Author Topic: Migrating from Windows to Linux  (Read 15889 times)

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Offline Ampera

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Re: Migrating from Windows to Linux
« Reply #100 on: March 08, 2018, 08:55:35 am »
Call me fanboy, but since this week I started to appreciate Linux/GNU a fair bit more, even for it's old-school Xorg.

For a project we needed to perform VLSI simulations and synthesis on a remote server. Every student can SSH into that box. So logically, with 2 commands you can create a personal SSH keychain and drop the public key on the server. Great, can login without having to type in my excessively lengthy student password every time.

Next, locally mounted the /home/ directory of remote server account using sshfs. Instant access to files on the remote server, just edit code in my favorite editor, etc. Works great as well, no need to put up with nano or continuously transferring code files back and forth.

Then finally enabled X11 forwarding and behold; running graphical applications on the server seamless in my own desktop environment with granularity to single applications. No annoying full-screen remote desktop connections as is the case on Windows. Sure dragging panels in the application is a bit slower than it used to, but everything else worked seamlessly.

Really liking this! I would almost swap my workstation laptop for a more lightweight one, and then forward X11 [everything] from my workstation on campus which has way more beefier hardware..

This is how my DOS programming workflow operates. I have a RasPi 3 (Switching over to a FreeBSD 12 VM on Google Cloud as I'm giving their free trial a shot) that runs just GNU Nano and DOSBox. X11 forwarding DOSBox, TC ontop of that, and I can run this from anywhere and everywhere.
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Offline bd139

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Re: Migrating from Windows to Linux
« Reply #101 on: March 08, 2018, 09:15:01 am »
Just a point on X which will diverge into a worrying trend... The "free desktop" lot are trying to kill it and replace it with Wayland with no regard for a ton of use cases where X actually craps upon it. What you will find, particularly in the last 5 years or so, is that Linux is converging on Windows architectural idioms. systemd is service manager. dbus is DCOM. journald is event logger. Weyland is DWM. On top of these is a non trivial stack of dependencies and APIs which cause very tight coupling between desktop services, toolkits and all sorts. Much like MFC/ATL/DirectX and all that cack. That means that the applications you build against this API aren't necessarily reasonably portable away from Linux as a platform. Also for anyone involved in the administration and development side of things this means API churn, instability and recovery nightmares. You will discover this if you have to recover a hosed systemd owned box. windows is a piece of piss to recover compared to this on a good day. As for portability, you will see shims appearing and application frameworks now which try and desperately abstract away all of these problems. The outcome is that even things like GTK and Qt are starting to get vertically huge to maintain portability.

The old adage of escaping windows bloat is an irony I can't laugh at any more.

Really this is exactly what the drivers of the ecosystem want. They want another monoculture which is difficult to migrate away from which they control. This is the antithesis of what people want when they move away from Windows really.

As for the drivers of the ecosystem, you will find that most of the independent looking projects are under the roof of Redhat. They hired everyone significant they could and are shaping everything from behind the scenes. They have even started buying up orchestration companies (Ansible) and getting silent agreements with cloud vendors and other OS vendors (particularly Azure and Microsoft!).

The reason for all this is there is big money in this. Redhat specifically say they are the "first $1bn open source company". Hmm.

The BSDs are the last refuge. Or ReactOS which is ironic really.
« Last Edit: March 08, 2018, 09:17:39 am by bd139 »
 

Offline Ampera

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Re: Migrating from Windows to Linux
« Reply #102 on: March 08, 2018, 09:36:14 am »
The fact that I see, however, is the NT family of operating systems suffer from one critical flaw. You can't change around key critical packages, especially for replacements that don't exist.

Linux may be suffering from the Windows bloats, but they all remain optional to the savvy techie. Windows is being hated right now for it's forcing of people to follow their exact measures, where as Linux has the advantage of being almost completely modular, as well as free and open.

BSD is nice, and while my personal experience with both is not nearly enough to make even a halfway decent remark on this, from what I have noticed, is that there is a critical difference between POSIX and NT ecosystems. Linux/BSD can be almost infinitely modified in whatever way you want, without having to mess with too much bullshit, whereas if I want to replace something as simple as the window manager on NT, good luck.
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Offline jmelson

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Re: Migrating from Windows to Linux
« Reply #103 on: March 08, 2018, 11:23:19 pm »
Call me fanboy, but since this week I started to appreciate Linux/GNU a fair bit more, even for it's old-school Xorg.

For a project we needed to perform VLSI simulations and synthesis on a remote server. Every student can SSH into that box. So logically, with 2 commands you can create a personal SSH keychain and drop the public key on the server. Great, can login without having to type in my excessively lengthy student password every time.

Next, locally mounted the /home/ directory of remote server account using sshfs. Instant access to files on the remote server, just edit code in my favorite editor, etc. Works great as well, no need to put up with nano or continuously transferring code files back and forth.
yes!!  Unix has been doing networking since Bill Gates was a teenager.  I have a bunch of Linux nodes at home, and use them remotely, ship files around, etc. all the time.  I do this at work, too.
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Then finally enabled X11 forwarding and behold; running graphical applications on the server seamless in my own desktop environment with granularity to single applications. No annoying full-screen remote desktop connections as is the case on Windows. Sure dragging panels in the application is a bit slower than it used to, but everything else worked seamlessly.
There is definitely a performance penalty when shipping parts of screens across the network all the time, but it works amazingly well, considering all the handstands that are needed to make this work.

Security on my home business web store is enhanced by only allowing http access from within the local network.  So, if I need to access it from away, I have to tunnel into the local network so it appears that I'm on the local side.  There are methods to do that, but it does get sluggish.

Jon
 

Offline jmelson

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Re: Migrating from Windows to Linux
« Reply #104 on: March 08, 2018, 11:28:59 pm »
The fact that I see, however, is the NT family of operating systems suffer from one critical flaw. You can't change around key critical packages, especially for replacements that don't exist.

Linux may be suffering from the Windows bloats, but they all remain optional to the savvy techie. Windows is being hated right now for it's forcing of people to follow their exact measures, where as Linux has the advantage of being almost completely modular, as well as free and open.
You should note that Linux kernels appear in all sorts of things.  My VOIP **PHONES** have Linux embedded in them!  There's a single flash memory chip soldered to the board that holds the kernel, drivers, Tcp/IP stack and their web-accessible configuration app, plus the phone's functionality!  Talk about stripping down to the bare essentials.

Jon
 
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Offline Ampera

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Re: Migrating from Windows to Linux
« Reply #105 on: March 08, 2018, 11:43:50 pm »
Of course! There's another thread going around here talking about running programs without a serious OS on your machine, but if you just get rid of all the unneeded packages, and reduce the daemons to only those that you REALLY need, you can get Linux going on some pretty silent running, Unix too. Heck, Unix was designed on the PDP-11, which by today's standards is anything but a speed demon.

We all are sitting here hoping the NT Kernel dies out so it's an excuse to stop using it and go completely to POSIX compatible operating systems like Unix/Linux. The reason many of us don't do this now is software support, but I do hope that as PCs gradually become more focused on power users for the first time in probably 28 years as an industry, and the fact that the industry that is taking up this slack, smartphones, is not only completely devoid of the NT kernel, but also completely Unix/Linux dominated, that we can see software support for us move closer to infinitely portable and adaptable versions with generic Unix/Linux/X11 support so we can get rid of the idea that a computer is something that you pay for someone else to tell you how to use it.
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Online nctnico

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Re: Migrating from Windows to Linux
« Reply #106 on: March 09, 2018, 12:39:06 am »
We all are sitting here hoping the NT Kernel dies out so it's an excuse to stop using it and go completely to POSIX compatible operating systems like Unix/Linux. The reason many of us don't do this now is software support, but I do hope that as PCs gradually become more focused on power users for the first time in probably 28 years as an industry, and the fact that the industry that is taking up this slack, smartphones, is not only completely devoid of the NT kernel, but also completely Unix/Linux dominated, that we can see software support for us move closer to infinitely portable and adaptable versions with generic Unix/Linux/X11 support so we can get rid of the idea that a computer is something that you pay for someone else to tell you how to use it.
Perhaps the move is more gradual. Nowadays many people use their smartphone and/or tablet (most of these run Linux under the hood) for many things like making appointments, reading/writing e-mail, visiting websites, watching video, etc which used to be things which where typically done on a Windows PC. In absolute numbers the number of Linux machines out in the field dwarf the number of Windows PCs. You might even go as far as saying Windows serves a shrinking niche market.
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Offline Ampera

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Re: Migrating from Windows to Linux
« Reply #107 on: March 09, 2018, 02:51:15 am »
Time will tell. Microsoft hasn't had a good track record of doing what everybody actually wants them to do, or doing any market research besides fudging statistics until it says people want to be bullied and spied on by their operating system.

I'm actually starting the process (mostly for fun) of replacing my Arch Linux installation with a FreeBSD one. I actually have sort of fallen in love with FreeBSD as of recent, and I thought it might revitalize my usage in the platform. Will report back on my status of using FreeBSD as a desktop operating system, but given it's high Linux compatibility, and general similarity to Linux, I don't think it will be all that bad. The only thing that annoys me are the file systems, I love my ext4, and am scared of the modern marvel that is ZFS, but whatever, it's a small part I can just not like.
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Offline amspire

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Re: Migrating from Windows to Linux
« Reply #108 on: March 09, 2018, 03:37:15 am »
I'm actually starting the process (mostly for fun) of replacing my Arch Linux installation with a FreeBSD one. I actually have sort of fallen in love with FreeBSD as of recent, and I thought it might revitalize my usage in the platform. Will report back on my status of using FreeBSD as a desktop operating system, but given it's high Linux compatibility, and general similarity to Linux, I don't think it will be all that bad.
I have never tried FreeBSD but it will be interesting to see how it goes. Looks like many developers are developing for Linux, and it is up to the FreeBSD community to port the program. Are the ports reliable or buggy?

Say for Blender, I can get a fully tested stable, experimental and nightly builds for Ubuntu or Debian, but for FreeBSD, I would have to go to Freshports where they have one build from a couple of months ago.

Wonder how you would go installing a massive commercial program such as Altera Quartus Prime  for FPGA development.
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The only thing that annoys me are the file systems, I love my ext4, and am scared of the modern marvel that is ZFS, but whatever, it's a small part I can just not like.
Well a fairly old modern marvel now. Should be rock solid, but is it as easy when things go wrong as NTFS or Ext2/3/4? I have not had the pleasure yet of being handed a crook ZFS or BTRFS disk and told that files on the disk have to be recovered. Not looking forward to that day either.
« Last Edit: March 09, 2018, 03:56:42 am by amspire »
 

Offline Ampera

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Re: Migrating from Windows to Linux
« Reply #109 on: March 09, 2018, 03:42:47 am »
FreeBSD has an almost fully featured communicability layer for Linux programs. No clue about the almost part of that, but I hear it works great enough, and can even run Linux programs faster than Linux itself sometimes.

For a stone age legacy computer nerd like myself, ZFS is an enigma I don't want to wrap my head around and it just gives me flashbacks to dynamic volumes on Windows which sometimes weren't even detected on other computers with identical versions of Windows (stupid). For me, drive, partition, journaling is nice, and done.
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Offline Ampera

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Re: Migrating from Windows to Linux
« Reply #110 on: March 09, 2018, 06:12:56 am »
Welp, I have results. Maybe it's my complete ineptitude towards this specific platform, but I am now quite cooled down with my love for FreeBSD.

Here's why:

I couldn't for the life of me install something as simple as NVidia's own X11 drivers.

I'm serious.

I couldn't as hard as I tried, using hours of time, and multiple resources, even the direct FreeBSD, and more modern forum based resources and a whole host of different methods, I couldn't get it to work. It would state the X11 server couldn't find any displays, and then nothing would work. I have not had this problem on Arch Linux, or any other barebones Linux configuration.

This could be me screwing stuff up, but honestly, I could just not be on the same wavelength for this sorta thing. Unix was fun, but now I am going immediately and straight back to Arch Linux, which I thought was a bit on the complicated side. Maybe I will revisit this.

I don't need any help, unless it's something really obvious, because if something as simple as this, can't be figured out by myself, then I am either too stupid, or FreeBSD is too stupid.
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Offline bd139

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Re: Migrating from Windows to Linux
« Reply #111 on: March 09, 2018, 07:19:07 am »
If it doesn’t work easily then it’s not you. That’s my view. This is incidentally why you find me running a windows laptop using WSL and headless remote machines most of the time. The power management and display server side of things really only makes sense if you pick hardware carefully.

While you didn’t win that battle, the journey was valuable.
 

Offline Ampera

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Re: Migrating from Windows to Linux
« Reply #112 on: March 09, 2018, 08:13:46 am »
If it doesn’t work easily then it’s not you. That’s my view. This is incidentally why you find me running a windows laptop using WSL and headless remote machines most of the time. The power management and display server side of things really only makes sense if you pick hardware carefully.

While you didn’t win that battle, the journey was valuable.

I try not to assume my failures as mistakes of other people rather than my own inexperience, but I do think someone could have done something here to not completely confuse and annoy me. Anyways, after dealing with my breaking grub, Arch Linux is back in the game for me.
I forget who I am sometimes, but then I remember that it's probably not worth remembering.
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