Which Linux distro do you use?

[legacy]

RasPi-based laptop

I got mine around 2008, these days there are new and modern pocket computers made in Japan, like the "NetWalker". This one runs modern versions of Linux with less problems, and it's as compact as the old Zaurus line.

[BravoV]

Even as someone certified to fix that shit, if the boot process fails I just reinstall the whole node. The whole Linux boot process is a complete piece of shit from end to end. It's a gigantic rube goldberg machine.

LOL ... thanks for the motivational speech, especially for noob like me. 

[legacy]

When I deal with a linux machine

Do you know why I like RISC PCs? One reason is that the OS is inside the ROM, and even if you end making a complete mess on the hard drive this won't stop the computer from resuming in a couple of seconds.

Love it! Thinking about modern stuff: what about putting Linux + ramrootfs inside a flash on our PCs? It would be a great fail-safe!

Yup, we have pen-drive, yup Linux does boot from them, but ... the probability you have a pen-drive when something goes wrong and you are far from your home/office is usually proportional to the need you have at that moment to complete something in the shortest time possible.

The Murphy Sod's Law is more powerful than the "force" in the whole Star Wars universe 

[bd139]

LOL I'm not so sure about the old RiscPCs. I have fucked up !boot on many occasions on one of them  .

The only reason I ended up in the IT trade is because I am a wrecking ball. Turns out that all the stuff I break regularly was a good education so makes me uniquely qualified to fix other people's stuff

[taydin]

LOL ... thanks for the motivational speech, especially for noob like me. 

As a noob, you want an OS that doesn't require constant fiddling (unless you want to LEARN THE OS as opposed to USE THE OS. In that case, you need Arch )

Debian doesn't have the latest greatest version of packages (some are years behind), but it is stable.

[RoGeorge]

Windows 9 is the best!

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1b/Linux_Distribution_Timeline.svg

 

[Halcyon]

Manjaro isn't really useful if you already run Arch with no problems. If there's a specific feature it has, like the graphical pacman frontend, then you can always just install that on normal Arch Linux.

I would agree with you, however the time you and I spent installing it was significant. You know me and I'm far from an average user, but if/when I need to reinstall this on another or new machine, it involves quite a bit of dicking around.

Arch is great if you truly want a minimalist OS and for me so far it has been just fine.

However I'm that "middle of the road" professional user. I want a nice, quick, GUI-based install with most of the basic packages I need from the start, then build from there. I don't want to have to spend an hour just getting a core OS installed. Manjaro seems to have that balance that I like. No bloat, just the good bits and since its based on Arch, it has very solid foundations, which I also like.

I installed a test system at work and quite enjoy it. You've already converted me to Arch Ampera, let me have this little thing ;-)

[legacy]

LOL I'm not so sure about the old RiscPCs. I have fucked up !boot on many occasions on one of them  .

You must be a serious pro

I have always failed at fucking up something like !boot on RISC OS v4.39 Adjust(1).

+Respect+ 

[bd139]

This was RiscOS 3.71 for me. I bailed out to NT then 

[Electro Detective]

Any Linux distro with a GUI does me    and no complaints from other users not familiar with (or can't be bothered, me included sometimes ) black and white command line gymnastix

Currently messing with Mint and Ubuntu/Lubuntu

and some others flogging penguins and sneakers I forget the geeky names of 

FWIW Windows 9 is loads better than 10   

but I have a soft spot for Win 7 

 

[SiliconWizard]

Do you know why I like RISC PCs? One reason is that the OS is inside the ROM, and even if you end making a complete mess on the hard drive this won't stop the computer from resuming in a couple of seconds.

Love it! Thinking about modern stuff: what about putting Linux + ramrootfs inside a flash on our PCs? It would be a great fail-safe!

This is something that is not hard to do. Actually any SSD is flash memory. What you additionally need are just two things: 1/ provision to make some area/partition of the SSD write-protected (in a hard way, probably the hardest part if you're using an off-the-shelf SSD), and 2/ a Linux distribution that can entirely boot from a pure read-only FS. A few distros are designed for exactly that, and typically the "live CD" ones can.

As you mentioned though, most motherboards these days allow a PC to boot from external drives, so they are virtually fail-safe. The above would just be an added convenience.

[eugenenine]

2/ a Linux distribution that can entirely boot from a pure read-only FS. A few distros are designed for exactly that, and typically the "live CD" ones can.

I did this a decade ago.  Installed Slackware A set, added a command to create a ram disk and remarked out the line that changes /rot from ro to rw and booted and looked for errors.  Anything that complained about trying to write i'd create links to the ram disk in my boot up script and try again.  It was actually quite simple trial and error a couple times until ti all worked.

I was experimenting with windows 2000 embedded read only back then and xp embedded was released and no matter what I did it wouldn't work read only.  Burned a MS support incident to find out that read only was no longer supported with XP embedded (this was pre-service packs, I'l told it was fixed later), but that was another reason I dumped windows.

[magic]

Arch, but please don't take it as a recommendation because it's a PITA to exorcise S***mD out of it.

[radioactive]

Tried several distros in 1997.  Settled on Debian.  After that, tried Ubuntu in the early days.  Switched back to Debian after the Ubuntu KDE debacle.  Never looked back since.  Not a big fan of systemd, but I guess I'm over it now.

[BravoV]

Whats the "fun"  thing about the systemd are you guys talking about ?

A linux noob here.

[magic]

It's a plan by Lennart Poettering and Red Cap to take over the world

It started out ostensibly as yet another new init system with more features, only to grow until everything becomes a S****mD plugin. First they replaced syslog whith their own version which crashed when its log became corrupted by hard reboot (well, maybe they fixed it by now), then they added a DNS resolver and cache suffering from bugs fixed 20 years ago in other products (well, maybe they fixed them by now) and rumor has it that they will not stop until Linux is replaced with their own s****d-kernel-service, because they are mad that Linux refuses to hide the "debug" boot parameter from applications, a change that would make their buggy software appear slightly less buggy to the untrained eye.



After the final step of obsoleting web browsers with s****md-https-client (featuring full ActiveX and Flash support to migrate the last remaining corporate Windows XP users to Red Cap) they will "monetize" their product by making it download advertisements to your "documents" folder. By that time no alternative software will exist because all distributions jumped on the hype train and use S***mD.

[bd139]

Yep systemd is basically a direct copy of windows/DCOM semantics (event log, service manager, lsass, DCOM) with all the stateful buggery that ensues. It is also why when presented with a failed boot I’m going to shrug and just blow the box away. Same as I do if windows goes pop.

I have an argument with Poettering once on another site. The guy is deranged.

Edit: and no they haven’t fixed journald yet. Literally two days ago I dealt with a hosed node that wouldn’t give me logs. I had to futz around in the uniquely shit nest of guid encrusted directories to find the problem. Two more levels of indirection; just what I needed!

Edit 2: gconf is the windows registry too. Ffs

[SiliconWizard]

systemd has never caused me any major issue, so I don't really care for now.
But I admit this was not the best move in the Linux world.

[BravoV]

So most linuxers x64/x86 use systemd ? Cmiiw.

[bd139]

Not out of choice

[magic]

Not out of choice

Stop sounding like an iPhone user, you do have a choice

[bd139]

I am an iPhone user and I choose to be one

Not out of choice because I run CentOS / RHEL in production because that's what I'm paid to do and it's what's right for the business.

I'm not going to cruise in and run a commercial op on FuckPoetteringOS am I?

Honestly if I had a choice I'd run FreeBSD and to hell with Linux.

[legacy]

Honestly if I had a choice I'd run FreeBSD and to hell with Linux.

uh, LLVM is going to be ready to compile Linux.
Sweet dreams are coming: to hell with GNUCC.

[legacy]

(the choice to choose which C compiler you wanna use for compiling the Linux kernel)

[Nominal Animal]

I'm not going to cruise in and run a commercial op on FuckPoetteringOS am I?

Ahem. It's called Devuan.
 

I'm still hoping systemd will implode on its internal complexity and maintenance burden, but you know people are people, so expecting sanity is a bit much..