Which Linux distro do you use?

[Halcyon]

There has been a lot of talk about Linux (particularly as a replacement to Windows 10). I'm curious as to what people here use and why.

Personally, I'm running Arch Linux as my daily driver. But have previously used Mint, Ubuntu Desktop, Fedora Workstation and CentOS. All have their strengths and weaknesses. Ampera (on the forum) helped me set up Arch (as it doesn't have a GUI installer) but it's very powerful.

More recently I've been considering Manjaro (which is based on Arch) as it seems quite popular; 2nd most popular on Distrowatch in the previous 12 months.

[eugenenine]

I'm the only (first) other... Slackware

But anything is better than windows 10.  Wife and daughter have windows 10 and we switched ISP and both of theirs will randomly say 'no internet' when connected, despite every other device in the house working fine.  Thats just the latest issue with 10.

[Ampera]

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.

Manjaro tries to be Ubuntu with Arch, in that it packages up simplification tools so that it's easier for non-linux people to use. My few moans with it are the desktop environments available to choose from (which is fine, they're easy to change, but it's packaging high weight environments, which I personally am not a fan of), their using separate repos for packages (somewhat understandable, as Arch has strict guidelines as to what ends up on their repos), and just not lining up with my personal theory that Linux is best used when you understand how it works, not when you're relying on someone else to understand how it works.

I obviously use Arch, and I think it's one of the best Linux distros for people who want to learn Linux. It has one of the best implementations of modularity in the Linux world, with an efficient and pretty hard to screw up package manager (let's not talk about the AUR though). It has better out of the box hardware support than most other distributions, given that it does not come with X, and the Linux kernel supports terminal modes going back to pre-VESA BIOS modes if you really needed it. This means it's possible to better understand your hardware and get the right drivers while you're installing X. It encourages people to keep it simple, stupid, and understand how your machine works so you can get the best out of it.

In my opinion the only possible switch I would make is to FreeBSD, which has much cleaner implementations of a lot of things, and it already runs on my server. Its only sin is that it has no usable linux binary support (doesn't support latest glibc). If it did, I'd love to have hybrid pacman/pkg package management (or both in the style of PacBSD) for Linux/BSD binary package management. If I can get all my Linux stuff, and all of my BSD stuff in one place, I would be in heaven.

[edy]

The poll asks obviously some basic distro questions but it is important to note that there are sub-flavors for each of them. It would be impossible to list them all, so I understand why the poll has to be more general. As far as I know, Ubuntu is branch of Debian. However, even within Ubuntu there are a bunch of different types which I use depending on the situation....

- Lubuntu for my older laptops, light-weight and fast
- Ubuntu Studio for my main working productivity machine

I try not to use the regular Ubuntu "GNOME" type distro because the UI is too graphic/processor intensive for most of my older machines. I like the interface but I don't need all those bells and whistles. I know you can install other GUI's on top of standard Ubuntu but I just go straight for the distro that is already either bundled with XFCE or LXDE.

[legacy]

Our hobby-projects at DTB are based on Gentoo Linux/GNU. We do support Gentoo/PPC, Gentoo/HPPA, and Gentoo/MIPS on EOL hardware { Apple/PowerMac-G4, HPPA-C3xxx and C8xxx, SGI/MIPS-IP30 and Atheros5-9 routers}, while our dev computers run Ubuntu, simply because it does what we need and it's ready out of the box without the need to dig deep into dependencies, broken packages, and all the problems that emerge with Gentoo.

Our Windriver dev-machines are based on Ubuntu for the same reason, but some are based on Debian due to our customers' preference.

[SiliconWizard]

Arch.

Note: I run a small server mainly used as a NAS, which is on CentOS, the only Linux machine I own that isn't on Arch. I had set it up before I even started using Arch, and CentOS seemed appropriate for this use back then.

[mrflibble]

Debian for standard server & workstation stuff. And ubuntu for other people's machines that I sorta-kinda-support. Mainly because that way the standard answer for support questions like "How do I XYZ?" then becomes "Well, google ubuntu XYZ". 

I try not to use the regular Ubuntu "GNOME" type distro because the UI is too graphic/processor intensive for most of my older machines. I like the interface but I don't need all those bells and whistles. I know you can install other GUI's on top of standard Ubuntu but I just go straight for the distro that is already either bundled with XFCE or LXDE.

On that note, every once in a while I try out a new window manager to see if it's any good. Most recent trial being LXDE. While it's nice enough, I miss all sorts of handy features. So it is back to fvwm2 for me! About the only thing that I miss in fvwm2 is good RandR integration.

[krish2487]

Ubuntu with i3 wm.


Simply because of the sheer amount of information available for it as mrfibble said... It is one of the most common/newbie/user friendly distros out there.. So it seems like it would also have a higher number of common problems and solutions.. And I am kinda used to its quirks by now.. having spent well over a decade +.


oh and Centos for servers. rock solid, stable and easy to use.

[bd139]

CentOS but I only run it on servers rather than clients. Rationale: it's RHEL really, well tested, reliable over more than a decade of usage, trustworthy and well documented. Have run hundreds of nodes with it and can't really fault it.

If I had to go desktop linux it'd be Ubuntu though. I like my conveniences

[legacy]

For the next laptop (Lenovo? Carbon? I have "hope"  ) I will for sure make a second particion for Arch.

Last time I take the airplane, I got 5 minutes of extra check-in, just after have exposed the passport.

- What is that?
- that? what?
- That thing!
- Ah, my japanese PDA ...
- is it a pocket computer?
- Yep, running Linux.




Lesson learned: the Captain HardLock flag stuck on the top shell is so nice and funny but doesn't help to pass the check-in because when agents see a skull they wonder bad things (is it a bomb? is him a terrorist? let's check out)

[bd139]

Oh that's cute. I want one 

[AngusBeef]

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.

Manjaro tries to be Ubuntu with Arch, in that it packages up simplification tools so that it's easier for non-linux people to use. My few moans with it are the desktop environments available to choose from (which is fine, they're easy to change, but it's packaging high weight environments, which I personally am not a fan of), their using separate repos for packages (somewhat understandable, as Arch has strict guidelines as to what ends up on their repos), and just not lining up with my personal theory that Linux is best used when you understand how it works, not when you're relying on someone else to understand how it works.

I'm currently using Manjaro - I fucked up my Arch install so it's a nice halfway there sort of thing. I will go to Arch eventually when I have more time to sit down and fully understand it. That said, I still needed to do configuring to solve about 10 issues that remained specific to my hardware combo and I still can't get my damn user to have rights to access USB devices as a serial interface without accessing the command line every time I unplug something and plug it back in, nor get it to remember my XINPUT mouse acceleration settings.

I think your personal theory can be said for anything, but at the end of the day in most cases I'm using a computer to accomplish other tasks, not for the sake of understanding how it works. If I can speed up or otherwise automate those tasks I have to do, then maybe the understanding of how it works becomes useful. But if I'm using a computer to write documents and browse the internet and other 'day-to-day' things, I just want something that works.

My only gripe about Arch is the lack of 32bit support. I've got a Motion Computing LE1600 tablet PC from way back (ok not so far) that has a Wacom tablet built into the display. But it's 32 bit and so Arch and Manjaro are out. It's running Mint right now because of the out-of-the-box functionality. I do believe there is some kind of modification I could do to the kernel in order to run on 32 bit but returning to my previous paragraph I use my devices for other purposes and don't always have the time to sit through a 6 hour command-line and wiki-reading session to be able to prove my turbo-autism on the alter of the UNIX god just to get the damn thing installed. One day soon I will, just not yet.

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[AngusBeef]

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'll second you on that - if you can use Arch to its full capacity then Manjaro doesn't add much to the mix.

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[legacy]

But if I'm using a computer to write documents and browse the internet and other 'day-to-day' things, I just want something that works

Then buy a second hand Apple Laptop, even the script-writer of Sex And The City wrote on a Mac(1) 
(kidding, but well, it's true that those products are made for day-to-day things. It's Apple Business)


(1) The PowerMac G3 Wallstress was used by Sarah Jessica Parker in the movie sex and the city.
So, from the script-writers to the actresses, they all wrote on a mac

[AngusBeef]

But if I'm using a computer to write documents and browse the internet and other 'day-to-day' things, I just want something that works

Then buy a second hand Apple Laptop, even the script-writer of Sex And The City wrote on a Mac(1) 
(kidding, but well, it's true that those products are made for day-to-day things. It's Apple Business)


(1) The PowerMac G3 Wallstress was used by Sarah Jessica Parker in the movie sex and the city.
So, from the script-writers to the actresses, they all wrote on a mac

I actually dislike Macs, primarily for their cost and their forced obsolescence.

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[BravoV]

Noob question, is there any distro, that capable of emergency boot mode like windows "safe mode" by default ?

What I mean "safe mode" in windows is, even at crappy resolution 640x480 and no hardware acceleration at all, still, for noob like me that is scared of command prompt, can still alive, kicking and probably do some GUI style fixing using GUI-ed system configuration tools. 

Its not like we're still using Hercules vs CGA era anymore right ? 

[AngusBeef]

Noob question, is there any distro, that capable of emergency boot mode like windows "safe mode" by default ?

What I mean "safe mode" in windows is, even at crappy resolution 640x480 and no hardware acceleration at all, still, for noob like me that is scared of command prompt, can still alive, kicking and probably do some GUI style fixing using GUI-ed system configuration tools.  [emoji14]

Just install it from a USB stick and keep it around. If you ever need to go into a "safe mode" you've got a version that will run off the stick that you can solve everything with. Manjaro and Mint will both run everything off USB and include drivers for Wireless and all of that. Even my Logitech wireless keyboard and mouse work running off the stick

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[taydin]

I was a long time Gentoo Linux user, but eventually I got tired of fixing breakage after updating the OS.

Switched to Arch Linux for a while and liked it a lot. But I'm doing yocto linux work on my linux desktop and with Arch, I have noticed very frequent breakage of the yocto build process. This is because everything in Arch is cutting edge. Arch switches to a newer perl, and yocto build craps out. Arch switches to a new make, yocto craps.

So I eventually installed Debian and now I can focus on yocto without worrying about the OS breaking it. I still want to use Arch, but first I need to find a way to work on yocto in a docker container so that it is shielded from what's happening in Arch. Once I have that in place, I will go back to Arch.

[BravoV]

Noob question, is there any distro, that capable of emergency boot mode like windows "safe mode" by default ?

What I mean "safe mode" in windows is, even at crappy resolution 640x480 and no hardware acceleration at all, still, for noob like me that is scared of command prompt, can still alive, kicking and probably do some GUI style fixing using GUI-ed system configuration tools.  [emoji14]

Just install it from a USB stick and keep it around. If you ever need to go into a "safe mode" you've got a version that will run off the stick that you can solve everything with. Manjaro and Mint will both run everything off USB and include drivers for Wireless and all of that. Even my Logitech wireless keyboard and mouse work running off the stick

Ok, thanks, but when booted thru this USB, is there a "GUI" style system configuration tools that is "adequate" to fix common system problems right ?

What I mean common problems are, the type of problems at noob's computer.

Few years ago when AMD released new Ryzen, bought a new spanking mobo + Ryzen cpu, with the naive thought its time to migrate to Linux as I believed at that time Linux was matured enough even for noob, I was wrong. As I didn't want to dual boot with my Win7, just want to have a full single boot disk solely for the linux and have a self motivational kick to start to get use linux.

Downloaded latest & "stable" Fedora at that time, installation went smoothly, and Ryzen was still very new at that time, the standard package probably didn't have the latest or complete system chip-set driver. Everything went fine, and then the system suddenly suggested and notified that there was an updated system/chipset driver for the Ryzen, downloaded, installed and rebooted, and BANG !!!, the system booted with tons of errors and left me at "text mode" command prompt screen waiting for the root to log-in, and no clue nor hint what to do next.

Thats it, I decided to postpone the migration, as its too much trouble just to have a stable basic OS to boot up even I didn't screw up.

Is it still the same situation for today's distro ?

[AngusBeef]

As long as you stay away from Arch linux. Both Manjaro (my current favorite, based on Arch but without the masochism) and Linux Mint (basically what Ubuntu should be but isn't) work out of the box. The only issue I've had so far on four different devices was that on one old tablet PC it didn't have wireless drivers installed so I had to use ethernet (I copied the drivers over now, so now it will have them if I have to go onto the live usb). But the other 3 configured off the live USB perfectly, including external HDMI devices, wifi, bluetooth, logitech wireless keyboard and mouse, etc. Plus, since they're user-friendly versions of linux they include GUIs for everything you need

Felt the need to add this point... So I first used Linux like 15 years ago when I was still a kid. It was fucking hard as shit and I was only 13 at the time so it's fairly normal. Also, I had dialup so I downloaded Fedora for about 2 weeks at night when nobody was calling. Later, I found out that Ubuntu would ship CDs to your house, so I got one of those guys (still have it) and it worked much easier for me. But comparing my first Linux excursion to what I recently (I mean literally 2 weeks ago) started again is a night and day difference. Everything is easy, nice, neat, clean, etc. I have a lot of older hardware and everything is running Linux now except my one Windows device because I need Windows for work. I don't know why I waited this long to come back.

TLDR: Yes and I recommend Manjaro followed by Linux Mint.

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[SiliconWizard]

Lesson learned: the Captain HardLock flag stuck on the top shell is so nice and funny but doesn't help to pass the check-in because when agents see a skull they wonder bad things (is it a bomb? is him a terrorist? let's check out)

 

Of course, it's very close to the symbol used for acute toxicity: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GHS_hazard_pictograms
You were lucky security agents were in a good mood.

[edy]

Is that a Sharp Zaurus PDA ? Like this one:



They are cute, although very tiny. How does it compare to say a cheap budget 11" screen laptop that you wipe clean and install Linux on? I see some for under $200 new, and you can probably pick up some refurbs off lease for less than $100-150 these days. I gave up on trying to make a RasPi-based laptop.... will never make it as compact as I want. I'll save the RasPi for the Arcade project. :-)

[NiHaoMike]

Gentoo on my main PC (was my OS of choice when I built it, couldn't be bothered to redo everything), Arch on my laptop (now my OS of choice for a machine to tweak for daily use), Ubuntu for most test machines (except when I need a specific distro for certain tasks), Debian on my mini home server (referred to as "LilDebby"), Raspbian on Raspberry Pis, and OpenWRT or DD-WRT on routers and similar small network appliances.

On the topic of PDAs with hardware keyboards, there are some new(er) ones but the specs aren't exactly impressive even accounting for the small size. I would really want to see one with the latest Tegra.

[BravoV]

Plus, since they're user-friendly versions of linux they include GUIs for everything you need

Do those GUI system fixing tools can do it's job at the already installed broken OS , such as my case above ?

Thanks for the suggestion, I guess Mint will be my next adventure.

[bd139]

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.

When I deal with a linux machine, I tend to create one or more separate logical volumes at /vol/N and then link /home and the bits of /var I care about to it. Then if anything goes wrong I can spew a new OS onto it, relink and deploy config (via ansible usually) onto the machine and bring it up. It's not impossible to entirely replace a whole hosed node in AWS or on your desktop in under 20 minutes then.

The BSDs get the boot process spot on. Which is ironic as from a conceptual level it looks like windows 

[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..

[bd139]

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.

It's not just that. I rather want the FreeBSD core system, the libraries and the commands without all the bejewelled dog poop of GNU coreutils/libc for example.

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..

It's a death march. It's not going to change. Especially with this fuckwit at the helm: https://github.com/systemd/systemd/issues/6237

[Nominal Animal]

Yup.  I don't care what kind of language my project leader uses, if it is on point.
However, when you have an essentially failed programmer as your project lead -- Poettering having had to start his own project, because his code was so shitty it was not accepted anywhere, and he is one of those idiots who refuse to ever admit any kind of blame or error, ever --, things turn to shit.

Fortunately, there is still freedom to choose.  It is becoming difficult, as desktop environments (Gnome, Cinnamon, KDE) integrate systemd-only features (I shudder to think xorg does as well), but it isn't yet impossible to replace that cancer with something modular instead.  On the embedded side, especially if you don't need a desktop environment, it is much easier.

[BravoV]

So cmiiw, most "common & popular" gui frontends, must be layered above the systemd layer ?

[legacy]

xorg

My team is having a serious problem with x11 and ... fonts, because we need them on our Sonoko project, which is, to sum up, a X11-terminal made on a Linux PowerPC embedded with a Matrox graphic card. We have  ramrootfs, which is tftpboot from the Lan, and it contains everything, including x11 and fonts, but for weird and still unknown reasons it takes an eternity to map them during booting.

Twenty five minutes to load 11Mbyte of fonts! And the font server is - buggy - so you have no choice, you have to include those blasted fonts locally, somehow/somewhere(1)

Fonts have always been a curse on X11. I have never seen a system running without issue, and even Mathematica on Irix (which cost something like 5K euro in license) had the same crappy problem with fonts when the application was used remotely from a big-iron computer (e.g. Onyx2, Origin ... ).

Why don't people fix it once and forever? When some bugs get shown the door, they re-enters from the window, just a few commits later.

The reason why it happens is a mystery 


(1) we have just hacked u-boot and implemented a modded version of "diskboot" able to load a raw partition without carring of which type

[Nominal Animal]

So cmiiw, most "common & popular" gui frontends, must be layered above the systemd layer ?

No; they use the messaging bus, dbus, for session control and events like new media detection; and dbus was subsumed into systemd years ago.

It is still possible to recompile most desktop environments to use alternate dbus implementations, and thus avoid systemd, and that's what Devuan does.

However, most of the daemons and services that provide session control and aforementioned events, have also already been subsumed into systemd, so the number of replacements one needs to find or implement, often with compatibility layers that make them look like their systemd counterparts (because it is easier for application developers to just assume systemd ones, instead of spend time and find out how to do it portably), is increasing day by day.

One of the nastiest parts is polkit.  If I were employed by an intelligence organization, that's where I'd put my backdoors.  (Anyone who has experience with Apache suexec security risks, knows how easy such mechanisms are to subvert; and polkit isn't exactly vetted for security.)

[Nominal Animal]

Fonts have always been a curse on X11.

No, not really; there's just been quite a few changes along the way, making things muddled if you aren't aware of the history.

Because of the client-server separation, there are two sets of fonts: core, and client side.  Most applications nowadays use client side fonts.  If you use a thin client, you'll need to disable font antialiasing, so that text is rendered on the server (machine containing the display hardware; what we normally consider the client) using the Render extension, with the minimum amount of data transferred.  With antialiasing enabled, the pixel data will flow back and forth between the server and the client.

You definitely want to ensure you have Render extension enabled (and EXA for Matrox Xorg drivers), and are using Xft2 and Freetype.

Twenty five minutes to load 11Mbyte of fonts!

Make sure you have just the bare minimum core fonts (/usr/share/fonts/X11/), and prefer Truetype client-side fonts (/usr/share/fonts/truetype/).

Old applications (on top of bare Xlib) may use the core fonts still, but Gtk+ and Qt (so Gnome, Cinnamon, LDXE, XFCE, and KDE) applications will use client-side fonts.  If you disable font antialiasing, the Render extension will be used to render them.

[legacy]

I don't like things like systemd, dbus, udev, ... I really do prefer simply things and static dev names, plus a static dependency list during the boot process

Code: [Select]

[*] rte
boot: cold-start
[*] mount-rootfs
[*] kernel-modules-dep
[*] mount-others
[*] mount-swap
[*] system-clean
[*] memory-clean
[*] date-and-time
[*] machine-identify
[*] hostname
[*] machine-onthelan
[*] wifi_init
wlan0
[*] networking-bridge
networking-devices[]={  eth0  eth1  eth2  } -> mybridge0
[*] networking-loopback
[*] networking-gateway
[*] networking-ipforwarding
[*] net
[*] env-shared-libraries
[*] http-tini-server
[*] sftp-server
[*] ssh-server
[*] tftp-server
[*] iperf-server
[*] ttyS-init
ttyS [ ttyS0 ttyS1 ttyS2 ttyS3 ttyS4 ttyS5 ttyS6 ttyS7 ttyS8 ]
[*] uart-init
uart [ ttyS0 ttyS1 ttyS2 ttyS3 ttyS4 ttyS5 ttyS6 ttyS7 ttyS8 ]
[*] ttyget
agetty tty[ ttyS0 ], waiting for cr-lf

This is a custom /sbin/init which loads services from a static list from /etc/system/conf/myinit-runlist. It was made from scratch and it only does what we need, on both routers, NASs, and X11-terminals (all Linux embedded profiled), as well as it can be used for PDA (like the C1K in the previous pic) and even laptop.

This profile is also used by our Catalyst-builder-machine, so we can accordingly create stages built on this way: without any dependency to dbus, udev& their friends, which can go hell

[Nominal Animal]

eudev is nice if you have hot-pluggable devices, and want to support them without polling.  For example, routers with USB 2.0 can be made to support 3G/4G/LTE dongles, if they can provide enough current (something like up to 1000mA in bursts, much less on average) on the USB bus.

(You need usb-modeswitch eudev rules for those, you see.)

[legacy]

eudev is nice if you have hot-pluggable devices, and want to support them without polling

they only ones that make sense are:
- usb pendrives -> they work pretty good without  *udev
- usb harddrives -> they work pretty good without  *udev
- usb to serials -> tried FTDI, it works pretty good without  *udev
- usb-LCDs -> developed our own (defio), it works pretty good without  *udev
- usb to CF2 -> they work pretty good without  *udev
- usb to PS/2 -> they work pretty good without  *udev

Conclusion: we do not want/need *udev, since the kernel does not need any helper in userspace, and it's already able to see the device when on probe events (cause forced to static dev name, this might require hack to each kernel module involved), and for the above we do not need any post-event configuration

[magic]

I am an iPhone user and I choose to be one

Truth be told, Apple may be better than plugging yourself into Google Skynet. But I don't touch those things at all.

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

Probably coming to me at some point as well. But I became familiar enough with Linux and able to keep it going despite bullshit that it will take a major shitshow to push me over. What they came up with so far is too easy to fix or disable

[Nominal Animal]

Note that eudev is a fork, and not part of systemd.  It provides both the daemon and the udevadm utility, and is standalone service.  I use it/udev mostly to create symbolic links and manage the owner/group and permissions of various USB-connected devices (microcontrollers, mostly), and it works well for that.  For me, it is complementary to the kernel: it applies my userspace policy for me.

eudev stays mostly blocked on the netlink, so it does not consume any CPU time unless something happens, but it does consume some RAM.  IMO, whether one uses it or not, is a question of whether the memory use (and storage needed and effort of configuration) is worth the flexible policy or not.

[legacy]

Code: [Select]

*  sys-fs/eudev
      Homepage:      https://github.com/gentoo/eudev
      Description:   Linux dynamic and persistent device naming support (aka userspace devfs)
      License:       LGPL-2.1 MIT GPL-2

Yup, it's in the default Gentoo's profile 

[nctnico]

Just wondering... why isn't Redhat on the list of options? Redhat is regulary on the list of supported distros of commercial software. Or has Redhat changed it's name? I have not kept track.

[bd139]

CentOS is Redhat.

[Halcyon]

Just wondering... why isn't Redhat on the list of options? Redhat is regulary on the list of supported distros of commercial software. Or has Redhat changed it's name? I have not kept track.

Red Hat (as you knew it) is now a non-free enterprise version of Linux (owned by IBM). CentOS is the free "consumer" version of what Red Hat was.

[Black Phoenix]

Just wondering... why isn't Redhat on the list of options? Redhat is regulary on the list of supported distros of commercial software. Or has Redhat changed it's name? I have not kept track.

Red Hat (as you knew it) is now a non-free enterprise version of Linux (owned by IBM). CentOS is the free "consumer" version of what Red Hat was.

Fedora project is sponsored by Red Hat, so basically the end user consumer version.

[NiHaoMike]

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.

Then some disgruntled user makes a fork that not only disables the ads, but also has a "BURN_BANDWIDTH" option that repeatedly downloads the ads to /dev/null in an infinite loop.

[olkipukki]

Ooh… a mythical creature with many faces so called Linux 

As today, end up with:

* CentOS: 
   at the time Xilinx Vivado has supported only this (or commercials)
   CentOS was a primary OS in AWS, not anymore since everything have migrated to FreeBSD 

* Ubuntus (in plural):
    well, most ‘drivers’ supports only this distro

* Debian-hybrid
   own choice, Proxmon as in-house virtualization platform


If I could, I would prefer to ditch these and reduce animals in my zoo.

[legacy]

Gentoo-derived (means Gentoo-Catalyst building custom stuff) on this PowerMacG4 PowerPC machine, loaded with a SCSI WIDE LVD controller, a SCSI NARROW SE, a WIFI module, a SATA SAS controller.

The RAM is limited to 2Gbyte, and the PCI subsystem is a bit slow. The SAS doesn't get more than 70Mbyte/sec from the SAS 4X.

Nothing special, and it's slow, but it's what I daily use remotely, and *the* premium was adding an Ada compiler, and Pascal compiler. Erlang still doesn't work, GNU Prolog neither.



I have always dreamed about owning this PowerMac, since the first time I read about it from an article written more than 10 years ago by Luigi Genoni and Andrea Arcangeli on a Magazine

[Black Phoenix]

Nothing special, and it's slow, but it's what I daily use remotely, and *the* premium was adding an Ada compiler, and Pascal compiler. Erlang still doesn't work, GNU Prolog neither.

This Pascal?



I learned that at school, back in 2002, it was the programming language everyone learned first at school to learn good programming practices using structured programming and data structuring.

Then after one year and an half of that you would start with C.

[frozenfrogz]

I am running Kali Linux and have nothing to complain. Yes, it is primarily designed for security testing etc. but ever since I tried it, I somehow felt right at home.
So basically I am using Debian I guess. XFCE GUI has come a long way since I had first tried it back in the SuSe 6 / 7 days. xD

[legacy]

This Pascal?

The above in the pic is Borland Turbo Pascal. It runs on DOS, it can be executed under DOSBox and even on a PowerPC machine, but the DOS IDE interface has some issue due to the emulation.

I think the problem must be related to the CONIO library (console I/O). There must be something weird in the required BIOS. Who knows  ?

The same applies to RISCPC with RiscOS v4.19 Adjust with a 486 guest card installed and the control software "!PC v308".

Both these two examples do not use a 100% compatible PC-BIOS, and the Borland IDE randomly shows weird behaviors. Anyway, I am able to use Turbo Pascal and Turbo Vision (Object Oriented Pascal + OOP libraries) without the IDE interface, similar to how we use GCC on the text console.


On my PowerMac, I use FreePascal and GNU Pascal. The first is still supported, the second is EOL since 2007, but I did somehow resurrect old versions and built a toolchain.

PowerPC/ADA was dropped by Gentoo's mainteiners in 2010, and partially supported by volunteers, who have -90% dropped the interest recently, so that stuff required a lot of work, especially for resurrecting almost-modern version Ada.

[legacy]

it was the programming language everyone learned first at school to learn good programming practices using structured programming and data structuring.

Some University prefered Modula2(1). I did a couple of examinations in 2004. Good memories


(1) it's in my TODO list for PPC, at least.

[bd139]

I did turbo pascal in the early 90s. Enjoyed it to be honest. It felt like what you were producing was going to be robust and it was! Plus the whole thing fits in your head.

[Nominal Animal]

It felt like what you were producing was going to be robust and it was!

Except for the division-by-zero fatal error bug on faster machines.

Yeah, I liked Turbo Pascal, too.  Even did my first commercial software job on it, in early nineties.

[bd139]

PatchCRT 

[radioactive]

Regarding systemd:

Debian May Need To Re-Evaluate Its Interest In 'Init System Diversity'
https://linux.slashdot.org/story/19/09/21/042213/debian-may-need-to-re-evaluate-its-interest-in-init-system-diversity#comments

Some interesting comments in there.

[bd139]

Thanks for that. That means I might sleep another few minutes tonight! 

[Black Phoenix]

It felt like what you were producing was going to be robust and it was!

Except for the division-by-zero fatal error bug on faster machines.

Yeah, I liked Turbo Pascal, too.  Even did my first commercial software job on it, in early nineties.

One of my colleagues at school, a very smart guy in programming made a clone of PacMan in Visual Turbo Pascal, with subprograms and routines, were even the eyes of the ghosts follow the main character. Even bonus stage and effects had.



It was is final 2 year project, and enough to say that it was the best one rated. Here is some video he published in Youtube showing the game itself. Currently he works in the Miniclip Development company, know in the end of 90 and 2000 by their time wasting flash games.

Other project he had was a clone of Super Mario Bros 3 but with Knuckles instead, called Super Marcolino:



His youtube channel also have some more stuff, specially a program he created that can change sprites animations for the original Genesis / Mega Drive Streets of Rage and some more stuff he experiment with, including but not limited to machine learning.

https://www.youtube.com/user/gsaurus4/videos

[bd139]

That’s really cool that is. Thanks for posting 

[SiliconWizard]

Regarding systemd:

Debian May Need To Re-Evaluate Its Interest In 'Init System Diversity'
https://linux.slashdot.org/story/19/09/21/042213/debian-may-need-to-re-evaluate-its-interest-in-init-system-diversity#comments

Some interesting comments in there.

Indeed. This one, flagged "insightful", looks particularly well documented:

Easy. Drop SystemD (Score:4, Insightful)
It is after all a load of shit.

 

[legacy]

I spent days leaving the big iron machine compiling stuff in its corner, ... now Erlang is up and running.

If you don't care about leaving the machine in a corner, then Gentoo is the only distro that can serve the evil purpose of supporting these old Unix big irons.


To summarize
- Erlang is now on x86, PPC, and now even on HPPA.
Next challenge: Erlang on MIPS!

[bd139]

Only problem with gentoo is the electricity bill 

[SiliconWizard]

Only problem with gentoo is the electricity bill 

Wasted time and energy. That's why I finally chose Arch. Close enough in spirit, but binary-based.

[Ampera]

My only gripe about Arch is the lack of 32bit support.

https://archlinux32.org/

Thank me later.

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.

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 ;-)

You get faster and better at setting it up the more and more you do it. I can set up an entire Arch system from booting the install stick to being at a usable desktop in about 30 minutes. (with all the programs I want).

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

I do have a choice, and I am almost behind you with that, but I'd need them to update the linux kernel modules, because I need my Linux programs (some proprietary stuff I can't just recompile for FreeBSD, like Steam.)

[AngusBeef]

My only gripe about Arch is the lack of 32bit support.

https://archlinux32.org/

Thank me later.

I guess I could've done a 5 second google search and discovered it, but my stupid self just went off the official page.  Thanks I think this will come in handy!


I've never touched any of the BSD based operating systems but all the gurus seem to rave about OpenBSD and even more about FreeBSD. Coming from a Windows background and just getting into the Linux systems, how many weeks/months/years would it take to grasp enough concepts to make a switch worthwhile?

I have heard a lot about Jails with ZFS under FreeBSD, but all of my reading simply tells me it's virtualization (though not at the kernel level) and that it enables people to setup multiple configurations of similar software packages easily. But I don't quite understand what the situations are where it would be applicable and all the articles I read are about procedures to establish a jail but not the situations that would be resolved with using them.

[bd139]

Jails are best described as a namespace. Ideal for shared hosting companies etc. You can give someone a whole machine to cock up without the overheads of a VM. Also for complete application isolation.  The last freebsd machine I used in production was a veritable monster with 16 cores and 8Gb of RAM (a lot at the time). It had 200 users (!) running in jails.

OpenBSD I haven’t used for a number of years. It was obtuse but very well documented.

Learning curve, depends. Experienced sysadmin, a few days. End user, a few months.

[AngusBeef]

Jails are best described as a namespace. Ideal for shared hosting companies etc. You can give someone a whole machine to cock up without the overheads of a VM. Also for complete application isolation.  The last freebsd machine I used in production was a veritable monster with 16 cores and 8Gb of RAM (a lot at the time). It had 200 users (!) running in jails.

OpenBSD I haven’t used for a number of years. It was obtuse but very well documented.

Learning curve, depends. Experienced sysadmin, a few days. End user, a few months.

Thanks for the description - is there any advantage for an end user to run FreeBSD vs a flavor of Linux? Unless I put together something like a thin client for a small business I doubt I'll have multiple users on a single server.

Edit: I guess you could create "portable" versions of your workspace for each part of a workflow in a jail and take it back and forth between multiple machines...similar to a VM but as you said without as much overhead since it doesn't virtualize the kernel

[bd139]

Not really for an end user unfortunately. Best to go with the flow. Hence why I use windows 10

You could do that. I’m not sure I’d bother though. I religiously avoid complexity where possible.

[eugenenine]

I use windows 10
 I religiously avoid complexity where possible.

you appear to be contradicting yourself here

[Nominal Animal]

Nah, bd139 is just using funny words to describe his personal preferences; nothing unusual.

It's the underlying reasons for those preferences that are interesting, although they are difficult to suss out, because people don't usually know.  I don't know if bd139 knows, but I bet there are interesting relevant experiences and anecdotes he could share -- even if I happen to personally disagree at this moment.

[bd139]

Everything I have said is backed up with plenty of anecdotes but fundamentally the points for me are:

1. you need a smooth desktop experience and for the most part of its existence, windows works pretty well once you've turned off all the shitty bits. It supports disparate development tools reasonably well, every piece of client software on the market therefore it allows me to seamlessly interoperate with many diverse businesses. You can drive it entirely with a keyboard too, consistently and reliably. On top of that, a well put together windows laptop (I use thinkpad T-series) has superior and considerably more reliable power management than Linux. Plus you have decent TPM and UEFI integrated full disk encryption with bitlocker. And the "time to recovery" if there is a failure is literally an order of magnitude less than futzing with systemd and md and luks etc. These are very very very important.

2. when I need to solve a problem or create something new, linux tends to work rather well there because it's easy to automate, consistent and has by far the best repeatability of any platform. That doesn't mean I need a GUI for it though. I work with it quite happily via PuTTY

So I can sit here streaming Apple Music from iTunes with full fat Visual Studio in the background, a PuTTY session open to AWS where I'm building RPM packages based on a spec open in Word. Win win.

Edit: I'm actually slacking on here eating a bacon sandwich at the moment though 

[Ampera]

Honestly the reason I like FreeBSD is that, in my experience, it tends to be a bit more refined than some Linux distributions. It's mostly a userland tools thing, in that the stuff you're given for things like package management just tend to work better. Somewhat annoyingly the place where things are put for programs (like configs) is almost always completely different in FreeBSD, but it's different among different Linux distros anyways. My only gripe is the lack of software support, because while most open source Linux tools can be easily ported, not all are, and a lot of proprietary software is not.

FreeBSD jails are very similar to the concept of a Linux chroot. The idea is that, within a single unified file system branching from a root directory, you can have another root directory usable for an entirely different userland containing different programs that shares the hardware and kernel scheduling with the rest of the system. FreeBSD and OpenBSD have very very secure implementations of this, which why people like it so much, even though it's not as polished as something like Linux's Docker which has a similar use. The more differences are something I'm not aware of because I've never used either, and I personally have never had a need to segregate different programs into different userlands.

As for experience, it's not really /harder/ it's just different. If you're used to Arch Linux or similar, you can likely pick up FreeBSD's quirks easily, just understanding that the documentation tends to not be that great, particularly for installing things like the nvidia driver port. The only other thing to say about FreeBSD is that the bootloading sucks ass. The actual design is pretty slick and simple to deal with, but the implementation breaks on a /lot/ of computers, making FreeBSD unusable even if the kernel and everything else runs perfectly fine. Don't even get me started on FreeBSD via PXE...

[mrflibble]

Note that eudev is a fork, and not part of systemd.  It provides both the daemon and the udevadm utility, and is standalone service.  I use it/udev mostly to create symbolic links and manage the owner/group and permissions of various USB-connected devices (microcontrollers, mostly), and it works well for that.  For me, it is complementary to the kernel: it applies my userspace policy for me.

Yup, same here. It applies whatever rules I have set for the various hot-pluggable devices. And indeed create symlinks, which is especially convenient when you have multiple USB connected dev-boards of the exact same type (same vendor & product ID) and you want an easy way for userspace applications to connect to the right one. None of that /dev/bus/usb/005/042 in userspace config. I prefer /dev/msp430thingy-used-for-xyz with proper permissions and ownership.

Also, systemd is a huuuuuge pile of something. Not quote sure yet which word to pick. To be fair, sysv-init could do with a bit of modernization. But overall, it is nice , simple and small. My main gripe with it is managing the more complex dependencies. Of course it can be done, and has been done in the past, but not as clean as I'd like. Unfortunately systemd is overkill and above all overreaching. I tolerate it on a few machines, so I can see how bad it is, and get some exposure. But on serious machines it seriously needs to die. Preemptively. by never getting installed in the first place. Did I mention yet that dbus needs to die die diiiieee? No? Well pardon me for that oversight. D-Bus needs to die!!! Not much of a bus if shit keeps losing connections, now is it? What's that little client? You lost connection and try to reconnect? Naaaaahh. 

TLDR: udev, yay! systemd, booh!

[Nominal Animal]

I prefer /dev/msp430thingy-used-for-xyz with proper permissions and ownership.

Exactly.  When you have a dozen microcontrollers, a few vinyl cutters, and a couple of experimental USB serial devices for 3D printer development, those symlinks and permission management come in extremely handy.

To be fair, sysv-init could do with a bit of modernization.

Funny thing is, the entire init thing is much better solved completely differently, using a small library that communicates with a trivial service manager, with a trivial interface to express prior service availability requirements, services provided, and current status (starting/stopping/restarting/reloading); having an entire bus for this purpose is just insane.  Sure, each service daemon needs a few lines added to their sources, but they're trivial to stub out on other inits/OSes, and they solve the ordering and parallel startup issues in one single whoop, with minimal runtime overhead.

Yeah, I really don't like how d-bus claims to solve any problems; it just makes them different.  Uglier.

[isometrik]

Debian for headless servers. Manjaro for desktop use.

[Circlotron]

My local pharmacy uses some sort of Linux.
Having a bit of a bad hair day though.

[blacksheeplogic]

Debian, I use the console/command line exclusively. I do have a system with Ubuntu/xfce when I need X-windows (qemu for example).

[scatterandfocus]

I didn't vote, but I use Manjaro on my desktop, just because it has been cutting edge and painless.  But I like Debian and Arch too.  Or I should say that I liked my past Debian and Arch installs.  Debian is always lagging behind (intentionally) in some ways for a gui desktop, and Arch requires more keeping up with things than I like to tend to these days.