By the way I run Arch, since I like to know exactly what my PC is doing and I have the time, nerve and experience to deal with it. And it has the AUR, so software package availability has never...
By the way I run Arch, since I like to know exactly what my PC is doing and I have the time, nerve and experience to deal with it. And it has the AUR, so software package availability has never been a problem.
The only Arch thing I can wholeheartedly recommend to a newcomer is the Arch wiki - it's easily one of the best Linux wikis on the net (together with Gentoo's) and most of it applies to all major distros.
I love Arch, it's by far my favorite distro for personal use. The customization is significant. Even years into using the same install, I felt a lot of pride in how it was setup. I felt at home...
I love Arch, it's by far my favorite distro for personal use.
The customization is significant. Even years into using the same install, I felt a lot of pride in how it was setup. I felt at home with Arch.
The problem is that it can be very tedious. Anyone who uses Arch and actually gets into customizing it will certainly learn a lot about Linux. That's valuable, but it's made going back to Arch a little hard for me. I don't want to spend hours in text files configuring which hard drive gets mounted to which points and in which order with whatever rights management. I like control, which any Linux distro will give you, but I'd like some of it automated too.
So now I use Manjaro because it is based on Arch and I'm very familiar with Arch related tools. The AUR is incredible and I find pacman to be one of the most useful and stable package mangers I've ever used. Manjaro is very stable and performance is great.
Yeah, I guess installing can be a bit tedious, but by now I've got it down to under an hour and a single reboot on common hardware. Pretty much everything after that is just installing everything...
Yeah, I guess installing can be a bit tedious, but by now I've got it down to under an hour and a single reboot on common hardware. Pretty much everything after that is just installing everything I want and cloning my dotfiles repo.
I'm glad you like Manjaro, just please stick to their support channels and don't come barging into #archlinux@freenode and expect to get anything but redirects ;)
Haha! Thakfully I can handle all of my own support through Arch's fantastic wiki, as you have mentioned. I don't think I've ever run into a problem I couldn't handle on my own (which is fortunate,...
Haha!
Thakfully I can handle all of my own support through Arch's fantastic wiki, as you have mentioned. I don't think I've ever run into a problem I couldn't handle on my own (which is fortunate, I've heard nightmares about systemd that I've never had.)
I've never actually run into anyone that has personally more than just "heard nightmares" about systemd. I wonder how much of it is just anti-poettering FUD, and repeating something they heard...
I've never actually run into anyone that has personally more than just "heard nightmares" about systemd. I wonder how much of it is just anti-poettering FUD, and repeating something they heard somewhere. The only problem I've had was when I had a failing SSD, and journald kept corrupting logs so I was having trouble diagnosing the service failures.
I always recommend Manjaro. I'm currently running ArchLabs on my laptop, and it's excellent. But about every second time I boot into it I have to upgrade and reboot. That gets tedious. I've also...
I always recommend Manjaro. I'm currently running ArchLabs on my laptop, and it's excellent. But about every second time I boot into it I have to upgrade and reboot. That gets tedious. I've also had to manually intervene twice to make the upgrade work.
It might be easier to set aside if I weren't running MXLinux on my desktop. It's based on Debian and smooth as butter.
I also use Manjaro - tho a flavor called Netrunner. It comes with a few extra programs (mostly dev and creativity related) and feels nice and speedy even running in virtualbox. Also, for those...
I also use Manjaro - tho a flavor called Netrunner. It comes with a few extra programs (mostly dev and creativity related) and feels nice and speedy even running in virtualbox.
Also, for those looking for a better package-manager for Arch: aurman is a great wrapper which searches AUR. It is the most secure and feature rich of the alt package-managers according to the AUR wiki. yaourt was my go to but it's fallen behind.
It's worth noting that: Recently, more and more games have started to run on Linux, because of the rise in popularity of SteamOS and gamer friendly distros such as Solus. WINE allows some Windows...
It's worth noting that:
Recently, more and more games have started to run on Linux, because of the rise in popularity of SteamOS and gamer friendly distros such as Solus.
WINE allows some Windows games to run on Linux with very minimal performance costs
Dual-Booting is a totally feasible solution - especially if you have an SSD. It only takes a minute to switch operating systems on a decent system, which really isn't a lot of time at all.
So long as you have the disk space for it, dual booting isn't too hard, and it is a good way to get to learn your way around a Linux system. I used Windows and Ubuntu in a dual-boot setup,...
So long as you have the disk space for it, dual booting isn't too hard, and it is a good way to get to learn your way around a Linux system. I used Windows and Ubuntu in a dual-boot setup, alternating between the two once every few days, for several months. Gradually the stretches of time in which I used Linux got longer and longer, and those in which I used Windows got shorter, and I now haven't used Windows at all in several months.
I currently use arch for my desktop (although I switch between that and a windows partition.) The first time I tried arch I gave up because the installer was broken. The second time I tried...
I currently use arch for my desktop (although I switch between that and a windows partition.) The first time I tried arch I gave up because the installer was broken. The second time I tried installing it I found the arch team had fixed this----by removing the installer.
I also favour Arch. Switched to it from Ubuntu about 4 years ago. It's customizable, but not prohibitively hard to set up, and yeah, the wiki, pacman, and AUR are all rock solid. And with the...
I also favour Arch. Switched to it from Ubuntu about 4 years ago.
It's customizable, but not prohibitively hard to set up, and yeah, the wiki, pacman, and AUR are all rock solid.
And with the right setup, you can get a great workflow for all your programming needs.
Debian stable for servers, every time. I've been running testing on my home machine in recent years because Ubuntu kept getting increasingly fiddly to upgrade - Debian's rolling release is much...
Debian stable for servers, every time. I've been running testing on my home machine in recent years because Ubuntu kept getting increasingly fiddly to upgrade - Debian's rolling release is much more comfortable for me.
NixOS really is an exciting project! I use it for a personal server and a handful of servers at work. It requires a kind of paradigm shift in one's thinking (more so, the longer one has used...
NixOS really is an exciting project! I use it for a personal server and a handful of servers at work. It requires a kind of paradigm shift in one's thinking (more so, the longer one has used traditional linux distros) but the advantages are pretty great! I feel like I have just been scratching the surface as well, some of the Nix wizards out there are doing such arcane things..
I wanted to like NixOS but it was ruined for me when I first tried it, MySQL and MariaDB was broken, and it couldn't be installed for months. It's just not a distro I can take seriously after that...
I wanted to like NixOS but it was ruined for me when I first tried it, MySQL and MariaDB was broken, and it couldn't be installed for months. It's just not a distro I can take seriously after that fiasco.
I guess I'm in the minority but I have always love Ubuntu. I want to spend my time on the computer doing other stuff than messing with the OS and Ubuntu has always been rock solid
I guess I'm in the minority but I have always love Ubuntu. I want to spend my time on the computer doing other stuff than messing with the OS and Ubuntu has always been rock solid
You're not in the minority, just in the boring un-hip majority (like me). Whenever I see questions about favorite OS distro, I always feel a bit of hidden subtext, "the more obscure, the better....
I guess I'm in the minority
You're not in the minority, just in the boring un-hip majority (like me).
Whenever I see questions about favorite OS distro, I always feel a bit of hidden subtext, "the more obscure, the better. (+10 points for a BSD instead of Linux!)"
You're not entirely wrong, but I think that it's more so that if someone says they use Ubuntu they usually do so simply because they're new to Linux or it was the first distro they used and never...
You're not entirely wrong, but I think that it's more so that if someone says they use Ubuntu they usually do so simply because they're new to Linux or it was the first distro they used and never moved away from it. I'm interested in hearing a nuanced explanation of why someone decided on their operating system, not just "I heard about Linux and that Ubuntu was the easiest so hear I am".
Given their relative obscurity, the rationale accompanying a BSD is more interesting than one for a popular Linux distro. The most passionate FreeBSD users I've talked to are operating system/kernel developers. From the perspective of someone who does or has done kernel development the opinion seems to be that FreeBSD's kernel has a much nicer code base than Linux.
It looks like I'm really, really late to the party here, but I'll bite! My first foray into Linux distros was actually Arch, and it was due to it being the official distro of choice for a CS class...
I'm interested in hearing a nuanced explanation of why someone decided on their operating system, not just "I heard about Linux and that Ubuntu was the easiest so hear I am".
It looks like I'm really, really late to the party here, but I'll bite!
My first foray into Linux distros was actually Arch, and it was due to it being the official distro of choice for a CS class I was taking while working with C. Specifically, we were encouraged to develop and test on the provided Arch image so that we could ensure that our software was up to par with project standards in terms of overall functionality (e.g. if your program worked on a Windows machine but not on the Arch image, then you didn't write it according to the requirements).
Near the end of my CS studies my laptop's HDD died on me, so I got a new one and attempted to dual boot Arch with Windows because I was interested in trying to learn to set things up on my own in a bare bones distro. That didn't turn out well, even after following the instructions down to the letter. The community wasn't particularly helpful either and I was immediately told to RTFM (seriously, fuck the Arch community). In the end, I found both the distro and the community to not be worth the hassle, so I gave up on both.
That's all just backstory, though, to contextualize my frustration with overly-complex and involved setup processes. Eventually I found myself working at a startup and our infrastructure was running on headless Ubuntu servers, so I became pretty familiar with it. My familiarity with the package management in particular ended up being a large contributing factor to my selecting Ubuntu as my primary dev machine OS when the HDD on that inevitably died as well. In addition, Ubuntu is an incredibly popular distro and (in my experience) tends to be very stable, reliable, and simple. Its popularity tends to make the rare troubleshooting incredibly easy, too. For servers, it's also a common pre-configured box that you can use, so you can be confident that you can get an Ubuntu server spinning up pretty much anywhere.
In short:
It's simple to setup and use.
It's reliable.
It's well-supported.
Its popularity makes troubleshooting a breeze.
There's a lot of consistency between desktop and server environments.
Major hosting services tend to provide Ubuntu as an option.
I'm very familiar with APT.
Sure, I could get away with pure Debian or Mint or some other Debian-based distro, but Ubuntu just hits that perfect sweet spot of serving all of my actual development needs in a convenient and consistent manner.
If I ever move to Linux for my normal home usage, however, I may end up playing around with some of the other distros to see what works best for me as a more casual, everyday use distro (possibly Mint because it's another no-hassle Debian-based option).
When I use Ubuntu I normally use one of its spins because I don't like Unity (or the Unity-Gnome hybrid that's in use now). Xubuntu is what I use on my own because I like xfce. Kubuntu and Mint...
When I use Ubuntu I normally use one of its spins because I don't like Unity (or the Unity-Gnome hybrid that's in use now). Xubuntu is what I use on my own because I like xfce. Kubuntu and Mint are go-to recommendation for Windows users.
Agreed 100% I use Ubuntu simply because I just want my OS to get out of the way and let me do what I want to do and most of the googleable resources out there are catered towards this particular...
Agreed 100% I use Ubuntu simply because I just want my OS to get out of the way and let me do what I want to do and most of the googleable resources out there are catered towards this particular distro.
There was a time when I'd be content to spending days compiling, configuring and customizing a Gentoo install but that ain't me anymore.
It might be better now, but I've had multiple machines fail to boot after dist-upgrades in the past, I have trouble trusting Ubuntu still because of those fiascos. I still use it for servers, and...
It might be better now, but I've had multiple machines fail to boot after dist-upgrades in the past, I have trouble trusting Ubuntu still because of those fiascos. I still use it for servers, and its been rock solid there for me
I actually like Unity. Granted, I don't like it as much as I used to (after they started Gnome3-ifying it and dropped the superbar), but it's still my 2nd favorite (now my favorite is Cinnamon)....
I actually like Unity. Granted, I don't like it as much as I used to (after they started Gnome3-ifying it and dropped the superbar), but it's still my 2nd favorite (now my favorite is Cinnamon).
Ubuntu-based distros are still my favorite. They install easily, drivers are included, and the repos are more up to date than Debian. Plus, they tend to be more stable than what I have to use at work (Oracle Linux).
I also use ubuntu. Previously I used debian but on my new notebook there were no network drivers. Because I was too lazy I installed ubuntu GNOME instead. I can't use the normal ubuntu because the...
I also use ubuntu. Previously I used debian but on my new notebook there were no network drivers. Because I was too lazy I installed ubuntu GNOME instead. I can't use the normal ubuntu because the normal is UI is ugly to me.
If I am spinning up a personal workstation, I prefer Fedora. Our servers at work are RHEL, and CentOS is really nice as a free facsimile to that environment.
If I am spinning up a personal workstation, I prefer Fedora. Our servers at work are RHEL, and CentOS is really nice as a free facsimile to that environment.
If it has to be strictly Linux, my favorite overall distro is OpenSUSE; it's rock steady, and openSUSE Tumbleweed makes for a quite-stable but extremely modern desktop OS, and snapper snapshots...
If it has to be strictly Linux, my favorite overall distro is OpenSUSE; it's rock steady, and openSUSE Tumbleweed makes for a quite-stable but extremely modern desktop OS, and snapper snapshots are extremely helpful if something gets messed up. Their KDE integration is also top notch, although I'd argue back in KDE4 it was even better. Super underrated distro.
However, FreeBSD is also definitely worth looking at. It's not Linux, it's technically a BSD and so uses a differently designed base, but it's extremely stable and performent especially on older machines. if you like Arch or especially Gentoo, you will probably love FreeBSD.
I've been using FreeBSD on some servers, and while I do like the general operating system, since it's incredibly lightweight and stable, I didn't like it as much as Funtoo. One reason being the...
I've been using FreeBSD on some servers, and while I do like the general operating system, since it's incredibly lightweight and stable, I didn't like it as much as Funtoo.
One reason being the ports system. I'm used to portage on Funtoo, which feels like an all-around improvement to the old ports. Configuration of packages is easier and can be done beforehand, then you just call emerge and let it do it's job. No popups in the middle of the installation process, no need for various make commands.
Another one would be the FreeBSD's developers stance on security. They absolutely abhorr security, it seems. Basic hardening that's been in regular practice everywhere else is not implemented on FreeBSD because some developers don't want it. One of them being, for instance, distribution upgrades are still being done as root for the entire process. The root user connects to the internet and runs code from it. And to top it off, their repos do not support a TLS connection. It all gets downloaded over plain FTP.
I've heard they recently did add some basic hardening options to the installer, although they're all toggled off by default as well. I haven't tried it in a long while, so they may have changed something with regards to their security practices, but last I checked it was pretty bad, with no sign of improvement any time soon.
Ah, you probably haven't looked at FreeBSD in a while then. portmaster does the same thing as emerge; it gets all of your configuration first, handles dependencies, etc. but it's much faster and...
Ah, you probably haven't looked at FreeBSD in a while then. portmaster does the same thing as emerge; it gets all of your configuration first, handles dependencies, etc. but it's much faster and doesn't require you to make a massive list of USE variables. Another upside, since it's written in pure shell script, it doesn't have any external dependencies that can break, while portage iirc needs python to work. As for the download as root thing, the reason why that doesn't matter is because all packages are verified with a checksum as soon as they're downloaded. If the checksum matches, that means it has to be the correct file, and you can trust it as much as you trust the upstream source. If it fails, no code is ever executed and it will instead print an error. Furthermore, since you need to enter root to install a package at all (since that's the whole point of privilege separation), if a package could escape checksum checking somehow, portage wouldn't be any safer; as soon as it entered root to install, that's when you could spring a trap. Likewise, downloading binary packages over plain http isn't a problem because they're all GPG signed; any modification would be detected and then rejected. So although it sounds scary, it's no less dangerous then doing it under a regular account.
Furthermore, FreeBSD has many security features that Linux does not have, such as Jails, Capsicum, and kernel security levels. The new hardening options also help, although they're disabled by default because they break certain usage cases (for example, one of them randomizes PIDs; however, some old software might rely on PIDs being assigned sequentially, or a user may want them that way for another reason. But it's easy to tick and enable them all.
That being said, funtoo seems intriguing. I've never liked plain gentoo very much as it's basically just an inferior version of FreeBSD, what does it do to set itself apart?
But this isn't a default part of the operating system, unlike Portage. And on the count of making a massive list of USE flags, I don't need to make one, I only have to update the ones I care...
portmaster does the same thing as emerge
But this isn't a default part of the operating system, unlike Portage. And on the count of making a massive list of USE flags, I don't need to make one, I only have to update the ones I care about. And I still prefer this to having the manual arrow-keying through the dialog that the ports tree uses, which is more effort.
As for the download as root thing, the reason why that doesn't matter [...]
It doesn't matter if everything goes correct. But there's still no need to actually go out as root user to the internet. Why even take the risk if there's no need for it in the first place? Don't forget, the checksum verification is also run as root, and any vulnerability in any part here will immediately escelate to a root issue. You're correct that if everything works as intended without bugs, it doesn't matter. But what everyone has learned about computers is that there's bugs, and it's best to be safe rather than sorry.
Portage would be safer, though. It has sandboxing and user-privs (as the portage user). The sources are fetched as a regular user, into a contained environment, where it's verified and build as a regular user, with no access to the wide internet to do anything heinous. Only the very last part of moving the files into the root filesystem is done with root privileges.
That being said, funtoo seems intriguing. I've never liked plain gentoo very much as it's basically just an inferior version of FreeBSD, what does it do to set itself apart?
No systemd, which is the core premise of Funtoo. Packages made by highly questionable devs with highly questionable practices, such as Gnome, are patched to not depend on systemd.
Furthermore, Funtoo brings in a default, precompiled debian-sources in the stage3 tarball, so you always have a readily available fallback kernel. If you don't want to tweak kernels at all, you can just stick to the sys-kernel/debian-sources kernel all the time, though it is slower to compile than your customized kernel.
And lastly, Funtoo has Daniel Robbins, the creator of Gentoo. He still works hard to improve the life of *ntoo users, with git syncing being developed for Funtoo (now also available on Gentoo), and lately we've gotten the kits system, which is a more modular way to deal with the portage tree.
There could be other things, but these reasons are the clear cases where I think Funtoo works better (for me) than Gentoo.
I had some luck installing Elementary on an old laptop. I don't really use it for much, though. I never made the time to use it as a primary machine so I don't really have a good understanding of...
I had some luck installing Elementary on an old laptop. I don't really use it for much, though.
I never made the time to use it as a primary machine so I don't really have a good understanding of Linux.
Been using Solus for a while now, and it's a really great distro. Thinking of switching to something more minimal soon. Maybe just Arch? Not quite sure yet! Edit: As a random shout out, I loved...
Been using Solus for a while now, and it's a really great distro. Thinking of switching to something more minimal soon. Maybe just Arch? Not quite sure yet!
Edit: As a random shout out, I loved listening to Ikey, the main creator of Solus, on the Late Night Linux podcast. It was cool hearing his thoughts about various Linux and FOSS topics. He had to leave recently which sucks, but he did so for good reasons. Still a cool podcast to checkout!
I'm currently pretty happy with my Manjaro setup. It's my first time with Arch(-based systems) and I really fooled around to try stuff - and always waited to really break something. But it's...
I'm currently pretty happy with my Manjaro setup.
It's my first time with Arch(-based systems) and I really fooled around to try stuff - and always waited to really break something.
But it's running since over a year without major problems and every fuck up on my side was surprisingly fast to fix.
I spent years using an Arch install I built from the groundup on my own and it was surprisingly stable. I've had more issues with the stability of Fedora and Ubuntu than I ever had with Arch,...
I spent years using an Arch install I built from the groundup on my own and it was surprisingly stable. I've had more issues with the stability of Fedora and Ubuntu than I ever had with Arch, despite me working my hardest to fuck it up through inexperience.
My laptop has been running the same arch install since I bought it 5 years ago. I've had two failed SSDs, and done multiple hardware upgrades during that time. Install linux-lts as a fallback, use...
My laptop has been running the same arch install since I bought it 5 years ago. I've had two failed SSDs, and done multiple hardware upgrades during that time. Install linux-lts as a fallback, use -dkms modules when possible, and its been a pillar of stability in my world of failed macOS and Windows upgrades.
Long time Windows user here, but I've been intrigued by the concept of Chrome os, so I've been trying to replicate the simplicity but to have more features with lightweight Linux distro. Currently...
Long time Windows user here, but I've been intrigued by the concept of Chrome os, so I've been trying to replicate the simplicity but to have more features with lightweight Linux distro. Currently trying out elementary os on an old laptop.
ChromeOS is actually based on Gentoo. Setting everything up to get to simple usage will take some effort, though, and some additional hardware to create an environment for the old laptop to not...
ChromeOS is actually based on Gentoo. Setting everything up to get to simple usage will take some effort, though, and some additional hardware to create an environment for the old laptop to not blow itself up.
I have no such usecases, but I'd go with Funtoo because I personally have the infra to support it (other machines can easily compile the packages for me and distribute them, which I already do...
I have no such usecases, but I'd go with Funtoo because I personally have the infra to support it (other machines can easily compile the packages for me and distribute them, which I already do with some packages anyway). I'm not sure what would be the best, but generally I recommend anything KDE based or Arch if the person asking it knows their way around the shell.
I've nearly 15 years of experience as developer. To cut it short and kind of oversimplifying, you begin to see the difference when you begin to develop some though shit. Right in the last 6 months...
I've nearly 15 years of experience as developer. To cut it short and kind of oversimplifying, you begin to see the difference when you begin to develop some though shit.
Right in the last 6 months I had to develop stuff that talk with hardware and basically every single library is built to be developed on a linux system. Then, you can compile it for any other OS you want through adapter (think using Wine to compile for windows from linux). The thing is not true both ways.
In the last 6 months I had to work on a windows computer for some stupid corporate regulation that should assure safety of my computer but instead just hinder my work and just last week I managed to show my manager how I could have done the same work that took me 3 weeks, in 2 days if I was on linux.
If you approaching CS you won't notice and won't need to also approach linux. But honestly I suggest you try and make it home because it will make life easier in the long run.
I suggest dual boot for the simple reason that virtual box will never be a clean and smooth experience. I had to virtual box an Ubuntu 18 the other day and run in all sort of problem when...
I suggest dual boot for the simple reason that virtual box will never be a clean and smooth experience.
I had to virtual box an Ubuntu 18 the other day and run in all sort of problem when compiling the code against the different os. Also the sluggish UI response really bothers me.
Started with Debian, then used Fedora for a few years and finally settled on Arch and derivatives of it. I feel like an outlier in the arch community as I don't install custom kernels or know much...
Started with Debian, then used Fedora for a few years and finally settled on Arch and derivatives of it. I feel like an outlier in the arch community as I don't install custom kernels or know much about Linux as a whole, but it's been super stable for me and I can be as bleeding edge as I like.
Don't listen to the stuff about needing to have excellent Linux knowledge and how it's everyday hardship. Arch + Gnome3 + archwiki and you've a great stable setup in a few hours
For me it's not just the initial setup, it's reinstallation if a machine is broken/stolen/lost. If I have to quick get another machine up for a project, I can't necessarily spend the time to get...
For me it's not just the initial setup, it's reinstallation if a machine is broken/stolen/lost. If I have to quick get another machine up for a project, I can't necessarily spend the time to get Arch installed again. That said, I love the concept of Antergos, but I've had more issues with the installer giving me an unusable system than I would just installing Arch. Manjaro has been good to me though.
That's most of the Arch community, actually. Next to nobody on Arch installs custom kernels, those people move to Gentoo or derivatives usually. I'm not sure if you're talking about Linux, the...
I feel like an outlier in the arch community as I don't install custom kernels or know much about Linux as a whole, but it's been super stable for me and I can be as bleeding edge as I like.
That's most of the Arch community, actually. Next to nobody on Arch installs custom kernels, those people move to Gentoo or derivatives usually.
I'm not sure if you're talking about Linux, the kernel, or GNU+Linux, the operating system. I can reply to both possibilities just in case, though. For the kernel part, this is common among most of GNU+Linux users in general. Very few people compile customized kernels, even less write custom patches. In general, people understand that Linux is the kernel, and they understand why it's an important part of the system as a whole. But deeper knowledge as to how the kernel actually does it's job is uncommon.
In the case of GNU+Linux, the operating system, knowledge is available on many levels. For normal users, you don't need to have very deep knowledge nowadays. I do think the average Arch user has a better understanding of how the system is set up, which parts work together to create a functioning operating system and tweak more and more often, compared to the average Ubuntu user for instance. In general, if you can make the operating system do what you need it to do, you have enough knowledge about it.
I agree that you can be up-and-cooking on Arch fairly easily, but there are still some things that have to be annoyingly hand configured. Mounting points for hard drives, for instance. Maybe this...
I agree that you can be up-and-cooking on Arch fairly easily, but there are still some things that have to be annoyingly hand configured. Mounting points for hard drives, for instance. Maybe this has changed, but to get a hard drive mounted on boot required editing a somewhat hard to read text file. Not hard, but tedious. Some DEs are also harder to configure than others. I personally don't like Gnome 3. I use xfce, which requires a bit more setup to get looking nice (but in the end it looks and feels much better than Gnome.) One of the most tedious things I remember having to install was software that enabled thumbnails in my file browser. I didn't figure that one out for months.
Once everything is setup the way you like (which might be never) it is pretty much just update and go. Arch's rolling nature means it's always up-to-date, which gets rid of the 'upgrade' process other Distros (and Windows and MacOS) have. Makes it less exciting and less annoying all at the same time.
Not really, creating the fstab for a new install is really just genfstab -U /chroot >> /chroot/etc/fstab (or something close to that). Which I assume is what you meant.
Not really, creating the fstab for a new install is really just genfstab -U /chroot >> /chroot/etc/fstab (or something close to that). Which I assume is what you meant.
For me, that command only works so much. Getting NTFS drives mounted and initialized was a bit more work, unless it's changed in recent years. It's been a while since I used Arch as a daily driver.
For me, that command only works so much. Getting NTFS drives mounted and initialized was a bit more work, unless it's changed in recent years. It's been a while since I used Arch as a daily driver.
Yeah... I wish I could. These drives in particular have stuff like school work (some of which I don't know why I keep) and media like movies and music. I guess I did have an opportunity to change...
Yeah... I wish I could. These drives in particular have stuff like school work (some of which I don't know why I keep) and media like movies and music. I guess I did have an opportunity to change over to a new file system but Windows only supports FAT and NTFS, and sadly I have to force myself to keep using Windows because of video games :(.
If you have integrated graphics I can highly recommend VFIO, basically just running Windows in a VM and passing your good graphics card to it. No reboots required, native gaming performance and...
If you have integrated graphics I can highly recommend VFIO, basically just running Windows in a VM and passing your good graphics card to it. No reboots required, native gaming performance and windows can be tucked away in a dark corner. /r/VFIO has a lot of useful info in its sidebar, Arch wiki can be helpful as well (duh :P).
I remember looking into this years ago and the performance was promising but I only had one video card (and support was experimental, but still good). Now, I'm using an i7 2600k which has...
I remember looking into this years ago and the performance was promising but I only had one video card (and support was experimental, but still good). Now, I'm using an i7 2600k which has integrated graphics. I'm in a crazy summer semester right now (back in school to finish my degree) so I'll have to check it out later, but I'll probably give it a good try when I have the time.
I've been running Funtoo for quite a while now. In my opinion, it's the absolute best distro for a developer. Everything is easily tweakable, it's geared towards compiling, and pretty much all...
I've been running Funtoo for quite a while now. In my opinion, it's the absolute best distro for a developer. Everything is easily tweakable, it's geared towards compiling, and pretty much all tools for development are readily available, at multiple versions, with good support and a great community in case of need. It's also incredibly easy to build an ebuild (the definition file to install applications) if needed.
For my media PC, I'm using Archlinux, since it was easier to get my drivers working on it. I use proprietary drivers for it as I'm also using it to play games on it (with Steam and an XBox controller).
I have a Raspberry Pi running Raspbian. This one device is used for me to test out packages and tutorials I write. I wanted to have some base hardware that was easily accessible for most people, and use the most default installation I could use with it to make it easy and straightforward for people to follow the tutorials.
If you're switching over from Windows, you might want to take a look at distributions that come with KDE by default. I've not used it personally, but I've heard good opinions on KDE Neon. I'm not a big fan of Ubuntu, since it's prone to break if you configure it beyond what the devs intended it to be configured for.
For information gathering, check out the Arch wiki for most common issues. The Gentoo wiki is a great resource if you're going beyond common issues (manually building and the issues that may come with it, for instance).
Fedora has been my distro of choice for a few years now, but I still haven't gotten away from dual-booting since there's a few programs I can't let go of
Fedora has been my distro of choice for a few years now, but I still haven't gotten away from dual-booting since there's a few programs I can't let go of
I just tossed my Windows partition. Fedora-root was too small at 50GB and I could not repartition it live. Having to risk it all anyways I just reinstalled Fedora 28 over everything. I like Fedora...
I just tossed my Windows partition. Fedora-root was too small at 50GB and I could not repartition it live. Having to risk it all anyways I just reinstalled Fedora 28 over everything.
I like Fedora because it has great support on the web, full stocked repo's and the newest programs. I haven;t ventured too much. Debian seems out of date, Ubuntu wit Unity was 'commercial'. Nope, Fedora hit is right for me. I've got enough problems.
Fairly long-time Ubuntu user, for about a year have been using Manjaro on my laptop and I now detest having to use apt on my desktop, so there might be a change coming up on that front soon.
Fairly long-time Ubuntu user, for about a year have been using Manjaro on my laptop and I now detest having to use apt on my desktop, so there might be a change coming up on that front soon.
I've been using Ubuntu since 2013; it Just Works™, and I can use PPAs to keep my packages up to date. Sometimes I consider moving to Arch, but there's no way I could ever remember all the pacman...
I've been using Ubuntu since 2013; it Just Works™, and I can use PPAs to keep my packages up to date. Sometimes I consider moving to Arch, but there's no way I could ever remember all the pacman flags, let alone actually use the system ;)
I've spent an absolutely stupid amount of time distro hopping, but I always end up coming back to Arch. When installing, I have pretty much complete control over what software is running on my...
I've spent an absolutely stupid amount of time distro hopping, but I always end up coming back to Arch. When installing, I have pretty much complete control over what software is running on my machine, the Arch wiki is amazing, the AUR is super useful, and pacman is one of the best package managers I've come across.
That said, I've really enjoyed Solus for the couple of times that I've had it installed. It's becoming a very solid distro.
I grew up on Slackware, then ran Gentoo for over a decade, tried several distros, of which Mageia is one that I used on my current laptop for the longest, because of its quality and amazing...
I grew up on Slackware, then ran Gentoo for over a decade, tried several distros, of which Mageia is one that I used on my current laptop for the longest, because of its quality and amazing community. And MeeGo and SailfishOS are the longest serving OS on my phones.
My current set-up though is:
NixOS on my private laptop (Lenovo ThinkPad X230) – for me the appeal is the mix of power and control from a source-based distro (think Gentoo), and the convenience of a binary distro; the declarative system and (mostly) reproducable builds are also a plus. The downside is that it breaks LSB (for good reasons) and therefore it’s not super-easy to run binaries that assume a full LSB system.
Kubuntu on my work laptop (Dell Latitude E7470) – I just needed something with KDE Plasma that is as wide-spread as possible, so I can also install any proprietary binary packages that I might need at work (e.g. Skype, Zoom)
Armbian on my servers (Olimex Lime 2 eMMC) – it’s pretty much vanilla Debian with the hell optimised out of it for each ARM board separately, plus some sane defaults. Great stuff, can warmly recommend.
Android on the phone – but thinking of flashing it with SailfishOS again, it’s just soooo much more comfortable, powerful and fun.
I use Debian on my machine because it's established, stable, and just works. All the packages seem to work well together, and I don't want to have to spend excessive time troubleshooting various...
I use Debian on my machine because it's established, stable, and just works. All the packages seem to work well together, and I don't want to have to spend excessive time troubleshooting various things.
Whenever I recommend or install a distro for a new user, I always recommend Mint. It is really easy, stable and is a great transition for a Windows user.
Unpopular opinion incoming: I don't like Arch Linux. I don't really have a favorite, I've run pretty much every distro, and switch every month or two on my desktop. I guess I'd choose something...
Unpopular opinion incoming: I don't like Arch Linux.
I don't really have a favorite, I've run pretty much every distro, and switch every month or two on my desktop. I guess I'd choose something like Fedora, Gentoo, or Slackware.
I donʼt know Linux well: about 1—2 year/s. So, itʼs obviously that I like/d Ubuntu, Mint with DE like MATE or Cinnamon. Later I found Arch where Pacman & AUR is fine for me. I know about tiling DE...
I donʼt know Linux well: about 1—2 year/s. So, itʼs obviously that I like/d Ubuntu, Mint with DE like MATE or Cinnamon. Later I found Arch where Pacman & AUR is fine for me. I know about tiling DE like i3 or awesome but I still canʼt get used to them.
Slackware. Oddly enough, I currently don't have it on either of my machines, but every couple of months I install -current to check out the progress. Once they release the next update at least one...
Slackware. Oddly enough, I currently don't have it on either of my machines, but every couple of months I install -current to check out the progress. Once they release the next update at least one of my machines will be back on Slack.
I think it's just the distro I know best. It's solid, simple to configure and everything comes vanilla from upstream. I distro hop a lot, but always come back to Slackware.
I quite enjoy Pop_OS. As a user moving from windows its super easy to use and i really enjoy the fact that i can integrate my google account to the os itself.
I quite enjoy Pop_OS. As a user moving from windows its super easy to use and i really enjoy the fact that i can integrate my google account to the os itself.
I run ChromeOS with a Debian Chroot for all my Linux/gnu utility needs, I really like it because I don't have to fuss with updates breaking things, or security, but I still get a full-featured...
I run ChromeOS with a Debian Chroot for all my Linux/gnu utility needs, I really like it because I don't have to fuss with updates breaking things, or security, but I still get a full-featured Linux environment.
The only Linux I used for more than a few minutes is Slax, because my last HDD died and I needed something to run my computer from. (Slax easily fits and works from a pendrive) Actually, I still...
The only Linux I used for more than a few minutes is Slax, because my last HDD died and I needed something to run my computer from. (Slax easily fits and works from a pendrive) Actually, I still have it around in case I need to get around Windows quickly.
I think Bedrock Linux is a pretty cool concept. Basically, it allows you to run multiple distros side by side, so you could be running KDE from OpenSUSE alongside Firefox from Arch. I haven't...
I think Bedrock Linux is a pretty cool concept. Basically, it allows you to run multiple distros side by side, so you could be running KDE from OpenSUSE alongside Firefox from Arch. I haven't actually used it yet; I'm just using Ubuntu with a plain OpenBox/Tint2 desktop config, which I suppose isn't very exciting. I distro hopped quite a bit before that.
I'm using a dual-boot with Mint/Cinnamon as my media / office / browsing general-purpose. This was my first experience with Linux (besides Android) coming from Windows. Other partition is Ubuntu...
I'm using a dual-boot with Mint/Cinnamon as my media / office / browsing general-purpose. This was my first experience with Linux (besides Android) coming from Windows.
Other partition is Ubuntu Studio with KXStudio repo for making music. The realtime kernel means I can get a powerful, professional studio experience on an aging, budget laptop. The project-oriented DE was really intuitive to get started with.
By the way I run Arch, since I like to know exactly what my PC is doing and I have the time, nerve and experience to deal with it. And it has the AUR, so software package availability has never been a problem.
The only Arch thing I can wholeheartedly recommend to a newcomer is the Arch wiki - it's easily one of the best Linux wikis on the net (together with Gentoo's) and most of it applies to all major distros.
I love Arch, it's by far my favorite distro for personal use.
The customization is significant. Even years into using the same install, I felt a lot of pride in how it was setup. I felt at home with Arch.
The problem is that it can be very tedious. Anyone who uses Arch and actually gets into customizing it will certainly learn a lot about Linux. That's valuable, but it's made going back to Arch a little hard for me. I don't want to spend hours in text files configuring which hard drive gets mounted to which points and in which order with whatever rights management. I like control, which any Linux distro will give you, but I'd like some of it automated too.
So now I use Manjaro because it is based on Arch and I'm very familiar with Arch related tools. The AUR is incredible and I find pacman to be one of the most useful and stable package mangers I've ever used. Manjaro is very stable and performance is great.
Yeah, I guess installing can be a bit tedious, but by now I've got it down to under an hour and a single reboot on common hardware. Pretty much everything after that is just installing everything I want and cloning my dotfiles repo.
I'm glad you like Manjaro, just please stick to their support channels and don't come barging into #archlinux@freenode and expect to get anything but redirects ;)
Haha!
Thakfully I can handle all of my own support through Arch's fantastic wiki, as you have mentioned. I don't think I've ever run into a problem I couldn't handle on my own (which is fortunate, I've heard nightmares about systemd that I've never had.)
I've never actually run into anyone that has personally more than just "heard nightmares" about systemd. I wonder how much of it is just anti-poettering FUD, and repeating something they heard somewhere. The only problem I've had was when I had a failing SSD, and journald kept corrupting logs so I was having trouble diagnosing the service failures.
I always recommend Manjaro. I'm currently running ArchLabs on my laptop, and it's excellent. But about every second time I boot into it I have to upgrade and reboot. That gets tedious. I've also had to manually intervene twice to make the upgrade work.
It might be easier to set aside if I weren't running MXLinux on my desktop. It's based on Debian and smooth as butter.
I also use Manjaro - tho a flavor called Netrunner. It comes with a few extra programs (mostly dev and creativity related) and feels nice and speedy even running in virtualbox.
Also, for those looking for a better package-manager for Arch:
aurmanis a great wrapper which searches AUR. It is the most secure and feature rich of the alt package-managers according to the AUR wiki.yaourtwas my go to but it's fallen behind.I actually use
yaourtfor all updates and whatnot, but maybe I'll switch toaurman.Antergos is basically “Arch, but with a real installer”
Can also install
aurmanwhich wraps pacman and searches AUR for packages instead of just the official repo.What are some advantages i would get if i moved from windows to Arch? I can imagine most of the programs i use don't exist for Linux...
Like what programs? You might be surprised at what you can do on Linux.
Mainly gaming. Otherwise I'd be very interested in getting started in a Linix OS!
It's worth noting that:
Recently, more and more games have started to run on Linux, because of the rise in popularity of SteamOS and gamer friendly distros such as Solus.
WINE allows some Windows games to run on Linux with very minimal performance costs
Dual-Booting is a totally feasible solution - especially if you have an SSD. It only takes a minute to switch operating systems on a decent system, which really isn't a lot of time at all.
Dual booting is something i want to look into, it's probably the best solution. I think there is a lot to learn by using a Linux system.
So long as you have the disk space for it, dual booting isn't too hard, and it is a good way to get to learn your way around a Linux system. I used Windows and Ubuntu in a dual-boot setup, alternating between the two once every few days, for several months. Gradually the stretches of time in which I used Linux got longer and longer, and those in which I used Windows got shorter, and I now haven't used Windows at all in several months.
I currently use arch for my desktop (although I switch between that and a windows partition.) The first time I tried arch I gave up because the installer was broken. The second time I tried installing it I found the arch team had fixed this----by removing the installer.
Arch is still great though!
I also favour Arch. Switched to it from Ubuntu about 4 years ago.
It's customizable, but not prohibitively hard to set up, and yeah, the wiki, pacman, and AUR are all rock solid.
And with the right setup, you can get a great workflow for all your programming needs.
Debian has long been my favorite distro, but I've also gotten to really like NixOS.
Debian stable for servers, every time. I've been running testing on my home machine in recent years because Ubuntu kept getting increasingly fiddly to upgrade - Debian's rolling release is much more comfortable for me.
Yes, Debian has a wonderful release cycle for servers, being free, it's easy to spin up test instances, and it has been rock solid for me.
First distro I installed after my lifelong windows loyalty. Never gonna look back.
Debian has been so much more reliable for me than any other distro. Maybe I mess around with it less than I did others, though.
NixOS really is an exciting project! I use it for a personal server and a handful of servers at work. It requires a kind of paradigm shift in one's thinking (more so, the longer one has used traditional linux distros) but the advantages are pretty great! I feel like I have just been scratching the surface as well, some of the Nix wizards out there are doing such arcane things..
I wanted to like NixOS but it was ruined for me when I first tried it, MySQL and MariaDB was broken, and it couldn't be installed for months. It's just not a distro I can take seriously after that fiasco.
I guess I'm in the minority but I have always love Ubuntu. I want to spend my time on the computer doing other stuff than messing with the OS and Ubuntu has always been rock solid
You're not in the minority, just in the boring un-hip majority (like me).
Whenever I see questions about favorite OS distro, I always feel a bit of hidden subtext, "the more obscure, the better. (+10 points for a BSD instead of Linux!)"
So the point gain is the same as the amount of people who actually use BSD then? /s
You're not entirely wrong, but I think that it's more so that if someone says they use Ubuntu they usually do so simply because they're new to Linux or it was the first distro they used and never moved away from it. I'm interested in hearing a nuanced explanation of why someone decided on their operating system, not just "I heard about Linux and that Ubuntu was the easiest so hear I am".
Given their relative obscurity, the rationale accompanying a BSD is more interesting than one for a popular Linux distro. The most passionate FreeBSD users I've talked to are operating system/kernel developers. From the perspective of someone who does or has done kernel development the opinion seems to be that FreeBSD's kernel has a much nicer code base than Linux.
It looks like I'm really, really late to the party here, but I'll bite!
My first foray into Linux distros was actually Arch, and it was due to it being the official distro of choice for a CS class I was taking while working with C. Specifically, we were encouraged to develop and test on the provided Arch image so that we could ensure that our software was up to par with project standards in terms of overall functionality (e.g. if your program worked on a Windows machine but not on the Arch image, then you didn't write it according to the requirements).
Near the end of my CS studies my laptop's HDD died on me, so I got a new one and attempted to dual boot Arch with Windows because I was interested in trying to learn to set things up on my own in a bare bones distro. That didn't turn out well, even after following the instructions down to the letter. The community wasn't particularly helpful either and I was immediately told to RTFM (seriously, fuck the Arch community). In the end, I found both the distro and the community to not be worth the hassle, so I gave up on both.
That's all just backstory, though, to contextualize my frustration with overly-complex and involved setup processes. Eventually I found myself working at a startup and our infrastructure was running on headless Ubuntu servers, so I became pretty familiar with it. My familiarity with the package management in particular ended up being a large contributing factor to my selecting Ubuntu as my primary dev machine OS when the HDD on that inevitably died as well. In addition, Ubuntu is an incredibly popular distro and (in my experience) tends to be very stable, reliable, and simple. Its popularity tends to make the rare troubleshooting incredibly easy, too. For servers, it's also a common pre-configured box that you can use, so you can be confident that you can get an Ubuntu server spinning up pretty much anywhere.
In short:
Sure, I could get away with pure Debian or Mint or some other Debian-based distro, but Ubuntu just hits that perfect sweet spot of serving all of my actual development needs in a convenient and consistent manner.
If I ever move to Linux for my normal home usage, however, I may end up playing around with some of the other distros to see what works best for me as a more casual, everyday use distro (possibly Mint because it's another no-hassle Debian-based option).
When I use Ubuntu I normally use one of its spins because I don't like Unity (or the Unity-Gnome hybrid that's in use now). Xubuntu is what I use on my own because I like xfce. Kubuntu and Mint are go-to recommendation for Windows users.
I understand. I've tried kubuntu and mint but I prefer unity/gnome
Agreed. It's pretty, intuitive and just works.
Unless I'm doing something along the lines of a server I jump straight to Ubuntu.
Agreed 100% I use Ubuntu simply because I just want my OS to get out of the way and let me do what I want to do and most of the googleable resources out there are catered towards this particular distro.
There was a time when I'd be content to spending days compiling, configuring and customizing a Gentoo install but that ain't me anymore.
It might be better now, but I've had multiple machines fail to boot after
dist-upgradesin the past, I have trouble trusting Ubuntu still because of those fiascos. I still use it for servers, and its been rock solid there for meI actually like Unity. Granted, I don't like it as much as I used to (after they started Gnome3-ifying it and dropped the superbar), but it's still my 2nd favorite (now my favorite is Cinnamon).
Ubuntu-based distros are still my favorite. They install easily, drivers are included, and the repos are more up to date than Debian. Plus, they tend to be more stable than what I have to use at work (Oracle Linux).
I also use ubuntu. Previously I used debian but on my new notebook there were no network drivers. Because I was too lazy I installed ubuntu GNOME instead. I can't use the normal ubuntu because the normal is UI is ugly to me.
Welcome to the Linux world! To be fair I have only used Ubuntu heavily. It suits all my needs.
I always seem to come back to CentOS.
If I am spinning up a personal workstation, I prefer Fedora. Our servers at work are RHEL, and CentOS is really nice as a free facsimile to that environment.
I'm a RHEL admin myself (and $oldjob ran CentOS) so I'm right there with you
If it has to be strictly Linux, my favorite overall distro is OpenSUSE; it's rock steady, and openSUSE Tumbleweed makes for a quite-stable but extremely modern desktop OS, and snapper snapshots are extremely helpful if something gets messed up. Their KDE integration is also top notch, although I'd argue back in KDE4 it was even better. Super underrated distro.
However, FreeBSD is also definitely worth looking at. It's not Linux, it's technically a BSD and so uses a differently designed base, but it's extremely stable and performent especially on older machines. if you like Arch or especially Gentoo, you will probably love FreeBSD.
I've been using FreeBSD on some servers, and while I do like the general operating system, since it's incredibly lightweight and stable, I didn't like it as much as Funtoo.
One reason being the ports system. I'm used to portage on Funtoo, which feels like an all-around improvement to the old ports. Configuration of packages is easier and can be done beforehand, then you just call
emergeand let it do it's job. No popups in the middle of the installation process, no need for variousmakecommands.Another one would be the FreeBSD's developers stance on security. They absolutely abhorr security, it seems. Basic hardening that's been in regular practice everywhere else is not implemented on FreeBSD because some developers don't want it. One of them being, for instance, distribution upgrades are still being done as root for the entire process. The root user connects to the internet and runs code from it. And to top it off, their repos do not support a TLS connection. It all gets downloaded over plain FTP.
I've heard they recently did add some basic hardening options to the installer, although they're all toggled off by default as well. I haven't tried it in a long while, so they may have changed something with regards to their security practices, but last I checked it was pretty bad, with no sign of improvement any time soon.
Ah, you probably haven't looked at FreeBSD in a while then.
portmasterdoes the same thing as emerge; it gets all of your configuration first, handles dependencies, etc. but it's much faster and doesn't require you to make a massive list of USE variables. Another upside, since it's written in pure shell script, it doesn't have any external dependencies that can break, while portage iirc needs python to work. As for the download as root thing, the reason why that doesn't matter is because all packages are verified with a checksum as soon as they're downloaded. If the checksum matches, that means it has to be the correct file, and you can trust it as much as you trust the upstream source. If it fails, no code is ever executed and it will instead print an error. Furthermore, since you need to enter root to install a package at all (since that's the whole point of privilege separation), if a package could escape checksum checking somehow, portage wouldn't be any safer; as soon as it entered root to install, that's when you could spring a trap. Likewise, downloading binary packages over plain http isn't a problem because they're all GPG signed; any modification would be detected and then rejected. So although it sounds scary, it's no less dangerous then doing it under a regular account.Furthermore, FreeBSD has many security features that Linux does not have, such as Jails, Capsicum, and kernel security levels. The new hardening options also help, although they're disabled by default because they break certain usage cases (for example, one of them randomizes PIDs; however, some old software might rely on PIDs being assigned sequentially, or a user may want them that way for another reason. But it's easy to tick and enable them all.
That being said, funtoo seems intriguing. I've never liked plain gentoo very much as it's basically just an inferior version of FreeBSD, what does it do to set itself apart?
But this isn't a default part of the operating system, unlike Portage. And on the count of making a massive list of USE flags, I don't need to make one, I only have to update the ones I care about. And I still prefer this to having the manual arrow-keying through the dialog that the ports tree uses, which is more effort.
It doesn't matter if everything goes correct. But there's still no need to actually go out as root user to the internet. Why even take the risk if there's no need for it in the first place? Don't forget, the checksum verification is also run as root, and any vulnerability in any part here will immediately escelate to a root issue. You're correct that if everything works as intended without bugs, it doesn't matter. But what everyone has learned about computers is that there's bugs, and it's best to be safe rather than sorry.
Portage would be safer, though. It has sandboxing and user-privs (as the
portageuser). The sources are fetched as a regular user, into a contained environment, where it's verified and build as a regular user, with no access to the wide internet to do anything heinous. Only the very last part of moving the files into the root filesystem is done with root privileges.No systemd, which is the core premise of Funtoo. Packages made by highly questionable devs with highly questionable practices, such as Gnome, are patched to not depend on systemd.
Furthermore, Funtoo brings in a default, precompiled
debian-sourcesin thestage3tarball, so you always have a readily available fallback kernel. If you don't want to tweak kernels at all, you can just stick to thesys-kernel/debian-sourceskernel all the time, though it is slower to compile than your customized kernel.And lastly, Funtoo has Daniel Robbins, the creator of Gentoo. He still works hard to improve the life of *ntoo users, with git syncing being developed for Funtoo (now also available on Gentoo), and lately we've gotten the kits system, which is a more modular way to deal with the portage tree.
There could be other things, but these reasons are the clear cases where I think Funtoo works better (for me) than Gentoo.
Fedora for workstation, debian for server
Can it be the distro I have to use because we don't have the funding to upgrade a simulation I maintain? If so, RHEL 6. Or is that Stockholm Syndrome?
I had some luck installing Elementary on an old laptop. I don't really use it for much, though.
I never made the time to use it as a primary machine so I don't really have a good understanding of Linux.
Been using Solus for a while now, and it's a really great distro. Thinking of switching to something more minimal soon. Maybe just Arch? Not quite sure yet!
Edit: As a random shout out, I loved listening to Ikey, the main creator of Solus, on the Late Night Linux podcast. It was cool hearing his thoughts about various Linux and FOSS topics. He had to leave recently which sucks, but he did so for good reasons. Still a cool podcast to checkout!
I'm currently pretty happy with my Manjaro setup.
It's my first time with Arch(-based systems) and I really fooled around to try stuff - and always waited to really break something.
But it's running since over a year without major problems and every fuck up on my side was surprisingly fast to fix.
I spent years using an Arch install I built from the groundup on my own and it was surprisingly stable. I've had more issues with the stability of Fedora and Ubuntu than I ever had with Arch, despite me working my hardest to fuck it up through inexperience.
My laptop has been running the same arch install since I bought it 5 years ago. I've had two failed SSDs, and done multiple hardware upgrades during that time. Install linux-lts as a fallback, use -dkms modules when possible, and its been a pillar of stability in my world of failed macOS and Windows upgrades.
Long time Windows user here, but I've been intrigued by the concept of Chrome os, so I've been trying to replicate the simplicity but to have more features with lightweight Linux distro. Currently trying out elementary os on an old laptop.
ChromeOS is actually based on Gentoo. Setting everything up to get to simple usage will take some effort, though, and some additional hardware to create an environment for the old laptop to not blow itself up.
Any recommendation for lightweight distro where you're only going to primarily use the browser (Firefox) and other webapps? Thanks.
I have no such usecases, but I'd go with Funtoo because I personally have the infra to support it (other machines can easily compile the packages for me and distribute them, which I already do with some packages anyway). I'm not sure what would be the best, but generally I recommend anything KDE based or Arch if the person asking it knows their way around the shell.
I've nearly 15 years of experience as developer. To cut it short and kind of oversimplifying, you begin to see the difference when you begin to develop some though shit.
Right in the last 6 months I had to develop stuff that talk with hardware and basically every single library is built to be developed on a linux system. Then, you can compile it for any other OS you want through adapter (think using Wine to compile for windows from linux). The thing is not true both ways.
In the last 6 months I had to work on a windows computer for some stupid corporate regulation that should assure safety of my computer but instead just hinder my work and just last week I managed to show my manager how I could have done the same work that took me 3 weeks, in 2 days if I was on linux.
If you approaching CS you won't notice and won't need to also approach linux. But honestly I suggest you try and make it home because it will make life easier in the long run.
I suggest dual boot for the simple reason that virtual box will never be a clean and smooth experience.
I had to virtual box an Ubuntu 18 the other day and run in all sort of problem when compiling the code against the different os. Also the sluggish UI response really bothers me.
If you only deal with backend it could be fine.
Started with Debian, then used Fedora for a few years and finally settled on Arch and derivatives of it. I feel like an outlier in the arch community as I don't install custom kernels or know much about Linux as a whole, but it's been super stable for me and I can be as bleeding edge as I like.
Don't listen to the stuff about needing to have excellent Linux knowledge and how it's everyday hardship. Arch + Gnome3 + archwiki and you've a great stable setup in a few hours
For me it's not just the initial setup, it's reinstallation if a machine is broken/stolen/lost. If I have to quick get another machine up for a project, I can't necessarily spend the time to get Arch installed again. That said, I love the concept of Antergos, but I've had more issues with the installer giving me an unusable system than I would just installing Arch. Manjaro has been good to me though.
That's most of the Arch community, actually. Next to nobody on Arch installs custom kernels, those people move to Gentoo or derivatives usually.
I'm not sure if you're talking about Linux, the kernel, or GNU+Linux, the operating system. I can reply to both possibilities just in case, though. For the kernel part, this is common among most of GNU+Linux users in general. Very few people compile customized kernels, even less write custom patches. In general, people understand that Linux is the kernel, and they understand why it's an important part of the system as a whole. But deeper knowledge as to how the kernel actually does it's job is uncommon.
In the case of GNU+Linux, the operating system, knowledge is available on many levels. For normal users, you don't need to have very deep knowledge nowadays. I do think the average Arch user has a better understanding of how the system is set up, which parts work together to create a functioning operating system and tweak more and more often, compared to the average Ubuntu user for instance. In general, if you can make the operating system do what you need it to do, you have enough knowledge about it.
I agree that you can be up-and-cooking on Arch fairly easily, but there are still some things that have to be annoyingly hand configured. Mounting points for hard drives, for instance. Maybe this has changed, but to get a hard drive mounted on boot required editing a somewhat hard to read text file. Not hard, but tedious. Some DEs are also harder to configure than others. I personally don't like Gnome 3. I use xfce, which requires a bit more setup to get looking nice (but in the end it looks and feels much better than Gnome.) One of the most tedious things I remember having to install was software that enabled thumbnails in my file browser. I didn't figure that one out for months.
Once everything is setup the way you like (which might be never) it is pretty much just update and go. Arch's rolling nature means it's always up-to-date, which gets rid of the 'upgrade' process other Distros (and Windows and MacOS) have. Makes it less exciting and less annoying all at the same time.
Not really, creating the fstab for a new install is really just
genfstab -U /chroot >> /chroot/etc/fstab(or something close to that). Which I assume is what you meant.For me, that command only works so much. Getting NTFS drives mounted and initialized was a bit more work, unless it's changed in recent years. It's been a while since I used Arch as a daily driver.
Oh yeah, NTFS might be a bit of a pain. I just avoid it altogether ;)
Yeah... I wish I could. These drives in particular have stuff like school work (some of which I don't know why I keep) and media like movies and music. I guess I did have an opportunity to change over to a new file system but Windows only supports FAT and NTFS, and sadly I have to force myself to keep using Windows because of video games :(.
If you have integrated graphics I can highly recommend VFIO, basically just running Windows in a VM and passing your good graphics card to it. No reboots required, native gaming performance and windows can be tucked away in a dark corner. /r/VFIO has a lot of useful info in its sidebar, Arch wiki can be helpful as well (duh :P).
I remember looking into this years ago and the performance was promising but I only had one video card (and support was experimental, but still good). Now, I'm using an i7 2600k which has integrated graphics. I'm in a crazy summer semester right now (back in school to finish my degree) so I'll have to check it out later, but I'll probably give it a good try when I have the time.
Fedora for workstation daily driver but play around with VMs and distro hopping on old machines. I also like Arch and various flavours of Ubuntu.
I've been running Funtoo for quite a while now. In my opinion, it's the absolute best distro for a developer. Everything is easily tweakable, it's geared towards compiling, and pretty much all tools for development are readily available, at multiple versions, with good support and a great community in case of need. It's also incredibly easy to build an
ebuild(the definition file to install applications) if needed.For my media PC, I'm using Archlinux, since it was easier to get my drivers working on it. I use proprietary drivers for it as I'm also using it to play games on it (with Steam and an XBox controller).
I have a Raspberry Pi running Raspbian. This one device is used for me to test out packages and tutorials I write. I wanted to have some base hardware that was easily accessible for most people, and use the most default installation I could use with it to make it easy and straightforward for people to follow the tutorials.
If you're switching over from Windows, you might want to take a look at distributions that come with KDE by default. I've not used it personally, but I've heard good opinions on KDE Neon. I'm not a big fan of Ubuntu, since it's prone to break if you configure it beyond what the devs intended it to be configured for.
For information gathering, check out the Arch wiki for most common issues. The Gentoo wiki is a great resource if you're going beyond common issues (manually building and the issues that may come with it, for instance).
Damn dude, that's awesome! and thank you for the suggestion!
Fedora has been my distro of choice for a few years now, but I still haven't gotten away from dual-booting since there's a few programs I can't let go of
I just tossed my Windows partition. Fedora-root was too small at 50GB and I could not repartition it live. Having to risk it all anyways I just reinstalled Fedora 28 over everything.
I like Fedora because it has great support on the web, full stocked repo's and the newest programs. I haven;t ventured too much. Debian seems out of date, Ubuntu wit Unity was 'commercial'. Nope, Fedora hit is right for me. I've got enough problems.
Fairly long-time Ubuntu user, for about a year have been using Manjaro on my laptop and I now detest having to use apt on my desktop, so there might be a change coming up on that front soon.
I've been using Ubuntu since 2013; it Just Works™, and I can use PPAs to keep my packages up to date. Sometimes I consider moving to Arch, but there's no way I could ever remember all the pacman flags, let alone actually use the system ;)
I've spent an absolutely stupid amount of time distro hopping, but I always end up coming back to Arch. When installing, I have pretty much complete control over what software is running on my machine, the Arch wiki is amazing, the AUR is super useful, and
pacmanis one of the best package managers I've come across.That said, I've really enjoyed Solus for the couple of times that I've had it installed. It's becoming a very solid distro.
Arch Linux is my preferred Linux distro, but I also like to use Debian Sid (Unstable) as well.
Manjaro for my Lenovo T520.
Debian for my server.
Xubuntu for any of my older hardware.
Arch or Ubuntu would be my favorite. They both work incredibly well and usually cause no problems for me.
Ubuntu, because I care more about stuff working than it being exactly how I like it.
I grew up on Slackware, then ran Gentoo for over a decade, tried several distros, of which Mageia is one that I used on my current laptop for the longest, because of its quality and amazing community. And MeeGo and SailfishOS are the longest serving OS on my phones.
My current set-up though is:
I use Debian on my machine because it's established, stable, and just works. All the packages seem to work well together, and I don't want to have to spend excessive time troubleshooting various things.
Whenever I recommend or install a distro for a new user, I always recommend Mint. It is really easy, stable and is a great transition for a Windows user.
NodeOS of course: https://node-os.com/
What could go wrong? /s
Unpopular opinion incoming: I don't like Arch Linux.
I don't really have a favorite, I've run pretty much every distro, and switch every month or two on my desktop. I guess I'd choose something like Fedora, Gentoo, or Slackware.
I donʼt know Linux well: about 1—2 year/s. So, itʼs obviously that I like/d Ubuntu, Mint with DE like MATE or Cinnamon. Later I found Arch where Pacman & AUR is fine for me. I know about tiling DE like i3 or awesome but I still canʼt get used to them.
Slackware. Oddly enough, I currently don't have it on either of my machines, but every couple of months I install -current to check out the progress. Once they release the next update at least one of my machines will be back on Slack.
I think it's just the distro I know best. It's solid, simple to configure and everything comes vanilla from upstream. I distro hop a lot, but always come back to Slackware.
I quite enjoy Pop_OS. As a user moving from windows its super easy to use and i really enjoy the fact that i can integrate my google account to the os itself.
Ubuntu, because it's the only distro that I can run off a USB with secure boot and UEFI.
I use crux on my only remaining Linux machine (the rest are OpenBSD)
I run ChromeOS with a Debian Chroot for all my Linux/gnu utility needs, I really like it because I don't have to fuss with updates breaking things, or security, but I still get a full-featured Linux environment.
The only Linux I used for more than a few minutes is Slax, because my last HDD died and I needed something to run my computer from. (Slax easily fits and works from a pendrive) Actually, I still have it around in case I need to get around Windows quickly.
I think Bedrock Linux is a pretty cool concept. Basically, it allows you to run multiple distros side by side, so you could be running KDE from OpenSUSE alongside Firefox from Arch. I haven't actually used it yet; I'm just using Ubuntu with a plain OpenBox/Tint2 desktop config, which I suppose isn't very exciting. I distro hopped quite a bit before that.
I'm using a dual-boot with Mint/Cinnamon as my media / office / browsing general-purpose. This was my first experience with Linux (besides Android) coming from Windows.
Other partition is Ubuntu Studio with KXStudio repo for making music. The realtime kernel means I can get a powerful, professional studio experience on an aging, budget laptop. The project-oriented DE was really intuitive to get started with.