The Linux Thread - The Autist's OS of Choice

[Trans Fat 41g]

So you're not really calling it shit, right? I'm just wondering since I'm still new to this Linux shit.

It's for those who aren't in the mindset to start pure Arch off the bat, but there isn't a rock solid reason anyone pursuing pure Arch as a new user should hesitate and settle with Manjaro.

If it just works stick to it, but mind the rough spots and whatever gopher hole you run into when you aren't the wingman of the install process.

 

[Ahriman]

 

[Dr. Geronimo]

View attachment 2583114

This is honestly a big problem. The Linux community doesn't seem to understand how to advertises itself. Everything I see when it comes to recommending an OS is either 'it will hold your hand completely' or 'you should be lynched for using a GUI'. Having that big of an advertising disparity only confuses and intimidates new users.

Like I've said, I've only moved to Manjaro because steam is making the move to KDE Arch. If they weren't I'd probably have stuck with Kubuntu. Too much shit has broken with Arch and it annoys me that I'm the one that has to fix it.

I'm still trying to learn though, so maybe my opinion will change.

 

[BootlegPopeye]

Arch is itself becoming a meme distro, let's face it. The insistence that newbies use it is a great way to turn them off to linux. I've been using linux since 2009, and I never found that arch or its derivatives were any better than the other popular distros. New users are going to find debian based ones easiest simply because you can find major companies that support linux (ie Plex) that have .deb files on their website. I've always been able to get my printer/scanners working on them too.

You should use whatever you are most comfortable with, there is no 'right' answer for a distro. Honestly, it all boils down to the quality of their package manager and their implementation of the various DEs.

 

[Trans Fat 41g]

This. I don't consider rolling distros something you should properly install on a USB drive, considering how easy it apparently is to completely lock drives out of any sort of functionality. If you want a portable distro, go LTS.

 

[Kosher Dill]

Arch is itself becoming a meme distro

"Becoming"?

New users are going to find debian based ones easiest simply because you can find major companies that support linux (ie Plex) that have .deb files on their website.

This was one of the biggest considerations for me when picking a distro. If you're not a diehard Stallmanite you're going to need to deal with third-party software, and most of that is just packaged as .deb and .rpm. I don't really want to take some random internet person's repack of these, and I don't want to do it myself.

 

[Ahriman]

My personal learning experience with Linux has been, initially, with OpenSUSE (as some call it, Ubuntu but made by Germans) back in the early '00s. Super comfy, yum and especially YaST were awesome to use.

Back then I leaned towards it because Ubuntu was built around Gnome and OpenSUSE around KDE, and since I've always found KDE 3.x UI sleekier, I ran with it. It's why I never understand the complaints about KDE being a system hog, at least when I used it with OpenSUSE it ran flawlessly - I think it's still the distro with the absolute best KDE integration of them all.

At that time, I had never used a media player/library like Amarok, it had set the bar so high that I ended up switching between MusicBee and Foobar2000 much later.

Eventually I tested out SELinux, then when I got my job as a Linux Sysadmin they were running CentOS servers so even if I was a Jr, I was more or less familiar with some basic troubleshooting I had to do.

At that time I wasn't interested in vidya and my Steam library was very small, as I got more vidya I had to make the switch to Win7 because I couldn't be bothered to configure dual boot, especially since I've found myself spending more time doing shit on Win7 than on SUSE. Once I changed jobs and was told to run a Linux distro for my workstation, I figured I'd try something different and since Linux Mint was the up-and-coming OS of choice, I figured I'd try that one out. No need for any fancy crap, I treat the OS as a tool so I need something that "just works" and it did. The switch from Red Hat-based to Debian-based didn't bother me much either.

Never cared too much about Fedora or Debian but I wouldn't mind testing out plain jane Fedora with KDE, just to hop on dat sigma grindset.

But if you're a noob and want to dip your toes into Linux, I'd definitely recommend OpenSUSE, Tumbleweed looks really nice and they maintain their fine tradition of optimizing KDE integration better than everyone else out there.

Just don't try it on a laptop, and the Gnome version, like the guy did on that video I posted earlier.

 

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This. I don't consider rolling distros something you should properly install on a USB drive, considering how easy it apparently is to completely lock drives out of any sort of functionality. If you want a portable distro, go LTS.

It just seems dumb to suggest installing a rolling distro for any linux noob.. whether one is advocating for Arch. Or Gentoo. Or Debian Unstable.

The latter probably provides at least as many up to the minute binary packages as any of these newfangled Arch contraptions, and the Arch system for building from source seems thoroughly primitive.

Just run Kubuntu or something for a little while, or the new SteamOS when it comes out, try to ignore the fact that systemd is causing a bunch of problems in a way that's impossible to fix without holding a gun to the head of a certain Red Hat employee while you get familiar with other stuff, and then install Devuan, or Gentoo if you really must live on the wild side.

 

[Casval Rem Deikun]

My personal learning experience with Linux has been, initially, with OpenSUSE (as some call it, Ubuntu but made by Germans) back in the early '00s. Super comfy, yum and especially YaST were awesome to use.

View attachment 2583348

Back then I leaned towards it because Ubuntu was built around Gnome and OpenSUSE around KDE, and since I've always found KDE 3.x UI sleekier, I ran with it. It's why I never understand the complaints about KDE being a system hog, at least when I used it with OpenSUSE it ran flawlessly - I think it's still the distro with the absolute best KDE integration of them all.

View attachment 2583372

At that time, I had never used a media player/library like Amarok, it had set the bar so high that I ended up switching between MusicBee and Foobar2000 much later.

Eventually I tested out SELinux, then when I got my job as a Linux Sysadmin they were running CentOS servers so even if I was a Jr, I was more or less familiar with some basic troubleshooting I had to do.

At that time I wasn't interested in vidya and my Steam library was very small, as I got more vidya I had to make the switch to Win7 because I couldn't be bothered to configure dual boot, especially since I've found myself spending more time doing shit on Win7 than on SUSE. Once I changed jobs and was told to run a Linux distro for my workstation, I figured I'd try something different and since Linux Mint was the up-and-coming OS of choice, I figured I'd try that one out. No need for any fancy crap, I treat the OS as a tool so I need something that "just works" and it did. The switch from Red Hat-based to Debian-based didn't bother me much either.

Never cared too much about Fedora or Debian but I wouldn't mind testing out plain jane Fedora with KDE, just to hop on dat sigma grindset.

But if you're a noob and want to dip your toes into Linux, I'd definitely recommend OpenSUSE, Tumbleweed looks really nice and they maintain their fine tradition of optimizing KDE integration better than everyone else out there.

Just don't try it on a laptop, and the Gnome version, like the guy did on that video I posted earlier.

I learned linux through OpenSuse in college its a very compatible OS distro to introduce user to Linux and learning basic Linux commands and how it operates. I recommend it to new users as a water tester then tell people to branch out into other distros.

 

[Trans Fat 41g]

It just seems dumb to suggest installing a rolling distro for any linux noob.. whether one is advocating for Arch. Or Gentoo. Or Debian Unstable.

Oh no doubt the general populace is sick of Windows for this very reason: insistent, sweeping updates, when Mint and Lubuntu will be like epoxy in the cold... I sure as shit didn't push a rolling distro onto my parents when I, with wholehearted agreement (surprisingly), liberated their PC with Mint.

 

[BootlegPopeye]

Oh no doubt the general populace is sick of Windows for this very reason: insistent, sweeping updates, when Mint and Lubuntu will be like epoxy in the cold... I sure as shit didn't push a rolling distro onto my parents when I, with wholehearted agreement (surprisingly), liberated their PC with Mint.

As an aside (I guess it's 'technically' Linux but still the product of another corporate behemoth), it drives me nuts how quickly Google cycles through Android versions, when you're lucky to get more than 1 update for some devices from the manufacturer.

 

[Never Scored]

The linux distro I first used was unironically Gentoo because it was on all the computers at my university's computer lab circa 2003. First one I actually installed on a computer myself was Xubuntu a couple years later.

 

[AmpleApricots]

I tried to install Red Hat Linux or something and the installer script failed and puked garbage, probably because of a driver problem with my IDE controller at the time. (yeah this was all a while ago) It annoyed me how I didn't really understand why the installer failed and how the documentation didn't really offer an explanation either. Wanting to figure out everything myself and seeing the much higher quality of the gentoo installation handbook I installed that then and it worked like a charm, although it took a bit. Haven't use anything else since because it feels limiting in comparison.

 

[potatofarms]

debian on bare metal, its a pain to set up but you only do it one time.
everything else is on the VM
i measure uptime in months, only shut down to install internal hardware or clean the fans.
dell r710, 54g ram, 10tb raid 5 array, used for serving websites, video editing, coding, boinc and gridcoin in the winter for heat

also using sparky on an old toughbook because it didnt give me hardware issues. might revert to puppy.

first used linux when suse first came out. 10 cds box

 

[NoSpiceLife]

Its been a year and a half since I've used Linux as my daily machine. Looking at Distrowatch, what the fuck is MX Linux and how'd it get so popular?

Also, is Slackware pretty much dead? More than 5 years on from the last major release.

I know I'm really late on this, broke my computer with Devuan, goddamn fucking Caja does this fuckarse thing where if you have another window with highlights in it, and you highlight something else to delete, it fucking deletes EVERYTHING. Took me two fucking weeks to try and extract the shit that got deleted, I don't know if I got everything, because everything just has a goddamn number as the title now.

So yeah to answer your question, the easiest 'out of the box' Linux distro ever made. You won't have to guess what I went back to.

I've been using MX Linux for a year and a half I think, can't remember, it seriously just works out of the box, no dramas (unless they are self made), extremely easy to take a snapshot occasionally and if something (me) fucks up, instantly back to what it was.

I am one of those fiddle with everything type of people, I have tried so many distros I've lost count, some more than once, more than three times, MX Linux is seriously the only distro I can load up and it just works, everything 'just fucking works'.

Using the MX21 Beta 2 XFCE, and again, it seriously just worked (not a gamer though, not sure if it makes a difference), a bloody Beta, just working!!!

 

[Ahriman]

It really it do be it like that.

 

[Shoggoth]

Distrowatch is not a good measure of usage. It only ranks search in distrowatch or something like that. Measuring downloads is useless. Will you measure every docker instance running every distro?

 

[Knight of the Rope]

Distrowatch is not a good measure of usage. It only ranks search in distrowatch or something like that.

Exactly; it ranks hits to the webpage based on the distro that you're using at the time.

This is something I've always been suspicious of actually, based on my own habits. I'm only ever on Distrowatch when I'm shopping around for a different distro to jump to, which means the distro that I hit the site with is one that I'm fed up with and abandoning. If everyone else uses Distrowatch similarly, then it would mean that on the contrary, something high on the Distrowatch ranking list is more likely to mean that it sucks.

 

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[WinnieTheJew]

First server has been upgraded to Debian 11. Looks like the new kernel keeps binary compatibility with the 4.19 kernel I compiled a couple of my C programs on. Thank you King Linus for not breaking all my user space shit.