The Linux Thread - The Autist's OS of Choice

[SandAthlete]

I've been a Linux syskiddie (is this how you say amateur/DIY sysadmin?) for a while now. Been thinking of upgrading my PC, and with that, throwing out Windows 10 (or at least dual-booting it in case I need it).

I generally use Debian for all of my servers and I've grown very comfortable with the way things work there. Is there any reason to not install pure Debian as a daily-driver? Majority of distros are just forks of either Debian or Arch with different Desktop Environments and custom bloat added to them. So why not just go raw Debian and slam together my own ghetto version of it, in spirit of FOSS?

 

[DavidS877]

I've been a Linux syskiddie (is this how you say amateur/DIY sysadmin?) for a while now. Been thinking of upgrading my PC, and with that, throwing out Windows 10 (or at least dual-booting it in case I need it).

I generally use Debian for all of my servers and I've grown very comfortable with the way things work there. Is there any reason to not install pure Debian as a daily-driver? Majority of distros are just forks of either Debian or Arch with different Desktop Environments and custom bloat added to them. So why not just go raw Debian and slam together my own ghetto version of it, in spirit of FOSS?

Debian includes plenty of destkop environments. You just have to select one. My current desktop started as Debian unstable with XFCE. I ended up on unstable to get the drivers for my newest gear. That's the only problem I've found. Now tracking bookworm as it has what I need and that will become stable. Then again I've been using Debian since roughly 1.1.

 

[Knight of the Rope]

Is there any reason to not install pure Debian as a daily-driver?

In your case? No, there's no reason. However, that's almost 100% because:

I generally use Debian for all of my servers and I've grown very comfortable with the way things work there.

If you know your way around Debian (and in particular, know how to work around its issues and idiosyncrasies) and you use it all the time anyway, then using it as a daily driver is also a great choice.

I guess the only thing I'd mention is that Debian's insistence on the 'Free' in FOSS means that you can usually expect to have issues with shit that other distros let you take for granted, like being able to immediately watch or listen to most media file formats or booting into a system with working wifi. If you know your way around a Debian server system then you've got a leg up already, but the difference between a headless server and a funmachine that has graphics and sound and Bluetooth and shit is a difference that Debian specifically tries to make as painful as possible.

 

[awoo]

Fedora KDE spin.

Ubuntu 22.04 is a hot mess and I don't recommend it. Never bothered with Mint.

Ubuntu is fine and has a large support base. Beginners do not care about why snap and systemd are the devil incarnate either.
I think something Debian based is more likely to be easier to get support for than Fedora (haven't used it tho)

also a mod should pin "which distro should I use FAQ" because it seems like this question gets asked every two pages over and over.

 

[SandAthlete]

Debian includes plenty of destkop environments. You just have to select one. My current desktop started as Debian unstable with XFCE. I ended up on unstable to get the drivers for my newest gear. That's the only problem I've found. Now tracking bookworm as it has what I need and that will become stable. Then again I've been using Debian since roughly 1.1.

I'm aware Debian isn't very cutting-edge and tends to stay on the safe side until possible issues get ironed out. I guess that's why I like using it for servers, it just works. But I'm not sure if it will bite me into the ass if I want to go on Ryzen 7 (probably not, it has been out for a while).

I guess the only thing I'd mention is that Debian's insistence on the 'Free' in FOSS means that you can usually expect to have issues with shit that other distros let you take for granted, like being able to immediately watch or listen to most media file formats or booting into a system with working wifi. If you know your way around a Debian server system then you've got a leg up already, but the difference between a headless server and a funmachine that has graphics and sound and Bluetooth and shit is a difference that Debian specifically tries to make as painful as possible.

Oh, I've had my fair share of fun with that.
It turns out after state renovated my dorm, it mandated an ethernet port in every room, but not the cable behind it (which probably got looted afterwards knowing how it goes). So I had to resort to using an older Zotac ZBOX with CLI debian as a router, where the dorm wifi gets masqueraded down to ethernet. Setting up the crappy Intel wifi driver was a headache, but I got the gist of it.
Fortunately I prefer my PC cabled, so don't care much for it.

I currently have a GTX 1070 too, and I've heard that Linux and Nvidia don't get along very well. But I'm not wasting additional money for an AMD GPU. Since Nvidia open-sourced some parts of their driver, I'm rather optimistic about it becoming better in the future.

If you know your way around Debian (and in particular, know how to work around its issues and idiosyncrasies) and you use it all the time anyway, then using it as a daily driver is also a great choice.

I'll get a few beers and swear at it, that approach generally works.

 

[agripipina]

I'm aware Debian isn't very cutting-edge and tends to stay on the safe side until possible issues get ironed out. I guess that's why I like using it for servers, it just works. But I'm not sure if it will bite me into the ass if I want to go on Ryzen 7 (probably not, it has been out for a while).


Oh, I've had my fair share of fun with that.
It turns out after state renovated my dorm, it mandated an ethernet port in every room, but not the cable behind it (which probably got looted afterwards knowing how it goes). So I had to resort to using an older Zotac ZBOX with CLI debian as a router, where the dorm wifi gets masqueraded down to ethernet. Setting up the crappy Intel wifi driver was a headache, but I got the gist of it.
Fortunately I prefer my PC cabled, so don't care much for it.

I currently have a GTX 1070 too, and I've heard that Linux and Nvidia don't get along very well. But I'm not wasting additional money for an AMD GPU. Since Nvidia open-sourced some parts of their driver, I'm rather optimistic about it becoming better in the future.


I'll get a few beers and swear at it, that approach generally works.

I know a few people that have run their bspwm setups on debian unstable but if you're going to try to avoid the non-free repos then you're stuck with nouveau and god forbid if you have a wifi card with proprietary drivers. Really I just broke down and installed arch on my system and learned to deal with the binary blobs nvidia provides for my GTX 960 (they do break occasionally forcing me to rollback). Also fair warning about dual booting in windows, there's a feature involved with shutting down Windows that locks up your ntfs partitions when you then boot into linux. It had something to do with hibernate but I had to go into service manager to turn it off. I would only try a FOSS stack on something like a thinkpad but it's your call.

 

[Ahriman]

Linux Mint Dot Com

 

[DavidS877]

I currently have a GTX 1070 too, and I've heard that Linux and Nvidia don't get along very well. But I'm not wasting additional money for an AMD GPU. Since Nvidia open-sourced some parts of their driver, I'm rather optimistic about it becoming better in the future.

If you don't mind not running 'free' software I personally have had no problems with the proprietary Nvidia drivers for many years. Even convinced my laptop with the bizarre hybrid of an AMD iGPU and an Nvidia 3070 to mostly work. (And thus why I'm on Debian's bleeding edge)

 

[TheBigZee]

I've been a Linux syskiddie (is this how you say amateur/DIY sysadmin?) for a while now. Been thinking of upgrading my PC, and with that, throwing out Windows 10 (or at least dual-booting it in case I need it).

I generally use Debian for all of my servers and I've grown very comfortable with the way things work there. Is there any reason to not install pure Debian as a daily-driver? Majority of distros are just forks of either Debian or Arch with different Desktop Environments and custom bloat added to them. So why not just go raw Debian and slam together my own ghetto version of it, in spirit of FOSS?

Debian Sid is serviceable as a desktop so long as you can tell when running apt upgrade is going to hose your whole system. Install a minimum stable install, then switch to the sid repos, upgrade, and then run tasksel to install a desktop environment. Debian stable is not a good choice for a desktop, especially not a new desktop. If you do any real work with your computer, you're going to wind up with a massive ~/bin/ & ~/lib folder because you're going to want newer versions of everything sooner or later. Just running make install as root will hose your stable system eventually.

Ubuntu or Mint are close enough to Debian that almost everything you know directly transfers or easily translates. I'd really recommend using one of those - it's what I do on my desktop.

 

[Klokateer636]

Turned out my inability to wake from sleep/lock is due to a Wayland bug.

Changed to X11 and working perfectly.

Now if only I could figure out why pci device passthrough to a vm just doesn't wanna work, that'd be swell.

 

[AnOminous]

Turned out my inability to wake from sleep/lock is due to a Wayland bug.

Is there anything good about that shit or is it just a mountain of buggy shit that makes Microsoft beta releases look rock solid?

 

[Klokateer636]

Is there anything good about that shit or is it just a mountain of buggy shit that makes Microsoft beta releases look rock solid?

No idea, all I know is that 3 finger swiping doesn't move from desktop to desktop which was a handy feature.

But I'll take working over constant reboots any day.

 

[Friendly Primarina]

Debian stable is not a good choice for a desktop, especially not a new desktop. If you do any real work with your computer, you're going to wind up with a massive ~/bin/ & ~/lib folder because you're going to want newer versions of everything sooner or later. Just running make install as root will hose your stable system eventually.

I'm fairly new to Debian (~2 1/2 years) so sorry if this sounds dumb. Is there any reason you can't backport only the software you need from unstable/upstream? Instead of making a giant ~/bin or ~/lib folder you can just package the tarballs yourself? I haven't broken my system (yet) doing this.

 

[TheBigZee]

I'm fairly new to Debian (~2 1/2 years) so sorry if this sounds dumb. Is there any reason you can't backport only the software you need from unstable/upstream? Instead of making a giant ~/bin or ~/lib folder you can just package the tarballs yourself? I haven't broken my system (yet) doing this.

That's the debian way to do it, so if it breaks you can easily roll it back.

My reason for not doing it is version clashes in the system wide dependencies. I've also wound up with wonky behavior putting things in /usr/local.

I think the highest profile example in recent Debian history was chromium and firefox versions going EOL upstream. I don't know if anyone has done a writeup of everything involved in altering stable so it could run firefox-esr v91 instead of 78. It's what finally sold me 100% for containerization on the desktop.

 

[ItCouldBeWorse]

>want to make a meme to post on the forum
>need to remove some element and realize i don't have resynthesizer in GIMP on my laptop
>decided to fuck around AUR to find the GIMP plugin pack I used last time
>build fails
>"huh, whatever"
>decide i don't need it anyways
>suddenly no other program wants so open
>reboot
>[ERROR] Failed to start Simple Desktop Manager
>try to fuck around
>glib missing
>barely anything works anymore systemwide
>a solid Manjaro system ruined by some retards shitty build script
I'm gonna murder someone tonight I swear

EDIT: Had to reinstall the system so this time I hopped to Fedora
FML

 

[rareblacklobster]

How exactly does distro hopping work? I want to switch from Pop to Mint. Do I just install Mint on another partition and copy my home folder?

 

[Knight of the Rope]

How exactly does distro hopping work? I want to switch from Pop to Mint. Do I just install Mint on another partition and copy my home folder?

Yep. Or just back everything up and reinstall Mint over the top of Pop.

"Distro-hopping" is simply bouncing from one distro to another, usually impulsively because Linux lets you be impulsive with that. Because Linux isn't Windows/Mac and there's zero chance that reinstalling your entire operating system is going to leave you too stranded (for example, because Microsoft won't let you reactivate because you forgot to rip the product key before you reformatted and now it thinks you're voiding the license*), you can just install and reinstall to your heart's content. Wanna try Arch Linux? Simply back everything up, wipe the thing and install from the ISO. Don't like Arch Linux after all? No worries, just reinstall Pop and you're back where you started.

*True story of something that happened to me once.

 

[eternal dog mongler]

I think something Debian based is more likely to be easier to get support for than Fedora (haven't used it tho)

Fedora is popular enough to where you should be able to find a guide for most everything.

And like I've said before I don't really care too much about snaps or systemd. Ubuntu 22.04 is seriously the buggiest release of Ubuntu I've ever used.

Last week I had the repos go out of sync and apt-get got confused and wanted to start downgrading shit. I don't know if I slid in an apt-get update at the perfect time or what but that would confuse the hell out of a new user.

 

[SandAthlete]

Last week I had the repos go out of sync and apt-get got confused and wanted to start downgrading shit. I don't know if I slid in an apt-get update at the perfect time or what but that would confuse the hell out of a new user.

Don't they tell you to use apt instead of apt-get nowadays?

 

[eternal dog mongler]

Don't they tell you to use apt instead of apt-get nowadays?

Maybe, but old habits die hard and it wouldn't have exactly synced the repos on their end.