The Linux Thread - The Autist's OS of Choice

419 said:
What, even Manjaro? I would have thought that's arguably better than Mint for some people as a starting distro since it's just as ready-to-use as Mint while also allowing for AUR integration which everyone usually loves Arch for.
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The problem with rolling releases is that QA never catches everything. I'd avoid a rolling release until you know you can unfuck your machine.
 
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Shoggoth said:
Gotta give some pushback here. It's easy to look back with our experience and think getting into any distro is easy. It's hard to forget unix sucks. Windows sucks ass and Mac sucks wang but unix still sucks.
I am not a sysadmin. Newbies are definitely not sysadmins. They don't have to deal with the insanity of linux and keeping a machine up and running.
Haven't tried it yet, but maybe Nix is the only one that makes sense.
My advice to those considering dipping their toes in - get an easy start. Computers are not worth pulling your hair out over. You can always learn and experiment afterwards, even with Ubuntu. If you just want to ditch windows/osx and use linux, not admin it, go for the user friendly options
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it depends on your individual goal and tolerance dealing with shit - good thing you have to deal with a lot less shit on *nix, because if shit breaks, which it will, the available options and resources to figure it out are miles apart. good luck figuring out that weird ass error and then sifting through dozens of "certified mcp" posts that boil down to sfc /scannow.

for most people going easy is the best option, because in the end they just want something that works while dealing with culture shock of using a different OS. just using it daily and trying to behave the way you're used to will be enough of a challenge in the beginning.
afterwards there's plenty of room to dig deeper or rice stuff.
 
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Shoggoth said:
The problem with rolling releases is that QA never catches everything. I'd avoid a rolling release until you know you can unfuck your machine.
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You can avoid this problem with openSUSE Tumbleweed somewhat by checking this thing and only updating to stable snapshots. That's a hassle though so what's the point.

You don't need the latest version of everything on your computer. You can run openSUSE Leap, for example, and just grab things using opi if you need the absolute newest version of something you're using.
 
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what Linux distro do you reading this use? and why?
 
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Had said:
what Linux distro do you reading this use? and why?
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Manjaro ARM.

The less important of the two reasons is due to the languishing browser situation with the Debian based ARM distros. I want to be able to play back media on Firefox ESR without shit breaking but that's not possible at the moment, there's virtually no love for firefox in APT, and trying to get Librewolf to run on an appimage for aarch64 on the Debian end is met with zero satisfactory results. Vilvaldi works but it's Chromium based, and Jewgle had been making anything Chromium even worse.

The more important of the two reasons is, it's a great distro to learn Linux with if you aren't ready to take on a pure Arch install and need something right away. Things break sure, but that's a sporadic issue with both Mac OSX and Windows so it's a matter of the least painful instance. I find it takes advantage of my Raspberry Pi in areas that Raspbian doesn't, especially in terms of memory optimization. It takes more resources for Manjaro, yet it's very optimized if you run something like MATE, Sway, or XFCE. The second flavor isn't a serious endorsement btw, Wayland needs a lot of work even after a decade of development, especially for ARM SBC's.

I will honorably recant my statement about Manjaro being any good, I officially stopped using it after the bullshit with Pacman and other questionable privacy decisions.
 
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Had said:
what Linux distro do you reading this use? and why?
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Im on manjaro LTS atm, because i like the rolling release of arch but every time xorg and pacman breaks i want to kill myself, so manjaro is a compromize, but debian 11 is a few months from release, and im considering swapping over. since i run debian on my servers, and theyre so stable i forget about them.
 
There is literally no reason why boomers should not be running Linux. All boomers ever use their computers for is to read tabloid-esque "news" on Facebook and to store pictures of their grand kids. I have put both of my grandmothers on Debian and all I've set it up to do for them is run Firefox and open pictures. The only issue I had was finding the proper drivers for an older printer from an obscure brand one of them had. The best part about this is that it is nearly impossible for them or any of the younger grandkids to install random ass programs when they lose their grasp on reality and cease lucidity during one of their intense Facebook sesh's, since all of the random programs from popup ads are for Windows. I have not been called over to "remove the varus from mah puter" once since putting a child-proofed version of Debian onto each of their respective PC's.

This has led me to the idea of making a Linux for boomers. Basically, a reskinned Debian that features various backgrounds of things like farms and Ronald Reagan along with a super simple neutered and locked down UI that just lets you open the home directory and Firefox, or Chrome, Opera, or whatever boomers like to use to browse Facebook. In fact, the bundled web browser might as well autodirect to Facebook upon launching it. Oh and the Libre Office Suite, I guess.

If I can make it inviting to boomers, maybe they'd take notice of and use it,
 
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Could anyone tell me for certain if SWAP partitions are still necessary today? The most convincing argument I've been able to find floating around somewhere is that they're nigh-useless now for newer hardware especially with larger amounts of RAM, but even so some people have said the kernel itself can still benefit from having some kind of swap space. I myself, though, haven't bothered with swap at all and I haven't been able to figure out a decisive answer on whether I still should or shouldn't.
 
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cockaine said:
This has led me to the idea of making a Linux for boomers... If I can make it inviting to boomers, maybe they'd take notice of and use it,
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The closest thing I've found is ChaletOS. It basically looks like windows if you use the "windows 10 transformation pack" and you can configure it so that even the most bungling, virus downloading senior can't really do anything to fuck it up. I've installed it on several older people's machines when they were having too many problems using Windows and 100% of them have loved it. It "just works", and they can embarrass their grandchildren on Facebook with less hassle than ever.

8B9608AF-0A6D-477A-BE37-C0E0D86201F0.png
 
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419 said:
Could anyone tell me for certain if SWAP partitions are still necessary today? The most convincing argument I've been able to find floating around somewhere is that they're nigh-useless now for newer hardware especially with larger amounts of RAM, but even so some people have said the kernel itself can still benefit from having some kind of swap space. I myself, though, haven't bothered with swap at all and I haven't been able to figure out a decisive answer on whether I still should or shouldn't.
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It really depends on whether you prefer to have some disk thrashing when a runaway process or a web browser gobs up all your memory or to get it OOMd outright.

I prefer to always have some swap space, regardless of the amount of RAM I have installed. Remember that you don't have to make a swap partition, you can create a swap file and mount it.
 
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419 said:
Could anyone tell me for certain if SWAP partitions are still necessary today? The most convincing argument I've been able to find floating around somewhere is that they're nigh-useless now for newer hardware especially with larger amounts of RAM, but even so some people have said the kernel itself can still benefit from having some kind of swap space. I myself, though, haven't bothered with swap at all and I haven't been able to figure out a decisive answer on whether I still should or shouldn't.
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Theoretically some older programs might flip out if you have no form of swap available whatsoever. I haven't heard of this happening in a long time though. You don't need a dedicated partition for it anymore.

Best solution is to put a swap file on zRAM. Compression is fast and a lot of stuff that gets swapped compresses very well. You never swap to disk but you've got a swap file available for anything that wants one.
 
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NumberingYourState said:
I want to be able to play back media on Firefox ESR without shit breaking but that's not possible at the moment
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What exactly is broken? I just installed Debian with ESR 78 or something like that, now I'm wondering if I ought to go out of my way to get a more recent version.
 
Some JERK said:
The closest thing I've found is ChaletOS. It basically looks like windows if you use the "windows 10 transformation pack" and you can configure it so that even the most bungling, virus downloading senior can't really do anything to fuck it up
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Look's good I might boot into it for shits and giggles and report back
 
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