228 replies to this topic

[CT96]

Wow, Slackware. Here's my new mental image of TTK and CT96;

 

Well, I do rock an epic beard... and I am a condescending "unix user" - referencing a Dilbert strip from when I was playing with Slackware:

 

[TTK Ciar]

Haha :-D an old friend shot me that exact Dilbert strip last week :-) and to be fair I deserved it.

On a more serious note, Slackware has evolved quite a bit since then. Its worst parts have gotten better, and its best parts have gotten better as well. There's a very lively, friendly support community http://www.linuxques...s/slackware-14/, and a lot less snootiness. It's still somewhat "hands-on" in some ways, but installation is a breeze and once installed you can get to work immediately without further configuration.

(Mostly. If your wireless is encrypted you'll need to poke a few clicks at NetworkManager, and using a printer requires some CUPS configuration. But that's true of other distros as well.)

All of my systems (desktops, laptops, servers) are Slackware, except for my phone which is Android. I'm quite happy with it.

But again, it's not for everyone. Mint is the answer for normal desktop use.

Edited by TTK Ciar, 14 July 2017 - 1136 AM.

[Murph]

I took the mint laptop with me on vacation as my main machine (I have the mac only for movies), and I would really like to somehow get Mint running on the desktop.  

[Murph]

Anyone using Fedora or one of its derivatives?  I really don't like that there is no long term release version of Fedora for me to try out.  As a buddy told me, Mint just works, and he is a hard core windows user who I converted to try MInt.  He had a cryptominer system built and is going to run Mint.  

[Avalon12]

Stopped using Fedora after 17, let my wife use it as her daily for a long time. She ditched it because no netflix. Oh well. She swaped to Mint aferwards. After that lappy died she's been using Win 8.1 U3. Need to get her back on a proper distro.

[Ivanhoe]

Anyone using Fedora or one of its derivatives?  I really don't like that there is no long term release version of Fedora for me to try out.  As a buddy told me, Mint just works, and he is a hard core windows user who I converted to try MInt.  He had a cryptominer system built and is going to run Mint.  

 

An LTS train (Long Term Support) is kinda anaethema to the concept of Fedora; bleeding edge, compile today's code against tomorrow's libraries sort of thing.

[Ivanhoe]

Stopped using Fedora after 17, let my wife use it as her daily for a long time. She ditched it because no netflix. Oh well. She swaped to Mint aferwards. After that lappy died she's been using Win 8.1 U3. Need to get her back on a proper distro.

 

Win 8.1? Good Lord, I hope you are making her sleep on the couch!

[Murph]

Does anyone have an LTS release based on Fedora?

 

Anyone using Fedora or one of its derivatives?  I really don't like that there is no long term release version of Fedora for me to try out.  As a buddy told me, Mint just works, and he is a hard core windows user who I converted to try MInt.  He had a cryptominer system built and is going to run Mint.  

 

An LTS train (Long Term Support) is kinda anaethema to the concept of Fedora; bleeding edge, compile today's code against tomorrow's libraries sort of thing.

 

[Panzermann]

I played with Slackware WAY back in the day. I later played with Gentoo. I've lived in Red Hat and Debian.
 
Mint just works. Game.

 
I have toyed with these too, back in the nineties early zeros.
 
There is also Suse Linux in its various incarnations. seems to have hit its stride by now and YAST (yet another setuo tool) seems to wrok now.. Also Mageia from the Red Hatted side of distros seems to be easy to use. The predecessors Mandrake and mandriva were easy imho.

 

 

Another vote for Mint with Cinnamon. I have recently put it on my old laptop. Works. Though i am looking into finding something slimmer still. Or maybe try to snag a bigger ram module off ebay or something.

 

 

 

there is also https://distrochooser.de/(is also in english language on the website) to select a distribution.

[Panzermann]

Stopped using Fedora after 17, let my wife use it as her daily for a long time. She ditched it because no netflix. Oh well. She swaped to Mint aferwards. After that lappy died she's been using Win 8.1 U3. Need to get her back on a proper distro.

 

Upgrade her Laptop to windows10.

[CT96]

 

Does anyone have an LTS release based on Fedora?

 

Anyone using Fedora or one of its derivatives?  I really don't like that there is no long term release version of Fedora for me to try out.  As a buddy told me, Mint just works, and he is a hard core windows user who I converted to try MInt.  He had a cryptominer system built and is going to run Mint.  

 

An LTS train (Long Term Support) is kinda anaethema to the concept of Fedora; bleeding edge, compile today's code against tomorrow's libraries sort of thing.

 

 

 

If you want a long-term support flavor in the Red Hat family for free (e.g. don't want to pay for RHEL), go with CentOS. If you are familiar and comfortable with Fedora, CentOS won't be that different, and you won't be chasing the update/upgrade tail every few months. It also won't have all the bells and whistles of current Fedora distros. 

[Ivanhoe]

there is also https://distrochooser.de/(is also in english language on the website) to select a distribution.

For me it recommended Arch (63%). Which is evidence that the designer of the webscripting is one of Putin's henchmen, tasked with undermining American ingenuity and productivity.

 

And Slackware came in at 42%.

[CT96]

 

there is also https://distrochooser.de/(is also in english language on the website) to select a distribution.

For me it recommended Arch (63%). Which is evidence that the designer of the webscripting is one of Putin's henchmen, tasked with undermining American ingenuity and productivity.

 

And Slackware came in at 42%.

 

It gave me Gentoo. WTFBBQ. Gentoo????? Because hitting myself in the head with a hammer feels sooo good when I stop?

[TTK Ciar]

Ahh .. yeah, no. Take that page with a grain of salt. It says Slackware "Installs only base operating system", when the opposite is true. Slackware is one of the few remaining "kitchen sink" distributions. The latest stable release installs 1322 packages up front -- ftp://ftp.osuosl.org/pub/slackware/slackware64-14.2/PACKAGES.TXT

Ivanhoe, CT96, did you select "I know what systemd is and wish to avoid that" in section 14? That would predispose the answer towards Gentoo or Slackware, those being two of the most significant distributions without systemd (after Android).

[Murph]

I have to get a new mother of a board since GIgabyte refuses to allow any linux installation whatsoever.

[Ivanhoe]

Ivanhoe, CT96, did you select "I know what systemd is and wish to avoid that" in section 14? That would predispose the answer towards Gentoo or Slackware, those being two of the most significant distributions without systemd (after Android).

 

I did not. I am only vaguely aware of the shift to systemd, not having done any serious Linux work for the last 5 years or so (I work in a Microsoft-only environment at work; pity me). So I don't draw steel at the mention of systemd in a favorable light, nor do I fly into a rage at the mention of non-GNU software...

 

One of these days I need to read up on systemd, and why people are so touchy about it...

[TTK Ciar]

One of these days I need to read up on systemd, and why people are so touchy about it...

When that day rolls around, this is a pretty good place to start:

http://without-syste...x.php/Main_Page

Executive summary: Some kids decided replacing a bunch of proven, well-working system components (init, syslog, inetd, cron, etc) would be easier than learning how POSIX works, so they did that, poorly. It failed to get much traction until they made udev dependent on it (used by most distributions to load device firmware).

[CT96]

that's pretty much systemd in a nutshell. I don't like it, but if I avoided everything I disliked, I would have no actual work.... nor change my son's diapers. Some things just are, and you learn to live with it.

[Murph]

I noticed Mint went from 4.8 kernel to 4.10.  Everything seems stable.  

[Panzermann]

 

One of these days I need to read up on systemd, and why people are so touchy about it...

When that day rolls around, this is a pretty good place to start:

http://without-syste...x.php/Main_Page

Executive summary: Some kids decided replacing a bunch of proven, well-working system components (init, syslog, inetd, cron, etc) would be easier than learning how POSIX works, so they did that, poorly. It failed to get much traction until they made udev dependent on it (used by most distributions to load device firmware).

 

 

Yes, systemd seems to take over every function by now.

 

The old systemV inits are proven, but one must say that the old SystemV init has accumulated a lot of cruft, appendixes, tautologies in scripts being nearly close copies of each other etc. systemd set out to change that and make it better, but the project seems to go over the top and the lead programmers seem like very arrogant pricks. And they assimilate everything like the Borg from Star Trek.

 

there have been lots of SysVinit replacement over the years, but upstart was the only one with some traction through Ubuntu. The others seem to have died quietly. I really dont know, why systemd now gains support. Well it does some tings better, but others worse. Especially making many other packages dependant on it.