What Linux Distro do the Linux users of GH use?

[iLLucionist]

I gave Fedora another chance on my Lenovo T420, which I'm really liking. I'm not a fan at all of Unity, so I can't wait until Ubuntu goes back to Gnome as its default DE, which will also probably be around the time I'll be in the market for a new desktop.

You know you can just install another desktop environment anytime right? Whatever you like. Ubuntu, Fedora, every gnu/linux distro.

Just a side not here...
You kind of have to be careful switching between Budgie, Cinnamon, Unity and Gnome, since all are based on Gnome 3 (Budgie may no longer be), each can and often will overwrite key files wrecking one or all of the desktop environments.


Oh, and there is an official Gnome edition of Ubuntu that is available.

That's a good point, didn't think of that. That's quite annoying actually.

[iLLucionist]

New Linux user

Decided to start with Antergos and using it as my main OS. Haven't done much aside bumble around; I'm loving the speed and stability, but it's got me looking forward to building an Archlinux box eventually which I can already feel is going to be time consuming the first time around, haha.

But it would be worth it! You'll learn so much!

First time I tried linux was SUSE Linux 7.2. I thought linux was just another kernel with another graphical shell. I heard about this "KDE" vs "Gnome" thing, but I thought that - like with windows - the "command prompt" was an app you ran on top of gui, not the other way round.

So obviously things started to break quickly (back then linux required more manual admin than nowadays... there was no ubuntu also). So I dived right in and started to fix every issue one at a time. It was horrible but then I mastered linux and it was great.

[Leslieann]

New Linux user

Decided to start with Antergos and using it as my main OS. Haven't done much aside bumble around; I'm loving the speed and stability, but it's got me looking forward to building an Archlinux box eventually which I can already feel is going to be time consuming the first time around, haha.

While I agree with iLLucionist, doing an Arch install is not a bad idea, I would learn a bit more before you do it. Can you? Absolutely, however if all you have done is bumble around, Arch will be a very serious project. You will learn a lot, the problem is that at this point, you may or may not be as familiar with the correct terminology as would be helpful when searching up advice when it borks...

And you WILL bork it.
Probably more than once.

[Leslieann]

First time I tried linux was SUSE Linux 7.2. I thought linux was just another kernel with another graphical shell. I heard about this "KDE" vs "Gnome" thing, but I thought that - like with windows - the "command prompt" was an app you ran on top of gui, not the other way round.

So obviously things started to break quickly (back then linux required more manual admin than nowadays... there was no ubuntu also). So I dived right in and started to fix every issue one at a time. It was horrible but then I mastered linux and it was great.

I remember when Windows was a gui and the prompt was the main system!
(Wasn't really that long ago, they just hid it better).

Pre-Ubuntu Linux was a nightmare. Of all the things Ubuntu did, creating a support forum that didn't have FTFM for every answer was a big improvement.

[iLLucionist]

First time I tried linux was SUSE Linux 7.2. I thought linux was just another kernel with another graphical shell. I heard about this "KDE" vs "Gnome" thing, but I thought that - like with windows - the "command prompt" was an app you ran on top of gui, not the other way round.

So obviously things started to break quickly (back then linux required more manual admin than nowadays... there was no ubuntu also). So I dived right in and started to fix every issue one at a time. It was horrible but then I mastered linux and it was great.

I remember when Windows was a gui and the prompt was the main system!
(Wasn't really that long ago, they just hid it better).

Pre-Ubuntu Linux was a nightmare. Of all the things Ubuntu did, creating a support forum that didn't have FTFM for every answer was a big improvement.

I know I know.. I've also used win 3.0 / 3.1 / 3.11 / 95 / 98. Yeah, before Ubuntu everybody was like "you got man, you noob. go to man." And than I was like "where are my binaries even?" And they were like "/bin, duuuhhh". And then I had a weird / non-default distro and I was like "no no... you're wrong". And some nerd on the forum told me "you suck you noob wtf you think you know your stuff." And then a day later he came back "oh right sorry... that distro does put binaries in /usr/bin and sometimes /usr/sbin".

So those were my first linux experiences.. But I was persistent, but that's what you need. In the beginnen I had no idea what booting was, or how lilo / grub differed etc. And man pages are often useless. Unless you are using freebsd, which provides rather complete online documentation.

[xtrafrood]

I gave Fedora another chance on my Lenovo T420, which I'm really liking. I'm not a fan at all of Unity, so I can't wait until Ubuntu goes back to Gnome as its default DE, which will also probably be around the time I'll be in the market for a new desktop.

You know you can just install another desktop environment anytime right? Whatever you like. Ubuntu, Fedora, every gnu/linux distro.

Just a side not here...
You kind of have to be careful switching between Budgie, Cinnamon, Unity and Gnome, since all are based on Gnome 3 (Budgie may no longer be), each can and often will overwrite key files wrecking one or all of the desktop environments.


Oh, and there is an official Gnome edition of Ubuntu that is available.

I've nothing but good experiences with Gnome 3 and laptop touchpads. I think I tried Unity a few years ago and switched to Linux Mint shortly after because of reasons. Be sure not to install the current (unofficial) Ubuntu Gnome as your primary (if you decide to check out the ISO..). That project is going to be abandoned in the wake of the official Ubuntu Gnome release.

Since it's an official release, it would probably be rolled right into the next update, so support and updates shouldn't be a problem.

As a result of this decision there will no longer be a separate GNOME flavor of Ubuntu. The development teams from both Ubuntu GNOME and Ubuntu Desktop will be merging resources and focusing on a single combined release, that provides the best of both GNOME and Ubuntu. We are currently liaising with the Canonical teams on how this will work out and more details will be announced in due course as we work out the specifics.

Wow, the web page even says it's an official release of Ubuntu. Don't I feel sheepish I read that they were halting the project but I didn't read the blog post afterward. Thanks for the clarification.

[Skull_Angel]

@ILLucionist&Leslleann

I won't get around to it untill I'm comfortable with using the terminal, but I do want to really get into it; getting things like non-free graphics divers to play nicely gave me some good practice (mostly in trying to find the right commands to use). I've been trying to cause problems to diagnose and fix, but it seems harder to mess simpler things up than I immagined it would be! Lol

I think my next project will be gitting Wine running since I do enjoy playing games that don't have native Linux support.

[iLLucionist]

@ILLucionist&Leslleann

I won't get around to it untill I'm comfortable with using the terminal, but I do want to really get into it; getting things like non-free graphics divers to play nicely gave me some good practice (mostly in trying to find the right commands to use). I've been trying to cause problems to diagnose and fix, but it seems harder to mess simpler things up than I immagined it would be! Lol

I think my next project will be gitting Wine running since I do enjoy playing games that don't have native Linux support.

You already got some terminal practice, great! No worries, there will inevitably come a time when apt-get wants to overwrite existing files, so you'll get some more terminal experience by then.

You really have to go wild to mess up simpler things today in linux. It's not as fragile as it used to be around 2000-2004. Autoconfiguration has become better also.

[xtrafrood]

@ILLucionist&Leslleann

I won't get around to it untill I'm comfortable with using the terminal, but I do want to really get into it; getting things like non-free graphics divers to play nicely gave me some good practice (mostly in trying to find the right commands to use). I've been trying to cause problems to diagnose and fix, but it seems harder to mess simpler things up than I immagined it would be! Lol

I think my next project will be gitting Wine running since I do enjoy playing games that don't have native Linux support.

You already got some terminal practice, great! No worries, there will inevitably come a time when apt-get wants to overwrite existing files, so you'll get some more terminal experience by then.

You really have to go wild to mess up simpler things today in linux. It's not as fragile as it used to be around 2000-2004. Autoconfiguration has become better also.

 Does apt (I like apt) or apt-get have an option similar to --needed?

[iLLucionist]

@ILLucionist&Leslleann

I won't get around to it untill I'm comfortable with using the terminal, but I do want to really get into it; getting things like non-free graphics divers to play nicely gave me some good practice (mostly in trying to find the right commands to use). I've been trying to cause problems to diagnose and fix, but it seems harder to mess simpler things up than I immagined it would be! Lol

I think my next project will be gitting Wine running since I do enjoy playing games that don't have native Linux support.

You already got some terminal practice, great! No worries, there will inevitably come a time when apt-get wants to overwrite existing files, so you'll get some more terminal experience by then.

You really have to go wild to mess up simpler things today in linux. It's not as fragile as it used to be around 2000-2004. Autoconfiguration has become better also.

 Does apt (I like apt) or apt-get have an option similar to --needed?

Do you refer to pacman: " If a package in the list is already installed on the system, it will be reinstalled even if it is already up to date. This behavior can be overridden with the --needed option." ??

If so, I'm not sure. Never needed such an option.

[xtrafrood]

@ILLucionist&Leslleann

I won't get around to it untill I'm comfortable with using the terminal, but I do want to really get into it; getting things like non-free graphics divers to play nicely gave me some good practice (mostly in trying to find the right commands to use). I've been trying to cause problems to diagnose and fix, but it seems harder to mess simpler things up than I immagined it would be! Lol

I think my next project will be gitting Wine running since I do enjoy playing games that don't have native Linux support.

You already got some terminal practice, great! No worries, there will inevitably come a time when apt-get wants to overwrite existing files, so you'll get some more terminal experience by then.

You really have to go wild to mess up simpler things today in linux. It's not as fragile as it used to be around 2000-2004. Autoconfiguration has become better also.

 Does apt (I like apt) or apt-get have an option similar to --needed?

Do you refer to pacman: " If a package in the list is already installed on the system, it will be reinstalled even if it is already up to date. This behavior can be overridden with the --needed option." ??

If so, I'm not sure. Never needed such an option.

Yep. That's what I'm referring to. About a week ago I installed fakeroot and didn't realize that I reinstalled pacman until I noticed that I couldn't install anything with pacman. So I reinstalled Arch from my recipe and installed fakeroot with --needed; after that I was able to use pacman without issue. I'm sure something like that would save a few headaches.

edit - "So in reinstalled" changed in to I .. smh

[davkol]

Pre-Ubuntu Linux was a nightmare.

A word.

Mandrake

[iLLucionist]

Pre-Ubuntu Linux was a nightmare.

A word.

Mandrake

Mandrake was the best in terms of ease of use. after suse I switched to mandrake. Then I switched to debian, then ubuntu, then arch, then back to ubuntu.

[iLLucionist]

@ILLucionist&Leslleann

I won't get around to it untill I'm comfortable with using the terminal, but I do want to really get into it; getting things like non-free graphics divers to play nicely gave me some good practice (mostly in trying to find the right commands to use). I've been trying to cause problems to diagnose and fix, but it seems harder to mess simpler things up than I immagined it would be! Lol

I think my next project will be gitting Wine running since I do enjoy playing games that don't have native Linux support.

You already got some terminal practice, great! No worries, there will inevitably come a time when apt-get wants to overwrite existing files, so you'll get some more terminal experience by then.

You really have to go wild to mess up simpler things today in linux. It's not as fragile as it used to be around 2000-2004. Autoconfiguration has become better also.

 Does apt (I like apt) or apt-get have an option similar to --needed?

Do you refer to pacman: " If a package in the list is already installed on the system, it will be reinstalled even if it is already up to date. This behavior can be overridden with the --needed option." ??

If so, I'm not sure. Never needed such an option.

Yep. That's what I'm referring to. About a week ago I installed fakeroot and didn't realize that I reinstalled pacman until I noticed that I couldn't install anything with pacman. So I reinstalled Arch from my recipe and installed fakeroot with --needed; after that I was able to use pacman without issue. I'm sure something like that would save a few headaches.

edit - "So in reinstalled" changed in to I .. smh

that's why i'm no longer a fan of arch tbh. i had these weird quirks after updating so many times.. it was really not worth the trouble anymore imho. I also had many package conflicts back in the day. Like gnome needed this version of gtk but then xfce needed this version. it was annoying

[sth]

pssst if you like arch but have any complaints whatsoever, try void

[madhias]

pssst if you like arch but have any complaints whatsoever, try void

I might give it a try sometimes. I just went with Arch because of the Wiki.

[sth]

pssst if you like arch but have any complaints whatsoever, try void

I might give it a try sometimes. I just went with Arch because of the Wiki.

void is nice for learning because other than learning the init system (which seriously takes 15 minutes) and package manger (very similar to pacman) , everything else is pretty much vanilla packages with the occasional tweak.
i still refer to the arch wiki for some things even though i haven't used arch in years!

[iLLucionist]

pssst if you like arch but have any complaints whatsoever, try void

looks cool, will definitely vm that ***** to see what's it like

[xtrafrood]

pssst if you like arch but have any complaints whatsoever, try void

I might give it a try sometimes. I just went with Arch because of the Wiki.

void is nice for learning because other than learning the init system (which seriously takes 15 minutes) and package manger (very similar to pacman) , everything else is pretty much vanilla packages with the occasional tweak.
i still refer to the arch wiki for some things even though i haven't used arch in years!

That wiki is the main reason I was pulled into Arch. I was tired of translating Arch wiki info for other distros. So much information it's unreal. Five years in and I'm already installing Arch wtf

[sth]

pssst if you like arch but have any complaints whatsoever, try void

I might give it a try sometimes. I just went with Arch because of the Wiki.

void is nice for learning because other than learning the init system (which seriously takes 15 minutes) and package manger (very similar to pacman) , everything else is pretty much vanilla packages with the occasional tweak.
i still refer to the arch wiki for some things even though i haven't used arch in years!

That wiki is the main reason I was pulled into Arch. I was tired of translating Arch wiki info for other distros. So much information it's unreal. Five years in and I'm already installing Arch wtf

at a certain point, really, you go from needing the wiki to understand how things are Supposed to Work to already having an idea of how things are Supposed to Work, and then the wiki just becomes a nice 'sane config options' reference that explains things a bit better than some man pages.

if openbsd ran a bit faster on my laptop i would be using it for the man pages alone. if you've only ever used linux manpages, you owe it to yourself to check out how well openbsd is documented.

[xtrafrood]

pssst if you like arch but have any complaints whatsoever, try void

I might give it a try sometimes. I just went with Arch because of the Wiki.

void is nice for learning because other than learning the init system (which seriously takes 15 minutes) and package manger (very similar to pacman) , everything else is pretty much vanilla packages with the occasional tweak.
i still refer to the arch wiki for some things even though i haven't used arch in years!

That wiki is the main reason I was pulled into Arch. I was tired of translating Arch wiki info for other distros. So much information it's unreal. Five years in and I'm already installing Arch wtf

at a certain point, really, you go from needing the wiki to understand how things are Supposed to Work to already having an idea of how things are Supposed to Work, and then the wiki just becomes a nice 'sane config options' reference that explains things a bit better than some man pages.

if openbsd ran a bit faster on my laptop i would be using it for the man pages alone. if you've only ever used linux manpages, you owe it to yourself to check out how well openbsd is documented.

Ninja Fish logo? Done deal. I'm an OpenBSD person now. . One of these days I'll setup a router with some form of BSD. I'll be sure to include OpenBSD in my reading material before I decide on a distro

[iLLucionist]

pssst if you like arch but have any complaints whatsoever, try void

I might give it a try sometimes. I just went with Arch because of the Wiki.

void is nice for learning because other than learning the init system (which seriously takes 15 minutes) and package manger (very similar to pacman) , everything else is pretty much vanilla packages with the occasional tweak.
i still refer to the arch wiki for some things even though i haven't used arch in years!

That wiki is the main reason I was pulled into Arch. I was tired of translating Arch wiki info for other distros. So much information it's unreal. Five years in and I'm already installing Arch wtf

at a certain point, really, you go from needing the wiki to understand how things are Supposed to Work to already having an idea of how things are Supposed to Work, and then the wiki just becomes a nice 'sane config options' reference that explains things a bit better than some man pages.

if openbsd ran a bit faster on my laptop i would be using it for the man pages alone. if you've only ever used linux manpages, you owe it to yourself to check out how well openbsd is documented.

Ninja Fish logo? Done deal. I'm an OpenBSD person now. . One of these days I'll setup a router with some form of BSD. I'll be sure to include OpenBSD in my reading material before I decide on a distro

Do you OpenBSD with a graphical environment? Does that work properly with drivers and hardware acceleration and all?

[sth]

pssst if you like arch but have any complaints whatsoever, try void

I might give it a try sometimes. I just went with Arch because of the Wiki.

void is nice for learning because other than learning the init system (which seriously takes 15 minutes) and package manger (very similar to pacman) , everything else is pretty much vanilla packages with the occasional tweak.
i still refer to the arch wiki for some things even though i haven't used arch in years!

That wiki is the main reason I was pulled into Arch. I was tired of translating Arch wiki info for other distros. So much information it's unreal. Five years in and I'm already installing Arch wtf

at a certain point, really, you go from needing the wiki to understand how things are Supposed to Work to already having an idea of how things are Supposed to Work, and then the wiki just becomes a nice 'sane config options' reference that explains things a bit better than some man pages.

if openbsd ran a bit faster on my laptop i would be using it for the man pages alone. if you've only ever used linux manpages, you owe it to yourself to check out how well openbsd is documented.

Ninja Fish logo? Done deal. I'm an OpenBSD person now. . One of these days I'll setup a router with some form of BSD. I'll be sure to include OpenBSD in my reading material before I decide on a distro

Do you OpenBSD with a graphical environment? Does that work properly with drivers and hardware acceleration and all?

i use a thinkpad and all of the hardware works great. i'm not sure if it supports bluetooth. also not sure what the state of things is with nvidia/amd but i can't imagine needing a more powerful GPU than what the new intel integrated graphics does. openbsd is not for gaming after all.

[iLLucionist]

pssst if you like arch but have any complaints whatsoever, try void

I might give it a try sometimes. I just went with Arch because of the Wiki.

void is nice for learning because other than learning the init system (which seriously takes 15 minutes) and package manger (very similar to pacman) , everything else is pretty much vanilla packages with the occasional tweak.
i still refer to the arch wiki for some things even though i haven't used arch in years!

That wiki is the main reason I was pulled into Arch. I was tired of translating Arch wiki info for other distros. So much information it's unreal. Five years in and I'm already installing Arch wtf

at a certain point, really, you go from needing the wiki to understand how things are Supposed to Work to already having an idea of how things are Supposed to Work, and then the wiki just becomes a nice 'sane config options' reference that explains things a bit better than some man pages.

if openbsd ran a bit faster on my laptop i would be using it for the man pages alone. if you've only ever used linux manpages, you owe it to yourself to check out how well openbsd is documented.

Ninja Fish logo? Done deal. I'm an OpenBSD person now. . One of these days I'll setup a router with some form of BSD. I'll be sure to include OpenBSD in my reading material before I decide on a distro

Do you OpenBSD with a graphical environment? Does that work properly with drivers and hardware acceleration and all?

i use a thinkpad and all of the hardware works great. i'm not sure if it supports bluetooth. also not sure what the state of things is with nvidia/amd but i can't imagine needing a more powerful GPU than what the new intel integrated graphics does. openbsd is not for gaming after all.

Hmmm.. perhaps it'll work on my new X1 carbon gen 5.

[iri]

https://github.com/systemd/systemd/issues/5644

[sth]

https://github.com/systemd/systemd/issues/5644

the attitude systemd devs show toward their actual target userbase is mindboggling

[Skull_Angel]

@ILLucionist&Leslleann

I won't get around to it untill I'm comfortable with using the terminal, but I do want to really get into it; getting things like non-free graphics divers to play nicely gave me some good practice (mostly in trying to find the right commands to use). I've been trying to cause problems to diagnose and fix, but it seems harder to mess simpler things up than I immagined it would be! Lol

I think my next project will be gitting Wine running since I do enjoy playing games that don't have native Linux support.

You already got some terminal practice, great! No worries, there will inevitably come a time when apt-get wants to overwrite existing files, so you'll get some more terminal experience by then.

You really have to go wild to mess up simpler things today in linux. It's not as fragile as it used to be around 2000-2004. Autoconfiguration has become better also.

I'm starting to pick up on that! I've alreready experienced the apt-get issue when I tried to install multiple DEs trying them out (using MATE atm, but haven't tried XFCE or KDE yet); conflicts and crases galore, but wasn't ready to try to sort them out, haha.

pssst if you like arch but have any complaints whatsoever, try void

I might give it a try sometimes. I just went with Arch because of the Wiki.

void is nice for learning because other than learning the init system (which seriously takes 15 minutes) and package manger (very similar to pacman) , everything else is pretty much vanilla packages with the occasional tweak.
i still refer to the arch wiki for some things even though i haven't used arch in years!

pssst if you like arch but have any complaints whatsoever, try void

I might give it a try sometimes. I just went with Arch because of the Wiki.

void is nice for learning because other than learning the init system (which seriously takes 15 minutes) and package manger (very similar to pacman) , everything else is pretty much vanilla packages with the occasional tweak.
i still refer to the arch wiki for some things even though i haven't used arch in years!

That wiki is the main reason I was pulled into Arch. I was tired of translating Arch wiki info for other distros. So much information it's unreal. Five years in and I'm already installing Arch wtf

I'm liking Arch/Antergos a lot so far, but definitely going to keep other builds in mind to eventually try out. Void does sound enticing from the description on the main page; I like the K.I.S.S. mentality for basic farmeworks, let's the end-user build up the way they want and give them the ability to more easily troubleshoot/fix/maintain what they're working with.

That's one of the things thet pulled me into Archlinux and Antergos too. I like info and the more the better! The thought of a rolling release OS is anothre thing I'm enjoying, esp. when most seem to run into very few issues with current updates.

[dante]

Are modern Linux distributions smart enough to optimize SSD drives [for lifespan] from the get go or do they still require further tweaking?

[Skull_Angel]

Are modern Linux distributions smart enough to optimize SSD drives [for lifespan] from the get go or do they still require further tweaking?

Current builds should be good enough not to need much tweaking, as long as the SSD supports TRIM (which any new SSD should). Furthermore, I remember reading that Intel and Samsung have the largest support, but any newer branded-SSD shouldn't give you any issues.

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Solid_State_Drives

[iLLucionist]

Are modern Linux distributions smart enough to optimize SSD drives [for lifespan] from the get go or do they still require further tweaking?

Current builds should be good enough not to need much tweaking, as long as the SSD supports TRIM (which any new SSD should). Furthermore, I remember reading that Intel and Samsung have the largest support, but any newer branded-SSD shouldn't give you any issues.

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Solid_State_Drives

It does depend on the distro though, so you should check to make sure. Most distros ok, but I had it sometimes with an obscure distro that trim kernel support wasn't compiled in for some reason.

[xtrafrood]

Are modern Linux distributions smart enough to optimize SSD drives [for lifespan] from the get go or do they still require further tweaking?

Current builds should be good enough not to need much tweaking, as long as the SSD supports TRIM (which any new SSD should). Furthermore, I remember reading that Intel and Samsung have the largest support, but any newer branded-SSD shouldn't give you any issues.

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Solid_State_Drives

It does depend on the distro though, so you should check to make sure. Most distros ok, but I had it sometimes with an obscure distro that trim kernel support wasn't compiled in for some reason.

Trim might be a bit easier to setup on Linux compared to Windows. If the distro doesn't do it for you just add discard to your fstab file. Usually found in /etc/fstab. Obviously accessing fstab is a good way to check to see if it's enabled. Take care that changing the wrong thing could cause a kernel panic at startup. There's probably a few more steps for maintenance but discard enables trim on linux iirc.

Example: rw, discard, relatime (or noatime on some distros)

[iLLucionist]

Are modern Linux distributions smart enough to optimize SSD drives [for lifespan] from the get go or do they still require further tweaking?

Current builds should be good enough not to need much tweaking, as long as the SSD supports TRIM (which any new SSD should). Furthermore, I remember reading that Intel and Samsung have the largest support, but any newer branded-SSD shouldn't give you any issues.

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Solid_State_Drives

It does depend on the distro though, so you should check to make sure. Most distros ok, but I had it sometimes with an obscure distro that trim kernel support wasn't compiled in for some reason.

Trim might be a bit easier to setup on Linux compared to Windows. If the distro doesn't do it for you just add discard to your fstab file. Usually found in /etc/fstab. Obviously accessing fstab is a good way to check to see if it's enabled. Take care that changing the wrong thing could cause a kernel panic at startup. There's probably a few more steps for maintenance but discard enables trim on linux iirc.

Example: rw, discard, relatime (or noatime on some distros)

Still - unless I'm mistaken - you need that feature compiled into your kernel otherwise changing your fstab doesn't do sh*t.

[xtrafrood]

Are modern Linux distributions smart enough to optimize SSD drives [for lifespan] from the get go or do they still require further tweaking?

Current builds should be good enough not to need much tweaking, as long as the SSD supports TRIM (which any new SSD should). Furthermore, I remember reading that Intel and Samsung have the largest support, but any newer branded-SSD shouldn't give you any issues.

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Solid_State_Drives

It does depend on the distro though, so you should check to make sure. Most distros ok, but I had it sometimes with an obscure distro that trim kernel support wasn't compiled in for some reason.

Trim might be a bit easier to setup on Linux compared to Windows. If the distro doesn't do it for you just add discard to your fstab file. Usually found in /etc/fstab. Obviously accessing fstab is a good way to check to see if it's enabled. Take care that changing the wrong thing could cause a kernel panic at startup. There's probably a few more steps for maintenance but discard enables trim on linux iirc.

Example: rw, discard, relatime (or noatime on some distros)

Still - unless I'm mistaken - you need that feature compiled into your kernel otherwise changing your fstab doesn't do sh*t.

A kernel that is patched for security updates but not for SSD? 2017? Seems unlikely. And there are plenty of other options besides discard.

[iri]

Are modern Linux distributions smart enough to optimize SSD drives [for lifespan] from the get go or do they still require further tweaking?

Current builds should be good enough not to need much tweaking, as long as the SSD supports TRIM (which any new SSD should). Furthermore, I remember reading that Intel and Samsung have the largest support, but any newer branded-SSD shouldn't give you any issues.

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Solid_State_Drives

That's with Mint 17.3 and a 4 years old SSD:

➜  ~  lsblk -D
NAME   DISC-ALN DISC-GRAN DISC-MAX DISC-ZERO
sda           0      512B       2G         0
├─sda1        0      512B       2G         0
├─sda2        0      512B       2G         0
├─sda3        0      512B       2G         0
└─sda4        0      512B       2G         0
➜  ~  uname -a
Linux iri 3.19.0-80-generic #88~14.04.1-Ubuntu SMP Fri Jan 13 14:54:07 UTC 2017 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

[rasmusx]

Arch linux. 10 years and going on

[vivalarevolución]

Switched to Manjaro GNOME on my laptop after using Ubuntu GNOME.  Overall, I have experienced less problems with Manjaro than Ubuntu, and prefer the rolling updates. 

In other news, Deepin works pretty good with a touchscreen laptop, just needs one of those pop-up touch keyboards to round it off.

[rowdy]

Arch linux. 10 years and going on

Dedication!

Ever tempted to try a different distro?

[rasmusx]

Arch linux. 10 years and going on

Dedication!

Ever tempted to try a different distro?

At this point not really. Feels very home with Arch and I can always configure it the way I need.

But I do use other distros on servers usually and run emulated win10 with gpu passthrough for gaming

[iri]

Overall, I have experienced less problems with Manjaro than Ubuntu, and prefer the rolling updates.

[WarCommand]

Loving Ubuntu 17.04 GNOME. Completely wrote off GNOME in the past but it's rock solid compared to some of the other DEs out there.

I want to eventually transition back to Debian but the ease of use with Ubuntu and availability of packages is making it hard for me to leave.

[killyou]

I started using Linux at the university since around 2007/2008 and I converted my desktops around 2012. This is my distro hopping path:

Debian -> Linux Mint -> Cinnarch -> Arch -> Antergos & Fedora

I'm using both Antergos and Fedora nowadays but most ofter Fedora as their latest releases are super solid.

If it comes to the DEs:

Gnome 2 -> Early Gnome 3 -> Cinnamon -> Gnome 3 since 3.16/3.18

[jjanssen1]

I am currently using Mint/Cinnamon on my 2015 Macbook air that I use every day for school

[Altis]

I am currently using Mint/Cinnamon on my 2015 Macbook air that I use every day for school

How do you find the battery life compared with running OSX/MacOS?

[Leslieann]

I am currently using Mint/Cinnamon on my 2015 Macbook air that I use every day for school

How do you find the battery life compared with running OSX/MacOS?

Generally, Linux tends to get around 60%, maybe 70% battery life compared to OSX, however, with some tuning, you can get 80-100% of the battery life (depending on how aggressive y0u go).

The reason for this is that MS and Apple use very aggressive power reduction when running in battery mode (Windows limits the processor to 50%, Apple is around 30-40%). If you use a good distro, Ubuntu based distros are actually almost as good as distros claiming to be power efficient(!), install ThermalD and P-state then do some tuning using TLP you can get almost all of it back.

Beware though, Airs use some odd hardware combinations which can give Linux (and Windows) problems.

[jjanssen1]

I am currently using Mint/Cinnamon on my 2015 Macbook air that I use every day for school

How do you find the battery life compared with running OSX/MacOS?

I get around ~9ish hours on OSX (I have alot of power hungry apps runnng most of the time) and maybe 4-6 hours on Linux at the moment (depending on what I am doing on it of course).

[skaloola]

sysadmins are really not installing packages all the time. occasionally, sure, but yum is Good Enough given the other advantages.

there's really no reason to be so flabbergasted that some people have different vendor requirements when it comes to their distro of choice!

I respect all that. But my memories of yum are SO SO BAD that I cannot imagine people PREFERRING it over alternatives.

ok, so I read some stuff in this thread that people clearly just pulled out of their ass which was pretty disappointing.. I really don't have it in me right now to set people straight/argue.. instead I'll try to answer this question as it's not something you can just find on Google easily.

Me: I manage ~150-200 nodes on EC2 (aws).  We run Ubuntu LTS.

Some companies prefer RHEL for a few reasons:

- reputation as an enterprise grade distro
- paid support, paid software offerings, long release cycles
- big hardware vendors formally "support" RHEL (Oracle, Dell, HP).. meaning they test their servers against OS's.  (used to work for Sun, we supported RHEL and SLES.  There is a ridiculous amount of work done before vendors claim to support an OS).  Each time a new OS version or system comes out, all that testing needs to be done again.

We run Ubuntu as it's free, well supported w/ open source software/tools, and is widely deployed on EC2

[skaloola]

no yum still sucks

Respectfully, for the love of god why do SYSADMINS use CentOS if the thing that you are doing very often sucks the most, which is the package manager 'yum'.

Is it like... a religion? Like CentOS is based off of the "most widely used red hat distro in the whole industry". And people are like "shiiiit i must have this yo" amongst sysadmins?

It's just like the windows kids ... They want someone there to hold their hand while they venture into computerland and will give them support when things go TU

Our manager tried to get us to standardize on CentOS because "everyone" in the industry is using RHEL... but we just told him to shove it and ran ubuntu lts 

ok, so I read some stuff in this thread that people clearly just pulled out of their ass which was pretty disappointing.. I really don't have it in me right now to set people straight/argue.. instead I'll try to answer this question as it's not something you can just find on Google easily.

Me: I manage ~150-200 nodes on EC2 (aws).  We run Ubuntu LTS.

Some companies prefer RHEL for a few reasons:

- reputation as an enterprise grade distro
- paid support, paid software offerings, long release cycles
- big hardware vendors formally "support" RHEL (Oracle, Dell, HP).. meaning they test their servers against OS's.  (used to work for Sun, we supported RHEL and SLES.  There is a ridiculous amount of work done before vendors claim to support an OS).  Each time a new OS version or system comes out, all that testing needs to be done again.

We run Ubuntu as it's free, well supported w/ open source software/tools, and is widely deployed on EC2



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[riktors]

Definitely bounced around a lot but I've come back to Arch several times and been on it consistently for about 5 years now. Just really enjoy building up the system how I want, the AUR and the rolling release model. My personal flip flop is always around the DE. Can't ever seem to be happy and change every few months. 

[SBJ]

Definitely bounced around a lot but I've come back to Arch several times and been on it consistently for about 5 years now. Just really enjoy building up the system how I want, the AUR and the rolling release model. My personal flip flop is always around the DE. Can't ever seem to be happy and change every few months. 

I used to be like you, I was never happy with how it looked and I spent so much time customizing that I usually borked the system.  )
I've been running my Linux machines with pretty much the same OS' for about a year now and I haven't changed anything, that's huge for me.

[Hypersphere]

From time to time, I try out a new distro by testing it in Virtualbox and/or VMware Workstation, but I keep coming back to Linux Mint 17.3 64-bit with the Xfce desktop. This is based on Ubuntu 14.04 64-bit LTS.

Recently, I tested Ubuntu MATE 16.04.2 LTS 64-bit. Very nice. If I ever had to stop using Mint and Xfce for some reason, Ubuntu MATE would be my next choice.