What Linux Distro do the Linux users of GH use?

[funderburker]

Still running elementary OS Loki and don't wanna switch. 

[iLLucionist]

Anybody here use any of that CLEAR LINUX?

Benchmarks look amazing. Don't like that it is owned by Intel though.. But imagine what could be done to linux if we drop backwards compatibility and optimize for fast modern hardware. Like arch with i686 only, already a step in the right direction.

Anytime someone claims they have a faster or more efficient Linux, take it with a GIGANTIC grain of salt.
It's using the same underlying OS and since it's open source, they all can use those same tweaks to make their system just as fast, if it was true.


Linux doesn't really have any backwards compatibility dragging it down like Windows, at least not in the same way. Linux is in a constant state of flux and upgrade, which renews itself. It's not perfect, because on occasion it does cause a system failure, but it's usually not too difficult to fix. It just doesn't carry the baggage like Windows does.

That's really insightful, thanks!

I must say, however, back in the day (early 2000s), choosing a different scheduler on a kernel build and building some drivers into kernel (e.g., network) really made a significant difference.

[davkol]

It still does.

Leslieann doesn't appear to follow LWN, not to say LKML.

There's a lot of weird **** in the Linux kernel. Tons of undocumented stuff, tons of dubious error paths, tons of subsystem-specific obscurities,… it's a miracle that it works so well… or at all.

"We don't break user space."

Well, yeah.

[iLLucionist]

It still does.

Leslieann doesn't appear to follow LWN, not to say LKML.

There's a lot of weird **** in the Linux kernel. Tons of undocumented stuff, tons of dubious error paths, tons of subsystem-specific obscurities,… it's a miracle that it works so well… or at all.

"We don't break user space."

Well, yeah.

That is what I remember about it. In the 2000's I still did menuconfig for kernels myself, believing I knew what I were doing. And that is not even reading / modifying / extending the kernel code. Even in menuconfig, there are SO many choices to make. I never thoroughly understood all of them. Heck, I couldn't even do it now.

[iri]

I'm so glad I don't have to use menuconfig anymore.

[iLLucionist]

I'm so glad I don't have to use menuconfig anymore.

It was super awful. Worst experience ever. 10/10 do not recommend.

I did feel like a "hacker" though, convincing my friends that custom compiling the kernel is the best way (I was 13 at that time). It felt "hardcore". Like when I and my friends switched to Gentoo coz "manual compiling is always faster", tuning gcc with custom flags.

And then wait 10 hours before you basically compiled a bootstrap and perhaps firefox.

Ahh the nostalgia..

[Zobeid Zuma]

Linux doesn't really have any backwards compatibility dragging it down like Windows, at least not in the same way. Linux is in a constant state of flux and upgrade, which renews itself. It's not perfect, because on occasion it does cause a system failure, but it's usually not too difficult to fix. It just doesn't carry the baggage like Windows does.

From where I sit, Linux is almost nothing but legacy baggage going all the way back to 1970s mainframes -- and many of its underlying design decisions were based on that computing environment, so long ago and so different from most of what we use today, and there's no way to fix any of it without breaking everything.

I mean, how long have we been saddled with X?

Who today would design an OS where every additional storage device appears to be a sub-directory somewhere on the system drive?

Even "ls" to get a directory listing. . .  Because it was invented by guys using teletype machines as terminals, and they never learned to touch-type and were deathly fearful of having to press an extra key or two.

And then there's all the dependency chaos. . .

But the good news is that Ubuntu MATE does a pretty good job of hiding its Unix roots from me most of the time, and so does Mac OS X, so I can live with them -- better than Windows, which makes no credible attempt to hide Windows from me.   

[xtrafrood]

Linux doesn't really have any backwards compatibility dragging it down like Windows, at least not in the same way. Linux is in a constant state of flux and upgrade, which renews itself. It's not perfect, because on occasion it does cause a system failure, but it's usually not too difficult to fix. It just doesn't carry the baggage like Windows does.

From where I sit, Linux is almost nothing but legacy baggage going all the way back to 1970s mainframes -- and many of its underlying design decisions were based on that computing environment, so long ago and so different from most of what we use today, and there's no way to fix any of it without breaking everything.

I mean, how long have we been saddled with X?

Who today would design an OS where every additional storage device appears to be a sub-directory somewhere on the system drive?

Even "ls" to get a directory listing. . .  Because it was invented by guys using teletype machines as terminals, and they never learned to touch-type and were deathly fearful of having to press an extra key or two.

And then there's all the dependency chaos. . .

But the good news is that Ubuntu MATE does a pretty good job of hiding its Unix roots from me most of the time, and so does Mac OS X, so I can live with them -- better than Windows, which makes no credible attempt to hide Windows from me.   

From my perspective, large production quality animation/effects studios utilize the linux kernel for good reason. And not because the multipurpose kernels are build with legacy support in mind. Nearly instant startup on my ancient LGA775 that spins rust is not a bad thing too.

edit - *And not because of the multipurpose kernels that are built with legacy support.* halp

[mnmlisme]

i have been always interested in linux due to it being freeware. for basic office work and internet, it's enough. tried both linux mint and currently ubuntu mate. but I think i'm more into linux mint. too bad my NUC 5CPYH is struggling with current mint release. Celeron N3050. what to expect huh?

[Leslieann]

Leslieann doesn't appear to follow LWN, not to say LKML.

Should  I.
I didn't say it doesn't, I said just not the same way. Anything with that much code will have garbage in it.

The Linux Kernel is now 26, imagine if MS had carried forward the same kernel for that long, can you imagine not only the size, but the garbage it would have in it? Would it even function at all by now?

From where I sit, Linux is almost nothing but legacy baggage going all the way back to 1970s mainframes -- and many of its underlying design decisions were based on that computing environment, so long ago and so different from most of what we use today, and there's no way to fix any of it without breaking everything.

I mean, how long have we been saddled with X?

Who today would design an OS where every additional storage device appears to be a sub-directory somewhere on the system drive?

That's because you are looking at it from a desktop perspective while using a server OS.

Who today would design an OS where every additional storage device appears to be a sub-directory somewhere on the system drive?

Who today would design an internet capable OS without a method of updating built in...

Engineers, especially software engineers, do not think the same way you do.

[iri]

There's plenty of linux distros with built-in update capabilities though.

[iLLucionist]

There's plenty of linux distros with built-in update capabilities though.

Which I hate is this auto-update functionality by Ubuntu. I even had security updates that broke stuff.

Luckily, I could turn it off. I wasn't even aware of this functionality.

I deployed to production on a VPS with Ubuntu Server and then all of a sudden something stopped working and I was like: I changed literally nothing.
And then I ran top and saw this service running.. but why..

[iri]

Yeah, but she said nothing about AUTOupdates.

[xtrafrood]

What's it like to update applications that were installed with snap or flatpack?

[Leslieann]

There's plenty of linux distros with built-in update capabilities though.

It was actually an Android joke, meant as an example of how software engineers don't always think like a normal person, or even logically all the time.

[rowdy]

i have been always interested in linux due to it being freeware. for basic office work and internet, it's enough. tried both linux mint and currently ubuntu mate. but I think i'm more into linux mint. too bad my NUC 5CPYH is struggling with current mint release. Celeron N3050. what to expect huh?

Depends on your definition of free - GPL comes with a set of obligations.

The BSDs are far more free, as in less obligations.

[iLLucionist]

Yeah, but she said nothing about AUTOupdates.

True, it was just something that came up when I thought about it.

I don't know of any distro that DOES NOT have an upgrade mechanism in place (or a package manager built in, for that matter).

[sth]

i have been always interested in linux due to it being freeware. for basic office work and internet, it's enough. tried both linux mint and currently ubuntu mate. but I think i'm more into linux mint. too bad my NUC 5CPYH is struggling with current mint release. Celeron N3050. what to expect huh?

Depends on your definition of free - GPL comes with a set of obligations.

The BSDs are far more free, as in less obligations.

bsd ensures more freedom for people
gpl ensures more freedom for the code

[davkol]

i have been always interested in linux due to it being freeware. for basic office work and internet, it's enough. tried both linux mint and currently ubuntu mate. but I think i'm more into linux mint. too bad my NUC 5CPYH is struggling with current mint release. Celeron N3050. what to expect huh?

Depends on your definition of free - GPL comes with a set of obligations.

The BSDs are far more free, as in less obligations.

bsd ensures more freedom for developers
gpl ensures more freedom for users

FTFY

[mnmlisme]

i have been always interested in linux due to it being freeware. for basic office work and internet, it's enough. tried both linux mint and currently ubuntu mate. but I think i'm more into linux mint. too bad my NUC 5CPYH is struggling with current mint release. Celeron N3050. what to expect huh?

Depends on your definition of free - GPL comes with a set of obligations.

The BSDs are far more free, as in less obligations.

good enough. always struggling with linux though, many said it's easier than windows, yet sometimes not long before installing it, I have to google how to solve problem X and it usually involves terminal and copying long string of commands told by other people that I have just to put faith on (ie. no idea what am I writing or what does the command does)

bsd ensures more freedom for people
gpl ensures more freedom for the code

[tristinDLC]

I've used a few variations of Ubuntu in the past just for exploration of Linux, but I still run OSX on all my machines. The only distro I currently run is live-booting TAILS off a USB sometimes.

[Altis]

I recently installed Mint 18.3 Cinnamon to try it out (as a dual-boot on a separate SSD). It was quite good and I didn't have any major problems.

Mint 18.3 Xfce just got released so I installed that. It worked but I had complications with my graphics card (GTX 970) -- it got sorted out in the end with a GRUB modification.

I do have a question though if anyone knows:  I'm looking to RDP to a school Windows 2012 Server. It uses the RDP protocol but I can't get any remote desktop application to connect.

The closest I've come is using rdesktop and freerdp, but I get an error about the lack of CredSSP (required by server) or SSL library problem. I tried messing around with Kerberos (krb5) but it didn't make a difference.

If anyone knows what can be done, I'd appreciate it! I'm trying to use Mint Xfce as my main desktop and I actually quite like it. I did manage to get it to boot Mint as a virtual machine from my Windows partition using VMWare -- that was really great and I might just need to do that when I want to work with both for cases like RDP.

[microsoft windows]

IT SEEMS LIKE QUITE A FEW PEOPLE ARE ADOPTING LINUX MINT THESE DAYS. HOW DO YOU ALL LIKE IT?

[JP]

IT SEEMS LIKE QUITE A FEW PEOPLE ARE ADOPTING LINUX MINT THESE DAYS. HOW DO YOU ALL LIKE IT?

BURN THE HERETIC! WINDOWS 98 IS THE CLEARLY THE SUPERIOR OPERATING SYSTEM.

[microsoft windows]

IT SEEMS LIKE QUITE A FEW PEOPLE ARE ADOPTING LINUX MINT THESE DAYS. HOW DO YOU ALL LIKE IT?

BURN THE HERETIC! WINDOWS 98 IS THE CLEARLY THE SUPERIOR OPERATING SYSTEM.

IT IS THE BEST OPERATING SYSTEM, BUT ANYTHING IS BETTER THAN CRAPPLE® MAC-OS. LINUX USERS ARE INFINITELY SMARTER THAN MACINTRASH USERS.

[Altis]

IT SEEMS LIKE QUITE A FEW PEOPLE ARE ADOPTING LINUX MINT THESE DAYS. HOW DO YOU ALL LIKE IT?

I went for Mint since it seems to be well supported as it's among the most popular desktop distros. However, in my experience, Linux Lite has been the only one to not give me any troubles.

I like the Xfce desktop environment as it's like classic Windows in terms of layout and operation, and even the look, if you so choose.

[fohat.digs]

IT SEEMS LIKE QUITE A FEW PEOPLE ARE ADOPTING LINUX MINT THESE DAYS. HOW DO YOU ALL LIKE IT?

I like it a lot. I dabbled with Ubuntu for several years, but I got frustrated with the direction they headed off in.

And my complaint was not Unity, which I didn't particularly like it but it wasn't awful.

Mint/Cinnamon has been my choice for about 3 years now, and I have really grown to like it.
I feel that it is certainly the easiest transition from Windows.

[Findecanor]

I tried installing Linux Mint Cinnamon on my netbook some time ago. It was really slow and I did not find the user interface agreeable.

Seriously, even if a netbook is old and not very powerful, it should not be bogged down by a simple user interface.

[Altis]

I tried installing Linux Mint Cinnamon on my netbook some time ago. It was really slow and I did not find the user interface agreeable.

Seriously, even if a netbook is old and not very powerful, it should not be bogged down by a simple user interface.

Cinnamon is slow, even on good hardware. It's kind of like how macOS has gotten these days.

Xfce is the way to go 

[_rubik]

I tried installing Linux Mint Cinnamon on my netbook some time ago. It was really slow and I did not find the user interface agreeable.

Seriously, even if a netbook is old and not very powerful, it should not be bogged down by a simple user interface.

Cinnamon is slow, even on good hardware. It's kind of like how macOS has gotten these days.

Xfce is the way to go 

barebones xfce DE with i3 wm is the way to go. 

[xtrafrood]

I tried installing Linux Mint Cinnamon on my netbook some time ago. It was really slow and I did not find the user interface agreeable.

Seriously, even if a netbook is old and not very powerful, it should not be bogged down by a simple user interface.

Cinnamon is slow, even on good hardware. It's kind of like how macOS has gotten these days.

Xfce is the way to go 

barebones xfce DE with i3 wm is the way to go. 

These days I prefer no DE but I can see the appeal behind xfce/i3wm. I've also read that openbox/i3wm is pretty great as well.

One year of Manjaro i3, and I'm about to remove the training wheels. No more installing vanilla arch to usb or vm while Manjaro i3 guards the bare metal. The Arch Wiki compels me  )

[_rubik]

I tried installing Linux Mint Cinnamon on my netbook some time ago. It was really slow and I did not find the user interface agreeable.

Seriously, even if a netbook is old and not very powerful, it should not be bogged down by a simple user interface.

Cinnamon is slow, even on good hardware. It's kind of like how macOS has gotten these days.

Xfce is the way to go 

barebones xfce DE with i3 wm is the way to go. 

These days I prefer no DE but I can see the appeal behind xfce/i3wm. I've also read that openbox/i3wm is pretty great as well.

One year of Manjaro i3, and I'm about to remove the training wheels. No more installing vanilla arch to usb or vm while Manjaro i3 guards the bare metal. The Arch Wiki compels me  )

I actually did everything backwards. I STARTED with Arch, learned as much as I could carry, and switched over to Debian a little while ago. I love Arch, but I don't want to put that much time into configuring everything anymore.

[Altis]

I tried installing Linux Mint Cinnamon on my netbook some time ago. It was really slow and I did not find the user interface agreeable.

Seriously, even if a netbook is old and not very powerful, it should not be bogged down by a simple user interface.

Cinnamon is slow, even on good hardware. It's kind of like how macOS has gotten these days.

Xfce is the way to go 

barebones xfce DE with i3 wm is the way to go. 

I haven't used i3wm much but I'm not sure I have a need for it with window snapping already part of the OS. I guess it can speed up certain workflows.

[_rubik]

I tried installing Linux Mint Cinnamon on my netbook some time ago. It was really slow and I did not find the user interface agreeable.

Seriously, even if a netbook is old and not very powerful, it should not be bogged down by a simple user interface.

Cinnamon is slow, even on good hardware. It's kind of like how macOS has gotten these days.

Xfce is the way to go 

barebones xfce DE with i3 wm is the way to go. 

I haven't used i3wm much but I'm not sure I have a need for it with window snapping already part of the OS. I guess it can speed up certain workflows.

Personally, I can't stand wasted screen space and GUIs. So I love i3 because I never have to position windows, use an entirely macro/keybound based workflow, and rarely have to touch a mouse. It's also just so damn clean and simple. It gives me everything I need and nothing more in a highly customizable platform. I get that it's not for everyone, but I think that folks should give it a try and stick with it for a week. There's a bit of a learning curve, but boy is it worth it.

[xtrafrood]

I tried installing Linux Mint Cinnamon on my netbook some time ago. It was really slow and I did not find the user interface agreeable.

Seriously, even if a netbook is old and not very powerful, it should not be bogged down by a simple user interface.

Cinnamon is slow, even on good hardware. It's kind of like how macOS has gotten these days.

Xfce is the way to go 

barebones xfce DE with i3 wm is the way to go. 

These days I prefer no DE but I can see the appeal behind xfce/i3wm. I've also read that openbox/i3wm is pretty great as well.

One year of Manjaro i3, and I'm about to remove the training wheels. No more installing vanilla arch to usb or vm while Manjaro i3 guards the bare metal. The Arch Wiki compels me  )

I actually did everything backwards. I STARTED with Arch, learned as much as I could carry, and switched over to Debian a little while ago. I love Arch, but I don't want to put that much time into configuring everything anymore.

Starting with Arch would have been much better than finding a distro and stripping defaults out until I had something I was comfortable with. I'm close to the set and forget stage; hopefully everything translates well when I reinstall/configure everything.. lol

[microsoft windows]

How does Arch Linux perform on low-end computers?

[xtrafrood]

How does Arch Linux perform on low-end computers?

Show Image

I used an Arch (Manjaro) kernel when I rendered out keyset images for SA Rebel and SA Utopia without hiccups. From my very basic glmark2 (LGA775/rad 5450 | usb live iso's) testing, Arch/i3wm (and Manjaro/i3wm) matched Fedora rather well in terms of graphical performance. I prefer less overhead at the moment so I tend to avoid Fedora and Gnome 3

[iri]

I use Fluxbox when working on slow machines.

[Leslieann]

How does Arch Linux perform on low-end computers?

Show Image

Arch tends to be one of the faster base systems, however the desktop will make the largest difference in performance, but that too depends on the system itself.

On older systems, the older, lighter desktop environments tend to rule, however, a newer system can use newer optimizations to help level the playing field a bit. The same is true in regards to battery life on laptops.

Basically, if you have an older system, use an older desktop, if you have a newer system, you can pretty much use what you like with almost no hit to performance.

[davkol]

How does Arch Linux perform on low-end computers?

Show Image

It doesn't if I assume correctly what ancient low-end stuff you mean.

Arch was one of the first distros to cut off support for pre-i686 architecture, and even i686 itself has recently become de facto deprecated.

A decade-old Core 2 Duo will still run alright, but I don't think that's what you mean based on your post history.

[sth]

I recently installed Mint 18.3 Cinnamon to try it out (as a dual-boot on a separate SSD). It was quite good and I didn't have any major problems.

Mint 18.3 Xfce just got released so I installed that. It worked but I had complications with my graphics card (GTX 970) -- it got sorted out in the end with a GRUB modification.

I do have a question though if anyone knows:  I'm looking to RDP to a school Windows 2012 Server. It uses the RDP protocol but I can't get any remote desktop application to connect.

The closest I've come is using rdesktop and freerdp, but I get an error about the lack of CredSSP (required by server) or SSL library problem. I tried messing around with Kerberos (krb5) but it didn't make a difference.

If anyone knows what can be done, I'd appreciate it! I'm trying to use Mint Xfce as my main desktop and I actually quite like it. I did manage to get it to boot Mint as a virtual machine from my Windows partition using VMWare -- that was really great and I might just need to do that when I want to work with both for cases like RDP.

You probably need to set your RDP hosts to use the less-secure older connection method (System Properties > Remote > somewhere near the bottom) - then you should be able to rdesktop to it.

[Leslieann]

It doesn't if I assume correctly what ancient low-end stuff you mean.

Arch was one of the first distros to cut off support for pre-i686 architecture, and even i686 itself has recently become de facto deprecated.

A decade-old Core 2 Duo will still run alright, but I don't think that's what you mean based on your post history.

Good point...
There are distros meant for systems older than C2d, even Arch can do it, but most are pretty handicapped and the rest usually need some extra work, but anything less than 4gigs is really going too be handicapped because even with Linux, modern web browsers eat ram for breakfast.

[Altis]

I recently installed Mint 18.3 Cinnamon to try it out (as a dual-boot on a separate SSD). It was quite good and I didn't have any major problems.

Mint 18.3 Xfce just got released so I installed that. It worked but I had complications with my graphics card (GTX 970) -- it got sorted out in the end with a GRUB modification.

I do have a question though if anyone knows:  I'm looking to RDP to a school Windows 2012 Server. It uses the RDP protocol but I can't get any remote desktop application to connect.

The closest I've come is using rdesktop and freerdp, but I get an error about the lack of CredSSP (required by server) or SSL library problem. I tried messing around with Kerberos (krb5) but it didn't make a difference.

If anyone knows what can be done, I'd appreciate it! I'm trying to use Mint Xfce as my main desktop and I actually quite like it. I did manage to get it to boot Mint as a virtual machine from my Windows partition using VMWare -- that was really great and I might just need to do that when I want to work with both for cases like RDP.

You probably need to set your RDP hosts to use the less-secure older connection method (System Properties > Remote > somewhere near the bottom) - then you should be able to rdesktop to it.

I don't control the servers so this won't work. 

[_rubik]

Has anyone tried Pop!_OS? I know it's supposed to be an iteration on Ubuntu:17.xx + Gnome 3, but I've heard it's put together very well. I feel like it could be too simple, but it really seems like the folks over at System76 know what they're doing. Also, I know some of their team develops for ElementaryOS, so that should be an indication of how well the UI end runs.

I have a feeling it's a quite heavy distro otherwise....

[Brammm87]

I've tried moving from OS X to Ubuntu but I've become too dependent on the eco system. Too many tools I use in regular life that aren't available...

[Vloshko]

I started with Gentoo because other than making a distro from scratch it seemed like the best option to learn and achieve a better understanding in the long run when I had been only using Windows throughout my life. Currently, I'm using Arch Linux as my main distro, I made the switch a year and a half ago after using Gentoo for 3 years.

edit: I do have a system that uses windows that is required by work. In addition, I often switch back to Gentoo. Both Gentoo and Arch have their pros and cons.

[rasmusx]

I started with Gentoo because other than making a distro from scratch it seemed like the best option to learn and achieve a better understanding in the long run when I had been only using Windows throughout my life. Currently, I'm using Arch Linux as my main distro, I made the switch a year and a half ago after using Gentoo for 3 years.

edit: I do have a system that uses windows that is required by work. In addition, I often switch back to Gentoo. Both Gentoo and Arch have their pros and cons.

I used also Gentoo long time ago and then moved to Arch Linux.
What you like about Gentoo?

For me endless compiling/optimizing was not needed at one point.

[rowdy]

I've tried moving from OS X to Ubuntu but I've become too dependent on the eco system. Too many tools I use in regular life that aren't available...

Moving operating systems sometimes means compromising.

I used Windows at home for years, then moved to Linux for a while.

Then I moved back to Windows, and them to OS X (now macOS).

I still have a Windows machine around for games, and my servers are mostly Linux.

At work we are moving away from Windows to cross-platform development, and three of us now have Macs.

Mostly open source software, which is generally cross-platform.

[_rubik]

I've tried moving from OS X to Ubuntu but I've become too dependent on the eco system. Too many tools I use in regular life that aren't available...

.
.
Moving operating systems sometimes means compromising.
.
.

I can't stress this enough to people making the switch. The reason the apple/google ecosystem has such a decisive grip on consumers is because they've built out everything to their specs. Their hardware/software/cloud is all made to play nice.

It will never be an easy transition, but it feels great breaking from that grip. It can be uncomfortable at times, but I say it's worth the switch.

.... And their are always alternatives to Mac software etc, just gotta look around.

[rowdy]

I've tried moving from OS X to Ubuntu but I've become too dependent on the eco system. Too many tools I use in regular life that aren't available...

.
.
Moving operating systems sometimes means compromising.
.
.

I can't stress this enough to people making the switch. The reason the apple/google ecosystem has such a decisive grip on consumers is because they've built out everything to their specs. Their hardware/software/cloud is all made to play nice.

It will never be an easy transition, but it feels great breaking from that grip. It can be uncomfortable at times, but I say it's worth the switch.

.... And their are always alternatives to Mac software etc, just gotta look around.

Different operating systems have different usage patterns, different controls and so on.  Different Linux distros are wildly different - Gnome, KDE, LXDE, XFCE etc. are all enormously different.  Windows changes sometimes drastically between versions.  macOS, I must say, has remained pretty much exactly the same since 10.0 (released in 2001, currently up to 10.13 released in 2017), with only minor incremental changes to window decorations and included tools.

When considering a migration, make a list of all the software you regularly use, say in a spreadsheet, and try to find if each application is cross-platform, or what the most common alternative is.

That should give a good indication how feasible an OS migration would be.