Trying *nix again

[Oqsy]

Ok, I have quite a bit of free space and I'm considering a dual boot system to play around with a linux distro.  Right now I'm downloading the .iso for mint, ubuntu, debian (several flavors), and openSUSE.  

I've got some linux experience, but it's been years and I've all but forgotten it, so I'll be starting from scratch essentially.  I used a RedHat distro back YEARS ago exclusively for a few months when I was on a militant anti-windows kick.  Unfortunately once I went back to windows, I dropped linux cold-turkey and have felt guilty about it ever since

Is there anyone here that's jumped into linux recently that would like to share the experience?  I don't know anyone personally that uses linux for any purpose whatsoever, so I'll kind of be out on a limb here, and would love someone to message occasionally (or frequently depending on your situation) to get some feedback and direction.

I was always able to find answers to my questions before by googling, etc., but I find I do best at new things when having conversations about it, not just reading other people's directions.  

Anyway, I'll be narrowing down which distro I prefer sometime in the next week or so, and then I'll be ready to start the adventure

[vyshane]

Since you've already used Linux years ago, it should be pretty easy for you this time around. The main thing is to keep an open mind and not to expect a unix system to behave like Windows. Once you've accepted this, you'll be able to get productive instead of fighting the system. 90% of your initial complaints towards Linux will likely fall into the "it's not Windows" category.

If something breaks, the easiest way to fix it is to pay attention to error messages. Find out where the program logs its error messages, and have a look there. Services typically log in /var/log. For GUI programs, you can try to launch them from the console, and look at the console output. Google the error messages and you're halfway there.

[EverythingIBM]

Is there anyone here that's jumped into linux recently that would like to share the experience?

After seeing this photo, I'm not sure Linux is very appealing to me anymore:


Linus Torvalds is about to jump into an OS/2 warp hole.

[Oqsy]

I tried running the live cds of ubuntu and mint tonight to get a taste of the newer GNOME variants, and MY MOUSE DOESN'T WORK!  I did learn to navigate through them pretty damn quickly without a mouse, though (just a few commands I need to figure out, like how to close a windows that doesn't have a menu bar, just the minimize, maximize, and close buttons).  In any case, an OS that doesn't allow me to use a PS/2 pointer is doomed from the start.  

KDE is next up, then lxde and xfce...

I read some forum posts around the interwebs about my mouse issue, but didn't find any fixes.

[Oqsy]

Ok, in Debian GNOME now.  Mouse works flawlessly.  Stupid ubuntu/mint kernel.  
I forgot how fun it is to be outside the windows comfort zone.
This one is promising, but I still have the other three desktop environments to test with Debian.

[EverythingIBM]

Ok, in Debian GNOME now.  Mouse works flawlessly.  Stupid ubuntu/mint kernel.  
I forgot how fun it is to be outside the windows comfort zone.
This one is promising, but I still have the other three desktop environments to test with Debian.

I like my DOS comfort zone... it helps me sleep at night when I have nightmares of iMac G3s replacing all of my IBMs.

[hyperlinked]

I can't really help give you any insight into what to look out for when jumping from Windows to Linux, but I can offer that if you know anyone who runs Web servers, you most likely know someone who's using a lot of Linux.

Make sure you discover the software package management programs if you haven't already. Different flavors of Linux have different package managers. Different flavors of Linux favor different pacakge installers. I believe "apt" is rather popular on Debian. I mostly use RedHat variants, so "yum" is what I use to install and update most of my software distributions.

I'm interested in hearing what your experience is with picking up Linux again as a desktop OS. I have a netbook that's choking along on WinXP and I might decide to wipe it out and run Linux on it. I only use Linux on my Web servers and Unix on my Mac when I need some extra flexibility. I haven't ever tried a *nix variant as my daily driver before.

[platon]

Ok, in Debian GNOME now.  Mouse works flawlessly.  Stupid ubuntu/mint kernel.  
I forgot how fun it is to be outside the windows comfort zone.
This one is promising, but I still have the other three desktop environments to test with Debian.

Actually i suggest you go with Ubuntu or Mint instead of pure Debian (Ubuntu is based on Debian, Mint is based on Ubuntu). They are much more friendly distros for a beginner.

[ch_123]

Here's my personal ranking of Linux distros -

1. Arch

...
...
...

2. Debian

That is all.

Actually i suggest you go with Ubuntu or Mint instead of pure Debian (Ubuntu is based on Debian, Mint is based on Ubuntu). They are much more friendly distros for a beginner.

You did read the bit where Ubuntu didn't let him use his mouse, right?

KDE is next up, then lxde and xfce...

I'd skip Xfce, it's like a bad ripoff of GNOME that's meant to be lighter, but in reality uses the same amount of RAM.

[platon]

I did. But if he cannot discover the way to fix that, he isn't ready for anything less automated (like Arch).

[ch_123]

Not really.

Ubuntu (and 95% of other distros) has two major problems -

1) It obfuscates and hides the configuration from the user.

2) It tries to second guess how you want your computer configured. The fact that the mouse worked under Debian but not under Ubuntu suggests that it was a problem with how Ubuntu is set up.

The reality with Arch is that unless you've come from Gentoo, Slackware or one of the BSDs, you won't really have any of the experience needed until you try installing it. I used (and abused) Ubuntu for a full year, and yet I learned more about Linux in a week of Arch usage.

[vyshane]

Ah, Arch Linux. I used to run that as my primary OS in 2004. Back then I was a university student with plenty of time on my hands.

[ch_123]

I can get an Arch setup fully set up and configured in about two hours. It takes about the same amount of time to get an Ubuntu or Debian system set up properly.

[vyshane]

I can get an Arch setup fully set up and configured in about two hours. It takes about the same amount of time to get an Ubuntu or Debian system set up properly.

It's not the amount of time it takes to set up a system from scratch. I keep configuration files that I care about in a code repository anyway.

It's the amount of time it takes to acquire the knowledge and keep it up to date. I'm willing to do that for things like Apache, Vim or tmux. I'm no longer willing to do that for things like graphics and sound. I want my OS to just work when it comes to these.

[ch_123]

I meant from scratch. I mean, I put in the Arch installation disk to my computer and boot from it, and within about 2 hours or so I have a fully functioning desktop with all my usual software set up.

[vyshane]

I meant it's not about the amount of time it takes to set it up from scratch. It's about the time invested in learning about things that the OS should be doing for me.

[ch_123]

The problem is that in my experience, things like Ubuntu break so often that you need to know these things anyway. At least with Arch you built the thing from the ground up so you know what to do if something breaks. Which happens less often because you've built the OS to meet your needs and your hardware configuration...

[ahmad]

Not really.

Ubuntu (and 95% of other distros) has two major problems -

1) It obfuscates and hides the configuration from the user.

2) It tries to second guess how you want your computer configured. The fact that the mouse worked under Debian but not under Ubuntu suggests that it was a problem with how Ubuntu is set up.

The reality with Arch is that unless you've come from Gentoo, Slackware or one of the BSDs, you won't really have any of the experience needed until you try installing it. I used (and abused) Ubuntu for a full year, and yet I learned more about Linux in a week of Arch usage.

This.

What made you choose Arch over Slackware?  I've always been a Slackware user, but the Arch community seems nice and their wiki and forums have been of much help to me many times.

Was considering sticking FreeBSD on my new Thinkpad, but decided to stick to what I already know.

[vyshane]

The problem is that in my experience, things like Ubuntu break so often that you need to know these things anyway. At least with Arch you built the thing from the ground up so you know what to do if something breaks. Which happens less often because you've built the OS to meet your needs and your hardware configuration...

Has not been my experience. If I ever need to build my own system from scratch in order for it to be stable, I'd say that the Linux ecosystem has failed hard.

I'm not dissing Arch. I've used it and I liked it. However, I have several computers, and I'm not willing to build a configuration for each from scratch anymore. I like my hardware to just work.

[ch_123]

It so happened that I tried Arch before Slackware, and I tried Slackware afterwards and wasn't really inspired by it. Arch has excellent documentation, and the best package manager of any Linux system out there.

Tried Gentoo when I stuck at home sick once =P Didn't really see the appeal of it, it's just too much work, and yet no real improvement over Arch.

The various flavors of BSD are quite good, but hardware support sucks, they're better as a server OS. Arch has a lot of BSD features such as the simple configuration and a ports-like system, but has the advantage of using the Linux kernel which supports lots of different hardware types.

[ahmad]

Yep, I absolutely love Slackware but frankly find the Slackbuilds system a little clumsy for buuilding from source.  'sbopkg' (an ncurses fronted to the slackbuilds.org repo) has done much to alleviate that, however.  A ports-style system would still work much more nicely.

In that respect, CRUX seemed promising (especially since it's i686 out-of-the-box) but it looks like it's been stangant for a long while.

Have avoided FreeBSD mainly because of hardware support issues too, though I'm not really sure how many exist (probably very few nowadays), I didn't want to have to find out about them post-install...

[platon]

I would still recommend Ubuntu or Mint to the thread starter. From my understanding he seeks an introductory distro. It is highly unlike he is going to permanently keep his first Linux installation anyway.

[ahmad]

I would still recommend Ubuntu or Mint to the thread starter. From my understanding he seeks an introductory distro. It is highly unlike he is going to permanently keep his first Linux installation anyway.

The thing with Ubuntu is, you're only really going to learn how to use Ubuntu.  It is not really an 'introduction' to Linux.  Seeing as the OP is thinking of 'trying *nix', I'd recommend against such distros - Ubuntu will not prepare you for *nix in any way.

Of course, I could have misundertood the OP's intent...

[platon]

A little feedback from the OP would clarify things i guess.

[bigpook]

The thing with Ubuntu is, you're only really going to learn how to use Ubuntu.  It is not really an 'introduction' to Linux.  Seeing as the OP is thinking of 'trying *nix', I'd recommend against such distros - Ubuntu will not prepare you for *nix in any way.

Of course, I could have misundertood the OP's intent...

Can you elaborate on that. I started with RH 5.1 and tried most of whats out there over the years. I am currently using Linux Mint as I have gotten somewhat lazy. But its all just linux to me anyways. Granted, some distros put stuff in different places but thats not such a big deal ( unless of course you want it to be ).

Underneath it all, its still linux, no? I don't see how Ubuntu can hurt a user when it comes to using linux. Its not a bad place to start and ubuntu hides the scary stuff. But don't most GUI environments do the same?

Not everyone wants to be hard core, some of us just want ease of use.

If the OP wants an "introductory" distro I would still suggest Ubuntu/Mint. Its got Debian underneath,
a really nice desktop, apt-get/synaptic , and in the case of Mint all of the codecs installed out of the box.
 
If he finds that lame/weak/or not "real" linux then turn him on to some Gentoo : ) or LFS. That will give the OP days/weeks of tweaking entertainment.

[vyshane]

He'll be fine with the so called "easy" distros. At the end of the day these distros still save their configuration in the same config files as the "advanced" distros. xorg.conf is still xorg.conf. The only difference is that an "easy" distro will try to detect your hardware and apply sane defaults for you.

If the OP wants to get down and dirty, he can. If he borks his system, he can still fix it the same way an Arch user would fix an Arch Linux system (By googling around ). The underpinnings are the same. These are all Linux distros and they tend to use the same components.

The main reason why I would pick something like Arch over something like Ubuntu is if I wanted to customise the guts of my system. It's easier then to start with a minimal installation and build it up rather than start with a built up system and try to remove bits. If the OP is comfortable with the idea, then by all means. Otherwise, he need not feel like he's missing out just because he's picked a distro that comes with more defaults than one of the more minimalistic distros.

[ch_123]

I went back to Ubuntu for about a year after using Arch, using the rationale that some here subscribe to - that it offers a nice out of box experience. In reality, it didn't. The wifi was unusable with my college's WPA2 Enterprise authentication, things kept crashing and I had to manually backport software that the repository didn't have at the time. I found myself waiting for the next releases that would fix the problems, but really they just introduced more.

On the backporting thing - I would have no problem with the likes of Ubuntu having a 'stable' repository of software that worked at the time at the time of release if there was any sort of logic to it - Ubuntu will not include drivers and new versions of software that will make things better because they were released about a month or so before Ubuntu was to come out. At the same time, they'll bundle in things that don't really work properly, like GRUB2, Pulse Audio, and throwing a beta version of Firefox into an LTS release...

Really what I realized is that Linux isn't going to be ready for the primetime, out-of-box, 'it just works like a Mac' experience for quite some time. What I want is an OS that gives me the power to mess around if something doesn't work, or I want it to work in a different way. Which is inevitable if you're going to use your Linux desktop for something other than web browsing.

Bigpook raised that point that it's all the same Linux under the hood... Yes and no, the ability to play with your soup depends not only on design decisions within the distro that allow you to tinker, but also the sort of support and documentation you get with it. Case in point - I tried Debian out a few months ago on my desktop. At the time, the Asus soundcard I have did not work properly under Alsa, and would only work with OSS4. The problem that there was no discernible way to get OSS4 working, and attempts to find Debian specific documentation lead me to their OSS4 wiki page. "Great!" I thought, "This will probably be like the Arch Wiki and will give me a clear explanation of the steps I need to get the thing working". Nope, it was just a page telling me that OSS4 was a sound system for Linux with no further information, I just gave up at that point.

So, after getting to know Arch, and then trying to go to more 'user friendly' distros, all I get is a headache. It's my honest opinion that if someone is really interested in using Linux, and getting to know how it works, they'll be better off getting to know something like Arch then trying to wrestle with a distro that is based on the arrogant hope that things will just work ok out of the box and the user will never really have to know what's going on.

[mcdonc]

Who cares, just pick one.  I swear to God, Linux users are their own worst enemies.

[Pylon]

I'm been running Ubuntu 10.04 on a 1.7 P4 machine for about a month or two now. I can't find my OEM XP reinstall discs and my Windows 7 RC expired so I tried out Linux again.

Thoughts:
1. Way faster than XP. Bootup time is significantly faster. It's comparable to an E5300-equipped PC running 7.
2. For all I do, (internet browsing, word processing, photo editing) it's more than enough.
3. Pretty decent out of the box for above. Most of the applications I needed were installed. I also like the easy customizability of the GUI.
4. However, it's pretty buggy. Here's the bugs I have so far.
     i. Hibernate and standby don't work. (it worked fine with 9.10)
    ii. Numpad didn't work (lately fixed)
   iii. Ufraw plug-in for GIMP installed but doesn't export to GIMP (no RAW for me...hooray)

5. Other complaints:
     i. System monitor itself uses too much resources (ironically) compared to Windows Task Manager. This really skews resource monitoring.
    ii. Too many updates. Update manager regularly tries to get me to install unnecessary stuff like fglrx driver updates (I run Nvidia) and other things I really don't need.
   iii. Fonts are pretty terrible. The Nimbus clone fonts are good but I don't feel good  using clone fonts. There's also a number of other clones. Other than Courier10Pitch, DeJavu sans, some of the monospaced sans and the Nimbus clones, most of the fonts are pretty terrible.

[Oqsy]

The OP has returned!  

Ok, it looks like this thread took off while I was sleeping, so I've got some 'splainin' to do.

1.  The RH distro I used years ago was a royal pain in the ass to get going (video card problems, sound problems, etc), but I googled around, read lots, and learned what I needed to get it all running.  

2.  I love to tinker, which is what makes me want to play with linux again, but I don't really think I'm ready to build anything from scratch.  

3. Ubuntu/Mint has serious issues with my ps/2 mouse.  Debian (GNOME) is fine with it.  That's a strike against the Ubuntu/Mint camp right off the bat.  I don't mind doing some work to try to get it working, and in fact it was kind of a confidence booster to be able to get around them without a mouse at all (at least some stuff stuck with me without me realizing it, like Alt-F1).  The downside is that I've found NO clues thus far as to why my mouse DOESN'T work right ouf of the box, so to speak.

4. In the end, there's no reason I can't install more than one distro and apply the knowledge gained from each to the others.  I have hundreds of GB free and woulnd't mind having one distro that's bare bones and a build-from-scratch project that I can take my time with, and another that's a more fully-fleshed GUI that I can use as a "retreat" to keep from feeling completely overwhelmed.

Yeah, anyway, the testing continues today.

[d4rkst4r]

Don't forget to try Fedora and Mandriva.

[Oqsy]

Ah yes, mandriva was on my list as well.  Don't recall reading anything specific about fedora, but I'll definitely check it out!  Thanks!

KDE and LXDE Debians are both very nice.  KDE is definitely the most Windows-like so far.  So far the straight up Debians are running away with it over Ubuntu/mint.  I'll have to look into Slackware and Arch out of curiosity now as well.

[ch_123]

Just in regards to your Red Hat experiences - Linux has come a long long way from the old days, setting up Linux could be a nightmare back then, nowadays pretty much all distros have good hardware support unless you're using the cheapest of cheap junk.

I'd also stay away from anything Red Hat/Fedora/SuSE based... Anything that uses RPM packages tends to have horrible package managers and all sorts of dependency resolution issues. Debian based systems are great because apt is largely idiot proof. One of the reasons I like Arch is that it's one of the few non-Debian distros that has a package manager that is as easy to use (and it arguably better, but that's another story)

Who cares, just pick one. I swear to God, Linux users are their own worst enemies.

Some people would say the same about keyboards, and yet, here you are.

[Oqsy]

thanks for all the input so far folks.  thanks especially to the irishman, as i believe you are understanding the nature of my exploits, sometimes even before I post them.  (yes, it does seem that linux is much more universally compatible with off the shelf parts than it was even 10 years ago).  I'll report back again later this evening after I've tried some more "exotic" varieties.

[Oqsy]

Mandriva seems to be having the exact same ps/2 issues as mint and ubuntu.  Mandriva is also hands-down the slowest I've loaded so far (I realize that a livecd isn't necessarily going to give me the most accurate representation of what to expect when running the OS from my hdd.  It does make me think, however, that it *must* have some bloat issues to run that much slower from the livecd than the other distros so far.  Debian (KDE and LXDE) are so much more smooth and responsive.  Mandriva seems to hang an awful lot like Windows.

From here on it's going to get away from the bigger distros (size AND popularity) and delve into the more unique and basic distros.  I'll have to keep my USB mouse handy for the rest of the night.

God bless the mouse setup in Debian.  Now if I just knew how to replicate it in other linuxii.

[ch_123]

What sort of motherboard do you have?

[Oqsy]

It's a K7N2 delta2 by MSI

[platon]

Who cares, just pick one.  I swear to God, Linux users are their own worst enemies.

It seems you are the only one who doesn't care in this thread.

[Superfluous Parentheses]

Hi, I'm a seasoned Debian user. It's what I've used pretty much exclusively (except for my macbook for Adobe crap and to "plug and play" on location) for 8 years.

It works for me, though I'm not claiming setting everything up right is easy (but then, I'm running a non-supported nouveau kernel with a semi-supported window manager - i3, which is GREAT!). Anyway. The base Debian system is pretty damn good and a lot of the knowledge is cleanly portable to Ubuntu and other Debian spin-offs. If you have questions, I might be able to help you. Good luck.

[Oqsy]

Superfluous:  Thanks, I will definitely keep you in mind.  Debian is looking more and more like the winning candidate.  I'm going to do some nitty-gritty research for my ps/2 issues tonight though, because I'd hate to let a simple change of which I'm ignorant cause me to dismiss three of the top recommended distributions (ubuntu, mint, and mandriva).  It's apparent to me that something is consistently not configured properly in the default configuration on those three that Debian has covered.  Finding out what that is will be the tricky part  

Playing with Arch and Slackware starting in just a few minutes.  I don't expect to dive into either of them whole-heartedly, but I feel I need to do it now while I'm still open to anything...  once I get 2 months into using Debian, Mint, or whatever I choose, I doubt I'll want to just hop over to Arch on a whim.

[ch_123]

I like Debian, but I never fully trusted after this one time I went to install it, and it turned my NTFS partition into a swap partition. Bare in mind that I didn't do anything at this point... I just got to the partitioning screen and found that my 900GB of data was now a swap partition.

Fortunately I was able to mount the swap partition as NTFS and save all my data, but I've never installed Debian on one of my machines... even though I've installed it successfully on many different machines...

[microsoft windows]

I like my DOS comfort zone... it helps me sleep at night when I have nightmares of iMac G3s replacing all of my IBMs.

I prefer Windows and DOS as well. You can do just about anything in DOS.

[EverythingIBM]

I prefer Windows and DOS as well. You can do just about anything in DOS.

DOS is really the best, the applications made back then were also very pristine and polished. Programmers are getting dumber, software is getting more bloated... oh my.

Windows is merely a visual aid, but I have my fair share of criticisms of course.

[ch_123]

Never get a job as a computer programmer. People will die, I'm not sure how, but it will happen eventually.

[Oqsy]

Yeah no chance I'm ready for ARCH / slackware / LFS / CRUX.  I'll need to check out a few library books before starting that adventure  

I did read some cool stuff about the *BSDs though.  I'm definitely going to look into them a bit more while on my "vision quest".  

Thanks again for all the input guys.  I know where you DOS/Win guys are coming from, as I grew up on MS machines.  They'll always be the most comfortable for me since I grew up with DOS commands (since 5 years old, and yes, I was EXPLORING DOS at that age, not just loading my games from floppies (but I did plenty of that, too).  I remember the first time I found dir...  my jaw dropped like I'd found a cavern full of rich stuff and booby traps.

All that being said, I certainly hope neither of you DOS gentlemen intend to try to turn this into a DOS vs. *NIX pissing contest.  I know nothing inflammatory has been said thus far, I just want to keep it that way

[ch_123]

I've never heard of a Unix vs DOS argument. Largely because it's like comparing MS Word with Notepad...

[vyshane]

Superfluous:  Thanks, I will definitely keep you in mind.  Debian is looking more and more like the winning candidate.  I'm going to do some nitty-gritty research for my ps/2 issues tonight though, because I'd hate to let a simple change of which I'm ignorant cause me to dismiss three of the top recommended distributions (ubuntu, mint, and mandriva).  It's apparent to me that something is consistently not configured properly in the default configuration on those three that Debian has covered.  Finding out what that is will be the tricky part  

Playing with Arch and Slackware starting in just a few minutes.  I don't expect to dive into either of them whole-heartedly, but I feel I need to do it now while I'm still open to anything...  once I get 2 months into using Debian, Mint, or whatever I choose, I doubt I'll want to just hop over to Arch on a whim.

I use Debian Stable and FreeBSD on my servers and they have always been rock solid for me. Debian is a good choice. I don't use it as a client OS because I tend to track more bleeding edge software in my day to day usage. The point of Debian Stable is that it is stable.

As for Arch, give it a go. I liked it a lot when I used it, and I always still hear good things about it. There's a tremendous sense of achievement when you've built your own system just so.

[vyshane]

I've never heard of a Unix vs DOS argument. Largely because it's like comparing MS Word with Notepad...

Ignore the DOS trolls They just feel the need to post in every single thread. One of them has even managed to work in a dig towards Macs, in a thread about Linux, while talking about DOS.

[Oqsy]

I have to say my inspiration for delving back into the linux-style scene was jailbreaking my iphone a few months back on 3.1.2.

Cydia / Rock / Icy seem to use a Debian apt-get packaging system, which is very appealing in many ways.  I also started using the terminal from time to time, and it just seemed like I was working in a haze trying to remember how to change directories, change users, etc.  A mission was born; to discover a linux distro that suited my needs, and use it to further develop my linux skills for whatever purpose I may need them down the road, or even just for the fun of it.

ch: i wasn't accusing anyone of starting an argument, I was just trying to prevent one because I noticed two of the biggest MS proponents on this site make back to back DOS comments.  I have no problem with either comment, I could just see the thread was a post or two from becoming an OS battle instead of an educational process.  My apologies if my comment was taken as anything other than apprehension.

[EverythingIBM]

I've never heard of a Unix vs DOS argument. Largely because it's like comparing MS Word with Notepad...

Yeah... DOS is MS Word, and unix is notepad.

I'm glad we're thinking on the same page