Any other linux users here? :)

[FreedByte]

.

 

[MrJim]

I've dabbled off and on with Ubuntu & Mint and have used Puppy as a rescue disk; still always seems to be some kind of glitch or headache requiring more time to track and fix than I have available. I have a mac and two PCs in the house (7 & 8) and everything runs just fine. When I retire and have more time I will play with linux then ..if only I had been born 30 years later...

 

[C-Man]

I was big-time into Arch Linux until they switched to systemd (smooth move, guys). I've been playing around with other distros in virtualbox to see what else works the best.

 

[wrexsti]

i played around with linux but never to the point of using it daily.
i installed them just for fun. (...to put that in words makes me feel so nerdy ).
i installed ubuntu, kubuntu, and that hacker distro that i cant remember the name of.

i do prefer osx because of the GUI simplicity.

 

[FreedByte]

.

 

[FreedByte]

I was big-time into Arch Linux until they switched to systemd (smooth move, guys).

How did that installation go? :O

I am very interested in arch linux but still consider myself somewhat of a linux noob. How much experience do you need?

 

[FreedByte]

i installed ubuntu, kubuntu, and that hacker distro that i cant remember the name of.

You installed ubuntu and kubuntu? Why not just install ubuntu and then install kde so you can switch desktop environments

 

[pgp_protector]

Running Ubuntu 12.04 at home as a server for backup, testing, web development, media serving and such.

No Desktop Environment though it's kept headless for the most part. Though I do use Webmin for keeping general track of it when I need.

 

[elytron]

Have used Ubuntu since 2006. Now I am into Linux Mint, and am using both Cinnamon and MATE versions.

 

[Cute Tink]

I use Ubuntu on my laptop and have for the last almost 2 years. I love it. My computer boots so much faster and runs so much better than it does under Windows 7.

 

[cutekittycat]

i spend most of my time using gnome though.

 

[FreedByte]

How did that installation go? :O

I am very interested in arch linux but still consider myself somewhat of a linux noob. How much experience do you need?

Now that I read more, it seems that you don't need as much experience to use Arch as I thought, considering how extensive the beginner's guide is. Perhaps giving Arch a try would be a good learning experience, I've been using Ubuntu for probably around 6 months but compatibility issues have forced me to become quite familiar with the terminal

 

[Qyöt27]

Ubuntu 13.04. I follow the six-month release cycle, and have been using it since 5.10. I'd also attempted to use Knoppix and Slax prior to Ubuntu, but the problem was that neither of them would work on my hardware, even though I could run them on other computers I had access to. Since Ubuntu was the first one that worked, and it had the reputation of being fairly easy to get acclimated to, I went with it.

I mostly use it as a cross-compilation platform. I typically rely on LXDE these days, although I used to use GNOME 2, and way back in the Breezy/Dapper/Edgy days, Fluxbox. I'm not hostile to Unity, but unless the comp is powerful enough to handle it smoothly, I'm usually only logged into it long enough to install LXDE. I'll pull in all of lubuntu-desktop if it's not a setup I want to take a whole lot of care in reconfiguring correctly, but don't do that on my own computer.

I've also tried Fedora, Sabayon, Archbang, and maybe a couple others, for specific reasons that just simply didn't pan out in the end. I also use OS X regularly for transcoding (with mpv, rarely x264 directly) and disc burning (via cdrecord) and toyed with the idea of setting up a VM of PC-BSD to test some build projects on, but that crashed and burned spectacularly when it refused to install, well, anything.

 

[C-Man]

and toyed with the idea of setting up a VM of PC-BSD to test some build projects on, but that crashed and burned spectacularly when it refused to install, well, anything.

Pretty much my experience with that too. Glitches upon glitches. >.>

 

[Qyöt27]

Pretty much my experience with that too. Glitches upon glitches. >.>

Yeah. The OS itself installed fine, but when I went to AppCafé and told it to install Firefox, it seemed to be caching a bunch of stuff in /usr that's totally unrelated to Firefox, and finally errored out saying it couldn't install.

The only thing I was able to actually verify is that, true to description, birth times are in fact exposed by the kernel to stat(), although the Terminal output of BSD stat is a poorly-formatted mess. Meanwhile, Linux users have been waiting on this ability for years, regardless of the fact that the 'Birth time' field was added to coreutils' stat in 2009...but it remains blank even when used with filesystems that support that timestamp (read: ext4, and it seems btrfs does too, from the crop of FSes that are typically used under Linux), because the kernel doesn't push it through. The only way to see that it does get written is to use debugfs and look at the inode data. Or, *shudder*, recompile the Linux kernel with the xstat patches included (and that's still no guarantee that stat will pick up on it). They've been arguing about this for a long time, I just hope it gets resolved soon so that it can make its way into the standard distribution and support channels.

This timestamp issue was the reason I tested Archbang, since it used a newer version of coreutils, but because I didn't know at the time that it was a kernel-side issue, it obviously was still a moot point. Fedora was mostly for testing darwinx (which made little long-term sense since the only computer we have that's powerful enough to run the VM is a Mac running OS X), and Sabayon was tested both for the darwinx case (which its repositories had hinted at) and the timestamp issue.

 

[EphesiaNZ]

I was big-time into Arch Linux until they switched to systemd (smooth move, guys). I've been playing around with other distros in virtualbox to see what else works the best.

Systemd aside, Arch is still awesome although, I will always advocate FreeBSD as this still adheres closely to the UNIX way.

 

[EphesiaNZ]

How did that installation go? :O

I am very interested in arch linux but still consider myself somewhat of a linux noob. How much experience do you need?

You can still experience Arch without the install pain so, try these respins

ArchBang

Manjaro Linux

There are other versions of Arch ready to go but the above should keep you out of mischief for a while

ArchBang is very good on machines that are over 5 years old as its quite a lightweight distro. Manjaro is better suited to more modern hardware.

 

[EphesiaNZ]

... toyed with the idea of setting up a VM of PC-BSD to test some build projects on, but that crashed and burned spectacularly when it refused to install, well, anything.

Did you use the ISO image or the specially prepared VM image for PC-BSD?

I have had issues installing PC-BSD to a VM using the ISO image.

I think PC-BSD needs more people to try it out and I'm going to get back into it again as they are going to be a rolling release soon so it will be almost bleeding edge and I think they are going to make ZFS the standard file system too so that will make things interesting.

Sure, any BSD needs a little bit more of an effort but I think its worth it as BSD and its derivatives have IMHO a better overall structure and community than in the Linux world - flame retardant undies on

 

[Qyöt27]

It was the ISO image. But like I said, installation of the OS itself went fine. It was in trying to install from external sources after the OS was set up that failed.

 

[EphesiaNZ]

It was the ISO image. But like I said, installation of the OS itself went fine. It was in trying to install from external sources after the OS was set up that failed.

Ah, I know that Firefox has been rather unfriendly for BSD users of late but I guess your issue may have been a package needed for Firefox that either was not found or unavailable at that moment in time. Also the package repositories have been offline since last Christmas due to a security issue in FreeBSD - this has recently come back online. BTW, PCBSD uses the FreeBSD repositories but they are getting close to using their own repositories soon for their rolling release as they will be more up to date than the FreeBSD repos. The reason why stuff was in /usr is that FreeBSD keeps to the UNIX philosophy where userland apps stay within /usr with only the key FreeBSD core OS and apps existing outside of /usr.

I've just downloaded a snapshot of PCBSD and will fire it up again for testing soon