161–170 of 236 posts
I've been using Mint for the past month or so, should I be using something else?
Given the grave lapses that are described here, I hope it's obvious to you that absolutely yes, you should be using something else. I'll guess that Ubuntu might be your cup of tea.
Is there a way for me to get the Mint Cinnamon experience with Ubuntu under the hood? The last time I tried I couldn't get it to work in a painless/reliable way.
I've used Mint in the past, and it was my go-to distro for family members who aren't so technical. I'm not bothered by the licensing issues mentioned, and I'm ambivalent about the namespace issues, but I've been increasingly uneasy for some time now about Mint's security practices. Serving downloads over http and not providing GPG signed SHA hashes like every other distro is fairly irresponsible in this day and age.…
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The point of GPG is to download the public key of the signer (in this case, the package maintainer). Then, you check it's bona fide, either by verifying that you have a trusted connection through your web of trust, or (more likely) by verifying the key id is mentioned in other trustworthy places (like legitimate Ansible and Bash scripts, etc.). After that, you have a trusted signature, and it doesn't matter if it the…
"If you're downloading the signature each time you're downloading a new version of a package or iso, and its SHAs, you're using GPG incorrectly." I believe you're confusing a PGP public key with a PGP signature for a particular file (made using said public key).
My sentence about "trusted signature" could have been clearer, too. You have a public key that you trust, that you leverage to verify any new materials signed by the package/distro maintainer. So by extension, you can trust the signed hashes.
I've been using PGP/GPG on a regular basis since 1998, so I'm pretty used to the workflow by now and not at all confused about key pairs and signatures (although I will admit that I sometimes got confused about the point of subkeys until I read this a few years ago: https://alexcabal.com/creating-the-perfect-gpg-keypair/)
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Given the grave lapses that are described here, I hope it's obvious to you that absolutely yes, you should be using something else. I'll guess that Ubuntu might be your cup of tea.
Yeah you're right. Downloading Ubuntu now.
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A lot of people according to http://distrowatch.com/dwres.php?resource=popularity . I was surprised to see Mint take the first spot.
I really don't see how distrowatch indicates anything, why would people using a system go to that site in particular? The latest wikimedia statistics from the middle of 2015 have: * Linux Other 2,170 M 0.84% * Linux Ubuntu 1,238 M 0.48% * Linux Fedora 53.6 M 0.02% * Mac PowerPC 49.7 M 0.02% * Linux Mint 6.4 M 0.00% * Linux Mips 4.6 M 0.00% * Linux SUSE 3.9 M 0.00% * Linux Debian 3.1 M 0.00% etc http://stats.wikimedia…
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Ubuntu is just too dated for development work IMO - I need to rebuild everything from source or find 3rd party PPA for anything remotely recent - I'm fine with compiling deps for production but for development the distro really shouldn't be getting in my way of trying new stuff out. That said I've had many performance issues on GNOME - I like the way it looks and the "feel" and I got used to the UI over the last year…
LTS or the other versions? Any distro with a release schedule is going to have caveats about not having prebuilt packages for the latest XYZ. The only things I can think of that might give you a faster update schedule than Ubuntu (in terms of newer versions, not just point releases) would be Fedora, Arch, or Gentoo.
I've forgot to mention I've moved to Fedora a year or two back for this reason - got tired of rebuilding/PPA hunting for every part of my OS when I want to use the latest version of tool/lib X.
And once dependencies are too old (very often) prepare to be rebuilding 5+ custom libs and figuring out the differences between debian package/path layout and what the library build uses ... so much wasted time.
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I use Fedora and I truly do love it. I find it to be far more stable than other distros I've tried, and it really does "just work." I know I've been suggesting it to people who are considering Linux for the first time, with the caveat of disabling SElinux. With that said, I'm not sure if it is good for non-technical people or people who aren't interested in learning about it. Getting certain things installed can be a…
> I also view it from the perspective of not knowing how to use any graphical installers (do they exist?) Yes, it exists and works pretty good when I installed it. Set up encrypted LUKS, EFI just fine and I found it reasonably pleasant to use.
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Ubuntu with a post install script that grabs flash etc? EDIT Write the post install script yourself don't use one of the many flawed ones that a search will show up. I really don't see why the downvote? The OP wants an easy to use distro that their grandmother can use but seems happy to install it them-self.
flash? isn't that what the chrome cage is for?