Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

A Linux Evening

fabiensanglard.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

171–180 of 330 posts

Re: A Linux Evening

#171

Post by jckahn »

I’m a proud and happy Linux desktop user and rarely have significant issues like the one described here. I attribute that to using a “boring” distro (latest Ubuntu LTS’s only), and “boring” hardware (a Dell XPS 13 which is known to have good Ubuntu support). I just don’t have the spare hours to throw at getting basic system functionality to work, so I make software/hardware choices accordingly.

Occasionally I will have a Linux Evening, and I attribute it to the fact that I didn’t pay for my OS and can therefore only expect so much. After all, you only get what you pay for.

That being said, I will never leave Linux because using an open source operating system is completely worth the occasional hassles it brings me.

Re: A Linux Evening

#172

Post by tempest_ »

freeplay wrote: post #147
swayvil wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This contradicts my experience. I use Linux every day and I never touch the engine. I also set up Linux for computer-illiterate old ladies. They love it.

Out of curiosity, what distro do you use and what is your distro of choice for the old ladies?

Honestly if you have older hardware, like a couple years old most of the most popular distros are pretty stable.

Ubuntu on hardware a few years old will chug along without issues more often than not especially if you are just using it as a glorified thin client for Chrome which is an increasingly large base of users.

There are of course some gotchas with things like integrated graphics and dedicated graphics in laptops or some device drivers for peripherals like printers (it is still linux after all, year of the linux desktop any year now aha)

Re: A Linux Evening

#173

Post by greatgib »

jckahn wrote: post #171

I’m a proud and happy Linux desktop user and rarely have significant issues like the one described here. I attribute that to using a “boring” distro (latest Ubuntu LTS’s only), and “boring” hardware (a Dell XPS 13 which is known to have good Ubuntu support). I just don’t have the spare hours to throw at getting basic system functionality to work, so I make software/hardware choices accordingly. Occasionally I will ha…

I have also a XPS13, it is quite good, and I never shutdown/reboot it. Only let it in sleep mode when needed. For months.

There is still a recurring issue that I was encountering, that is similar to the one reported by Fabien Sanglard. It is with the small usb-c to usb-3 thunderbolt accessory. It is working perfectly, and suddenly, after months, it will not work anymore with anyhting plugged to it, without reason.

In that case, in the syslog I can also see that the "memory space" is exhausting, with something "BAR" and it looks like that it is not able to allocate ports anymore.

Before, in such a case, I was forced to reboot and that was a lot of frustration for me, to lose all my contexts. And most often at the wrong time when you are in a hurry.

But, recently,in a Linux Evening, I found a command that "magically" resolve my issue when it is happening, without having to reboot:

  for i in /sys/bus/pci/drivers/[uoex]hci_hcd/*:*; do   [ -e "$i" ] || continue;   echo "${i##*/}" > "${i%/*}/unbind";   echo "${i##*/}" > "${i%/*}/bind"; done
This will deinit/deallocate all the usb internal hubs (usb2/usb3/...) freeing the ports that were allocated (leaked?) for them. And then reset them. Then everything is working correctly again.

Even if it is not great to have this issue, this is the case when I like Linux, when there is always a way to fix your issues without having to reboot.

Re: A Linux Evening

#174

Post by ronjouch »

freeplay wrote: post #147
swayvil wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This contradicts my experience. I use Linux every day and I never touch the engine. I also set up Linux for computer-illiterate old ladies. They love it.

Out of curiosity, what distro do you use and what is your distro of choice for the old ladies?

Not OP, but chiming in nevertheless, as I do also "set up Linux for computer-illiterate old ladies".

They all roll Debian stable with unattended_upgrades and it's an absolute joy of stability.

Not that I would use Debian stable for my personal machines: I want the latest shiniest and I want to be close to upstream to report bugs when they're fresh and easy to fix by the maintainer (yes, "I use arch btw" indeed), but for "computer-illiterate" people, stability trumps everything else.

The "computer illiterate" isn't amused by constant breaking behavior / visual changes. They want the thing to work reliably and unsurprisingly. Debian delivers this and never breaks. Once every major dist-upgrade I review changes with them, and they're good to go until next time.

Re: A Linux Evening

#175

Post by gabrielgio »

_justinfunk wrote: post #44

I used to hear "Linux is only free if you don't value your time." - this article seems to validate that this is still the case. Am I getting the wrong impression?

Yes, every OS has problem. The only difference is that Linux let you debug it.

Re: A Linux Evening

#176

Post by Arainach »

>When I emerge from these "Linux evenings", I wonder if the real problem is my attitude

Put another way, "after I'm done being abused, I wonder if it's my fault".

Re: A Linux Evening

#177

Post by gabrielgio »

pvsukale3 wrote: post #71

This is kind of the reason I have switched to Mac. I used Ubuntu throughout my CSE degree and a year after. But system bricking at random upgrade, needing a fix was a no go for me at work. I understand some people do not face this issue. But whenever I wanted to try out something new or install anything, some random stuff would go wrong and would need hours of searching and fixing. Happens much less often with MacOs.

That is quite vague statement to make. Linux let you try/change a lot more on its internal than MacOS, so you can definitely to more damage to your system on linux.

I don’t see you trying simple things like “apt install go” and your pc would stop working (unless faulty hardware).

Re: A Linux Evening

#178

Post by mahoro »

One more thing that happened with Linux in last 20 years is complexity raised in orders of magnitude.

I remember Linux 2.x times and I had similar problems with hardware but a lot of them I fixed by following a limited set of tricks/patterns. Sometime I read a source code of some drivers or maybe applied some patches but not so often.

But at that time I felt confidence that most problems I could fix. Now I don’t (and actually switched to Mac 5 years ago)

Re: A Linux Evening

#179

Post by noisy_boy »

danobi wrote: post #101
noisy_boy wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The main one I have is Syncthing[0]. I have a fairly involved file sync setup across several Android and Linux devices and it works beautifully; I like that I can use the space available on my devices instead of having to depend on/pay money for cloud (I know that it is not much for most of us). However, to best of my knowledge, Syncthing doesn't run on iPhone (it is possible that jailbreaking etc can make that work…

I use stock ios and mobius sync works pretty well. No issues so far over 1y+ of use.

Thanks - I'll check it out.

Re: A Linux Evening

#180

Post by freeplay »

ronjouch wrote: post #174
freeplay wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Out of curiosity, what distro do you use and what is your distro of choice for the old ladies?

Not OP, but chiming in nevertheless, as I do also "set up Linux for computer-illiterate old ladies" . They all roll Debian stable with unattended_upgrades and it's an absolute joy of stability. Not that I would use Debian stable for my personal machines: I want the latest shiniest and I want to be close to upstream to report bugs when they're fresh and easy to fix by the maintainer (yes, "I use arch btw" indeed), but…

Nice. What is your go to desktop environment for them?
Post reply on HN