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Poll: HN desktop Linux users, what distro do you use?

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Re: Poll: HN desktop Linux users, what distro do you use?

#91

Post by natermer »

kostya-kow wrote: post #83

I am an Arch user, but I am thinking of switching to Fedora or Ubuntu again. Arch just takes too much configuration and time, and the dual-head is a pain. It also doesn't support fglrx drivers, because the X version they use is too high. It's more of AMD's fault, not Arch's, but it still requires too much work. In general, I like Arch's minimalism, and it uses very little RAM, but I am sick and tired of wrestling wit…

> It also doesn't support fglrx drivers, because the X version they use is too high.

Friends don't let friends use fglrx. The open source drivers work fine. If I can run Gnome-Shell while playing StarCraft 2, Left4dead 2 beta and team fortress on open source AMD drivers with acceptable performance then so can you.

Re: Poll: HN desktop Linux users, what distro do you use?

#93

Post by hkmurakami »

DanBC wrote: post #74
hkmurakami wrote: post #64

New Linux convert here. Been an Ubuntu user since early April. Chose Ubuntu since it's what I defaulted to for my Linode instance (which I've also only had since January) upon referencing some guides, and since it seemed to have strong guides and references I could look to if I got stuck on something. Happy to be off the MSFT train after 17 years!

Ubuntu is a nice choice. It's easy enough, it has huge amounts of software available, commercial support is available, etc. The user generated support is variable in quality. There are a lot of people who know just enough to give the wrong advice, which can be frustrating. There are some problems with Ubuntu. There are some political things about the benign dictator, and about contributing fixes, and about the direct…

Thanks a bunch for the info :)

It's not so much that I don't care about the dictator/fixes/direction, but rather I'm not knowledgeable enough to know the significance. It's like an election where I'm not yet even capable of informing myself of the significance of the issues at hand.

Hopefully I'll be able to make an informed "vote" in the future.

Re: Poll: HN desktop Linux users, what distro do you use?

#94

Post by mrpdaemon »

Long time Gentoo user (almost 10 years) here. I'll admit that it is NOT a distribution for everyone, tailored more towards power users and tinkerers in general, but for me it is the ideal distribution. Here are a few reasons why I think Gentoo is great:

* Customizability / minimalism: Binary distributions usually come with tons of packages compiled with all kinds of bells and whistles, and often times make choices for you like what init system to use, what DE/WM to use, heck even what kernel to use. They are customizable to a degree, ie. you can install additional DE's after the fact, but not as much as Gentoo, which puts you in control of exactly what should be installed, and exactly what options to turn on. On a machine without bluetooth? Don't compile any bluetooth support into any libs/apps, not even in the kernel. Gentoo allows you to build a custom-tailored minimal software bundle for your exact hardware.

* Bleeding edge: Being a rolling release distribution, you get to experience the latest and greatest of open source software as it is being developed. Admittedly Gentoo has fallen behind lately on some areas due to not having as many active maintainers as it once used to, but for most areas it is still as bleeding edge as you can get (probably behind Arch overall). GNOME 3.8.2 became available the next day after its release, I'd say that is pretty bleeding edge.

* Documentation: The Gentoo forums and wiki are a great source of information for any general linux desktop (and server) issues. Arch has taken over in terms of having the majority of the mindshare, but I view both distributions' forums/wikis as the primary source of informed discussion on desktop linux topics.

* Speed: Not everyone is into -Oomg-optimized ricing, but for people who are, few other distributions will let you use custom CFLAGS all around and push your hardware truly to the limit.

Long live Gentoo!

Re: Poll: HN desktop Linux users, what distro do you use?

#98

Post by kostya-kow »

natermer wrote: post #91
kostya-kow wrote: post #83

I am an Arch user, but I am thinking of switching to Fedora or Ubuntu again. Arch just takes too much configuration and time, and the dual-head is a pain. It also doesn't support fglrx drivers, because the X version they use is too high. It's more of AMD's fault, not Arch's, but it still requires too much work. In general, I like Arch's minimalism, and it uses very little RAM, but I am sick and tired of wrestling wit…

> It also doesn't support fglrx drivers, because the X version they use is too high. Friends don't let friends use fglrx. The open source drivers work fine. If I can run Gnome-Shell while playing StarCraft 2, Left4dead 2 beta and team fortress on open source AMD drivers with acceptable performance then so can you.

All the things I tried were either too slow or didn't start at all with open-source drivers. With fglrx everything works. But I hate installing/upgrading them, because they either mess something up, or uninstall incompletely.

Re: Poll: HN desktop Linux users, what distro do you use?

#99

Post by memset »

icebraining wrote: post #40
memset wrote: post #25

I started out with Gentoo, maybe 10 years ago. It was the coolest thing, but later realized that I was spending a lot of time compiling everything and wanted these magical things called "binaries" instead. So I switched to Ubuntu - Warty Warthog! I loved it because it was a minimal distro that was very useful and fit on a single CD. (I neither had lots of internet nor CDs available to me at the time.) Also, I never k…

as a power-user, I was really unhappy when the switched from init scripts to upstart Why? Personally, I much prefer the declarative configuration over the lengthy SysV boilerplate, and there's always pre-start and such if you want to insert some shell code. By the way, may I suggest Debian Sid/Unstable? Most of the commands and package names are the same (for obvious reasons ;), it has a rolling release (so you're al…

At the time they made the switch, there was not much documentation or support for upstart. All documentation on the internet was (is?) for init scripts and runlevels.

For example, I wanted to take some old hardware and set it up as a server. Easy - just change init to runlevel 3 (no display) and boom, there you are, headless linux.

If I wanted to do that in ubuntu, I still wouldn't know how, to be honest. I guess I'd have to reinstall it with ubuntu server? Do we even have single-user mode any more?

(I learned sysadmin from "the armadillo book" [1]. I feel like most of the concepts are identical, but the tools are so different now. all I want to do is run a new script on boot. why do i want upstart??)

[1] http://shop.oreilly.com/product/9780596003432.do

Re: Poll: HN desktop Linux users, what distro do you use?

#100

Post by memset »

kenko wrote: post #36
memset wrote: post #25

I started out with Gentoo, maybe 10 years ago. It was the coolest thing, but later realized that I was spending a lot of time compiling everything and wanted these magical things called "binaries" instead. So I switched to Ubuntu - Warty Warthog! I loved it because it was a minimal distro that was very useful and fit on a single CD. (I neither had lots of internet nor CDs available to me at the time.) Also, I never k…

"I started out with Gentoo, maybe 10 years ago. It was the coolest thing, but later realized that I was spending a lot of time compiling everything and wanted these magical things called "binaries" instead." I'm using Gentoo and I don't really notice this, but that's probably because my needs are fairly minimal and I take the approach of "if it's working, don't change it". Unless I happen to upgrade to something that…

When installing a new gentoo system, you basically let it compile overnight.

When something was broken - let's say X11 wouldn't start - the first thing you'd try is "re-emerge X." 2 hours later, the display is still broken and only later do you realize you had xorg.conf misconfigured.

(I think all of the auto configuration for displays is great, by the way. But on the occasion it doesn't work, I wish I could just edit xorg.conf, but of course that doesn't even exist any more because everything is autodetected by default.)

I loved the idea of USE flags, until I realized that they were just a wrapper around ./configure options.

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