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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?

#101

Post by memset »

ciclista wrote: post #39
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…

Same here, around 8-9 years ago... on a laptop. Things would break all the time for me and it was hard to even use any vanilla kernels on it. It taught me most of my basic linux skills, and the forums were a treasure of information (before they took a dive, not sure how they are nowadays). I often had to boot Knoppix (livecd) to fix things. It was a distro that invited a lot of experimenting and tweaking. I've been r…

Oh yeah, gentoo's documentation was, hands-down, the best on the net at the time for getting your stuff to work (say, ndiswrapper for getting wireless working.) Their guides didn't really rely on gentoo-specifc features because gentoo doesn't really have features beyond portage, which more or less wraps gcc.

I just spent a few minutes looking through the gentoo doc again. Makes me really excited how good the community doc was - this is how it's done! [1]

[1] http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/xorg-config.xml

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

#102

Post by ciclista »

memset wrote: post #101
ciclista wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same here, around 8-9 years ago... on a laptop. Things would break all the time for me and it was hard to even use any vanilla kernels on it. It taught me most of my basic linux skills, and the forums were a treasure of information (before they took a dive, not sure how they are nowadays). I often had to boot Knoppix (livecd) to fix things. It was a distro that invited a lot of experimenting and tweaking. I've been r…

Oh yeah, gentoo's documentation was, hands-down, the best on the net at the time for getting your stuff to work (say, ndiswrapper for getting wireless working.) Their guides didn't really rely on gentoo-specifc features because gentoo doesn't really have features beyond portage, which more or less wraps gcc. I just spent a few minutes looking through the gentoo doc again. Makes me really excited how good the communit…

I remember being so excited when I got both my wifi and my external monitor to work :) Good memories indeed, thanks Gentoo.

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

#109

Post by icebraining »

memset wrote: post #99
icebraining wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

In my case, the "Upstart Intro, Cookbook and Best Practises" document has told me all I needed to know.

For example, here's the info on Runlevels, including how to set Single-User mode either temporarily or permanently: http://upstart.ubuntu.com/cookbook/#runlevels

all I want to do is run a new script on boot. why do i want upstart??

Frankly, if all you wanted was that, you could just stick the script in the kernel init= parameter, no need for Upstart or SysV ;)

Both of them are daemon management applications, and frankly I don't think it makes much sense to optimize for the "running script on boot" versus sanely managing daemon startup.

That said, at least on Ubuntu the SysV infrastructure is still called (as an Upstart job), so you should still be able to stick something in /etc/rc.local.

Alternatively, you can just write an Upstart configuration file:

  post-start script
    #your script here
  end script

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

#110

Post by trumbitta2 »

It's been a long ride...

I started in 1998 with Debian 2.0 and the dreadful dselect, went on to 2.1 and 2.2, and I was happy and in control.

Then at work they imposed me to use RedHat 5 to 9. A nightmarish experience of broken package dbs and way too much reinstalls. Only highlight was the awesome Ximian Gnome and Red Carpet, which lately more or less became the even more awesome Synaptic.

When Fedora came out, I was fed up with rpm and started my own little Gentoo (from Stage 0) revolution. So much fun! Everything was optimized and fast. Like Flash-fast! But after 2 wild years of emerges, my HDD went in pieces and I learned the dark side of continuous recompiling: the HDD suffers. So I felt again the debianist inside me and in 2005 installed the most natural evolution of Debian. It was stable, it had apt, it was up-to-date. It was Ubuntu 5.04 (Hoary Hedgehog).

Never looked back since.

Today I'm very happy with 13.04, but I'm also now starting to long for a MacBook Pro.

Because I'm older, wiser, and I need a laptop with top-class hardware and an OS that just works.

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