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I spent 18 years in the Linux console

eugene-andrienko.com

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Re: I spent 18 years in the Linux console

#101

Post by somat »

I have found openbsd to be one of the best unix desktop systems. Which is strange as that is not something they advertise as being good at. A large part of this is familiarity with the system(surprise, if you use a system a lot, you get comfortable with it) but some of it is this subtle feeling that the developers actually use it as a daily driver, which is often not the case with many linux systems.

Now there are some huge caveats to this statement, When I say unix desktop I mean fairly bare bones terminal heavy classic unix type operating environment, If you want something more like a mac or windows desktop, but don't want to use mac or windows, than a linux distro offering that is probably more suitable. But openbsd does.. ok... here as well.

Most problems with the heavy wimp style desktop environments are system administration related, where they don't understand openbsd system administration. personally I prefer cli based administration tools, and get a bit agitated when I have to worry about conflicting with some unknown desktop manager app that also wants to admin the system. So this works out great for me.

Re: I spent 18 years in the Linux console

#102

Post by ykonstant »

INTPenis wrote: post #10

This is an article about preferring to use Linux over Windows, not using the Linux console without graphics. The author's screenshots clearly show a GUI. Sorry but this is an important dinstinction to me because I actually know people who insist on using the Linux Console.

I am someone who uses the console a lot; I do rely on fbterm for sanity, though, and I don't know how reliable/secure it is long term. Arch, for instance, does not include it in its repositories, though Void does.

Re: I spent 18 years in the Linux console

#103

Post by 05 »

Asooka wrote: post #64
vkazanov wrote: post #9

While I have been using Linux since 1996 or so, and do have quite an opinionated workflow, I never could agree with this kind of ultraconservative approach to things. History never stops. Things change. Linux changes. Not every day, not every month, but every couple of years something has to go. And that's ok.

The problem is Linux is, as he puts it, hard to learn and hard to master. So once I've gone through the learning phase for fun and learned what to do, I really want to just keep using it and not have all my hard work undone at a whim. Perhaps ironically systemd is one case I would point to as being an acceptable breakage. The software itself definitely fulfils the license's promise of "NOT FIT FOR ANY PURPOSE", but a…

> Similarly if you have a bind mount you can't make it wait for the target to be mounted before the bind mount is executed

Have you tried RequiresMountsFor/WantsMountsFor ? You'd have to create a new unit that just does the bind mount though..

Re: I spent 18 years in the Linux console

#104

Post by makz »

somat wrote: post #101

I have found openbsd to be one of the best unix desktop systems. Which is strange as that is not something they advertise as being good at. A large part of this is familiarity with the system(surprise, if you use a system a lot, you get comfortable with it) but some of it is this subtle feeling that the developers actually use it as a daily driver, which is often not the case with many linux systems. Now there are so…

I recently switched to OpenBSD for my home lab and the experience was exactly the same as yours. It works even better than FreeBSD.

Re: I spent 18 years in the Linux console

#105

Post by anonymousiam »

hinkley wrote: post #48
blueflow wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TIL this was an intentional change. I wondered why it stopped working...

As I recall it was kinda twitchy because Linux let you have multiple consoles open, and the scrollback was handled via VGA text memory, which was divided evenly between the consoles. So if you changed the max terminals in… grub? You got proportionally more or less scroll back.

Yes, if you switched virtual consoles, the scrollback buffer would be cleared. Still, it was quite useful.

Re: I spent 18 years in the Linux console

#106

Post by croemer »

blueflow wrote: post #22
the-grump wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First, what distro are you on? Second, have you tried windows or macOS recently?

Distro doesn't matter that much, its mostly the desktop environment (panels and settings), and kernel regressions. Like half of my thinkpad fleet now boots into a blank screen due to an regression in the Linux i915 driver. I used to run Alpine Linux on servers, decided i wanted to change to something less exotic and found that Debian is no less buggy. No idea how to go on. Windows is consistently worse, i haven't tri…

I'm happy with macOS, I know what to tweak and the display support is great. Ubuntu was very bad with fractional scaling for 4k displays. Maybe skill issue but the ARM Macs are just so fast, don't want to give up on that.

Re: I spent 18 years in the Linux console

#107

Post by croemer »

the-grump wrote: post #87
blueflow wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Debian is supposed to be stable, but the last time apt hosed itself is barely two weeks ago. The suggestion with the bug sensitivity is belittling, cut that out.

How is it belittling when I told you I'm that way too. What I'll actually cut out is responding. Good luck with your bugs.

Agreed with you, I'm also sensitive to bugs and it's not belittling.

Re: I spent 18 years in the Linux console

#108

Post by worik »

jwilk wrote: post #65

> Git renamed the branch master to main No, it didn't. Git's default branch is still "master", although it warns you the default is subject to change.

> Git renamed the branch master to main

I get it. Ok.

But now I name all my main branches: "Mistress"

Mēh!

Re: I spent 18 years in the Linux console

#109

Post by jerrac »

darrmit wrote: post #72

This is reminiscent of my own experience with Linux, but I didn't go the developer route and instead ended up in product management via sysadmin and consulting. Through the years, the thousands of hours I spent experimenting with Linux in ~2004-2008 as a teenager has stuck with me. I fondly remember printing the Gentoo install guide out and installing it offline because I had some early Linksys wireless adapter that…

Gentoo was the first distro I got working with internet access because it supported the little phone line based network my family had, so I could share dial-up via the parents windows computer. And, yes, I also printed off the install guide.

Man, I should find time to dig into Gentoo again.

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