51–56 of 56 posts
But the recurring "linux-on-the-desktop" discussion is inane. Are we back to the whole Lindows/Linspire circlejerk of a decade ago?
Linux has won the battles that matter: mobile/embedded and supercomputing. The goal of Linux dominating on the desktop simply doesn't matter as much anymore.
This is a re-submission. Previous discussions: • https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10812214 (368 comments) • https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10757785 (2 comments) • https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=616146
Interesting how people editorialize the title.
I am using Debian as my main desktop (laptop in this case) for the last 8 years... sure I am not the only one. I have suspend/hibernate, great Gnome experience, no issues to run presentations or use public printers, really stable and very fast experience, and I did not configure any system aspect to make it work, just installed the distribution and that works out of box. Well, I am very happy with Linux desktop. Just…
What laptop are you using to get such great compatibility match?
Basically with various forms of linux - Mandrake, Redhat and then Ubuntu for the past decade. Rule of thumb is to pick thinkpads (or business class laptops) and pick Intel hardware where possible.
I'm not sure it's even "ready for the server". I have a server without a monitor I'd like to VNC to. Unfortunately X doesn't start without a physical monitor plugged in because it uses it for autodetection. It's such a silly problem that you can even buy fake "monitor" dongles to plug in to trick X into thinking that there is one. I don't feel like spending money on a software problem so I followed the standard worka…
In fairness to Linux, you're not actually building a "server" there. A typical server would be running on over ethernet rather than WiFi and on server board with support for remote management (eg IPMI or iLO) which would have mitigated the VNC issues you were having (though anecdotally I've never had any problems running X + VNC on a headless Linux box on the rare occasions I've needed to) But arguments about VNC asi…
And who says I don't want to run a GUI? I don't live in the 70s.
I'm not sure it's even "ready for the server". I have a server without a monitor I'd like to VNC to. Unfortunately X doesn't start without a physical monitor plugged in because it uses it for autodetection. It's such a silly problem that you can even buy fake "monitor" dongles to plug in to trick X into thinking that there is one. I don't feel like spending money on a software problem so I followed the standard worka…
> I have a server without a monitor I'd like to VNC to. That’s your problem right there. You can’t (or, rather, don’t ) “VNC” to Unix servers. For normal remote access, you use SSH. If you really need to run a graphical X program continuously on a server, you run a virtual X server program like “Xvfb”, and point your graphical X program to that. You can then “VNC” all you like to this virtual X server. All without a…
This is a clear flaw in Linux/X - don't try to excuse it with the tired old "why would you want to do that?" refrain.