Linux discussion
- Thread starter Nothing_Much
- Start date
That's been now forked as MATE, which is pointless when you have XFCE and LXDE, but the OSS community's full of a buncha cunts.
I see it as the consumer's version of fragmentation. Everybody's like "upstart vs systemd" "Wayland vs Mir" etc. When we already have tons of these fucking desktop environments that as a consumer would confuse the fuck outta me and others. Mate is pretty much pointless when you have KDE, E18, Cinnamon, XFCE, LXDE, and loads of Tiling window managers that do exactly the same things, just different implementations of the same difference.
tux9656
Uncharitable Spy
I get what you are saying now. This is the reason why it difficult to make a Linux distro as a consumer product. Android is successful because it locks the user out of making modifications to the base system and allows the system to retain a certain level of compatibility with released apps. If Android users had a choice of kernel, display server, desktop environment and system libraries, you couldn't release apps for Android because for all practical purposes, there would be no such thing as Android. The problem with trying to create a Linux distro as a consumer product is that you would have to set it up as to lock the consumer out of having a choice of the software installed to assemble the base system. GNU/GPLv3 seems to be at war with people that do this and people that try to do this get a lot of backlash from the GNU/GPLv3 community. All the GNU/GPLv3 community seem to be doing is limiting the number of people that would find the GNU/Linux OS useful. Perhaps a Linux distro using the Linux kernel, BSD's libc, clang, and as many BSD licensed base OS software components as possible where the kernel, display server, desktop environment and system libraries are all preselected for the consumer and not designed to easily be switched out while still remaining open source would fare much better as a consumer product.
What it comes down to is that consumers want to hear, "Yes. This will work with Windows 7 or later versions of Windows," or "Yes. This will work with Android 2.3 or later." They don't want to hear "Yes. This will work with Debian 6 and 7 if you are running version 6.0.3 or later, but not any later version than 7.2, unless you added the unofficial package repo that pulls in older packages that may break your machine or make your other applications crash unless you recompile some system libraries with an older version of gcc that you can get from another unofficial package repo."
What it comes down to is that consumers want to hear, "Yes. This will work with Windows 7 or later versions of Windows," or "Yes. This will work with Android 2.3 or later." They don't want to hear "Yes. This will work with Debian 6 and 7 if you are running version 6.0.3 or later, but not any later version than 7.2, unless you added the unofficial package repo that pulls in older packages that may break your machine or make your other applications crash unless you recompile some system libraries with an older version of gcc that you can get from another unofficial package repo."
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Yes, but then there's Ubuntu, which is being commercialized and has its own "walled garden". The problem is the unjustified hate that Canonical gets because they're Canonical, I recently discovered that before Mir was developed, Wayland devs were critical of Canonical's decisions and Canonical feared that their modifications to Wayland wouldn't be heard of. The OSS community is horrible and can't make decisions, and Ubuntu is pretty much doing the best it possibly CAN do to actually get it mainstream, while still being as open as it can, though the CLA is a bit on the touchy side of things.
I run Win 8.1 for work but Mint 17.1 Cinnamon for home desktop. How can you not want access to 45,000 FREE programs/apps/etc. as well as a dozen different window managers. Windows you pay and pay and pay and still only get what MS gives you for a desktop. Hmm... Linux, maybe that's why I play Engie allot.
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spyfly #stnbots.tk
Scarcely Lethal Noob
VirtualBox is such a pain in the ass.
I did make a sacred vow, however, to run Linux solo when I eventually cave in and get a laptop.
Probably just Ubuntu because Fedora's another pain in the ass. Even if I have the disc for it.
I did make a sacred vow, however, to run Linux solo when I eventually cave in and get a laptop.
Probably just Ubuntu because Fedora's another pain in the ass. Even if I have the disc for it.
Any Linux enthusiast that recommends anything other than an official Ubuntu-based distro (from this link) don't understand that most of the distros they use aren't made for the mainstream audience.
I am trying to learn more about Linux. I just installed Mint yesterday in VirtualBox and was poking around trying to learn a little Bash. I LOVE apt-get. I was was trying to run traceroute and got an error message that it wasn't installed, but with a sudo apt-get install traceroute it was there in seconds. Pretty slick.
So what other distros should I try? I poked around in Ubuntu once. I have played around with my jailbroken iPhone which is basically Debian. What else should I explore to get to know Linux better?
Thanks.
So what other distros should I try? I poked around in Ubuntu once. I have played around with my jailbroken iPhone which is basically Debian. What else should I explore to get to know Linux better?
Thanks.
Read up on Linux security patches if you're going to use Linux Mint. Honestly, I'd recommend Ubuntu or the official Ubuntu flavors. I'm unsure about Linux Mint, but with Ubuntu, you can use just
and be finished with either installing, updating or upgrading. Although, --force-upgrade might not work because the flags aren't all implemented within the "apt" command.
As for other distros in general if you think you're up for the challenge, there's lots of choices, most of them with different desktop environments and different philosophies on how the updating process works. I prefer Ubuntu ( and the official flavors ) for absolute beginners, because distros like Linux Mint completely fail to include security patches and aren't really meant for beginners at all. It's more preferred for enthusiasts or seasoned veterans of Linux and people who really care about customizations, but the tradeoff is not worth it for people who are ignorant about Linux and PCs in general, which is why Windows auto-updates itself, but I digress.
There's 4 types of distros to consider if you want to try them out:
"Just work" distros:
Ubuntu simply put, it "just works"! Although to be honest, most unofficial Ubuntu-based ( "just work" ) distros are horrible for beginners, because they lack security functionality and are mostly out of date. As I said, stick to the official flavors if you want some more customizations.
Stable distros:
Debian GNU/Linux is pretty much THE distro to go to if you want absolute stability on your system, the trade off is that it's very outdated and with the current "Stable" build of Debian is outdated to the point where you'd have to use a customized Steam installer from Github because Steam requires at least libc6 version 2.15, the current Debian Stable ( AKA 7 or codenamed: Wheezy, named after the Toy Story characters ) includes libc6 version 2.13, and that's a dependency that won't allow Steam to install, but because of the community, you can install it with a specialized installer that implements a sandboxed libc6 version 2.15 so you basically can use Steam on Debian Stable. There's also Debian Testing and Debian Unstable, but since Debian Testing will soon be released this upcoming April 25th, you *could* safely upgrade to Debian Jessie ( current Testing, future Stable on April 25th, 2015).
Bleeding edge distros:
Fedora Linux is the "bleeding edge" distro, which has the latest and greatest ( but sometimes unstable ) packages you could ever want. However, it also uses a completely different package manager, which I believe is going to be dnf, I'm unsure of what the commands are. Fedora is also based off the Red Hat Enterprise Linux distro, so if you have Fedora Linux smarts, you have RHEL smarts. Keep in mind, it's very "bleeding edge", which means that they can be either incredibly stable or incredibly unstable.
Customization distros:
Arch Linux and Gentoo Linux are somewhere in between bleeding edge and stable, kind of like Ubuntu, however, if you have a LOT of time on your hands ( especially Gentoo ), you will probably need to customize a LOT of things, which pretty much slaps you into a CLI, which is either a tradeoff or a benefit in whomever's eyes. You have 100% full control over these distros.
Source distros:
Gentoo gives you even more control, because you can compile directly from the source code, which means more flags, which means more performance, which means total control of your hardware and software, depending on if the drivers are FOSS as well, in most cases, Intel GPU drivers will give you the most control. As previously stated, if you have a LOT of time on your hands and wish to read a lot of stuff for the maximum amount of customization, Gentoo is the way to go, but that goes way beyond Arch Linux and any other distro, although I believe that Slackware Linux is also a Source distribution. ( It also happens to be the oldest, still alive distro to this day! Originally made in 1993! )
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