I read that as “Distro for Piece of Shit”. I was going to say, if you dont like them, install Gentoo.
Personally i tend to use Debian or Fedora. Fedora have also got a few distros that are immutable which if its a pos basically means it shouldnt ever break or get corrupted.
That being said… If it works, dont ‘fix’ it. Debian is a decent OS.
Tbh when I was thinking of the title that’s what came to mind, sorry for being clickbaity haha. Immutable OS’s have been on my radar for a while I just need to be a bit confident in using them before going live.
Immutables are easy enough. Had a couple of months on the kde fedora spin. Fresh install and youll have no dnf (equiv of apt in debian) or other terminal tools. Might make you wonder what to do. The trick is toolboxes (or distrobox for a bit more umpfh).
Commands like this
toolbox create testzone
toolbox enter testzone
Install a load of shit that eventually fucks up your config somehow… And if it goes to shit
toolbox rm testzone
If it complains the toolbox is still running when you try to delete you can kill it using podman to find its process id, then you can kill it. I forget the commands though
You can have a stack of toolboxes. Gives you dnf and all your terminal tools. Still a few things to work out with data storage since it locks most of the root directories. It wants you in best practice dirs like /home, /etc but thats also what stops it breaking.
If a toolbox isnt enough, you can use distrobox, which can give you other flavours of *nix within it.
The Linux Kernel version is at 6 point something, I think they’re working on version 7. That’s not the OS though, the current Ubuntu version under LTS is 22.04. That’s more than twice as much as Windows.
Note I had to get this information from Wikipedia because Ubuntu’s website is currently unusable corporate garbagepuke.
Correct; the minor number is also the month. Which is why they’re almost always .04 or .10; the LTS version is always released in April, with non-LTS releases that serve a similar purpose to Debian Unstable (newer package base at the possible expense of more bugs) are released in October. They also have a convoluted codename system, as many point release distros do.
You’re not wrong about their website, but it still only took 2 clicks to get that information. For reference, I can’t find it at all on Debian’s website without clicking download and looking at the version number in the filename. But you can get that in one click so I suppose they’re doing better.
Edit: Sorry, I was wrong, you can see it under the Microsoft Azure section after one click:
I went with Fedora when switching almost a month ago now, and I’ve been having issues with some games not working as expected, and also had trouble getting NVIDIA drivers to work correctly (which I’ve already solved, I hope). (And some applications weren’t working at all, such as Unity)
What would you consider as major advantages of Fedora, in addition to what you mentioned? So far, I usually couldn’t find a Fedora-specific version of the applications I wanted, unlike for other more well-known distributions. I do work as a programmer, which was also why I choose Fedora - I really like their Fedora Toolbox, but I would like to game regurarly on my PC and so far, it seems that Fedora doesn’t really handle it too well. Will I have similar issues on other distros, or will switching to something like Pop!OS be worth the time?
EDIT: Just found out about Nobara, I guess I’ll give that one a try.
One plus for fedora, or more of a minus for debian-based distros, is that fedora with its short release cycle is closer to how windows does updates. There’s no release cycle for almost all software on windows, and so the years long release cycle weirds many people out.
(Looks at laptop I’m using to reply to this that’s running Debian)
Server OS? Debian? Yes it is, but it’s also a Desktop and Laptop OS and many other things. Everything on this HP laptop just worked, including the function buttons. There’s a reason it’s such a well used distro, and it’s not just because it’s good for servers.
I never said it can’t work, but try using MX for a bit and tell me it doesn’t make Debian much better as a workstation. MX tools are enough of a reason for me to always pick it over Debian in that scenario.
There’s a reason it’s such a well used distro, and it’s not just because it’s good for servers.
What are some workstation specific reasons it’s well used?
I’m pretty sure stuff like function keys are just DE defaults. I’ve installed default gnome and they worked.
The main reason people use Debian, no matter what they use it for, is stability. While it’s great that nothing ever breaks, you’re also receiving nonessential updates every ~2 years.
That’s not an issue on a server that’s running mysql released 7 years ago, but you probably need to use flatpak and guix to keep specific tools relatively up to date. You’re less likely going to need those tools when using a workstation focused distro like Fedora, that’s released on a fixed 6 month cycle.
On top of that, workstation focused distros also integrate flatpak. Since synaptic only knows about apt, MX improves on it by only requiring you to enable flathub as a source to get a unified search/install/update.
Small stuff like that is important for a beginner that’s asking for distro advice. They’ll most likely want to click through a pretty gui, and Debian is lacking on that front because it’s a server focused distro.
who the fuck made this horrible graphic? when will people realize that grossly redundant features that also complicate interpretation (such as trying to make a bar plot 3d) is absolutely one of the worst things you can do.
When used correctly the point of the graph is to make use of the fact that humans are super fast at visual convolution tasks but not so great at doing mental statistics. If your graph makes the interpretation of complicated statistical facts immediate for the viewer (and as faithful to the facts as possible, whatever that means) then it has achieved its purpose.
I get that, I know what a graph is, but this is clearly meant as a meme, hence the lacking axis descriptions and scale, and the 3d rendering. It’s literally just a meme
I recently jumped to mint, and I have to say I’m very happy with it. I struggled with like two things but the OS is popular enough that there are walkthroughs for nearly everything. And I was able to get Linux-based or browser-based software for everything I did on my windows computer
How does Mint compares to Fedora? I decided to finally switch almost a month ago, and went with Fedora because it seemed like the best solution for general development, and I really like their Toolbox. However, I’ve been running into some issues mostly regarding gaming and NVIDIA drivers, and in general getting some applications to work on Fedora was more painful than apparently in most of the other systems.
So, should I switch, or will the Wine/Steam/Lutris experience be mostly the same on Mint as it is on Fedora?
Most problems I’ve seen between Nvidia and Linux were caused by Wayland. If you’re using Fedora with Gnome (the default) then you can try hitting the gear icon when logging in and choosing “gnome on xorg” (screenshot). That might help with the drivers.
For any other issues, Mint might be easier just because it’s based on Debian, which is immensely popular. It’s more of a well beaten path, and there’s probably more help online for any issues you run into.
Debian is Debian based and regular Mint is Ubuntu LTS based and use theirs respective repos (not a big difference for the average user). While currently the non Debian version is the main and recommended version, due some controversial changes in Ubuntu people want to move away from Ubuntu and the devs have considered making the Debian edition the main one.
Mint is great. It also works well out of the box in virtual machines. I like the MATE versions for my older machines.
There is a major shift happening right now, and mint is slower than many to adopt changes. I’d argue that’s good for mint users, but it may be bad for you personally if you plan to learn about modern linux. Idgaf personally about X11 vs Wayland, because I just need to be able to use my programs.
I personally started by playing around with Ubuntu, but it just didn’t feel intuitive coming from windows.
Went over to Mint, and was very happy,especially with drivers and gaming. I even fully removed my windows installation during this period. Having gained a better understanding of Linux, I have now moved on again.
The only real drawback of Mint is not natively supporting KDE Plasma (as they did before). And yes, you can just install it yourself, but I wouldn’t recommend a beginner who barely knows how to install Linux to attempt such an endevour.
One word of advice to OP: don’t wait till you can’t use Windows anymore. Start by dual booting and getting a hang of Linux, but with windows at the ready for any tasks you cannot yet do/feel comfortable doing on Linux. As you get a better hold of Linux, you should naturally begin to use Windows less.
The worst thing someone can do, is to jump OS without any backup or safety net. Learning to use Windows took a long time, getting a hang of new concepts and getting used to an alien environment. Now, already having a hang of “computers” (Windows), we have digital needs and expectations (E-Mail, gaming, etc.) which will need fulfilling, but many seem to forget that a different OS means different ways of doing our daily tasks and different challenges to handle.
And yes, “different”, because Windows definitely also comes with it’s own unique challenges, you just don’t see them as much when having gotten used to them.
One word of advice to OP: don’t wait till you can’t use Windows anymore. Start by dual booting and getting a hang of Linux, but with windows at the ready for any tasks you cannot yet do/feel comfortable doing on Linux. As you get a better hold of Linux, you should naturally begin to use Windows less.
We are making dbus-broker our default implementation of D-Bus, for improved performance, reliability and integration with systemd.
For the foreseeable future we will still support the use of dbus-daemon, the previous implementation. Pacman will ask you whether to install dbus-broker-units or dbus-daemon-units. We recommend picking the default.
For a more detailed rationale, please see our RFC 25.
And as a desktop environment (which I think will influence your Linux experience far more than the distro pick) I’d pick KDE or Cinnamon or if you want to go old school XFCE (which is little easier on the resources) (all three stick to a more traditional desktop paradigm, so the switch from windows wont be as awkward)
luckily you can switch the DE pretty easy. you can just install them on your distro of choice and use them side by side if you’d like to try them out (generally speaking, you can choose which DE session you want to use on your login screen)
Yes but this a problem, you get very fragmented systems, tons of wasted space and resources (because your CPU/RAM will pay as well) and even worse you create a situation where developing Linux desktop apps isn’t just attractive to anyone.
Just to prove this point I’m sure you’ve noticed that the largest growth in Linux “desktop” apps (be it single developer apps or more “professional” stuff) was around the time Java desktop app became popular and then later on with Electron because at that point those packing solutions were dealing with the Linux DE mess (the constant updates and breaking of things) behind the scenes and the developers only had to add a very few checks into their code to handle all Linux systems.
What I’m saying is that by have all that DE choice and constant fuckery we’re making our lives worse in the sense that nobody same wants to develop to such platform thus getting less software and making Linux less of an alternative. Until we don’t get a single DE with a single solid and well designed theme, UI library, developer friendly frameworks and whatnot Linux won’t be getting any meaningful traction among regular people and professional developers.
GNOME and their large backing was a way to fix this mess and make all other DEs fade away but then their purist vision and CSS themes got in the way of optimizing the DE for the mass market and take over everything as they should have had.
The DE that will take Linux to succeed in the desktop doesn’t need themes, customization and all the personalization that would make it really hard to create. Hell it don’t need to be much, it can even be a simple 1:1 copy of the macOS desktop experience (and keep it updated) and it will likely become very popular in no time and send GNOME, KDE and others into oblivion.
I went with Pop!_OS because it was one of the least Windows-like DEs. Which is what I wanted after getting so damn sick of their garbage. Kinda macOS though with the dock and all. I dig it.
There is not a single distro where everything works out of the box. I would be very surprised if even Windows or MacOS work exactly like you expect, the second you boot into them the first time.
I like Arch / EndeavourOS, but you will definitely need quiet some configuration for them. If you want more user-friendly or more up-to-date Debian, try Sparky Linux. It’s honestly quite good. Instead of Ubuntu you might want to give Mint a try. Many fancy it as a more open and less corpo alternative.
Ubuntu itself is alright, but it’s being criticised for pushing anti-consumer moves lately (i.e. forcing Snaps and telemetry onto them). Also, updates on Ubuntu are extremely slow in my experience. Maybe that has changed, but in some areas I doubt it.
That is absolutely not true, Ubuntu has been a lot more out of the box experience for almost 2 decades. Thing is people are already familiar on how to do things on Windows, and most laptops already come with windows and drivers pre installed. Windows 10 was the first version to have a driver manager that could find the correct drivers for you, still you need to waste a few hours and reboots to get all of the drivers and updates.
As a very casual user, I can say that windows has intuitive solutions to issues that may arise. At least there are some things users can try by just using logic.
In Linux, solving issues requires you to type in the Romanian national anthem backwards, speperated by ; and the ocational “sudo” and “apt get”
If you tried to stumble your way around the UI on Linux you’ll probably find very similar UI paths to solve any issue. The thing is that Linux has several different UIs so when you ask in a forum it’s easier to give you the UI-agnostic solution. Let’s take a common issue with an apparent arcane solution, e.g. change your screen positions. On windows you do this by going start > settings > system > display and adjust them there, on Linux you’ll get given an xrandr command like xrandr --output HDMI-0 --left-of DP-2, but on KDE you go start > system settings > display and monitor and adjust them there, but because you might be using Gnome, Lxde, XFCE, Mate, etc (all of which have a very similarly intuitive path to adjust this) it’s easier to give you a command that does it.
For the first several years I used Linux I almost didn’t touched the terminal, and that was a long time ago so it’s not that it’s not possible or recent, it’s just that because windows has only a single graphical interface you get answers for it, but if you ask things on generic Linux forums you’ll get generic Linux responses, if you had to do things without asking anyone online they’re very much the same.
There is not a single distro where everything works out of the box.
On the other hand, if hardware manufacturers or software developers test their products with one Linux distribution, it will be Ubuntu. So that’s generally the safest bet - and that’s coming from someone who doesn’t use Ubuntu.
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