I think the real time requirement can be relaxed for self contained experiment packages. And given that the shuttle ran a healthy number of student experiments, it’s pretty likely that X system has appeared.
I believe crew laptops for email and stuff are also running non real-time systems.
Well sure, but if i have to figure out what to get, where to get it, how to install a driver from a tar.gz file, maybe i just install ubuntu instead.
I opted for fedora instead, until it died on an nvidia update (as every distro inevitably seems to do with me) and fucked off back to windows. Linux desktop has not treated me well so far in any case.
No need, if Ubuntu works out of the box then Debian also works most of the time. I’ve never had to install drivers for ethernet or wifi. The installer is a bit less graphical, but it will connect in a few “clicks”, even wifi works for the installer.
Yup, and if some bad software wants to create malicious webserver they can not do it as all the ports that are open are used in a legit way. And thus can not really communicate either one or the other way.
A webserver listens on port 80 or 443. Neither port can be claimed by a normal user (no port below 1024 can). But yes if you manage more than your own user on a desktop AND these other users are not allowed to start programs on their own THEN a firewall can be helpful; but this is not a normal situation for a desktop-client, isn’t it?
Because it’s easier, and is more likely to “just work” using only the GUI. That makes it more accessible to people new to it, and as it is perfectly capable once you’re no longer new to it there isn’t much incentive to move away.
Same reason many people choose iPhones, they can just turn it on and use it without thinking or needing to configure it. Meanwhile those with more knowledge who might actively be looking for customisation may prefer another option.
Don’t you just love how with phones you don’t really have one?
Google is breaking their backs locking down Android tighter than a nun’s cooch, and generally enshitifyijg every garbage product they offer. Where’s my third fucking option?
Probably try a raspberry pi one. Custom built and with a custom OS. Not sure if there is a version of Lineage or Graphene that works on it, but that’s an option.
Well, we have a Pink Ubuntu (Hannah Montana Linux), a Red/Black Ubuntu (Satanic Edition), a Salmon Pink Ubuntu (Uwuntu), a White/Gray Ubuntu (Elementary OS), a Blue Ubuntu (Zorin OS), a Yellow/Black Ubuntu (Linux Lite) and an Teal Ubuntu (POP! OS). And I think that KDE Neon could be Purple Ubuntu, but I’m not sure.
I have used Linux since 1993 (Slackware, Suse and Debian) and Ubuntu since 2006. I consider switching back to Debian because I hate snap and other containers for Of-the-Line Software and while I can uninstall snap and install a De-Snapped Firefox directly from Mozilla I hate doing this Extra-Work.
Dudes, even the “newer faster” Firefox-Snap is still taking three times as long to start and uses twice as much memory and on my work computer, a Core2 Q9550 with 8GByte of memory, this is VERY noticable. Yes, the system is old but for work more than enough. My i7 is only for games and I don’t mix work and fun.
Oh, and then there is that old neighbour who is using a Pentium4 3Ghz 3GByte RAM, which is 32Bit only. He is like 80 years old and doesn’t want to buy a new computer and his old rig does everything he wants. Ubuntu simply doesn’t support it anymore. Supporting old computers is something Linux does outstanding (Windows 11 dropping two year old systems is fucking sick)
Because it’s an easy transition to Linux, which is beneficial in numerous ways. If you’re gatekeeping Linux distros, you can kindly leave normal people alone.
Because once one works out that it’s as easy to I use and does everything they need, it’s a lot more expandable and configurable and a lot less advertising intensive than actual windows
Here comes Arch Linux with the parts for a steel chair! Now they’re pulling out the instructions for putting it together! Uh oh, the instructions say what kind of bolts they need, but not how many! Arch is trying to fit it all together anyway! Hmm, looks like some of the assembly steps are missing… ok, Arch has got something that looks like a chair constructed… now they’re going to test it by sitting down… oh, and the chair frame has held together but the seat has fallen off. Arch forgot about not breaking user space again!
And now here comes Gentoo with a… a coal forge? Oh my God he’s forging a steel chair from a metal blank! But what’s this? Hes pulling out a smaller forge to forge a hammer for the bigger forge! The humanity!
The bit about the small forge forging a forge is skewering the Gentoo concept of toolchain bootstrapping.
Problem: how can you claim to have compiled the entire system on your own local machine if you need a compiler to compile a compiler? Where do you get that compiler from?
Solution: Use an external compiler to compile a compiler. Then use that compiler that you just compiled to compile itself again. Then use that second compiler to recompile the rest of the system.
I briefly experimented with it ages ago. And I mean ages ago, like 20+ years ago. Maybe it’s changed somewhat since then, but my understanding is that Gentoo doesn’t provide binary packages. Everything gets compiled from source using exactly the options you want and compiled exactly for your hardware. That’s great and all but it has two big downsides:
Most users don’t need or even want to specify every compile option. The number of compile options to wade through for some packages (e.g. the kernel) is incredibly long, and many won’t be applicable to your particular setup.
The benefits of compiling specifically for your system are likely questionable, and the amount of time it takes to compile can be long depending on your hardware. Bear in mind I was compiling on a Pentium 2 at the time, so this may be a lot less relevant to modern systems. I think it took me something like 12 hours to do the first-time compile when I installed Gentoo, and then some mistake I made in the configuration made me want to reinstall and I just wasn’t willing to sit through that again.
Compiling your own kernel was often useful or even necessary back in the day. I think it was the only package I regularly compiled for myself back then, and I think I was on red hat
And oh my god, here comes Windows with a steel chair! Its a fine chair that almost anyone can sit in, as long as its updated regularly and paid for, or else they take off two of the legs. She whacks you with it, but only with the long end of the chair by default, which really stings. If you prefer to be hit with the flat of the chair, she desperately tries to convince you that being hit with the Edge is better.
Ubuntu was my very first distro and I used it for a year. Maybe it was harsh to say that it sucked ass. When they pushed snaps on me, I started using them and towards the end, my computer got very slow. I’m now on arch btw
Arch is awesome. I use Arch on my laptop. I’ve been thinking about changing my Pop desktop to Arch, but the GFX driver management for Pop is super convenient and I have steam all set up exactly as I want it. I don’t really want to go through all the set-up again.
Real talk, Pop_OS! is just nice. Besides Blackbox and like 3 Gnome Extensions I hadn’t had to change or add anything. It’s a great experience and I recommend it to everyone.
I tried it. Had a bunch of issues with it, like freezes, forcing me to manually reboot. Then I tried Fedora. It’s been great. Still using Fedora. Don’t like the opt-out (rather than opt-in) telemetry they’re planning to add though, but honestly not enough to make me switch
I’ve been using nobara, it’s fedora based and has made me swith from windows to it full-time. I’ve had zero issues with it. You may want to check it out?
(Also iirc it’s made by Glorious Eggroll, the guy who made GE-Proton)
I also used it, and liked it, then Plasma, made it look like Windows 12 (looked like a combination of Windows and macOS), but I’m now on GNOME again. I might use something else in the future tough.
What are your problems exactly? For me, it was that GNOME was more stable and had some trackoad gestures. And on Plasma, something just felt small. I tried changing the text size, but it was still harder to read.
Weird I always have the opposite feeling with KDE: everything is big. Mostly the icons and bar at the bottom. However tbf it might be because I am used to Xfce4 and only recently went back to KDE
I’m sure Arch and Manjaro are worth a try, back in the day I tried RedHat/SuSE/Slackware/Debian/Ubuntu and ended up with Mint Cinnamon.
The closest to Arch I tried was using Debian Sid, but got annoyed when I one time had to battle with getting it up and running after a dist upgrade. I really hope Arch handles those upgrades better.
The most annoying with that upgrade was that the UI changed to an early version of Gnome Shell, I think that prompted me to switch to Mint MATE
From my limited understanding it’s based on Debian instead of Ubuntu (which is based on Debian). The purpose is to have a fallback in the event Canonical snaps Ubuntu out of existence.
Good to hear! My main computer is my desktop, running Mint. (I’m using it right now.) But I also have a Surface Pro 4 that I use for work. It has no problems and works fine on Windows… but I have been wondering if I can move that away from Windows as well. So its encouraging to hear that it has worked for you.
Does Mint have good support for the stylus and touch-screen on the Surface 4? (I imagine the Surface tech might be specialised to Windows a bit, so I wouldn’t be confident those would work immediately in Linux.)
My surface pro 4 still works great with windows also and even though I ran mint on the laptop I used before it I have no intention of replacing windows on the SP4 at least until support for 10 is done.
Even though I don’t use the touchscreen often, it’s not a feature I’d be willing to sacrifice either.
I don’t know about this specifically, but in my experience with Mint, it’s very plug and play with this kind of stuff. I’m always really impressed by just how little setup Mint needs.
Nope, it does not. You can install a kernel made just for surface devices and you’ll get mouse emulation via touch, but Mint doesn’t have Wayland yet and it’s my understanding that Wayland is where all the good things, like gestures, lives. So, I’m waiting for that but it honestly works fine without the touch. I’d use it if it was there, but it’s fine honestly.
That said, I’ve been using Linux/osx as my primary at work for a lot of years now so I’m super unfamiliar with even basic sysadmin stuff on Windows, so I’m happy that the surface is now on Linux. Need to move my desktop to it one day, but I honestly almost never use it.
DragoraGNU/Linux-Libre, an independent GNU/Linux distribution based on concepts of simplicity.
Dyne:bolic a GNU/Linux distribution with special emphasis on audio and video editing. This is a “static” distro, normally run from a live CD. Since it will not receive security updates, it should be used offline.
guix Guix System, an advanced GNU/Linux distro built on top of GNU Guix (pronounced “geeks”), a purely functional package manager for the GNU system.
Hyperbola Hyperbola GNU/Linux-libre, a long-term support simplicity-focused distribution based on Arch GNU/Linux.
Parabola GNU/Linux-libre, a distribution based on Arch that prioritizes simple package and system management.
PureOS, a GNU/Linux distribution based on Debian with a focus on privacy, security, and convenience.
Trisquel, a GNU/Linux distribution based on Ubuntu that’s oriented toward small enterprises, domestic users and educational centers.
Ututo, a GNU/Linux 100% free distribution. It was the first fully free GNU/Linux system recognized by the GNU Project.
I agree with your message of freedom, but please space out your text so it isn’t just a big wall. And don’t recommend distros like Guix, Hyperbola or Parabola to beginners, please…
If you’re a beginner and your hardware supports Linux-Libre, use Trisquel.
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