Distro-hoppers anonymous

ratcheer · 2016-11-16 14:11:47

shadowplay wrote:

Which brings me to Gentoo.
I like the idea of defining what goes into the distro (maybe Arch is better suited!) and the process of compiling for your own h/w has some appeal.
Brings me back to the good ol' days of SuSE 6.x and compiling my own kernel just for the fun :-)

Arch is my primary distro. Gentoo is much better suited to "defining what goes into the distro". It is made with the purpose in mind of generating your own customized Linux kernel. You can do that on Arch, but you have to do some digging. Gentoo even lets you choose your init system. You can do that on Arch, too, but again, it is built to use systemd.

I haven't decided yet what, if anything, I will actually do with Gentoo. But it was a fun exercise getting it installed and configured. I have added Openbox, vim, Firefox, irssi, and a few other goodies.

Tim

Last edited by ratcheer (2016-11-16 14:13:49)

shadowplay · 2016-11-16 18:55:59

ratcheer wrote:

I haven't decided yet what, if anything, I will actually do with Gentoo. But it was a fun exercise getting it installed and configured.
Tim

^Exactly this!

The fun is the journey, not the destination. If nothing else, I'll learn something useful along the way.

As happens every time, I'll end up back with BL as my stable go-to laptop distro.

martix · 2016-11-22 01:32:38

"The fun is the journey, not the destination." - this seems to be also true to the TempleOS guy. Anyone tried it? Such a "different" distro...

Head_on_a_Stick · 2016-11-22 07:28:48

martix wrote:

TempleOS

Awesome, thanks for the link

TempleOS author wrote:

Yes, I wrote the compiler from scratch.

iMBeCil · 2016-11-22 12:09:49

^ Wiki entry for TempeOS

I find entry as quite funny 8o 8o (although, it might be difficult for Terry ...).

Head_on_a_Stick · 2016-11-22 20:14:06

I'm getting there with my 9front system...

I have actually managed to install it on the bare metal of my Haswell laptop \o/

The graphics and ethernet card are supported and it boots up just fine in UEFI mode (!) -- it was a simple matter of copying (and re-naming) their Bootx64.efi UEFI loader binary over to the Arch EFI system partition (mounted to /boot in Arch) then creating a boot menu entry with this systemd-boot configuration file:

# /boot/loader/9front.conf
title 9front
efi /9front/9front.efi

The installer set up the networking and it was connected at first boot (yay!) and I managed to try the awesome mothra(1) browser, it's like w3m but more polished and views the pages by mounting them to the filesystem using webfs(4) 8)

Unfortunately, /lib/ndb/local was changed for some reason and it won't connect now so I've been trying to set it up manually but the instructions are... technical, to say the least:

http://fqa.9front.org/fqa6.html#6

I love this OS, it is fascinating.

martix · 2016-11-22 21:34:53

iMBeCil wrote:

^ Wiki entry for TempeOS
I find entry as quite funny 8o 8o (although, it might be difficult for Terry ...).

There is that fine line between being a genius and a complete moron... Anyhow I find this distro awesome - in a very peculiar way though. Never heard of 9Front before, but it looks interesting too...

Head_on_a_Stick · 2016-11-29 21:26:56

Now that the transition freeze is in place for the testing branch, I have installed Debian stretch on the family laptop alongside jessie.

I put it on a btrfs subvolume within the jessie system and installed it following https://www.debian.org/releases/jessie/ … 03.html.en 'cos I couldn't be bothered messing around with partitioners or ISO images.

I decided to spread the bug-catching wings wide and install the GNOME desktop, stretch will have version 3.20 for the release and it looks very nice indeed, I will post some scrots later.

The $DEPENDENT_MINOR has volunteered to be a bug catcher and tester for Chromium, GIMP, KolourPaint, MineCraft (well, java-jre anyway) and a few other programs

In a surprise victory for the GNOME team, said user declared their desktop to be excellent to use and much better than my custom PekWM/lxpanel desktop. Ah well

No problems have shown up. So far.

EDIT: forgot to mention that I wasted 45 minutes using `rsync` to clone /home from jessie to stretch then, just as it was finishing, realised that `btrfs snapshot` would have done the same job instantly...

Last edited by Head_on_a_Stick (2016-11-29 21:35:01)

BLizgreat! · 2016-11-29 23:07:16

Hmmm hmmmmhmmmmhmmmmhmmm. Comes into thread, sets up chair, takes out fishing pole, time to cast and see what's I catchy.

Anyone heard of this thing ? Nother info link. Which explains somewhat what it is. Thing natively supports ZFS, which gnu/Nix apparently doesn't and supposedly never will directly, while available via fuse/hack.

No real experience with either ZFS, nor Btrfs. Been on the 2do for quite awhile, though often the 2do is over-ridden by the 2lazy file on my system. However ... by throwing a properly baited hook into this digital pond, figured I might catch something. Ie: Like a HOAS perchance.

Recent ZFS vs Btrfs and supposedly why ZFS is mostly better than the other ( though dated 1+ years ago, which in tech could mean it's now prehistoric) ... link.

Vll!

Afterthought babble, sighs. HOAS is no fish and guess there'll pretty much never be a substitute for 1st hand, do it ye damnself'ing. More sighs + consensus seems to be eventually Btrfs will be the bomb diggity anyway and is fully open sourced. Will try to schedule btrfs in for a luncheon or summin.

Last edited by BLizgreat! (2016-11-29 23:20:47)

Head_on_a_Stick · 2016-11-30 07:22:33

btrfs ftw!

The zfs licence is evil

EDIT: I suppose I should note that Debian has decided to allow zfs into the distribution (boo! hiss!) but the user has to build an evil custom kernel module themselves to get it to work:

http://blog.halon.org.uk/2016/01/on-zfs-in-debian/

Last edited by Head_on_a_Stick (2016-11-30 07:26:24)

Head_on_a_Stick · 2016-11-30 07:39:57

BLwillbegreat! wrote:

this

Interesting; I tried the proprietary version:

http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/serve … index.html

I had to run it in VESA mode on my Intel hardware but it will apparently run OK with NVIDIA cards, they even have a blob for them.

It's a true UNIX environment, fully certified POSIX compliant

BLizgreat! · 2016-11-30 18:44:08

^Thanks as ever Hoas, seems I just have to kick back and follow along in your footsteps a lot of times. Glad to have gotten feedback from someone who's actually had 1st hand experience with something. Was mostly just curious, as it seems more a novelty OS, than anything someone would use as a daily driver type.

Interesting info I hadn't known about Debian + zfs either, so thanks again. Not surprisingly looks like you've opted for the up and comer filesystem anyway. Keep reading btrfs is eventually going to surpass zfs and that's it's totally fine for personal applications currently regardless.

Going to fire up gparted on live media and setup a btrfs partition just to play around with it. Sorry for the off-topicness. Still burnt out on the distrohop myself, got to the point where it's pretty much, gnu/Linux is gnu/Linix is gnu/Linux here. Despite whoevers default configs or selection of apps/utils they opt to use in it.

Vll!

Last edited by BLizgreat! (2016-11-30 18:45:14)

g33zr · 2016-12-05 23:58:40

After several years of distro-hopping, I confess to returning to Ubuntu...yes, Ubuntu. I'm not a true geek or a devoted Linux tinkerer. Of all the distros I've tried, I think that Ubuntu is the most polished and finished both in design and function. Moreover, Unity, despite its many critics, is brilliant in that you don't need a menu per se. All you need to do is type a letter or two and presto, there is your app, unless you already have a keyboard shortcut for it. Flame suit on. ]:D

Head_on_a_Stick · 2016-12-06 07:24:38

g33zr wrote:

Unity, despite its many critics, is brilliant in that you don't need a menu per se. All you need to do is type a letter or two and presto, there is your app, unless you already have a keyboard shortcut for it.

They have dmenu in Unity now?

8o

Last edited by Head_on_a_Stick (2016-12-06 07:27:33)

pvsage · 2016-12-06 10:05:29

As you know, I remain faithful to Vanilla Debian LXDE, but I'm taking a brief test-drive of Puppy Slacko 6.3.2. So far, I don't hate it...but it ain't Debian.

dolly · 2016-12-07 19:53:43

SparkyLinux 4.5 is released. The minimal GUI iso comes with OpenBox, and is the comfortable and lazy way to sid.

https://sparkylinux.org/sparkylinux-4-5-is-out/

balloon · 2016-12-08 08:37:49

^ That panel is fbpanel. MinimalGUI has recently been adopted:

Recently I learned about MiyoLinux. It is a derivation of Devuan (and Refracta tools):
http://miyolinux.weebly.com/

Recently Devuan derived has a lightweight release. It will come out further in 2017...

Oh, my PC contains BL! Please be relieved.

Edit: add MiyoLinux Link and Fixed derivation

Last edited by Head_on_a_Stick (2016-12-09 07:29:47)

brontosaurusrex · 2016-12-08 09:15:55

▲ It is just amazing how ugly (most) distros are by default.

Head_on_a_Stick · 2016-12-11 00:09:41

Debian stretch is running well, Xorg was updated to 1.19 so is now ahead of Arch (although they have it in [staging]) and everything seems to run very well on this old, slow AMD laptop.

To increase security, I am using unbound for DNS queries, it was very easy to get up & running:

# apt install unbound
# systemctl enable unbound --now
# echo "nameserver 127.0.0.1" > /etc/resolv.conf

I have also enabled AppArmor, a form of Mandatory Access Control, again fairly simple to set up:

https://debian-handbook.info/browse/sta … armor.html

The profiles still need to be configured, ofc 8)

Finally, I have removed sudo and restricted the use of `su` to those in the "wheel" group (just like in the *BSDs) by adding this line to /etc/pam.d/su:

auth		required	pam_wheel.so use_uid

The "wheel" group has to be created and the user added to it:

# groupadd wheel && gpasswd -a $USER wheel

Then the root account can be disabled to prevent logins:

# passwd -l root

mrneilypops · 2016-12-15 17:32:53

MX-16! CHECK IT OUT!

https://mxlinux.org/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1YZYGBqSOcA

#441 2016-11-16 14:11:47

Re: Distro-hoppers anonymous

#442 2016-11-16 18:55:59

Re: Distro-hoppers anonymous

#443 2016-11-22 01:32:38

Re: Distro-hoppers anonymous

#444 2016-11-22 07:28:48

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#445 2016-11-22 12:09:49

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#446 2016-11-22 20:14:06

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#447 2016-11-22 21:34:53

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#448 2016-11-29 21:26:56

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#449 2016-11-29 23:07:16

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#450 2016-11-30 07:22:33

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#451 2016-11-30 07:39:57

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#452 2016-11-30 18:44:08

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#453 2016-12-05 23:58:40

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#454 2016-12-06 07:24:38

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#455 2016-12-06 10:05:29

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#456 2016-12-07 19:53:43

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#457 2016-12-08 08:37:49

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#458 2016-12-08 09:15:55

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#459 2016-12-11 00:09:41

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#460 2016-12-15 17:32:53

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