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The Ubuntu blog has a report on installation metrics:
We first announced our intention to ask users to provide basic, not-personally-identifiable system data back in February. Since then we have built the Ubuntu Report tool and integrated it in to the Ubuntu 18.04 LTS initial setup tool. You can see an example of the data being collected on the Ubuntu Report Github page.
At first login users are asked if they would like to send the information gathered and can preview that data if they wish.
One thing to point out is that this data is entirely from Ubuntu Desktop installs only and does not include users of Ubuntu Server, Ubuntu Core, our cloud images, or any of the Ubuntu derivatives that do not include the ubuntu-report software in their installer.
For example, the average install took 18 minutes, but some systems were able to install in less than 8 minutes. Available RAM was most frequently reported at 4GB followed closely by 8GB, but there were systems reporting in with as little as 1GB and as much as 128GB.
How do your system(s) compare?
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 24 2018, @09:01PM (11 children)
Well, none of mine run bloody Ubuntu for a start...
For Gits and Shiggles¹ I've just finished installing Tiny Core Linux on a HP t5520 thin client -- CPU: VIA Eden 800 MHz, RAM: 128 MB, HD: 64 MB Flash
¹ I say that, but sad to say, it's one of the only things I've got left in my (s)crap pile with a serial port, and I need something urgently tonight that I can plonk on the network to allow for remote monitoring of the serial debug output of a bit of equipment...the ability to connect a USB camera to the bugger for visual monitoring is a bit of a bonus.
(Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Sunday June 24 2018, @09:20PM (10 children)
I run Ubuntu MATE 16.04 on Win7 using Virtualbox (yeah, I know it should be the opposite, and I plan to make the move after verifying that my killer apps will work) with 2GB RAM allocated to the virtual machine. Works like a champ, no slowdown in either OS, hell, Ubuntu in a 2GB VM is snappier than Win7 with 6GB left over. One of the things I've been meaning to do is go 100% Linux but that will take considerable effort given that I don't have a lot of patience for fiddling nowadays. I'm still pissed as fuck about Compiz-fusion not staying up to date with all of its rad effects, it leaves me convinced that the people responsible for maintaining it have been compromised by fifth-columnists who want to keep the lackluster Crapple OS-GayseX as the "prettiest" OS. One of the more noticeable and huge advantages of desktop Linux is that it boots way fucking faster and usably than Microsoft Trash.
It seems with Win7 Microsoft has come full-circle back into the Win98 days when periodic reinstalls were the norm. Even with safe habits it's easy to shit up Win7 over time and it becomes slower, and having to install LabVIEW and other NI garbage probably ain't helping the speed. There's no excuse for periodic slowdowns on a machine with 8GB ram that isn't rendering or otherwise running computationally-intensive simulations. Even an XP box could run Cubase 5 recording in full-duplex without causing anything else to choke.
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Sunday June 24 2018, @10:10PM (4 children)
When you complete your switch to linux, i'll say "Welcome to the dark side... we have Hamantaschen", then you'll shoot me and say "Mazel tov".
We'll have good times, as we always do. :)
Seriously... yes, make the switch!
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Sunday June 24 2018, @11:01PM (3 children)
Actually that's a good idea for a follow-up discussion or poll: Which killer apps besides games (though game discussions would be welcome from the perspective of a WINE/VM standpoint) are keeping you running windows?
I do know as fact that Military and other government organizations such as the VA are still running dos apps(run on a more advanced OS, but still). I'll state the more obvious ones:
- Office (Openoffice and derivatives have made great progress but still blow ass)
- DAWS such as Cubase (yeah, they and other killer apps run on Mac, but that's not my point)
- Scientific applications? (this is probably the domain that has made the greatest progress supporting UNIX/Linux: Matlab, LabVIEW, etc.). Of course Unix and Linux have had historically strong association with scientific applications and any Embedded Linux dev would be batshit insane to dev in Windows.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 25 2018, @07:34AM (2 children)
> Which killer apps besides games (though game discussions would be welcome from the perspective of a WINE/VM standpoint) are keeping you running windows?
In descending order of importance, Total Commander, IrfanView, Winamp.
I tried a bunch of FOSS alternatives for these three, and all of them sucked. Most of the functionality is there, sure, but man they're clunky :/ I dread the day when I'll have to move away from my Win7, as Win10 is just... no. I'm fervently hoping that at least Total Commander will eventually get a Linux port, as running a file manager through Wine is, uh, not ideal.
Some other applications that are not critical but are much nicer than their Linuxy counterparts: DisplayFusion, TortoiseSVN/TortoiseGit, Notepad++, Process Explorer, wgnuplot (... why?), WinSCP, uTorrent 2.2.1 (what do you mean it's from 2011?), Everything (clarification: that's the name of the application, I don't mean "all software")...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 25 2018, @08:39PM
File manager? ls, mv, rm, find and/or xargs - that's all you need to know., The man pages have everything, just make sure to use the docs that shipped with your distro or you might run into some strangeness due to differing implementations. Learn a shell, any shell (except csh). You'll never think GUI shit is elegant or powerful or has killer features again. Music software is hard to recommend as it seems there's no clear best for everyone and it's down to personal preferences regarding features, display, and styling. I think winamp runs in wine though IIRC (wasn't there an article with a lot of discussion about this a month or two ago?). As for wgnuplot, maybe it's using Qt on windows and your distro ships a gtk version? If it's not too big you might just want to try building it yourself with some different configuration settings. For everything else, either never heard of or I just can't understand why you would ever think that was better. Task management, version control, backups, and ssh should be done with aliases and functions and cron jobs/modern init. My transmission-daemon is sitting on a huge pile of scripts that I've fine-tuned to the point that I only use a client when I run into more windows jackasses putting all kinds of unmentionable shit into filenames and breaking my automation.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 25 2018, @08:43PM
Containerized VMs would probably work for most of the stuff if newer versions don't break compatability too badly. You could even do file management with some sshfs hackery and proper attention to security.
(Score: 5, Informative) by LoRdTAW on Sunday June 24 2018, @11:48PM (4 children)
tl;dr Windows 10 and Linux are both a hot mess.
Ha. I'm in the Same boat. I've been making some more connections and doing some interesting side work which is all industrial automation related which is all windows only. So every time I think about my 100% perfectly fine windows 7 box that happily hums away is ever inching to the windows 10 abyss, I get some serious anxiety. And it's a shame because 10 offers me nothing over windows 7. And I know this because I run windows 10 at work and it can go jump in a fucking fire.
It has this dreaded glitch where explorer does not update the directory contents after performing a file system operation such as creating a new directory. you click the new folder button and you have to press F5 to manually refresh the directory contents, even in file dialogue boxes. and the print spooler likes to randomly shit the bed to the point where I have a fucking script on my desktop that I run as admin to stop and then restart the print spooler and any associated printing services. updated every bloody print driver and purged old drivers and nada, spooler still dies. Piece of shit architecture that services idiocy. Why arent they regular windows processes? "Oh that was our brilliant idea to reduce memory foot print, services are light weight dll processes hosted by a single service process" fucking stupid. Same with the registry. Why not an actual file tree like /etc? NOPE! Fuck you we engineered the fuck outta that problem by make a file system in a file that needs its own shell and uses an api interface. and god help you if it's corrupted (thankfully ultra rare these days). the fetid crust is still thick in that mess of an os. rant off.
I do use Linux but it is fast becoming a bloated mess itself. And no automation vendor takes Linux on the desktop serious. Embedded real-time linux? Of course! Plenty of that: Delta Tau, National Instruments, Siemens, Opto22, MKS Instruments, etc. Linux desktop support tools like IDE's, programming tools, diagnostic tools, programmers, etc? HA! Nope! Windows only chump. You just cant get the hell away from it.
On the down side, Linux is getting more and more windows like by the day. The kernel is a bloated mess along with the rest of user space thanks to system derp. I've had tons of issues with USB drives hanging, dropping off, all sorts of instabilities. I also run a raid 5 using mdadm which itself is now a complex fickle mess that tries to figure out everything plugged in because it's so much smarter than you only to fall flat on it's face and drop random disks off the array. smart says nothing. Maybe shit hardware? who knows! Linux kinda sucks now. Then again, I haven't tried gentoo, arch, or slack in a long, long time. Maybe they are better distros with tweaked kernels
but my patience for tweaking/building linux installs is long gone. Gimme a clean, stable base with a lean kernel, a simple GUI and i'll handle the rest.
And I don't have that behavior on the windows machine. then again, the linux box is its an older AMD A8 and the windows machine an older i7 2600k. Maybe the amd drivers or hardware is shit. The stability just isn't there anymore. Perhaps a linux mint is the issue but I doubt they stray far from vanilla kernel sources. just disappointing. I've used openBSD and it feels like a solid unix platform that has enough modern stuff to the point where I can play you tube videos on old IBM Thinkpads. But again, takes more patience, hardware support isnt as broad, and getting a useable desktop takes patience I dont have.
(Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Monday June 25 2018, @12:05AM (1 child)
I see you don't work for the military industrial complex. Take your problems, magnify them by a thousand, and that's your daily routine.
Or maybe you do, and you've been blessed with some form of admin access. I remember those good ol' days.
(Score: 3, Informative) by LoRdTAW on Monday June 25 2018, @12:15AM
We're a job-shop at the far edge of that complex but DFARS had made everything a pain in the ass. Though getting compliant wasnt hard, just very annoying.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 25 2018, @12:18AM
"Help us Google Fuchsia, you're our only hope."
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 26 2018, @01:36AM
You can only choose one.
Gentoo and Slackware were good picks since neither will make you use "system derp". Disclaimer: I run Gentoo with OpenRC.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by frojack on Sunday June 24 2018, @09:25PM (41 children)
First this:
Then This:
Conclusion: Well over half are Distro Tourists.
These folks have nothing to do on these machines except install distros, play with them, nuke and redo.
They have no data on the machine they are interested in saving, and probably no actual use of the machine except to install linux.
To a LOT of people, running linux only means installing linux linux over and over, trying out different distros, mistaking wallpaper for functionality, rinsing and repeating.
Only 25% of Ubuntu installers were upgrading (Presumably from Ubuntu).
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Dr Spin on Sunday June 24 2018, @09:50PM (14 children)
A lot of people do not keep the only copy of their data on a hard disk, especially an laptop hard disk. Some people keep their data in the cloud,
and some use tape backup. A lot use external hard drives, USB sticks, and yes, even DVDs.
Personally, I almost always install an OS as a clean install, often on a bigger H/D than the previous one. Then I restore the data into
a separate /home partition.
I have enough LTO tapes to fill a station wagon (old shape Mini ;-), and some external H/Ds.
I do not have any copies of Windows, since I last used it over 10 years ago.
Warning: Opening your mouth may invalidate your brain!
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Sunday June 24 2018, @10:13PM (8 children)
Absotutely....
i backup and then install, sometimes going with established partitions, sometimes letting the distro decide (usually letting the distro decide to see what it does, and then either going with it or rejecting it and going with existing partitions.
I liked Ubuntu One storage: wish they hadn't gotten rid of it. Then again, i've moved on from Ubuntu.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Sunday June 24 2018, @11:06PM (7 children)
Serious non-troll question: Which distro(that Just Works™) is better than Ubuntu for the common-man? Don't you dare say "Debian" and don't you dare say "Mint."
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 24 2018, @11:59PM
DebianDebianDebianDebianDebianMint Mint Mint Mint Mint
The family tree goes like this:
Debian=> (Ubuntu) => Mintand then you have quite a few reasonable alternatives to distros that actually work: Solus, Linux Lite, Elementary, ...
(Score: 3, Informative) by Apparition on Monday June 25 2018, @12:05AM (2 children)
Solus Linux [solus-project.com] is pretty good. It's a polished, rolling release Linux distro built entirely from scratch, and is intended out of the box for home use. Solus Linux is light, only installs with one program per job (no half dozen browsers or image viewers, etc.), and includes proprietary graphics card drivers, (necessary since many Solus users are video gamers). It includes the Budgie, GNOME, and MATE graphic environments. However, there are a couple of "buts." Solus Linux only has a couple of developers, uses its own in-house packaging system (eopkg), and their own packages repository. As such, built software packages for stuff that isn't commonly used home programs is rare, and their packages repository has gone down at least once for several hours this past year.
Try it, see if you like it. Personally, I think Solus Linux is not quite ready yet, but it has a lot of promise and seems to be the best "common man" Linux distribution that isn't Ubuntu nor based on Ubuntu. As such, I've been contributing $$ per month to their Patreon for a little while now. Their Patreon has already let them hire two full-time developers, so hopefully it'll improve in the packages department soon.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Monday June 25 2018, @01:40AM
I like Solus / Budgie as well.
I do worry about the developer though, he seems to have a minor case of de Raadt disease complicates putrescence of Poettering.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 25 2018, @10:21PM
I wanted to try Solus back when it was newer just because that DE looked real pretty and it wasn't in any other distro's repo, but the Marvell ATA drivers for the SSD in my laptop weren't in their kernel, weren't in a year later, and probably still aren't. Quite a few distros do that, probably because the default kernel make config doesn't include them and saving a few kb is obviously more important than shipping a kernel that works for more than the main dev. Who needs drivers for popular wifi dongles? Bluetooth HID? Nah, if I have to compile my own kernel to get past the second screen in your gui installer I'll run something with a bit more sense about how to put shit together.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Gaaark on Monday June 25 2018, @12:20AM (1 child)
All I've run recently (the last 2ish years) is Manjaro, a nice Arch derivative.
Systemd, though, unfortunately.
ONLY one single problem in all that time: make sure you install and keep a second stable kernel. One update gave me a bad kernel (not all the modules I needed) and I was left unbooting.
Fortunately they give you a GUI tool to install any kernel you need.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 2) by frojack on Monday June 25 2018, @12:57AM
Agreed.
Been running Manjaro (rolling along since 06/2016) on their stable branch. (I keep a testing VM around as well).
I don't think I've had a single update that didn't work correctly.
On Stable branch, Manjaro is a Punctuated Rolling Release. Install it once and get periodic but not scheduled updates when ever the Devs are sure that everything went from Unstable, through Testing and arrived at Stable. I also run a Windows Server in Virtualbox under Manjaro.
You want full rolling, then run Manjaro's Unstable branch, which is really quite stable because it comes from Arch Stable.
They have different flavors of Desktops, Officially: KDE/Plasma, XFCE, Gnome, and Community Spins: LXDE, Deepin, Mate, Mint, Bungie, i3 etc, etc, a variety of Kernels, and easy switching.
And YES, its systemd, which means it just works, and everything is under your control, fully opensource, pretty well documented (finally) and transportable across Distros.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 25 2018, @11:37AM
PCLinuxOS, on the whole, for my general purpose desktop machines, just works, and works consistently across disparate hardware out of the box without tweaking.
I will say that the only real issues I've had with it recently is the borking of the nvidia drivers (no, nouveau isn't a serious option..finding it lurking in the initrd was a bit of a pain), and their separation of the libreoffice updater from the main synaptic package update mechanism is a bit weird and can lead to breakages which need the offline installer to be run to fix.
As I said, ok for general purpose desktops, code development? apart from the occasional install of stuff from source that isn't in the PCLinuxOS repos, I still do all serious code friggery on Devuan, Slackware and BSD boxes.
(Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Sunday June 24 2018, @11:19PM (4 children)
Is that really still done nowadays? Are CIOs still stuck in the seventies and eighties? I'm asking unironically because I'm not a part of this business.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by takyon on Monday June 25 2018, @07:37AM
LTO Tape Sales Remain Steady [soylentnews.org]
IBM Claims Densest Tape Storage Record [soylentnews.org] (330 TB uncompressed)
LTO-11 (96 TB) and LTO-12 (192 TB) Added to Tape Cartridge Roadmap [soylentnews.org] (also uncompressed)
As long as they can keep making relatively cheap and very dense tapes, it will still be around for years to come.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 25 2018, @07:50AM (1 child)
Tape backup: Expensive purchase, cheap to do daily backups while keeping them for a long time, easy to bring off site.
Does anything beat tape backup for corporate use?
Personally I use a hard drive for backup, but I don't have a need to be able to go back to Friday last month. A While a hard drive is much cheaper than a tape drive, once you need several generations of backups, hard drives quickly become more expensive than tapes.
And forget anything that smells of "cloud", unless you want to spend the rest of your life documenting how everything is under your control, until something happens and you find out that no, it isn't. Like, when you cloud backup provider goes bankrupt and you need to restore a backup from six months ago, where is that backup now? Hopefully you have a tape backup of your cloud backup.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 25 2018, @10:55PM
For cheap backups I managed to luck up and come across a lot of refurbished HD's that came from a data center that was upgrading. They've been put to work in the past and can be noisy but less than ten dollars a terabyte and they're basically just redundant mostly read only storage. New snapshots get added in on a scripted schedule and kept up with a local torrent syncing them between my old raspis that have been retired to media center boards.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 25 2018, @07:45PM
i don't know where you people come from, but tapes never even went away. to say they are "still done nowadays" is to never have noticed they remained in place and stable and reliable, while the world around them changed, got replaced, or had been forced to upgrade.
it used to be that the "people new to IT" would say this stuff about tapes, because the computer their dad bought them or the one the family used .. those things aren't coming with a tape drive. and you are too old to have just found out that the business world uses something besides gamer notebooks and ultrabooks that have no tape slots.
(Score: 2) by Arik on Sunday June 24 2018, @10:12PM (12 children)
If you setup your partitions right you don't lose any data, you can have more certainty that the OS is correctly installed when you're done, and it's often faster as well.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Ethanol-fueled on Sunday June 24 2018, @11:08PM (4 children)
It's 2018. Periodic reinstalls should not be necessary for any operating system. Fetishists enjoy the process of reinstalling, normal folk like me don't.
(Score: 2) by Arik on Sunday June 24 2018, @11:16PM (1 child)
Sorry man, that just sounds dumb.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2) by frojack on Monday June 25 2018, @01:03AM
Doesn't take longer. Especially if you follow your own prescription and set up your partitions right.
In production, I run a rolling release (Manjaro) and a Periodic Release (Opensuse). Manjaro is WAY easier to maintain and keep current.
Opensuse is becoming wackier and more problematic with each release (every 18 months).
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 25 2018, @01:03AM
"it's $CURRENT_YEAR"
mate, that doesn't matter, it's not like the various issues of long-standing OS installs disappeared
mind you, I haven't absolutely had to reinstall anything in a while, other than a Windows 10 machine (bleh) that was choking on its own ass trying to update itself and getting nowhere quickly
but in terms of various small issues piling up over time, sure -- some shit doesn't install or uninstall correctly, various settings alterations you made forever ago or some program you used to use had causing issues, package conflicts (because of pure human oversight), disk usage piling up (annoying on Windows in particular)
these aren't the issues of ten years ago, these are issues that happen right now
(Score: 2) by Nerdfest on Monday June 25 2018, @04:06AM
I upgraded on every release of Kubuntu for five years without a problem, as a data point. I eventually reinstalled as I upgraded to SSDs. Exceptionally stable as well (now).
(Score: 2) by frojack on Monday June 25 2018, @01:26AM (6 children)
Not at all.
More certainty? Seriously?
Do it your way and there is a week worth of chasing small-ish packages you added along the way which neither you or your notes will remember, and your fresh install won't include. Because you forgot them, you also forgot the configuration files for them that reside in /etc or /var/lib, or some such place, so now you are making multiple passes through your backups retrieving config files.
If you let the system update, it will update everything you previously had installed, handle new and old dependencies and warn you about all manor of pitfalls, point out to you the packages for which you have no updates because they were dropped from the distro, or what ever.
So no. I would rather update in place. I have my partitions set up properly, my private data is in a separate partition and I have full backups. I find I NEED my backups far fewer times doing an in-place upgrade.
I used to do it your way. Its Much More work your way.
Also the Ubuntu Blog differentiates between "Erase Device and Reinstall" and "Erase existing and Reinstall". I read Erase Device as nuke the entire machine from orbit. That's 53% all by itself. Not likely to be "people who know what they are doing". People who don't know what they are doing nuke and reinstall. Because they aren't confident enough of their skills to manage anything else.
Their "Manual" category (21%) sounds like people who might actually know what they are doing.
(Quite frankly, I don't know what they mean by this "erase" word they continue to use.)
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Arik on Monday June 25 2018, @01:58AM (4 children)
"Do it your way and there is a week worth of chasing small-ish packages you added along the way which neither you or your notes will remember, and your fresh install won't include. Because you forgot them, you also forgot the configuration files for them that reside in /etc or /var/lib, or some such place, so now you are making multiple passes through your backups retrieving config files."
Nope.
Seriously, I don't know what else to say. I've been doing it this way for decades and that has literally never happened.
"If you let the system update"
Then you should just forget about security entirely. No point at all in patching the little cracks and crevices when you have deliberately opened a grand-canyon sized gap in your fortifications already.
It's crazy to think people actually go along with such an insane idea.
"I used to do it your way. Its Much More work your way."
Yeah, nah, it just isn't.
I'm not saying it's always quicker, but that's a strong tendency.
It's definitely not more work than trying to fix the corrupted system you get when you discover a flaw in your upgrade-in-place routine.
"Also the Ubuntu Blog differentiates between "Erase Device and Reinstall" and "Erase existing and Reinstall". I read Erase Device as nuke the entire machine from orbit. That's 53% all by itself. Not likely to be "people who know what they are doing"."
Even people who know what they're doing might install Ubuntu occasionally, for reasons.
"(Quite frankly, I don't know what they mean by this "erase" word they continue to use.)"
Yeah, that just tells me the people that wrote the installer didn't know what they are doing.
Given those options, you're right, manual would be the only sane thing to try.
When I say nuke and reinstall, I mean you format your system partitions and install the OS.
There's no need to damage any data or call for backups unless you hit the wrong button somewhere...
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2) by frojack on Monday June 25 2018, @06:55PM (3 children)
Are you intentionally being daft? Or do you run such a crap distro that you can't even trust it to upgrade one kernel to the next without opening security holes?
How about one CONCRETE example where an inplace system-upgrade opens a security hole that a fresh install doesn't?
Do you even know how this process works these days? Because it sounds like you don't. Or your distro is utterly brain dead. Or you've been nuking for 30 years and have no clue how well the auto upgrades work.
You do realize that an in-place upgrade retains all your configurations and settings? They are saved where ever possible, and warned about where not possible. Those ports you blocked in the firewall are still blocked by the upgraded firewall. Those permissions you set are still set. Your MTA is still properly configured with the proper certificates. Old kernels are replaced with new, but fall-back copies are retained.
NONE of that happens when you Nuke and Reinstall. NONE of it. You have to recreate it from scratch. And you WILL forget something.
You tell me you've never forgotten ANYTHING in 30 years of nuke-and-install, and I'm going to call you a liar.
You've already stated you've nuked for decades. So how the fuck would you know nothing else works and security holes are created? Bullshit of the highest order.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by Arik on Monday June 25 2018, @08:38PM (2 children)
Are you?
"Or do you run such a crap distro that you can't even trust it to upgrade one kernel to the next without opening security holes?"
That's daft right there. You're implying that only a 'crap distro' could get pwned. That's just bullshit. If your security is based on such bullshit then it's bullshit too!
Trust and secure just don't mix. Trusting a server outside of your control to alter running systems however it sees fit - now that's truly daft.
"Do you even know how this process works these days?"
Like a finely polished turd, I am sure.
"You do realize that an in-place upgrade retains all your configurations and settings?"
That's one of the many ways they wind up causing trouble, too. There's no guarantee the old configuration files are even in a compatible format with the new software! But worse than that it may have changed subtly, and old directives are interpreted in different ways... it's better to keep your modifications separately.
"NONE of that happens when you Nuke and Reinstall. NONE of it."
Happily so.
"You tell me you've never forgotten ANYTHING in 30 years of nuke-and-install, and I'm going to call you a liar."
Sure, I've forgotten things. I've nuked and reinstalled many hundreds, probably several thousand times, I've spent a few hours on minor issues caused by forgetfulness, sure.
I've upgraded in place using distros that are built for it (Debian, Redhat, others) a few hundred times as well. I've spent a lot more time cleaning up those messes, out of a much smaller sample. I've seen subtle corruption caused by that process on several occasions, and full on trash the disk and halt the system failure once. On good machines, as shown by the fact that after a nuke and reinstall there was no problem. So I've used that in certain situations where I saw an advantage, but even then, I sometimes wound up regretting it.
So no, I'm not bullshitting at all. It's true that most of my experience with those systems is from past years, when they were less mature, so they may well be more polished than what I've worked with, but the fundamental idea is still flawed, and it's still this massive complicated system to do something that just isn't really needed to begin with, and certainly could not be permitted to exist under any reasonable security policy on top of that.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 25 2018, @11:47PM (1 child)
I won't deny that apt is a steaming pile of shit and I've loathed debian-based systems and other automagical "package managers" that invariably always manage to fuck something up, but I don't think that's the result of upgrading in place as much as having systems that try to do way too much. Once a system tries to do automatic dependency resolution and removal and incompatible packages and saving the user from being stupid it will invariably fuck shit up for anyone who has their own idea about how something should work. Crux, which is source-based, has the simplest and sanest package management I've seen in any linux distro (it's very similar to the BSD pkg utils but a step further in the right direction IMO). Every package is literally a bog-standard shell script that can be read and modified by anyone with a modicum of experience. The packages are normal tarballs with an index file generated when the package is built that checks for file collisions and adds them to the index. Every command dealing with installing and removing packages can be forced through the few safeguards which are in place. Making a new package is as simple as writing a file with the same commands you would to build it on the normal interactive commandline in a function called build with a name and version variable defined. I don't run Crux anymore myself, but I still use their packaging tools to build easily deployed and modifiable root tarballs from scratch and I highly recommend them to anyone looking for sane utilities that enable that kind of workflow.
(Score: 2) by Arik on Tuesday June 26 2018, @01:40AM
Very, very true. And yes, that's not exactly what we were talking about, but it is related. Package managers suck. The more they do the more they suck. And they're fundamentally wrong-headed, really. What's the problem this is supposed to solve? In the end there are a lot of them, but most are better solved with other tools, or else not even really a problem. So often the problem is really 'I don't understand X' and then the solution is not 'I will learn how to X' instead it is 'I will build Y, which will allow me to continue to be ignorant of X.' Yeah, that's not actually such a great method of solving problems.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 25 2018, @07:29AM
Exactly.
This is the reason that I refuse to reinstall, no matter what. I have almost 20 years worth of customization (I installed from scratch in late 1998 or early 1999), everything is customized to my liking, and it's going to take a looooong time before I'm happy with everything.
(Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Sunday June 24 2018, @11:16PM (2 children)
If any of them are like me, they're trying to find alternatives to Ubuntu, then they realize for various reasons that the rest suck for versatility (unless they enjoy fiddling and use their Linux for a couple of tasks like being a server, or Linux development).
I gave up on that long ago. When I have to use Linux, it's some derivative of Ubuntu.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 24 2018, @11:53PM
I've been on Mint for just on/over 10 years. My only Ubuntu 18.04 is in a VM - my Distro Tourist contribution to the world. It gave me insights since April into what to expect in Mint 19.
I have found Mint is to Ubuntu like Manjaro is to Arch - makes things actually work without drama. Manjaro takes the masochistic insanity out from Arch so it is usable by normal humans, Mint take Ubuntu's "innovative" not-spyware addons and some other poor decisions out of the picture. I did tour Manjaro as a full install for 2 months on one laptop, but it stands on the verge of being wiped with Mint 19, nice as Manjaro may be there are too many niggles.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 25 2018, @01:57AM
I'm on a parallel track to your thinking:
They're nuking their "free" copy of Windoze.
They
-got new hardware (which only ships with Windoze)
-have no use for Windoze
-have already used Ubuntu on another machine and are happy with it
.
Another scenario:
They don't trust Windoze at all (but are forced to use it for some task) and don't want a drive with any MICROS~1 crap on it in the box when their Linux install is also there.
(Removable drives: 1 with Windoze; 1 with Linux)
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 25 2018, @12:56AM (3 children)
If VM installs are included, then there'd be a lot of skew with people setting up VMs from scratch.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Monday June 25 2018, @01:27AM (2 children)
Most of those installs into VMs can safely be assumed to be tourists.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 25 2018, @10:27AM (1 child)
Cross platform development / QA and per distro packaging seems more likely than tourism TBH.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Monday June 25 2018, @07:06PM
Those tasks amount to less than 1% of the Linux userbase, which in itself is something like 2% of PC ussers.
So yeah, there is some of that, I run VMs for testing my self. (Mostly windows VMs on Linux Hosts).
But I've also got many VMs with different distros installed for doing my fair share of Distro Tourism.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Monday June 25 2018, @03:54AM
Distros are like long term stay motels. I'm still touring, looking for the perfect distro. Was NOT happy when the distros I'd been with (Arch and the Ubuntus) switched to systemd. Been trying PCLinuxOS most recently.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 25 2018, @07:18AM (1 child)
The data supports the opposite conclusion: most people buy a new computer, install Ubuntu, and then keep running that version of Ubuntu on that computer until the hardware breaks.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Monday June 25 2018, @07:13PM
Nope. Data does not support that. There wouldn't be so many nuke and reinstalls.
People buy a computer. Run windows. Try dual-booting Linux, soon learn that rebooting back and forth is too much trouble.
Next windows update horks over their linux install, so they forget about it.
They hear about a new release of linux and they install that one, again dual-booting. Maybe they install yet another distro beside the other one (triple booting).
They don't spend any significant time in any of them, they just reinstall a few times, till their mom needs the machine to do taxes or something.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by darkfeline on Monday June 25 2018, @08:54AM
Back when I used Ubuntu, I would always do a fresh install. Upgrading in place was unreliable. All you need to do is keep /home on a separate partition.
Your conclusion is almost certainly wrong. If you spend a second thinking about it, your conclusion is saying that over half of the users of one of the most popular Linux distributions are distro tourists. That means roughly half of all Linux users do nothing but reinstall different Linux distros. That doesn't even pass a smell test.
Join the SDF Public Access UNIX System today!
(Score: 3, Insightful) by mmcmonster on Monday June 25 2018, @10:04AM
I would never upgrade an OS. Too many possibilities for failure.
It's pretty easy to have /home as a separate partition and nuke / and do a clean install.
I've come over the past few years to keep a simple text file with a list of applications to install once I install the new OS. It started as just a list of apps that aren't installed by default, but has grown to a list of simple commands that I do infrequently enough so that it's easy to keep them for reference rather than Google them. (ie: rip the audio of a YouTube video as an mp3 using youtube-dl)
(Score: 2) by VanessaE on Tuesday June 26 2018, @12:42AM
I think you forget something...
I've used a number of distros over the years. Slackware, Mandrake (yes, that long ago), [Ku|Xu|U]buntu. Hell, even -funroll-lo--- ahem, Gentoo at one time. I use Debian these days (pulse and systemd haven't pissed me off enough to switch to something else... yet).
But regardless of distro, even though I've been at this for at least a couple of decades, I've never felt comfortable doing automated in-place upgrades from one major release to the next. Too many failures in the past, and there's always some schmutz left over after enough routine apt-get upgrade runs (apt-get autoremove always wants to clean out stuff I want to keep, so I never use it).
When I'm ready to update to a new major release, or if my OS has been showing signs that it's "due" for a major clean-up, I just download/burn the latest installer image to a USB fob, back up my personal data to an external hard disk, and reinstall from scratch, letting the installer wipe my root partition in the process (/home is in its own, natch). Often, I'll take the opportunity to wipe out all of the less-important dot-files/folders (yeah, I call 'em that, so sue me), caches, etc., keeping config trees that are either too important, or just too much of a pain in the ass to recreate (desktop environment, browser, email, etc.).
What helps with that is a not-quite-a-script that I keep updated, that I can use to basically restore my system state after USB installer has done its job (fetch/install all my favorite packages, configure things that don't survive a reinstall, re-compile a few out-of-repo packages I use, that kind of thing). It's "not-quite-a-script" because it's quite dumb: there's no error handling, no sanity checks, no nothing. Just a raw list of commands that I can just copy and paste to a shell a little at a time.
Once the installer's done its job (usually about 20 minutes if the network mirror is cooperative, and I'm installing from one of my decent USB fobs), I can at least go browse the web or something, while I work through not-quite-a-script in the backgroun. 2 hours and everything's back to normal.
I hate reinstalling, but I like starting from a clean slate. Surely I'm not the only one who approaches things this way?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by richtopia on Monday June 25 2018, @12:42AM (5 children)
I just bought a new laptop: an Acer Aspire 1 http://a.co/bG2Mtiu [a.co] which I found openbox at Microcenter for ~140USD
I didn't even try Windows 10. I tried the Ubuntu 18.04 for about 24 hours, but noticed some lag when using Gnome's accelerated graphics actions. The next day I went to Lubuntu, and yet again I don't know why modern desktops try so hard. Lubuntu works really well and I don't miss any of the advanced features of Gnome. Perhaps it is ignorance, but I just need a UI to let me launch applications.
Moral of the story: if you are looking for a cheap laptop, the Aspire 1 is plenty fast with Linux. Only complaint I have is the viewing angle of the screen; I am constantly adjusting the tilt. But for youtube videos in the garage or terminal access in the living room I've been happy.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by frojack on Monday June 25 2018, @01:30AM
Yup.
I use LXDE (essentially Lubuntu) on any lightweight machine.
Especially for people I help who just want a word processor and web browser, maybe Tbird, and expect printing to work.
It does everything you need, and runs great on small machines.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by dw861 on Monday June 25 2018, @03:31AM (3 children)
Actually, I have attempted the same thing, but have encountered a problem.
https://askubuntu.com/questions/1047779/lubuntu-18-04-acer-aspire-one-1-431-no-wifi-on-install [askubuntu.com]
If you have any thoughts, I'm all ears. :)
(Score: 3, Informative) by hendrikboom on Monday June 25 2018, @10:19AM (1 child)
I have a similar problem with a Raspberry Pi running Devuan. My guess is that's it's a missing driver, but no one I ask seems to know what driver to use. But my Pi has a wired connection and that works fine.
(Score: 2) by dw861 on Monday June 25 2018, @11:26PM
Ok, hendrikboom, thanks for sharing your experience! Not having a wired connection really paints one into a corner, when wireless doesn't function. So, I've ordered a usb ethernet dongle and once it arrives I'll see if doing a system update can salvage the situation.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 26 2018, @12:11AM
Boot the livecd, chroot into your install (remember to copy /etc/resolv.conf), enable the nonfree repos and update.
Alternatively, boot the livecd and see what modules you have according to lsmod compared to what's on your install. There's probably a nonfree wifi driver in there that isn't included in the base install. You may be able to install it using the live image as a local repo when you boot into your installed system. Synaptics can usually tell you if you are missing any required nonfree drivers in one of the configuration menus too IIRC. I'd guess broadcom or atheros maybe, a lot of cheap laptops use those and some of them need non-distributable blobs.
If you have a phone with bluetooth or usb tethering it can be a great help in a situation like that - a bt dongle is maybe $5 on amazon and can be very useful in a lot of situations.
(Score: 1) by pTamok on Monday June 25 2018, @09:49AM
There is no single Linux distribution that suits all use-cases. Even trying to recommend a distribution to a 'new user' has pitfalls, as you have to ask:
Is it someone who has never used a personal computer before in their life (rare, but not impossible)
Is it someone who is familiar with some form of computer, but has never used Linux?
It is someone who wants a computer to behave exactly like their old one?
Is it someone who is willing and able to learn new ways of doing things?
And so on.
I can't recommend a distribution to someone 'just like that'. I have used MS-DOS PCs. Windows PCs, Macintoshes, Unix workstations, and Minicomputers, as well as Linux PCs, so I can adapt to pretty much any weird environment thrown at me, although I have used Windows 10 infrequently enough to find it confusing. Different people have different needs, as well as expressed wishes, and I have grown old enough to appreciate I do not know enough to give 'the best' recommendation to someone, as I simply don't have the in-depth knowledge of the reasonably common distributions or the insight into each person's needs to say what is best for them.
The thing I find about Linux is that it gives you a choice: you can decide which window-manager you use, and which desktop environment (or decide to be CLI only), you can choose different email packages, and you can choose from a huge array of free software. I dislike software that actively removes options to make things 'easier' for users. Well documented, flexible software with sensible defaults that are easily, simply and reversibly changed is appreciated by me. I understand not all people agree (e.g. some 'UX designers' and Gnome software developers spring to mind), but there is room in the ecosystem for different beliefs.
What I would say is that if you are called upon to recommend a distribution to someone, please don't do so unless you are prepared to put in the time helping and supporting the person you make the recommendation to. The Linux community as a whole benefits if the experiences of incomers are good. Don't blame a distribution if someone finds it difficult: blame yourself for not providing the right recommendation to start with, and not providing help when needed. In some areas, newbies are expected to have read and understood the fine manual before asking questions, and it is best to gently guide people away from the more exacting sources of information until they are ready to navigate the deep waters alone.
If helping someone else, the key thing to remember is to be welcoming. If choosing a new distribution for yourself, make sure you understand it, and what need it is meeting, which may not be aligned with yours.