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If you have gained some Linux skills after using Ubuntu for some time, you may try switching to these distributions to explore the world of Linux distributions further.
Ubuntu is one of the best Linux distributions for beginners. It's an excellent platform for people new to Linux. It is easy to install, has tons of free resources available along with a massive list of applications available for it. https://itsfoss.com/distribution-after-ubuntu/
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Discussion: Which Linux Distribution to Use After Ubuntu?
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TOO BAD YOU CAN'T BUY a voodoo globe so that you could make the earth spin
real fast and freak everybody out.
-- Jack Handey, The New Mexican, 1988.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 24 2018, @06:54AM (29 children)
It's all trash underneath.
I'd suggest Linux From Scratch at most; build something that is your own, because other people are Hell.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 24 2018, @07:35AM (22 children)
Or Gentoo if you don't want brainlessly copy-pasting command line instructions from the LFS manual.
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 24 2018, @01:30PM (15 children)
I'd recommend gentoo as a first distribution - it exposed the user to the core components of Linux and gives them some idea of what's going on. Ubuntu creates a helpless windows mentality by hiding the system from the user.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Azuma Hazuki on Saturday March 24 2018, @02:19PM (14 children)
You're joking, but that's exactly what I did. After reading about several available distros in mid 2004, I decided on Gentoo, printed out the 70+-page install manual, decided to go with a 2.6 kernel rather than 2.4, and sat down on my bed with my old Pentium M laptop, vowing not to get up until I had a booting kernel. It only took 3 hours, amazingly, for me to get it all right and running, this from never having touched Linux before.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 24 2018, @05:33PM
I wasn't joking at all. I first used debian around 15 years ago, but never really understood anything until I used gentoo.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 24 2018, @06:09PM (6 children)
... of you wee Azuma Hazuki on her bed....
(Score: 3, Touché) by Azuma Hazuki on Saturday March 24 2018, @07:31PM (5 children)
6' is "wee" these days? I'm taller than most men.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 3, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 24 2018, @10:53PM (4 children)
Now I'm thinking of you, tall, slim, lying on a bed wearing camo gear and unlaced army boots, and booting gentoo, with candles all round the room, swedish death metal playing softly in the background, and a bottle of JB and two glasses on the dresser.
I'm so confused.
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Sunday March 25 2018, @12:56AM (2 children)
MAN, KEEP GOING!!! I'm almost there! SHEEIT!
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Sunday March 25 2018, @01:44AM
What's wrong, went all Crying Game on you?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 29 2018, @08:03PM
I put on my robe and wizard hat...
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Azuma Hazuki on Sunday March 25 2018, @02:07AM
LOL, hate to disappoint you, but at 19 I was pushing 180lb and my usual nighttime clothes were gray sweatpants and an Invader Zim t-shirt. No candles because fire, and no alcohol because underage. I *was* making some rather death-metalish and certainly blasphemous noises at the machine, if that helps =P
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Sunday March 25 2018, @12:53AM (5 children)
1999 was fun with red hat (5.2?ish)...delving into Xorg to feck around and get X going, but sooo much fun! RPM hell!!! :)
That's the thing about distro hopping: its fun, usually. LFS/BLFS was interesting, but I couldn't see having the time EVER to maintain it.
Tried Gentoo but jumped when it fell apart for a while.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Sunday March 25 2018, @01:40AM (4 children)
1999 I all but hated RedHat, for many reasons, certainly didn't like rpm. But I've always said one of the most important things for Linux distros is package management.
Fast forward to 2009+, kind of fell into rpm world (CentOS), the GUI apps are horrible and horribly broken, found yum, yumex, etc., thought I had found nirvana (it's been rock-solid stable), and RedHat goes all systemd on me. Still running 6 and looking for a new distro.
Lots of great systemd-less distros out there, but I hate learning package management the hard way. As stated elsewhere, Alpine has been awesome but the package manager is lacking. For example, every time I run it (apk), it completes but always with an error, and never tells me exactly what's wrong.
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Sunday March 25 2018, @10:14AM (3 children)
The ONLY thing I don't like about Manjaro(arch) is the systemd thing.
Might check out void if I ever get time, but for now.....
....I just love Manjaro!
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Sunday March 25 2018, @05:08PM (2 children)
Have you tried Alpine?
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Sunday March 25 2018, @06:41PM (1 child)
Looked it up in a bit more detail than before: has i3wm! Bonus! :)
Find me some time and i'll try it out along with void linux.... time is my killer, though ( i need like a day/two without any interruptions which is impossible, or a new system (only have my laptop right now...am saving (STILL!!!!) for a reasonable desktop i can put a couple hard drives in to try a couple distros out))...my life is tooooooo full and not enough money :(
Sounds nice: an arch/manjaro type distro without systemd would be nice. I might have to do a regular backup, wipe and a couple installs and fuck it-- just try it, lol.
I've found it doesn't take long to get my manjaro back up and running after a wipe in case i need to get it back.
Always looking to learn new things: it's just the time factor, hence i might just have to say fuck it and do it. ;)
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Monday March 26 2018, @04:15PM
You could always start small and add-on so long as you have a newer motherboard.
ASROCK Ryzen 2000 ready MB with USB 3.0: $65
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157765 [newegg.com]
AMD A8-9600 Bristol Ridge Quad-Core 3.1 GHz Socket AM4 65W - Intergrated Graphics CPU: $68
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819113453 [newegg.com]
GeIL Pristine 4GB DDR4 2133Mhz RAM: $44
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820158179 [newegg.com]
Patriot Flare 2.5" 60GB SSD: $30
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=0D9-003W-00031 [newegg.com]
Antec MicroATX / MicroITX Computer Case with 380Watt Power supply: $67
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811129196 [newegg.com]
Linux OS: Free
Total: $274+Tax/shipping
In case you need a Monitor:
Acer 23.6" 1920x1080 resolution: $100
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16824011066 [newegg.com]
Total with Monitor: $374+Tax/Shipping (-$10 promo code on the monitor)
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16824011066 [newegg.com]
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 2) by leftover on Saturday March 24 2018, @05:54PM (5 children)
Slack '96 for my first time. It was an effort but I learned a lot. Using KDE neon now and finding it to be ... workable. Getting stretched between too-old this's and too-new thats repairing and rebuilding various CAD/CAM tools for my own use. The biggliest problem, IMHO, is the lack of definitive choice. I do not get to pick one initialization system, I am forced to use them all simultaneously. It seems like everything that has ever been in the history of BSD and Linux is still actively used. My most frequent gripes are too few cross-library APIs and too many individual library APIs that change with every minor version. I would like to choose, for example, how I want BLAS operations to be performed -- SMP or GPU or MPI or whatever -- and have that choice dynamically apply to everything that uses BLAS operations. As things are right now, I need to concurrently track all the various libraries that my applications use and rebuild entire application stacks whenever one library makes a significant change. I have no choice, given the list of applications I need to use.
To tie this issue back to the topic of distributions: this was what I determined to be my underlying motivator for constantly examining different distributions. It isn't a distribution issue at all since it affects all of them nearly equally. Same with boot and initialization, X itself and all the widget libraries (fixing something in Tkinter right now), sound (how many different and conflicting packages do we really need to make a machine with a dozen Xeon cores play music almost as well as an old MP3 clip-on?) ad infinitum
I would venture that a goodly percentage of us looking for the next distribution are actually being driven by this issue. No one distribution can possibly fix it for the general case. A distribution based on a desktop environment would appear to have a chance of success for 'normal' office desktop use. This is why I am trying KDE neon and the jury is still out on whether it can overcome the ubuntu base and the increasing fragmentation within KDE/Plasma. Trying to even define an "engineering workstation environment" seems remote.
Bent, folded, spindled, and mutilated.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Saturday March 24 2018, @06:07PM (4 children)
I'd define that as "minimal and stable." And ideally "without bloody SystemD." Devuan Jessie or Slackware might be good, maybe Void if you don't mind rolling release.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by leftover on Saturday March 24 2018, @08:53PM
Agreed, as far as they go. That still leaves all of the application + libraries logjam up to the end user. I am tired of spending more time repairing tools than using them. When I find myself wistfully remembering the productivity of dividers and straightedges I know it is time to take a break.
Bent, folded, spindled, and mutilated.
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Sunday March 25 2018, @06:45PM (2 children)
Looking at the slackware site, it looks like slack is all but dead? Released 14.2 in 2016?
Too bad.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Friday March 30 2018, @01:44AM (1 child)
No no, Slackware doesn't work like that. I don't know how/why they choose version numbers, but you can sort of ignore them.
I don't know the official policy for how far back they go, but older versions are kept updated, found in "root-name"/patches/packages.
I just download them to some directory, "upgradepkg *txz", and it figures out what to do. As with many distros, you have to look for "(whatever).new" files, which are usually /etc startup and config stuff. It can be updated daily. (ftp root)/slackware-current/ChangeLog.txt tells you what's been updated, and it can happen daily, several times a day, or every few days- all depending on package source code releases.
But also, Slackware can be used as a rolling-release. Slackware-current (and Slackware64-current) will have the newest stuff, and simple wget scripts will get the latest, and "upgradepkg" will do the obvious thing.
My favorite running/working install is a 14.1 (updated). I recently did a 14.2 and had some problems, like xorg.conf, which I fixed, but still have some annoying odd problems with xterm (that I haven't spent much time trying to fix).
I've been running Slackware since about 1994.
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Friday March 30 2018, @01:46AM
ftp://ftp.slackware.com/pub/slackware/slackware-current/ChangeLog.txt [slackware.com]
(Score: 4, Interesting) by julian on Saturday March 24 2018, @07:49PM (5 children)
It's not so much that it's all trash, but that only the trashiest distros have the resources to put in the polish and quality of life improvements that Microsoft and Apple offer. Linux is technically superior in many ways to what Apple and MS produce, until you get to the real world where software has to run on hardware.
Regardless of what you say about Windows 10 or macOS from a privacy and freedom point of view (and there's a lot to say), they're solid and reliable user interfaces, with some flaws that are mostly a matter of taste and personal preferences. You will always have drivers for your hardware. The GPU will work correctly and at full speed, will accelerate the desktop, there will be no tearing, there will be no stuttering or glitches. Your laptop will switch between the iGPU and discrete GPU on the fly without rebooting. Every switch and key will do what it was intended to do without hacks or manual remapping. The indicator LEDs will all display their state correctly.
Most of this is the fault of hardware makers, which has always been the problem with Linux usage in the real world. That's one of the reasons it's so successful on servers, and Android. Servers were already running a Unix-derived OS, so when a free/libre one came around the advantages were obvious and the transition fairly smooth. For Android, a giant company is available to throw money and developers at the problem of supporting new hardware.
I'm less and less interested in computing like it's 1999. The fact is, the best OS for my W530 Thinkpad is Windows 10. I hate that, but it's true. This isn't even a new computer, and brand new Linux distros from the big boys still can't get everything totally right.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 24 2018, @08:01PM (4 children)
"This new car is fantastic overall, with only some minor personal-preference flaws if you can overlook the fact that is has no functioning brake system at all."
(Score: 4, Insightful) by julian on Saturday March 24 2018, @09:57PM (3 children)
That's the opposite of what is going on here. Windows 10 is more complete, polished, functional, and supports more hardware fully than Linux. There are some philosophical and ethical concerns that aren't even on the radar for most people as legitimate issues. It's rather a case of asking people to drive a VW Beetle from the 1970s because it's entirely documented (not even a single integrated circuit!) and you can replace literally everything in it yourself and there's a thriving community of hobbyists who keep turning out replacement parts. No thanks, I want a 2018 VW Jetta even though it's running millions of lines of code I am not allowed to read.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 25 2018, @01:23AM (1 child)
Don't forget spying on you in more detail than ever before. Keep in mind poor hardware support is primarily due yo proprietary lock in.
Damn, you hit the clueless jackpot. The fact that Linux still gains traction in the face of overwhelming corporate pressure should be enough to convinc you. Oh! You conveniently leave out the many issues that new MS systems have, and the poor performance.
Did you even think this through???
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 25 2018, @05:33AM
Most people ain't got time for tinkering. They want something that Just "Works".
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Sunday March 25 2018, @02:37PM
Sorry, you have that exactly backward. Windows supports no hardware. Or, more precisely, it supports no more hardware, and possibly less, than Unix-likes do. Windows supports CPU architectures, and that is just about all that it supports. Ditto most Unix-likes.
The proper way to state what you meant, would be, "More hardware manufacturers support Windows than support Linux."
Your original statement implies that Microsoft has put time, money, and resources into supporting virtually every piece of hardware in the world.
What really happened was, Microsoft enjoyed a monopoly for some years. Microsoft offered their Windows OS's to computer vendors, with exclusivity clauses. No one could afford to offer anything else, because they would have lost their Microsoft licensing. Because Windows enjoyed a monopoly, hardware vendors baked Windows support in.
Windows is losing it's monopoly, slowly, and hardware support for Unix-likes is improving steadily. Herr Bush did the computing world no favors, when his administration decided not to pursue monopoly suits against Microsoft.