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Linux Distro Noob thread of Linux noobs

Pctx

Banned
Id agree that Fedora aces ubuntu on polish which is why i think Canocial needs a business like fork (IMO) for it to hit the next level.
I'm thinking once 16 comes out ill switch to fedora and start learning CentOS just because of the superior support.
 

onken

Member
I used Fedora for years but the 6 month release cycle just fucks me off too much, really what is the point?

Moved to Arch about a year ago and haven't look back; lean, fast, intuitive and rolling release.
 

Pctx

Banned
onken said:
I used Fedora for years but the 6 month release cycle just fucks me off too much, really what is the point?

Moved to Arch about a year ago and haven't look back; lean, fast, intuitive and rolling release.
What is the learning curve on Arch? Ive dabbled a bit but nothing serious.
 

Vanillalite

Ask me about the GAF Notebook
onken said:
I used Fedora for years but the 6 month release cycle just fucks me off too much, really what is the point?

Moved to Arch about a year ago and haven't look back; lean, fast, intuitive and rolling release.

Rolling releases aren't as good for the general public as you're more likely to see things skip through but get patched. Plus it allows for a core defined dev cycle to get things done.

That being said IMO what needs to happen to help keep things straight especially for Ubuntu would be to really push the LTS as THE version. Then just bug fix and nail down everything with patches. Keep a new version of the LTS coming on the current set time frame.

Then I'd like to see them scrap the in between releases. Granted I know most average desktop users can be fine with the regular release especially after the 1st week or two of patches. Still I'd rather see them focus on the LTS as the main stable release verses the in between releases that they don't support long term.

Go label the in between stuff as dev snap shots. Ideally I'd get rid of the every 6 month dev snap shots though, and make the dev version a constant rolling release. Fuck the number system. Plus there wouldn't be such a rush and a debate on if this thing that's definitely going to be in the next LTS and on the docket if it should be pushed for a non LTS version if it's not totally ready. As of now you always here this debate on if such and such new thing will make the in between releases or not.

This way wouldn't matter. Plus it would get rid of the need to always be pushing out an alpha and a beta and then as soon as the release launches putting all the testers back on alpha again which seems crazy since it's not always totally alpha.

If need be they could have two rolling release channels and do it like say Chrome/ium. Have a rolling release beta channel and alpha channel. Then the stable would just be the LTS the stable regular release on the website for everyone to download.

Hell they just announced 12.04 is going to push not only server but desktop support for 12.04 from 3 years to 5 years to help with corporate roll outs. As far as I'm concerned they could move the LTS to a 3 year cycle instead of 2 to really help nail down things in the rolling release, and yet 3 years wouldn't make it TOOOO far behind.

PS: Debian sort of already does this with the unstable and testing phases before it pushes stuff out for release.
 

peakish

Member
Polari said:
Seems OK here, but if it's enough of annoyance maybe switching to Chrome (which uses its own Flash install) might help.
Right, then I assume that it's Opera failing (it's also crashing somewhat frequently, I wish their Linux versions were better). Thanks!

itxaka said:
I use minitube for youtube videos. Blazing fast, all the options, none of the problems. Give it a try if you want. It's a bit of problematic to having to cut and paste the youtube lnk but well, takes a couple of seconds.
Wow, Minitube works fantasticly. But no ads = no money to some channels I like to support. If I understand things correctly right now it's Google's fault but even so...
 

Vanillalite

Ask me about the GAF Notebook
Am I crazy for thinking at this point if you want a Gnome fork just use XFCE 4.8 instead? I mean it's already out, and basically everything everyone wanted from the old gnome anyways. Plus it's light on system resources.
 

angelfly

Member
Brettison said:
Am I crazy for thinking at this point if you want a Gnome fork just use XFCE 4.8 instead? I mean it's already out, and basically everything everyone wanted from the old gnome anyways. Plus it's light on system resources.
Nope, it's what the majority of people that aren't interested in Gnome 3 are moving to. Even Linus made the switch to XFCE because of it.
 

Tworak

Member
Brettison said:
Am I crazy for thinking at this point if you want a Gnome fork just use XFCE 4.8 instead? I mean it's already out, and basically everything everyone wanted from the old gnome anyways. Plus it's light on system resources.
yes, xfce is not gnome2. and besides, lxde is better.
 

Vanillalite

Ask me about the GAF Notebook
Tworak said:
yes, xfce is not gnome2. and besides, lxde is better.

Arguably both XFCE and LXDE are better than Gnome 2 and the setup is pretty much the same. I still don't get the reasoning for this.
 

Vanillalite

Ask me about the GAF Notebook
Okay so a Brettison Linux Update:

1 - Fedora 16 hits this week. I'm not doing a big topic ala Ubuntu, but I do plan on posting something for an |OT| later today. Be on the look out for that! :p

2 - Ubuntu is now fully dropping mono. It'll support it via download, but it's not shipping with the OS anymore. Granted this was more for space reasons rather than FOSS reasons. This also means Rythmbox is back to default and Tomboy isn't preinstalled because Banshee and Tomboy both rely on mono

3 - Gimp dev release is now at 2.73. Current trajectory for the highly anticipated Gimp 2.8 is now 12/15/2011 (hey hey dat be my birthday!).

4 - If you missed it the Mint crew last Friday finally became unsilenced Friday on the next version of Mint. It's been highly anticipated because they stuck with old Gnome 2 for the last release and people were wondering where Mint was headed. You can read all about it HERE!
 

ThatObviousUser

ὁ αἴσχιστος παῖς εἶ
I was wondering when it'd go up. I don't surf OT though so I don't know about it until it's posted here. :p
 
So what's the way to go for Linux? Ubuntu, Fedora, or Mint? I've been thinking about switching away from Windows 7 for awhile now. Linux should offer me better performance yes?
 

MC RaZaR

Neo Member
BoboBrazil said:
So what's the way to go for Linux? Ubuntu, Fedora, or Mint? I've been thinking about switching away from Windows 7 for awhile now. Linux should offer me better performance yes?
Mint is very user friendly and probably the best for transition from WIndows to Linux. Ubuntu has a large community and support. Fedora is a good distro for a work computer maybe? Why not give them all a try and see which one you like. Start out with Mint to learn some of the basics for Linux and then move on to other distros. Yeah, Linux is less bloated than Windows and will offer better performance.
 
MC RaZaR said:
Mint is very user friendly and probably the best for transition from WIndows to Linux. Ubuntu has a large community and support. Fedora is a good distro for a work computer maybe? Why not give them all a try and see which one you like. Start out with Mint to learn some of the basics for Linux and then move on to other distros. Yeah, Linux is less bloated than Windows and will offer better performance.

Thanks, should I go with the 32bit or 64 bit edition? I'm on an athlon 4000+ with 4 gigs of ram. I should wait for Mint 12 to come out right? It seems like it is coming in a few weeks at the latest.
 

ThatObviousUser

ὁ αἴσχιστος παῖς εἶ
In the meantime, at least mess around with Fedora 16, just came out yesterday and has a great new desktop environment you won't find anywhere else.
 
Andrex said:
In the meantime, at least mess around with Fedora 16, just came out yesterday and has a great new desktop environment you won't find anywhere else.

With Fedora using the new gnome I was reading on the mint blog that it doesn't have a taskbar or windowed tasks? Is that true?
 

ThatObviousUser

ὁ αἴσχιστος παῖς εἶ
It has windowed programs, however it does not have a traditional taskbar. See below:



Basically, mousing into the upper left (or clicking the Activities button) triggers "Overview mode":


(not my screenshots, they also don't show the same running programs)

In this mode, all the open windows for the current desktop are arranged nicely as thumbnails. Clicking one of these will bring this application to the foreground. On the left is the Windows 7-like dock, with both running and pinned programs.

On the right is what I think is Gnome 3's best feature, the "elastic workspaces." Basically, by default there are two desktop thumbnails shown here. Dropping a running program's thumbnail into the second will move that program to that workspace, as well as create a blank third one to drop stuff into. Rinse and repeat. (The workspace strip on the right also sort of moves out and becomes more visible when you mouse over it.)

Basically, think of it like tabs vs. windows in browsers. Usually you can group different tabs by opening new windows so you don't clutter things up with 100 tabs. Same deal here. You move and group running programs together to make them more manageable, and Gnome 3 does this the absolute best.

Anyways I would definitely suggest browsing around the Gnome 3 website to see if it's for you.
 

MC RaZaR

Neo Member
BoboBrazil said:
Thanks, should I go with the 32bit or 64 bit edition? I'm on an athlon 4000+ with 4 gigs of ram. I should wait for Mint 12 to come out right? It seems like it is coming in a few weeks at the latest.

Go with the 64 bit version I suppose. Though the 32 bit should be fine. You can play around with 11 as 12 is going to be using Gnome 3. By playing around maybe you can decide if you want to go with MATE for 12 which uses Gnome 2.32 or go over to Gnome 3 with Mint 12.
 

zoku88

Member
barnone said:
In my bash terminal, is there a way to create a shortened variable for a path like this:

https://blablabla.bla.bla/blabla/~bla

so that I don't have to type it out everytime? Something maybe like how $HOME or $PATH stores stuff. Thanks !
you mean like:

>BLAH=https://blablabla.bla.bla/blabla/~bla
>echo $BLAH
https://blablabla.bla.bla/blabla/~bla

?

That should work if you're using bash or some shell that's bash-ish

If it's like tcsh or something, then you have to use setenv like:

setenv BLAH https://blablabla.bla.bla/blabla/~bla
 

Vanillalite

Ask me about the GAF Notebook
So I have a small cool Linux story to share with Linux-GAF.

So my new found interest in Linux sort of coincided with me getting my current GF and so she's knows I like to mess around in the Linux world. Granted she doesn't understand it much other than seeing well the few OSes I've dual booted. Though she does have an Android phone.

Anyways she's currently in Nursing school and they do clinical almost every week now. So the other night she said told me she was riding in the elevator in the hospital. There were other people in there, and she surmised the one dude must have been IT Staff. Anyways she noticed he had a lanyard around his neck, and it had the Ubuntu Logo. She was like oh heeeyyyy I know what that is even without the name being written on it!

I asked her if she said anything to the guy, but she said she didn't mention it. Just kept the thought to herself. Still I was like hey I guess my Linux stuff is rubbing off on you even if it's in some small shape or form.
 

ThatObviousUser

ὁ αἴσχιστος παῖς εἶ
She's totally banging that dude in the elevator man. You know girls can't resist the 'buntu!
 

Vanillalite

Ask me about the GAF Notebook
They definitely seem a little more forward thinking design wise. Gnome Shell going forward screams lets creative side of the brain to me where as Unity seems more Left Brain.

What would be killer for me is if the next version of Debian went straight Gnome Shell. That would be A to the WESOME, and probably immediately become my defacto linux distro.
 

Vanillalite

Ask me about the GAF Notebook
Andrex said:
Hrm, isn't Debian mostly used as a command line/server OS though?

Base Debian desktop wise is totally fine. It's basically Gnome 2.32 with all the normal Deb stuff. People just figured if you were already going this route to use the downstream Ubuntu instead. Plus stable Debian only releases every 24 months.

Now that Ubuntu is going with Unity though you get a bunch of front in differences between the two. Backend is still all the same though since Ubuntu is still a Debian downstream release.
 

peakish

Member
Andrex said:
So is all you really want is a Gnome-using distro that can open .deb's?
All this makes me wonder how Gnome OS will look and play when it finally surfaces. There's a lot to look forward to in the development of that DE right now, love it.
 

Pctx

Banned
Brettison said:
They definitely seem a little more forward thinking design wise. Gnome Shell going forward screams lets creative side of the brain to me where as Unity seems more Left Brain.

What would be killer for me is if the next version of Debian went straight Gnome Shell. That would be A to the WESOME, and probably immediately become my defacto linux distro.
Taking bets on Mint going GNOME 3.4 in next release?? :)
 

peakish

Member
Pctx said:
Taking bets on Mint going GNOME 3.4 in next release?? :)
Why bet? It's confirmed :p Or do you mean specifially 3.4?

They've definitely got some nice ideas with their extensions, I was thinking that some distributions would modify it in some ways and the Mint developers seem to make some good decisions in staying relevant.

And of course disabling the extensions and going fully vanilla Gnome should be trivial.
 

Pctx

Banned
peakish said:
Why bet? It's confirmed :p Or do you mean specifially 3.4?

They've definitely got some nice ideas with their extensions, I was thinking that some distributions would modify it in some ways and the Mint developers seem to make some good decisions in staying relevant.

And of course disabling the extensions and going fully vanilla Gnome should be trivial.

yeah I knew it was ;)... It just adds more fuel to the fire of Ubuntu users jumping ship to Mint over Ubuntu. Course for me, it comes down to whatever seems to work which GNOME does work quite well for a desktop UI.
 

ThatObviousUser

ὁ αἴσχιστος παῖς εἶ
Pctx said:
yeah I knew it was ;)... It just adds more fuel to the fire of Ubuntu users jumping ship to Mint over Ubuntu. Course for me, it comes down to whatever seems to work which GNOME does work quite well for a desktop UI.

What do you mean? I think it does a great job of renovating the workspace concept from Gnome 2 and making it even better. And Gnome 3 isn't even that great for tablets when it comes down to it, it's still very much a desktop environment.
 

Vanillalite

Ask me about the GAF Notebook
Thing about Mint is they seem to be adding some weird stuff like the other application menu and the bottom bar. Sort of kills some of the industrial design for me.
 

Vanillalite

Ask me about the GAF Notebook
What's up with SUSE? Why does it seem like the distro use to be a big deal in the Linux community, but now it feels like nobody cares?
 

Tworak

Member
What's up with SUSE? Why does it seem like the distro use to be a big deal in the Linux community, but now it feels like nobody cares?
it's relatively big in Europe still. or used to. who knows where it goes now after Novell went tits up.

IBM's Watson runs on SLES, for example.
 

Pctx

Banned
Just responding to the "nobody cares" about SUSE comment.

It feels like it might be more popular for non-personal computers?

Well Intel used to run SuSe for a long time but have since switched over to Red Hat and Fedora for its development junk.

I never had any ill will towards SuSe other than its Novel past. :)
 

zoku88

Member
Well Intel used to run SuSe for a long time but have since switched over to Red Hat and Fedora for its development junk.

I never had any ill will towards SuSe other than its Novel past. :)

Actually, I work at Intel and the computer I VNC into still uses SUSE (at least, I'm pretty sure it does...)

Well, big company, I'm sure there's lots of different OS's used.
 

Pctx

Banned
Actually, I work at Intel and the computer I VNC into still uses SUSE (at least, I'm pretty sure it does...)

Well, big company, I'm sure there's lots of different OS's used.

You by chance working on Legacy stuff? Only reason I ask is because I know the guys out at Jones Farm are running hardcore RHL development servers.
 

zoku88

Member
You by chance working on Legacy stuff? Only reason I ask is because I know the guys out at Jones Farm are running hardcore RHL development servers.

I actually had to look up where Jones Farm was. Thought the only Oregon place was in Hillsboro.

Nah, no legacy stuff here. But I'm at a different site, anyway. Maybe it will change when my current project ends.
 
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