 DistroWatch Weekly |
| DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 776, 13 August 2018 |
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Welcome to this year's 33rd issue of DistroWatch Weekly!
Last week we discussed a Linux distribution called Secure-K OS which runs from a USB thumb drive and can be used as a portable operating system for secure on-line communication. This week we jump over to the BSD community and explore another live, portable system called NomadBSD. NomadBSD is based on FreeBSD and strives to provide a live desktop environment for basic computing tasks and data recovery. Read on to hear more about this portable flavour of FreeBSD. In our News section we talk about Debian finding and preparing to squash more bugs while openSUSE extends life support for openSUSE 42.3. The team behind the Librem 5 phone, which is designed to run a GNU/Linux operating system, has been working with upstream projects to improve the mobile user interface and we have details on their progress. Plus we cover NAS4Free changing its name to XigmaNAS. In our Questions and Answers column we discuss the theoretical upper limits of Linux memory and storage capabilities. Plus we are happy to share last week's releases and the torrents we are seeding. The Opinion Poll this week asks, since we have already reviewed Linux Mint 19 this year, whether our readers are interested in hearing about Linux Mint Debian Edition 3, which is expected to be released soon. We wish you all a wonderful week and happy reading!
Content:
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| Feature Story (by Jesse Smith) |
NomadBSD 1.1
One of the most recent additions to the DistroWatch database is NomadBSD. According to the NomadBSD website: "NomadBSD is a 64-bit live system for USB flash drives, based on FreeBSD. Together with automatic hardware detection and setup, it is configured to be used as a desktop system that works out of the box, but can also be used for data recovery."
The latest release of NomadBSD (or simply "Nomad", as I will refer to the project in this review) is version 1.1. It is based on FreeBSD 11.2 and is offered in two builds, one for generic personal computers and one for Macbooks. The release announcement mentions version 1.1 offers improved video driver support for Intel and AMD cards. The operating system ships with Octopkg for graphical package management and the system should automatically detect, and work with, VirtualBox environments.
Nomad 1.1 is available as a 2GB download, which we then decompress to produce a 4GB file which can be written to a USB thumb drive. There is no optical media build of Nomad as it is designed to be run entirely from the USB drive, and write data persistently to the drive, rather than simply being installed from the USB media.
Initial setup
Booting from the USB drive brings up a series of text-based menus which ask us to configure key parts of the operating system. We are asked to select our time zone, keyboard layout, keyboard model, keyboard mapping and our preferred language. While we can select options from a list, the options tend to be short and cryptic. Rather than "English (US)", for example, we might be given "en_US". We are also asked to create a password for the root user account and another one for a regular user which is called "nomad". We can then select which shell nomad will use. The default is zsh, but there are plenty of other options, including csh and bash. We have the option of encrypting our user's home directory.
I feel it is important to point out that these settings, and nomad's home directory, are stored on the USB drive. The options and settings we select will not be saved to our local hard drive and our configuration choices will not affect other operating systems already installed on our computer. At the end, the configuration wizard asks if we want to run the BSDstats service. This option is not explained at all, but it contacts BSDstats to provide some basic statistics on BSD users.
The system then takes a few minutes to apply its changes to the USB drive and automatically reboots the computer. While running the initial setup wizard, I had nearly identical experiences when running Nomad on a physical computer and running the operating system in a VirtualBox virtual machine. However, after the initial setup process was over, I had quite different experiences depending on the environment so I want to divide my experiences into two different sections.
NomadBSD in VirtualBox
When running Nomad in a virtual environment, the operating system offered slightly different results almost every time it booted. The first time, Nomad booted to a blank graphical environment with a working mouse pointer. There were no desktop elements and both left- and right-clicking produced no results. I could switch to a text console which showed a stream of messages saying "pushing table, processing notify events, popping table" over and over. The text consoles did not respond to keyboard input.
On the second boot, Nomad loaded a minimal desktop environment. A panel at the bottom of the screen presented me with a logout menu and a system tray. Right-clicking on the desktop brought up an application menu. Trying to open more than one application caused the system to lock up.
NomadBSD 1.1 -- The default desktop and application menu
(full image size: 634kB, resolution: 1280x800 pixels)
On the third boot, the desktop was displayed again, but the mouse pointer did not work at all.
The fourth time I launched Nomad the system booted and displayed the desktop. The graphical environment worked for about a minute, then the operating system froze and would not respond to any input.
I eventually found that Nomad would never run for more than a few minutes before locking up. Trying to run more than one application at a time would also bring the system immediately to a halt.
Despite the project's website mentioning VirtualBox integration, and the existence of a display configuration tool in the application menu, I could not get Nomad to display a desktop at a resolution above about 800x600 pixels. I noticed that when Nomad was displaying its minimal desktop, my host computer's CPU was always running at 100%, but when Nomad was displaying a text console my host's CPU idled around 5%.
Physical desktop computer
At first, Nomad failed to boot on my desktop computer. From the operating system's boot loader, I enabled Safe Mode which allowed Nomad to boot. At that point, Nomad was able to start up, but would only display a text console. The desktop environment failed to start when running in Safe Mode.
Networking was also disabled by default and I had to enable a network interface and DHCP address assignment to connect to the Internet. Instructions for enabling networking can be found in FreeBSD's Handbook. Once we are on-line we can use the pkg command line package manager to install and update software. Had the desktop environment worked then the Octopkg graphical package manager would also be available to make browsing and installing software a point-n-click experience.
Had I been able to run the desktop for prolonged amounts of time I could have made use of such pre-installed items as the Firefox web browser, the VLC media player, LibreOffice and Thunderbird. Nomad offers a fairly small collection of desktop applications, but what is there is mostly popular, capable software.
When running the operating system I noted that, with one user logged in, Nomad only runs 15 processes with the default configuration. These processes require less than 100MB of RAM, and the whole system fits comfortably on a 4GB USB drive.
Conclusions
Ultimately using Nomad was not a practical option for me. The operating system did not work well with my hardware, or the virtual environment. In the virtual machine, Nomad crashed consistently after just a few minutes of uptime. On the desktop computer, I could not get a desktop environment to run. The command line tools worked well, and the system performed tasks very quickly, but a command line only environment is not well suited to my workflow.
I like the idea of what NomadBSD is offering. There are not many live desktop flavours of FreeBSD, apart from GhostBSD. It was nice to see developers trying to make a FreeBSD-based, plug-and-go operating system that would offer a desktop and persistent storage. I suspect the system would work and perform its stated functions on different hardware, but in my case my experiment was necessarily short lived.
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Hardware used in this review
My physical test equipment for this review was a desktop HP Pavilon p6 Series with the following specifications:
- Processor: Dual-core 2.8GHz AMD A4-3420 APU
- Storage: 500GB Hitachi hard drive
- Memory: 6GB of RAM
- Networking: Realtek RTL8111 wired network card
- Display: AMD Radeon HD 6410D video card
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Visitor supplied rating
NomadBSD has a visitor supplied average rating of: 5.5/10 from 2 review(s).
Have you used NomadBSD? You can leave your own review of the project on our ratings page.
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| Miscellaneous News (by Jesse Smith) |
Debian tackles bugs, openSUSE extends life of 42.3 release, update on the Librem 5 phone, NAS4Free renamed to XigmaNAS
The Debian team has become very good at finding bugs and potential problems in their software packages. While discovering these issues is good, it means that more effort is required to get the distribution fixed up and ready for release. There is some concern this will delay the release of Debian 10 "Buster" unless volunteers put more effort into squashing bugs. A post titled Buster is headed for a long hard freeze states: "We are getting better and better accumulating RC bugs in testing. This is unfortunate because the length of the freeze is strongly correlated with the number of open RC bugs affecting testing. If you believe that Debian should have short freezes, then it will require putting effort behind that belief and fix some RC bugs - even in packages that are not maintained directly by you or your team and especially in key packages." Some statistics on the current list of known bugs are also provided.
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The openSUSE team is extending the life cycle of their distribution's 42.3 release. openSUSE 42.3 was originally scheduled to reach the end of its supported life in January 2019, but this date has been pushed back to June 2019. A post on the openSUSE News page reads: "The last minor version of the Leap 42 series was scheduled to be maintained until January 2019, but that has changed thanks to SUSE committing to additional months of maintenance and security updates. Leap 42.3 is based on SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 12 Service Pack (SP) 3 and SUSE has agreed to keep publishing updates for Leap 42.3 until June 2019. This means the extended End of Life for Leap 42.3 will increase the total lifetime of the Leap 42 series to 44 months. Users of the openSUSE Leap 42 series are encouraged to use the additional months to prepare the upgrade to Leap 15, which was released in May."
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The Librem 5 is a smart phone being designed to run open source software, such as a GNU/Linux distribution with a GNOME-based desktop interface. The Librem 5 is still in development and is expected to be released sometime in 2019. At the moment the developers are testing new designs and filling in gaps in functionality which will hopefully be included in the corresponding upstream projects. "Some more bugs were fixed in libhandy too as well as more preparation for GTK+4. One of the issues found and fixed was memory leak was found and fixed. Also there was a bug found and fixed in HdyColumn where the wrong width was being used for column height calculation. If you are following the librem-5-dev email list, then you may have seen that libhandy v0.0.2 has been released too! Nobody likes unsolicited ads so Better ad blocking was suggested to upstream to be used with Epiphany and is undergoing discussion. The phone will ship with an SMS app which also has E2EE messaging. We are working with the Fractal project upstream to get encryption implemented, but it’s not clear whether the Fractal 1-1 successor app (GNOME Messages) will have all the things we need by launch." More details can be found in this blog post.
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The NAS4Free project makes a network attached storage (NAS) operating system based on FreeBSD. The project is in the process of changing its name to XigmaNAS. The wiki and forums have already been moved to their new domain and the project's main website will soon follow. Details on the process and the reason behind the name change can be found in this forum thread.
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These and other news stories can be found on our Headlines page.
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| Questions and Answers (by Jesse Smith) |
Maximum storage limits on Linux
Filling-up-all-available-space asks: What is the maximum upper limit for disk and swap space? Just how much stuff can Linux hold?
DistroWatch answers: There are theoretical limits on the amount of disk, memory and swap space you can access with a Linux distribution. In reality though we are likely to run into practical limits (such as the cost of equipment or physical room size) before we run into the theoretical restrictions of the Linux kernel.
The amount of memory Linux can access can vary from one processor architecture to another, so you will run into different memory size restrictions depending on the number of registers in your CPU and how big they are. On a x86_64 processor, which most modern desktop and laptop computers have, I think the maximum amount of memory Linux can access is defined by 44 bits. Which should provide an upper limit of about 16TB of RAM. Or about a thousand times more than the average laptop has at my local electronics store.
The amount of data we can write to disk storage will vary quite a bit depending on which file system we are using. The commonly used ext4 file system has an upper limit of around 1EiB, which if memory serves is a million terabytes. Another file system, called XFS, is often used by enterprise-class distributions and can store up to 8EiB of data. If that's still not enough, the advanced Btrfs format provides up to 16EiB of storage. In this arena ZFS probably has the highest theoretical limit with 256 trillion YiB of storage. A yobibyte (YiB) is a trillion, trillion bytes. At this point one might wonder if the ZFS developers were just making up new numbers to drive home just how much storage space their file system could handle.
I'd like to point out that the above file system storage limits are for just one file system. We could mount multiple massive file systems and/or attach additional storage over the network via a NAS. You're probably going to run out of money for new hard drives before reaching the upper limit of data we can write to attached file systems.
The maximum limit of swap space is a little less mind boggling. The maximum amount of swap space we can use will again vary by hardware architecture, but the mkswap manual page offers some pretty good estimates. The maximum number of swap areas (files or partitions dedicated to swap space) is 32. The maximum number of pages in a swap area is about 4 billion. A page's size can vary, but will typically be 4,096 bytes. So the maximum amount of swap space is probably 4,096 bytes per page, multiplied by about 4 billion pages in a swap partition, multiplied by 32 swap spaces: 512TB.
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Additional answers can be found in our Questions and Answers archive.
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| Released Last Week |
Development, unannounced and minor bug-fix releases
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| Torrent Corner |
Weekly Torrents
The table below provides a list of torrents DistroWatch is currently seeding. If you do not have a bittorrent client capable of handling the linked files, we suggest installing either the Transmission or KTorrent bittorrent clients.
Archives of our previously seeded torrents may be found in our Torrent Archive. We also maintain a Torrents RSS feed for people who wish to have open source torrents delivered to them. To share your own open source torrents of Linux and BSD projects, please visit our Upload Torrents page.
Torrent Corner statistics:
- Total torrents seeded: 978
- Total data uploaded: 21.1TB
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| Upcoming Releases and Announcements |
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Summary of expected upcoming releases
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| Opinion Poll |
Review of Linux Mint Debian Edition 3
The Linux Mint project maintains two main branches of its distribution, one based on Ubuntu and the other based on Debian. Earlier this year we reviewed Mint 19 which is based on Ubuntu 18.04. With a new version of Linux Mint Debian Edition due to be released soon, should we review the Debian-based edition too, or is covering the available features in one branch of Mint enough?
You can see the results of our previous poll on using portable operating systems in last week's edition. All previous poll results can be found in our poll archives.
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| DistroWatch.com News |
DistroWatch database summary
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This concludes this week's issue of DistroWatch Weekly. The next instalment will be published on Monday, 20 August 2018. Past articles and reviews can be found through our Article Search page. To contact the authors please send e-mail to:
- Jesse Smith (feedback, questions and suggestions: distribution reviews/submissions, questions and answers, tips and tricks)
- Ladislav Bodnar (feedback, questions, donations, comments)
- Bruce Patterson (podcast)
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| Reader Comments • Jump to last comment |
1 • BSD (by vern on 2018-08-13 04:07:00 GMT from United States)
It appears that BSD's are having a hard time of lately. Your current review of another BSD fail isn't looking good.
2 • Review of Linux Mint Debian Edition 3 (by R. Cain on 2018-08-13 04:16:46 GMT from United States)
I voted 'yes', and figured I could put the proviso in here: 'yes', if you will please do a comparison with LM 19.
Mint Linux has continually gone down-hill since adopting 'systemd', basing its distribution on LTS Ubuntus 16.04 and 18.04, which use 'systemd'. When Mint Linux was based on the non-'systemd' init (Ubuntu 14.04), Linux Mint was--and had been, for quite a long time; maybe years--number one in DistroWatch's rankings. Mint 17.3 was ranked as THE best of all Linux distributions going into 2017.
In DistroWatch's 7-day average, Linux Mint (19) is now ranked as #3, and MX-17 Linux has pulled ahead into the #2 slot.
3 • Libre vs Tor (by Jon Wright on 2018-08-13 04:23:01 GMT from France)
I see those 'Libre' folks (Puri.sm) are still banning Tor users.
4 • Mint Debian (by Jon Wright on 2018-08-13 04:28:26 GMT from France)
Looks like the latest Mint Debian is notable for being really like its main sibling ... for notably bad reasons including painful memory and cpu usage. Previously we expected something lean and mean with the Debian edition. For this reason I say review it, to either find reasons for running it, or to state it's not worth bothering with.
I'm currently with Mint MATE 18.3. I've really struggled with the 2018 crop of distros.
5 • Nothing wrong in reviewing (by Ron Rivera on 2018-08-13 05:09:24 GMT from Canada)
There is nothing wrong in reviewing Linuxmint LMDE, I guess.
At the same time one must be aware of cost and competitive prices for professional review of any technical products in details.
Many Linux Magazines has already reviewed Linuxmint 19 in recent printed version.
And, of course they are making money by selling a printed copy of magazines. Sometimes such magazines are paid for positive reviews (as advertisements) from the companies developing such products and brands.
Hence, I voted Yes review LMDE 3.
6 • @ # 2 MX/ANTIX (by Ron Rivera on 2018-08-13 05:22:29 GMT from Canada)
@ # 2
"In DistroWatch's 7-day average, Linux Mint (19) is now ranked as #3, and MX-17 Linux has pulled ahead into the #2 slot."
I have tried MX-16.x community edition in recent past, definitely I would say it offered almost everything out-of-box and performed a way better in comparative mode.
Now I am chasing for Linuxmint 19 to disassemble to the root level and assemble again.
7 • LMDE 3 review (by OstroL on 2018-08-13 06:26:53 GMT from Poland)
The review should be in comparison to other Debian based distros, such as Sparky Linux, MXLinux etc. What we'd like to see is not how Cinnamon works with Debian, but how effective is Mint with the Debian, as Debian can be installed in any computer without much of a fuss, and any DE can be installed, while its been installed, or after. Wallpapers and few tweaks doesn't matter.
Or, a review of LMDE in comparison to Debian with Cinnamon DE. Pros and cons.
8 • LMDE 3 (by TheRealist on 2018-08-13 06:51:26 GMT from Serbia)
I voted yes but since it is still in beta, wouldn't it be better to wait a bit for the stable release? Also, if it's gonna be tested and compared with other similar distro (like MX) could it be more adequate to test it with lighter DE on in the likes of XFCE or Mate?
9 • LMDE 3 Mate, Xfce (by R. Cain on 2018-08-13 07:22:47 GMT from United States)
@ 8--
I think you'll find that the Mint team has decided against developing any other version(s) of LMDE3 except Cinnamon. Short answer: LMDE3 *means* LMDE3 Cinnamon.
10 • Maximum storage limits (by Marc Claes on 2018-08-13 07:29:17 GMT from Belgium)
"At this point one might wonder if the ZFS developers were just making up new numbers to drive home just how much storage space their file system could handle."
Mmm. Not exactly. Check Wikipedia "Unit Prefix" page (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_prefix) under the heading "Binary prefixes", in the table: a Yobibyte is 1024^8 or 1,208,925,819,614,629,174,706,176 bytes. A lot, for sure, but not invented by the ZFS developers!... ;-)
11 • Debian with Cinnamon or any other DE (by Kazan on 2018-08-13 07:59:19 GMT from United Kingdom)
I agree with #7 and #8
To give a comprehensive review, LMDE 3 should be reviewed against pure Debian with Cinnamon. Debian is Debian. All one does is adding a DE to it. If you review LMDE, then you are reviewing how well (or badly) Cinanmon works with Debian.
12 • LMDE 3 Mate, Xfce (by TheRealist on 2018-08-13 08:03:33 GMT from Serbia)
@9 Bummer... Ok, the devs recently tweaked Cinnamon for speed maybe, it won't come out of the test as an utter underdog.
13 • NomadBSD (by RoboNuggie on 2018-08-13 08:29:32 GMT from United Kingdom)
@1 I completely disagree, to paraphrase Aristotle,
"the problems of one reviewer does not a problem with BSD make."
FreeBSD and it's derivatives have been flawless for me, and if I had encountered any problems it was my hardware that was to blame... maybe the reviewer is unlucky, maybe not.
14 • LMDE3 (by Laofzu on 2018-08-13 11:25:38 GMT from United States)
I have been experimenting with the beta version; and have found some serious issues, When installing Plex Media Center, there is no entry added to the menu. When trying to retrieve email online from my account, no luck although Thunderbird will work to do so. Choices for tweaking the theme are more limited than before. I have gone back to Debian 9 with a Cinnamon core desktop installed from the command line. It runs faster and leaner without the problems I mentioned earlier.
15 • DistroWatch Weekly, Issue (by AlgerRoi on 2018-08-13 11:58:23 GMT from Algeria)
DistroWatch Weekly is getting more and more short with every issue...
Hope thins change in near future.
16 • @ 15 DW getting shorter... (by Kazan on 2018-08-13 12:36:52 GMT from United Kingdom)
Well, there's nothing much to write about these days. No new distros, no one 'cloning' distro off Debian and Ubuntu.
17 • LMDE Xfce (by Jeff on 2018-08-13 13:04:07 GMT from United States)
@8, @9 When Linux Mint abandoned LMDE Xfce Solydx was created, just as when the planned LMDE KDE was abandoned Solydk was created.
18 • @13 (by brad on 2018-08-13 13:28:59 GMT from United States)
I'm willing to try NomadBSD - perhaps it will work better on Intel-based PC's.
I wonder though - FreeBSD has always had issues working with hardware - to my limited intellect, this is not so much an issue with the hardware, as it is with the ability (or willingness) of developers to work with HW "challenges". I attribute BSD "fails" as failures on both sides of the equation.
19 • System Rescue CD? (by Kingneutron on 2018-08-13 13:34:28 GMT from United States)
Anyone know if SRCD is still being actively maintained? They haven't had an ISO rev since April...
20 • LMDE3 and hardware (by Tim on 2018-08-13 13:44:16 GMT from United States)
@11, 7
I don’t agree that LMDE is just Debian with a desktop and wallpaper.
It’s got its own repository and often has newer desktop applications than stock Debian. It also has all the non-free but essential firmware installed.
As Jesse pointed out in the NomadBSD review and others have commented, performance on any distro isn’t necessarily reproducible between different hardware configurations. LMDE is different enough from default installed Debian that it’s a good choice sometimes.
21 • @17 (by jaws222 on 2018-08-13 13:58:20 GMT from United States)
Thank God for that cause I love Solydxk! I've been using that as my main PC since 2013.
Didn't Ikey from SolusOS also work with LMDE back in the day?
22 • LMDE3 (by Laotse on 2018-08-13 13:59:35 GMT from Switzerland)
YES, review LMDE3, but also CALCULATE LINUX 17.20 which will come out this mounth. Thanks.
23 • @1 (by jaws222 on 2018-08-13 14:06:28 GMT from United States)
My experience with BSD has also been pretty bad. I recently tried to install FreeBSD and had issues configuring package management and could not get a GUI installed. I then tried TrueOS, which had the Lumina Desktop and ran into several issues there, wifi, updates and package manager all fail. Think I will just stay with Linux.
24 • puri.sm and Tor (by gplcoder on 2018-08-13 14:10:00 GMT from Netherlands)
@3 I just read their latest blog using Tor browser without any issues. This is the first time I have been able to access the site using Tor. As a backer of the Librem 5, I found the company, being a so-called privacy advocate, and was incensed by this incongruity.
25 • @ 21 (by OstroL on 2018-08-13 14:10:38 GMT from Poland)
When Arjen and Ikey were there, there was some LMDE. Anyway, who can stay with Mint? There is no dev team as such at Mint...
Actually, SolydXK should be reviewed, both X and K, rather than LMDE.
26 • @25 (by jaws222 on 2018-08-13 14:18:36 GMT from United States)
I thought SoldyXK was reviewed a few months back. It's a very underrated Distro if you go by the page hits here at Distrowatch. IMO it's a top 5 distro. Debian derivatives are very strong with Solydxk, MX and Neptune, very lean and fast. I wish Point Linux was still around too, also a good distro.
27 • LMDE and ZFS (by Jesse on 2018-08-13 14:35:15 GMT from Canada)
@8:" Wouldn't it be better to wait for the stable release?"
Yes, we always wait for the stable release, we don't review beta versions. The poll needs to happen before the stable release though if we want to review it when the new version comes out.
@10: I think this is evidence humour does not always come across well over text. The comment about ZFS unit sizes was a joke.
28 • LMDE (by M.Z. on 2018-08-13 15:35:30 GMT from United States)
@11
"All one does is adding a DE to it."
Never come close to using LMDE, have you? It's okay, but try not to make up things about that which you have no knowledge. I've had LMDE 2 on my laptop since about the time it came out & not only does it have the independently derived installer (that may be replaced anyway), but it also has various Mint tools found in the main edition like the update manages, repo speed tester & selector, etc.
I get the urge to comment, but making things up makes you look worse than the project, which you clearly don't understand. Yes LMDE has the desktop started by the Mint team, but it is also taking a lot of the tools that make Mint a top Distro & adding them to a Distro with a Debian base. Most of the things that make Mint stand out are in LMDE, though you actually have to look.
29 • You pay for it? Then complain... (by R. Cain on 2018-08-13 15:44:19 GMT from United States)
"DistroWatch Weekly is getting more and more short with every issue... "
Sound familiar? How about, "Clem NEEDS to put THIS in LMDE..."
I'm certain Mr. Smith would welcome the services of a VERY hard-working, passionate individual to rectify any perceived shortcomings in DistroWatch. The pay? One probably wouldn't have to pay DW TOO much.
"You don't get invited to a party to eat the food"--Anonymous
30 • Stock trading distro or app. (by Larry Hylton on 2018-08-13 16:09:37 GMT from United States)
Microsoft geek since dos... finally dumping Windows..found Peppermint Distro which suits me fine. One last hurdle is Stock Trading, Unable to locate a Distro or app for charts ect.
My Windows apps do not function with Wine.
Any help?
31 • Reviewing Mint (by Ken on 2018-08-13 16:25:40 GMT from United States)
I say yes. If separate reviews can be dedicated to every different spin of Ubuntu (Xubuntu, Lubuntu, Ubuntu Mate, etc.), then separate reviews can be dedicated to Linux Mint and LMDE.
32 • @ # 29 • You pay for it? Then complain... (by Wesley Waldworm on 2018-08-13 18:21:20 GMT from Canada)
Jessies efforts for DW and Clement's efforts for Linuxmint are much appreciated.
The act of total clean-up is almost impossible for Jessie, Clement or any other individuals.
The way it is messed up and twisted, no organization even have any capacity left.
"DistroWatch Weekly is getting more and more short with every issue... "
But, this is the fact. Linux users are kepp falling by counts for a reason or two, as if Linux has nothing good to offer. This is fact and ditto well know truth. I would not hesitate in accepting this truth. With Linux users below 0.1% and thousands of distros, one can calculate average users per distro very easy without calculator.
""You don't get invited to a party to eat the food"--Anonymous
If recent development in Linux is considered as a party,
One must be very cautious about bacterias, flies, larvas,
and other microorganisms that could be found in the food served.
Forget inviting and serving food, invite at least someone to clean up the garbage after the party bcoz there is already tons of garbage. If bad guys planting food worms are allowed already, why not guys with bad mouth?
If some is not allowed to clean-up the garbage, then,
everything will be soon rotten and nothing but garbage every where.
Everyone using linux should be welcomed to join the party either here or any other linux forum.
33 • Poll (by a on 2018-08-13 18:38:39 GMT from France)
Ubuntu edition or Debian edition, who cares? They both use systemd. Reviews are pointless.
34 • Thanks for DW reviews (by George on 2018-08-13 18:51:48 GMT from United States)
Thanks for the review of NomadBSD, a BSD system that is intended to be used as a desktop system out of the box. I hope that NomadBSD will become successful in exposing BSD to more computer users.
Most here probably feel that Debian is no problem. Some say Ubuntu makes Debian more usable. Some say Mint makes Ubuntu more usable. Some complain that there is no difference. Easy to see why DW runs a poll to see what reviews the majority prefers.
Historically, LMDE has been problematic for me, as has Manjaro and to a lesser extent CentOS, which I run on at least one PC. This sort of distro is stressful (at best) for me to maintain. I've tried LMDE a couple times and will not try it again, even if DW finds no problem with their install over period of a week or two. SJVN is not going to install LMDE on his mother-in-law's PC. So, even though it's in the best interest for DW to do the review, I vote against it to indicate the preference of the few here who are mainstream computer users.
There have been suggested comparisons that should be made in the proposed DW review. Hopefully Jesse Smith (and other DW reviewers) continue to do whatever they personally prefer. Of course, their preference might be to incorporate suggestions in their reviews. Whatever the case, the DW reviews are consistently the most informative, useful reviews available.
35 • Poll (by dolphin oracle on 2018-08-13 18:59:22 GMT from United States)
I went with yes, as there are more differences between a ubuntu base and a debian (even testing) base than a lot of people might otherwise realize.
36 • @ 28 Mr. Zombie (by Kazan on 2018-08-13 19:10:01 GMT from United Kingdom)
Aha, our court arguer...knows everything...argues on everything...and has the urge...
Hmm...
37 • Linux file system (by Carney3 on 2018-08-13 19:15:54 GMT from United States)
Rather than theoretical / astronomical file and drive sizes, I'm much more interested in Linux finally getting what Windows and MacOS have had for decades: information about date/time CREATED as well as date/time modified. It's bizarre that this ultra-basic feature has been glaringly lacking in Linux, with zero apparent clue on the part of any relevant developers. It's IRRELEVANT if YOU don't see the need to find or sort by date created; what's relevant is that Windows and Mac users have taken for granted for decades the ability to do so if they chose.
38 • This guy... (by Pierre on 2018-08-13 19:16:14 GMT from United Kingdom)
This guy M.Z. is needed here. There is always a court jester in every forum. We have a few, but this M.Z is best out all jesters!
39 • Mint LMDE (by Wesley Waldworm on 2018-08-13 19:28:04 GMT from Canada)
Linuxmint users might try LMDE to feel Debian.
But, pure Debian users have clear choices with desired DE either Debian (systemd) or Devuan (non-systemd), both are available with many DE flavors.
At corporate level systemd is preferred, while sysV at personal.
40 • Windows from Surface to ARM (by Wesley Waldworm on 2018-08-13 19:33:13 GMT from Canada)
Jusr rushed to click post in above post.
In efforts to wipe out linux from devices, MS Windows soon raising from Surface to ARM in Google's Chrome-books. It might hurt Android, but, definitely compete iPads.
And,
definitely, that concludes an another chapter.
41 • Installing Linux on Tablets (by Wesley Waldworm on 2018-08-13 19:54:32 GMT from Canada)
I have self brewed R-Pi media box.
Any one here successfully replaced embeded OS with linux on any tablet(s)?
Debian, Ubuntu, Mint, Arch and Porteus might give a GO.
if so, can any one lead me to step-wise procedure?
42 • Wait. What? (by Crass Act on 2018-08-13 20:55:29 GMT from United States)
"FreeBSD and it's derivatives have been flawless for me, and if I had encountered any problems it was my hardware that was to blame"
Did I really just read that?
OTOH, I did have a similar problem recently. I was ticketed for running a stoplight. How is it my fault the light changed too soon?
43 • Off topic.. and LMDE. (by Steve on 2018-08-13 21:16:52 GMT from United Kingdom)
I enjoy using DW, and appreciate the work that goes into this site. I have an idea.. would it be possible to get rid of the hits per rankings? Instead every week the list just features a random 100 distributions, then every month we get a post showing how many hits distros have been getting. My way of thinking is there are some widely unknown distributions that really do deserve more credit, it would be interesting to see the statistics.
Anyway, back on topic, LMDE - yes, review it, every projects deserves a feature, however, I use Debian and for me I do not see why you would want to use LMDE over pure Debian? Surely just using Debian would be better?
Kind regards.
44 • LMDE (by M.Z. on 2018-08-13 23:20:47 GMT from United States)
#36 &38
Not sure what you guys are smoking, but you seem too caught up in nonsense.
@43
"...I use Debian and for me I do not see why you would want to use LMDE over pure Debian?"
How about a better installer, easier multimedia support, & the rich array of Mint tools?
I've tried straight Debian before, but it's far from my ideal PC distro. LMDE is a fair bit easier to setup & admin, & while Debian was rock solid once I got it going, LMDE is just easier & friendlier. I don't remember the firmware @20 mentioned, but there is a neat driver manager for instance.
45 • LMDE (by Mike on 2018-08-13 23:57:50 GMT from Australia)
Yes, review. While running low on patience waiting for LMDE3 I installed BunsenLabs and swapped out xfce for Cinnamon. Voila! Just like LMDE, rock solid and easy install without Ubuntu overhead.
46 • Mint (by Jon Wright on 2018-08-14 02:13:54 GMT from Netherlands)
@2 When Mint Linux was based on the non-'systemd' init (Ubuntu 14.04)
I suppose they had the choice of continuing development off v17.3 (a solid release), but Mint will always be an Ubuntu-based release. Read Clem's recent comments (BTL) - he really talks up Ubuntu's work with Debian. Unfortunately Ubuntu 18.04 (with help from Linux 4.15) has more bugs than a camping holiday in the Scottish Highlands. Lately the option of basing LMDE off Devuan has presented itself - this option has a lot more going for it.
@2 "... in DistroWatch's rankings"
And ReactOS is 15th, and there are some flagship distros in the 30's. The rankings reflect the chatter in the hipper and more excitable corners of the Fossiverse, that's all.
@5 Linux Magazines has [sic] already reviewed ... they are making money by selling
Are you suggesting ...? No money was paid by Mint and this is certainly no path to riches.
@7 Or, a review of LMDE in comparison to Debian with Cinnamon DE
Sounds good. Slip references (resource usage, maturity) to Mint 18.3 in there too.
@8 could it be more adequate to test it with lighter DE
It's Mint Debian with Cinnamon. Changing the DE of a distro to review would serve little purpose.
@ It’s got its own repository and often has newer desktop applications than stock Debian
You'll see packages.linuxmint.com is miniscule compared to the base repo. It contains the mint* tools, Firefox, and a bunch of desktop tweaks. I think the only newer app is Firefox - Debian relies on a FirefoxESR-based version.
@21 Didn't Ikey from SolusOS also work with LMDE back in the day?
He spent almost zero time as a 'contractor'. I seem to remember he dissapeared shortly after the announcement.
@ There is no dev team as such at Mint
Can anyone clarify? I've read references to a 'dev team' (ie non-forum, website duties). They're pulling in $10,000 per month.
@28 repo speed tester
I really like this tool. Debian used to have a couple of command-line tools that I think just relied on ping times. I wonder if anyone has tried to install Mint's tool outside Mint or make it standalone?
@39 Linuxmint users might try LMDE to feel Debian.
As I said before, I think they'll feel more Ubuntu. Just download Debian it has MATE, Xfce,
Lxde, Cinnamon, ...
@43 I do not see why you would want to use LMDE over pure Debian? Surely just using Debian would be better?
And they have https repos, even Tor repos, even .onion repos ... The whole website runs .onionified. And Buster packages are close to 93% reproducible. Shame they went systemd, and went with it in such a non-compromising fashion. But I'm with Debian, I reckon.
47 • Libre vs Tor (by Jon Wright on 2018-08-14 02:15:03 GMT from Netherlands)
@24 Puri.sm and Tor
Still blocked for me. That's blocked, "blocked by Wordfence", not even that tiresome image-matching rigmarole.
48 • Linux Users Numbers (by Michael on 2018-08-14 05:27:31 GMT from United States)
Lately (here and on other sites), I have been hearing a lot of people say, essentially, that Linux is fading into obscurity. They never provide evidence for the numbers, but even if those numbers are true, wouldn't it make more sense that every year more and more people who used to not use computers are using computers, and those new users (largely in the developing world) tend to use pirated copies of Windows. I suspect that the total number of Linux users is in fact growing. I almost never hear of anyone who has used Linux as their primary system for a significant amount of time ever leaving it.
What I see is Linux getting better and better, and much more accessible to new users without technical skills. I've been using it exclusively for a year and a half now, and I am convinced it is far superior to other systems, but still requires slightly higher technical skills (and ambition) than commercial systems. Soon that will not be true though, and I believe Linux is on the cusp of a huge jump in market share, perhaps in a couple years or a decade, but it is coming.
49 • mint lmde (by peer on 2018-08-14 05:42:58 GMT from Netherlands)
I am not a mint user.
I would like to see a review that compares mint lmde and mint cinnamon
50 • @44 (by OstroL on 2018-08-14 06:09:30 GMT from Poland)
"I've tried straight Debian before, but it's far from my ideal PC distro."
So, go ask Mint dev to base LMDE on any other distro than Debian!
Did it ever cross your mind, why Clem is basing his distros on Ubuntu and Debian? Because, it is quite easy to use a ready made distro to add his packages. Ubuntu had made things much easier, than Debian, and that's why Mint's present success.
Go ask him to base his distros on Crux or Gentoo...
51 • @ 46 (by Kazan on 2018-08-14 07:04:08 GMT from United Kingdom)
"Didn't Ikey from SolusOS also work with LMDE back in the day?
He spent almost zero time as a 'contractor'. I seem to remember he dissapeared shortly after the announcement."
Have a look at the LMDE's installer. Who created it?
52 • Linux Users Numbers (by TheRealist on 2018-08-14 07:09:15 GMT from Serbia)
@48
Yes, I've also noticed the same arbitrary assumptions spreading everywhere. It is as if the evil empire is fighting back, using FUD and slander just to keep the user level at a required percentage level.
Because, who in the their right mind would still use the abominable RR "service", that now quite openly spies on you? Non technical people knowing zilch about computers and just somehow using what came preinstalled, never counted for anything anyway apart from bragging about the market shares.
53 • @ 52 "Linux User Numbers" (by Willi on 2018-08-14 08:16:11 GMT from Austria)
"It is as if the evil empire is fighting back"
Not quite true - the correct sentence is:
"The evil empire is fighting back"
Of course they are - what else should they do?
In the sad, dark world they are living in, rising market share and profits are the only reason they have for getting out of bed each morning - so do you suppose that they would willingly stand back and let others take over? And, even worse, others, who possibly might have more fun in life than they have?
54 • @48, 52, The death of Linux and evil empires (by Angel on 2018-08-14 09:55:40 GMT from Philippines)
First, trying to make it clear that this exaggerated rumors about the death of Linux refer to the consumer desktop, i. e Gnu/Linux. In other venues, Linux is not only flourishing, but becoming dominant. Then there are the opposite rumors: The year of the Linux desktop is nigh, and evil Microsoft is dead meat.
@48, I tried Linux back in the wonder beginnings of X Windows. It was too geeky for me at the time, so I played with it a little and forgot. In 2006, when the sudden death and refusal to reinstall of a Windows XP system on a laptop make me look to Linux. First install was Linux Mint 2 (Barbara), and it helped save a business deal for me in South America. Since then I've been reading the rumors about Linux dead or triumphant. In fact, the percentage of Linux desktop users has remained pretty much the same throughout those years. I doubt the future will bring much change from that. On the one hand, there will always be a small percentage of people who like to be different will enjoy and use Linux, on the other, there are no fortunes to be made from desktop Linux. Frankly, I like it the way it is and am happy if it remains so.
@52, What evil empire? It is now possible to run Ubuntu, Suse, Debian and Kali Linux directly on Windows WSL. Brought to you courtesy of Microsoft. Although it doesn't support a GUI by default, even a semi-geek like me can fix that and run an Xserver. Google is making it possible to run Linux programs on Chrome OS. Around 40% of Microsoft's Azure cloud VMs are Linux. Google. I could go on. . . but doesn't sound like the evil empires are succeeding if they want to eradicate Linux.
During the years I've used Linux, percentage of desktop users has remained between 1 and 2 percent. PC use is declining, so in real numbers, maybe Linux numbers are declining. But this decline, especially in 3rd world countries, is not due to one OS or another. It's due to the smart-phone. Here in the Philippines, the number of PC shops and the goods they offer have shrunk quite a bit in the last few years. For most people's use, smartphones suffice, plus they offer more features. Still 1.48% of over a billion PCs in use is around 15 million, a drop in the bucket in percentage, but enough people to fill a large city. Of course, as they say, there are lies, damn lies and statistics, but these links do provide an idea.
From 2010:
https://royal.pingdom.com/2010/08/10/failure-of-linux-to-grab-1-percent-of-desktop-os-market/
From 2017:
https://www.zdnet.com/article/how-many-linux-users-are-there-anyway/
Trends:
https://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_os.asp
55 • BSD usability, LMDE testing (by TheTKS on 2018-08-14 11:25:20 GMT from Canada)
@1, @23 BSDs. I’m slowly test driving OpenBSD on boxes. First 6.2 in VM in Kubuntu, now 6.3 on an SD card on a temporarily HDD-less box, later this year hopefully directly installed as the only OS.
For what I’ve wanted it to do *so far* as a home user who likes to tinker, OpenBSD has worked well (although very slow on the SD card, no surprise.) Where the BSDs I have tried (Open Net Free Ghost Dragonfly) have been weak is wifi card support on laptops that I have had handy - so if you’re set on using a BSD on a laptop, you have to keep this front of mind when shopping. I failed to get a DE loaded on Free, don’t know why and didn’t stick with it, but have heard since there are good guides to doing that. I have yet to try printing, which for me will be a more important test than wifi card support.
Testing LMDE. Please do. I like to keep up on what’s current without having to try every one out. Maybe a 3-way if it works? LMDE Cinnamon vs Linux Mint Cinnamon vs Debian + Cinnamon. I don’t use any of those, but I’ve looked at Linux Mint and Debian Xfce in my hopping, and keep live copies of a few distros that seem newbie-friendly, easy and approachable by Windows users, to show on the chance that it might catch someone’s attention.
TKS
56 • Mint Debian (by Jon Wright on 2018-08-14 11:44:37 GMT from France)
@51 Have a look at the LMDE's installer. Who created it?
I smell a rhetorical question. Did Ikey create it? What's my prize? Good installer, I was guiding associates thru the install while Obama was still fresh. It froze on me during my LMDE3 beta install, and I fired up the other installer (this info provided apropos of almost nothing).
BTW the latest Debian installer is great, it asks all the right questions (please, Ubuntu installer), while not getting in the way.
BTW that time was a black-eye for Mint. Linux Mint could possibly be regarded as a pioneer in terms of crowd-funding open-source (or anything). Funds were raised, there was a boat-load of anticipation, Ikey was hired ... and he disappeared.
57 • Linux usage on desktop up or down? (by TheTKS on 2018-08-14 11:47:59 GMT from Canada)
Is Linux usage on desktop up or down since [whenever]?
How could we know? I’ve seen attempts to quantity, but all are unreliable with huge error bars. That leaves me to go by feel, with a little data to flavour that.
My impression is that awareness of the existence of Linux among the general population is higher than it has ever been and that trend is slowly up, which suggests to me that more people are trying it. How many stick with it is anyone’s guess.
At my workplace, with a significant portion of the population R&D scientists and industrial design and production engineers, but 0 IT people (so we’re not representative of the average population in my city), I’m aware of a few of us and their family members using Linux at home - 4-5%. I suspect there are a number more that I don’t know about. That won’t fly for work, though - our employer and customers dictate Microsoft and compatible.
Those people here saying Linux desktop usage 1% and falling, or similar? I don’t see it and challenge you to come up with anything more solid than I have to make your case.
TKS
58 • @ 54 Linux desktop's decline (by OstroL on 2018-08-14 11:49:55 GMT from Poland)
Well, the Linux desktop's practical enemy is not some "evil empire" in terms of Windows, but something that came from Linux itself, Android.
59 • Linux - Android (by Jon Wright on 2018-08-14 11:58:16 GMT from Switzerland)
@58 something that came from Linux itself, Android
Remember the kernel version? Google are pressing ahead with Fuchsia.
60 • Enemies and evil empires (by Laotse on 2018-08-14 12:26:07 GMT from Switzerland)
You guys talking about enemies and evel empires are funny or ignorant. Microsoft is running its buiseness; and Android is runninig it's own; just like every serious entreprise in the world. What else dou you expect? To step back and say let's switch to Linux and make no money more?
On the other hand, nobody can stop you to run your Linux. I'm running Linux 10 years now, never ever has Microsoft or Android tried to stop me doing that.
61 • @60 (by OstroL on 2018-08-14 12:34:23 GMT from Poland)
You are not running Linux, pal, but a distro based on the Linux kernel. Android is based on (older) Linux kernel. Google appears to know the "abilities" of the Linux kernel, so now is going to use completely something else, which is less bloated.
62 • Linux usage (by dragonmouth on 2018-08-14 12:48:53 GMT from United States)
@54 Angel:
"The year of the Linux desktop is nigh"
That rumor is almost as old as Linux itself, usually spread by tech writers and pundits. :-)
@Linux Usage:
Is O/S usage some kind of competitive sport? Does the winning O/S get a big, garish trophy? AFAIAC, as long as there are Linux distros I can use, life is good. With the proper choice of parameters to interpret the data, statistics can be used to prove ANY assertion you care to make.
63 • Linux usage (by TheRealist on 2018-08-14 13:21:44 GMT from Serbia)
@62 Is O/S usage some kind of competitive sport?
No, especially when one realizes that Linux is mostly free (as in free beer).
Still, every now and then, you'll notice somebody popping out, as if from nowhere, in Linux forums and elsewhere, splattering something or other about "Linux market share dropping" and other things in the same vein as if that matters.
What motivates these people is baffling unless foul play is not ruled out.
64 • Linux is kernel! (by Laotse on 2018-08-14 13:22:08 GMT from Switzerland)
@ 61 I know that very well, you Klugscheisser. Ever heard of metaphor? For sure, I'm running a GNU/Linux-Distribution and I'm very curious to hear what "something completely new" Google is going to use.
65 • mistake (by Tim on 2018-08-14 13:53:01 GMT from United States)
@46
You got me on that- I went back and looked at my notes from the year I ran LMDE2- I had newer packages because I had added Debian Jessie backports. My mistake.
Rose colored glasses I guess because I really liked that system.
@36, 38
Of all the nasty comments on the DW threads you're going after MZ?
Basically, every week is the same here. Jesse writes a nice article, asks a question about some feature, and then the comments end up being about how terrible everything is and how much better it used to be. MZ is one of the only reasons to read the comments because after a while they jump in and explains why something actually is pretty good and why Linux makes them happy instead of angry. We need more MZs here.
66 • My LMDE review (by cykodrone on 2018-08-14 13:53:53 GMT from Canada)
Green and grey GUI treatments with added bugs to an already bug and spyware infested under the hood distro. Their LMDE version should be based on Devuan, kill two birds with one stone. Modularity has been lost in Linux, we need to get back to basics. Over engineering and over tinkering has led to nothing but bloat. Bloat=chaos.
67 • @64 Android also runs the Linux kernel, only an older one... (by Kazan on 2018-08-14 14:07:53 GMT from United Kingdom)
Android also runs Linux, only an older one. Google appears to know that its better to use the older kernel with less bloat. It also knows that it doesn't have to support a lot, but some ARM based chips. And, they are all over the place. Look around you, how many such devices are there in your home, office, car etc?
Linux as a desktop couldn't take 2%, while Android with the older Linux kernel took over the world. Now, that Google had taken the world with Android, it'd drop the Linux kernel and bring in a Microkernel, their own.
@65
Hmm...so, you are Tim now...MZ?
68 • You know Linux has made it when... (by CS on 2018-08-14 14:25:20 GMT from United States)
You know Linux has made it when Linux can be discussed without ranting about Windows. (Or Android it appears)
69 • That wouldn't work (by Garon on 2018-08-14 14:40:50 GMT from United States)
@66
"Their LMDE version should be based on Devuan"
Why? Because of the systemd myth? I thought that debate was finished. You'll still have your hard liners tho. Sometimes people just can't accept change and advancement into areas they are not familiar with. That's okay tho because I'm the same way. I like modules and I don't think that has been lost, not yet anyway. Also there are some new things that have come out that I like or liked. I liked the Unity DE tho a lot of people didn't and they won out on that one. That's okay because that's the way it seems to work. I will still try new things and as soon as Devuan gets a little more mature I'll try them out. Looking forward to it.
70 • Linux - Android (by Jon Wright on 2018-08-14 14:49:44 GMT from France)
@67 Google appears to know that its better to use the older kernel with less bloat
No, Google know that when the time for obsolescence arrives they can toss it down the hole and nobody will retrieve it. Linux bloatage has actually leveled off of late, just recently we had one of the only releases that was smaller than its predecessor. And regarding that bloat, it was interesting to hear GregKH's take - of the 25million lines in the Linux kernel, his laptop ran just 1.6million lines, whereas his phone required 4million.
71 • @69 Cult-like propaganda... (by cykodrone on 2018-08-14 15:10:48 GMT from Canada)
I noticed you didn't touch on the modularity point, why is that? Because you know it's true, systemd and pulseaudio have created a toxic mess of dependencies, to the point of trashing an install if one tries to remove them, or causing such a huge loss of functionality that one just throws their hands in the air and gives up. You are not a certain orange dictator, the words you put on my screen are not the 'gospel truth'. There are numerous examples of distros that are completely trashed if you try to remove systemd and replace it with something else, aside from many 3rd party apps now requiring it as a dependency (aka lack of modularity, look up the word please). Even Lennart himself proudly stated that Linux is "just a kernel" and his abomination is the 'system'. Put down your Jonestown cocktail and do some research before commenting, and maybe actually do some real world experimentation and testing like I have. I do actual bare metal installs to verify causes and conditions, do you?
72 • @ 70 "Jon Wright" (by Kazan on 2018-08-14 15:20:02 GMT from United Kingdom)
Hmmm...in the post #3 and 4, you were in France, #46 and #47 in Netherlands, in #56 in France, #59 in Switzerland and in #70 in France
You must be a time traveller...
73 • Just me (by Tim on 2018-08-14 16:34:05 GMT from United States)
No, I’m not MZ, I’m just another person who is grateful and happy developers give me a free beer system that most of the time works pretty well. Desktop Linux is great. I get roughly the same performance at home on aging Core2Duos and cheap HP laptops running Ubuntu Mate and Xubuntu that I do on much fancier machines at work. None of this stuff sucks. And despite all the constant vitriol in these comments, none of you folks have ever been forced to stop using some software you like. There’s always a fork, or another distro. I’ve been using desktop Linux for ten years, and in all that time only one application I like (KompoZer) has ever truly disappeared. But thanks to all this stuff good people give us for free, I STILL can use it running an old Debian in a Virtualbox. For free. Because people are nice and give us nice things.
I also think it’s interesting that all of the “nobody uses Linux” comments seem to ignore Chrome. Chrome is absolutely Linux, and because of Crouton you can access the entire range of GNU/Linux software.
74 • LMDE & Silliness (by M.Z. on 2018-08-14 17:32:47 GMT from United States)
@50
"So, go ask Mint dev to base LMDE on any other distro..."
Did you not get the whole comment? LMDE is what makes Debian perfect for PC use. It's straight Debian that I didn't like, though I have to admit I haven't installed it in a while, perhaps since version 6 or 7. Debian is a great base system & there is a reason it's the foundation that many distro are based on, it's just not optimized for easy PC use. It was very solid after the initial setup though.
@65
I think maybe some were just hurt about the RHEL conversation last week & couldn't find a decent rationalization for their irrational fears after I pointed out the Scientific Linux folks 'love upstream' as the Sci Linux site put it. Then they started this week with some weak Ad hominem stuff, rather than try to come up with a decent counterpoint. Just my guess.
Anyway, I do try to improve the conversation in my own imperfect way, thanks for noticing.
#67
HI! I'm Michael, from an IP address somewhere not too far from Kennedy Space Center. If you want to track Tim down to support your conspiracy theories be my guest. I promise I'm too lazy to spoof an IP address, & you can tell because I use Mint & Mageia rather than Slackware & Arch. :)
75 • nomadBSD (by brad on 2018-08-14 17:35:36 GMT from United States)
I have just successfully downloaded, burned onto a USB key, and am running nomadBSD from said key, on my intel-powered laptop (core-i5, 7th gen, with intel graphics, running at FHD display).
It's slow...but usable. I had to wait quite a while for the desktop to show up (Openbox), but it has a lot of applications (Firefox, PaleMoon, Thunderbird, LibreOffice (V6.0.5.2), GIMP, Audacity, Cantata, and VLC, among others. I haven't tried them all, but I may do so in the days/weeks ahead.
I encourage any of you with an all-Intel system to try it. This is by far the best experience I've had with *BSDs in a long time; IMHO, better than PC-BSD, GhostBSD, Open, Net, or Free. This one works OOTB with no struggle (besides the lack of speed). I hope they will come out with a non-live version.
76 • @61 Ostrol: (by dragonmouth on 2018-08-14 18:00:28 GMT from United States)
Don't be a pedant. It is accepted usage to say "I am running Linux" when referring to using one of the distros. Only prigs insist on saying "GNU/Linux kernel".
77 • @65 Tim (by dragonmouth on 2018-08-14 18:02:55 GMT from United States)
"We need more MZs here."
No, no, no! One is quite enough. :-)
78 • @67 Kazan: (by dragonmouth on 2018-08-14 18:22:47 GMT from United States)
"Linux as a desktop couldn't take 2%, while Android with the older Linux kernel took over the world."
Android may have taken over the world but what is their desktop share? Do they have even .0001%? I wonder if Android is as popular on the desktop as Slackware is on smartphones. And don't bother to point out that Android is not a desktop O/S. (Actually, there is a desktop version of Android) You are the one that is making apples to oranges comparison to prove some vague point.
BTW - Android DID NOT "take over the world". It is splitting the smartphone market with iOS.
Android is as much Linux as OS/X is BSD, i.e. not much.
79 • @76 GNU/Linux kernel (by Kazan on 2018-08-14 18:33:47 GMT from United Kingdom)
How many prigs are out there, dragonmouth? Hope you are not fuming.
Most of the vociferous here don't really use Linux at work, but play with it in the evenings at home. Most of them usually use Windows at work, and, most importantly they are angry. It can be felt by their comments. They can't fight it out with the bosses at work, so fume in such fora.
80 • @76 @dragonmouth (by Kazan on 2018-08-14 18:41:40 GMT from United Kingdom)
Hope you are using a "open source" mobile phone, other than Android.
Android is not out there for desktop. It is out there to kick out the desktop. It is the smart phone world today. Where do you live? Somewhere in a desert, probably?
81 • Debian by itself is superb (by OstroL on 2018-08-14 19:01:55 GMT from Poland)
Debian is so good, there are so many distros that shows how good Debian is, for example, MX Linux, Kali, AntiX, Sparky Linux, Voyager Debian, Parrot, BunsenLabs, Neptune, Siduction, AV Linux, Raspbian, SolydXK, Deepin, Makulu Linux, Salent OS, BlankOn, Ubuntu to name a few.
There were iconic distros too, such as #!. Certain distros came out of the death of #! say to donate to Debian, if they like those distros.
And, also the newer fork of Debian, Devuan.
82 • @69 Garon: (by dragonmouth on 2018-08-14 19:48:16 GMT from United States)
"Sometimes people just can't accept change and advancement "
And sometimes people can't accept the fact that change may be for the worse; the change is a regression, not an advancement.
83 • @81: (by dragonmouth on 2018-08-14 19:55:02 GMT from United States)
If Debian is so great, why were all those other distros created if not to fix Debian's shortcomings?
84 • @73 - Kompozer (by Uncle Slacky on 2018-08-14 20:11:58 GMT from France)
It hasn't really disappeared, it's now part of the Seamonkey suite ("Composer"): https://www.seamonkey-project.org/doc/features
85 • PCLinux of 2007 was GREAT! But LESS since. (by OS2_user on 2018-08-14 20:18:09 GMT from United States)
Yep, when I surfed the net WHILE installing (only 20 minutes!), I thought that "Linux on the desktop" was wave of the future. Found nearly all hardware tried. Built-in NTFS and HPFS file systems so I could swap drives around as wished. Can't recall any serious bugs.
(Tried to interest locals, without much success: it's a tough sell when Windows plays games, mainly. -- On other hand, a couple now have tiny little Raspberry Pi. Do they "use" Linux, then? -- Hell, no! It's been made into APPLIANCE!)
THEN PCLINUX AND ALL STARTED PUTTING TOO MANY "FEATURES" IN THE GUIs.
EASE AND RELIABILITY WENT DOWN FOR ME. A number of complaints here support me in that view. Linux drifted from working okay basics into overly-ambitious and non-working.
In short, in my view, "Linux on the desktop" has failed due to doing too much trying to keep up with Windows.
------
By the way, a just about entirely overlooked distro that I've have good luck, no problems, with is Super X. Used for a while on Asus EEE. -- Development stopped in 2015! No clue why. -- Here's a review:
https://www.linuxinsider.com/story/81938.html
------
Second overlooked is the new Links browser, native on OS/2, but versions for Windows and Linux. -- On OS/2 it's blazing fast, done rendering before YOUR browser has even started grinding through javascript. Dodges nearly all tracking and other web "features", but does require some "learning" and getting used to, notably in use of "Insert" and "Delete" instead of up / down arrows. But it's perfectly geeky. Don't know why never mentioned.
86 • Links browser link forgot. (by OS2_user on 2018-08-14 20:20:21 GMT from United States)
http://links.twibright.com/download.php
87 • Even a niche Linux distro creator goes Windows...and to iOS (by Kazan on 2018-08-14 20:40:57 GMT from United Kingdom)
"Now, let me tell you, it is very difficult to willingly let that go. So, why have I?"
('that' btw, is Linux.)
"The primary reason was a very selfish one, I wanted to know if I had been missing out on anything. I mean, 10+ years is a very long time in the computing world, at least long enough for Microsoft to have released 3 (or 4, if you count 8 and 8.1 as differing beasts, and discount the various other Windows variants, such as Server) different versions of Windows, and I really wanted to know what, if anything, I was missing out on. In short, I believe I may have been suffering from a severe case of FoMO."
"And had I been missing out? Well, yes, I believe I had. Both Windows 7 (switched to from Debian at work) and Windows 8.1 (switched to from Debian at home) are both excellent operating systems. Sure, I get a few butterflies in my stomach if I think too hard about the four freedoms when I’m using them, but it’s becoming easier and easier to push those thoughts to the back of my mind. When things “just work”, it definitely helps to make it easy to forget about the things you are trying not to think about."
"As I mentioned, it really wasn’t easy to make the switch, especially in the beginning. There were times when I longed for my familiar Linux desktop, but after ~6 months, and a considerable amount of bending to the OS, I’m now in a position where I can use Windows and it doesn’t get in my way. In fact, I’m well on my way to becoming a proficient Windows power user — I’ve swapped Bash scripts for Batch files and I’m learning new tricks all the time. And for the most part, I’m loving it."
...................
....................
"UPDATE: I’ve since switched to OS X."
(Not my words, his.)
88 • re:87 Even a niche Linux distro creator goes Windows (by TheRealist on 2018-08-14 21:18:19 GMT from Serbia)
@97
It's just curiosity. He'll be back...
On the other hand, Hollywood seems to be experiencing a completely opposite feeling of FoMO
https://variety.com/2018/digital/news/academy-software-foundation-open-source-1202901261/
89 • AMD Threadripper - Linux wins (by Tim on 2018-08-14 22:21:16 GMT from Austria)
Interesting benchmark results on Phoronix. Linux seems to handle AMD Threadripper pretty well. Beats Win10 Pro hands down. Also interesting: Opensuse Tumbleweed is ahead of Clear Linux in most cases (whenever it was included in the benchmarks).
90 • @88 no, he won't (by Kazan on 2018-08-14 22:32:14 GMT from France)
No, he won't be back. He was the most famous of the lot, who left. He left in 2015, when his distro was on the top. He was one of the most liked, (most loved would be a better word). He still uses Linux, but on his servers. I was puzzled at that time, even angry, but slowly found out he was right -- on the desktop matter.
Checked Win 8.1, and liked it. Checked Win 10, and liked that too. I still have a dedicated Linux box, and few laptops multi-boot -- Android, Linux and Win 10 and a 10.1" 2 in 1 with only Win 10. So, I know how it is about desktop use. I've been with Linux since 2005, some years with Linux only in the Win 7 time. I'm not going to lose on not knowing about other OSs, by getting stuck with just one -- too little time on this planet Earth in one life. I cannot afford to buy a Mac, but know how to use it, had used one for few years too (office).
Been waiting too long for a real Linux desktop, and it had not come through. Cannonical had big ideas, but when it found out it can't make money out of it, it just dropped the desktop. Atm, there's a show of creating a new release, but that's done by some community members. Canonical still have few paid developers, but not as it was before. It is now interested in embedded OSs. Nothing happens at community.ubuntu.com for a long time. Have a look and see for yourself.
Mandriva died, money problem. PCLinuxOS would slowly die too. Slackware would go the same road. Arch and Gentoo would hold on. Debian too for sometime. Red hat and Suse might until profit come through. Google would go with Microkernel, or something else their own, dropping out of Linux. Businesses are not interested in non-paying desktop users. You are needed to shout, and for nothing else. If business won't pay for the development of Linux, it'd simply die. A profit has to be made to run a show. You (we) as the non-paying user is not counted.
91 • 90 • @88 no, he won't (by Kazan (by TheRealist on 2018-08-14 23:47:26 GMT from Serbia)
@90
You are being overly melodramatic and completely misinformed regarding Mandrake/Mandriva - one of the first distros I've used. It has been forked into 3 different distros so it's very far from being dead.
Likewise you cannot predict with any certainty what future holds up its sleeve for PCLinuxOS, Slackware or others. The abandoned Unity is forked too. It's just your bleak guesswork that doesn't allow for any good outcome. Is this FUD/trolling from your part? I hope not...
Of course, you shouldn't feel stuck and try other things. It is through my previous experience with other operating systems that I came to value what Linux desktop has to offer. I can bend it around me, to what I want, not the other way around.
92 • review suggestion (by pengxuin on 2018-08-15 00:36:46 GMT from New Zealand)
How about a review / side by side comparison of the system installers.
Ubiquity (for Ubuntu and offspring)
Calamares installer.
Anaconda (for Redhat and offspring)
Drake installer (for Mandrake offspring)
etc.
Suggest that the install is in a Virtual box set up as a new (potential) user would find in their laptop.
So, one HDD, as many partitions as a standard store bought Windows system would have.
efi, c:/ , recovery, etc
Let the installer do all the work, so no pre-partitioning before install starts.
If the install is difficult or breaks their existing Windows, they are very unlikely to continue with Linux, no matter how nice the desktop looks.
As new (potential) Linux users, they would be unlikely to know all the shortcuts / traps that existing Linux users know how to avoid, or recover from!
have fun.
Number of Comments: 92
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Zencafe GNU/Linux
Zencafe GNU/Linux was a desktop Linux distribution designed specifically for public Internet cafés. Based on Slackware and Zenwalk Linux, it includes auto-recovery features, Internet café billing and management software, and other graphical system administration tools. Zencafe's default edition uses Xfce as the main desktop, while its "Lite" edition, designed for older or less powerful computers, installs the IceWM window manager.
Status: Discontinued
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