Mandatory distro question

I don't use linux, I use my own operating system I made. It's built to run on windows dependencies (so I can open exe files, rars and install like windows) but also is really secure.
Although hosting my servers, It would have to be FreeBSD, CentOS or Windows Server 2016.

Up until very recently arch. I considered trying out gentoo but after messing up near the end of the install, I'm too demotivated to get that working now. For the time being, I'll just go with something that doesn't take so much time to set up.

On my desktop I run Ubuntu 16.04. It's easy to set up, supports a lot of software and it fits my needs (some light programming, listening to music, surfing the net.)

I have 2 VPS on which I run Debian 8. I like it for it's stabilty & many guides I've read are based on it.

laifot wrote

what are the best linux distros for creating a server for windows users? wanna read your opinions :3

Do you have any experience with *Unix or Linux? What do you need the server for?
If you choose Ubuntu or Debian for your server you can't do much wrong, it depens on what you're planning to do with though =)

debian for lyf

Here's my question: Why use anything other than Ubuntu and its variants?

I mean sure, Arch is customizable, but I hear it's a bit of a chore to set up. When the OS itself becomes a hobby; isn't that somewhat counterproductive?

Debian for my servers, Manjaro for my desktop. Manjaro gives me the love of Arch without the hassle of installing manually. <3

Arch Linux is the lazy man's Gentoo
Any other distro is just the lazy man's Arch.

Moral of the story? Install Gentoo >:3

Backlash wrote

Here's my question: Why use anything other than Ubuntu and its variants?

I mean sure, Arch is customizable, but I hear it's a bit of a chore to set up. When the OS itself becomes a hobby; isn't that somewhat counterproductive?

Arch is a chore to set up, but it's not that hard to maintain. This means that because arch is barely more effort to use after initial setup than ubuntu, arch only has to be a bit better to pay off long-term. For non-programmers, there's not really any reason to use arch over ubuntu. However for me, arch is a huge win because the packages are up to date. Because Debian and Ubuntu are stable distributions, their packages tend to be months to years out of date. It ends up that eventually you do need the latest version of X, Y, and Z and it turns into a pain in the ass to install. On arch, living on the bleeding edge is a lot easier, and the packages are a whole lot more up to date by default.

I also enjoyed setting up arch, and it taught me a lot about linux. This knowledge is transferrable to any linux distro, including debian and ubuntu.

Backlash wrote

Here's my question: Why use anything other than Ubuntu and its variants?

I mean sure, Arch is customizable, but I hear it's a bit of a chore to set up. When the OS itself becomes a hobby; isn't that somewhat counterproductive?

It is a time thing if you want the Arch or anything minimal like that as your main OS. If you still want to learn you can always go the vm route. Also on thing to keep in mind about linux distros they are all the same except the initramfs and default kernel config.

AbsentLife wrote

Also on thing to keep in mind about linux distros they are all the same except the initramfs and default kernel config.

Wat. That's plainly not true.

RX14 wrote

AbsentLife wrote

Also on thing to keep in mind about linux distros they are all the same except the initramfs and default kernel config.

Wat. That's plainly not true.

Everything else is either a config file or a package. Even package managers can replaced and changed.

AbsentLife wrote

RX14 wrote

AbsentLife wrote

Also on thing to keep in mind about linux distros they are all the same except the initramfs and default kernel config.

Wat. That's plainly not true.

Everything else is either a config file or a package. Even package managers can replaced and changed.

• The packages have different versions for each distro
• The packages have different patches for each distro
• The packages are built differently for each distro
• The packages have different default configs for each distro
• The packages in the "base set" are different for each distro
• Distros use different package managers with different featuresets

There's a whole lot different between distros. "Everything else is either a config file or a package". The kernel and intramfs ARE packages. Sure, packages are the "only difference" between distros, but thats because distros are entirely composed of packages. There's nothing else to BE different.

RX14 wrote

AbsentLife wrote

RX14 wrote

AbsentLife wrote

Also on thing to keep in mind about linux distros they are all the same except the initramfs and default kernel config.

Wat. That's plainly not true.

Everything else is either a config file or a package. Even package managers can replaced and changed.

• The packages have different versions for each distro
• The packages have different patches for each distro
• The packages are built differently for each distro
• The packages have different default configs for each distro
• The packages in the "base set" are different for each distro
• Distros use different package managers with different featuresets

There's a whole lot different between distros. "Everything else is either a config file or a package". The kernel and intramfs ARE packages. Sure, packages are the "only difference" between distros, but thats because distros are entirely composed of packages. There's nothing else to BE different.

Everything about packages can be changed on any linux distro no package is special nor does that make a distro special for having a certain version or patch or a package. Builds are incredibly similar since packages are built to run on as many machines as possible. Configs are just files that can copied. Base sets are just collection of packages that someone thought would go nice together. You are right about package managers. The kernel and the initramfs are the only two thing that are not interchangeable and define a distribution. Also initramfs is not a package.

RX14 wrote

Backlash wrote

Here's my question: Why use anything other than Ubuntu and its variants?

I mean sure, Arch is customizable, but I hear it's a bit of a chore to set up. When the OS itself becomes a hobby; isn't that somewhat counterproductive?

Arch is a chore to set up, but it's not that hard to maintain. This means that because arch is barely more effort to use after initial setup than ubuntu, arch only has to be a bit better to pay off long-term. For non-programmers, there's not really any reason to use arch over ubuntu. However for me, arch is a huge win because the packages are up to date. Because Debian and Ubuntu are stable distributions, their packages tend to be months to years out of date. It ends up that eventually you do need the latest version of X, Y, and Z and it turns into a pain in the ass to install. On arch, living on the bleeding edge is a lot easier, and the packages are a whole lot more up to date by default.

I also enjoyed setting up arch, and it taught me a lot about linux. This knowledge is transferrable to any linux distro, including debian and ubuntu.

This pretty much.
I love the process of installing arch. The people that say that bleeding edge is unstable are wrong. It's incredibly rare that an update to anything with break something.

Another primary reason to install something like Arch is purely that it has 0 bloat. Something like Ubuntu has a fuckload of pre-installed packages that you don't necessarily want or use.
Sure, they make an entirely usable desktop OS, but for a lot of users they won't use even half of the packages it comes with.
If you just want something that "just werks" then Ubuntu is fine, but personally I want to set up my system to work efficiently using only the packages necessary to do so.
You have other options than Arch if you want to achieve that, such as the Manjaro Net Install seeing as Manjaro is basically Arch just without the need to fuck around with manually setting up the base installation.

Oh and another negative for some is that Ubuntu isn't FSF compliant, people don't like that a large for-profit company develops Ubuntu, and it comes with some things that heavily invade privacy out of the box.
I think they can be disabled in the settings, however they're switched on by default and most don't know they're on unless they stumble across them in the settings.
Arch has non-FSF compliant packages in its repositories, but the OS itself is FSF compliant as far as I know.

AbsentLife wrote

RX14 wrote

AbsentLife wrote

RX14 wrote

Wat. That's plainly not true.

Everything else is either a config file or a package. Even package managers can replaced and changed.

• The packages have different versions for each distro
• The packages have different patches for each distro
• The packages are built differently for each distro
• The packages have different default configs for each distro
• The packages in the "base set" are different for each distro
• Distros use different package managers with different featuresets

There's a whole lot different between distros. "Everything else is either a config file or a package". The kernel and intramfs ARE packages. Sure, packages are the "only difference" between distros, but thats because distros are entirely composed of packages. There's nothing else to BE different.

Everything about packages can be changed on any linux distro no package is special nor does that make a distro special for having a certain version or patch or a package. Builds are incredibly similar since packages are built to run on as many machines as possible. Configs are just files that can copied. Base sets are just collection of packages that someone thought would go nice together. You are right about package managers. The kernel and the initramfs are the only two thing that are not interchangeable and define a distribution. Also initramfs is not a package.

I'd argue that if you change every package then it's just your own distro. You could change and rebuild the packages, use different versions than everyone else using the distro, or install your own set of base packages. But what matters about a distribution is the community, and if you're so far away from what 99% of people use, you're essentially using your own distro. For the 99.9% who do not significantly edit their distro, they will see a huge difference between different distributions, and that's why distros are not "all the same".

You're also right about the initramfs. It's not technically a package, it's typically generated by another package on the machine (mkinitcpio in arch).

RX14 wrote

AbsentLife wrote

RX14 wrote

AbsentLife wrote

Everything else is either a config file or a package. Even package managers can replaced and changed.

• The packages have different versions for each distro
• The packages have different patches for each distro
• The packages are built differently for each distro
• The packages have different default configs for each distro
• The packages in the "base set" are different for each distro
• Distros use different package managers with different featuresets

There's a whole lot different between distros. "Everything else is either a config file or a package". The kernel and intramfs ARE packages. Sure, packages are the "only difference" between distros, but thats because distros are entirely composed of packages. There's nothing else to BE different.

Everything about packages can be changed on any linux distro no package is special nor does that make a distro special for having a certain version or patch or a package. Builds are incredibly similar since packages are built to run on as many machines as possible. Configs are just files that can copied. Base sets are just collection of packages that someone thought would go nice together. You are right about package managers. The kernel and the initramfs are the only two thing that are not interchangeable and define a distribution. Also initramfs is not a package.

I'd argue that if you change every package then it's just your own distro. You could change and rebuild the packages, use different versions than everyone else using the distro, or install your own set of base packages. But what matters about a distribution is the community, and if you're so far away from what 99% of people use, you're essentially using your own distro. For the 99.9% who do not significantly edit their distro, they will see a huge difference between different distributions, and that's why distros are not "all the same".

You're also right about the initramfs. It's not technically a package, it's typically generated by another package on the machine (mkinitcpio in arch).

You are right about distros being different in a casual sense. After spending sometime using linux the difference in packages feel mundane to me. I find myself look at how initramfs works and the default kernel config, to differentiate distribution, more than what comes prepackaged. Even then a kernel config is just a file so I end up looking at what kind of kernel is in use.

Well I think all is said so thanks for providing me some insight of some shit I do not think about anymore.

Riight, so after fiddling with Manjaro for days over a small but fatal bug, I figured I'd opt for a Debian-based distro for out-of-the-box stability. Ended up using KDE Neon, which is pretty much just Kubuntu without the bloat.

What's everyone else running these days? ^_^

Backlash wrote

Riight, so after fiddling with Manjaro for days over a small but fatal bug, I figured I'd opt for a Debian-based distro for out-of-the-box stability. Ended up using KDE Neon, which is pretty much just Kubuntu without the bloat.

What's everyone else running these days? ^_^

-snip-

Void Linux with i3 ^_^

A stable rolling-release distro with a pretty friendly community, and pretty simple packaging system.

Backlash wrote

Riight, so after fiddling with Manjaro for days over a small but fatal bug, I figured I'd opt for a Debian-based distro for out-of-the-box stability. Ended up using KDE Neon, which is pretty much just Kubuntu without the bloat.

What's everyone else running these days? ^_^

I'm using KDE Neon as well! I like having the newest KDE updates and I don't care about the underlying distro as long as it is stable, so I might as well stick with the LTS Ubuntu base.

Decided to switch to using Linux on this brand new computer because a lot of reasons; one of them being that I kind of hate how hard it is to customize the look of windows. Everything looks beautiful, really customizable, consume little resources while being really smooth and all that. Despite being a total noob at anything computer related, I love it. Currently on Manjaro. I've been spending quite some time trying to get my games to work. Some of them work from the get go, some of them require a few days of looking up stuff on the internet and then there are a few games which just crash without any error message for me to work on or just have an issue which I have no idea how to describe.

Anyway, I have this habit of pressing windows + shift + s to take screenshots but holding down windows + shift makes my cursor draw an annoying red line that won't go away and stay on top of everything. Still haven't figured it out how to fix that.