Linux Discussion Thread

Anybody else here tried using Gnome 3? I started using it and it looks pretty and nice but it seems pretty unstable on my system. I'm trying out kde(which I haven't tried in years and never to any extent) just to see what has happened to it since early versions of kde 3. I'm just trying to find something nice that will be inviting to family that might try to use my computer when it is booted into arch and they click on the guest account. I also hate how gnome has devolved the configurability of their desktop environment and login manager(this is what I had to do to set the wallpaper in GDM 3 https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/GNOME_3#GDM_Customization ). Gnome 2 was the best in that regard. What do you guys use for desktop environments these days and why?

also did you guys hear that linux 3.0 is going to be the next major kernel version? http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.linux.kernel/1147415

Anyways this thread is for watmm to discuss linux related things.

Micro kernels are cooler.

you mean like xnu?

For the normal non-geeks I've got XFCE installed which is quite good.

I use Awesome WM myself, a minimal tiling window manager. I don't need window chromes, menu's and toolbars. Rather just use shortcuts and maximize screen estate.

bothered

  On 5/30/2011 at 9:19 PM, Ego said:

For the normal non-geeks I've got XFCE installed which is quite good.

 

I use Awesome WM myself, a minimal tiling window manager. I don't need window chromes, menu's and toolbars. Rather just use shortcuts and maximize screen estate.

I've been meaning to check out awesome myself. I use xmonad but to be honest I don't know what I'm doing half the time when configuring it because the config file is written in haskell.

Playing around with KDE right now actually and it is surprisingly snappy, at least compared to gnome3. I disabled desktop effects and the nepomuk services and the memory/cpu footprint is pretty low and everything reponds pretty much instantaneously.

always have linux boxes around, for fun and work.

i have to say, linux is massively better than it was ten years ago. i remember fighting with it just to find the right drivers for the NIC, then fighting to find the graphics drivers after, then the sound after that, etc. and only after that do you get around to actually setting up what you want it to do. much more slick these days, esp. if you're not running it on a dinosaur PC. if progress keeps up at this pace, i have reasonable faith that it'll start to do to windows what we've all wanted it to do to windows for years. say in the 2-5 year range.

yet, yet -- there's still shit that won't work sometimes, and the fixes aren't trivial. and i'm not sure a bunch of idiots running linux boxes will be any better/more secure than a bunch of idiots running windows boxes !

  Quote

i have to say, linux is massively better than it was ten years ago. i remember fighting with it just to find the right drivers for the NIC, then fighting to find the graphics drivers after, then the sound after that, etc. and only after that do you get around to actually setting up what you want it to do. much more slick these days, esp. if you're not running it on a dinosaur PC. if progress keeps up at this pace, i have reasonable faith that it'll start to do to windows what we've all wanted it to do to windows for years. say in the 2-5 year range.

There are still some things holding it back somewhat. The sound architecture is a mess. There are still 3 major sound servers competing: ALSA, the new OSS and PulseAudio. PulseAudio should be the future, but configuration is a disaster so I just keep using ALSA. I want to migrate to PulseAudio though, you can do some really sweet things with it (it can send streams over the network for example.)

There are still some driver problems with exotic hardware. I don't know whether the ATI drivers have been improved yet. The Nvidia binary driver is great, but too bad it's binary. But with well-supported hardware it's great.

And commercial software support is probably the biggest problem. I mean, for most things I do at home there are great free software alternatives. But at the office I really need Adobe Suite and Wine is very hit and miss. I have to boot into Windows for games as well. I attempted to do gaming, in Wine for a while. But it's such a headache to spend hours and hours fixing up your Wine environment before you can start playing (often in a buggy state.)

I run 2 linux machines.

- An old Pentium 4 running 24/7 on Arch Linux that is a seedbox, fileserver, music server (long live MPD) etc. Considered moving the server to Debian because I rarely update it but the software stack I'm using seems quite stable. This thing has been running non-stop for 2 years and it only went down once because the power supply got fried.

- My main PC which runs Arch Linux as well. Beast of a machine running on an SSD. Amazing boot times, always snappy, love it.

Anyone noticed improved desktop performance after the wonder patch in 2.6.38? It sounds very cool, can't say I've noticed it though.

hegewars

  On 5/30/2011 at 11:03 PM, Ego said:

  Quote

i have to say, linux is massively better than it was ten years ago. i remember fighting with it just to find the right drivers for the NIC, then fighting to find the graphics drivers after, then the sound after that, etc. and only after that do you get around to actually setting up what you want it to do. much more slick these days, esp. if you're not running it on a dinosaur PC. if progress keeps up at this pace, i have reasonable faith that it'll start to do to windows what we've all wanted it to do to windows for years. say in the 2-5 year range.

 

There are still some things holding it back somewhat. The sound architecture is a mess. There are still 3 major sound servers competing: ALSA, the new OSS and PulseAudio. PulseAudio should be the future, but configuration is a disaster so I just keep using ALSA. I want to migrate to PulseAudio though, you can do some really sweet things with it (it can send streams over the network for example.)

yeah, i agree completely. i've had problems with nvidia cards too, when i want to do fancier things, like TV-out. but it's a zillion times better, and i am confident that they will continue to sort out the mess, to the point where it'll be a lot more viable for j. random user. that's all i was saying.

however, i think there will always be mess. linux is evolutionary -- three competing audio packages forces all of them to up their game a bit (or stop playing).

  On 5/30/2011 at 10:30 PM, hahathhat said:

yet, yet -- there's still shit that won't work sometimes, and the fixes aren't trivial. and i'm not sure a bunch of idiots running linux boxes will be any better/more secure than a bunch of idiots running windows boxes !

There is a recent example of linux malware that diguises itself as a theme or screensaver wrapped up in a dpkg and turns the system into a ddos bot.

Linux distributions definitely have their faults as "everyday" operating systems. it has come a long way since the early days, but it still has a very very long way to go.

one of my favourite distro's is Crunchbang Linux, which is Debian based and runs OpenBox or XFCE as your window manager (of course you can install whatever you like when it's up and running). it's nice and lean (compared to Ubuntu) and by default has a rather nice minimal look to it

  On 5/30/2011 at 11:52 PM, Bubba69 said:

  On 5/30/2011 at 10:30 PM, hahathhat said:

yet, yet -- there's still shit that won't work sometimes, and the fixes aren't trivial. and i'm not sure a bunch of idiots running linux boxes will be any better/more secure than a bunch of idiots running windows boxes !

 

 

There is a recent example of linux malware that diguises itself as a theme or screensaver wrapped up in a dpkg and turns the system into a ddos bot.

nothing's secure. vigilance is still the first and last line of defense !

what's more, attacks on linux will increase with its popularity. comparable to all that "mac defender" brouhaha.

hmm, tho rooted mac & linux boxes have much higher prices cos they are more secure, and are far more reliable that windoze

  On 5/31/2011 at 12:43 AM, sickboy said:

hmm, tho rooted mac & linux boxes have much higher prices cos they are more secure, and are far more reliable that windoze

what?

for botnets and that

price of a rooted mac or linux box is loads more than a win machine

so to say that attacks on them are happening less on them in proportion to their market share is not entirely accurate

fuckin what? yerself anyway

  On 5/30/2011 at 11:17 PM, sup said:

hegewars

i don't really know anything about computers but i've been using Ubuntu for 2 years. I actually find it simpler to use than windows now. If a major manufacturer starts shipping PCs with ubuntu installed, its market share could explode. I think it's ready for the big time too. Adobe making a linux suite would be massive.

At first Unity really got on my nerves but now that i'm used to it, i like it. they really ballsed up disabling the notification area though. and the disappearing scroll bars, who the fuck thought that was a good idea.

yeah, unity can get fucked.

  On 5/31/2011 at 6:58 AM, Al Hounos said:

i don't really know anything about computers but i've been using Ubuntu for 2 years. I actually find it simpler to use than windows now.

It's simpler, until it isn't. Like, when X11 goes down on you.

i started off with slackware and redhat 5.0. as i alluded to earlier, i couldn't even get ethernet up until i figured out how to recompile the kernel.

it is so, so much better now.

But this is the year of linux on the desktop!

  On 5/31/2011 at 7:56 AM, baph said:

But this is the year of linux on the desktop!

actually, it's the year of the hack.

I like Arch Linux a lot, my soundcard isn't supported though so I dunno right now.

doing a Linux From Scratch is still on my list of things to do.. build a nice studio system with it, but it still lacks software components and I don't want to go the Wine route.