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digitalmars.D - [OT] Good or best Linux distro?

reply "Chris" <wendlec tcd.ie> writes:
At work we use Ubuntu, however, I'm not at all happy with it and 
don't want to use it on my private computer. Which is the best 
alternative (I've been looking at OpenSUSE; Mint is based on 
Ubuntu/Debian but only shares the repository with Ubuntu 
(right?); Fedora has bad reviews at the moment and might be a 
pain to set up (drivers etc.)). I'm also considering FreeBSD, a 
completely different beast.
Jan 20 2014
next sibling parent reply "Dicebot" <public dicebot.lv> writes:
On Monday, 20 January 2014 at 12:30:27 UTC, Chris wrote:

 At work we use Ubuntu, however, I'm not at all happy with it 
 and don't want to use it on my private computer. Which is the 
 best alternative (I've been looking at OpenSUSE; Mint is based 
 on Ubuntu/Debian but only shares the repository with Ubuntu 
 (right?); Fedora has bad reviews at the moment and might be a 
 pain to set up (drivers etc.)). I'm also considering FreeBSD, a 
 completely different beast.


It is always a good idea to list specific requirements first :P 
For example:

  - how comfortable you are with console tinkering?
  - what is your preferred Deskop Environment / Windows Manager?
  - do you need most recent versions for some software?
  - is having good out of the box support for D important? ;)

etc.
Jan 20 2014
parent reply "Chris" <wendlec tcd.ie> writes:
On Monday, 20 January 2014 at 12:34:33 UTC, Dicebot wrote:

 On Monday, 20 January 2014 at 12:30:27 UTC, Chris wrote:

 At work we use Ubuntu, however, I'm not at all happy with it 
 and don't want to use it on my private computer. Which is the 
 best alternative (I've been looking at OpenSUSE; Mint is based 
 on Ubuntu/Debian but only shares the repository with Ubuntu 
 (right?); Fedora has bad reviews at the moment and might be a 
 pain to set up (drivers etc.)). I'm also considering FreeBSD, 
 a completely different beast.


 It is always a good idea to list specific requirements first :P 
 For example:

  - how comfortable you are with console tinkering?


Is fine with me as long as it doesn't get too much.


  - what is your preferred Deskop Environment / Windows Manager?


Most distros are flexible. Right now I'm testing Xfce.


  - do you need most recent versions for some software?


Not necessarily. But it might be handy to have a good updating 
mechanism.


  - is having good out of the box support for D important? ;)


Should be fine as I'm considering OpenSUSE, Mint or (maybe) 
Fedora. There are easy installers for all of them and dub works 
on all of them, I suppose.


 etc.
Jan 20 2014
parent reply "Dicebot" <public dicebot.lv> writes:
On Monday, 20 January 2014 at 12:47:15 UTC, Chris wrote:

 - what is your preferred Deskop Environment / Windows Manager?


 Most distros are flexible. Right now I'm testing Xfce.


Theoretically - yes. In practice packaging quality differs 
depending on how much attention specific DE/WM gets from that 
distro maintainers. For example, you are unlikely to reliably use 
Unity anywhere but on Ubuntu and Gnome 3 fans are pretty much 
limited to Fedora and Arch. For more simplistic environments it 
is not that much of a concern, at least Xfce should be rock solid 
anywhere.

I am (unsurprisingly) using Arch but can easily imagine perfectly 
legitimate reasons to not do so :P
Jan 20 2014
parent reply "Chris" <wendlec tcd.ie> writes:
On Monday, 20 January 2014 at 14:35:29 UTC, Dicebot wrote:

 On Monday, 20 January 2014 at 12:47:15 UTC, Chris wrote:

 - what is your preferred Deskop Environment / Windows Manager?


 Most distros are flexible. Right now I'm testing Xfce.


 Theoretically - yes. In practice packaging quality differs 
 depending on how much attention specific DE/WM gets from that 
 distro maintainers. For example, you are unlikely to reliably 
 use Unity anywhere but on Ubuntu and Gnome 3 fans are pretty 
 much limited to Fedora and Arch. For more simplistic 
 environments it is not that much of a concern, at least Xfce 
 should be rock solid anywhere.

 I am (unsurprisingly) using Arch but can easily imagine 
 perfectly legitimate reasons to not do so :P


I've had a look at Arch. While it seems to be a nice and (c)lean 
distro, it is a bit of a pain in the neck to install / set up. 
Also I don't know, if it will be easy to get the hardware support 
I need. I don't want to spend ages configuring it and tinkering 
with drivers etc. I prefer UI installers and out-of-the box 
support (and if the latter is not possible, at least an 
"easy-to-get-the-drivers-later-system"). The laziest option would 
be Mint, but Mint is basically Ubuntu (if it's not LMDE). If 
OpenSUSE causes problems with D (as pointed out above), I'm not 
sure, if it's a good idea to use it, especially now that I use 
dub. Little annoyances can sometimes become big annoyances, if 
they occur at a critical moment.

Maybe I'll give Fedora (+ Xfce) a shot.
Jan 20 2014
next sibling parent reply "Chris" <wendlec tcd.ie> writes:
On Monday, 20 January 2014 at 14:53:55 UTC, Chris wrote:

 On Monday, 20 January 2014 at 14:35:29 UTC, Dicebot wrote:

 On Monday, 20 January 2014 at 12:47:15 UTC, Chris wrote:

 - what is your preferred Deskop Environment / Windows 
 Manager?


 Most distros are flexible. Right now I'm testing Xfce.


 Theoretically - yes. In practice packaging quality differs 
 depending on how much attention specific DE/WM gets from that 
 distro maintainers. For example, you are unlikely to reliably 
 use Unity anywhere but on Ubuntu and Gnome 3 fans are pretty 
 much limited to Fedora and Arch. For more simplistic 
 environments it is not that much of a concern, at least Xfce 
 should be rock solid anywhere.

 I am (unsurprisingly) using Arch but can easily imagine 
 perfectly legitimate reasons to not do so :P


 I've had a look at Arch. While it seems to be a nice and 
 (c)lean distro, it is a bit of a pain in the neck to install / 
 set up. Also I don't know, if it will be easy to get the 
 hardware support I need. I don't want to spend ages configuring 
 it and tinkering with drivers etc. I prefer UI installers and 
 out-of-the box support (and if the latter is not possible, at 
 least an "easy-to-get-the-drivers-later-system"). The laziest 
 option would be Mint, but Mint is basically Ubuntu (if it's not 
 LMDE). If OpenSUSE causes problems with D (as pointed out 
 above), I'm not sure, if it's a good idea to use it, especially 
 now that I use dub. Little annoyances can sometimes become big 
 annoyances, if they occur at a critical moment.

 Maybe I'll give Fedora (+ Xfce) a shot.


Any experience with Manjaro which is based on Arch linux?
Jan 20 2014
parent reply Daniel =?ISO-8859-1?Q?Koz=E1k?= <kozzi11 gmail.com> writes:
Chris píše v Po 20. 01. 2014 v 15:00 +0000:

 Any experience with Manjaro which is based on Arch linux?


Yes, I have installed it a few times with no problem (But only on BIOS +
MBR) UEFI and GPT not tested.

HW support has been perfect same as Arch linux.
Jan 20 2014
parent reply "Chris" <wendlec tcd.ie> writes:
On Monday, 20 January 2014 at 15:26:15 UTC, Daniel Kozák wrote:

 Chris píše v Po 20. 01. 2014 v 15:00 +0000:

 Any experience with Manjaro which is based on Arch linux?


 Yes, I have installed it a few times with no problem (But only 
 on BIOS +
 MBR) UEFI and GPT not tested.

 HW support has been perfect same as Arch linux.


Ok, thanks. I'll give that a try (hope it's easy to install D and 
dub).
Jan 20 2014
next sibling parent "Dicebot" <public dicebot.lv> writes:
On Monday, 20 January 2014 at 15:33:11 UTC, Chris wrote:

 Ok, thanks. I'll give that a try (hope it's easy to install D 
 and dub).


Assuming it has Arch repos available:
pacman -Sy dlang-dmd dub
Jan 20 2014
prev sibling parent reply Daniel =?ISO-8859-1?Q?Koz=E1k?= <kozzi11 gmail.com> writes:
Chris píše v Po 20. 01. 2014 v 15:33 +0000:

 On Monday, 20 January 2014 at 15:26:15 UTC, Daniel Kozák wrote:

 Chris píše v Po 20. 01. 2014 v 15:00 +0000:

 Any experience with Manjaro which is based on Arch linux?


 Yes, I have installed it a few times with no problem (But only 
 on BIOS +
 MBR) UEFI and GPT not tested.

 HW support has been perfect same as Arch linux.


 
 Ok, thanks. I'll give that a try (hope it's easy to install D and 
 dub).


just do:
sudo pacman -S libphobos libphobos-devel dmd dtools

or you can use gui (octopi)
Jan 20 2014
parent reply "Chris" <wendlec tcd.ie> writes:
On Monday, 20 January 2014 at 15:41:21 UTC, Daniel Kozák wrote:

 Chris píše v Po 20. 01. 2014 v 15:33 +0000:

 On Monday, 20 January 2014 at 15:26:15 UTC, Daniel Kozák wrote:

 Chris píše v Po 20. 01. 2014 v 15:00 +0000:

 Any experience with Manjaro which is based on Arch linux?


 Yes, I have installed it a few times with no problem (But 
 only on BIOS +
 MBR) UEFI and GPT not tested.

 HW support has been perfect same as Arch linux.


 
 Ok, thanks. I'll give that a try (hope it's easy to install D 
 and dub).


 just do:
 sudo pacman -S libphobos libphobos-devel dmd dtools

 or you can use gui (octopi)


Okidoke. I'll try to install it today in UEFI mode and see what 
happens.
Jan 20 2014
parent reply =?UTF-8?B?IlRow6lv?= Bueno" <munrek gmx.com> writes:
I am also using Arch for several years now. I've tried a lot of 
distros, but everytime I get back to Arch mostly because of its 
wonderful repos.
AUR is brilliant, and I love having every package up to date.
The distro is simple, and everything works like you want because 
you designed your own system.

On Monday, 20 January 2014 at 15:43:59 UTC, Chris wrote:

 Okidoke. I'll try to install it today in UEFI mode and see what 
 happens.


Manjaro is great but keep in mind that you will not have access 
to ArchLinux official repositories. Manjaro's ones are a little 
bit slower to spread the latest packages, they don't really have 
the same policy.

I have installed Arch with UEFI on my laptop with the bootmanager 
rEFInd because I needed a dual boot. This is fairly simple, but 
if you only need to have one distro on your computer, I recommend 
you to boot using linux's UEFI bootstub, which is blazing fast.
Jan 21 2014
next sibling parent "Chris" <wendlec tcd.ie> writes:
On Tuesday, 21 January 2014 at 09:28:48 UTC, Théo Bueno wrote:

 I am also using Arch for several years now. I've tried a lot of 
 distros, but everytime I get back to Arch mostly because of its 
 wonderful repos.
 AUR is brilliant, and I love having every package up to date.
 The distro is simple, and everything works like you want 
 because you designed your own system.

 On Monday, 20 January 2014 at 15:43:59 UTC, Chris wrote:

 Okidoke. I'll try to install it today in UEFI mode and see 
 what happens.


 Manjaro is great but keep in mind that you will not have access 
 to ArchLinux official repositories. Manjaro's ones are a little 
 bit slower to spread the latest packages, they don't really 
 have the same policy.


But using pacman should give me the official ArchLinux repos. I 
installed some packages with pacman and it seems that it accessed 
the ArchLinux repo.


 I have installed Arch with UEFI on my laptop with the 
 bootmanager rEFInd because I needed a dual boot. This is fairly 
 simple, but if you only need to have one distro on your 
 computer, I recommend you to boot using linux's UEFI bootstub, 
 which is blazing fast.


UEFI installation failed or "didn't happen" with Manjaro. I 
installed it, got the message that everything was fine, and then 
on reboot I was shown "Ubuntu" as an option that did not and 
could not work, because it had been erased from disk. I installed 
in legacy mode and it worked. In fairness, Manjaro says that the 
test installer (with UEFI support) might not work. After the 
installation everything worked well (wifi, sound etc.). Ubuntu on 
the other hand did not, I had to download Xubuntu desktop to get 
a UI, and then edit a file that is "no longer needed" (but 
apparently is!). Then Unity worked too. Still, Ubuntu would 
always have some issue (wifi would break down, sound would not 
work, something new every effin day). So I decided to give it the 
boot, and for other reasons too: I don't like the Ubuntu approach 
anymore. I was beginning to feel Microsoftened or (ver)Appled.
Jan 21 2014
prev sibling parent reply Andrej Mitrovic <andrej.mitrovich gmail.com> writes:
  parent reply "Chris" <wendlec tcd.ie>  writes:


On Sunday, 26 January 2014 at 19:56:59 UTC, Andrej Mitrovic wrote:

 On 1/21/14, <munrek gmx.com>" puremagic.com <"\"Théo".Bueno"> 
 wrote:

 Manjaro is great but keep in mind that you will not have access
 to ArchLinux official repositories.


 Speaking of Manjaro, does anyone know how to disable the 
 auto-update
 feature of Pacman? I'm really getting tired of being asked to 
 download
 400MB updates every single day when I start pacman. I can't 
 find much
 on their wiki. Yeah I could ask in IRC, but I might as well ask 
 here.
 :)


Guess it's somewhere in the preferences for the Xfce desktop or 
in the GUI version of pacman, but I dunno, I just found this on 
first google.

http://wiki.manjaro.org/index.php/Using_Manjaro_for_Beginners

Regarding FreeBSD and ArchLinux, the baseline is:

FreeBSD is very good, but ArchLinux is more or less on the same 
level. Right?



 Jan 27 2014



  parent reply "Chris" <wendlec tcd.ie>  writes:


On Monday, 27 January 2014 at 18:35:24 UTC, Chris wrote:

 On Sunday, 26 January 2014 at 19:56:59 UTC, Andrej Mitrovic 
 wrote:

 On 1/21/14, <munrek gmx.com>" puremagic.com <"\"Théo".Bueno"> 
 wrote:

 Manjaro is great but keep in mind that you will not have 
 access
 to ArchLinux official repositories.


 Speaking of Manjaro, does anyone know how to disable the 
 auto-update
 feature of Pacman? I'm really getting tired of being asked to 
 download
 400MB updates every single day when I start pacman. I can't 
 find much
 on their wiki. Yeah I could ask in IRC, but I might as well 
 ask here.
 :)


 Guess it's somewhere in the preferences for the Xfce desktop or 
 in the GUI version of pacman, but I dunno, I just found this on 
 first google.

 http://wiki.manjaro.org/index.php/Using_Manjaro_for_Beginners

 Regarding FreeBSD and ArchLinux, the baseline is:

 FreeBSD is very good, but ArchLinux is more or less on the same 
 level. Right?


On the topic of FreeBSD, any experience with PC-BSD? Seems to be 
a sound system based on FreeBSD.



 Jan 27 2014



  parent reply "Chris" <wendlec tcd.ie>  writes:


On Monday, 27 January 2014 at 19:43:09 UTC, Chris wrote:

 On Monday, 27 January 2014 at 18:35:24 UTC, Chris wrote:

 On Sunday, 26 January 2014 at 19:56:59 UTC, Andrej Mitrovic 
 wrote:

 On 1/21/14, <munrek gmx.com>" puremagic.com <"\"Théo".Bueno"> 
 wrote:

 Manjaro is great but keep in mind that you will not have 
 access
 to ArchLinux official repositories.


 Speaking of Manjaro, does anyone know how to disable the 
 auto-update
 feature of Pacman? I'm really getting tired of being asked to 
 download
 400MB updates every single day when I start pacman. I can't 
 find much
 on their wiki. Yeah I could ask in IRC, but I might as well 
 ask here.
 :)


 Guess it's somewhere in the preferences for the Xfce desktop 
 or in the GUI version of pacman, but I dunno, I just found 
 this on first google.

 http://wiki.manjaro.org/index.php/Using_Manjaro_for_Beginners

 Regarding FreeBSD and ArchLinux, the baseline is:

 FreeBSD is very good, but ArchLinux is more or less on the 
 same level. Right?


 On the topic of FreeBSD, any experience with PC-BSD? Seems to 
 be a sound system based on FreeBSD.


Just found this. Interesting. Is the guy exaggerating or not?

http://aboutthebsds.wordpress.com/2013/03/31/bsd-vs-linux/



 Jan 27 2014



 next sibling parent  "ezneh" <petitv.isat gmail.com>  writes:


On Monday, 27 January 2014 at 20:42:57 UTC, Chris wrote:


 Just found this. Interesting. Is the guy exaggerating or not?

 http://aboutthebsds.wordpress.com/2013/03/31/bsd-vs-linux/


Found this forum post talking about the article :
https://www.linuxdistrocommunity.com/forums/showthread.php?tid=1537&pid=9321#pid9321



 Jan 27 2014



prev sibling  parent reply "Dicebot" <public dicebot.lv>  writes:


On Monday, 27 January 2014 at 20:42:57 UTC, Chris wrote:

 Just found this. Interesting. Is the guy exaggerating or not?

 http://aboutthebsds.wordpress.com/2013/03/31/bsd-vs-linux/


Stopped reading after GPL vs BSD license bullshit.



 Jan 27 2014



  parent reply "Chris" <wendlec tcd.ie>  writes:


On Monday, 27 January 2014 at 22:15:22 UTC, Dicebot wrote:

 On Monday, 27 January 2014 at 20:42:57 UTC, Chris wrote:

 Just found this. Interesting. Is the guy exaggerating or not?

 http://aboutthebsds.wordpress.com/2013/03/31/bsd-vs-linux/


 Stopped reading after GPL vs BSD license bullshit.


"[...] former OpenBSD developer Jason Dickson mentions that when 
a new BSD variant is created, they have to start from the broken, 
old and outdated 4.4BSD code as including code from other BSDs 
often leads to law suits and death threats."

And earlier he writes

"[...] The problem appears when USBs are removed without 
unmounting them first. The result is a kernel panic. [...] 
FreeBSD mailing lists even ban people who dare mention about it."

This gives you the impression that the BSD community is fairly 
narrow-minded (to put it mildly) and does not tolerate any 
criticism.

Anyway, I'll stick to Arch for now as we use Linux at work too 
and Linux seems to be more up-to-date (or "bleeding edge") than 
the BSDs ... and the name "pacman" for the package manager is 
just brilliant, I wonder why no-one else ever came up with this 
pun.



 Jan 28 2014



  parent reply "Dicebot" <public dicebot.lv>  writes:


On Tuesday, 28 January 2014 at 09:50:19 UTC, Chris wrote:

 ...


I have never used BSD-based systems and have no idea abut its 
internal affairs. Linux is better for desktops simply because it 
has bigger community. But any time I read something akin to "GPL 
license is so much more free than BSD" I immediately mark author 
as terribly biased and possibly ignorant whatever else he has to 
say.



 Jan 28 2014



  parent reply "Chris" <wendlec tcd.ie>  writes:


On Tuesday, 28 January 2014 at 10:28:02 UTC, Dicebot wrote:

 On Tuesday, 28 January 2014 at 09:50:19 UTC, Chris wrote:

 ...


 I have never used BSD-based systems and have no idea abut its 
 internal affairs. Linux is better for desktops simply because 
 it has bigger community. But any time I read something akin to 
 "GPL license is so much more free than BSD" I immediately mark 
 author as terribly biased and possibly ignorant whatever else 
 he has to say.


I read the following blog (or rant?) too

http://aboutthebsds.wordpress.com/2013/03/01/bsd-and-stallmans-four-freedoms/

and don't know, if the author has a point. Big companies will 
always try to sue everyone for everything.

And here's a lengthy discussion about the issue:

http://beta.slashdot.org/story/6106

(and elsewhere if you care to google it)

I'm no expert but I'm sure there are pitfalls with both licenses.



 Jan 28 2014



  parent reply "Dicebot" <public dicebot.lv>  writes:


On Tuesday, 28 January 2014 at 11:03:16 UTC, Chris wrote:

 I'm no expert but I'm sure there are pitfalls with both 
 licenses.


Exactly. Pretty much why starting an article with an license 
ideology rant on this topic does not give a credit to an authour. 
There is no shame in having opinion on topic but starting with it 
what was supposed to be fact-based comparison? No way.

On ideology offtopic - in my opinion BSD is akin to anarchism and 
GPL is like communism, in modern internet flavor :)



 Jan 28 2014



  parent reply "Chris" <wendlec tcd.ie>  writes:


On Tuesday, 28 January 2014 at 11:34:42 UTC, Dicebot wrote:


 On ideology offtopic - in my opinion BSD is akin to anarchism 
 and GPL is like communism, in modern internet flavor :)


Not so sure about the anarchism bit. In an anarchy nobody can 
assume power (i.e. make it proprietary).



 Jan 28 2014



 next sibling parent reply "Dicebot" <public dicebot.lv>  writes:


On Tuesday, 28 January 2014 at 11:42:22 UTC, Chris wrote:

 On Tuesday, 28 January 2014 at 11:34:42 UTC, Dicebot wrote:


 On ideology offtopic - in my opinion BSD is akin to anarchism 
 and GPL is like communism, in modern internet flavor :)


 Not so sure about the anarchism bit. In an anarchy nobody can 
 assume power (i.e. make it proprietary).


This statement is only true if you consider information a 
meta-property and thus very concept of copyright legitimate. I 
personally don't and thus BSD ideology suits me better :P In such 
terminology base your statement makes no sense as restricting a 
copy has nothing to do with original.

Pretty much any GPL vs BSD holywar out there makes circles 
arounds these very basics. I like BSD ideologically but GPL is 
simply better for practical reasons if you want your project to 
evolve as community-based. And, of course, there are always 
exceptions :P



 Jan 28 2014



  parent reply "Chris" <wendlec tcd.ie>  writes:


On Tuesday, 28 January 2014 at 12:17:28 UTC, Dicebot wrote:

 On Tuesday, 28 January 2014 at 11:42:22 UTC, Chris wrote:

 On Tuesday, 28 January 2014 at 11:34:42 UTC, Dicebot wrote:


 On ideology offtopic - in my opinion BSD is akin to anarchism 
 and GPL is like communism, in modern internet flavor :)


 Not so sure about the anarchism bit. In an anarchy nobody can 
 assume power (i.e. make it proprietary).


 This statement is only true if you consider information a 
 meta-property and thus very concept of copyright legitimate.


Legitimacy of copyright is a tough one. Software development and 
the internet have added a new angle to it. However, where do you 
draw the line? The fact that something can be easily copied / 
distributed (internet) does not mean that the concept of 
copyright is obsolete (cf. the Pirate Party). Why should a 
composer, band or author not have the copyright on his/her own 
work and not see any money for it?

In software it's a bit different. Where does "innovation" or "own 
work" start? Companies have sued each other for trivial things 
that anybody would come up with intuitively. However, I don't 
think that you can easily compare the world of software 
development with other areas.


 I personally don't and thus BSD ideology suits me better :P In 
 such terminology base your statement makes no sense as 
 restricting a copy has nothing to do with original.

 Pretty much any GPL vs BSD holywar out there makes circles 
 arounds these very basics. I like BSD ideologically but GPL is 
 simply better for practical reasons if you want your project to 
 evolve as community-based. And, of course, there are always 
 exceptions :P





 Jan 28 2014



 next sibling parent reply "Dicebot" <public dicebot.lv>  writes:


On Tuesday, 28 January 2014 at 14:06:08 UTC, Chris wrote:

 Legitimacy of copyright is a tough one. Software development 
 and the internet have added a new angle to it. However, where 
 do you draw the line? The fact that something can be easily 
 copied / distributed (internet) does not mean that the concept 
 of copyright is obsolete (cf. the Pirate Party).


For me it is convincing enough, despite working in industry which 
has traditionally relied on that (good to see it is moving from 
there). Concept of authorship is important, concept of copyright 
is fallacy.


 Why should a composer, band or author not have the copyright on 
 his/her own work and not see any money for it?


Why can't they do it without relying on copyright? ;) Software 
industry has moved quite a lot in direction of SaaS models, for 
example, when encountered similar problem. Kickstarter has shown 
that you can find different ways of funding creativity. It may 
destroy few industries in process but I have zero respect to 
habits or tradition.


 In software it's a bit different. Where does "innovation" or 
 "own work" start? Companies have sued each other for trivial 
 things that anybody would come up with intuitively. However, I 
 don't think that you can easily compare the world of software 
 development with other areas.


You can't, of course, but other areas are not as naturaly 
fast-evolving as IT stuff is so it is always interesting to model 
former with the latter in attempt to guess any possible future 
impact.

See how GPL vs BSD comes to dispute over fundamental beliefs? :P



 Jan 28 2014



  parent reply "Chris" <wendlec tcd.ie>  writes:


On Tuesday, 28 January 2014 at 15:11:17 UTC, Dicebot wrote:

 On Tuesday, 28 January 2014 at 14:06:08 UTC, Chris wrote:

 Legitimacy of copyright is a tough one. Software development 
 and the internet have added a new angle to it. However, where 
 do you draw the line? The fact that something can be easily 
 copied / distributed (internet) does not mean that the concept 
 of copyright is obsolete (cf. the Pirate Party).


 For me it is convincing enough, despite working in industry 
 which has traditionally relied on that (good to see it is 
 moving from there). Concept of authorship is important, concept 
 of copyright is fallacy.


How so? Imagine you write a song and someone else has a hit with 
it. Why shouldn't you get a piece of the cake? Also, imagine 
someone uses something you have the copyright on for things you 
don't agree with (Nazis, the KKK whoever), isn't good that you 
can stop them from using your work to promote their cause?


 Why should a composer, band or author not have the copyright 
 on his/her own work and not see any money for it?


 Why can't they do it without relying on copyright? ;)


How would that work?


 Software industry has moved quite a lot in direction of SaaS 
 models, for example, when encountered similar problem. 
 Kickstarter has shown that you can find different ways of 
 funding creativity. It may destroy few industries in process 
 but I have zero respect to habits or tradition.


Neither do I.


 In software it's a bit different. Where does "innovation" or 
 "own work" start? Companies have sued each other for trivial 
 things that anybody would come up with intuitively. However, I 
 don't think that you can easily compare the world of software 
 development with other areas.


 You can't, of course, but other areas are not as naturaly 
 fast-evolving as IT stuff is so it is always interesting to 
 model former with the latter in attempt to guess any possible 
 future impact.


Beware of borrowing from IT! All that bullsh*t companies, PR 
agents and the like come up with (from "copy and paste" to 
"gamification").

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamification)


 See how GPL vs BSD comes to dispute over fundamental beliefs? :P





 Jan 28 2014



  parent reply "Dicebot" <public dicebot.lv>  writes:


On Tuesday, 28 January 2014 at 18:28:02 UTC, Chris wrote:

 How so? Imagine you write a song and someone else has a hit 
 with it. Why shouldn't you get a piece of the cake?


Why should I? Once it is published, it is out wild. If I was 
going to earn on it, I'd gather as much as possible _before_ it 
is published (== kickstarter). Of course, if someone else 
pretends he is actually author of a song, this is completely 
different story.


 Also, imagine someone uses something you have the copyright on 
 for things you don't agree with (Nazis, the KKK whoever), isn't 
 good that you can stop them from using your work to promote 
 their cause?


No. Never. Full stop. Restricting something simply because you 
don't like it / can't agree with it is reliable way to get 
restricted yourself. It is essentially same thing as freedom of 
speech. There are better ways to oppose Nazis.


 Why should a composer, band or author not have the copyright 
 on his/her own work and not see any money for it?


 Why can't they do it without relying on copyright? ;)


 How would that work?


Have already seen several successful Kickstarter projects that 
had wording akin to "We need X $ to record this album". I 
sincerely think that such model is most honest approach to 
producing elements of culture. And if sound labels finally get 
the idea of subscription-based music distribution, it makes 
perfect sense to simply hire some proven artists "full-time" same 
way one may do with sport stars. There are variety of options 
once you abandon idea of copyright and try to adjust consuming 
model istead of trying to adjust laws. Music won't be the way to 
become rich and famous then but I think it is a good thing.



 Jan 28 2014



  parent reply "Chris" <wendlec tcd.ie>  writes:


On Tuesday, 28 January 2014 at 19:27:32 UTC, Dicebot wrote:

 On Tuesday, 28 January 2014 at 18:28:02 UTC, Chris wrote:

 How so? Imagine you write a song and someone else has a hit 
 with it. Why shouldn't you get a piece of the cake?


 Why should I? Once it is published, it is out wild. If I was 
 going to earn on it, I'd gather as much as possible _before_ it 
 is published (== kickstarter). Of course, if someone else 
 pretends he is actually author of a song, this is completely 
 different story.


 Also, imagine someone uses something you have the copyright on 
 for things you don't agree with (Nazis, the KKK whoever), 
 isn't good that you can stop them from using your work to 
 promote their cause?


 No. Never. Full stop. Restricting something simply because you 
 don't like it / can't agree with it is reliable way to get 
 restricted yourself. It is essentially same thing as freedom of 
 speech. There are better ways to oppose Nazis.


Ok. Imagine you write a song called "Destroy!" (maybe having 
traditions and rules in mind). Two things happen:

1. A band records it (or puts it on youtube) and has a hit. They 
respect your authorship, say "Thanks, buddy!", but they get all 
the money.

2. A bunch of racists use the song (because of the titles) for 
one of their hate rallies, pointing at minorities and singing 
"Destroy! Destroy!".

Case 1: As long as there are so many c*nts out there (and there 
are many rats among musicians), you want to have some kind of way 
of not being ripped off.

Case 2: You cannot always prevent these things, but if someone 
takes your art (= what your mind & soul produced) and uses it in 
a completely perverted way, you won't feel good about it.

In a perfect world, I agree, there wouldn't be all that copyright 
bullshit. After all, these laws only protect the interests of the 
rich and powerful, and it kills (as has been said here) 
creativity in music. I agree. I once wanted to send some of my 
songs to people and was warned against it by people who had been 
in the business "once it's out there, you can't claim the 
copyright/authorship anymore". And knowing how people are, I 
desisted from sending them to a broader audience. I still don't 
know what to do in this respect. I'd like to share the music, but 
I know how people are.


 Why should a composer, band or author not have the copyright 
 on his/her own work and not see any money for it?


 Why can't they do it without relying on copyright? ;)


 How would that work?


 Have already seen several successful Kickstarter projects that 
 had wording akin to "We need X $ to record this album". I 
 sincerely think that such model is most honest approach to 
 producing elements of culture. And if sound labels finally get 
 the idea of subscription-based music distribution, it makes 
 perfect sense to simply hire some proven artists "full-time" 
 same way one may do with sport stars. There are variety of 
 options once you abandon idea of copyright and try to adjust 
 consuming model istead of trying to adjust laws. Music won't be 
 the way to become rich and famous then but I think it is a good 
 thing.





 Jan 29 2014



  parent reply "Dicebot" <public dicebot.lv>  writes:


On Wednesday, 29 January 2014 at 10:18:49 UTC, Chris wrote:

 Ok. Imagine you write a song called "Destroy!" (maybe having 
 traditions and rules in mind). Two things happen:

 1. A band records it (or puts it on youtube) and has a hit. 
 They respect your authorship, say "Thanks, buddy!", but they 
 get all the money.


Expected and appropriate. Don't put stuff public that is not 
expected to be in public domain. Once anyone else knows it, it is 
out of your control. Royalties should just vanish from existence.

And even better - don't write songs if you are for money.


 2. A bunch of racists use the song (because of the titles) for 
 one of their hate rallies, pointing at minorities and singing 
 "Destroy! Destroy!".


And you will accept it. Or try to punish them for what they 
actually do, not for songs they use.

Accepting that you can't have control over other people is first 
step to become free yourself. Most police states start from 
restrictions appealing to public morale and greater good.


 "once it's out there, you can't claim the copyright/authorship 
 anymore".


Only copyright. Authorship is relatively easy to claim - you only 
need to be first documented person publishing it. About song 
itself - just releasing it with no further concerns can help you 
build the reputation. And that is most valuable thing any artist 
can get.



 Jan 29 2014



  parent reply "Chris" <wendlec tcd.ie>  writes:


On Wednesday, 29 January 2014 at 10:34:08 UTC, Dicebot wrote:

 On Wednesday, 29 January 2014 at 10:18:49 UTC, Chris wrote:

 Ok. Imagine you write a song called "Destroy!" (maybe having 
 traditions and rules in mind). Two things happen:

 1. A band records it (or puts it on youtube) and has a hit. 
 They respect your authorship, say "Thanks, buddy!", but they 
 get all the money.


 Expected and appropriate. Don't put stuff public that is not 
 expected to be in public domain. Once anyone else knows it, it 
 is out of your control. Royalties should just vanish from 
 existence.


But this is exactly what keeps people from sharing their stuff. 
And then you have a situation where nobody gets anything out of 
it. Good stuff is "kept secret".


 And even better - don't write songs if you are for money.


This is not the point. You write songs, because they come to you, 
not because you think of making money, at least if you are a 
serious musician. The point is that it is simply not fair that 
someone gets money for something someone else created. Many 
inventors and musician died in poverty while untalented but 
greedy business men made millions. It's simply not fair.


 2. A bunch of racists use the song (because of the titles) for 
 one of their hate rallies, pointing at minorities and singing 
 "Destroy! Destroy!".


 And you will accept it. Or try to punish them for what they 
 actually do, not for songs they use.

 Accepting that you can't have control over other people is 
 first step to become free yourself. Most police states start 
 from restrictions appealing to public morale and greater good.


Fair enough.


 "once it's out there, you can't claim the copyright/authorship 
 anymore".


 Only copyright. Authorship is relatively easy to claim - you 
 only need to be first documented person publishing it. About 
 song itself - just releasing it with no further concerns can 
 help you build the reputation. And that is most valuable thing 
 any artist can get.


This sounds a bit cynical, doesn't it? Sounds exactly like the 
producers and managers that ripped off black musicians in the 
30's, 40's, 50's and 60's "But people respect you for your work, 
what else do you want? Money doesn't count (cos I'm counting it, 
ha ha ha!)".
I think it boils down to fairness. If someone can have a good 
life with what you've created, why shouldn't you have a good life 
too? You have to change the system completely so that everyone 
gets his / her due. You cannot have a system where a band can 
make money with a song, but royalties don't exist, and the author 
gets nothing.



 Jan 29 2014



 next sibling parent reply Nick Sabalausky <SeeWebsiteToContactMe semitwist.com>  writes:


On 1/29/2014 9:12 AM, Chris wrote:

 The point is that it is simply not fair that someone gets
 money for something someone else created. Many inventors and musician
 died in poverty while untalented but greedy business men made millions.
 It's simply not fair.


I don't think the real solution to that is copyright - just kill all the 
MBA's ;)



 Jan 29 2014



  parent  "Chris" <wendlec tcd.ie>  writes:


On Thursday, 30 January 2014 at 05:57:30 UTC, Nick Sabalausky 
wrote:

 On 1/29/2014 9:12 AM, Chris wrote:

 The point is that it is simply not fair that someone gets
 money for something someone else created. Many inventors and 
 musician
 died in poverty while untalented but greedy business men made 
 millions.
 It's simply not fair.


 I don't think the real solution to that is copyright - just 
 kill all the MBA's ;)


He, he. No, copyright may not be the solution. But I am against a 
system where authors don't have any rights, while other people 
can still make money with the work they created. There's an 
imbalance there that is highly injust. If you wanna get rid of 
copyright you have to overhaul the whole system. Unless that's 
done, we'll have to make do with copyright and royalties.



 Jan 30 2014



prev sibling  parent reply "Dicebot" <public dicebot.lv>  writes:


On Wednesday, 29 January 2014 at 14:12:03 UTC, Chris wrote:

 I think it boils down to fairness. If someone can have a good 
 life with what you've created, why shouldn't you have a good 
 life too? You have to change the system completely so that 
 everyone gets his / her due. You cannot have a system where a 
 band can make money with a song, but royalties don't exist, and 
 the author gets nothing.


It is. And fairness is highly subjective. Even value of fairness 
is subjective - no one actually demands laws of physics to be 
fair after all, do they? For me it is perfectly expected that act 
of presentation is more profitable than act of creation. 
Inventing stuff is by design inferior to selling stuff.

And yes, I am very cynical towards culture. We have already more 
books one can read and songs one can listen to in whole life. 
That quickly and justly diminishes value of any new one to the 
point where listeners attention may become more expensive than 
authors time. Most authors won't get a penny for their creations 
because they don't actually cost a penny.

But it is all about personal beliefs in the end and I am not 
trying to convince you that there is aything inherently wrong 
about your attitude. It is reasonable and solid. What I have 
tried to show is that statements like "BSD is less free than GPL 
because it does not enforce freedom" are very opinionated and 
boil down to very core ideological preferences. One simply can't 
use such statements  in article that is supposed to provide any 
fact-based overview.



 Jan 30 2014



  parent  "Chris" <wendlec tcd.ie>  writes:


On Thursday, 30 January 2014 at 12:36:07 UTC, Dicebot wrote:

 On Wednesday, 29 January 2014 at 14:12:03 UTC, Chris wrote:

 I think it boils down to fairness. If someone can have a good 
 life with what you've created, why shouldn't you have a good 
 life too? You have to change the system completely so that 
 everyone gets his / her due. You cannot have a system where a 
 band can make money with a song, but royalties don't exist, 
 and the author gets nothing.


 It is. And fairness is highly subjective. Even value of 
 fairness is subjective - no one actually demands laws of 
 physics to be fair after all, do they? For me it is perfectly 
 expected that act of presentation is more profitable than act 
 of creation. Inventing stuff is by design inferior to selling 
 stuff.


Laws of physics cannot be compared to the ways humans interact. 
And who knows, maybe the laws of physics are fair. After all, the 
amount of energy remains the same, there is no imbalance.
Without creation there can be no presentation of the same. 
Without Mozart there would be no symphonic orchestra "presenting" 
his work.



 And yes, I am very cynical towards culture. We have already 
 more books one can read and songs one can listen to in whole 
 life. That quickly and justly diminishes value of any new one 
 to the point where listeners attention may become more 
 expensive than authors time. Most authors won't get a penny for 
 their creations because they don't actually cost a penny.


It has always been like this. It's only that the internet has 
made it apparent (as in "any idiot can 'create' something"). In a 
way it is better and more democratic. A lot of the "real culture" 
we convinced ourselves to enjoy before the internet had been 
superimposed by an educated elite and their middle class tastes, 
beliefs and preferences. Shakespeare and Goethe, there is a lot 
of hype and hypocrasy involved too. Who knows how many good 
writers were rejected, because they didn't conform to a small 
elite's understanding of culture. Perhaps the problem is really 
just the clash of our old understanding of "culture" and new 
information technologies.


 But it is all about personal beliefs in the end and I am not 
 trying to convince you that there is aything inherently wrong 
 about your attitude. It is reasonable and solid. What I have 
 tried to show is that statements like "BSD is less free than 
 GPL because it does not enforce freedom" are very opinionated 
 and boil down to very core ideological preferences. One simply 
 can't use such statements  in article that is supposed to 
 provide any fact-based overview.


Haven't seen many fact-based overviews on the internet. I don't 
subscribe to any ideology. What I found interesting in that blog, 
however, was the mentioning of the wars in the BSD community. 
This is something to ponder on.



 Jan 30 2014



prev sibling  parent  =?UTF-8?B?TWFyaXVzeiBHbGl3acWEc2tp?= <alienballance gmail.com>  writes:


Chris   2014-01-28 15:06:

  However, I don't think that you can easily compare the world of 
 software development with other areas. 


Possibly suing is not that common, but i find music and software 
development extremely similar in terms of creation. Even if you're not 
that much into music, you can glimpse over sites like 
http://www.whosampled.com/ that illustrate it.
Compared to older music - only methods changed (no sampling), the fact 
is still the same.

"Music copyrights" works mostly for corporations that (i think) do not 
help with creativity. Instead of making music, people have to "find the 
right people" and "get their attention". Then, after company invested in 
some artist, they want to have a revenue, so they insist "make a tune" 
which is *not* helping with making art.

Result of "internet revolution" is, that most of small or independent 
musicians are uploading their own songs to youtube for free, because 
most of their profit is throught live acts (again - promotes 
creativity). Many of them use services like Spotify, that pay them for 
every "play". Thanks to it, listeners are free to listen and explore 
what they like, and artists money-curve is less asymptotic.



 Jan 28 2014



prev sibling  parent  "deadalnix" <deadalnix gmail.com>  writes:


On Tuesday, 28 January 2014 at 11:42:22 UTC, Chris wrote:

 On Tuesday, 28 January 2014 at 11:34:42 UTC, Dicebot wrote:


 On ideology offtopic - in my opinion BSD is akin to anarchism 
 and GPL is like communism, in modern internet flavor :)


 Not so sure about the anarchism bit. In an anarchy nobody can 
 assume power (i.e. make it proprietary).


Intellectual property enforcement is based on state power. 
Copyleft is a hack of copyright law, which, in essence rely on 
state power.

If you can't have an intellectual property enforcement, that 
obviously don't prevent someone to do proprietary software. One 
do not have to shared his/her source or his/her patches to an 
open source project.



 Jan 28 2014



prev sibling next sibling parent reply "qznc" <qznc web.de>  writes:


On Monday, 20 January 2014 at 14:53:55 UTC, Chris wrote:

 Maybe I'll give Fedora (+ Xfce) a shot.


You could try Korora, which is based on Fedora, but includes a 
lot of convenience. For example, proprietary software like Skype 
and Adobe Reader is already in the repo. Fonts and Drivers are a 
little bit nicer.

https://kororaproject.org/

Personally, I switched back from Korora to Ubuntu a while ago, 
because Ubuntu is better with my laptop battery.



 Jan 20 2014



  parent reply Iain Buclaw <ibuclaw gdcproject.org>  writes:


On 20 Jan 2014 15:35, "qznc" <qznc web.de> wrote:

 On Monday, 20 January 2014 at 14:53:55 UTC, Chris wrote:

 Maybe I'll give Fedora (+ Xfce) a shot.



 You could try Korora, which is based on Fedora, but includes a lot of


convenience. For example, proprietary software like Skype and Adobe Reader
is already in the repo. Fonts and Drivers are a little bit nicer.


I wouldn't call proprietary software a convenience. ;)

Iain.



 Jan 21 2014



  parent  Nick Sabalausky <SeeWebsiteToContactMe semitwist.com>  writes:


On 1/21/2014 3:26 AM, Iain Buclaw wrote:

 On 20 Jan 2014 15:35, "qznc" <qznc web.de> wrote:

 On Monday, 20 January 2014 at 14:53:55 UTC, Chris wrote:

 Maybe I'll give Fedora (+ Xfce) a shot.



 You could try Korora, which is based on Fedora, but includes a lot of


 convenience. For example, proprietary software like Skype and Adobe Reader
 is already in the repo. Fonts and Drivers are a little bit nicer.


 I wouldn't call proprietary software a convenience. ;)


I would, but not when the proprietary software in question is Skype and 
Adobe Reader ;)



 Jan 24 2014



prev sibling next sibling parent  "Craig Dillabaugh" <cdillaba cg.scs.carleton.ca>  writes:


On Monday, 20 January 2014 at 14:53:55 UTC, Chris wrote:

 On Monday, 20 January 2014 at 14:35:29 UTC, Dicebot wrote:


clip

 I've had a look at Arch. While it seems to be a nice and 
 (c)lean distro, it is a bit of a pain in the neck to install / 
 set up. Also I don't know, if it will be easy to get the 
 hardware support I need. I don't want to spend ages configuring 
 it and tinkering with drivers etc. I prefer UI installers and 
 out-of-the box support (and if the latter is not possible, at 
 least an "easy-to-get-the-drivers-later-system"). The laziest 
 option would be Mint, but Mint is basically Ubuntu (if it's not 
 LMDE). If OpenSUSE causes problems with D (as pointed out 
 above), I'm not sure, if it's a good idea to use it, especially 
 now that I use dub. Little annoyances can sometimes become big 
 annoyances, if they occur at a critical moment.

 Maybe I'll give Fedora (+ Xfce) a shot.


Likely whatever you end up using will be fine.

I didn't mean to scare you off OpenSUSE.  My D experience has 
mostly been positive.  Just a small hiccup or two getting it set 
up (one of which was my fault), now it runs smoothly.



 Jan 20 2014



prev sibling  parent reply Nick Sabalausky <SeeWebsiteToContactMe semitwist.com>  writes:


On 1/20/2014 9:53 AM, Chris wrote:

 I've had a look at Arch. While it seems to be a nice and (c)lean distro,
 it is a bit of a pain in the neck to install / set up. Also I don't
 know, if it will be easy to get the hardware support I need. I don't
 want to spend ages configuring it and tinkering with drivers etc. I
 prefer UI installers and out-of-the box support (and if the latter is
 not possible, at least an "easy-to-get-the-drivers-later-system"). The
 laziest option would be Mint, but Mint is basically Ubuntu (if it's not
 LMDE).


While Linux isn't my primary desktop system, the desktop Linux stuff I 
do work with has gone from Ubuntu -> Debian -> Mint.

I left Ubuntu because Canonical was starting to piss me off, partly 
because of their apparent obsession with being basically just an OSX 
clone. So I went upstream to Debian. Still run Debian on my server, but 
I abandoned it as a desktop OS partly because so much of it is out of 
date literally before they even release it, and also because once they 
do get a newer version of something, there's a fair chance you can't 
actually get it without upgrading the whole OS because not everything 
actually gets into backports (and Debian backports is a whole other beef 
with me - I don't know how they managed to take what should have been 
trivial to use and make it so...well, now I'm rambling).

I say all that not to bitch, but to point out that despite everything 
that bugged me about Ubuntu and Debian, I've actually been fairly happy 
with Mint 15 XFCE so far. Plus, the similarities it does have to 
Ubuntu/Debian are actually kinda nice since it's that much less to re-learn.

But I'd recommend doing what I did: Grab VirtualBox, and try out a bunch 
of different distros and DE's.



 Jan 24 2014



  parent reply "H. S. Teoh" <hsteoh quickfur.ath.cx>  writes:


On Fri, Jan 24, 2014 at 06:01:33AM -0500, Nick Sabalausky wrote:
[...]

 While Linux isn't my primary desktop system, the desktop Linux stuff
 I do work with has gone from Ubuntu -> Debian -> Mint.
 
 I left Ubuntu because Canonical was starting to piss me off, partly
 because of their apparent obsession with being basically just an OSX
 clone. So I went upstream to Debian. Still run Debian on my server,
 but I abandoned it as a desktop OS partly because so much of it is
 out of date literally before they even release it, and also because
 once they do get a newer version of something, there's a fair chance
 you can't actually get it without upgrading the whole OS because not
 everything actually gets into backports


[...]

You should just run off Debian/unstable (or if you're chicken, testing).
I do.  In spite of the name, it's actually already as stable as your
typical desktop OS with its typical occasional random breakage. Stable
is really for those people who are running mission critical servers that
when the OS dies, people die. That's why it's always "out of date", 'cos
everything must be tested thoroughly first. For desktop users you don't
need that kind of stability, and generally you don't want to wait that
long to get software upgrades. So just use unstable or testing. I've
been living off unstable for almost 15 years and have only had 1 or 2
occasions when things broke in a major way. That's saying a lot
considering how many times I've had to reformat and reinstall Windows
(supposedly a stable release version!) back when I was still stuck using
it.


T

-- 
"How are you doing?" "Doing what?"



 Jan 24 2014



  parent reply "John Colvin" <john.loughran.colvin gmail.com>  writes:


On Friday, 24 January 2014 at 16:14:15 UTC, H. S. Teoh wrote:

 On Fri, Jan 24, 2014 at 06:01:33AM -0500, Nick Sabalausky wrote:
 [...]

 While Linux isn't my primary desktop system, the desktop Linux 
 stuff
 I do work with has gone from Ubuntu -> Debian -> Mint.
 
 I left Ubuntu because Canonical was starting to piss me off, 
 partly
 because of their apparent obsession with being basically just 
 an OSX
 clone. So I went upstream to Debian. Still run Debian on my 
 server,
 but I abandoned it as a desktop OS partly because so much of 
 it is
 out of date literally before they even release it, and also 
 because
 once they do get a newer version of something, there's a fair 
 chance
 you can't actually get it without upgrading the whole OS 
 because not
 everything actually gets into backports


 [...]

 You should just run off Debian/unstable (or if you're chicken, 
 testing).
 I do.  In spite of the name, it's actually already as stable as 
 your
 typical desktop OS with its typical occasional random breakage. 
 Stable
 is really for those people who are running mission critical 
 servers that
 when the OS dies, people die. That's why it's always "out of 
 date", 'cos
 everything must be tested thoroughly first. For desktop users 
 you don't
 need that kind of stability, and generally you don't want to 
 wait that
 long to get software upgrades. So just use unstable or testing. 
 I've
 been living off unstable for almost 15 years and have only had 
 1 or 2
 occasions when things broke in a major way. That's saying a lot
 considering how many times I've had to reformat and reinstall 
 Windows
 (supposedly a stable release version!) back when I was still 
 stuck using
 it.


 T


The thing with stability is, it's meaningless without context. 
The only thing that has meaning is stability in the face of a 
particular workload.

Mission critical servers tend to have very static requirements. A 
power-user's desktop has very dynamic requirements. Debian stable 
will be more "stable" for the server, but the same is not 
necessarily true for the desktop.



 Jan 25 2014



  parent reply "H. S. Teoh" <hsteoh quickfur.ath.cx>  writes:


On Sat, Jan 25, 2014 at 11:51:57AM +0000, John Colvin wrote:

 On Friday, 24 January 2014 at 16:14:15 UTC, H. S. Teoh wrote:

On Fri, Jan 24, 2014 at 06:01:33AM -0500, Nick Sabalausky wrote:
[...]

While Linux isn't my primary desktop system, the desktop Linux stuff
I do work with has gone from Ubuntu -> Debian -> Mint.

I left Ubuntu because Canonical was starting to piss me off, partly
because of their apparent obsession with being basically just an OSX
clone. So I went upstream to Debian. Still run Debian on my server,
but I abandoned it as a desktop OS partly because so much of it is
out of date literally before they even release it, and also because
once they do get a newer version of something, there's a fair chance
you can't actually get it without upgrading the whole OS because not
everything actually gets into backports


[...]

You should just run off Debian/unstable (or if you're chicken,
testing).  I do.  In spite of the name, it's actually already as
stable as your typical desktop OS with its typical occasional random
breakage.  Stable is really for those people who are running mission
critical servers that when the OS dies, people die. That's why it's
always "out of date", 'cos everything must be tested thoroughly
first. For desktop users you don't need that kind of stability, and
generally you don't want to wait that long to get software upgrades.
So just use unstable or testing.  I've been living off unstable for
almost 15 years and have only had 1 or 2 occasions when things broke
in a major way. That's saying a lot considering how many times I've
had to reformat and reinstall Windows (supposedly a stable release
version!) back when I was still stuck using it.


T


 
 The thing with stability is, it's meaningless without context. The
 only thing that has meaning is stability in the face of a particular
 workload.
 
 Mission critical servers tend to have very static requirements. A
 power-user's desktop has very dynamic requirements. Debian stable
 will be more "stable" for the server, but the same is not
 necessarily true for the desktop.


OK, but what I was getting at was that Debian 'unstable' is actually
usable for daily desktop needs in spite of the name.


T

-- 
"Holy war is an oxymoron." -- Lazarus Long



 Jan 25 2014



 next sibling parent  "John Colvin" <john.loughran.colvin gmail.com>  writes:


On Saturday, 25 January 2014 at 15:52:39 UTC, H. S. Teoh wrote:

 On Sat, Jan 25, 2014 at 11:51:57AM +0000, John Colvin wrote:

 On Friday, 24 January 2014 at 16:14:15 UTC, H. S. Teoh wrote:

On Fri, Jan 24, 2014 at 06:01:33AM -0500, Nick Sabalausky 
wrote:
[...]

While Linux isn't my primary desktop system, the desktop 
Linux stuff
I do work with has gone from Ubuntu -> Debian -> Mint.

I left Ubuntu because Canonical was starting to piss me off, 
partly
because of their apparent obsession with being basically 
just an OSX
clone. So I went upstream to Debian. Still run Debian on my 
server,
but I abandoned it as a desktop OS partly because so much of 
it is
out of date literally before they even release it, and also 
because
once they do get a newer version of something, there's a 
fair chance
you can't actually get it without upgrading the whole OS 
because not
everything actually gets into backports


[...]

You should just run off Debian/unstable (or if you're chicken,
testing).  I do.  In spite of the name, it's actually already 
as
stable as your typical desktop OS with its typical occasional 
random
breakage.  Stable is really for those people who are running 
mission
critical servers that when the OS dies, people die. That's 
why it's
always "out of date", 'cos everything must be tested 
thoroughly
first. For desktop users you don't need that kind of 
stability, and
generally you don't want to wait that long to get software 
upgrades.
So just use unstable or testing.  I've been living off 
unstable for
almost 15 years and have only had 1 or 2 occasions when 
things broke
in a major way. That's saying a lot considering how many 
times I've
had to reformat and reinstall Windows (supposedly a stable 
release
version!) back when I was still stuck using it.


T


 
 The thing with stability is, it's meaningless without context. 
 The
 only thing that has meaning is stability in the face of a 
 particular
 workload.
 
 Mission critical servers tend to have very static 
 requirements. A
 power-user's desktop has very dynamic requirements. Debian 
 stable
 will be more "stable" for the server, but the same is not
 necessarily true for the desktop.


 OK, but what I was getting at was that Debian 'unstable' is 
 actually
 usable for daily desktop needs in spite of the name.


 T


I was agreeing with you, in a very round-a-bout way :)



 Jan 25 2014



prev sibling  parent reply "Dicebot" <public dicebot.lv>  writes:


On Saturday, 25 January 2014 at 15:52:39 UTC, H. S. Teoh wrote:

 OK, but what I was getting at was that Debian 'unstable' is 
 actually
 usable for daily desktop needs in spite of the name.


And original rant was that Debian unstable is too _stable_ for 
desktop use, not the other way around :)



 Jan 25 2014



  parent reply Jeff Nowakowski <jeff dilacero.org>  writes:


On 01/25/2014 11:46 AM, Dicebot wrote:

 On Saturday, 25 January 2014 at 15:52:39 UTC, H. S. Teoh wrote:

 OK, but what I was getting at was that Debian 'unstable' is actually
 usable for daily desktop needs in spite of the name.


 And original rant was that Debian unstable is too _stable_ for desktop
 use, not the other way around :)


If you're talking about Nick's rant, he didn't specifically say what 
Debian release he was using, but it was clearly stable, especially when 
he mentions backports. Over the years I've switched from Debian stable, 
to testing, and finally to unstable and haven't looked back.



 Jan 25 2014



 next sibling parent  "Dicebot" <public dicebot.lv>  writes:


On Sunday, 26 January 2014 at 00:33:43 UTC, Jeff Nowakowski wrote:

 If you're talking about Nick's rant, he didn't specifically say 
 what Debian release he was using, but it was clearly stable, 
 especially when he mentions backports. Over the years I've 
 switched from Debian stable, to testing, and finally to 
 unstable and haven't looked back.


I was talking about one of my own :P



 Jan 25 2014



prev sibling next sibling parent reply "H. S. Teoh" <hsteoh quickfur.ath.cx>  writes:


On Sat, Jan 25, 2014 at 07:33:43PM -0500, Jeff Nowakowski wrote:

 On 01/25/2014 11:46 AM, Dicebot wrote:

On Saturday, 25 January 2014 at 15:52:39 UTC, H. S. Teoh wrote:

OK, but what I was getting at was that Debian 'unstable' is actually
usable for daily desktop needs in spite of the name.


And original rant was that Debian unstable is too _stable_ for desktop
use, not the other way around :)


 
 If you're talking about Nick's rant, he didn't specifically say what
 Debian release he was using, but it was clearly stable, especially
 when he mentions backports. Over the years I've switched from Debian
 stable, to testing, and finally to unstable and haven't looked back.


Makes me wonder if Debian should just rename unstable -> stable, testing
-> very stable, and stable -> very old. :-P


T

-- 
This is a tpyo.



 Jan 25 2014



  parent  Nick Sabalausky <SeeWebsiteToContactMe semitwist.com>  writes:


On 1/25/2014 8:20 PM, H. S. Teoh wrote:

 Makes me wonder if Debian should just rename unstable -> stable, testing
 -> very stable, and stable -> very old. :-P


I've started wondering the same, but it's probably not worth it to 
expect a sane naming system from something that uses "versions" like 
"wheezy", "lenny", etc. ;)  And in absolutely no discernible order no 
less! </pet peeve>



 Jan 26 2014



prev sibling  parent  Russel Winder <russel winder.org.uk>  writes:


On Sat, 2014-01-25 at 17:20 -0800, H. S. Teoh wrote:
[…]

 Makes me wonder if Debian should just rename unstable -> stable, testing
 -> very stable, and stable -> very old. :-P


experimental → playground
unstable → workstation (*)
testing → Britney's playground
stable → server (for conservative sys admins who are afraid)


(*) and server for those who do not do automatic upgrades and are
careful when doing manual upgrades.

-- 
Russel.
=============================================================================
Dr Russel Winder      t: +44 20 7585 2200   voip: sip:russel.winder ekiga.net
41 Buckmaster Road    m: +44 7770 465 077   xmpp: russel winder.org.uk
London SW11 1EN, UK   w: www.russel.org.uk  skype: russel_winder



 Jan 26 2014



prev sibling next sibling parent  "John Colvin" <john.loughran.colvin gmail.com>  writes:


On Monday, 20 January 2014 at 12:30:27 UTC, Chris wrote:

 At work we use Ubuntu, however, I'm not at all happy with it 
 and don't want to use it on my private computer. Which is the 
 best alternative (I've been looking at OpenSUSE; Mint is based 
 on Ubuntu/Debian but only shares the repository with Ubuntu 
 (right?); Fedora has bad reviews at the moment and might be a 
 pain to set up (drivers etc.)). I'm also considering FreeBSD, a 
 completely different beast.


I'm really enjoying Arch + Xmonad. Every time I have to use my 
work machine with openSuse and gnome or kde I feel like it's 
getting in my way at every turn by comparison.

Simple, controllable distro + a good tiling window manager = 
productive, flexible programmer.

As a bonus, Arch has great D support out of the box :)



 Jan 20 2014



prev sibling next sibling parent reply "Daniel Kozak" <kozzi11 gmail.com>  writes:


On Monday, 20 January 2014 at 12:30:27 UTC, Chris wrote:

 At work we use Ubuntu, however, I'm not at all happy with it 
 and don't want to use it on my private computer. Which is the 
 best alternative (I've been looking at OpenSUSE; Mint is based 
 on Ubuntu/Debian but only shares the repository with Ubuntu 
 (right?); Fedora has bad reviews at the moment and might be a 
 pain to set up (drivers etc.)). I'm also considering FreeBSD, a 
 completely different beast.


I try lots of distros (*buntu, debian, suse, mandriva, fedora, 
centos, gentoo...). And every distro has some cons and pros. But 
then I discovered Arch linux. After that, I do not have a reason 
to try another distro :).

BTW. Arch linux has perfect D support



 Jan 20 2014



  parent reply Marco Leise <Marco.Leise gmx.de>  writes:


Am Mon, 20 Jan 2014 13:03:18 +0000
schrieb "Daniel Kozak" <kozzi11 gmail.com>:


 On Monday, 20 January 2014 at 12:30:27 UTC, Chris wrote:

 At work we use Ubuntu, however, I'm not at all happy with it 
 and don't want to use it on my private computer. Which is the 
 best alternative (I've been looking at OpenSUSE; Mint is based 
 on Ubuntu/Debian but only shares the repository with Ubuntu 
 (right?); Fedora has bad reviews at the moment and might be a 
 pain to set up (drivers etc.)). I'm also considering FreeBSD, a 
 completely different beast.


 
 I try lots of distros (*buntu, debian, suse, mandriva, fedora, 
 centos, gentoo...). And every distro has some cons and pros. But 
 then I discovered Arch linux. After that, I do not have a reason 
 to try another distro :).
 
 BTW. Arch linux has perfect D support


Not that there is any competition going on, but Gentoo has
support for installing multiple versions of DMD, GDC and LDC2
at once. It has the "dman" command to quickly look up stuff
on dlang.org. It can install GtkD on top of all three
compilers at once in 32-bit and 64-bit.
And in addition it allows you to chose the compiler (i.e.
optimization) flags and optional components for D packages.
For GtkD the gtksourceview component and a few others are
optional.

-- 
Marco



 Jan 20 2014



  parent reply "Dicebot" <public dicebot.lv>  writes:


On Tuesday, 21 January 2014 at 03:50:28 UTC, Marco Leise wrote:

 Not that there is any competition going on...


Well, I won't reject this possibility :P

Your Gentoo approach is very solid though and I don't think it is 
possible to do anything like that right now for any binary 
package distro - most of D code is source-compatible between 
compilers but almost never ABI-compatible. It is one of cases 
where Gentoo philosophy really shines.

Good job ;)



 Jan 21 2014



  parent  Marco Leise <Marco.Leise gmx.de>  writes:


Am Tue, 21 Jan 2014 08:52:40 +0000
schrieb "Dicebot" <public dicebot.lv>:


 On Tuesday, 21 January 2014 at 03:50:28 UTC, Marco Leise wrote:

 Not that there is any competition going on...


 
 Well, I won't reject this possibility :P
 
 Your Gentoo approach is very solid though and I don't think it is 
 possible to do anything like that right now for any binary 
 package distro - most of D code is source-compatible between 
 compilers but almost never ABI-compatible. It is one of cases 
 where Gentoo philosophy really shines.
 
 Good job ;)


Thanks, that felt good on a cold day. :)

-- 
Marco



 Jan 21 2014



prev sibling next sibling parent  "Zoadian" <dkjsf dll.de>  writes:


On Monday, 20 January 2014 at 12:30:27 UTC, Chris wrote:

 At work we use Ubuntu, however, I'm not at all happy with it 
 and don't want to use it on my private computer. Which is the 
 best alternative (I've been looking at OpenSUSE; Mint is based 
 on Ubuntu/Debian but only shares the repository with Ubuntu 
 (right?); Fedora has bad reviews at the moment and might be a 
 pain to set up (drivers etc.)). I'm also considering FreeBSD, a 
 completely different beast.


gentoo ;)



 Jan 20 2014



prev sibling next sibling parent  "Craig Dillabaugh" <cdillaba cg.scs.carleton.ca>  writes:


On Monday, 20 January 2014 at 12:30:27 UTC, Chris wrote:

 At work we use Ubuntu, however, I'm not at all happy with it 
 and don't want to use it on my private computer. Which is the 
 best alternative (I've been looking at OpenSUSE; Mint is based 
 on Ubuntu/Debian but only shares the repository with Ubuntu 
 (right?); Fedora has bad reviews at the moment and might be a 
 pain to set up (drivers etc.)). I'm also considering FreeBSD, a 
 completely different beast.


I use OpenSUSE with KDE desktop.  I've had no problems working 
with most D related stuff.  One minor problem with OpenSUSE is I 
find that often things are set up just a little differently than 
in some of the more popular distro's.  This isn't generally a 
problem as the Repositories are pretty complete, but sometimes 
trying to configure certain software can be a bit of a pain if 
the instructions you have found were written for Ubuntu/Redhat 
(which is common).

One D related problem (a small one) I had was with DUB.  It 
requires libcurl and it seems SUSE uses a different naming 
convention for this library than other distros.  This (along with 
me downloading the wrong DUB binary), caused me some trouble the 
first time I tried to use it. See:

http://forum.rejectedsoftware.com/groups/rejectedsoftware.dub/thread/230/

Now everything works. DUB complains about missing 
libcurl-gnutls.so.4 every time I run it ... but it still works.

Having said all that, now that I've read this thread I guess I am 
going to have to switch to Arch Linux.



 Jan 20 2014



prev sibling next sibling parent  "Moritz Maxeiner" <moritz ucworks.org>  writes:


On Monday, 20 January 2014 at 12:30:27 UTC, Chris wrote:

 At work we use Ubuntu, however, I'm not at all happy with it 
 and don't want to use it on my private computer. Which is the 
 best alternative (I've been looking at OpenSUSE; Mint is based 
 on Ubuntu/Debian but only shares the repository with Ubuntu 
 (right?); Fedora has bad reviews at the moment and might be a 
 pain to set up (drivers etc.)). I'm also considering FreeBSD, a 
 completely different beast.


As Dicebot said already, it depends heavily on your requirements.

For me, the most important property of any operating system (and 
by extension Linux distribution) is, that it doesn't hinder me in 
what I want to do (or better: That is does so as little as 
possible).

I'm not going to poke the Linux vs. BSD monster with a stick, but 
personally, I'm using Linux. On the topic of which distribution, 
I like the amount of freedom Gentoo and Arch give you. Arch does 
so somewhat less than Gentoo, but I find the amount of time 
required to compile everything (including the kernel, binutils, 
etc.), as is done in Gentoo, a lot more of a hindrance than the 
restrictions Arch has that Gentoo doesn't.

So for the time being I'm using Archlinux+i3, which is a setup I 
can definitely recommend.



 Jan 20 2014



prev sibling next sibling parent reply "H. S. Teoh" <hsteoh quickfur.ath.cx>  writes:


On Mon, Jan 20, 2014 at 12:30:26PM +0000, Chris wrote:

 At work we use Ubuntu, however, I'm not at all happy with it and
 don't want to use it on my private computer. Which is the best
 alternative (I've been looking at OpenSUSE; Mint is based on
 Ubuntu/Debian but only shares the repository with Ubuntu (right?);
 Fedora has bad reviews at the moment and might be a pain to set up
 (drivers etc.)). I'm also considering FreeBSD, a completely
 different beast.


As many have said, it really depends on what you're looking for.

I myself use Debian/unstable (in spite of the 'unstable' moniker it's
actually very stable, as far as OSes in general go). I'm extremely
CLI-biased, so my particular setup of Debian is probably far from
typical, but here's exactly why I like the way Debian is setup: many
packages actually go out of the way to support non-default
configurations. You can install the base system without X11 or
LibreOffice or any of the "big fat" packages, and even if you decide to
install those packages, they are broken up into core / optional pieces
so that you can control exactly what you want. At the same time, the
dependency system automatically manages what to install when you wish to
just install an entire package suite without further ado. When you
upgrade, packages are very careful not to overwrite any custom config
files.

In a nutshell, Debian is a tinkerer's paradise, where you can customize
the system to your heart's content, without some organization somewhere
deciding how things ought to be. There *are* reasonable defaults
provided, but non-default customizations are explicitly supported.

But again, my use case is probably extremely different from yours, so
YMMV, take this with a huge grain of salt, etc..

(P.S. Now I know Ubuntu is based on Debian, but the one time I had to
deal with an Ubuntu system directly I noticed that they were not as
friendly to customization. But I didn't spend too much time actually
using it to say this for sure -- I switched apt/source.list to the
Debian repos and apt-get'd the system into Debian/unstable within a day,
so now the system is no longer Ubuntu. :-P)


T

-- 
Recently, our IT department hired a bug-fix engineer. He used to work for
Volkswagen.



 Jan 20 2014



 next sibling parent reply "Chris" <wendlec tcd.ie>  writes:


On Monday, 20 January 2014 at 16:22:15 UTC, H. S. Teoh wrote:

 On Mon, Jan 20, 2014 at 12:30:26PM +0000, Chris wrote:

 At work we use Ubuntu, however, I'm not at all happy with it 
 and
 don't want to use it on my private computer. Which is the best
 alternative (I've been looking at OpenSUSE; Mint is based on
 Ubuntu/Debian but only shares the repository with Ubuntu 
 (right?);
 Fedora has bad reviews at the moment and might be a pain to 
 set up
 (drivers etc.)). I'm also considering FreeBSD, a completely
 different beast.


 As many have said, it really depends on what you're looking for.

 I myself use Debian/unstable (in spite of the 'unstable' 
 moniker it's
 actually very stable, as far as OSes in general go). I'm 
 extremely
 CLI-biased, so my particular setup of Debian is probably far 
 from
 typical, but here's exactly why I like the way Debian is setup: 
 many
 packages actually go out of the way to support non-default
 configurations. You can install the base system without X11 or
 LibreOffice or any of the "big fat" packages, and even if you 
 decide to
 install those packages, they are broken up into core / optional 
 pieces
 so that you can control exactly what you want. At the same 
 time, the
 dependency system automatically manages what to install when 
 you wish to
 just install an entire package suite without further ado. When 
 you
 upgrade, packages are very careful not to overwrite any custom 
 config
 files.

 In a nutshell, Debian is a tinkerer's paradise, where you can 
 customize
 the system to your heart's content, without some organization 
 somewhere
 deciding how things ought to be. There *are* reasonable defaults
 provided, but non-default customizations are explicitly 
 supported.

 But again, my use case is probably extremely different from 
 yours, so
 YMMV, take this with a huge grain of salt, etc..

 (P.S. Now I know Ubuntu is based on Debian, but the one time I 
 had to
 deal with an Ubuntu system directly I noticed that they were 
 not as
 friendly to customization. But I didn't spend too much time 
 actually
 using it to say this for sure -- I switched apt/source.list to 
 the
 Debian repos and apt-get'd the system into Debian/unstable 
 within a day,
 so now the system is no longer Ubuntu. :-P)


 T


I'm kinda torn between the two sides. On the one hand I don't 
want to do too much manual configuring and tinkering (especially 
for basic things), on the other hand I don't want big fat apps 
I'll probably never use installed by default. I'll give Manjaro 
(Arch Linux) a try and see, if I can build up my own custom 
configuration as I go along. The only fear I have in this regard 
is that it might be hard to get certain apps i like or need, if 
they are not in the repository. But things will improve and I 
like to give new things a try. I can always come back to the 
bigger distros.



 Jan 20 2014



 next sibling parent  "Dicebot" <public dicebot.lv>  writes:


On Monday, 20 January 2014 at 16:36:32 UTC, Chris wrote:

 I'm kinda torn between the two sides. On the one hand I don't 
 want to do too much manual configuring and tinkering 
 (especially for basic things), on the other hand I don't want 
 big fat apps I'll probably never use installed by default. I'll 
 give Manjaro (Arch Linux) a try and see, if I can build up my 
 own custom configuration as I go along. The only fear I have in 
 this regard is that it might be hard to get certain apps i like 
 or need, if they are not in the repository. But things will 
 improve and I like to give new things a try. I can always come 
 back to the bigger distros.


AUR (aur.archlinux.org, user-supplied PKGBUILD database) is the 
place to look at for some less popular or controversial packages. 
I am pretty sure it fits into Manjaro too.



 Jan 20 2014



prev sibling  parent reply "Kapps" <opantm2+spam gmail.com>  writes:


On Monday, 20 January 2014 at 16:36:32 UTC, Chris wrote:

 I'm kinda torn between the two sides. On the one hand I don't 
 want to do too much manual configuring and tinkering 
 (especially for basic things), on the other hand I don't want 
 big fat apps I'll probably never use installed by default. I'll 
 give Manjaro (Arch Linux) a try and see, if I can build up my 
 own custom configuration as I go along. The only fear I have in 
 this regard is that it might be hard to get certain apps i like 
 or need, if they are not in the repository. But things will 
 improve and I like to give new things a try. I can always come 
 back to the bigger distros.


I find with yaourt (accesses the AUR), most of the free things
I'm looking for already have a package that you can install in a
single command.



 Jan 20 2014



  parent reply "Chris" <wendlec tcd.ie>  writes:


I managed to install Arch Linux with Manjaro. I could install dub 
and dmd without any problems. The installation of Manjaro failed 
in UEFI mode, although it said it had been successful, it didn't 
work. I reinstalled it in classic mode with the stable installer 
and now it works. Now I'm testing it. So far everything works out 
of the box (wifi etc.) (unlike Ubuntu that gave me an effin 
headache).

I still believe that UEFI is just another trick to scare people 
away from Linux.



 Jan 20 2014



  parent reply "Moritz Maxeiner" <moritz ucworks.org>  writes:


On Monday, 20 January 2014 at 22:39:53 UTC, Chris wrote:

 I managed to install Arch Linux with Manjaro. I could install 
 dub and dmd without any problems. The installation of Manjaro 
 failed in UEFI mode, although it said it had been successful, 
 it didn't work. I reinstalled it in classic mode with the 
 stable installer and now it works. Now I'm testing it. So far 
 everything works out of the box (wifi etc.) (unlike Ubuntu that 
 gave me an effin headache).

 I still believe that UEFI is just another trick to scare people 
 away from Linux.


Have you tried setting up UEFI manually 
(https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/GRUB#UEFI_systems_2) ? 
Since Manjaro is Arch-based the  wiki should mostly still apply. 
I have setup UEFI with Arch on several systems so far without any 
issues, but as the page states, different manufacturers implement 
UEFI differently. If you run into any UEFI issues, you might want 
to report them, so they can be fixed / others can avoid that 
hardware if the need working UEFI.

Further off topic: SecureBoot might be a trick to scare people 
away from Linux, but UEFI? It brings direct boot into 64 bit long 
mode (making a lot of initialisation assembly code obsolete) and 
if you want, you can even get rid of a normal bootloader and 
directly boot up a kernel (efistub). While it is true that 
several manufacturers seem to implement it in a way that 
complicates / causes issues for Linux and it certainly could be 
made better / more implementations of it standard-compliant, I 
think UEFI is still a step up from BIOS.



 Jan 20 2014



  parent  "Chris" <wendlec tcd.ie>  writes:


On Monday, 20 January 2014 at 23:38:39 UTC, Moritz Maxeiner wrote:

 On Monday, 20 January 2014 at 22:39:53 UTC, Chris wrote:

 I managed to install Arch Linux with Manjaro. I could install 
 dub and dmd without any problems. The installation of Manjaro 
 failed in UEFI mode, although it said it had been successful, 
 it didn't work. I reinstalled it in classic mode with the 
 stable installer and now it works. Now I'm testing it. So far 
 everything works out of the box (wifi etc.) (unlike Ubuntu 
 that gave me an effin headache).

 I still believe that UEFI is just another trick to scare 
 people away from Linux.


 Have you tried setting up UEFI manually 
 (https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/GRUB#UEFI_systems_2) ? 
 Since Manjaro is Arch-based the  wiki should mostly still 
 apply. I have setup UEFI with Arch on several systems so far 
 without any issues, but as the page states, different 
 manufacturers implement UEFI differently. If you run into any 
 UEFI issues, you might want to report them, so they can be 
 fixed / others can avoid that hardware if the need working UEFI.


I tried the test installer provided by Manjaro. The standard 
installer doesn't support UEFI (yet). The installer said 
everything had been set up (efi partition etc.), but the 
installation failed somehow. I was lazy and didn't partition 
manually but used the auto-partitioning option.
(cf. http://wiki.manjaro.org/index.php?title=UEFI_-_Install_Guide)

Then I just changed to legacy mode and installed with the stable 
installer. It's working now. I'd like to give UEFI another go, 
but there's always some issue. Ubuntu can handle it 
automatically, though.


 Further off topic: SecureBoot might be a trick to scare people 
 away from Linux, but UEFI? It brings direct boot into 64 bit 
 long mode (making a lot of initialisation assembly code 
 obsolete) and if you want, you can even get rid of a normal 
 bootloader and directly boot up a kernel (efistub). While it is 
 true that several manufacturers seem to implement it in a way 
 that complicates / causes issues for Linux and it certainly 
 could be made better / more implementations of it 
 standard-compliant, I think UEFI is still a step up from BIOS.


True, true. But I have a feeling that standardization / 
simplification is not really a priority, because it makes the 
installation of linux systems nigh impossible for normal users 
who are not tech savvy. MS sure won't complain about this 
situation ;)



 Jan 20 2014



prev sibling  parent reply Nick Sabalausky <SeeWebsiteToContactMe semitwist.com>  writes:


On 1/20/2014 11:20 AM, H. S. Teoh wrote:

 (P.S. Now I know Ubuntu is based on Debian, but the one time I had to
 deal with an Ubuntu system directly I noticed that they were not as
 friendly to customization.


I'd say that's fairly accurate. Ubuntu started as an easy-to-use Debian. 
But ever since, they've been gradually, but steadily, turning it into an 
OSX clone.

With Unity now, it's exactly what I'd recommend to Mac fans who want to 
try Linux, but not really to anyone else.



 Jan 24 2014



  parent  Marco Leise <Marco.Leise gmx.de>  writes:


Am Fri, 24 Jan 2014 06:23:26 -0500
schrieb Nick Sabalausky <SeeWebsiteToContactMe semitwist.com>:


 On 1/20/2014 11:20 AM, H. S. Teoh wrote:

 (P.S. Now I know Ubuntu is based on Debian, but the one time I had to
 deal with an Ubuntu system directly I noticed that they were not as
 friendly to customization.


 
 I'd say that's fairly accurate. Ubuntu started as an easy-to-use Debian. 
 But ever since, they've been gradually, but steadily, turning it into an 
 OSX clone.
 
 With Unity now, it's exactly what I'd recommend to Mac fans who want to 
 try Linux, but not really to anyone else.


Even just Gnome 3 is too heavy weight for my taste. >500 MiB
RAM for a desktop shell alone and quite a slice of free video
memory wasn't worth it too me for what it offers in usability
over light weight desktops. Maybe if I had 8 GiB RAM or
so... :)

-- 
Marco



 Jan 26 2014



prev sibling next sibling parent reply "ed" <growlercab gmail.com>  writes:


On Monday, 20 January 2014 at 12:30:27 UTC, Chris wrote:

 At work we use Ubuntu, however, I'm not at all happy with it 
 and don't want to use it on my private computer. Which is the 
 best alternative (I've been looking at OpenSUSE; Mint is based 
 on Ubuntu/Debian but only shares the repository with Ubuntu 
 (right?); Fedora has bad reviews at the moment and might be a 
 pain to set up (drivers etc.)). I'm also considering FreeBSD, a 
 completely different beast.


I used Ubuntu for a couple of releases but switched back to 
Fedora in 2008 because there was talk of dropping support for 
Gnome rather than contributing to it. I use Openbox but Ubuntu 
was starting to leave a bad taste in my mouth.

Now with Mir and Wayland...well I'm really hoping the best of 
both eventually congeal into one great protocol.

But, that was in the past. About 2 years ago I thought I'd try 
Arch and loved it from the moment it was set up, which took about 
30 min first time; not much longer than the Fedora installer.

Arch is BRILLIANT!...IMO of course.

Cheers,
Ed



 Jan 20 2014



  parent  "David Nadlinger" <code klickverbot.at>  writes:


On Tuesday, 21 January 2014 at 00:24:31 UTC, ed wrote:

 Arch is BRILLIANT!...IMO of course.


Arch indeed seems to be very popular around here, I use it on my 
notebook as well. For me it brings all the flexibility I want, 
like Gentoo, but without the hassles of compiling everything 
yourself, and also does an excellent job of not getting in my 
way. For technically minded people, the documentation (ArchWiki) 
is in my opinion among the best, if not the best, of all Linux 
distributions right now.

I wouldn't want to install it on my parent's machine though, 
you'll definitely end up using the command line and/or editing 
config files to tweak settings though.

But of course, this is a highly subjective issue…

David



 Jan 20 2014



prev sibling next sibling parent reply "simendsjo" <simendsjo gmail.com>  writes:


On Monday, 20 January 2014 at 12:30:27 UTC, Chris wrote:

 At work we use Ubuntu, however, I'm not at all happy with it 
 and don't want to use it on my private computer. Which is the 
 best alternative (I've been looking at OpenSUSE; Mint is based 
 on Ubuntu/Debian but only shares the repository with Ubuntu 
 (right?); Fedora has bad reviews at the moment and might be a 
 pain to set up (drivers etc.)). I'm also considering FreeBSD, a 
 completely different beast.


As many others here, I've also been using Arch for a couple of 
years.
It's a really great distro, and I don't think the "Expert user" 
label is correct (I'm no expert user), although I've used Debian 
distros on and off (mostly off) since 2001.

The only expert level I've encountered has been the installation 
procedure, but I simply just followed the instructions 
step-by-step. I've done this for 3 computers.

1) The repository is filled with all the software I need (be sure 
to use yaourt or some other package manager that has access to 
AUR)

2) The rolling release pretty much just work. The last time it 
was a hassle was september 2013 - but the arch news gives a head 
up on these issues, and the forum is very responsive to newbies.

3) It's as lightweight as you need. My setup use 84MB RAM after 
booting and 110MB after launching X (I use i3wm and no desktop).

4) The documentation (Arch wiki) is an amazing source of 
information. The wiki is the reason I started using Arch. Anytime 
I searched for something, Arch wiki (and sometimes the forum) 
seemed to pop up with the solution.

It's the first distro that Just Works (TM) for me, and the distro 
that made me go full-time GNU/Linux.
Even compiling a custom kernel, which I needs for a piece of 
hardware, is just a couple of commands.

I haven't tried much of the graphical tools though, so you might 
have to be comfortable with the terminal for all I know.



 Jan 21 2014



  parent reply "ed" <growlercab gmail.com>  writes:


On Tuesday, 21 January 2014 at 10:53:32 UTC, simendsjo wrote:
[snip]


 It's the first distro that Just Works (TM) for me, and the 
 distro that made me go full-time GNU/Linux.
 Even compiling a custom kernel, which I needs for a piece of 
 hardware, is just a couple of commands.

 I haven't tried much of the graphical tools though, so you 
 might have to be comfortable with the terminal for all I know.


+1 to everything said here. Arch was also the first distro which
for me just works and keeps on working.

When Fedora broke I didn't mind. It was usually just after a
fresh install, easy to fix and very occasional. It was just too
out of date for my taste.

I had a lot of problems with Ubuntu and stability from
7.10-13.04. Even guys at my work, which were Ubuntu fanatics,
stopped at 13.04 when I convinced them to try Arch because they
were having issues after the release. One did settle on Fedora
because Arch required RTFM for 10 mins during first install.

Now at work Ubuntu users are rare. The occasional junior dev,
straight out of uni/college and still very earnest and excitable,
may be spotted booting into Ubuntu but that's it.

Cheers,
Ed



 Jan 24 2014



  parent reply "Kapps" <opantm2+spam gmail.com>  writes:


On Friday, 24 January 2014 at 23:17:55 UTC, ed wrote:

 I had a lot of problems with Ubuntu and stability from
 7.10-13.04. Even guys at my work, which were Ubuntu fanatics,
 stopped at 13.04 when I convinced them to try Arch because they
 were having issues after the release. One did settle on Fedora
 because Arch required RTFM for 10 mins during first install.


10 minutes? heh.

It will take most people much longer than 10 minutes to do their 
first install.



 Jan 24 2014



  parent  "Dicebot" <public dicebot.lv>  writes:


On Saturday, 25 January 2014 at 06:46:17 UTC, Kapps wrote:

 On Friday, 24 January 2014 at 23:17:55 UTC, ed wrote:

 I had a lot of problems with Ubuntu and stability from
 7.10-13.04. Even guys at my work, which were Ubuntu fanatics,
 stopped at 13.04 when I convinced them to try Arch because they
 were having issues after the release. One did settle on Fedora
 because Arch required RTFM for 10 mins during first install.


 10 minutes? heh.

 It will take most people much longer than 10 minutes to do 
 their first install.


It was about 10 minutes even for newbies until they (we) have 
removed ncurses installer as no one has maintained it :(



 Jan 25 2014



prev sibling next sibling parent reply "Joakim" <joakim airpost.net>  writes:


On Monday, 20 January 2014 at 12:30:27 UTC, Chris wrote:

 At work we use Ubuntu, however, I'm not at all happy with it 
 and don't want to use it on my private computer. Which is the 
 best alternative (I've been looking at OpenSUSE; Mint is based 
 on Ubuntu/Debian but only shares the repository with Ubuntu 
 (right?); Fedora has bad reviews at the moment and might be a 
 pain to set up (drivers etc.)). I'm also considering FreeBSD, a 
 completely different beast.


FreeBSD with E17 is the best desktop I've ever used, very fast 
and responsive.  You can quickly run or install PC-BSD to see if 
it will go well with your hardware, then reinstall to FreeBSD if 
you like it but don't want or need all the PC-BSD extras.  The 
FreeBSD packaging system works very well.

Arch is the one linux distro that reminds me of FreeBSD, 
particularly pacman and the AUR, which is why it is the only one 
I install these days.



 Jan 21 2014



  parent reply "Chris" <wendlec tcd.ie>  writes:


On Tuesday, 21 January 2014 at 11:18:05 UTC, Joakim wrote:

 On Monday, 20 January 2014 at 12:30:27 UTC, Chris wrote:

 At work we use Ubuntu, however, I'm not at all happy with it 
 and don't want to use it on my private computer. Which is the 
 best alternative (I've been looking at OpenSUSE; Mint is based 
 on Ubuntu/Debian but only shares the repository with Ubuntu 
 (right?); Fedora has bad reviews at the moment and might be a 
 pain to set up (drivers etc.)). I'm also considering FreeBSD, 
 a completely different beast.


 FreeBSD with E17 is the best desktop I've ever used, very fast 
 and responsive.  You can quickly run or install PC-BSD to see 
 if it will go well with your hardware, then reinstall to 
 FreeBSD if you like it but don't want or need all the PC-BSD 
 extras.  The FreeBSD packaging system works very well.

 Arch is the one linux distro that reminds me of FreeBSD, 
 particularly pacman and the AUR, which is why it is the only 
 one I install these days.


How's the FreeBSD documentation / community? Is it easy to find 
solutions? ArchLinux is really good (from the little I've seen so 
far) and not as chaotic as "askubuntu".



 Jan 21 2014



 next sibling parent reply Iain Buclaw <ibuclaw gdcproject.org>  writes:


On 21 January 2014 11:42, Chris <wendlec tcd.ie> wrote:

 On Tuesday, 21 January 2014 at 11:18:05 UTC, Joakim wrote:

 On Monday, 20 January 2014 at 12:30:27 UTC, Chris wrote:

 At work we use Ubuntu, however, I'm not at all happy with it and don't
 want to use it on my private computer. Which is the best alternative (I've
 been looking at OpenSUSE; Mint is based on Ubuntu/Debian but only shares the
 repository with Ubuntu (right?); Fedora has bad reviews at the moment and
 might be a pain to set up (drivers etc.)). I'm also considering FreeBSD, a
 completely different beast.



 FreeBSD with E17 is the best desktop I've ever used, very fast and
 responsive.  You can quickly run or install PC-BSD to see if it will go well
 with your hardware, then reinstall to FreeBSD if you like it but don't want
 or need all the PC-BSD extras.  The FreeBSD packaging system works very
 well.

 Arch is the one linux distro that reminds me of FreeBSD, particularly
 pacman and the AUR, which is why it is the only one I install these days.



 How's the FreeBSD documentation / community? Is it easy to find solutions?
 ArchLinux is really good (from the little I've seen so far) and not as
 chaotic as "askubuntu".


Being a ubuntuforum guy (and a previous member of staff there) - I've
never liked askubuntu either.



 Jan 21 2014



  parent  "Chris" <wendlec tcd.ie>  writes:


On Tuesday, 21 January 2014 at 12:04:56 UTC, Iain Buclaw wrote:

 How's the FreeBSD documentation / community? Is it easy to 
 find solutions?
 ArchLinux is really good (from the little I've seen so far) 
 and not as
 chaotic as "askubuntu".


 Being a ubuntuforum guy (and a previous member of staff there) 
 - I've
 never liked askubuntu either.


Yes, it's quite chaotic, this whole idea of crowdsourcing went 
wrong there.



 Jan 21 2014



prev sibling  parent reply "Arjan" <arjan ask.me.to>  writes:


 How's the FreeBSD documentation / community? Is it easy to find 
 solutions?


I'm a long time FreeBSD user. I've always found the documentation 
quality outstanding. Never had any difficulty to find answers or 
solutions. Besides FreeBSD has a web forum and mailing list with 
lots of helpfull people attending.

I'm also using OpenSUSE since 10.0 days. And debian on and off 
since the 4.0 days.

I use D (self build from github sources) on FreeBSD OpenSUSE and 
windows. (On windows sometimes also the prebuid binaries.)

As DE I prefer KDE.



 Jan 21 2014



  parent reply "Chris" <wendlec tcd.ie>  writes:


On Tuesday, 21 January 2014 at 13:42:11 UTC, Arjan wrote:

 How's the FreeBSD documentation / community? Is it easy to 
 find solutions?


 I'm a long time FreeBSD user. I've always found the 
 documentation quality outstanding. Never had any difficulty to 
 find answers or solutions. Besides FreeBSD has a web forum and 
 mailing list with lots of helpfull people attending.

 I'm also using OpenSUSE since 10.0 days. And debian on and off 
 since the 4.0 days.

 I use D (self build from github sources) on FreeBSD OpenSUSE 
 and windows. (On windows sometimes also the prebuid binaries.)

 As DE I prefer KDE.


I'm testing ArchLinux now and so far I think it's great. I've 
encountered less problems than on other, so called user-friendly, 
distros. The documentation is sound, and I like the fact that 
it's a rolling distro. If it comes so close to FreeBSD, as has 
been said, I wonder if it is worth the trouble to install FreeBSD 
at all.



 Jan 21 2014



  parent  "Joakim" <joakim airpost.net>  writes:


On Tuesday, 21 January 2014 at 15:08:16 UTC, Chris wrote:

 How's the FreeBSD documentation / community? Is it easy to find 
 solutions?


FreeBSD has the best official docs I've ever seen for an OS:

http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/

The mailing lists and forums are good places to get questions 
answered.  I've never had problems finding solutions, if they 
exist. ;) Arch's wiki might be the best such informational 
resource I've ever seen though.


 I'm testing ArchLinux now and so far I think it's great. I've 
 encountered less problems than on other, so called 
 user-friendly, distros. The documentation is sound, and I like 
 the fact that it's a rolling distro. If it comes so close to 
 FreeBSD, as has been said, I wonder if it is worth the trouble 
 to install FreeBSD at all.


It's worth trying FreeBSD if you're at all interested in tech 
like zfs, zones, dtrace, bhyve, etc.  Pacman is better than any 
other package manager I've used though.



 Jan 24 2014



prev sibling next sibling parent reply "Mariusz `shd` =?UTF-8?B?R2xpd2nFhHNraSI=?= <alienballance gmail.com>  writes:


On Monday, 20 January 2014 at 12:30:27 UTC, Chris wrote:

 At work we use Ubuntu, however, I'm not at all happy with it 
 and don't want to use it on my private computer. Which is the 
 best alternative (I've been looking at OpenSUSE; Mint is based 
 on Ubuntu/Debian but only shares the repository with Ubuntu 
 (right?); Fedora has bad reviews at the moment and might be a 
 pain to set up (drivers etc.)). I'm also considering FreeBSD, a 
 completely different beast.


If you've never heard about it, NixOS is quite interesting 
project.
It would require a bit of Linux knowledge and even worse - time - 
to use it.



 Jan 21 2014



 next sibling parent reply Danni Coy <danni.coy gmail.com>  writes:


So far I have found Kubuntu to be the least amount of work to get a
system that works the way I want. I have tried Arch and OpenSuSe but
both of those seem to be a lot more work.


On Wed, Jan 22, 2014 at 10:50 AM,  <"Mariusz `shd` Gliwiński\"
<alienballance gmail.com>" puremagic.com> wrote:

 On Monday, 20 January 2014 at 12:30:27 UTC, Chris wrote:

 At work we use Ubuntu, however, I'm not at all happy with it and don't
 want to use it on my private computer. Which is the best alternative (I've
 been looking at OpenSUSE; Mint is based on Ubuntu/Debian but only shares the
 repository with Ubuntu (right?); Fedora has bad reviews at the moment and
 might be a pain to set up (drivers etc.)). I'm also considering FreeBSD, a
 completely different beast.



 If you've never heard about it, NixOS is quite interesting project.
 It would require a bit of Linux knowledge and even worse - time - to use it.





 Jan 21 2014



  parent  "Chris" <wendlec tcd.ie>  writes:


On Wednesday, 22 January 2014 at 05:31:02 UTC, Danni Coy wrote:

 So far I have found Kubuntu to be the least amount of work to 
 get a
 system that works the way I want. I have tried Arch and 
 OpenSuSe but
 both of those seem to be a lot more work.


I installed a flavor or ArchLinux (Manjaro, cos I'm lazy) and 
could get things to work (including the touchscreen) fairly 
easily. It took less time than trying to fix all the problems I 
had with Ubuntu ("low graphics mode", touch screen etc.), and the 
documentation is really really good. What they say works, unlike 
askubuntu* that gives you 1,000 answers that don't work, and you 
end up having changed 1,000 things more or less randomly. I'm 
beginning to like ArchLinux, it gives me freedom and control over 
my own computer.

(*What really annoys, now that I have made the switch, is that on 
askubuntu it often seems as if it's the vendor's fault, if the 
hardware doesn't work properly with Ubuntu. However, with 
ArchLinux my hardware works very well. Hm.)



 Jan 22 2014



prev sibling next sibling parent reply "Ola Fosheim =?UTF-8?B?R3LDuHN0YWQi?=  writes:


On Wednesday, 22 January 2014 at 00:50:36 UTC, Mariusz `shd` 
Gliwiński wrote:

 If you've never heard about it, NixOS is quite interesting 
 project.


Woah! Atomic transactional configuration. That's cool! Debian 
with Nix would be great.

I've been a loyal Debian (testing) user since I dropped Slackware 
in the 90s, and can't see why a programmer would use anything 
else for their own use. Debian is good at not telling you how 
your setup should be, so you can more easily go minimal without 
sacrificing much. But you get the occasional configuration 
hiccup. Not often even though, and usually easy to fix.



 Jan 22 2014



 next sibling parent reply "Dicebot" <public dicebot.lv>  writes:


On Wednesday, 22 January 2014 at 10:40:47 UTC, Ola Fosheim 
Grøstad wrote:

 and can't see why a programmer would use anything else for 
 their own use.


For me deciding factor was Debian focus on stability. Software 
evolves just too fast and I always want bleeding edge. Even 
[unstable] is too stable/old in my opinion.



 Jan 22 2014



 next sibling parent  "Chris" <wendlec tcd.ie>  writes:


On Wednesday, 22 January 2014 at 10:50:41 UTC, Dicebot wrote:

 On Wednesday, 22 January 2014 at 10:40:47 UTC, Ola Fosheim 
 Grøstad wrote:

 and can't see why a programmer would use anything else for 
 their own use.


 For me deciding factor was Debian focus on stability. Software 
 evolves just too fast and I always want bleeding edge. Even 
 [unstable] is too stable/old in my opinion.


I agree. Nowadays software evolves so fast that it's better to be 
reasonably bleeding edge. It's often no longer feasible to just 
wait and see what happens, and if it happens.



 Jan 22 2014



prev sibling  parent  "Ola Fosheim =?UTF-8?B?R3LDuHN0YWQi?=  writes:


On Wednesday, 22 January 2014 at 10:50:41 UTC, Dicebot wrote:

 For me deciding factor was Debian focus on stability. Software 
 evolves just too fast and I always want bleeding edge. Even 
 [unstable] is too stable/old in my opinion.


Yes, Debian is a bit conservative when it comes to open source 
policies and stability. Usually a blessing, but an annoyance when 
you have to do things from scratch to get around it.



 Jan 22 2014



prev sibling  parent reply "Thomas Mader" <thomas.mader gmail.com>  writes:


On Wednesday, 22 January 2014 at 10:40:47 UTC, Ola Fosheim 
Grøstad wrote:

 On Wednesday, 22 January 2014 at 00:50:36 UTC, Mariusz `shd` 
 Gliwiński wrote:

 If you've never heard about it, NixOS is quite interesting 
 project.


 Woah! Atomic transactional configuration. That's cool! Debian 
 with Nix would be great.


Thanks to you guys mentioning NixOS. This seems to finally solve 
my biggest issue with Linux. (System breaks after update)
I tried many distributions over the years (Ubuntu, Arch, Gentoo, 
Suse, Mandriva, Debian, Fedora,...)
All of them suffer from the same disease.
A rolling release system like Arch has it is fabulous, but only 
if you also get a rollback functionality.



 Jan 22 2014



  parent reply Nick Sabalausky <SeeWebsiteToContactMe semitwist.com>  writes:


On 1/23/2014 2:00 AM, Thomas Mader wrote:

 A rolling release system like Arch has it is fabulous, but only if you
 also get a rollback functionality.


Does it?



 Jan 24 2014



  parent  "Thomas Mader" <thomas.mader gmail.com>  writes:


On Friday, 24 January 2014 at 11:26:43 UTC, Nick Sabalausky wrote:

 On 1/23/2014 2:00 AM, Thomas Mader wrote:

 A rolling release system like Arch has it is fabulous, but 
 only if you
 also get a rollback functionality.


 Does it?


If NixOS supports a rollback? Yes indeed it does, you can even do 
a "test" upgrade which doesn't get to be selected as the default 
boot option. So if you reboot the machine, you are left with the 
exact same system before your test.
You can even simply create a Virtual Machine to test a new 
configuration without a reboot.

So there is no way to get a broken system at times you don't have 
time to fix your system after an update because you can always 
simply rollback to the old configuration.
The only exception is, if the boot loader doesn't work anymore.

Good overview of the philosophy behind the project: 
http://nixos.org/nixos/

The project is very young (first stable release back in October) 
and inmature but I do really like the idea.



 Jan 24 2014



prev sibling  parent  "Moritz Maxeiner" <moritz ucworks.org>  writes:


On Wednesday, 22 January 2014 at 00:50:36 UTC, Mariusz `shd` 
Gliwiński wrote:

 On Monday, 20 January 2014 at 12:30:27 UTC, Chris wrote:

 At work we use Ubuntu, however, I'm not at all happy with it 
 and don't want to use it on my private computer. Which is the 
 best alternative (I've been looking at OpenSUSE; Mint is based 
 on Ubuntu/Debian but only shares the repository with Ubuntu 
 (right?); Fedora has bad reviews at the moment and might be a 
 pain to set up (drivers etc.)). I'm also considering FreeBSD, 
 a completely different beast.


 If you've never heard about it, NixOS is quite interesting 
 project.
 It would require a bit of Linux knowledge and even worse - time 
 - to use it.


OT:
Thank you very much for bring up NixOS. I found it quite 
interesting and am considering switching over to it from Arch on 
my laptop.
*tipsimageneryhat*



 Jan 28 2014



prev sibling  parent  "Dejan Lekic" <dejan.lekic gmail.com>  writes:


On Monday, 20 January 2014 at 12:30:27 UTC, Chris wrote:

 At work we use Ubuntu, however, I'm not at all happy with it 
 and don't want to use it on my private computer. Which is the 
 best alternative (I've been looking at OpenSUSE; Mint is based 
 on Ubuntu/Debian but only shares the repository with Ubuntu 
 (right?); Fedora has bad reviews at the moment and might be a 
 pain to set up (drivers etc.)). I'm also considering FreeBSD, a 
 completely different beast.


I use Fedora since the first beta release. There will always be 
people who do not like this and that... :) openSuSE, Fedora, 
ArchLinux, Mint, Mageia (etc) are all good distros - pure matter 
of taste I would say. Try few distros and see which one you like 
the most. That is my advice. Do not read reviews, because they 
are in 90% subjective.



 Jan 26 2014