My Linux Adventure

[Clara D.]

Long term support versions are not unique to Mint only; many other big distributions have them, too.

I was thinking mostly of Mint vs. Ubuntu, Ubuntu also has some LTS distros though.

Unrelated: the Unity desktop makes me break out in hives.

 

[Bartholomew Gallacher]

Ubuntu abandoned Unity over one year ago, using GNOME again instead.

 

[Argent Stonecutter]

Ubuntu LTS are two years apart, and they only have 6 month support for the non-LTS releases, with no overlapping. They used to have longer support for the half-way-mark releases but dropped it around 2012.

 

[Clara D.]

I've used both AMD and nVidia on my Linux machines. You're right, nVidia tends to perform better, but they also tend to burn out faster, too. I have yet to burn out an AMD chip.

Brands really matter. I tend towards MSI or eVGA that put much better cooling on their cards than the usual "plastic box with a fan on."

Though back when I ran 6600 cards, I always got aftermarket cooling for those. Short story -- only nVidia I've had "fry" on me was because of a powersupply fuckup that pretty much killed *everything,* never due to heat.

 

[Jolene Benoir]

There's always been a strong asshole contingent in the open source world because "libertarians". In the last several years that element has gone full /pol/ right-wing.

Over the last ~5 years (staring around the time of gamergate, maybe?) there's been a series of scandals and controveries (eg FreeBSD and Linux both adopting "code of conduct" policies) that pisses in nazi snowflake wheaties because they demand professional conduct. Usually what happens is that assholes stir up crap on places where dicussions take place (mailing lists, IRC, reddit) and are quickly joined by (in reddit -and I suspect forum cases) far right jackoffs who wouldn't know a shell from a rock but are joining in on the brigading for the sake of trolling.

So, just like comics the tech sector has become a culture war battle ground but luckily most of the nazi types end up making jokey spinoffs (eg "hugsbsd") that go nowhere. Meanwhile, there actually are adults in the room (both FreeBSD and Linux are used heavily in the corporate/enterprise world) so even tho they're a pain in the ass, I think that more positive/mature voices will probably win out.

Thanks. Yeah, I kind of got that feeling, a number of linux commentators talking about safe spaces, sjw's, etc...Seems to me to be like taking a hammer to everything they can to apply those labels. I can see, to a point, how those that set themselves apart with deliberation from mainstream programs/os etc..might take the view that it's them against the big, bad world hell-bent on eroding their freedoms and be fertile territory for certain agendas like gaming/gamers were used, comics, movies, etc...

It's a shame because, just as an outsider still dabbling, I see GNU/Linux as a very, very positive development, philosophy, etc... minus nonsense that might drag it into any political sphere(s). It gives us (the user) as well as developers so much more freedom in so many ways to determine how we wish to use our own devices, programs, etc.. The very essence, to me, is that knowledge is best shared among like-minded users and free from corporate overlords who, by nature, wish to limit personal usage.

Maybe the simple amount of distros that one can learn from, use, even make leads to "My way is better than your way", but it is also the strength, imo.

 

[Jolene Benoir]

Also, I think I've discovered why I had assorted challenges with samba. This explains how Mint 19 uses Samba 3, while other versions used SMB 1. It explains that I can see but not access Win10 shares directly from the file manager unless I have SMB1 enabled (which I will not do for security reasons) and why I had to type in the IP addy instead.

That works fine enough for my purposes and is what I will do. Simply needing to know my ip addresses is a pretty minor inconvenience.

Mint 19 and Samba File Sharing Changes - Linux Mint Forums

 

[Han Held]

Thanks. Yeah, I kind of got that feeling, a number of linux commentators talking about safe spaces, sjw's, etc...Seems to me to be like taking a hammer to everything they can to apply those labels. I can see, to a point, how those that set themselves apart with deliberation from mainstream programs/os etc..might take the view that it's them against the big, bad world hell-bent on eroding their freedoms and be fertile territory for certain agendas like gaming/gamers were used, comics, movies, etc...

It's a shame because, just as an outsider still dabbling, I see GNU/Linux as a very, very positive development, philosophy, etc... minus nonsense that might drag it into any political sphere(s). It gives us (the user) as well as developers so much more freedom in so many ways to determine how we wish to use our own devices, programs, etc.. The very essence, to me, is that knowledge is best shared among like-minded users and free from corporate overlords who, by nature, wish to limit personal usage.

Maybe the simple amount of distros that one can learn from, use, even make leads to "My way is better than your way", but it is also the strength, imo.

I think anything that gives people the tools to create and express and control their experiences are positive -anything that makes tech more accessible and democratic; so I agree with you that it's a very positive development.

I think that if you divorce the "my way or the highway" BS from it; that variety is a sign of health. I rarely dip into obscure distros these days (if I'm in the mood to tinker for it's own sake, I'll use NetBSD/pkgsrc in a virtual machine) but I appreciate that it's still possible for them to be there.

 

[Katheryne Helendale]

I was thinking mostly of Mint vs. Ubuntu, Ubuntu also has some LTS distros though.

Unrelated: the Unity desktop makes me break out in hives.

Ubuntu has an LTS release every two years. Mint follows Ubuntu's LTS releases, but instead of intermediate releases only supported for six months, each sub-release (xx.1, xx.2, xx.3) is supported for as long as the base LTS release is supported. For example the current LTS release of Mint is version 19 "Tara". It is supported until April 2023. The current version, 19.1 "Tessa", is also supported until April 2023. The next versions after that, 19.2 and 19.3, will also be supported until April 2023.

 

[Bartholomew Gallacher]

Over the last ~5 years (staring around the time of gamergate, maybe?) there's been a series of scandals and controveries (eg FreeBSD and Linux both adopting "code of conduct" policies) that pisses in nazi snowflake wheaties because they demand professional conduct. Usually what happens is that assholes stir up crap on places where dicussions take place (mailing lists, IRC, reddit) and are quickly joined by (in reddit -and I suspect forum cases) far right jackoffs who wouldn't know a shell from a rock but are joining in on the brigading for the sake of trolling.

The thing about code of conducts (CoC) is that all of those projects, where most started in the 90s, did well at least for two decades without because people did know how. Until the new generation of crybabies and insecure shitstirrers showed up, who in reality want it as a welcome lever to eject unwanted/disliked people out of those established communities. That's the truth about most CoCs in the open source scene; yes, they are zeitgeist at the moment and most of them can be considered harmful.

The only real ripple (not controversy even!) the Linux kernel developer community ever had so far was Sarah Sharp, when she stepped back from kernel development in 2015.

Here's Sharp's goodbye statement from back then: Closing a door – Sage Sharp

And here's what started her complaints on the kernel mailing list; Greg is Greg Kroah-Hartman, and he's quite tall. So what we got here was some joking between people who've been working together since years, and Sharp decided to feel offended, went ballistic and full victim mode. I cannot take this woman serious.

On Mon, Jul 15, 2013 at 11:52 PM, Sarah Sharp
<sarah.a.sharp@linux.intel.com> wrote:
> On Fri, 12 Jul 2013 18:17:08 +0200, Ingo Molnar <mingo@kernel.org> wrote:
>> * Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org> wrote:
>>
>> > On Fri, Jul 12, 2013 at 8:47 AM, Steven Rostedt <rostedt@goodmis.org> wrote:
>> > >
>> > > I tend to hold things off after -rc4 because you scare me more than Greg
>> > > does ;-)
>> >
>> > Have you guys *seen* Greg? The guy is a freakish giant. He *should*
>> > scare you. He might squish you without ever even noticing.
>>
>> Greg might be a giant and he might squish people without ever even
>> noticing, but that's just a grave, deadly physical threat no real kernel
>> hacker ever feels threatened by. (Not much can hurt us deep in our dark
>> basements after all, except maybe earthquakes, gamma ray eruptions and Mom
>> trying to clean up around the computers.)
>>
>> So Greg, if you want it all to change, create some _real_ threat: be frank
>> with contributors and sometimes swear a bit. That will cut your mailqueue
>> in half, promise!
>
> On Fri, 12 Jul 2013 08:22:27 -0700, Linus wrote:
>> Greg, the reason you get a lot of stable patches seems to be that you
>> make it easy to act as a door-mat. Clearly at least some people say "I
>> know this patch isn't important enough to send to Linus, but I know Greg
>> will silently accept it after the fact, so I'll just wait and mark it
>> for stable".
>>
>> You may need to learn to shout at people.
>
> Seriously, guys? Is this what we need in order to get improve -stable?
> Linus Torvalds is advocating for physical intimidation and violence.
> Ingo Molnar and Linus are advocating for verbal abuse.
>
> Not *fucking* cool. Violence, whether it be physical intimidation,
> verbal threats or verbal abuse is not acceptable. Keep it professional
> on the mailing lists.
>
> Let's discuss this at Kernel Summit where we can at least yell at each
> other in person. Yeah, just try yelling at me about this. I'll roar
> right back, louder, for all the people who lose their voice when they
> get yelled at by top maintainers. I won't be the nice girl anymore.
>
> Sarah Sharp
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Since Sharp left - and nobody is missing her - all went more or less smoothly again.

 

[Han Held]

The thing about code of conducts (CoC) is that all of those projects, where most started in the 90s, did well at least for two decades without because people did know how. Until the new generation of crybabies and insecure shitstirrers showed up, who in reality want it as a welcome lever to eject unwanted/disliked people out of those established communities. That's the truth about most CoCs in the open source scene; yes, they are zeitgeist at the moment and most of them can be considered harmful.

The only real ripple (not controversy even!) the Linux kernel developer community ever had so far was Sarah Sharp, when she stepped back from kernel development in 2015.

Here's Sharp's goodbye statement from back then: Closing a door – Sage Sharp

And here's what started her complaints on the kernel mailing list; Greg is Greg Kroah-Hartman, and he's quite tall. So what we got here was some joking between people who've been working together since years, and Sharp decided to feel offended, went ballistic and full victim mode. I cannot take this woman serious.



Since Sharp left - and nobody is missing her - all went more or less smoothly again.

My point isn't that the CoCs are good or bad -my point is that they generated a lot of right-wing feuled heat and shit stirrers from /pol/ and the_donald on various subreddits, mailing lists and forums. It was the worst regarding the FreeBSD one; but I do remember there being some whinging on reddit after Linux instituted theirs (and also after Linus said he was going to moderate his flaming tendancies).

 

[Han Held]

It's worth noting that in all cases the CoCs seemed to be written to address incel type behavior.

 

[Jolene Benoir]

Okay, so I switched to Manjaro...First I tried Gnome, one of their flagship DE's, but I just do not like Gnome, so I switched to community maintained Cinnamon. I'm really, really liking it. I did like LinuxMint as well, but I just hate adding PPA's every which way just to get updated software. Example: I now have the newest, fixed version of Cantata and it's working really well. I will likely choose Manjaro XFCE for the netbooks, though may stick with Peppermint despite the old software just because it runs so well.

My question for you folks that may have used Timeshift is: what did you use as a backup drive? On my tower I have two drives. Right now, C (sda) is dual booting Windows and Manjaro. D (sdb) is my data drive and is formatted as NTFS. Timeshift requires a drive to be formatted as EXT4. I certainly will never format the entire drive to be ext4, as then windows would not be able to see it. I thought I'd be slick and use a 64GB USB stick, but I really can't. It's USB 2, and not feasible due to speed.Should I be making an ext4 partition on my data drive and if so how big do these backups typically get so I might have an idea of how big to make said partition.

Thanks in advance.

Will show you pics, Katheryne, of the newer Cantata soon. Just don't have much time today.

 

[Jolene Benoir]

Ok, so this is what Cantata looks like when it is working properly, Katheryne. Spoiler because pictures. I've also been playing around a bit more with it. In addition to shoutcat, icecast, tunein, jamendo, magnatune, soundcloud, podcasts from multiple sources it also has 1fm and 977fm plus a bunch more. It is version 2.40. Since I am using Pamac with AUR, building it is built in. When I figure out instructions on how to build it in LinuxMint, I'll let you know.

Spoiler

Lyrics:

Artist:

Album:

All 3 together:

What it looks like outside of info view:

 

[Argent Stonecutter]

Backups happen in the background. I don't know how that particular programs work but if you really care what you have on your computer I'd get an external 4TB drive, split it into Windows and Linux backup partitions, and use that.

 

[Bartholomew Gallacher]

I certainly will never format the entire drive to be ext4, as then windows would not be able to see it. I thought I'd be slick and use a 64GB USB stick, but I really can't.

Actually you can, there's a bunch of programs for Windows around which can read/write to ext4, some are free, others you need to buy.

Or you could just install a Linux into a VM under Windows, mount the hardware and export it via Samba to your Windows host. This Linux does not even much ressources if you are just using it for that specific task only.

 

[Jolene Benoir]

Backups happen in the background. I don't know how that particular programs work but if you really care what you have on your computer I'd get an external 4TB drive, split it into Windows and Linux backup partitions, and use that.

Actually you can, there's a bunch of programs for Windows around which can read/write to ext4, some are free, others you need to buy.

Or you could just install a Linux into a VM under Windows, mount the hardware and export it via Samba to your Windows host. This Linux does not even much ressources if you are just using it for that specific task only.

Interesting and thank you. I did not realize that, though I would obviously prefer to have native access without need for extraneous programs.

I think it's a good idea to add a third drive meant purely for backup purposes.

 

[Han Held]

Or you could just install a Linux into a VM under Windows, mount the hardware and export it via Samba to your Windows host. This Linux does not even much ressources if you are just using it for that specific task only.

Ow I would ...really not recommend this. Because of complexity and performance. Myself, I'd just spring for one of the ext4 drivers and call it a day.

A possible solution might be to use btrfs on an external drive -both windows and linux can read that. But btrfs is really, really unreliable and installing the windows driver might be a pain in the ass (I don't know -haven't tried it in a while).

 

[Argent Stonecutter]

Only use a VM if you are not using anything that requires more than a rock bottom graphics card like you can't even get any more.

 

[Katheryne Helendale]

I have a Linux-based file server that uses Samba, so both my Windows and Linux workstations can see it. I use it for storing my data, and I make regular backups of it on to an ext4-formatted external drive. This works well for my purposes, though it has the disadvantage of not fully preserving the permissions metadata of my Linux workstations. If you have a spare computer sitting around collecting dust, you can set it up as a file server. It doesn't even have to be very robust.

 

[Clara D.]

Only use a VM if you are not using anything that requires more than a rock bottom graphics card like you can't even get any more.

Virtualbox supports OpenGL and D3D9 to some extent with the "guest addons," but you have to be able to use the linux first.
If I was fiddling with this, I'd look for a distro that had more than one "desktop" -- a full featured one and a very lightweight one, because you'd first need to be able to "boot" into linux with the lightweight one to get the "guest addons" installed. I don't know if this gets around the very low vram limits in Vbox though.

An alaternative to using samba to share files with the VM would be to use the shared folders functionality of the guest add-ons.

More here:

Chapter 4. Guest Additions

4.3 - shared folders
4.5 - hardware graphics

I never experimented with the graphics thing, I was just using puppy with JWM.
The shared folders did occasionally get quirky when editing files from linux.