Damn, Ubuntu Feisty is nice...

[Tsuroerusu]

I didn't mean for this to turn into a FreeBFD vs. Ubuntu debate. FreeBSD was just an example, really. I was also referring to distros like Slackware, Arch, and Gentoo as well. My realization was that I'm tired of always having to use the command line and configure stuff manually, and compile from source. It's so nice to use something that just works out of the box, and is completely polished and graphical. Again, not referring specifically to Ubuntu, just user friendly distros in general. I guess my days of tinkering with Gentoo USE flags. and rolling my own Slackware packages are behind me.

Listen to this guy, after bashing my ways for like a year or something, he turns himself into the ease-of-use-distros. What I have to put up with from this community of hours is just incredible to say the least!
Oh well, for the love of the game, I guess.

Hehe, well, my opinion of RPM-based distros still hasn't changed.

Well, that was going more specific than I really meant to. That's not changing the fact that Ubuntu is one of them awful distro that, heaven forbid, are EASY TO USE!!!! HERESY!!!!

[Vogateer]

My realization was that I'm tired of always having to use the command line and configure stuff manually, and compile from source. It's so nice to use something that just works out of the box, and is completely polished and graphical. Again, not referring specifically to Ubuntu, just user friendly distros in general. I guess my days of tinkering with Gentoo USE flags. and rolling my own Slackware packages are behind me.

I'm beginning to feel that way, too. I installed Ubuntu, and then—expecting to have to configure things for days or a week like Gentoo—just started using it that first day. Everything for the desktop was a decent default, it ran nice, and the updates haven't broken anything major yet (I missed the Xorg update mess because I didn't reboot, and the proprietary nvidia driver has been the only source of trouble since). I've compiled a few programs, but I find that I don't want to have to track them myself so I can update them later. Besides, things move pretty quickly and I'm getting lazy, and starting to think it's better just to wait a few months and let Ubuntu take care of it for me. Consequently, I spend far less time fiddling with my system than I did when I ran Gentoo.

There will always be a place in my heart for Gentoo, for she taught me well, but Ubuntu, and even Debian on PPC, are both winning the battle for my boxen.

[Chess]

My realization was that I'm tired of always having to use the command line and configure stuff manually, and compile from source. It's so nice to use something that just works out of the box, and is completely polished and graphical.

I completely understand that sentiment. Sometimes I feel the same way.

My problem, I guess, is that I really like to tinker. I can't help it. If a system installs perfectly and there is nothing for me to do ... well, I get bored. I actually like to manually configure things and screw around deep in the system. Just like my grandfather who liked to tinker and fix old clocks, computers are my hobby. I don't know what I'd do if everything was automagically configured for me.

I know, I must be crazy.

[Wally Balljacker]

I've compiled a few programs, but I find that I don't want to have to track them myself so I can update them later.

You know, there is a great tool for creating Ubuntu packages from source tarballs, and that is the same one I used on Slackware - CheckInstall. Install that, and instead of typing make install, type checkinstall, and it will create an Ubuntu compliant package you can install with dpkg, and track through Synaptic.

http://packages.ubuntu.com/edgy/admin/checkinstall

Oh, and if you're feeling "Gentoo-like", there actually is a tool for Debian/Ubuntu systems that allows you to build from source with specific optimizations ala Portage.

http://packages.ubuntu.com/edgy/devel/apt-build

[Tsuroerusu]

There will always be a place in my heart for Gentoo, for she taught me well, but Ubuntu, and even Debian on PPC, are both winning the battle for my boxen.

Having just finished watching a hentai anime movie, something about that sentence of yours, Vogateer, just didn't sound right. Sorry, couldn't resist. Anyway, I agree, if you wanna learn how GNU/Linux, and even UNIX in general to some degree, works, Gentoo is really great for that because of their really really good documentation (They learned from *BSD on that one), and all that happy stuff. However, for a production box, I think Gentoo is probably the last distro I would use. In my eye, it's a tinkerer's distro.

My realization was that I'm tired of always having to use the command line and configure stuff manually, and compile from source. It's so nice to use something that just works out of the box, and is completely polished and graphical.

I completely understand that sentiment. Sometimes I feel the same way.

My problem, I guess, is that I really like to tinker. I can't help it. If a system installs perfectly and there is nothing for me to do ... well, I get bored. I actually like to manually configure things and screw around deep in the system. Just like my grandfather who liked to tinker and fix old clocks, computers are my hobby. I don't know what I'd do if everything was automagically configured for me.

I'm a geek to the heart as well, and I love to tinker too, but as far as my main, primary desktop computer goes, I just want it to work and work and work, and keep on working. I wouldn't have a problem spending a weekend, or a few days of a holiday, setting up my box, and then knowing that it's gonna be running for months and months, and being very easy to update, when needed for security etc., and overall maintain.
There's a reason I have 10 computers in my 11 square meter room, and there's a reason all of them run either GNU/Linux, FreeBSD or OpenBSD. I love these OSes, they work, and they work just great. BSD in general took me a little getting used to, but after having gone through an 800-page book (I only read about 600 pages, because I already know how to install FreeBSD, so I skimmed the installation part) on FreeBSD, and tons of OpenBSD online docs (Which, by the way, are excellent!), then they are really a joy to use, for me.
The upgrading procedure in OpenBSD can be a little heavy, or whatever you could say, but if you have the "room", then it's just really great being able to sit down with a cup of cola, and a slize of pizza, and just tinker with your systems, while at the same time, for me, having a desktop that just keeps running and running and running, until I reboot to do either hard drive, or hardware maintenance (Such as cleaning out the dust boulders).

I know, I must be crazy.

Like Jim Gettys said while answering questions at FOSDEM, during his talk about OLPC: We're all nerds here!

[mowestusa]

/grouchy early morning rant/

So, it's only kubuntu that they keep fscking with in bad ways? It's been almost 10 months since a cd on my desktop said anything other than "disc0." It's been at least 5 or 6 since I've had anything besides /home and /media in my konqueror side bar. Also, before I moved a friend of mine to edgy, he couldn't mount anything at all that was attached via USB - it would just fail with a totally useless error and not mount. IIRC it was some fuckup in HAL.

I guess what I'm getting at is that I regularly hear about how great and "just works" ubuntu is, but personally I find that I deal with minor and major breakage on it about as regularly as I do Arch, and the Arch devs tend to have things fixed within a week instead of burying until "next time around." I'm starting to get the suspicion that Kubuntu is *not* the first class citizen Shuttleworth said it was going to be...

/grouchy early morning rant/

I also have had my issues with Ubuntu, not as many as people tend to have with Kubuntu for whatever reason. I guess I would like to just give a shout out to straight Debian. I plan to do an install on a "new" (old machine given to me) in the next few weeks. Although I have been happy with Ubuntu, I'm seriously thinking I'm going to go the straight Debian with a different solution for window manager and kind of build a machine from a net install with just what I want without the tons of extra stuff I don't need.

I have straight debian running on an old old box Celeron 500 with 192 megs of ram and it seems to run with a little more snap than a Pentium 500 with 320megs of ram both running gnome.

I think folks who have had troubles with Ubuntu should give Debian testing a try. You don't have to relearn much because Ubuntu is Debian based, and your Desktop Environment can be the same with different colored backgrounds than brown.

[snarkout]

I actually like debian quite a bit. I just don't want to run sid, and therefore don't really see it as a very good choice for a desktop. I'm actually very happy with Arch and Frugalware, but neither of them have been all that much fun on a lappy - I really depend on suspend/hibernate, and I've had problems with that on both. I'm certain they were my problems, but I need something that just works as far as that stuff is concerned.

When Feisty comes out, I'm going to demo several distros for my wife and see which she likes best - if it's Kubuntu, then I guess I'll stick with it since it's much easier for me to fix issues she has if I can fix them on my own lappy first (we both have stinkpads).

[mowestusa]

I actually like debian quite a bit. I just don't want to run sid, and therefore don't really see it as a very good choice for a desktop. I'm actually very happy with Arch and Frugalware, but neither of them have been all that much fun on a lappy - I really depend on suspend/hibernate, and I've had problems with that on both. I'm certain they were my problems, but I need something that just works as far as that stuff is concerned.

When Feisty comes out, I'm going to demo several distros for my wife and see which she likes best - if it's Kubuntu, then I guess I'll stick with it since it's much easier for me to fix issues she has if I can fix them on my own lappy first (we both have stinkpads).

That sounds like a great idea. Actually, I don't believe in running Debian sid either. I like running testing which right now is etch until they release etch as stable. Debian testing is very stable from what I can tell, personally, I have had no issues at all with it. The packages seem fresher than Ubuntu installs. You don't have to upgrade every six months.

I ran sid for a while with a Kanontix box, and when they were making all of the changes to xorg it did break it a few times so that I did not have x when I rebooted. Since trying Debian testing, I've been wondering about changing all of my computers over to straight Debian. Ubuntu does make certain things easy. Download automatix2 and you have an easy way to install all media codecs, and other goodies. Ubuntu laptop support seems great from what I hear at the LUG, don't have one to test myself.

Consider giving Debian testing net install a try. You might like it better than sid or Kubuntu.

[allix]

If you're gonna run a production system, you either wanna patch your system manually, use freebsd-update, or track an errata branch. Running development branches (-STABLE or -CURRENT) on any time of production-critical system (Which I consider my main desktop to be) is not a good idea.

Thats what i was getting at, Wally Balljacker thought you have to recompile every week, which you clearly do not have to.

Free software licensing is something that I have become really good at. If Sun ever GPLs Solaris (OpenSolaris) then it will be under GPLv3, they have already clearly said that. One of the reason is the license's explicity about patents and stuff like that. GPLv2 and v3, as far as I know (And I know the GPL pretty well), will fundementally be incompatible, because GPLv3 adds some restrictions, which GPLv2 does not allow. So you can't legally mix code licensed strictly under one or the other, which in the case of Linux, ZFS and OpenSolaris will mean that the Linux kernel developers CAN NOT just port ZFS to Linux, unless they do their own implementation, but then, what's the point?

so linux will never have ZFS a less open solaris is released on gpl v2 or the linux kernel somehow moves to gpl v3?

Hey, I have a shitload of data, so I am a pretty good test for a file system. Any file system that holds my porn collection is a good file system, and both EXT3 and UFS does that quite well.

LOL , as long as Troels box can store porn without loss of data , the world is guaranteed a safe,reliable,secure,scalable,fast FS.

Why continue a flamewar that has raged on since 1991, and that no one will ever win? Waste of tubes, waste of time!!.

It goes back further, there was a huge flamewar in the 1980s with which unix is better.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix_wars

This is where I think BSD is really nice, because it completely seperates the operating system from the applications that you have installed, by installing everything from ports into /usr/local and keeping /usr for the OS. This way you can upgrade/change the OS without your apps and settings being affected, or being affected very little, at all. Just a little something that I thought was worth mentioning.

That's what pulled me over to the BSDs, there very easy to maintain between different releases. Occasionally they move the port upgrade system around which happened recently and it scared me ,but searching mailing list i found the solution.

[Tsuroerusu]

If you're gonna run a production system, you either wanna patch your system manually, use freebsd-update, or track an errata branch. Running development branches (-STABLE or -CURRENT) on any time of production-critical system (Which I consider my main desktop to be) is not a good idea.

Thats what i was getting at, Wally Balljacker thought you have to recompile every week, which you clearly do not have to.

He just likes to compare anything to Gentoo!

Free software licensing is something that I have become really good at. If Sun ever GPLs Solaris (OpenSolaris) then it will be under GPLv3, they have already clearly said that. One of the reason is the license's explicity about patents and stuff like that. GPLv2 and v3, as far as I know (And I know the GPL pretty well), will fundementally be incompatible, because GPLv3 adds some restrictions, which GPLv2 does not allow. So you can't legally mix code licensed strictly under one or the other, which in the case of Linux, ZFS and OpenSolaris will mean that the Linux kernel developers CAN NOT just port ZFS to Linux, unless they do their own implementation, but then, what's the point?

so linux will never have ZFS a less open solaris is released on gpl v2 or the linux kernel somehow moves to gpl v3?

Correct.

Hey, I have a shitload of data, so I am a pretty good test for a file system. Any file system that holds my porn collection is a good file system, and both EXT3 and UFS does that quite well.

LOL , as long as Troels box can store porn without loss of data , the world is guaranteed a safe,reliable,secure,scalable,fast FS.

Exactly!

Why continue a flamewar that has raged on since 1991, and that no one will ever win? Waste of tubes, waste of time!!.

It goes back further, there was a huge flamewar in the 1980s with which unix is better.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix_wars

That was before Linux came into existence, the UNIX wars, gee, talk about oldschool!

This is where I think BSD is really nice, because it completely seperates the operating system from the applications that you have installed, by installing everything from ports into /usr/local and keeping /usr for the OS. This way you can upgrade/change the OS without your apps and settings being affected, or being affected very little, at all. Just a little something that I thought was worth mentioning.

That's what pulled me over to the BSDs, there very easy to maintain between different releases. Occasionally they move the port upgrade system around which happened recently and it scared me ,but searching mailing list i found the solution.

Yeah, sometimes BSD takes a little more tweaking to get just right, but in a lot of cases, I think that that is very easy tweaking as well.

[Vogateer]

I should change my moniker to Topic Drifter, given my propensity to post something a tangential to the topic.

I do like the idea of keeping the OS and the applications separate, but what seems more helpful to me on my machine is keeping my user data separate from the OS and applications. It probably wouldn't take me long to reinstall the entire OS and all the applications I use, so keeping the OS and applications separate wouldn't seem to save me much time on a desktop machine. On a server that might be a different matter altogether, and I may have to try a BSD out for a server someday.

Having a separate /home partition obviously helps considerably for keeping user data and OS + Application files separate, though I do wonder about those .gconf files, which might get corrupted or somehow cause other problems. But what I truly want goes beyond that. I want the vast majority of my user data to be stored in desktop and application independent manner. I want there to be some sort of way to tell KDE, Gnome, XFCE and all their respective applications to store information in the same place, so that if I change something in one environment, the other environment picks it up. Kmail, Evolution, and Thunderbird would all pick up any change in my Addressbook and Mail settings. Bookmarks could be picked up by Konqueror, Firefox and Epiphany. Databases for photographs and where those files are stored could be shared by F-Spot & digiKam, and the same for music in Banshee, amaroK, and Rhythmbox.

Perhaps that's not really desirable for many people, but I think it would be great to have freedesktop.org standards for these types of things. It would make switching to other applications less of a burden when that next great app comes along. I can dream, can't I?

[allix]

Its interesting what the freedesktop.org team are doing, especially some of the standardisation work . The amount of dialogue boxes on applications when you click open in the application to find a file is extraordinary.

As you say user data is stored in /home/~ , of course not everything is. That usually down to the way the project implements configuration files.
What can be confusing is when apps are too be run as non-root user and yet there configuration files can only be edited by root.

[snarkout]

Consider giving Debian testing net install a try. You might like it better than sid or Kubuntu.

I have etch running on my little soekris here, and it does a great job. The problem I've had with running etch as a desktop is that the devs occasionally remove a package I need/want - they did this with amarok about a year ago - just *poof!* I can't really live my life like that.

[riddlebox]

Ok, I am pretty sure that this will upset someone, but the reason I like ubuntu is that it is 1 disc! Also ubuntu has a chosen packages for me, when you install debian and do an apt-get install gnome, holy cow do you get a ton of packages and when go to the Applications menu, man there are packages on top of packages. That being said I love apt-get and debians package management, the only time I have ever had a problem was once in a while with repositories that might take over certain packages, but Ubuntu is doing a great job of having everything I want in the main repos.

[Wally Balljacker]

Ok, I am pretty sure that this will upset someone, but the reason I like ubuntu is that it is 1 disc! Also ubuntu has a chosen packages for me, when you install debian and do an apt-get install gnome, holy cow do you get a ton of packages and when go to the Applications menu, man there are packages on top of packages. That being said I love apt-get and debians package management, the only time I have ever had a problem was once in a while with repositories that might take over certain packages, but Ubuntu is doing a great job of having everything I want in the main repos.

Yep, that's true. I'm also glad Ubuntu came to their senses and have continued to ship Firefox, and not that bastardization known as "IceWeasel".