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/tech/ - Technology

"Technology reveals the active relation of man to nature" - Karl Marx
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File: 1676169769823.png (155.07 KB, 840x734, ClipboardImage.png)

 No.18376

Linux Distro users are good, because it is open source. I won't lie and say linux is good, but if you like linux, what distros do you use?

I'll start
I use Fedora and Manjaro on my two devices, but the one with Manjaro is mostly because i installed it there 2 years ago, and it hasn't broken down yet. If you're considering using Manjaro just don't, I think arch would be better since it's more stable than manjaro probably

 No.18377

NixOS with KDE on my desktop and 4GB ram laptop, and I plan to put NixOS with sway on my 2GB ram laptop.
I don't do anything advanced with it, but I can add stuff without worrying about it breaking. I used to use arch but after a while I accepted installing anything with python would just break pacman within a few months.

 No.18378

Alma Linux (CentOS discontinued, thus Alma Linux continues on as community)

Qubes OS

 No.18384

>>18377
What a pretty cat

 No.18389

File: 1676191642153.webm (241.08 KB, 640x360, 8bitguy_poof.webm)

Debian

 No.18390

>>18376
Slackware on my laptop and Gentoo on my desktop.

 No.18393

File: 1676192425886.jpg (531.33 KB, 1366x768, s.jpg)

I managed to find enough distfiles for a graphical dulap gentoo.
Now it just works. Forever.

 No.18402

>>18377
what's NixOS about? Ive heard about it again and again but it doesnt seem like a very standard distro so i never checked it out

>>18376
I've used various ubuntu based distros, debian, whonix (aka debian really), fedora, and void

<ubuntu kind of sucks tbh, ive had more problems with it than with debian somehow.

>Debian is my favorite, probably just because i have the most experience with it since its more standard for servers. SystemD is nice despite the hate, it basically just works, tho the official documentation is totally shitty, full of holes and outdated
<Fedora is nice, i think dnf might have some advantages over apt? i was unused to it at first but quickly felt like it was simpler to use. This is feels based and not objective, so idk how apt and dnf actually stack up ultimately for features, but fedora is nice, its defaults are nice, its maybe more polished out of the box than debian, but without feeling like a distro for the downtrodden like ubuntu.
>Void is very nice, it was my first distro and I had to be babysat setting up everything in a multi-day intensive process, which sucked, but after that runit is very very noob friendly so i thnk it was good for me to get a feel for how a linux system in general is, especially with it being so barebones. Nice community. The head dev got v& by the CIA, then tried to wreck his own project, and got kicked out of the development so thats a positive indicator ig ok maybe it didnt happen exactly like this, and thats not 100% confirmed, but let me have this lore
<whonix == debian + good tor management, in 2 separate systems (which does add some complexity. Whonix overall kind of sucks to use, many apps have whonix-specific presets and the documentation on this is HIGHLY sparse, so… tinker at your own peril
>oh yeah i forgot, ParrotOS also… it is what it is, annoying PS1 tbh but good selection of tools, its debian based iirc

And the one OS to rule them all… Qubes my beloved, Queen of all distros (and windows too)

 No.18403

File: 1676275247889.png (175.34 KB, 216x635, guix_20230213090011.png)

GNU Guix. I have not gotten very down-and-dirty with the system yet, but defining services and cron-jobs in lisp from on place is pretty comfy.

Also the niceties shared with nix such as simple to set up containers or ad-hoc dev environments, non-superuser package management and roll-backs for when the setup gets borked from my hacking on it are nice safety features which makes me braver in my system hacking.

And it's GNU so it is 100% free by default, and is completely bootstrappable from a small set of binaries unlike nix. Unfortunately that has excluded lots of npm packages from its ecosystem, because of the dependency hell.

 No.18404

>>18376
i use endeavour os with xfce. just werks most of the time, but i think i'm gonna switch to another distro for more security and libre stuff. also i think i'm gonna abandon xfce because xorg fucking sucks for egpus. i had to troubleshoot for weeks, write an entire configuration file, and a script to help me manage switching conf files around so that the setup doesn't fall apart. supposedly egpus just werk on wayland and i need to see it

 No.18413

>>18403
The fact that there are cringey memes and incel fanboys for this distro is reason enough to avoid it like the plague

 No.18451

>>18376
debian and it's flavours (like Raspbian). it's stable and it works for most purposes.
I'm a programmer anyway so Linux to me is a lot more intuitive to use. I have been using it as my OS since 2008 or so.

 No.18452

>>18413
not rly

 No.18472

I love the idea of linux but i haven't found a distro that isn't user un-friendly. I use ubuntu for work.

For the most part i just pirate windows and every other software.

 No.18473

>>18472
I hate how proprietary software gets to be "user friendly" even though they treat their users like trash and steal and lie and are as user unfriendly as they get but because people are taught how to use them in compulsory education they are perceived as "user friendly".

 No.18474

>>18473
you are right but linux creators' insistance on having the terminal as the center of operations with it's shitty commands and runes instead of a regular GUI and installation wizards is driving me nuts.

 No.18476

>>18474
>linux creators' insistance on having the terminal as the center of operations
There are tons of GUIs in "user friendly" linux distros. If a furry porn dowloader only has a cli on linux, it will also be the case on windows if at all.
Even then most special purpose commands only require file arguments, so you could always invoke them from most filemanagers. I'd be interested in what niche cross-platform software you need to use, that is more complicated than "do-stuff-with file".

 No.18478

>>18474
I don't think it is true but I can understand how online tutorials and help forums can dive you that impression. Even if graphical interfaces exist, people will always prefer to give instructions in commands, simply because they are much easier to communicate and are usually much more consistent between versions. If someone can just say "type this in and press enter" instead of a long sequence of gestures like "now click this button, then in the third menu press the sixth option, unless you are using version x where it is the second menu, and of course if you are using a non-English version you might as well just start with reinstalling it in English" and so on, they will obviously do the former, even if it is scary to people who are not used to text-based interfaces.

 No.18488

>>18402
Basically, all packages come with what they need, building them in isolation from one another. Kinda like Appimage but via a package manager.
Also it has an interesting configuration scheme with it's own language called nix. So like instead of keeping track of a bunch of config files all over the place, you can tell configuration.nix to write to it for you. Bashrc, /etc/hosts, sway config, most things can be declared from one file. (or split into modules as I've seen people on github do it.)
The latter makes dotfiles a lot easier to manage.

 No.18489

gentoo

 No.18490

Every time in the past two decades I've sat down to try and become a linux guy some bullshit for school or work gets in the way and demands I use windows. I have like 3 old desktops I installed Ubuntu on and never touched again. Its like my computer skills maxed out in 2009 and never went father than that.

 No.18494

>>18490
What is becoming a linux guy
You just use linux, it's not that complicated

 No.18496

>>18490
What on earth are they requiring you to use? Libreoffice exports and imports all microsoft office files, GIMP or other programs do decent image editing, a lot of specialized stuff like math homework are usually done in browsers. I've been using linux exclusively for a decade and except for some triple A games everything has been working fine.

I think part of the linux "problem" is just familiarity bias. When something breaks on windows people complain about "computers" in general, when something breaks on linux it's suddenly a uniquely "linux" problem. It also doesn't help popular programs like Photoshop aren't linux comparable, not because of anything wrong with the kernel, but because microshaft and apple pays them to not develop for it.

 No.18595

Qubes so I can run all of the cool distros at the same time as separate VMs.

 No.18596

>>18496
Proprietary software should be avoided at all costs. If you have to use it for work, don't install it in your personal computer or at least use a virtual machine if your job doesn't provide you with a decent computer.

 No.18597

File: 1677510689293.png (844.79 KB, 1920x1080, ClipboardImage.png)

I use Linux Mint! :)

 No.18654

Currently not a linux user for meat space reasons but among others I tried Zorin OS a few years ago and thought it was an extremely normie-friendly distribution (much more so than just Ubuntu).

How come I never see or hear anyone else mention it though? Are the guys behind it sketchy?
I see that they received some positive coverage in some mainstream magazines by now, which is usually not a good sign.

 No.18655

>>18654
>How come I never see or hear anyone else mention it though?
Does it do anything besides reskinning Ubuntu?
There are more interesting desktop-based distros I rarely see discussed, for example Mandriva or Solus.

 No.18656

>>18654
How many distros catering to people whose psyches will shatter if they don't have an experience pitch-perfect to desktop WIndows are out there at this point

 No.18657

>>18654
Ubuntu became popular because some computers ship with it so it's what more people are familiar with.

 No.18751

File: 1678547417582.png (31.98 KB, 1024x576, debian-logo-1024x576.png)

deb deb deb deb deb deb deb deb deb deb deb deb deb deb deb deb

 No.20549

>>18496
>Libreoffice exports and imports all microsoft office files
LibreOffice is unstable. I get a better experience using Microsoft office 2003 through wine. Less random crashes, and is more efficient with very large documents. Forwards and backwards compatibility, basically the same UI.
Tho I use Calc instead of excel. I also use LaTeX most of the time, but sometimes I need to work on other's people docs and word 2003 is the least terrible compromise. Tho my first choice was word 2002 + the docx plugin. But I couldn't get that working with wine, and I'm not running a winXP VM just for word

 No.20550

>I need to interject for a minute….. GNU/ etc. etc. >Gentoo and Artix GNU/Linux
>Also alpine Linux, mostly on ARM devices and recovery drives. The installer makes it really easy to set Alpine to load the entire root partition on RAM and with a minimalist WM system that's as low as 1.5 GB overhead+ 200MB for the actual processes after booting. And I have between 4 and 16GB on my PCs. The point is I don't have to set that up manually and it makes running Linux from a USB for long periods of time feasible (since their lifespan is not so great if you read/write constantly). It boots slower since it has to load everything into RAM at boot, but then all I write to it are files in my /home dir.

 No.20656

>>18376
I run Void Linux. The glibc version for my desktop and musl version for my old laptop. I used to run Alpine Linux on my laptop but I wanted to have the same distro on both (and it's not like I'm losing much since Void also has a musl version available). Void works pretty well and the distro keeps out of your way and it works the way I want. I'm using Ratpoison (a manually tiling WM that's very lightweight). It's pretty simple to use, just press C-t ? to get the currently used keybindings (even custom ones!)

 No.20659

>>20656
I use glibc Void with awesomewm. It's great cause it's simple, if you've used unix/linux before and expect everything to be a file. runit is also simple and fast, void boots under 10s, from pressing the power button to reaching the login screen. Updating is stable and xbps is a powerful and awesome package manager.

 No.20698

>>18376
>I won't lie and say linux is good
Linux isn't good. GNU is. GNU, BSDs, 9front. Every Unix-like system that consists (almost) entirely of libre software is based in my book. Libre software gigachads, unite!

>>18377
Looked into it before. The problem with NixOS is that it's harder to harden compared to other distros. Firejail doesn't fucken work at all, neither do AppArmor or SELinux. Your only line of defense is virtualizing everything I guess. But then again, might as well use Qubes by this point (if your PC can handle it). Muh precious security and privacy are more dear to my heart than any of those fancy package managers or whatever, I don't care. Maybe I should consider abandoning technology and becoming monke like Ted recommended.

 No.20705

>>18451
I have no idea how can anyone use Debian on anything that's not a server. that thing is TOO stable.
shits is 2 years out of date!

 No.20706

>>20698
>Every Unix-like system that consists (almost) entirely of libre software is based in my book. Libre software gigachads, unite!
Unix and it's lineage were a mistake, the only thing holding Linux back is the fact that it's Unix based.
Unix was designed for multi-user mainframes and happens to work well on servers. it makes for an awful personal computing OS.

 No.20708

>>20705
>I have no idea how can anyone use Debian on anything that's not a server. that thing is TOO stable
It's old, yes. But it's also very reliable. Pretty much the only competitors to Debian are Fedora and Parabola, all other systems either move too fast or aren't well-tested. Period. Rolling release is good for package maintainers and those who can bother to troubleshoot breakages every time. Not only do you have to upgrade every fucken day but the upgrades can easily bork your system.

>>20706
>Unix was designed for multi-user mainframes and happens to work well on servers. it makes for an awful personal computing OS
It doesn't matter what it was designed for. Compared to other systems it's a godsend, we don't have anything better. Creating a new OS won't get a big enough userbase to make all the necessary software and proprietary systems are automatically out of the question.

It's not that Unix is the best OS it can be. It's just that there's nothing better than it, and as far as I concerned, that's all that matters to me. Having higher expectations from Unix is entirely unrealistic, Lisp machines are dead, anon. They're dead, they're not coming back. Get over it.

 No.20709

>>20708
Oh, and NixOS. NixOS also has point releases. It's Debian, Fedora, Parabola and NixOS. I've also tested OpenSUSE but it's buggy and its community is full of libshits so I wouldn't even bother.

 No.20718

>>20705
Debian has three editions: stable, testing and unstable. Stable is for servers, but for desktops and laptops unstable is perfectly fine. They call it "unstable" cause it consists of new packages that the maintainers/developers aren't certain will not break the system, but it is not unreliable as the name suggests. Unstable gets all the latest drivers and latest packages, it also gets security updates (like stable, but unlike testing).

You can also make a "frankendebian" where you have packages from different editions. This is usually fine for video drivers and the like, but shouldn't be used-system wide to make a complete mix of your system. This is where pinning comes in.
https://wiki.debian.org/AptConfiguration
You can use the –download-only option on apt to download latest packages and then manually install them (when a package is marked as manually installed, the package manager won't touch that package).

>>20706
>Unix was designed for multi-user mainframes and happens to work well on servers. it makes for an awful personal computing OS.
Then you don't understand what the real benefit of a multi-user system is, and that's separation of userspace and kernel space and privilege fine-tuning. For example, a web server can run as a separate, unprivileged user so if the web server is compromised, an attacker will have a hard time doing anything. Since userspace is separated from the kernel, Linux (and unix) can run things within a chroot/jail, that has a self-contained collection of libraries necessary to run whatever it is running. This way you can separate processes from one another without the VM overhead.

Windows cannot do these things because userspace and kernelspace are not separate. That is why Windows gives you all kinds of warnings when you download an .exe, that .exe can contain whatever and your user running it will give it complete privileges on the system.

 No.20723

>Windows cannot do these things because userspace and kernelspace are not separate.
The singleuser/multiuser distinction has nothing to do with kernel/userspace and NT windows is neither singleuser nor lacks a distinction between the latter.
The kernel is by definition seperate from userspace and usually consists of multiple differently privileged parts internally. The NT architecture is decended from VMS, where privilege seperation is traditonally MORE rigidly enforced than on unix.
AFAIK modern unixen have more individual options to restrict users than windows, yet no user on a windows system even approaches the power of root without privilege escalation exploits.
>That is why Windows gives you all kinds of warnings when you download an .exe, that .exe can contain whatever and your user running it will give it complete privileges on the system.
Running it gives the program control over what matters. A conventional virus doesn't need to modify anything more than user files and other programs.
Technically you can run untrusted programs as another windows user, but the encouraged approach is either full virtualization or praying limited user privileges (uac) and defender detection will minimize the harm.
https://www.itprotoday.com/compute-engines/windows-nt-and-vms-rest-story
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/security/application-security/application-control/user-account-control/

 No.20725

>>20723
>The kernel is by definition seperate from userspace and usually consists of multiple differently privileged parts internally.
Then I expressed myself incorrectly (or I was incorrect, take your pic). What I should have said is: Windows runs a lot of things in kernel space that Linux runs in user space, e.g. window manager. I assume wm in Windows is explorer.exe.

 No.20727

>>20725
>Windows runs a lot of things in kernel space that Linux runs in user space, e.g. window manager. I assume wm in Windows is explorer.exe.
No, explorer.exe can in fact be killed and restarted through ctrl+alt+del, which is also started by the user on keypress. Windows has graphic components in its kernel, but i don't know to what extent. X-Windows used to come with drivers that accessed the raw video devices. Now, at least on linux, the lower half of any video driver resides in kernelspace.
The windows base system is as locked-down as it is, because there is a system layer, where software runs in userspace with more privileges than a regular user (see the evocative diagrams in my previous post). In principle it's as if init, getty, dbus, powerd, and X were the only programs running as root.

 No.20745

>>20727
On your own graph here >>20723 window manager is part of the kernel subsystem.

 No.20747

File: 1688249892504-1.png (3.36 KB, 266x247, gditoddi.png)

>>20745
You are right.
The diagram is a bit misleading, as the component most closely resembling a window manager (DWM) operates in userspace while communicating over a kernel ipc mechanism. The "composition engine" (gdi/win32k) in kernelspace ostensibly does drawing to the screen. Documentation hints at some of it being in userspace before NT 4.

 No.20748

File: 1688251062286.png (4.73 KB, 540x265, graphics01.png)

>>20747
>"composition engine" (gdi/win32k) in kernelspace
This time i got it wrong. The composition engine is entirely in userspace. Only the legacy dgi and low-level DXddi apis are actually in kernel.


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