Hello, I've been wanting to switch to Linux for awhile now, but I'm not sure which distro I should use. What distro would you anons recommend I use?
>>19683IMO you can start with any "advanced" distro if you give yourself the time to learn it. Once you have your main programs set up, using them will naturaly make you accustomed to their specific workflow. If you wanted to avoid the command line as much as possible, that would entail having a file manager, program bar, right-click menu and installing smaller graphic configurators as needed.
Archlinux has an accessible learning curve due to the large community. Its deep flaws only come to the surface after prolonged use and by then you should know what you want from a distro. Any system setup ultimately boils down to installing programs and configuring them according to their documentation. The archlinux repo, aur and wiki ease beginners into this paradigm.
>>19684Mint is acceptable, as they take pains to remove questionable aspects from ubuntu upstream. Antix is a much preferable alternative though. While also based on debian, it has significantly less of the brokenness regularly assaulting windows users: obtuse error messages and buggy background processes (see all software on freedesktop.org).
Void Linux, if you want one that is still linux-y. and trust me, you will come to appreciate features like easily writing startup scripts, managing startup and running services in general, sane defaults in applications, file structure that makes sense, helpful community, etc.
https://voidlinux.org/download/https://docs.voidlinux.org/installation/index.html
>but why not Arch, Gentoo or Slackwarewhile Slackware (
or as I like to call it Slackware+AlienBOB) and Gentoo are good and stable, Slackware's lack of a package manager makes it difficult to install new applications and hunting for sources to drivers can be fun when you're 15 and have nothing to do, but otherwise it's a hassle. Gentoo has a package manager, but still compiles everything from source so installing anything takes a while, which can be annoying when you just wanna install and use something quickly. Arch is a mess, don't even bother.
If you want something akin to the windows experience, then any Debian-derivative with KDE should do.
>>19719it's like saying all you have to do to build a motorcycle is to also follow the instructions
I mean, it's a notable achievement
>>19683KDE Spin of Fedora, Kubuntu, or KDE Neon.
Linux mint if you want a stable system.
If you don't like the Windows GUI and you have 0iq then you will like GNOME.
I use OpenSUSE Tumbleweed with KDE btw. >>19687>Archlinux has an accessible learning curve.This is terrible advice for someone who isn't already a programmer or used to how Unix like systems work.
>AntixIsn't Antix basically MX Linux? I've had great experiences with MX on 32bit x86
>Gentoo has a package manager, but still compiles everything from source so installing anything takes a whileOn a modern PC that's not an issue. If you don't care about electricity consumption and only about the time.
I can recompile all my packages in about 10h so while I sleep. That is if I use the binary version of firefox, which comes directly from Mozilla. The other long compile is GCC but I update it roughly once every 3 months. So a regular weekly update doesn't take more than 5 hours, and I try to sleep more than that a day. + you can ctrl+z and suspend the process. Do your work if you need those resources then resume it. But I also use a minimalist WM. I assume if I had to compile 400 KDE packages it would make updates much longer. But I don't use KDE.
>>20541>They are gonna didch Ubuntu and have their main version rebased on Debian anyway due to the Snap controversy. Where are you getting this from?
I get no relevant search results returned when searching DDG for this
I would
really like a Linux Mint (mainline) rebased on Debian
>>20546On their download page
>Its goal is to ensure Linux Mint can continue to deliver the same user experience if Ubuntu was ever to disappear. It allows us to assess how much we depend on Ubuntu and how much work would be involved in such an event. LMDE is also one of our development targets, as such it guarantees the software we develop is compatible outside of Ubuntu.So I was speculating. But Ubuntu is on the path of depending more and more on snap (which disqualifies them from being a free distro, even when using the brodest definition of free.) Meanwhile Linux Mint mentainers hate Snaps and prefer flatpaks. So it might happen. Tho I've used LMDE in the past and it is worthy of being a daily driver in it's current state.
>>20548>Any distros come with programs like Librewolf by default?Apparently FreeBSD, LiGurOS, nixpkgs, OpenIndiana, PCLinuxOS and RebornOS have it according to
https://repology.org/project/librewolf/versions you can use that site to see if any program you are interested is packaged by a distro
>Something like PureOS but maintained and intended for a general audience (not just Purism customers).There are other free distros, see
https://www.gnu.org/distros/free-distros.html >>20662That is exactly what mandriva is.
>Mandriva Linux contained the Mandriva Control Center, which eases configuration of some settings. It has many programs known as Drakes or Draks, collectively named drakxtools, to configure many different settings. Examples include MouseDrake to set up a mouse, DiskDrake to set up disk partitions and drakconnect to set up a network connection. They are written using GTK+ and Perl, and most of them can run in both graphical and text mode using the ncurses interface.The original project is dead, but there is an active fork at
https://openmandriva.org >>20662>Is there a "point and click" linux distro?The best point-and-click OS is 9front, but no Unix-likes' DE utilizes the mouse in the same manner sadly, and neither does Windows. I haven't really researched into it as I prefer keyboard-driven interfaces since you don't have to switch back-and-forth between mouse and keyboard.
Stacking WMs were a mistake.
>>20711I agree that rio/9term/acme has the most useful and consistent mouse interface. The anon you replied to is statedly averse to commands though. The strength of the plan9 ui lies not in avoiding commands. Quite to the contrary it eases manipulation and execution of text.
>no Unix-likes' DE utilizes the mouse in the same manner sadlyYou can get X-Windows compatible plan9 software through plan9port. Windows even has self-contained sam and acme distributions.
>I prefer keyboard-driven interfaces since you don't have to switch back-and-forth between mouse and keyboard.Douglas Engelbart designed the mouse in conjunction with a chording keyboard, but i don't think the bell labs team used any.
Some people are quite adept at touch-typing with one hand. I remember Dennis Ritchie saying he did on a mailing list.
As a recent self-transformed Linux user, quite interested in FOSS as pushback against corporationist spyware and shit-design intended half-functionality I can reccomend Ubuntu Budgie (that was my first distro) or Linux Mint(more akin to Windows interface) to easily familiarise yourself with a differences between Linux and Windows/Mac systems. Just to gain certiain perspective and not feel intimidated by all the different apps, terminal usage etc. I'd reccomend after that or your other first distro for try out: ArcoLinux it's based on Arch and I chose it as a gateway to learn more about Arch when I'll be more skilled and start using it in a future. For now Arco is very stable it comes in different flavour for different needs as I noticed and most of all, even as it's a bit niche it has a real good source to learn how it operates and how the distro works piece by piece- Eric Dubois YT channel:
https://youtu.be/Jd8fKLki2Ks seriosuly this guy saved me from so much headache as a recent ArcoLinux noobie user. It'll reccomend to check it out. Also ArchWiki will definitely come in handy. Good luck on your adventure with Linux!
>>21074It's perfectly usable without using CLI, unless you want to really fine tune the system, automate shit, etc. Stuff that you couldn't do on Windows/Mac anyway without use of CLI and scripting, and even then you were far more limited. Not to mention that most of this shit is actually configured via text files, and you can use whatever GUI text editor you want for that.
To conclude: if your needs are the same as a Windows/Mac user than you absolutely don't need to touch the command line at all.
If you want to go beyond that then you're probably a geek interested in CLI and scripting anyway.
I recently took the djb-pill and moved my mail server from openbsd to alpine linux with s6 and qmail. It's a shame 99% of people using a computer will never experience the joys of lean, modular software and reliable logging infrastructure.
>>24635Is there a benefit to a LFS base system over a conventionally minimal distro like slackware besides the ability to bootstrap from any C compiler?
>>24638you don't know what you're talking about:
>pf is nice and has a sane default policy<my mailserver runs behind a firewall>the openbsd monitoring scripts may be useful for some people<people who don't sit right next to the server AND have a ssh permanently open>opensmtp can't compete with the security-conscious architecture of qmail>many exploit mitigations are ineffective and/or already exists under linux>bsd boot scripts are a couple of unsupervised shell scripts started by init>the service manager has feature parity with sysvinitbesides in practice an openbsd release certainly is LESS hardened than that of a linux-lts distro used in countless embedded systems and containers.
>>24648Installation manual? Features?
Also what's a logging daemon for void that isn't dogshit?
svlogtail is garbage and the demonstration that simple is not better
>>24649See
http://skarnet.org/software/s6/Logging is done by
http://skarnet.org/software/s6/s6-log.htmlSupervised s6 services can have their own associated logging daemons. They can have different privileges and also do log rotation. Logs are read the service from a pipe to the service provided by fdholder, so no logs are lost when a service dies. This also avoids the /dev/log bottleneck.
>>24660>wojak meme>in video form with unfunny voiceoverwhy did i decide to watch this
>>24661rolling release is weird but whatever
>systemd badmeh. i doubt a new linux user cares about init implementation politics
>>19683>Hello, I've been wanting to switch to Linux for awhile now, but I'm not sure which distro I should use. What distro would you anons recommend I use?Unless you are forced to by your work (be a redhat sysadmin and get RHCSA certified), then i'd choose a debian based distro, if not just Debian itself. Google runs gLinux internally which is essentially just Debian with a cinnamon desktop and a few slight modifications.
Debian has stood the test of time. its the ur-linux distro. If you are really brand brand new Linux then i recommend Debian-derived Ubuntu + Ubuntu derivates like Linux Mint, Pop Os, Kubuntu, etc.
>>19684FPBP. My left, microsoft hating, non technically savvy friends use mint with no trouble. Cinammon is a comfy traditional DE. It also won't pull in snaps by default. I like Pop for the GNOME extensions and Scheduler, but I have a hard time recommending it to new users.
>>19687>IMO you can start with any "advanced" distro if you give yourself the time to learn it.People don't want a learning curve on their email and web browsing machine.
>>24868>People don't want a learning curve on their email and web browsing machine.Email and web browsing aren't a distro thing, unless you want every program preinstalled like ur mom. The only questions are whether a distro has a graphical package manager and whether it carries niche options like palemoon and ungoogled-chromium or you need to compile them yourself.
When i was using arch, for the first few month my workflow consisted purely of searching for programs, installing programs with a command and typing the program name in a terminal to launch it. Occasionally i would install a toolbar for launching programs or edit my wm rightclick menu. Anyone with a weekend to spare can get used to this!
The tipping point in complexity for using a distro with scant sysadmin knowledge comes when you need to manually build system software or write your own initscripts. Before that everything is a point, click and write a couple lines you memorized from a wiki affair.
>>24870Onboarding and upkeep ARE a distro thing and the more complicated they are the more they get in the way of using the computer to do things. For some reason Linux attracts sparetime sysadmin LARPers who think they're the penguin's tits for telling new users to suck it up and learn their 1970s paradigms. It is perfectly reasonable to expect a good email client, web browser, and office suite to be preinstalled. Ubuntu got big by being an easier Debian and doing precisely that before they sold out to Amazon. Mint continues that legacy.
Aside: Arch sucks and deserves its reputation for breaking. It is absurd to be proud of spending "a few months" on setting up a basic DE with the essentials. Furthermore, Nix eats AUR's lunch in terms of stability, package count, and package freshness:
https://repology.org/repositories/statistics/newest. Usually there's only a handful of programs I need the latest and greatest version of and I'm perfectly comfortable building them by hand on a more stable distro.
>>24879>It is absurd to be proud of spending "a few months" on setting up a basic DE with the essentials.Learn to read. I was talking about the workflow i had for a few months before i started getting comfortable in the terminal. It mostly involved typing package install commands and graphical program names into terminals, which is imo a foolproof way to use a distro without a preinstalled desktop environment after adding something like openbox or fvwm to xinitrc.
>Arch sucks and deserves its reputation for breaking.I agree. Read
>>19687 again.
>>24892 Linux is a kernel, not an OS. And i see many people getting that wrong here, if we compare Linux, the Kernel, to something like NT or Darwin, it's clear which is better. Linux is much, much, MUCH better than anything Microsoft or Apple have created, and this is the simple truth. Linux distributions greatly vary, and if you go into Linux expecting an Experience similar to windows like alot of people here, you're in to get disappointed. The Linux philosophy of "Everything is a file" is alot better than the Registry way of doing things in Windows, which is chaotic and cluttered at the very best. Package Managers that manage your packages for you are superior to every single way of installing apps on Windows, as you can run kernel updates and install all your apps through them. I see many people here afraid of using the terminal, yet another way Windows has caused brain-damage. Why the terminal is used soo often in Linux is because it simply is the superior way of doing things. It's faster and more efficient, it isn't something you should be afraid of using, it's an integral part of the OS and is a very powerful tool. The Heirarchal File System linux uses makes it much more secure, if there is a new vunerability in OpenCL, I'd have to update every single app in windows that uses the vunerable version, whilst on linux only the OpenCL package itself has to be updated. linux has one blaring issue and it's the reason why it hasn't taken over and that issue is Software-support. driver issues are long gone with distros like Pop!_OS and Manjaro that make both easy. I personally used windows for many years and because of how used to the way it does things, I had a very difficult learning curve when switching to Linux, but I did see the sense in the way Linux did things, and unlike many people here, I didn't rage quit because something didn't work the way it does on Windows. if you prefer windows, that's your opinion and it's as valid as any other. But if you hate Linux for not doing things like windows, you're braindead.
>>24891muh time is money
got any more bourgeois aphorisms for us to yawn to
>>24894>Linux is much, much, MUCH better than anything Microsoft or Apple have created, and this is the simple truth.we have no basis to say that because we dont have access to those kernels, being proprietary. In any case I don't think it really is. Monolithic Kernel is a 1960s paradigm, linux only caught on due to being unix like and free. Even Windows NT is a hybrid kernel.
We aren't going to start over and we are likely stuck with linux so its a moot point, but if you had to start over something like Redox OS's microkernel is far superior. Saying Linux monolithic 1960s style kernel is a good idea is basically just cope.
>>24894the terminal is inferior to a graphical interface for most things an end user would actually want to do. its vulnerability to typos and semantic pedantry is fatal in a society with the level of literacy that we've got - and that's on principle, without even getting into the love of over-shortening commands in unix-derived systems. (list > ls, 50% efficiency gain!)
clicking the wrong button, hitting back/cancel and trying again is simply less tedious than having the computer spit out some wanky error message because you forgot to close your quotation marks. the first step gives you feedback every step of the way, the second leaves it to the end to announce that you have fucked up. the more i dwell on this, the more i wonder why attempts to fix it aren't more prominent: why not dynamically parse what's typed and print, in a little box, an explanation of what will happen if you hit enter? or why not allow commands to be assembled out of Scratch-like code blocks, with only valid options appearing? there are countless attempts to make a distro where you don't have to touch the terminal (doomed for any user who wants to do more than browse the web) but there seem to be few prominent attempts to advance the new user experience of the terminal beyond the 1980s (when someone had the bold, innovative idea of putting it in a window on a GUI system.)
>>24904most end users do not want to run a sever.
>>24908"as a programmer i'm a lazy elitist who most likely writes software of use only to programmers, server admins, and so on." forgive the aggressive paraphrasing but: we know, the type is not uncommon. write a program the end-user would actually want to use before bragging that you make no effort to let them do so.
>>24917given my post was not even specifically about linux, but about the terminal in general, this conversation is unlikely to go anywhere useful. it is built on a foundation of stand. enjoy the rest of your day.
>>24918if i was wrong you would be rubbing it in my face, bragging about how actually you write word processors and image editors, spreadsheet software and 3d modelling programs, video capturing and editing software, screen readers for the blind, automatic subtitling for the deaf, and color-profile-changers for the color-blind, but i am not wrong and so can offer only this incoherent outburst. (karen? really? that's the best you've got?)
here's a program you can write that someone might want to use, one that you can feel like a special little boy for making terminal only: an insult generator.
>>24902>the terminal is inferior to a graphical interface for most things an end user would actually want to do. not necessarily, the modern gen/ of tech's jus been raised on the standard of the gui.
>its vulnerability to typos can't speak for other distros, bu Arch recommends similar commands from typos. not rly a devastatin problem imo. lemme kno if u got any specific ex's tho anon.
>semantic pedantry is fatal in a society with the level of literacy that we've got in the nicest way possibl, then myb the internet wasn't designed for everyone. i dont kno all the commands on linux, bu there all listed under /bin, an i dont use half of them on a daily basis. it aint too complex of a level of literacy, an if its rly that bad they aint got it, i got a simple solution: android.
>clicking the wrong button, hitting back/cancel and trying again is simply less tedious than having the computer spit out some wanky error message there r undo commands on terminals aswell anon, an not sure wht distro ur usin where the error messages are "wanky". myb python? i was workin on a python script this evenin an i was reminded how retarded debuggin processes is for the language. other than that no nothin comes to mind, again, feel free to give ex's.
>the more i dwell on this, the more i wonder why attempts to fix it aren't more prominent: why not dynamically parse what's typed and print, in a little box, an explanation of what will happen if you hit enter? –help.
>or why not allow commands to be assembled out of Scratch-like code blocks, with only valid options appearing?mad-storage-dependent.
>there are countless attempts to make a distro where you don't have to touch the terminal (doomed for any user who wants to do more than browse the web) but there seem to be few prominent attempts to advance the new user experience of the terminal beyond the 1980s (when someone had the bold, innovative idea of putting it in a window on a GUI system.)idk i think its quite simple, if it aint broke dont fix. operatin systems (good ones atleast) shld be designed 2 b efficent, not simple.
>>24910>"as a programmer i'm a lazy elitist who most likely writes software of use only to programmers, server admins, and so on."that's not wht anon was sayin, gui's do take a shitton more resources, its not the same. a good example off the top of my head'd be endeavour os's iso images: the non-gui iso (in the stable version) is 3gb less than the gui-iso. i might be wron bu am pretty sure this is the case. anyway, here's my takeway from my rant: always consider memory allocation and space, and cuttin out what aint necessariy. myb its the repacker and rust-programmar in me, idk, bu sum things r jus too bloaty that a system dont necessarily use. for instance, i own a latitude d420 that was made in 2001, an i'd love to run a "jus-works" distro like mint-cinammon, bu the gui shit jus slows the bitch down by suchhhh a degree, i jus had to bite the bullet and downloa minimal packages via arch. i gotta imagine its the same for other users, guis can jus b bloaty sumtimes, it aint jus a server developer issue.
>>24902I think you don't hate the terminal so much as how the UNIX shell works. Unix specifically is terrible because all it knows is strings, and thus shit breaks constantly due to formatting errors, and you have to fuck with regex constantly. Read the Unix Hater's Handbook, research Lisp machines and Lisp REPLs, learn about old mainframe OSes and Multics, learn about JSON and semantic web tech and ways to pass around typed data.
a similar problem is with programming where most tools are extremely primitive and only deal with plaintext, and use a large chain of parsers to gradually convert the plaintext into something with an abstract structure. this prevents any tools being able to have an idea of what you're trying to do while you're programming, and using that info to aid you at all. and also necessitates writing an entire language parser any time you want to extract data out of that plaintext, which is a massive pain in the ass.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Ab3ArE8W3sunix's obsession with text is a sin and is one of the worst ideas in computer science.
>>24920>here's a program you can write that someone might want to use, one that you can feel like a special little boy for making terminal only: an insult generator.lel
I think instead of getting angry at "IT" (half-formed homunculi) from now on I'll say "I'm not angry, just disappointed"
Linux Mint is easy to install and use. Debian is also good.
Tip: Use Linux hardware database to check Linux compatibility.
https://linux-hardware.org/>>24967gentoo works on any hardware and architecture + is the fastest and most stable distro
doesnt matter if it is rolling releaseinstall gentoo:
https://gentoo.org>>24970they are just sponsors
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