(Copypasted from a previous 4chin /g/ thread as a foundation to making these generals on leftypol)
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Check the Wikis (most troubleshoots work for all distros):
https://wiki.archlinux.orghttps://wiki.gentoo.org/g/'s Wiki on GNU/Linux:
https://igwiki.lyci.de/wiki/Category:GNU/Linux
>What distro should I choose?https://igwiki.lyci.de/wiki/Babbies_First_Linux>What are some cool programs?https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/list_of_applicationshttps://directory.fsf.org/wiki/Main_Pagehttps://suckless.org/rocks/>What are some cool terminal commands?https://www.commandlinefu.com/commands/browsehttps://cheat.sh/>Where can I learn the command line?https://mywiki.wooledge.org/BashGuidehttps://www.grymoire.com/Unix/>Where can I learn more about Free Software?https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/philosophy.html>How to break out of the botnet?https://prism-break.org/en/categories/gnu-linux>>26562Haven't used it myself but seems to be one of the prettier ones from a strictly visual point of view. Debian base most likely means it's solid.
The main thing you have to ask yourself is if you're comfortable with using an OS based in China. If it's not subverted right now, it can be tomorrow at the drop of a hat, and you won't know.
>>26571Look at heads (
https://heads.dyne.org) and roll your own release with more recent software.
>>26600The enterprise world favors RH because of legacy, they were the first ones to do it successfully w support contracts. From there a sense of "safe" carries.
End users like Debian because *checks notes* it's good. It's versatile. Seriously, half or more of all distros are Debian for a good reason. It's not completely brain dead easy like Ubuntu or Zorin but it's not far off
>>26571Qubes OS or Devuan/Artix/Void with full disk encryption (dm-crypt). Note that Artix has better support for OpenRC and probably S6. Their Apparmor packages don't install init script for Runit. The init script loads all profiles on boot. I recommend always using Apparmor because it adds extra security. Always also install firewall (like ufw).
More tips:
Do not make a swap partition (or encrypt it). Don't use suspend on disk (Sleep mode) or suspend on RAM. Have a separate computer for your personal activities and political activities. Don't use the same password for both computers. Lock the root account if you don't use it ( with sudo passwd –lock r00t ).. Be sure to always turn off the computer that you use for political activities when you don't use it. This way they can't extract your encryption keys from RAM. Prefer using Tor Browser whenever you can and use bridges. Encrypt your mail using GnuPG (don't trust your webmail to do it). I prefer distros that don't have SystemD because SystemD is so huge that it adds to the attack surface. Example: the old xz-utils backdoor required a custom downstream patch to OpenSSH daemon that enabled systemd-notify support. Red Hat, Fedora, Ubuntu and Debian were targeted because no one else had patched their OpenSSH to enable that functionality.
>>26711endeavour is for those who can't install arch by reading some wiki pages but still want arch
>mxI think it's terrible, one glance at the faq and they're already suggesting reinstalling the distro if the debian stable base changes
I recommend gentoo if you have the attention span to read the whole handbook
>>26729Cool off on the gentoo shilling a bit. I understand you may be excited about the options portage offers, but in practice gentoo doesn't come close to being a meta-distro. You have a mainline GNU configurations with openrc or systemd and a lot of commonly used linux software, that is the only one actively supported and tested. Then you have a slew of lesser used ebuilds and overlays, where the most support you will get is asking someone on the forums. Furthermore the project has a history of capitulating to the latest snakeoil and deprecating any sane alternatives, like what happened with udev, dbus and logind.
For someone wanting a systemd-free distro that doesn't use openrc and supports package source compilation, i would recommend both alpine and void over gentoo, maybe devuan and obarun as well.
>>26730>>26730>For someone wanting a systemd-free distro>that doesn't use openrcbruh
>Cool off on the gentoo shilling a bitnah
ok only a little bit>the project has a history of capitulating to the latest snakeoil and deprecating any sane alternatives, like what happened with udev, dbus and logind.I don't think they have many developers to keep maintaining too many components like what happened with eudev
>>26735>openrcYes it's a step forward from sysvinit+shellscripts, but it only supports rudimentary service supervision and paralell startup is experimental to this day.
>eudevEudev and elogind were straight up forks of the systemd code. I'm speaking about static /dev and consolekit.
>>26738>I'm speaking about static /dev and consolekit.but like, where would one find recent/still maintained documentation for static /dev and consolekit, even LFS doesn't teach it and on the gentoo forums only like
actually I'd rather not mention any names of the users, probably disrespectful and etc knows about this
>>26752>where would one find recent/still maintained documentation for static /dev and consolekitA long time ago both both were supported options for a gentoo installation, then a certain redhat project EEEd the linux desktop software ecosystem. Slackware never stopped using consolekit2 for example (though udev clearly won the battle decades ago because of plug-and-play fetishization). Logind is only a hard dependency for modern crapware like Skype and Wayland anyway.
What this historical precedent ultimately means is, that you can't necessarily trust the gentoo maintainers not to deprecate gtk+2 or a release of a compiler version you need. They've already started removing python2 ffs. The project just isn't committed to long term software stability in any way.
>>26762Their main market isn't desktop and not even small-scale orders (
https://it-notes.dragas.net/2023/08/27/that-old-netbsd-server-running-since-2010/). They're in a dominant market position, so they peddle unstable software to maximize profits from businesses with large-scale orders, that will ultimately buy their contracts regardless of software quality. Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM.
>>27272 (me)
nvm I didn't break the company's notebook, it's just ubuntu being ub
aduntu
>>27295And Devuan upgrades every year or at most every other year.
You good??
Just harden/configure a debian install for any third person reading
>>27332>>27342static /dev is totally worth it, i haven't had any device problems since setting it up. never used consolekit though. i'm not even sure which programs need a login manager except for gnome, kde and skype for linux????
all my boot bundle in s6-rc does is mount some filesystems, launch fdholder, set the hostname, keymap and a seed for /dev/random, as well as load everything from /etc/modules. the next step is starting some gettys. average linux users don't understand how needlessly complicated their setup is compared to this.
Don't plan on using /opt/ much but do plan on a split-usr.
EFI 512MIB
swap 8GiB
/ 16GiB
/opt/ 32GiB
/var/ 32GiB
/usr/ 64GiB
/home/ ~1TB
tmpfs 32GiB
Anything about this seem nuts?
>>27361but after you set all this up, will it need to be maintained/constantly tinkered with or is the only thing necessary of system administration would be just to update the system like on
>>26758 ?
>>27365>/ 16GiBon openbsd i could get by with only 1G. you usually want root to be small, so no files get accidently dumped there. 4-8G would work for modern linux maybe.
>/var/ 32GiBseems way too large. i usually keep mine under 4G, except for /var/lib/flatpak that's a symlink to my massive /usr/local partition.
>/home/ ~1TBhaving /home be the partition for large data is a matter of taste. i like to have /usr/local fill that role. if i were you i would also symlink /opt to /usr/local/opt
>tmpfs 32GiBi can't tell anymore how much memory the average person has, i'm still at 16G on my desktop. i would advise against using your whole memory for /tmp. my system ground to a halt before while launching a game and having a few large files there.
>>27368>/ 16GiB>on openbsd i could get by with only 1G. you usually want root to be small, so no files get accidently dumped there. 4-8G would work for modern linux maybe.You're probably right here. Have a bit of a fear of / not being writable.
>/var/ 32GiB>seems way too large. i usually keep mine under 4G, except for /var/lib/flatpak that's a symlink to my massive /usr/local partition.Apparently portage puts temporary files there so if wanted to install chromium this would be 16GiB plus whatever was already there.
>tmpfs 32GiB>i can't tell anymore how much memory the average person has, i'm still at 16G on my desktop. i would advise against using your whole memory for /tmp. my system ground to a halt before while launching a game and having a few large files there.My system has 64GB of ram, might make tmpfs smaller, like 8GiB. Haven't gotten to this step yet.
>>27372>My system has 64GB of ram, might make tmpfs smaller, like 8GiB. Haven't gotten to this step yet.fortunately you can change this at any later point with minimal effort.
>Apparently portage puts temporary files there so if wanted to install chromium this would be 16GiB plus whatever was already there.i say symlink the portage stuff somewhere else. keeping /var small and easily fsckable is important for recovering log files.
>You're probably right here. Have a bit of a fear of / not being writable./ not being writable would be a good thing in some cases. here's a reminder what the point of having multiple partitions is:
<most user accounts should not have the ability to write large filesif any unprivileged program goes rogue, you can still write to "full" partitions as root and clean up the mess.
<the base system should be on its own small partitionpower failure during lots of i/o can leave a partition crippled and you don't want that to be your root. fsck also won't take as long.
<you can set options on individual partitionshave a look at the mount manpage for restricting file types, disabling asynchronous i/o and performance options related to atime.
>>27379Since there isn't a musl split-user stage3 looks like the key was to copy the list of programs in /bin/ of a split-usr stage3 (with minor adjustments as needed), copy over /lib/ from /usr/lib/ temporarily and then recompile everything with
split-usr static static-libs After this it should be possible to remove /lib/ because /bin/ is static, and remove those files in /usr/bin/ which are also in /bin/ though this last sentence is yet to be tested. Also had to create a new /dev/null for static-usr.
>>27379>this is not what thought the benefit was.with partitions you can also take advantage of the physical properties of hdds, letting you group related files into partitions. for ssds you instead want the simplest scheduler (deadline) and ideally jfs on the most accessed partitions.
>musl, statichuh, i tried this once but was hindered by the lackluster documentation and my cursory knowledge of portage, but it seems as though musl support is no longer experimental, providing stage3 tarballs. marxspeed anon!
>>27383Managed to get this thing to boot and with a clean split /usr/ (/lib/ is not totally empty) etc. Have no idea really how to use static-dev however. You can add some filesystems with mknod and a device MAJOR MINOR these seem to be available under /sys/dev/block (one for each partition plus one for the disk it seems) and /sys/dev/char (199 different devices on my system!) . How would one go about determining the MAJOR MINOR numbers for a device e.g. my wireless card, rather than by table (e.g.
https://lxr.linux.no/#linux+v2.6.31/Documentation/devices.txt). Or is this way off.
>>27397>these seem to be available under /sys/dev/blockinteresting. i only knew what numbers they were assigned, depending on how you configured your per-device partition maximum. documentation specifically for device numbers is under
https://lxr.linux.no/linux+v6.7.1/Documentation/admin-guide/devices.txt>How would one go about determining the MAJOR MINOR numbers for a device e.g. my wireless cardnetwork devices don't require device files. you may need network_throughput (c10,61) and network_latency (c10,62) for DHCP though.
if at any point you feel like you're missing something, mount a tmpfs under /dev and have a look at what dbus does. 'busybox mdev -s' would also be a good start. the point of static /dev is understanding what character and block devices your system accesses and managing them yourself, which is usually a one-time job.
>>27400>if at any point you feel like you're missing something, mount a tmpfs under /dev and have a look at what dbus does. 'busybox mdev -s' would also be a good start.Have dbus masked, but could install busybox it seems. Might just watch out for changes in /sys/dev and mount accordingly though, if that would work.
>the point of static /dev is understanding what character and block devices your system accesses and managing them yourself, which is usually a one-time job.Have largely postponed this step for better or worse. Will not be able to stay in this state of ignorance because will be needing to connect flash drives etc. But have already questioned why there would be 97 TTY devices when only 6 of them are writable by the tty user.
Wasn't able to reasonably avoid installing llvm/clang. Could be done with the vesa driver, but considering that my monitor is already flickering half the time considered it a bad idea to experiment with drivers.
>>27396>static /dev would be interesting if I could keep it bleeding edge updated, like regular gentooThis is evidently possible, with the exception of some drivers,
if it really does interests anyone.
>>27464>On that note, a good way of testing which input device corresponds to which character device is catting the files to the terminal. Don't forget to type reset afterwards.Intereesting
>>27463>It's actually in the Xorg manpage. Launching Xorg with the -configure option should auto-generate most things. The only settings i had to adjust were the keyboard device number and mouse protocol.Actually didn't need to do anything after setting up the old drivers it just worked!
>>27470>Guess am still going to need a browserGet an alpine chroot. It has up-to-date versions of chrome and firefox.
>>27469>>27471Dbus and Gtk+3 are more trouble than they're worth. Masking them is just common sense. See Stanislav's /etc/portage/package.mask/crapolade:
sys-apps/systemd
sys-fs/udev
media-video/libav
gnome-base/gconf
>=app-crypt/gnupg-2.0.22
app-accessibility/at-spi2-atk
app-accessibility/at-spi2-core
sys-apps/dbus
sys-auth/consolekit
sys-auth/polkit
gnome-extra/polkit-gnome
dev-util/gdbus-codegen
gnome-base/dconf
>=x11-libs/gtk+-3.0.0
>>27473Wasn't looking forward to trying to keep up with patches for Gtk+3 let alone trying to maintaining them. Will give masking >=x11-libs/gtk+-3.0.0 a go also at your suggestion.
>Get an alpine chroot. It has up-to-date versions of chrome and firefox.A chroot to run the browser in sounds reasonable, but using alpine will be my last resort. Seems with either webkit-gtk2, webkit-qt, or palemoon a static build wouldn't need too much.
Unfortunately think palemoon is the only option in terms of development tooling which will build. >>27475Ended up nearly doing an exhaustive search, and doing certain things over and over again with slight alternation hoping they would work. Palemoon doesn't compile without glibc, and am not presently able to make the patches myself. Removing gcr from surf wasn't as easy as it looked. Am also not presently able to make ebuilds for anything more than dummy packages.
Nyxt requires a small patch so might give this a go at some point, put luakit compiled and ran with only the Gtk+3 patch.
The flickering was a hardware issue to do with Turbo Boost. But the trackpad still doesn't work (/dev/input/event* and /dev/input/mice exist) and because used genkernel suspend doesn't work.
>>27521Still haven't migrated over my personal and development files; haven't quite got comfortable with it just yet. A number of compromises were necessary as can be seen from the screenshot. A problem with such compromises is that a number of these systems are interelated, and to remove one modification means removing others. So compromising on udev meant that through grub pciutils needed the -static-libs flag and my system isn't completely static (not sure if it was anyway). Switching to the modern intel drivers over i915 meant acceloration worked but dragged in LLVM (one of the more tollerable compromises). Was further suprised by the lack of modern webbrowsers (and only modern webbrowsers) which would build with the system.
If decided to do it over again would make sure to configure the kernel, and such that devtmpfs was disabled allowing for permissions to be maintained with a static-dev, or else would write a script to handle this for me. That should allow for shaving all but the Gtk+3 compromise. The suggestion to run the browser in a chroot does seem to be the only way to have a clean build environment. Seems like ideally there would be a WPE based browser available (and technically there is):
https://eleni.mutantstargoat.com/hikiko/wpe/ >>27548>why are you using grub and not lilo or efistubDidn't try LILO or Syslinux, but EFI stubs still required the -static-libs for pciutils.
>>27545Didn't end up setting this up, because it was a bad idea.
>>27555rob pike, chuck moore, rms, guy steele, alan kay, richard p. gabriel, djb, jwz, uriel, mircea popescu…
all of them were right
>>28580There's probably some stuff, debian has quirks. Like you'll have to install sudo. But you're already running debian if you're using ubuntu. There shouldn't be a huge change.
That said, I've been trying fedora based distros and gnome is really nice… If you're ready for an actual switch, try smth fedora with gnome.
>>28582>you'll have to install sudoreally? that's surprising, even if you install it with a desktop like gnome?
>I've been trying fedora based distros and gnome is really nice… If you're ready for an actual switch, try smth fedora with gnome.i actually used fedora gnome a while back but it really didn't like my laptop and would spit out dozens of incomprehensible errors everytime i turned it on, one day an update seemed to fix it, but only a few days later another update brought it back, one of the reasons i was considering debian was that i felt the frequency of updates on other distros was too fast for me, and i also think a vanilla gnome would be better than ubuntu's odd custom gnome, although i like both.
in the meantime i had to reinstall anyway so i decided to try out linux mint for some reason, and i am not enjoying it, so i will still probably be switching to debian soon.
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