This is not a troll.  I'm a Linux user since the days of SLS and
Slackware on floppy disks.  I've been using Red Hat and Fedora for
a long time now, both because of familiarity and because Fedora
seems to be kept up-to-date with the latest kernels and other software.

Now I'm wondering if I should switch distributions or abandon Linux
entirely for something like BSD.  The problem is that the complexity
of administration is getting beyond me.

Today I was doing ordinary things when I got a "No more processes"
message.  So I got a terminal and logged in as root and looked at
what was running, and one thing I saw was a lot of processes with
the name tracker in them.  Now I don't know what tracker does, and
it's probably nothing that I want done anyway.  I don't know how to
turn it off, so I just removed it from the system.  

This is only the latest in a string of disappointments.  Back when
we used chkconfig to manage the services I was pretty happy with it.
Now that it's mostly systemd I'm completely bewildered by the way to
get things to happen or not happen.  And I see something called FUSE
running that I'm not aware of ever needing or wanting.  I was using
xfce because Gnome 3 is so bizarre, but it suddenly started acting
weird, giving me voice announcements that I never wanted and don't
know how to turn off.  I'm starting to think I was more productive
in the old days of TWM.

And just in the last few days my DSL network has started going
away, and I can't get it back except by rebooting.  Maybe this is
unrelated, but...

So...is there a distribution out there that is simpler, easier to
administer, but keeps pretty well up to date in the interests of
security?  Or am I going to have to put some effort into living with
the beast as it is, or abandon Linux entirely?

--
jhhaynes at earthlink dot net

Dunno but I found debian a good compromise between solidity,
conservatism and up to date kernel wise.

I think you have to appreciate that some distros - mint, ubuntu - are
heading towards a rather specialised consumer application.

Others are simply content to be a GUI interface to a general purpose
workstation.

--
Ineptocracy

(in-ep-toc’-ra-cy) – a system of government where the least capable to
lead are elected by the least capable of producing, and where the
members of society least likely to sustain themselves or succeed, are
rewarded with goods and services paid for by the confiscated wealth of a
diminishing number of producers.

Have a look at PC-BSD if you are serious about BSD.
It is based on FreeBSD.
They have a live dvd/usb.
goggle is your friend
You can download the manual (pdf) there also.

I am also looking at moving to BSD as linux has just gone to far
bonkers.  Getting too much like windows... I gotta have the latest and I
gotta change this and that just because it is not broke.  What linux is
UNIX like?  You have to be kidding!  

PC-BSD/Free-BSD no systemd there!

--
systemd a solution looking for a problem...

On Sunday, October 21st, 2012, at 17:40:21h -0500, Jim Haynes pondered:

All depends on what you mean by "easier".

Maybe you should be looking at either Slakware or Arch Linux
if you prefer the more traditional (if that is what you mean
by easier) style of system administration.

Fedora is a bleeding edge distribution and thus is moving more
rapidly away from traditional administration to new fangled
ways of doing things such as systemd to replace sysV init,
all because of the need to go from power on to X11 login
within 5 seconds or less, regardless of the state of the
file systems or other system services because that is
the way Windoze tends to do things.

Ah, the good old days. :)
Yep, I also have been down that road.

Now running Mageia Linux.
Mageia Control Center is the GUI application to manage almost everything.

Off hand that would be my guess. Several mainstream distributions are
going systemd.

Yes, that seems to be yet another Micro$not'ism feature creep crap.

Looking in Software Management screen for the tracker rpm, I get:
        Tracker is a framework designed to extract information and metadata
        about your personal data so that it can be searched easily and
        quickly. Tracker is desktop-neutral, fast and resource efficient.

Heheheh, yup been there also.

as root     systemctl stop tracker.service
systemctl disable tracker.service

Yeah, I have settled on KDE just for the configurability and
navigability features.

Downside is there is a bunch more of that content indexing crap
running and takes a bit more research to disable it in the user's account.

Heheh, ye gads. I hear that. :-D

I bit the bullet and started reading about systemd. Next release,
Mageia 3, will be pretty near all systemd.

On Mageia, the systemd-ui rpm provides the systemadm application. That
will allow you to see all sorts of systemd stuff and provide lots of
information at a glance. You still need to use the command line to
dis/enable a service.

Since I load pretty near everything, I wrote a script,
disable_servers, which disables the daemon/services I do not need/want.

I will be glad when they get systemd settled down and quit changing
the names of daemon/services for the same activity.

On 2012-10-21, J G Miller <mil...@yoyo.ORG> wrote:

Arch now defaults to systemd, and existing users are 'being encouraged' to
convert their systems.  The Wiki and mailing-lists are pretty good for
guidance and support.  But you do get pretty complete control over what
gets installed - the installation ISO gives you a system that's just enough
to start configuring and installing stuff.  Arch is more 'cutting edge'
than some distros, and as it's a rolling release hardly a day goes by
without something getting updated or upgraded - so if you want a system
that doesn't change from one month to the next, it may not be a good
choice.

Debian stable is noted for reliability, but is too conservative for some.

Systemd protagonists would argue that there's more to it than 'booting
fast'.  There does seem to be some merit to the concept, but getting ones
head around the new concepts and terms does take some effort.

--
-- ^^^^^^^^^^
--  Whiskers
-- ~~~~~~~~~~

So have I.

Why do you need the latest kernels and other software?

 Description-en: metadata database, indexer and search tool
  Tracker is an advanced framework for first class objects with
  associated metadata and tags. It provides a one stop solution for all
  metadata, tags, shared object databases, search tools and indexing.
 Homepage: http://projects.gnome.org/tracker/

It's there because something you installed needed it.  As you see, it's
a Gnome thing.  You seem to have Gnome installed, so now you know where
you got it.

 Description-en: Filesystem in Userspace
  Filesystem in Userspace (FUSE) is a simple interface for userspace
  programs to export a virtual filesystem to the Linux kernel. It also
  aims to provide a secure method for non privileged users to create and
  mount their own filesystem implementations.
 Homepage: http://fuse.sourceforge.net/

It's there because something you installed needed it.  Probably also
pulled in by Gnome.

So go back to using TWM.  It is still available, at least in Debian.
Just install a Standard system (skip Tasksel) and then install just the
packages you want.  The package management system will take care of all
the dependencies.
--
John Hasler
jhas...@newsguy.com
Dancing Horse Hill
Elmwood, WI USA

There's Testing and Unstable for those who prefer to be closer to the
edge.  I've been running Unstable (Sid) for years with no problems. I
use no "desktop environment": just FVWM.  Gnome seems to be at the root
of most of the difficulties people have with Sid.

Too much more.
--
John Hasler
jhas...@newsguy.com
Dancing Horse Hill
Elmwood, WI USA

Indeed.  OTOH gnome is a big package of  a lot of useful utilities and
applications.

:-)

--
Ineptocracy

(in-ep-toc’-ra-cy) – a system of government where the least capable to
lead are elected by the least capable of producing, and where the
members of society least likely to sustain themselves or succeed, are
rewarded with goods and services paid for by the confiscated wealth of a
diminishing number of producers.

On Sun, 21 Oct 2012 17:40:21 -0500

I use Arch <http://archlinux.org>. It's simple, kind of like slackware.
Arch linux has a simple package manager that handles dependencies, it
tends to be very up to date (I'm usually on the latest stable version
of most packages), and it only installs the bare minimum by default.

On the downside, you need to pay attention to Arch linux announcements
on the main page, general mailing list, or RSS feed (choices!), or an
update may (probably will) break your system eventually. On the bright
side, you get to know what's getting changed.

You might also like slackware or gentoo.

I've tried freebsd recently. I'm amazed at what zfs can do, and I'm
pretty impressed how well the system is designed as a whole. Also,
freebsd has jails. It's like chroot, but more complete (probably since
freebsd is well-integrated).

But seriously, if you're getting tired of the distros you're
using/administrating, try something new. Install it as a partition on
your PC, and if you like it, bring it into production. A little variety
to spice up tech life? Try plan9 - probably not something you'd use
in production servers, but it is very different :D

I'm an Arch linux fan all the way, as far as linux goes. Every other
distro just seems to make things too complicated. I don't need gui
configs and all that fancy stuff; I just want the stuff underneath to
be simple.

A co-worker convinced me to migrate the file server to freebsd with
zfs (old server was RedHat). I thought, "Eh, I prefer linux, but I'll
try it out." Now we've got a raidz (like raid-5, but zfs-style) setup
with daily snapshots running on a cron job. Overwrite a file by
accident? Any user can copy yesterday's version of that file, or last
week's, from the .zfs/snapshots folder. There are many other things
different about freebsd, but you should try it rather than read my
ramblings all day :).

I tried openbsd a while ago, as well. One thing I can say is that it's
fairly outdated, even compared to the stable release of Debian. Their
focus is security, though.

Remember, software is not a religion. Linux won't be mad if you try
something else for a while, even if you decide you like
freebsd/plan9/whatever more ;). It sounds like you really just want to
try something new. I tried out several distros before I found that Arch
was what I liked.

--
Matt Boswell

()  ascii ribbon campaign - against html e-mail
/\  www.asciiribbon.org   - and proprietary attachments

Go here:

http://ask.fedoraproject.org/question/131/how-do-i-disable-tracker

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/User:Peter/FUSE

Up to you.  I'm sure there's an easy way to turn off voices.
Fedora Forum is pretty good.

A few problems, change distro?

--
Dan Espen

The Natural Philosopher <t...@invalid.invalid> writes:

Gnome applications run under any WM, including FVWM.

--
Dan Espen

On 2012-10-21, Jim Haynes <jhay...@alumni.uark.edu> wrote:

I don't think RHEL/CentOS 6.x uses systemd.  At least, it's not on
my CentOS 6.3 box (or AFAIR any of my other 6.x boxes).

As others have mentioned, Slackware may be an acceptable compromise.
RHEL/CentOS may also be a good choice, though they tend to be a little
older.

--keith

--
kkeller-use...@wombat.san-francisco.ca.us
(try just my userid to email me)
AOLSFAQ=http://www.therockgarden.ca/aolsfaq.txt
see X- headers for PGP signature information

On Monday 22 October 2012 01:05, GangGreene conveyed the following to
comp.os.linux.misc...

Slackware, Arch, Gentoo, LFS... :-)

For those interested in Gentoo, but seeking an easy-to-install approach,
there's also Sabayon.  It's based on Gentoo - but supports binary
repositories as well - and it comes as an installable live DVD.

--
= Aragorn =
(registered GNU/Linux user #223157)

On Monday 22 October 2012 01:51, John Hasler conveyed the following to
comp.os.linux.misc...

Actually, most desktop-oriented distributions set up FUSE by default
these days, because the distribution vendors /naturally/ assume that
you'd also be wanting to mount your NTFS partitions.

And of course, you *do* have NTFS partitions, don't you? [1]  I mean,
everyone does, because everyone also has Wintendo installed on their
hard disks!  (Yes, that was sarcasm. <grin>)

All jest aside, FUSE can also be used for using ZFS in GNU/Linux.  Given
that ZFS is licensed under the CDDL, the GPLv2 which Linux is licensed
under forbids inclusion of the ZFS code in the Linux kernel.  Ergo, FUSE
comes to the rescue for those who want to play with ZFS in a GNU/Linux
system, albeit that I expect that need to become superseded in the
foreseeable future by the focus on btrfs, which is supposed to offer the
same functionality as ZFS.

[1] Uhh, I don't have any of those myself, but then again, I have been
    informed by certain individuals in alt.os.linux.ubuntu [2] that I am
    "not normal". :-)

[2] No, I'm not running Ubuntu either.  I prefer Gentoo for servers and
    specialized workstations, and I'm running the x86-64 version of
    Mageia 1 here on this box, with an old 32-bit PCLinuxOS as a
    fallback on a PATA hard disk which came out of a broken machine.
    Given that the SATA hard disk already failed within a few months
    after I had purchased this machine, it was a good thing that I still
    had that PCLinuxOS, so I'm keeping it around just in case.

--
= Aragorn =
(registered GNU/Linux user #223157)

On 2012-10-22 05:21, Aragorn <stry...@telenet.be.invalid> wrote:

If you get an USB stick from a non-linux user (and even if you get it
from a linux user) there is a good chance that it is NTFS formatted. The
chance may be less than 50%, but it is definitely larger than zero.

So yes, you might want to mount "your" NTFS partitions, even if you
don't have Windows.

You don't need FUSE for that. You can compile zfs as a kernel module:
http://zfsonlinux.org/

Linux distributions can't include that because of the conflicting
licenses but nothing stops you as a user (or sysadmin).

        hp

--
   _  | Peter J. Holzer    | Deprecating human carelessness and
|_|_) | Sysadmin WSR       | ignorance has no successful track record.
| |   | h...@hjp.at         |
__/   | http://www.hjp.at/ |  -- Bill Code on a...@irtf.org

On 10/21/2012 05:40 PM, Jim Haynes wrote:

<snip>

I started out with Linux about 12 years ago with Red Hat 5.2 .

Though I used Linux on a part-time basis for many years I decided to
switch to it full time about three years ago. Since I started out with
Red Hat I felt partial to it, so I went with Fedora. Within a few months
I realized that was a mistake as it's simply a Beta product that serves
as a testing ground for RHEL. I had more problems with it than I need to
go into so I moved on.

I then decided to perform "test installs" of a number of the main
distributions out there...and for me Ubuntu was the best choice.
Due to it now using Unity by default (which is horrible) if I were
starting over I'd just go straight to Debian.

Not to mention things like cameras.

--
Ineptocracy

(in-ep-toc’-ra-cy) – a system of government where the least capable to
lead are elected by the least capable of producing, and where the
members of society least likely to sustain themselves or succeed, are
rewarded with goods and services paid for by the confiscated wealth of a
diminishing number of producers.

Thanks for confirming my suspicions.

That old fashioned Ubuntu - or Debian as it is known - is a good basic
installation.

For people who actually just want to install something that basically
works without having to get out te compiler or a text editor.

--
Ineptocracy

(in-ep-toc’-ra-cy) – a system of government where the least capable to
lead are elected by the least capable of producing, and where the
members of society least likely to sustain themselves or succeed, are
rewarded with goods and services paid for by the confiscated wealth of a
diminishing number of producers.

I have my own LFS distro, based on my needs and in the future it will not
be what I what and need because of this insane feature creep.

Linux is going too far away and is pursuing change for the sake of
change,  like the systemd hyperbole, all of linux will be systemd in the
future. You can see that once the change is made there will be nothing
else,  it is even creeping into the kernel.

BSD will not go there and remain a true UNIX like system.

Arch linux is even more bleeding edge than Fedora and fully systemd.

[putolin]

Systemd a solution looking for a problem, that solves nothing.
If I wanted ms windows I would just use ms windows.

On Monday 22 October 2012 13:57, GangGreene conveyed the following to
comp.os.linux.misc...

Hmm...  The thing with systemd is that it is developed at RedHat, by
Lennart Poettering, who is - to put it mildly - rather arrogant, and
disdainful of other distributions.  Also developed at RedHat, by Kay
Sievers, is udev.

Now, Sievers and Poettering are working on streamlining and integrating
systemd and udev in such a way that you will not be able to use udev
without systemd anymore in the foreseeable future, because only RedHat
and derivatives matter, and all other distributions are irrelevant, in
their opinion.  

However, these other and irrelevant distributions - such as Gentoo - are
already working on alternatives.  For one, Gentoo offers the option of
using an alternative /dev handler, mdev, and the other solution is to
fork udev.  Part of what brought this about was Sievers's and
Poettering's screwup on account of having the both of them invoke
scripts which were living under /usr before /usr was mounted, which
Sievers and Poettering then "made more consistent" - so as to have it
appear as if it was intentional - by installing systemd under /usr/sbin,
rather than /sbin, and which was retroactively justified as being an
intended merge of /usr with the /bin, /sbin and /lib{64} directories,
"for greater compatibility with UNIX, and specifically Solaris".

The merge of /bin, /lib and /sbin with their counterparts under /usr may
indeed be as certain versions of proprietary UNIX have already been
doing it for quite some time, but it does break the ability to boot a
Linux kernel without using an initramfs if you happen to have /usr on a
filesystem separate from the root filesystem itself.  This did not make
a number of people happy in the Gentoo community, where people are
accustomed to rolling their own kernels and foregoing the use of an
initramfs or initrd.

So Sievers and Poettering may think that they are deities and that they
can control the future of GNU/Linux development, and indeed, a number of
distributions chooses to rather comply with the mainstream rather than
go against it, but Sievers and Poettering have obviously overlooked that
very specific property of the FLOSS community called "forking".  
Whenever something evolves into a direction that generates rejection by
a sufficiently critical mass, the project will get forked.

As an example, look at KDE4.  The distributions themselves were pushing
KDE4 long before it was production-ready, and as a result, several
developers chose to fork the old, trusted and reliable KDE3, and this
has then resulted in what is now called Trinity Desktop, a highly
stabilized and modernized version of KDE3, currently at version 3.5.13
or whereabouts.

Similarly, not everyone was happy about GNOME3, with as a result that
alternative GNOME Shells were developed such as MATE and Cinnamon, and
they are quite popular.

The bottom line is that, yes, the mainstream will follow the course set
by a few narrow-minded individuals, but there will always be resistance
to that course from developers who do not agree with the mainstream.

On account of the BSDs, I can only say that, first of all and in light
of the above, BSD follows the Cathedral model, rather than the Bazaar,
so it's not evident to fork something over there, unless you're forking
the entire distribution, as was the reason why NetBSD and OpenBSD came
to be.

Secondly on account of the BSDs, while they generally may be reliable -
and OpenBSD is probably the most secure one - hardware support in BSD
lags behind on the Linux kernel by several years.  Just think about the
proprietary video drivers from nVidia or ATi, but that's just the tip of
the iceberg.  There's a lot more hardware which is supported in Linux
but not yet in the BSDs.

I'm not trying to advocate in favor of GNU/Linux and/or against BSD
specifically.  I'm just listing some facts to consider.  In the end, the
choice is yours, but suffice to say that, if you do stick with
GNU/Linux, you are probably better off with a non-RPM distribution,
because most of those follow the template outlined by RedHat.

I am running Mageia 1 on this machine here, with Mageia 2 already being
the mainstream now and Mageia 3 awaiting release, simply because Mageia
1 still doesn't use systemd.

Like somebody else said in this thread, systemd is a solution looking
for a problem, and it attempts to do much more than simply replace the
traditional System V init.  For one, it also attempts to replace
(x)inetd, and quite frankly, it isn't even half as transparent to the
user as either one of those.

Ultimately, it all depends on your own planning.  If you're someone who
favors a long term support platform, then you could already bite the
bullet and check out Gentoo now, but if you're someone who regularly
installs new distributions, then I would advise you to use Debian or
Slackware for now, and the same advice applies to the OP. ;-)

--
= Aragorn =
(registered GNU/Linux user #223157)

On 10/22/2012 06:30 AM, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

<snip>

Yes. It's a very straightforward distribution and a good one IMHO
--
https://www.createspace.com/3707686

On 10/21/2012 5:40 PM, Jim Haynes wrote:

I went from Slack to:

1. Ubuntu
2. Lubuntu
3. Mint (various cinnamon, mate, xfce, ...)
4. Peppermint
5. Bodhi

I have been sticking with Bodhi for a while now.  I don't know what you
will be doing, but I just use basic simple stuff these days.  I needed
something that was light weight for my old lappy that doesn't need a lot
of memory as i have 512 meg.  If I had a newer machine probably would be
Mint Mate.  It just works without a lot of messing around with it.

There are many to try...

--
Steal a little and go to jail, steal a lot and become King.

http://twovoyagers.com/improve-usenet.org/