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Jim Haynes
Oct 21, 2012, 6:40:21 PM10/21/12
to
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
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
The Natural Philosopher
Oct 21, 2012, 7:00:05 PM10/21/12
to
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.
GangGreene
Oct 21, 2012, 7:05:50 PM10/21/12
to
On Sun, 21 Oct 2012 17:40:21 -0500, Jim Haynes wrote:
> 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.
Have a look at PC-BSD if you are serious about BSD.
> 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.
It is based on FreeBSD.
They have a live dvd/usb.
goggle is your friend
You can download the manual (pdf) there also.
>
> 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?
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...
J G Miller
Oct 21, 2012, 7:31:46 PM10/21/12
to
On Sunday, October 21st, 2012, at 17:40:21h -0500, Jim Haynes pondered:
> 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?
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.
> Or am I going to have to put some effort into living with
> the beast as it is, or abandon Linux entirely?
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.
> 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?
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.
> Or am I going to have to put some effort into living with
> the beast as it is, or abandon Linux entirely?
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.
Bit Twister
Oct 21, 2012, 7:37:12 PM10/21/12
to
On Sun, 21 Oct 2012 17:40:21 -0500, Jim Haynes wrote:
> 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.
Ah, the good old days. :)
> 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.
Yep, I also have been down that road.
Now running Mageia Linux.
Mageia Control Center is the GUI application to manage almost everything.
> 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.
going systemd.
> 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.
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.
> I don't know how to
> turn it off, so I just removed it from the system.
as root systemctl stop tracker.service
systemctl disable tracker.service
> 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,
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.
> 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.
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.
Whiskers
Oct 21, 2012, 7:51:14 PM10/21/12
to
On 2012-10-21, J G Miller <mil...@yoyo.ORG> wrote:
> On Sunday, October 21st, 2012, at 17:40:21h -0500, Jim Haynes pondered:
>
>> 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?
>
> 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.
Arch now defaults to systemd, and existing users are 'being encouraged' to
> On Sunday, October 21st, 2012, at 17:40:21h -0500, Jim Haynes pondered:
>
>> 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?
>
> 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.
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.
>> Or am I going to have to put some effort into living with
>> the beast as it is, or abandon Linux entirely?
>
> 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.
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
-- ~~~~~~~~~~
John Hasler
Oct 21, 2012, 7:51:45 PM10/21/12
to
Jim Haynes writes:
> I'm a Linux user since the days of SLS and Slackware on floppy disks.
So have I.
> 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 don't know what tracker does, and it's probably nothing that I
> want done anyway.
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.
> And I see something called FUSE running that I'm not aware of ever
> needing or wanting.
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.
> I'm starting to think I was more productive in the old days of TWM.
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
jha...@newsguy.com
Dancing Horse Hill
Elmwood, WI USA
John Hasler
Oct 21, 2012, 8:38:46 PM10/21/12
to
Whiskers writes:
> Debian stable is noted for reliability, but is too conservative for
> some.
There's Testing and Unstable for those who prefer to be closer to the
> Debian stable is noted for reliability, but is too conservative for
> some.
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.
> Systemd protagonists would argue that there's more to it than 'booting
> fast'.
The Natural Philosopher
Oct 21, 2012, 9:52:42 PM10/21/12
to
John Hasler wrote:
> Whiskers writes:
>> Debian stable is noted for reliability, but is too conservative for
>> some.
>
> 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.
>
Indeed. OTOH gnome is a big package of a lot of useful utilities and
> Whiskers writes:
>> Debian stable is noted for reliability, but is too conservative for
>> some.
>
> 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.
>
applications.
>> Systemd protagonists would argue that there's more to it than 'booting
>> fast'.
>
> Too much more.
Matthew of Boswell
Oct 21, 2012, 9:56:03 PM10/21/12
to
On Sun, 21 Oct 2012 17:40:21 -0500
Jim Haynes <jha...@alumni.uark.edu> wrote:
> 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?
I use Arch <http://archlinux.org>. It's simple, kind of like slackware.
> 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?
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
Dan Espen
Oct 21, 2012, 11:15:39 PM10/21/12
to
Jim Haynes <jha...@alumni.uark.edu> writes:
> 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.
Go here:
> 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.
http://ask.fedoraproject.org/question/131/how-do-i-disable-tracker
> And I see something called FUSE
> running that I'm not aware of ever needing or wanting.
> 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.
Fedora Forum is pretty good.
> 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?
--
Dan Espen
Dan Espen
Oct 21, 2012, 11:18:06 PM10/21/12
to
The Natural Philosopher <t...@invalid.invalid> writes:
> John Hasler wrote:
>> Whiskers writes:
>>> Debian stable is noted for reliability, but is too conservative for
>>> some.
>>
>> 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.
>
> Indeed. OTOH gnome is a big package of a lot of useful utilities and
> applications.
Gnome applications run under any WM, including FVWM.
> John Hasler wrote:
>> Whiskers writes:
>>> Debian stable is noted for reliability, but is too conservative for
>>> some.
>>
>> 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.
>
> Indeed. OTOH gnome is a big package of a lot of useful utilities and
> applications.
--
Dan Espen
Keith Keller
Oct 21, 2012, 11:43:10 PM10/21/12
to
On 2012-10-21, Jim Haynes <jha...@alumni.uark.edu> wrote:
> 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.
I don't think RHEL/CentOS 6.x uses systemd. At least, it's not on
> 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.
my CentOS 6.3 box (or AFAIR any of my other 6.x boxes).
> 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?
RHEL/CentOS may also be a good choice, though they tend to be a little
older.
--keith
--
kkeller...@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
Aragorn
Oct 22, 2012, 12:55:54 AM10/22/12
to
On Monday 22 October 2012 01:05, GangGreene conveyed the following to
comp.os.linux.misc...
> What linux is UNIX like? You have to be kidding!
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)
comp.os.linux.misc...
> What linux is UNIX like? You have to be kidding!
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)
Aragorn
Oct 22, 2012, 1:21:18 AM10/22/12
to
On Monday 22 October 2012 01:51, John Hasler conveyed the following to
comp.os.linux.misc...
> Jim Haynes writes:
>
>> And I see something called FUSE running that I'm not aware of ever
>> needing or wanting.
>
> 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.
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.
comp.os.linux.misc...
> Jim Haynes writes:
>
>> And I see something called FUSE running that I'm not aware of ever
>> needing or wanting.
>
> 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.
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.
Peter J. Holzer
Oct 22, 2012, 5:48:41 AM10/22/12
to
On 2012-10-22 05:21, Aragorn <str...@telenet.be.invalid> wrote:
> 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>)
If you get an USB stick from a non-linux user (and even if you get it
> 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>)
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.
> 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,
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 as...@irtf.org
philo
Oct 22, 2012, 6:29:31 AM10/22/12
to
On 10/21/2012 05:40 PM, Jim Haynes wrote:
> 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.
>
<snip>
> 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.
>
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.
The Natural Philosopher
Oct 22, 2012, 7:28:47 AM10/22/12
to
Peter J. Holzer wrote:
> On 2012-10-22 05:21, Aragorn <str...@telenet.be.invalid> wrote:
>> 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>)
>
> 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.
>
Not to mention things like cameras.
> On 2012-10-22 05:21, Aragorn <str...@telenet.be.invalid> wrote:
>> 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>)
>
> 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.
>
>
>> 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,
>
> 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
>
--
The Natural Philosopher
Oct 22, 2012, 7:30:25 AM10/22/12
to
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.
GangGreene
Oct 22, 2012, 7:57:25 AM10/22/12
to
On Mon, 22 Oct 2012 06:55:54 +0200, Aragorn wrote:
> On Monday 22 October 2012 01:05, GangGreene conveyed the following to
> comp.os.linux.misc...
>
>> What linux is UNIX like? You have to be kidding!
>
> Slackware, Arch, Gentoo, LFS... :-)
I have my own LFS distro, based on my needs and in the future it will not
> On Monday 22 October 2012 01:05, GangGreene conveyed the following to
> comp.os.linux.misc...
>
>> What linux is UNIX like? You have to be kidding!
>
> Slackware, Arch, Gentoo, LFS... :-)
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.
GangGreene
Oct 22, 2012, 8:03:00 AM10/22/12
to
GangGreene
Oct 22, 2012, 8:05:40 AM10/22/12
to
On Sun, 21 Oct 2012 23:51:14 +0000, Whiskers wrote:
[putolin]
> 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.
Systemd a solution looking for a problem, that solves nothing.
If I wanted ms windows I would just use ms windows.
[putolin]
> 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.
If I wanted ms windows I would just use ms windows.
Aragorn
Oct 22, 2012, 8:37:54 AM10/22/12
to
On Monday 22 October 2012 13:57, GangGreene conveyed the following to
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. ;-)
comp.os.linux.misc...
> On Mon, 22 Oct 2012 06:55:54 +0200, Aragorn wrote:
>
>> On Monday 22 October 2012 01:05, GangGreene conveyed the following to
>> comp.os.linux.misc...
>>
>>> What linux is UNIX like? You have to be kidding!
>>
>> Slackware, Arch, Gentoo, LFS... :-)
>
> 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.
Hmm... The thing with systemd is that it is developed at RedHat, by
> On Mon, 22 Oct 2012 06:55:54 +0200, Aragorn wrote:
>
>> On Monday 22 October 2012 01:05, GangGreene conveyed the following to
>> comp.os.linux.misc...
>>
>>> What linux is UNIX like? You have to be kidding!
>>
>> Slackware, Arch, Gentoo, LFS... :-)
>
> 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.
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. ;-)
philo
Oct 22, 2012, 10:27:44 AM10/22/12
to
On 10/22/2012 06:30 AM, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
> philo wrote:
>> On 10/21/2012 05:40 PM, Jim Haynes wrote:
>>> 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.
>>>
<snip>
> philo wrote:
>> On 10/21/2012 05:40 PM, Jim Haynes wrote:
>>> 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.
>>>
<snip>
> 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.
>
>
>
Yes. It's a very straightforward distribution and a good one IMHO
>
> 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.
>
>
>
--
https://www.createspace.com/3707686
telsar
Oct 22, 2012, 12:08:16 PM10/22/12
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/
Loki Harfagr
Oct 22, 2012, 1:13:38 PM10/22/12
to
Sun, 21 Oct 2012 21:56:03 -0400, Matthew of Boswell did cat :
> On Sun, 21 Oct 2012 17:40:21 -0500
> Jim Haynes <jha...@alumni.uark.edu> wrote:
>
>> 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?
>
>
> I use Arch <http://archlinux.org>. It's simple, kind of like slackware.
yup, it was, and in some way stil is, but it's now fallen in
the Dr evilclumsy hands (pods?) and the last resources are now
circling in systemd-shootmefootagainpromisethattimewonthurtohnoos' pit
and the penduluum has started to move.
> 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
ah well, it's aimed to a very different phylum I'm afraid ;-)
> 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.
...
easy-admin port of an excellent distro (Slackware) there's SalixOS:
http://www.salixos.org/wiki/index.php?title=Home&redirect=no
the 14.0 is still named beta1 but should be named rc-final ;-)
http://www.salixos.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=3996
and the system of compatibility and building is nice and powerful,
that was for the request about "simpler and easier to admin
while up2date".
Now, of course if you want to go explore the wilderness Plan9
and Oberon are probably nice paths to stroll for a while :-)
(a problem could be that you might not find many attackers but
it'd take you some time to even know that you've been assaulted :D)
> On Sun, 21 Oct 2012 17:40:21 -0500
> Jim Haynes <jha...@alumni.uark.edu> wrote:
>
>> 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?
>
>
> I use Arch <http://archlinux.org>. It's simple, kind of like slackware.
the Dr evilclumsy hands (pods?) and the last resources are now
circling in systemd-shootmefootagainpromisethattimewonthurtohnoos' pit
and the penduluum has started to move.
> 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.
> 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.
To OP: in case you'd like to take a test to a good easy-install
> 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.
easy-admin port of an excellent distro (Slackware) there's SalixOS:
http://www.salixos.org/wiki/index.php?title=Home&redirect=no
the 14.0 is still named beta1 but should be named rc-final ;-)
http://www.salixos.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=3996
and the system of compatibility and building is nice and powerful,
that was for the request about "simpler and easier to admin
while up2date".
Now, of course if you want to go explore the wilderness Plan9
and Oberon are probably nice paths to stroll for a while :-)
(a problem could be that you might not find many attackers but
it'd take you some time to even know that you've been assaulted :D)
Aaron W. Hsu
Oct 22, 2012, 1:27:21 PM10/22/12
to
On Sun, 21 Oct 2012 18:40:21 -0400, Jim Haynes <jha...@alumni.uark.edu>
goals is explicitly to try to be UNIX-like, or at least as UNIX-like as it
can be. I definitely think it scores as the most UNIX-like Linux out there
at the moment. It's also good about getting security updates and has
fairly recent software packaged by default. It's easy to update to more
recent software if the need arises, but Slackware is quite good about
having up-to-date releases that are stable and comfortably spaced out.
It's my daily workstation OS right now, and it's quite good.
Still, the BSDs are really nice, and I have to say that I would align
myself more with the BSDs than with Linux, personally. I really like
OpenBSD, and DragonFlyBSD is making some waves in terms of performance.
FreeBSD or PC-BSD is probably the most friendly to someone who is used to
Linux.
--
Aaron W. Hsu | arc...@sacrideo.us | http://www.sacrideo.us
Programming is just another word for the Lost Art of Thinking.
wrote:
> 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?
So, I'm a big fan of Slackware in the Linux community, because one of its
> 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?
goals is explicitly to try to be UNIX-like, or at least as UNIX-like as it
can be. I definitely think it scores as the most UNIX-like Linux out there
at the moment. It's also good about getting security updates and has
fairly recent software packaged by default. It's easy to update to more
recent software if the need arises, but Slackware is quite good about
having up-to-date releases that are stable and comfortably spaced out.
It's my daily workstation OS right now, and it's quite good.
Still, the BSDs are really nice, and I have to say that I would align
myself more with the BSDs than with Linux, personally. I really like
OpenBSD, and DragonFlyBSD is making some waves in terms of performance.
FreeBSD or PC-BSD is probably the most friendly to someone who is used to
Linux.
--
Aaron W. Hsu | arc...@sacrideo.us | http://www.sacrideo.us
Programming is just another word for the Lost Art of Thinking.
Jim Haynes
Oct 22, 2012, 3:12:43 PM10/22/12
to
Thanks for all the suggestions - some of them I will have to check out.
The reason I want a distribution that stays up to date is simply fear
of security bugs. And a second reason is that once some time back I
was trying to do something on a Ubuntu system and the program I was
using kept breaking. I discovered that there was a much more recent
version of same program out there, and compiled it and had no more
trouble.
I guess the big obstacle in going over to a BSD system is that I have
all my files in a Linux file system - can BSD mount an Linux ext4 file
system?
The reason I want a distribution that stays up to date is simply fear
of security bugs. And a second reason is that once some time back I
was trying to do something on a Ubuntu system and the program I was
using kept breaking. I discovered that there was a much more recent
version of same program out there, and compiled it and had no more
trouble.
I guess the big obstacle in going over to a BSD system is that I have
all my files in a Linux file system - can BSD mount an Linux ext4 file
system?
John Hasler
Oct 22, 2012, 3:45:57 PM10/22/12
to
Jim Haynes writes:
> The reason I want a distribution that stays up to date is simply fear
> of security bugs.
All security fixes are backported to Debian Stable. It is widely used
> The reason I want a distribution that stays up to date is simply fear
> of security bugs.
in industry and academia for just that reason: no unpleasant surprises
due to sudden changes in the behavior of programs, yet no unpatched
security bugs.
> And a second reason is that once some time back I was trying to do
> something on a Ubuntu system and the program I was using kept
> breaking. I discovered that there was a much more recent version of
> same program out there, and compiled it and had no more trouble.
Debian Backports <backports.debian.org> makes recent versions of
> And a second reason is that once some time back I was trying to do
> something on a Ubuntu system and the program I was using kept
> breaking. I discovered that there was a much more recent version of
> same program out there, and compiled it and had no more trouble.
programs available to people running Stable. You can pick and choose
where you want to be up to date and where you prefer predictable
stability.
GangGreene
Oct 23, 2012, 10:45:11 AM10/23/12
to
On Mon, 22 Oct 2012 14:37:54 +0200, Aragorn wrote:
[putolin]
>
> 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.
>
It was also said that udev was going to be a stand alone as well, That
was a lie.
> 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".
>
Well the folks at LFS also mildly forked udev as to be able to be
installed without systemd.
> 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.
Yes just destroy the previous environment and force it to be like they
need it.
> 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.
You are talking to the first successful packager of Trinity for Arch
linux...
[putolin]
> Like somebody else said in this thread, systemd is a solution looking
> for a problem,
That was me
>
> 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. ;-)
Why would I use those when I have my own made from scratch distro?
[putolin]
>
> 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.
>
was a lie.
> 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".
>
installed without systemd.
> 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.
need it.
> 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.
linux...
[putolin]
> Like somebody else said in this thread, systemd is a solution looking
> for a problem,
>
> 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. ;-)
Aaron W. Hsu
Oct 23, 2012, 10:18:57 PM10/23/12
to
On Mon, 22 Oct 2012 15:12:43 -0400, Jim Haynes <jha...@alumni.uark.edu>
wrote:
> The reason I want a distribution that stays up to date is simply fear
> of security bugs. And a second reason is that once some time back I
> was trying to do something on a Ubuntu system and the program I was
> using kept breaking. I discovered that there was a much more recent
> version of same program out there, and compiled it and had no more
> trouble.
One of the nice things about Slackware (for me at least) is that they seem
to stay on top of Security updates reasonably well, but moreover, that the
packaging system doesn't complain too badly if I want to update my
software. While this has its downsides as well, I am confident enough in
my own understanding of how things work that if I want to update a piece
of software, I don't want to have to jump through too many hoops to just
build a new package and replace the old one. With certain distributions,
this can be a real headache, and often requires a whole team managing
things so that the package manager doesn't go crazy on you.
Of course, those systems do have their own advantages, so it's more of a
matter of taste. I happen to like the extra freedom I get with Slackware's
methodology, so I'm on Slackware.
wrote:
> The reason I want a distribution that stays up to date is simply fear
> of security bugs. And a second reason is that once some time back I
> was trying to do something on a Ubuntu system and the program I was
> using kept breaking. I discovered that there was a much more recent
> version of same program out there, and compiled it and had no more
> trouble.
to stay on top of Security updates reasonably well, but moreover, that the
packaging system doesn't complain too badly if I want to update my
software. While this has its downsides as well, I am confident enough in
my own understanding of how things work that if I want to update a piece
of software, I don't want to have to jump through too many hoops to just
build a new package and replace the old one. With certain distributions,
this can be a real headache, and often requires a whole team managing
things so that the package manager doesn't go crazy on you.
Of course, those systems do have their own advantages, so it's more of a
matter of taste. I happen to like the extra freedom I get with Slackware's
methodology, so I'm on Slackware.
Chick Tower
Oct 23, 2012, 10:22:16 PM10/23/12
to
On 2012-10-22, Jim Haynes <jha...@alumni.uark.edu> wrote:
> I guess the big obstacle in going over to a BSD system is that I have
> all my files in a Linux file system - can BSD mount an Linux ext4 file
> system?
My knowledge is a couple of years old, and came from playing with
> I guess the big obstacle in going over to a BSD system is that I have
> all my files in a Linux file system - can BSD mount an Linux ext4 file
> system?
FreeBSD 8.2, so things may have changed with the new version of FreeBSD.
FreeBSD couldn't read ext3 without having some simple patches applied.
I don't know if those patches would also allow for reading ext4
filesystems, or if there are other patches, or perhaps it is now a
feature of the FreeBSD kernel.
You could probably find an answer in the FreeBSD forums, which may be
found by starting at
http://www.freebsd.org
--
Chick Tower
For e-mail: colm DOT sent DOT towerboy AT xoxy DOT net
Chick Tower
Oct 24, 2012, 4:45:23 PM10/24/12
to
On 2012-10-24, Chick Tower <c.t...@deadspam.com> wrote:
> My knowledge is a couple of years old, and came from playing with
> FreeBSD 8.2, so things may have changed with the new version of FreeBSD.
> FreeBSD couldn't read ext3 without having some simple patches applied.
> I don't know if those patches would also allow for reading ext4
> filesystems, or if there are other patches, or perhaps it is now a
> feature of the FreeBSD kernel.
>
> You could probably find an answer in the FreeBSD forums, which may be
> found by starting at
>
> http://www.freebsd.org
Upon further reflection, I realized that patch I mentioned may be for
> My knowledge is a couple of years old, and came from playing with
> FreeBSD 8.2, so things may have changed with the new version of FreeBSD.
> FreeBSD couldn't read ext3 without having some simple patches applied.
> I don't know if those patches would also allow for reading ext4
> filesystems, or if there are other patches, or perhaps it is now a
> feature of the FreeBSD kernel.
>
> You could probably find an answer in the FreeBSD forums, which may be
> found by starting at
>
> http://www.freebsd.org
reading ext2 filesystems. You had better get your answer straight from
the source.
bad sector
Nov 3, 2012, 8:27:56 AM11/3/12
to
On 10/22/2012 06:29 AM, philo wrote:
> 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.
My thinking too, why not just go with the mother ship instead? That
> 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.
said, I did no better myself when way back then I went over to Suse as
it grew out of Slackware. I do however keep both Slackware and Debian
installed, set up and in the boot menu on all my computers...just in
case. These are not playthings but instantly usable ready-1 & ready-2.
In addition I periodically tool around with others such as one of the
'buntus last week (rejected) while next up is Mageia (because it seems
to be a rising star). Correct me if I'm wrong, I believe Debian has a
_huge_ volunteer base (not same as user base).
J G Miller
Nov 3, 2012, 8:13:13 PM11/3/12
to
On Saturday, November 3rd, 2012, at 08:27:56h -0400,
Bad Sector pondered:
> Correct me if I'm wrong, I believe Debian has a
> _huge_ volunteer base (not same as user base).
Correct, but more and more of those volunteers are going AWOL
and this is resulting in a noticeable decline in the quality
of Debian.
There are currently of the order of 39 500 packages in Debian
and just not enough active volunteers to maintain them.
I would not be surprised if there was not a major cull of
abandoned packages in the not too distant future.
It should be pointed out that these effectively unmaintained
packages are not major core packages but peripheral ones,
but there are even some what I would call "major" secondary
level packages which have been abandoned by their maintainer
eg FVWM
Bad Sector pondered:
> Correct me if I'm wrong, I believe Debian has a
> _huge_ volunteer base (not same as user base).
and this is resulting in a noticeable decline in the quality
of Debian.
There are currently of the order of 39 500 packages in Debian
and just not enough active volunteers to maintain them.
I would not be surprised if there was not a major cull of
abandoned packages in the not too distant future.
It should be pointed out that these effectively unmaintained
packages are not major core packages but peripheral ones,
but there are even some what I would call "major" secondary
level packages which have been abandoned by their maintainer
eg FVWM
Richard Kettlewell
Nov 4, 2012, 4:05:30 AM11/4/12
to
J G Miller <mil...@yoyo.ORG> writes:
> Bad Sector pondered:
>> Correct me if I'm wrong, I believe Debian has a _huge_ volunteer base
>> (not same as user base).
>
> Correct, but more and more of those volunteers are going AWOL
> and this is resulting in a noticeable decline in the quality
> of Debian.
Your evidence for these claims?
> Bad Sector pondered:
>> Correct me if I'm wrong, I believe Debian has a _huge_ volunteer base
>> (not same as user base).
>
> Correct, but more and more of those volunteers are going AWOL
> and this is resulting in a noticeable decline in the quality
> of Debian.
--
http://www.greenend.org.uk/rjk/
philo
Nov 4, 2012, 6:04:08 AM11/4/12
to
not really want to start all over...I have way too many personal
settings. Since 10.04 is soon going to end it's LTS cycle I decided to
clone my drive and try an upgrade to 12.04 and I'll be darned...it
worked fine.
Of course I had to immediately get rid of Unity and there were a couple
of other minor "improvements" that I had to fix...
but it looks like I will be staying with Ubuntu for many more years.
--
https://www.createspace.com/3707686
J G Miller
Nov 4, 2012, 8:51:19 AM11/4/12
to
On Sunday, November 4th, 2012, at 09:05:30h +0000,
Richard Kettlewell wrote:
> Your evidence for these claims?
Bug reports which remain "unclassified" for more than 3 months.
> Your evidence for these claims?
J G Miller
Nov 4, 2012, 8:55:32 AM11/4/12
to
maintainer gone AWOL?
QUOTE
Thanks for your bug report, it sounds like a good idea.
However, I am no longer a Debian developer, so I cannot
make changes to the package. You are welcome to take over
the package (very low maintenance) or contact upstream.
Cheers,
/JP
(Sent from my phone.)
UNQUOTE
Richard Kettlewell
Nov 4, 2012, 9:25:36 AM11/4/12
to
J G Miller <mil...@yoyo.ORG> writes:
> J G Miller wrote:
>> Richard Kettlewell wrote:
>>> Your evidence for these claims?
>>
>> Bug reports which remain "unclassified" for more than 3 months.
>
> And how about this response to a bug report from the former
> maintainer gone AWOL?
>
> QUOTE
>
> Thanks for your bug report, it sounds like a good idea.
> However, I am no longer a Debian developer, so I cannot
> make changes to the package. You are welcome to take over
> the package (very low maintenance) or contact upstream.
>
> Cheers,
> /JP
>
> (Sent from my phone.)
>
> UNQUOTE
Don’t be so ridiculous. Volunteer turnover is not “evidence of
>> Richard Kettlewell wrote:
>>> Your evidence for these claims?
>>
>> Bug reports which remain "unclassified" for more than 3 months.
>
> And how about this response to a bug report from the former
> maintainer gone AWOL?
>
> QUOTE
>
> Thanks for your bug report, it sounds like a good idea.
> However, I am no longer a Debian developer, so I cannot
> make changes to the package. You are welcome to take over
> the package (very low maintenance) or contact upstream.
>
> Cheers,
> /JP
>
> (Sent from my phone.)
>
> UNQUOTE
decline”.
--
http://www.greenend.org.uk/rjk/
Michael Black
Nov 4, 2012, 9:37:27 AM11/4/12
to
Michael
J G Miller
Nov 4, 2012, 11:31:11 AM11/4/12
to
On Sunday, November 4th, 2012, at 14:25:36h +0000,
It is not a case of turnover but of depletion and non
replenishment of the volunteer pool.
Richard Kettlewell wrote:
> Don’t be so ridiculous. Volunteer turnover is not “evidence of
> decline”.
You are the one being ridiculous.
> Don’t be so ridiculous. Volunteer turnover is not “evidence of
> decline”.
It is not a case of turnover but of depletion and non
replenishment of the volunteer pool.
Richard Kettlewell
Nov 4, 2012, 12:07:35 PM11/4/12
to
J G Miller <mil...@yoyo.ORG> writes:
> Richard Kettlewell wrote:
>> Don’t be so ridiculous. Volunteer turnover is not “evidence of
>> decline”.
>
> You are the one being ridiculous.
>
> It is not a case of turnover but of depletion and non replenishment of
> the volunteer pool.
You claim there’s decline. What you posted was evidence of, at most,
>> Don’t be so ridiculous. Volunteer turnover is not “evidence of
>> decline”.
>
> You are the one being ridiculous.
>
> It is not a case of turnover but of depletion and non replenishment of
> the volunteer pool.
volunteer turnover. Offering evidence of a single volunteer leaving
when challenged to produce evidence of decline is, indeed, ridiculous.
--
http://www.greenend.org.uk/rjk/
Jim Haynes
Nov 9, 2012, 12:17:21 AM11/9/12
to
On 2012-10-21, Bit Twister <BitTw...@mouse-potato.com> wrote:
>
> Heheheh, yup been there also.
>
> as root systemctl stop tracker.service
> systemctl disable tracker.service
>
>
Uh, well, systemctl doesn't show that as a service, and it appears from
a ps listing that the tracker stuff is run out of gnome session. I
remember there used to be a thing in gnome where you told it what
things you wanted started up when you log in, but that seems to be
better hidden now.
Maybe I should do like you and try KDE again. I've read that even Linus
Torvalds kinda likes KDE now.
>
> Heheheh, yup been there also.
>
> as root systemctl stop tracker.service
> systemctl disable tracker.service
>
>
Uh, well, systemctl doesn't show that as a service, and it appears from
a ps listing that the tracker stuff is run out of gnome session. I
remember there used to be a thing in gnome where you told it what
things you wanted started up when you log in, but that seems to be
better hidden now.
Maybe I should do like you and try KDE again. I've read that even Linus
Torvalds kinda likes KDE now.
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