[dev] Suckless (*NIX|*BSD) Distribution?
Antony Jepson
search of <d...@suckless.org>) but what distributions do you guys use on
a daily basis? I recently built a new computer and I'm looking for a
good OS to install on there.
I've been eyeing Crux lately but maybe Gentoo would be a better choice?
If it makes a difference, I currently use Arch.
Comments or suggestions for a (quality|suckless|KISS) distribution
(doesn't matter if *BSD or *NIX) would be appreciated. I read about
pancake's distribution [1] and it definitely sounds interesting.
--
Sincerely,
Antony Jepson / <anto...@gmail.com> / GPG Key: 0xFA10ED80
Kris Maglione
>I've been eyeing Crux lately but maybe Gentoo would be a better choice?
>If it makes a difference, I currently use Arch.
“Gentoo is for ricers.” Stay away from it unless you're the kind
of hopeless idealist who doesn't mind waiting hours for simple
software installs and days before you have a usable system. If
you want simple-stupid, especially if you're BSD-minded, I'd
stick with Arch.
--
Kris Maglione
If the lessons of history teach us anything it is that nobody learns
the lessons that history teaches us.
Kurt H Maier
> I'm not sure if this has been asked before (although I did do a quick
> search of <d...@suckless.org>) but what distributions do you guys use on
> a daily basis? I recently built a new computer and I'm looking for a
> good OS to install on there.
I use Slackware primarily because Pat doesn't molest upstream code
very much. I like Arch okay but I don't really see the point of a
ports system.
--
# Kurt H Maier
Leandro Chescotta
it because of the hardware of my msi wind, that has more linux support
--
---------------------------------
http://aleyscha.spaces.live.com/
""El lugar mas peligroso de todos es el cielo... En el, cada
pensamiento se hace realidad... sea bueno o malo... creas tu paraiso o
tu infierno""
Dieter Plaetinck
Leandro Chescotta <leandro....@gmail.com> wrote:
> arch linux here... :P but looking at freebsd lately, only not trying
> it because of the hardware of my msi wind, that has more linux support
>
>
> On Sat, Jun 20, 2009 at 2:27 AM, Kurt H Maier<karm...@gmail.com>
> wrote:
> > On Fri, Jun 19, 2009 at 11:21 PM, Antony Jepson<anto...@gmail.com>
> > wrote:
> >> I'm not sure if this has been asked before (although I did do a
> >> quick search of <d...@suckless.org>) but what distributions do you
> >> guys use on a daily basis? I recently built a new computer and
> >> I'm looking for a good OS to install on there.
> >
> > I use Slackware primarily because Pat doesn't molest upstream code
> > very much. I like Arch okay but I don't really see the point of a
> > ports system.
> > --
> > # Kurt H Maier
> >
> >
>
>
>
Arch here too. I wouldn't know anything better then Crux or Arch.
Maybe Nixos? Though nixos has fancy tools that may not fit the "kiss"
label anymore.
Dieter
Claudio M. Alessi
can't image a way to handle packages better than it. OTOH the best OS I ever
try is NetBSD. It uses pkgsrc as main packages system which, similar is needed
in order to install most of the third party packages (without which the system
is still usable but umconfortable). Needless to say that I also use it on some
box. I must confess I'll use it as primary system (which actually is FreeBSD)
after a conflict between azalia(4) and the noapic support will be fixed.
Saying that people have to «stay away from it unless you're the kind of
hopeless idealist who doesn't mind waiting hours for simple software installs
and days before you have a usable system», as Gentoo and other
hours-setting-up-based OS like NetBSD are, you are discredit a large part of
OS users and developers which, apart the idealisms, believe in some other
technical concept as, for example, efficiency, customization and modularization
(which mean to have a light core where to build your OS upon).
That's why I use and suggests NetBSD as KISS, power and fast OS.
Regards,
Claudio M. Alessi
--
JID: smoppy AT gmail.com
WWW: http://cma.teroristi.org
Antoni Grzymala
> On Sat, Jun 20, 2009 at 12:21:54AM -0400, Antony Jepson wrote:
> >I've been eyeing Crux lately but maybe Gentoo would be a better
> >choice? If it makes a difference, I currently use Arch.
>
> “Gentoo is for ricers.” Stay away from it unless you're the kind of
> hopeless idealist who doesn't mind waiting hours for simple software
> installs and days before you have a usable system. If you want
> simple-stupid, especially if you're BSD-minded, I'd stick with Arch.
This is a common misconception that dates from years ago. Now the loud
wannabe Gentoo ricer kids have all died out of boredom or got day jobs
and Gentoo is happily used in production as a high quality distro with
great management tools. And easily tunable for light dependencies on
packages if that's what you need.
You can get a usable system in an afternoon (autobuild stage3) where the
installation is basically untarring the base system onto a fs and a
little configuration of the likes of fstab and such is to be done. Then
you build some X-tools, compile dwm and off you go.
I tried migrating my personal laptops to arch, debian and the like and
always keep getting back to Gentoo. Debian is great, but so much less
flexible than Gentoo, and Arch is fine when you get to use the basic
(small) set of packages but venturing beyond that into the AUR is a
*quality disaster*.
You may not like Gentoo for other valid reasons, but what you write is
sweet crap.
Best,
--
[a]
bharder
> I think you are a bit wrong. I'm not a Gentoo supporter, I used Debian since I
> can't image a way to handle packages better than it. OTOH the best OS I ever
> try is NetBSD. It uses pkgsrc as main packages system which, similar is needed
> in order to install most of the third party packages (without which the system
> is still usable but umconfortable). Needless to say that I also use it on some
> box. I must confess I'll use it as primary system (which actually is FreeBSD)
> after a conflict between azalia(4) and the noapic support will be fixed.
>
> hopeless idealist who doesn't mind waiting hours for simple software installs
> hours-setting-up-based OS like NetBSD are, you are discredit a large part of
> OS users and developers which, apart the idealisms, believe in some other
> technical concept as, for example, efficiency, customization and modularization
> (which mean to have a light core where to build your OS upon).
>
> That's why I use and suggests NetBSD as KISS, power and fast OS.
+1
--
Brad Harder,
Method Logic Digital Consulting
http://www.methodlogic.net
Anselm R Garbe
2009/6/20 Antony Jepson <anto...@gmail.com>
> I'm not sure if this has been asked before (although I did do a quick
> search of <d...@suckless.org>) but what distributions do you guys use on
> a daily basis? I recently built a new computer and I'm looking for a
> good OS to install on there.
>
> I've been eyeing Crux lately but maybe Gentoo would be a better choice?
> If it makes a difference, I currently use Arch.
>
> Comments or suggestions for a (quality|suckless|KISS) distribution
> (doesn't matter if *BSD or *NIX) would be appreciated. I read about
> pancake's distribution [1] and it definitely sounds interesting.
I started with FreeBSD, tried Slackware, Gentoo, Debian, went to
NetBSD and later OpenBSD, tried CRUX and early versions of Arch, and
settled with Ubuntu at some point, which I'm using for several years
now. This voyage has several reasons: the first one is that initially
I was a desktop/server user only, I didn't own a notebook until 2003
or so, so using the BSDs and testing some Linux distros like Gentoo
and CRUX was quite straight forward on proper desktop hardware.
Setting these systems up on a notebook by that time was usually a
nightmare apart from the basic usage (mostly no power management was
working, trouble with sound and video etc). That doesn't mean that it
used to be impossible to get a cool BSD or from scratch distro running
well on a notebook, but it took a magnitude of time to get it right...
Another reason is that I was a student until 2006 and had a lot more
time to spend at my computers. Since I joined the daily profession
life time is more rare, so I don't really want to get into that
configuration nightmare ;) Finally I'm a notebook only user nowadays
-- aparat from some hosts I keep running. Due to the relationship of
Ubuntu to Debian I choose Debian for severs nowadays though -- if I
knew that there'd be an easy way to setup FreeBSD or NetBSD on these
servers I'd probably would do so...
From all distributions/BSDs I came across I found that Ubuntu is the
only one that just works out of the box, even if it comes packed with
tons of crap (which I usually remove right after the installation).
But I save the time in figuring out which binary driver needs to be
downloaded from somewhere in order to make WiFi work etc.
This doesn't mean that I'm happy with Ubuntu from a technical
perspective, more the opposite. But what I wanted to say is, that I
experienced a personal shift towards that a system has to just run and
good if I can be stripped somehow. I don't want to get into the
configuration hell again ;)
That way I can set up a system in a matter of 2 hours and get back to
work again, which I want to spend my time with, mainly st and dwm
nowadays.
Kind regards,
Anselm
Paul Malherbe
Regards
Paul
Malherbe
+27
(0) 21 6711866
+27
(0) 82 9005260
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This message has been scanned for viruses and
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believed to be clean.
Jimmy Tang
>
> This is a common misconception that dates from years ago. Now the loud
> wannabe Gentoo ricer kids have all died out of boredom or got day jobs
> and Gentoo is happily used in production as a high quality distro with
> great management tools. And easily tunable for light dependencies on
> packages if that's what you need.
>
> You can get a usable system in an afternoon (autobuild stage3) where the
> installation is basically untarring the base system onto a fs and a
> little configuration of the likes of fstab and such is to be done. Then
> you build some X-tools, compile dwm and off you go.
>
this is probably the cause, that you can get a working system quick
enough. the speed up in modern machines probably really helps it along.
> I tried migrating my personal laptops to arch, debian and the like and
> always keep getting back to Gentoo. Debian is great, but so much less
> flexible than Gentoo, and Arch is fine when you get to use the basic
> (small) set of packages but venturing beyond that into the AUR is a
> *quality disaster*.
>
> You may not like Gentoo for other valid reasons, but what you write is
> sweet crap.
>
personally I like debian based distros if I were to be made to use linux
and everything is free and opensource. If I need a production machine to
deploy commercial or propietry codes and hardware (read infiniband
networking, fibre networking and management software etc...) I would
use RHEL or centos based distro. If I don't need linux, I'm kinda
partial to the openbsd of the bsd family :)
I guess use the right tool for the right job.
Jimmy
--
Jimmy Tang
Trinity Centre for High Performance Computing,
Lloyd Building, Trinity College Dublin, Dublin 2, Ireland.
http://www.tchpc.tcd.ie/ | http://www.tchpc.tcd.ie/~jtang
Kurt H Maier
> That way I can set up a system in a matter of 2 hours and get back to
> work again, which I want to spend my time with, mainly st and dwm
> nowadays.
Ubuntu is an utter nightmare to use on anything but a "workstation"
system. They ship broken packages, break currently-working packages,
fail to document important things (such as "we broke fai and have no
intention of fixing it"), etc. As a desktop/laptop OS, it's decent,
but in my experience less reliable than (for instance) fedora, which
these days is equal to Ubuntu in configuration ease. If I sat down an
enumerated the things Ubuntu has broken and required me to work around
and/or patch, this e-mail would blow someone's disk quota.
You guys running Gentoo in production environments either have an
infinite amount of time or else tiny little production environments.
AFAIK there's no Gentoo equivalent of FAI [1] or kickstart [2], and
without tools like that a distribution is worthless to me as a
"production" OS. Hell, even Slackware has facilities that make it
trivial to perform an automated, noninteractive rollout. Past the
installation, distributing source to machines and having them all
compile their own is a breathtaking waste of time and resources, and
I'd justly be fired if ever I tried something like that. I'd hope
Gentoo has a way by now to distribute binary updates, but then what's
the point of Gentoo?
Obviously if a distro does what you want and you're satisfied with it,
it's the "right" one.
--
# Kurt H Maier
[1] - http://www.informatik.uni-koeln.de/fai/
[2] - http://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/linux/RHL-7.3-Manual/custom-guide/ch-kickstart2.html
Ross Mohn
very good distro.
-RPM
Michael P. Soulier
> I totally agree with your comments. I have been using gentoo in corporate
> environments for the past 5 years mainly as servers but also as desktop
> systems and yet have to find another distro to compare with its flexibility
> and package management.
I'm using Ubuntu on my laptop, and I'm experimenting with Gentoo on my
desktop. My only issue with Gentoo is that often I find the regular
upgrades somewhat painful, requiring too much intimate knowledge of
the software involved.
For customization in Ubuntu or Debian, I find it simple enough to grab
tarballs and build them in custom locations. I've actually had more
problems doing this in Gentoo, which is odd since Gentoo is
source-based.
As a busy father of two, I find I often just can't keep up with the
changes in the Gentoo world. I only have so much time, and sysadmining
my boxes should be a small part of my day, not a full-time job.
Mike
Thomas Gallen
> infinite amount of time or else tiny little production environments.
Or they know what they're doing and how they want to do it.
> AFAIK there's no Gentoo equivalent of FAI [1] or kickstart [2], and
> without tools like that a distribution is worthless to me as a
> "production" OS. Hell, even Slackware has facilities that make it
> trivial to perform an automated, noninteractive rollout. Past the
You are correct, we don't give fancy names to automating our
installations (at least not that I'm aware of).
> installation, distributing source to machines and having them all
> compile their own is a breathtaking waste of time and resources, and
> I'd justly be fired if ever I tried something like that. I'd hope
I'd fire you too considering the current tarballs are updated regularly
and keeping a local package cache and portage mirror is not rocket
science. Of course, if you require all of X and a desktop environment on
your servers, then I can't help you there.
> Gentoo has a way by now to distribute binary updates, but then what's
> the point of Gentoo?
It's a metadistribution. The entire point is to use it how you see fit
and it tries to help you do that, but it by no means holds your hand
while doing it.
> Obviously if a distro does what you want and you're satisfied with it,
> it's the "right" one.
Correct. Assuming you made your choice after trying out many other
solutions then I'd say your conclusion is quite correct. Some people
wish to fashion their own custom solution to a problem and some people
only need an out of the box solution.
Thomas
Thomas Gallen
package management system to install packages in alternate locations? If
it's the latter:
http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/gentoo/amd64/187813
(Though I admit I do the former so I can't say I've tried these.)
If it's the former though, I've always just created a directory
somewhere as a sandbox and created a file in /etc/env.d to set up my
path, library locations, etc.
I don't know how apt and friends handle alternate installation
directories so I can't comment on them. However, from what I hear,
installing packages in alternate directories does appear to be a
place where Gentoo's portage has fumbled.
Thomas
Michael P. Soulier
> Are you referring to manual installation of packages or using the
> package management system to install packages in alternate locations? If
> it's the latter:
I develop software for a production system that is often lagging
behind the mainstream. So, on my laptop and desktop I often have to
build older versions of Python, Django, sqlite, etc., to match what's
in production. To do that I just build custom versions of Python like
./configure --prefix=$HOME/my/custom/location
I've had issues with getting python-sqlite working on Gentoo though,
with anything but the version packaged in the portage tree. The
pysqlite2 developers weren't much help.
> If it's the former though, I've always just created a directory
> somewhere as a sandbox and created a file in /etc/env.d to set up my
> path, library locations, etc.
I almost need multiple boxes to target each release I'm working on,
but I can't afford that, so I have scripts to set up environment
variables to pick the correct install of Python.
Mike
--
Michael P. Soulier <msou...@digitaltorque.ca>
"Any intelligent fool can make things bigger and more complex... It takes a
touch of genius - and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction."
--Albert Einstein
Thomas Gallen
> > Are you referring to manual installation of packages or using the
> > package management system to install packages in alternate locations? If
> > it's the latter:
>
> I develop software for a production system that is often lagging
> behind the mainstream. So, on my laptop and desktop I often have to
> build older versions of Python, Django, sqlite, etc., to match what's
> in production. To do that I just build custom versions of Python like
>
> ./configure --prefix=$HOME/my/custom/location
>
> I've had issues with getting python-sqlite working on Gentoo though,
> with anything but the version packaged in the portage tree. The
> pysqlite2 developers weren't much help.
Has setting PYTHONPATH/the module search path not worked out when you
changed it? I think the search path precedence is current directory,
then PYTHONPATH, then the default module search path. If that's not
working then there's something strange happening there...
http://docs.python.org/tutorial/modules.html#the-module-search-path
> > If it's the former though, I've always just created a directory
> > somewhere as a sandbox and created a file in /etc/env.d to set up my
> > path, library locations, etc.
>
> I almost need multiple boxes to target each release I'm working on,
> but I can't afford that, so I have scripts to set up environment
> variables to pick the correct install of Python.
That's what I do. ^_^; Guilty as charged.
Jacob Todd
me that. Plus I have half as many packages installed on my system
because they aren't compiled with every DE intergrated into it, like
they were on debian.
On Sat, Jun 20, 2009 at 12:21:54AM -0400, Antony Jepson wrote:
--
Jake Todd
// If it isn't broke, tweak it!
Kurt H Maier
> You are correct, we don't give fancy names to automating our
> installations (at least not that I'm aware of).
If stock Gentoo installation tools work for rolling out unattended
installs to many diverse workstations, a couple dozen servers, and two
clusters, someone needs to write a paper, because I bet there's a PhD
in there for them. FAI and kickstart are far more than "fancy names."
I suspect you've misapprehended what they do.
> I'd fire you too considering the current tarballs are updated regularly
> and keeping a local package cache and portage mirror is not rocket
> science. Of course, if you require all of X and a desktop environment on
> your servers, then I can't help you there.
Not really sure what X has to do with local repositories, but yes,
some of our machines do require X and a desktop environment. People
actually use them.
> It's a metadistribution. The entire point is to use it how you see fit
> and it tries to help you do that, but it by no means holds your hand
> while doing it.
I don't think "metadistribution" has an actual application here. I
see things like LFS or JeOS as metadistributions; 'being configurable'
doesn't really cut it.
Jack Woehr
--
Jack J. Woehr # I run for public office from time to time. It's like
http://www.well.com/~jax # working out at the gym, you sweat a lot, don't get
http://www.softwoehr.com # anywhere, and you fall asleep easily afterwards.
mi...@milesgroman.com
Miles
----------------------------------------
Sent from my BlackBerry
Michael P. Soulier
> Has setting PYTHONPATH/the module search path not worked out when you
> changed it? I think the search path precedence is current directory,
> then PYTHONPATH, then the default module search path. If that's not
> working then there's something strange happening there...
>
> http://docs.python.org/tutorial/modules.html#the-module-search-path
Yeah, but building pysqlite2 doesn't seem to work on my gentoo box for
some reason, although the ebuild works fine. From there it's hard to
mix the custom python build with the ebuild of pysqlite2 'cause they
tend to be built with different options.
Thomas Gallen
> On Sat, Jun 20, 2009 at 8:47 AM, Thomas Gallen<kaori....@gmail.com> wrote:
> > You are correct, we don't give fancy names to automating our
> > installations (at least not that I'm aware of).
>
> If stock Gentoo installation tools work for rolling out unattended
> installs to many diverse workstations, a couple dozen servers, and two
> clusters, someone needs to write a paper, because I bet there's a PhD
> in there for them. FAI and kickstart are far more than "fancy names."
> I suspect you've misapprehended what they do.
Err, no no. I'm suggesting that automating a Gentoo installation would
be both possible and relatively easy, but it would be so application
specific that naming it would be silly. It obviously won't compare to
FAI or Kickstart but I thought it would be obvious after you read my
first line.
> > I'd fire you too considering the current tarballs are updated regularly
> > and keeping a local package cache and portage mirror is not rocket
> > science. Of course, if you require all of X and a desktop environment on
> > your servers, then I can't help you there.
>
> Not really sure what X has to do with local repositories, but yes,
> some of our machines do require X and a desktop environment. People
> actually use them.
Err, I said "servers" in that sentence because I was talking about the
habit of some people installing X on their servers in relation to your
statement about wasted resources. The package cache and portage mirror
statement was meant to be part of that theme as well but I guess I
didn't relate the two very well.
> > It's a metadistribution. The entire point is to use it how you see fit
> > and it tries to help you do that, but it by no means holds your hand
> > while doing it.
>
> I don't think "metadistribution" has an actual application here. I
> see things like LFS or JeOS as metadistributions; 'being configurable'
> doesn't really cut it.
Eh, it's not too horribly difficult to chop it up and use it's parts. I
don't think you need to start with a bucket of legos in order to be a
"metadistribution".
Uriel
other *nix system out there this days.
Peace
uriel
Fernan Bolando
Leandro Chescotta
BSD's, so, i wanna know
--
Julien Laffaye
James PIC
Man bash
man portage
On Jun 20, 2009 2:50 PM, "Kurt H Maier" <karm...@gmail.com> wrote:On Sat, Jun 20, 2009 at 4:22 AM, Anselm R Garbe<gar...@gmail.com> wrote: > That way I can set up a ...
Kurt H Maier
> Man bash
> man portage
I'm pretty happy that both of those commands fail on all my systems
hiro
I'm pretty happy that both of those commands fail on all my hand calculators.
They are great Systems. I never had to reboot or upgrade anything,
cause it's so fucking less sucking. And it works with solar power!
You guys bore me today :P
And I feel a bit like Eris Discordia. What a pain.
Thomas Gallen
Thomas
Uriel
Learn to use good ol' sh, or switch to rc, but stop spreading the bash
braindamage.
uriel
Antoni Grzymala
> Bash scripts are one of the worst venereal diseases to even infest
> *nix systems.
I wouldn't exaggerate. Most bash scripts don't use bashisms and could
just as well be “good ol' sh” scripts as you like to call them, though I
don't personallly see what so “good” in them, mostly just the “ol'” bit.
Bash programming is a bit smelly anyhow, though useful.
As to whether bashisms cause (are result of?) particular braindamage is
a matter of debate, that this list isn't probably suitable for.
Best,
--
[a]
hiro
Useful in creating jobs, right.
I will try to keep this in mind, thank you very much.
Scat, though smelly, is also very useful as a fertilizer.
Antoni Grzymala
Definitely. There's a hint (or more) of scat that I enjoy in some of the
finest cheeses.
--
[a]
Fernan Bolando
Chescotta<leandro....@gmail.com> wrote:
> Why freebsd is not suckless? not arguing, but i don't know a lot about
> BSD's, so, i wanna know
>
>
> On Sun, Jun 21, 2009 at 3:11 AM, Fernan Bolando<fernan...@mailc.net> wrote:
>> On Sun, Jun 21, 2009 at 4:25 AM, Uriel<lost....@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> Agreed, OpenBSD is far from perfect, but it sucks much less than any
>>> other *nix system out there this days.
>>>
>>> Peace
>>>
>>> uriel
>>>
>>> On Sat, Jun 20, 2009 at 5:53 PM, Jack Woehr<j...@well.com> wrote:
>>>> There's already a BSD distrib that sucks less. It's called OpenBSD!
>>>>
>>>> --
>>>> Jack J. Woehr # I run for public office from time to time. It's
>>>> like
>>>> http://www.well.com/~jax # working out at the gym, you sweat a lot, don't
>>>> get
>>>> http://www.softwoehr.com # anywhere, and you fall asleep easily afterwards.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>> crux distro for linux
>> openbsd or netbsd for bsd
>>
>>
My comment on using openbsd or netbsd versus freebsd is purely because
I have not used freebsd myself. Crux and Obsd already has almost
everything I need in a <200MB base system, so I only needed to
download a few package to configure it for specific purpose. I have
always had the impression that freebsd wants me to download >600MB of
data to install. If they created a picobsd distro then I would have
probably prefered using that for some of my stuff.
fernan
Pinocchio
>> It's a metadistribution. The entire point is to use it how you see fit
>> and it tries to help you do that, but it by no means holds your hand
>> while doing it.
>>
>
> I don't think "metadistribution" has an actual application here. I
> see things like LFS or JeOS as metadistributions; 'being configurable'
> doesn't really cut it.
>
>
>
used Gentoo in the past and one of the main reasons I liked it was that
you could install only the components you liked. So if you were not
using Gnome, you could eliminate the gnome support and dependency
libraries altogether from a lot of common applications. So in a sense,
it allows you not only to decide which applications you want to install
but also have control on which subsystems you want to install. Also,
this is the very reason why it is source based as I don't think its
technically feasible to do with a binary distribution without some
standardization and/or hackery. At least, I was ready to put up with the
compilation to get rid of bloated and buggy subsystems.
I think it will be nice to have a way of directly looking up installed
components and then disabling / enabling features in binary installs
depending on their presence and absence. Also, I think having this at
the granularity of single packages is probably not a good idea and there
should be a notion of "subsystems" which applications could query. There
are many collections of packages that could become subsystems
(ssh-client, ssh-server, X-client, X-server, standard-tray-desktop...)
and that would be a nice way to give control to applications themselves
to query, enable and disable support for features in their apps.
Bottomline, I believe that giving applications more control rather than
relying on distributions to package things well would be a good first
step towards a suckless (less bloat, works out of the box) workstation /
server setup
regards,
pinocchio
Jorge Vargas
> I'm not sure if this has been asked before (although I did do a quick
> search of <d...@suckless.org>) but what distributions do you guys use on
> a daily basis? I recently built a new computer and I'm looking for a
> good OS to install on there.
>
> I've been eyeing Crux lately but maybe Gentoo would be a better choice?
> If it makes a difference, I currently use Arch.
>
> Comments or suggestions for a (quality|suckless|KISS) distribution
> (doesn't matter if *BSD or *NIX) would be appreciated. I read about
> pancake's distribution [1] and it definitely sounds interesting.
>
it *just works* I don't agree with most of it's design decision and I
totally disagree with the "code for the idiots" but oh well. At this
point in time it doesn't gets in my way and I'm happy with that.
I have to totally agree with the Gentoo is not for racers part. In
fact for servers if I ever manage a server again. I'll probably run
gentoo on it. Mainly becuase
1- you install only what you want
2- you build from source (this is good! for security)
3- SELinux is really good in gentoo.
4- Going to dev versions of needed (for patches for example) doesn't
means you need to wait 6 months for it.
Jimmy Tang
> My comment on using openbsd or netbsd versus freebsd is purely because
> I have not used freebsd myself. Crux and Obsd already has almost
> everything I need in a <200MB base system, so I only needed to
> download a few package to configure it for specific purpose. I have
> always had the impression that freebsd wants me to download >600MB of
> data to install. If they created a picobsd distro then I would have
> probably prefered using that for some of my stuff.
>
I haven't used freebsd since 4.1, but the last time I looked, it was
not too much bigger than openbsd/netbsd on a default install. A base
freebsd install is usually much smaller than your average linux distro.
there was a picobsd distribution :) but the work from that just
eventually got merged back into the installer system for freebsd if i
remember right.
Jimmy
--
Jimmy Tang
Trinity Centre for High Performance Computing,
Lloyd Building, Trinity College Dublin, Dublin 2, Ireland.
http://www.tchpc.tcd.ie/ | http://www.tchpc.tcd.ie/~jtang
Jimmy Tang
my own views and experience of running hundreds of machines in
production and from running a few distros on different machines.
On Sun, Jun 21, 2009 at 11:29:56PM -0400, Jorge Vargas wrote:
> I have to totally agree with the Gentoo is not for racers part. In
> fact for servers if I ever manage a server again. I'll probably run
> gentoo on it. Mainly becuase
I guess everyone has different views on gentoo being a good distribution
or not for servers. certainly in my experience of running servers,
gentoo is fun, and has lots of new stuff to play with. I can see why
people like/dislike it
> 1- you install only what you want
this is an obvious advantage for gentoo. but with diskspace being so
cheap these days, I really couldn't care if the server that I installed
to run httpd on also installs a few hundred more megs of *crap* given
that my system disk is going to be at least 80gigs in size, and I have
access to more storage as I need it. In a work where diskspace is cheap,
its often better to let the distribution people build the packages imho.
so you don't have to worry about it and its dependancies.
> 2- you build from source (this is good! for security)
why is this good? a large proportion of people who read the code probably
don't know too much about it, or to understand it on it being correct. and
just because you build from source doesn't mean its good you are still
relying on the packagers and or upstream people for fixes anyway.
> 3- SELinux is really good in gentoo.
good :) it's also apparently quite good on ubuntu, RHEL, centos and
others...
> 4- Going to dev versions of needed (for patches for example) doesn't
I think this point is particularly important for gentoo users, patches
are great for new features and security fixes, but more often than not
(at least in the past when I last looked at gentoo) many were advocating
to update to the latest version in the portage collection for bug fixes
and security updates. which relates to point 2, IMHO its often not a
great idea to update versions to get bug fixes and security patches. I
think in the linux/free and opensource software world things change too
fast, and updates as opposed to security patches/fixes just break stuff
on production machines.
Uriel
> On Sat, Jun 20, 2009 at 12:21 AM, Antony Jepson<anto...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> I'm not sure if this has been asked before (although I did do a quick
>> search of <d...@suckless.org>) but what distributions do you guys use on
>> a daily basis? I recently built a new computer and I'm looking for a
>> good OS to install on there.
>>
>> I've been eyeing Crux lately but maybe Gentoo would be a better choice?
>> If it makes a difference, I currently use Arch.
>>
>> Comments or suggestions for a (quality|suckless|KISS) distribution
>> (doesn't matter if *BSD or *NIX) would be appreciated. I read about
>> pancake's distribution [1] and it definitely sounds interesting.
>>
> I totally agree with Anselm I'm using ubuntu for the desktop, because
> it *just works*
Hah! If only, last I tried to use ubuntu had to waste almost a whole
day trying to get ACPI to work on my thinkpad, I got so feed up with
it that I installed Windows XP.
> I don't agree with most of it's design decision and I
> totally disagree with the "code for the idiots" but oh well. At this
> point in time it doesn't gets in my way and I'm happy with that.
>
> I have to totally agree with the Gentoo is not for racers part. In
> fact for servers if I ever manage a server again. I'll probably run
> gentoo on it. Mainly becuase
> 1- you install only what you want
> 2- you build from source (this is good! for security)
> 3- SELinux is really good in gentoo.
SELinux is stupid and pointless, and anyone using it is a masochist at best.
uriel
Preben Randhol
Uriel <lost....@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hah! If only, last I tried to use ubuntu had to waste almost a whole
> day trying to get ACPI to work on my thinkpad, I got so feed up with
> it that I installed Windows XP.
When was last time? Which version? Old versions were not good to say
the least. I have installed Ubuntu on 5 completely different machines
all from laptop to desktop and I have had no hickups. For desktop
usage, I like how Ubuntu utilizes the Debian system and makes it desktop
friendly. Debian has always had (I have not tested Lenny) a server
approach.
After using Linux for 14 years (starting with Slackware, then RedHat,
Debian and now finally Ubuntu) I'm happy to get a system
where I do not need to spend lot of time mocking about with
configuration files, but rather enables me to be productive at what I
want to do/develop.
If one is a admin nutcase sure one wants something low level as
slackware or worse... ;-p
--
Preben
hiro
> day trying to get ACPI to work on my thinkpad, I got so feed up with
> it that I installed Windows XP.
>
Also regard the decent battery life, working firewire port and UMTS on XP, haha.
Antony
> Comments or suggestions for a (quality|suckless|KISS) distribution
> (doesn't matter if *BSD or *NIX) would be appreciated. I read about
> pancake's distribution [1] and it definitely sounds interesting.
Thank you, everyone, for your suggestions.
I have decided to stick with Arch Linux and install it upon my new desktop.
