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Topic: General Unix/Linux Thread (Read 120496 times)

Re: General Unix/Linux Thread

Reply #151 –
I just noticed that Apt 1.0 also listens to just apt rather than the good old apt-get only. So instead of:
Code: [Select]
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

Now you can save a few keystrokes with:
Code: [Select]
sudo apt update
sudo apt upgrade
sudo apt full-upgrade

Perhaps more important, it also listens to stuff like apt search instead of having to remember that it's apt-cache or whatever.

It also comes with a fun little progress meter.


Edit: some background info: http://mvogt.wordpress.com/2014/04/04/apt-1-0/

Re: General Unix/Linux Thread

Reply #152 –
I just found out apt autoremove is not a thing; that still requires apt-get. Weird.

Re: General Unix/Linux Thread

Reply #154 –
Although I'm not exactly a fan of the GNOME 3 looks, the new Evince 3.14 is much improved. Files display significantly faster and opening it by itself gives you a nice homescreen with recently viewed files. In semi-related news, I wrote a script to fix up scanned PDF files people send you: https://github.com/Frenzie/readablepdf

Re: General Unix/Linux Thread

Reply #156 –
Scaring!

Re: General Unix/Linux Thread

Reply #157 –
Quote from: Frenzie on

http://lkml.iu.edu//hypermail/linux/kernel/1408.1/02496.html

Someone sent that over a NetBSD list a while ago.
We're not likely to adopt it. One reason is that the very idea of running all or most system services in a single process context gives the security people a heart attack.
And boot time? My old PowerBook ( 500MHz G3, 1GB RAM ) boots from pushing the button to the login prompt in about 10-15 seconds. That's a full BSD init, scripts and all. Includes the firmware twiddling its thumbs. Ok, it's running from a CompactFlash card. Still beats the living crap out of a bunch of 'fast' inits I've seen with Linux on newer hardware.

Re: General Unix/Linux Thread

Reply #158 –
Manjaro was among early adopters of systemd. Now they have put up a tutorial to transfer from systemd to OpenRC and are considering if to provide Manjaro versions with both init systems or to conclusively go over to OpenRC.

Re: General Unix/Linux Thread

Reply #159 –
Quote from: Macallan on

Quote from: Frenzie on

http://lkml.iu.edu//hypermail/linux/kernel/1408.1/02496.html

Someone sent that over a NetBSD list a while ago.
We're not likely to adopt it. One reason is that the very idea of running all or most system services in a single process context gives the security people a heart attack.
And boot time? My old PowerBook ( 500MHz G3, 1GB RAM ) boots from pushing the button to the login prompt in about 10-15 seconds. That's a full BSD init, scripts and all. Includes the firmware twiddling its thumbs. Ok, it's running from a CompactFlash card. Still beats the living crap out of a bunch of 'fast' inits I've seen with Linux on newer hardware.

My computer boots in less than 10 seconds with or without systemd,* yet a completely negligible speed benefit is given as an argument. Also, I happened to think the list of things loading was awesome to look at. Now I don't even know when my file systems are being checked for consistency anymore, or if they are at all. I just sort of assume it still happens automatically. The bottom line: systemd obfuscates information and I don't like it. As a user, not as a developer who thinks systemd is a massive beast just a disaster waiting to happen. Although if they're trying to change the kernel to work around systemd bugs... yeah.

* The key primarily being hard disk speed.

Re: General Unix/Linux Thread

Reply #160 –
Quote from: Frenzie on

My computer boots in less than 10 seconds with or without systemd,* yet a completely negligible speed benefit is given as an argument.

With HDD (as opposed to SSD or whatever it is) the boot times are from 20 seconds up to a minute. This is not negligible. However, as far as I have been able to test, systemd only speeds it up ten seconds at best. For better results, other tweaks are needed.

(Of course I am talking about a shipped distro, not about a system built by following Linuxfromscratch website, which is probably how Macallan does it.)

Re: General Unix/Linux Thread

Reply #161 –
Quote from: ersi on
With HDD (as opposed to SSD or whatever it is) the boot times are from 20 seconds up to a minute. This is not negligible.

To me it is. More than two seconds means I'll do something else first. At that point it doesn't really matter if it's five seconds or up to about a minute. For example, my HDD-using netbook boots in half a minute. When I take it with me I'll take it out of my bag, turn it on, and when I've finish preparing other things I need it'll be ready to go. From that point onward I'll use suspend until I'm completely done with it. In any case, while I didn't explicitly time it and it's not the only difference, I have the impression that my Xubuntu laptop boots almost twice as slow with systemd than it did with upstart. Could be it's not systemd's fault but that it still needs to be configured better.

Anyway, I fully recognize that Debian's old sysinitv system is kind of silly in a way. Sure, some processes need to come after others, but plenty of stuff could be loading in parallel.

Edit: for good measure, here's one of the developers defending the opposite point of view http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/the-biggest-myths.html (see here for something completely unrelated that might show philosophical differences.)

Quote from: ersi on
(Of course I am talking about a shipped distro, not about a system built by following Linuxfromscratch website, which is probably how Macallan does it.)

NetBSD isn't Linux. :)

Re: General Unix/Linux Thread

Reply #162 –
Quote from: Frenzie on

Quote from: ersi on
(Of course I am talking about a shipped distro, not about a system built by following Linuxfromscratch website, which is probably how Macallan does it.)

NetBSD isn't Linux. :)

True, Macallan is running BSD. However, he mentioned that he has tried Linux and that Linux was slower than BSD. Since he didn't say which distro he tried, I assumed he built it from scratch, because in his world this is how everybody does it.

Re: General Unix/Linux Thread

Reply #163 –
Quote from: ersi on

True, Macallan is running BSD. However, he mentioned that he has tried Linux and that Linux was slower than BSD.

I said several 'fast' inits. One of them was creatively names 'fast-init'.

Quote from: ersi on

Since he didn't say which distro he tried, I assumed he built it from scratch, because in his world this is how everybody does it.

Quite obviously you have not the faintest idea what my world looks like.

Re: General Unix/Linux Thread

Reply #164 –
Quote from: Frenzie on

Quote from: ersi on
With HDD (as opposed to SSD or whatever it is) the boot times are from 20 seconds up to a minute. This is not negligible.

To me it is. More than two seconds means I'll do something else first. At that point it doesn't really matter if it's five seconds or up to about a minute. For example, my HDD-using netbook boots in half a minute. When I take it with me I'll take it out of my bag, turn it on, and when I've finish preparing other things I need it'll be ready to go. From that point onward I'll use suspend until I'm completely done with it.

This is how I behave with my netbook too. I am not in a hurry. The boot time, which seems to vary from 18 to 28 seconds (some inherent systemd instability?) is fast enough for me. I don't need faster. However, "in the industry" or "on the market" the bootup time craze is one of the current hypes, and Linux must not be left behind. Of course I am confident it won't be left behind.

I don't think bootup time is any kind of argument for systemd per se. If anything, it is an argument to develop even more different types of init systems and perhaps find a way to easily switch between init systems in a single installation.

Quote from: Macallan on

Quite obviously you have not the faintest idea what my world looks like.

I was just guessing at random. It was not intended as an accurate real-life description. Sorry if it was too close.

Re: General Unix/Linux Thread

Reply #165 –
Quote from: ersi on
Of course I am confident it won't be left behind.

Windows 7 and 8 both boot significantly slower in my experience. As such it'd be more about maintaining the advantage. Compared to Windows 7, running Xubuntu on a different netbook quartered the boot time, increased battery life by at least a third (from ~4 to 6+ hours), and felt faster to use on top. And that's after I uninstalled all the preinstalled junk, but without digging into disabling unneeded system services like I might if actually intended to use Windows. Oh yeah, and its lack of Aero resulted in a horribly ugly look, while in Linux there was no trouble using Cinnamon, Unity or Gnome Shell if so desired.

Re: General Unix/Linux Thread

Reply #166 –
With the latest version of Chrome, you can now watch Netflix in Linux.

Re: General Unix/Linux Thread

Reply #169 –
The upcoming release of Manjaro Xfce is pure awesomeness. First stylewise, but also otherwise. Even bluetooth works out of the box this time! I thought I had tweaked my prime machine to perfection as far as possible, but now I'm seriously considering a new installation.

For a hands-on impression, try a live boot. In my opinion, Manjaro provides the best Xfce, certainly the best-looking one. Mint is a close second. Others are far behind.

In other news, Manjaro team is dropping Openbox from among official releases. Looks like what unites the team is the knack for what critics call "bloat", and the Openbox maintainer does not tolerate criticism. In my opinion, the best Openbox release was 0.8.8 - most minimal. Later ones were overstyled and overpacked. With regard to Manjaro Openbox, I tended to side with the critics.
 

Re: General Unix/Linux Thread

Reply #170 –
Quote from: ersi
In my opinion, Manjaro provides the best Xfce, certainly the best-looking one. Mint is a close second. Others are far behind.

You may be right that Manjaro is the best Xfce option.

As for me, I used many desktop environments and to be fair enough, I can be happy with each one of them. Human is able to get used to on every desktop gui. I even heard about amazingly happy customers of Windows 8 and Windows 8.1 upgrading from Windows XP. Also, the same appears for new adopters of Mac OS X. As for Linux, it does not much really matter if user prefer Unity, KDE, GNOME, LXDE (soon LXQt), Enlightenment, Cinnamon, MATE, Xfce or something else).

Recently I am using Xfce-based Xubuntu 14.10 (I installed it from Daily builds repos about a year ago http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/xubuntu/daily-live/current/). There are links for every other Ubuntu family distros. For example, Lubuntu is here http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/lubuntu/daily-live/current/. Everything else can be find in parrent directory http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/

I heard about Manjaro a lot. It is quite high in Distrowatch.com ranking, and also it attracts me the fact, that Manjaro is based upon Arch Linux with much more user-friendly installation and using processes. Manjaro is certainly on my check list. I only dislike a bit slow implementation of new stable packages. In latest stable version of Manjaro (0.8.10 stable), I can get only Firefox 32.0.3, libreoffice 4.3.2, gnome-shell 3.12.2, kdelibs 4.14.1, linux 3.17.0, which are all obsolete versions. Although, particular packages concerning XFCE (xfdesktop) is currently in version 4.11.8, while the last stable is 4.10.3. However, it is true that Manjaro 0.8.11 RC is making things newer, but generally I feel that original Arch Linux is doing better job than Manjaro do in keeping packages rolling stable.

Re: General Unix/Linux Thread

Reply #171 –
Quote from: Josh M on
As for me, I used many desktop environments and to be fair enough, I can be happy with each one of them. Human is able to get used to on every desktop gui.

If a GUI requires you to do twice as much moving and clicking that's a significant disadvantage not only to simple efficiency, but also to your basic health through the risk of RSI and increased eye strain. And in any case, decreased efficiency also negatively affects your life because you're spending more time doing meaningless busywork.

Quote from: Josh M on
I even heard about amazingly happy customers of Windows 8 and Windows 8.1 upgrading from Windows XP.

I suggest you ask them how to shut down their computer. I dare you. :lol:

Re: General Unix/Linux Thread

Reply #172 –
Quote from: Frenzie

If a GUI requires you to do twice as much moving and clicking that's a significant disadvantage not only to simple efficiency, but also to your basic health through the risk of RSI and increased eye strain. And in any case, decreased efficiency also negatively affects your life because you're spending more time doing meaningless busywork.
Hmmm. Very scientific speech!  :jester: ... Yes. I generally prefer more sophisticated and more feature-rich desktop environments, with many pre-installed apps. GNOME and KDE are the top in such custom measure. While Xfce and LXDE are quite poorer, low-end and old computers needs such simple environments to ensure its limited resources available for best performance. The nice about Linux is plenty of choice.
Quote from: Frenzie
I suggest you ask them how to shut down their computer.
Yep. New adopters and unskilled users can have had, at first, problem to find a way ho to do it. ... I mentioned it in accordance of my opinion that most computer users are able to adapt and get used to on previously unknown desktop environment. Suchlike many first-time critics of Ubuntu Unity are now fully satisfied. I believe that the same applies for every DE and every OS. This theory only suppose both the GUI and OS are good-enough for average user.

Re: General Unix/Linux Thread

Reply #173 –
Quote from: Josh M on
Yep. New adopters and unskilled users can have had, at first, problem to find a way ho to do it.

There is nothing "unskilled" about someone who can't find a "charms bar". Hiding things is just horrible GUI design. I happen to find that menus are easier to use and scan through than the ribbon, but at least the ribbon is functionally equivalent. The thing is, if it's equivalent, I don't want it because I'm already proficient in something equivalent. I'm only interested if it's better. If it's worse, get away from me with that junk. MetroModern UI full-screen apps are objectively useless. It's called Windows for a reason, not Window.

Quote from: Josh M on
Suchlike many first-time critics of Ubuntu Unity are now fully satisfied.

I used it for a year and I still don't like it. However, it never had such retarded notions like Gnome Shell and Windows 8 that something as simple as shutting down your computer should be hidden away. Getting used to Unity or Mac OS X? Sure, they're just slightly different. Getting used to Gnome Shell or Windows 8? Heck no, they hate people who have actual things to do.

Re: General Unix/Linux Thread

Reply #174 –
Quote from: Frenzie
If it's worse, get away from me with that junk.
I agree. Windows 8.x have lot of doubtful novelties. But Windows 7 and all older ones are also slow, insecure, and nothing-work OS. Also, I experienced repeatedly 'Windows Update' errors on Windows 8.1 (my friend's computer). The updates are trying to install and cycling again and again, even when is self-evident something is wrong with the update! The only solution was just disable and hide that updates altogether to avoid cycling spiral again. My legally bought Windows 7.x is claiming to be illegal license! This error can happens to few legal customers, just google it for 'Windows Not Genuine, even though Copy is Purchased' and after few months of trying to fix it, I resigned. The Copy is activated and registered, with license key. But... something with the Windows is always wrong. Newly bought computer with Windows contains lot of bloatware that I must manually uninstall with good uninstaller. .... and so on, and so on. .... Some people say: 'Hey, it will be great and all fixed with Windows 10. Just wait.' ... But who believes that? ..... Also, how Linux is doing software repositories and packages management. In Windows I have to update all applications separately and most of them even download separately. Getting Windows up-to-date takes usually full one day or more to update everything and clean all the mess behind. In Linux I just write few words in terminal and that's it! Software management in Linux is incredibly efficient. Nothing compares.

Quote from: Frenzie
Getting used to Gnome Shell or Windows 8? Heck no, they hate people who have actual things to do.
Not sure why you think that bad about GNOME, but generally to paraphrase first part of this last post from me: 'Wait for Windows 10. Everythin will be perfect.' ... if you believe that  :D