On Monday, 20 January 2014 at 16:36:32 UTC, Chris wrote:
> I'm kinda torn between the two sides. On the one hand I don't want to do too much manual configuring and tinkering (especially for basic things), on the other hand I don't want big fat apps I'll probably never use installed by default. I'll give Manjaro (Arch Linux) a try and see, if I can build up my own custom configuration as I go along. The only fear I have in this regard is that it might be hard to get certain apps i like or need, if they are not in the repository. But things will improve and I like to give new things a try. I can always come back to the bigger distros.

AUR (aur.archlinux.org, user-supplied PKGBUILD database) is the place to look at for some less popular or controversial packages. I am pretty sure it fits into Manjaro too.

On Monday, 20 January 2014 at 16:36:32 UTC, Chris wrote:
> I'm kinda torn between the two sides. On the one hand I don't want to do too much manual configuring and tinkering (especially for basic things), on the other hand I don't want big fat apps I'll probably never use installed by default. I'll give Manjaro (Arch Linux) a try and see, if I can build up my own custom configuration as I go along. The only fear I have in this regard is that it might be hard to get certain apps i like or need, if they are not in the repository. But things will improve and I like to give new things a try. I can always come back to the bigger distros.

I find with yaourt (accesses the AUR), most of the free things
I'm looking for already have a package that you can install in a
single command.

I managed to install Arch Linux with Manjaro. I could install dub and dmd without any problems. The installation of Manjaro failed in UEFI mode, although it said it had been successful, it didn't work. I reinstalled it in classic mode with the stable installer and now it works. Now I'm testing it. So far everything works out of the box (wifi etc.) (unlike Ubuntu that gave me an effin headache).

I still believe that UEFI is just another trick to scare people away from Linux.

On Monday, 20 January 2014 at 22:39:53 UTC, Chris wrote:
> I managed to install Arch Linux with Manjaro. I could install dub and dmd without any problems. The installation of Manjaro failed in UEFI mode, although it said it had been successful, it didn't work. I reinstalled it in classic mode with the stable installer and now it works. Now I'm testing it. So far everything works out of the box (wifi etc.) (unlike Ubuntu that gave me an effin headache).
>
> I still believe that UEFI is just another trick to scare people away from Linux.

Have you tried setting up UEFI manually (https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/GRUB#UEFI_systems_2) ? Since Manjaro is Arch-based the  wiki should mostly still apply. I have setup UEFI with Arch on several systems so far without any issues, but as the page states, different manufacturers implement UEFI differently. If you run into any UEFI issues, you might want to report them, so they can be fixed / others can avoid that hardware if the need working UEFI.

Further off topic: SecureBoot might be a trick to scare people away from Linux, but UEFI? It brings direct boot into 64 bit long mode (making a lot of initialisation assembly code obsolete) and if you want, you can even get rid of a normal bootloader and directly boot up a kernel (efistub). While it is true that several manufacturers seem to implement it in a way that complicates / causes issues for Linux and it certainly could be made better / more implementations of it standard-compliant, I think UEFI is still a step up from BIOS.

On Monday, 20 January 2014 at 23:38:39 UTC, Moritz Maxeiner wrote:
> On Monday, 20 January 2014 at 22:39:53 UTC, Chris wrote:
>> I managed to install Arch Linux with Manjaro. I could install dub and dmd without any problems. The installation of Manjaro failed in UEFI mode, although it said it had been successful, it didn't work. I reinstalled it in classic mode with the stable installer and now it works. Now I'm testing it. So far everything works out of the box (wifi etc.) (unlike Ubuntu that gave me an effin headache).
>>
>> I still believe that UEFI is just another trick to scare people away from Linux.
>
> Have you tried setting up UEFI manually (https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/GRUB#UEFI_systems_2) ? Since Manjaro is Arch-based the  wiki should mostly still apply. I have setup UEFI with Arch on several systems so far without any issues, but as the page states, different manufacturers implement UEFI differently. If you run into any UEFI issues, you might want to report them, so they can be fixed / others can avoid that hardware if the need working UEFI.

I tried the test installer provided by Manjaro. The standard installer doesn't support UEFI (yet). The installer said everything had been set up (efi partition etc.), but the installation failed somehow. I was lazy and didn't partition manually but used the auto-partitioning option.
(cf. http://wiki.manjaro.org/index.php?title=UEFI_-_Install_Guide)

Then I just changed to legacy mode and installed with the stable installer. It's working now. I'd like to give UEFI another go, but there's always some issue. Ubuntu can handle it automatically, though.

> Further off topic: SecureBoot might be a trick to scare people away from Linux, but UEFI? It brings direct boot into 64 bit long mode (making a lot of initialisation assembly code obsolete) and if you want, you can even get rid of a normal bootloader and directly boot up a kernel (efistub). While it is true that several manufacturers seem to implement it in a way that complicates / causes issues for Linux and it certainly could be made better / more implementations of it standard-compliant, I think UEFI is still a step up from BIOS.

True, true. But I have a feeling that standardization / simplification is not really a priority, because it makes the installation of linux systems nigh impossible for normal users who are not tech savvy. MS sure won't complain about this situation ;)

On Monday, 20 January 2014 at 12:30:27 UTC, Chris wrote:
> At work we use Ubuntu, however, I'm not at all happy with it and don't want to use it on my private computer. Which is the best alternative (I've been looking at OpenSUSE; Mint is based on Ubuntu/Debian but only shares the repository with Ubuntu (right?); Fedora has bad reviews at the moment and might be a pain to set up (drivers etc.)). I'm also considering FreeBSD, a completely different beast.

I used Ubuntu for a couple of releases but switched back to Fedora in 2008 because there was talk of dropping support for Gnome rather than contributing to it. I use Openbox but Ubuntu was starting to leave a bad taste in my mouth.

Now with Mir and Wayland...well I'm really hoping the best of both eventually congeal into one great protocol.

But, that was in the past. About 2 years ago I thought I'd try Arch and loved it from the moment it was set up, which took about 30 min first time; not much longer than the Fedora installer.

Arch is BRILLIANT!...IMO of course.

Cheers,
Ed

On Tuesday, 21 January 2014 at 00:24:31 UTC, ed wrote:
> Arch is BRILLIANT!...IMO of course.

Arch indeed seems to be very popular around here, I use it on my notebook as well. For me it brings all the flexibility I want, like Gentoo, but without the hassles of compiling everything yourself, and also does an excellent job of not getting in my way. For technically minded people, the documentation (ArchWiki) is in my opinion among the best, if not the best, of all Linux distributions right now.

I wouldn't want to install it on my parent's machine though, you'll definitely end up using the command line and/or editing config files to tweak settings though.

But of course, this is a highly subjective issue…

David

Am Mon, 20 Jan 2014 13:03:18 +0000
schrieb "Daniel Kozak" <kozzi11@gmail.com>:

> On Monday, 20 January 2014 at 12:30:27 UTC, Chris wrote:
> > At work we use Ubuntu, however, I'm not at all happy with it and don't want to use it on my private computer. Which is the best alternative (I've been looking at OpenSUSE; Mint is based on Ubuntu/Debian but only shares the repository with Ubuntu (right?); Fedora has bad reviews at the moment and might be a pain to set up (drivers etc.)). I'm also considering FreeBSD, a completely different beast.
> 
> I try lots of distros (*buntu, debian, suse, mandriva, fedora, centos, gentoo...). And every distro has some cons and pros. But then I discovered Arch linux. After that, I do not have a reason to try another distro :).
> 
> BTW. Arch linux has perfect D support

Not that there is any competition going on, but Gentoo has
support for installing multiple versions of DMD, GDC and LDC2
at once. It has the "dman" command to quickly look up stuff
on dlang.org. It can install GtkD on top of all three
compilers at once in 32-bit and 64-bit.
And in addition it allows you to chose the compiler (i.e.
optimization) flags and optional components for D packages.
For GtkD the gtksourceview component and a few others are
optional.

-- 
Marco

On 20 Jan 2014 15:35, "qznc" <qznc@web.de> wrote:
>
> On Monday, 20 January 2014 at 14:53:55 UTC, Chris wrote:
>>
>> Maybe I'll give Fedora (+ Xfce) a shot.
>
>
> You could try Korora, which is based on Fedora, but includes a lot of
convenience. For example, proprietary software like Skype and Adobe Reader is already in the repo. Fonts and Drivers are a little bit nicer.
>

I wouldn't call proprietary software a convenience. ;)

Iain.

On Tuesday, 21 January 2014 at 03:50:28 UTC, Marco Leise wrote:
> Not that there is any competition going on...

Well, I won't reject this possibility :P

Your Gentoo approach is very solid though and I don't think it is possible to do anything like that right now for any binary package distro - most of D code is source-compatible between compilers but almost never ABI-compatible. It is one of cases where Gentoo philosophy really shines.

Good job ;)