On 1/20/2014 11:20 AM, H. S. Teoh wrote:
>
> (P.S. Now I know Ubuntu is based on Debian, but the one time I had to
> deal with an Ubuntu system directly I noticed that they were not as
> friendly to customization.
>

I'd say that's fairly accurate. Ubuntu started as an easy-to-use Debian. But ever since, they've been gradually, but steadily, turning it into an OSX clone.

With Unity now, it's exactly what I'd recommend to Mac fans who want to try Linux, but not really to anyone else.

On 1/23/2014 2:00 AM, Thomas Mader wrote:
>
> A rolling release system like Arch has it is fabulous, but only if you
> also get a rollback functionality.

Does it?

On Fri, Jan 24, 2014 at 06:01:33AM -0500, Nick Sabalausky wrote: [...]
> While Linux isn't my primary desktop system, the desktop Linux stuff I do work with has gone from Ubuntu -> Debian -> Mint.
> 
> I left Ubuntu because Canonical was starting to piss me off, partly because of their apparent obsession with being basically just an OSX clone. So I went upstream to Debian. Still run Debian on my server, but I abandoned it as a desktop OS partly because so much of it is out of date literally before they even release it, and also because once they do get a newer version of something, there's a fair chance you can't actually get it without upgrading the whole OS because not everything actually gets into backports
[...]

You should just run off Debian/unstable (or if you're chicken, testing). I do.  In spite of the name, it's actually already as stable as your typical desktop OS with its typical occasional random breakage. Stable is really for those people who are running mission critical servers that when the OS dies, people die. That's why it's always "out of date", 'cos everything must be tested thoroughly first. For desktop users you don't need that kind of stability, and generally you don't want to wait that long to get software upgrades. So just use unstable or testing. I've been living off unstable for almost 15 years and have only had 1 or 2 occasions when things broke in a major way. That's saying a lot considering how many times I've had to reformat and reinstall Windows (supposedly a stable release version!) back when I was still stuck using it.


T

-- 
"How are you doing?" "Doing what?"

On Friday, 24 January 2014 at 11:26:43 UTC, Nick Sabalausky wrote:
> On 1/23/2014 2:00 AM, Thomas Mader wrote:
>>
>> A rolling release system like Arch has it is fabulous, but only if you
>> also get a rollback functionality.
>
> Does it?

If NixOS supports a rollback? Yes indeed it does, you can even do a "test" upgrade which doesn't get to be selected as the default boot option. So if you reboot the machine, you are left with the exact same system before your test.
You can even simply create a Virtual Machine to test a new configuration without a reboot.

So there is no way to get a broken system at times you don't have time to fix your system after an update because you can always simply rollback to the old configuration.
The only exception is, if the boot loader doesn't work anymore.

Good overview of the philosophy behind the project: http://nixos.org/nixos/

The project is very young (first stable release back in October) and inmature but I do really like the idea.

On Tuesday, 21 January 2014 at 15:08:16 UTC, Chris wrote:
> How's the FreeBSD documentation / community? Is it easy to find solutions?

FreeBSD has the best official docs I've ever seen for an OS:

http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/

The mailing lists and forums are good places to get questions answered.  I've never had problems finding solutions, if they exist. ;) Arch's wiki might be the best such informational resource I've ever seen though.

> I'm testing ArchLinux now and so far I think it's great. I've encountered less problems than on other, so called user-friendly, distros. The documentation is sound, and I like the fact that it's a rolling distro. If it comes so close to FreeBSD, as has been said, I wonder if it is worth the trouble to install FreeBSD at all.

It's worth trying FreeBSD if you're at all interested in tech like zfs, zones, dtrace, bhyve, etc.  Pacman is better than any other package manager I've used though.

On Tuesday, 21 January 2014 at 10:53:32 UTC, simendsjo wrote:
[snip]

> It's the first distro that Just Works (TM) for me, and the distro that made me go full-time GNU/Linux.
> Even compiling a custom kernel, which I needs for a piece of hardware, is just a couple of commands.
>
> I haven't tried much of the graphical tools though, so you might have to be comfortable with the terminal for all I know.

+1 to everything said here. Arch was also the first distro which
for me just works and keeps on working.

When Fedora broke I didn't mind. It was usually just after a
fresh install, easy to fix and very occasional. It was just too
out of date for my taste.

I had a lot of problems with Ubuntu and stability from
7.10-13.04. Even guys at my work, which were Ubuntu fanatics,
stopped at 13.04 when I convinced them to try Arch because they
were having issues after the release. One did settle on Fedora
because Arch required RTFM for 10 mins during first install.

Now at work Ubuntu users are rare. The occasional junior dev,
straight out of uni/college and still very earnest and excitable,
may be spotted booting into Ubuntu but that's it.

Cheers,
Ed

On Friday, 24 January 2014 at 23:17:55 UTC, ed wrote:
> I had a lot of problems with Ubuntu and stability from
> 7.10-13.04. Even guys at my work, which were Ubuntu fanatics,
> stopped at 13.04 when I convinced them to try Arch because they
> were having issues after the release. One did settle on Fedora
> because Arch required RTFM for 10 mins during first install.

10 minutes? heh.

It will take most people much longer than 10 minutes to do their first install.

On Saturday, 25 January 2014 at 06:46:17 UTC, Kapps wrote:
> On Friday, 24 January 2014 at 23:17:55 UTC, ed wrote:
>> I had a lot of problems with Ubuntu and stability from
>> 7.10-13.04. Even guys at my work, which were Ubuntu fanatics,
>> stopped at 13.04 when I convinced them to try Arch because they
>> were having issues after the release. One did settle on Fedora
>> because Arch required RTFM for 10 mins during first install.
>
> 10 minutes? heh.
>
> It will take most people much longer than 10 minutes to do their first install.

It was about 10 minutes even for newbies until they (we) have removed ncurses installer as no one has maintained it :(

On Friday, 24 January 2014 at 16:14:15 UTC, H. S. Teoh wrote:
> On Fri, Jan 24, 2014 at 06:01:33AM -0500, Nick Sabalausky wrote:
> [...]
>> While Linux isn't my primary desktop system, the desktop Linux stuff
>> I do work with has gone from Ubuntu -> Debian -> Mint.
>> 
>> I left Ubuntu because Canonical was starting to piss me off, partly
>> because of their apparent obsession with being basically just an OSX
>> clone. So I went upstream to Debian. Still run Debian on my server,
>> but I abandoned it as a desktop OS partly because so much of it is
>> out of date literally before they even release it, and also because
>> once they do get a newer version of something, there's a fair chance
>> you can't actually get it without upgrading the whole OS because not
>> everything actually gets into backports
> [...]
>
> You should just run off Debian/unstable (or if you're chicken, testing).
> I do.  In spite of the name, it's actually already as stable as your
> typical desktop OS with its typical occasional random breakage. Stable
> is really for those people who are running mission critical servers that
> when the OS dies, people die. That's why it's always "out of date", 'cos
> everything must be tested thoroughly first. For desktop users you don't
> need that kind of stability, and generally you don't want to wait that
> long to get software upgrades. So just use unstable or testing. I've
> been living off unstable for almost 15 years and have only had 1 or 2
> occasions when things broke in a major way. That's saying a lot
> considering how many times I've had to reformat and reinstall Windows
> (supposedly a stable release version!) back when I was still stuck using
> it.
>
>
> T

The thing with stability is, it's meaningless without context. The only thing that has meaning is stability in the face of a particular workload.

Mission critical servers tend to have very static requirements. A power-user's desktop has very dynamic requirements. Debian stable will be more "stable" for the server, but the same is not necessarily true for the desktop.

On Sat, Jan 25, 2014 at 11:51:57AM +0000, John Colvin wrote:
> On Friday, 24 January 2014 at 16:14:15 UTC, H. S. Teoh wrote:
> >On Fri, Jan 24, 2014 at 06:01:33AM -0500, Nick Sabalausky wrote: [...]
> >>While Linux isn't my primary desktop system, the desktop Linux stuff I do work with has gone from Ubuntu -> Debian -> Mint.
> >>
> >>I left Ubuntu because Canonical was starting to piss me off, partly because of their apparent obsession with being basically just an OSX clone. So I went upstream to Debian. Still run Debian on my server, but I abandoned it as a desktop OS partly because so much of it is out of date literally before they even release it, and also because once they do get a newer version of something, there's a fair chance you can't actually get it without upgrading the whole OS because not everything actually gets into backports
> >[...]
> >
> >You should just run off Debian/unstable (or if you're chicken, testing).  I do.  In spite of the name, it's actually already as stable as your typical desktop OS with its typical occasional random breakage.  Stable is really for those people who are running mission critical servers that when the OS dies, people die. That's why it's always "out of date", 'cos everything must be tested thoroughly first. For desktop users you don't need that kind of stability, and generally you don't want to wait that long to get software upgrades. So just use unstable or testing.  I've been living off unstable for almost 15 years and have only had 1 or 2 occasions when things broke in a major way. That's saying a lot considering how many times I've had to reformat and reinstall Windows (supposedly a stable release version!) back when I was still stuck using it.
> >
> >
> >T
> 
> The thing with stability is, it's meaningless without context. The only thing that has meaning is stability in the face of a particular workload.
> 
> Mission critical servers tend to have very static requirements. A power-user's desktop has very dynamic requirements. Debian stable will be more "stable" for the server, but the same is not necessarily true for the desktop.

OK, but what I was getting at was that Debian 'unstable' is actually usable for daily desktop needs in spite of the name.


T

-- 
"Holy war is an oxymoron." -- Lazarus Long