Quoting: slaapliedje

Quoting: Scoopta

Quoting: slaapliedje

Quoting: ageres

Quoting: razing32If you really don't like the setup of Arch , try Manjaro or one of the helper scripts.

The problem with distributions derivatives is that their support can be dropped, like Antergos.
If, say, Xubuntu ends someday, I can always use Ubuntu mini CLI installer and simply choose xfce as DE. But I have problems with installing Arch. I tried several times, and succeeded only once, and I'm not sure what was different that time. It's something with a bootloader. I chose its every option in the installer, but the system did not start after installing. So, I don't want to use Arch-based distros if I cannot even install Arch.

Also, I don't see any reason to use Arch. Having a rolling release distro, so I wouldn't ever have to upgrade or reinstall? OpenSUSE is one too. Many software distribute as deb or rpm files only, which can be converted to each other with "alien", but Arch supports neither. More nuisances, no benefit.

The main reason for Arch over OpenSUSE Tumbleweed is probably that Tumbleweed is more of the bleeding edge, rolling release version of OpenSUSE, whereas it's just what Arch does.

So stability wise, Arch is more likely to be stable than Tumbleweed is.

I've tried out Tumbleweed in the past, and while stability wasn't really an issue, I just can't use Yast. It's funny, those that started out Linux with that distribution probably love Yast, anyone who started out with other distributions despise it. I kind of fall into that latter group.

It's the same thing for something like webmin / webadmin, that thing was horrific back in the day, not sure how it is now, but it's just simpler to edit the configs yourself, and not use something that's going to mash over it. Especially for configuring things like the Squid proxy software, where it has a billion options, and there is no decent way to create a UI for configuring it, without losing a lot of the potential functionality.

Anyhow, Arch may have a lack of what most people would say is a real installer, but it doesn't matter because once you have it installed, it just works.

It's also gotten a LOT better than it used to be, some things are just simply 'pacman -S gnome' and you get gnome. I think it takes me about 20 minutes to do a net install of Debian, and maybe another 10m after that of configuring it how I like it. Arch takes maybe an hour for both. Though with Arch, you should have a phone or some other device to read wikis while installing :)

The Debian installer bugs me. It doesn't let me setup my system the way I want. It has a habit of telling me the thing I'm trying to do won't work and that I can't do it when I can. I just don't use it anymore, I have a Debian disk with debootstrap on it and I just install Debian the same way most people do Arch. It lets me get Sid right from the start and it doesn't get in my way. It's also not terribly difficult if you're familiar enough with Linux.

Ha, now I'm really curious what you're trying to do with the installer that prevents you from setting it up the way you want. I mean I understand that about Ubuntu and a lot of other distributions, where they try to simplify the partitioning, but what is it you're trying to do that Debian doesn't allow, because I think it's one of the more flexible partitioners (unless you're not talking about partitioning?)

Nope I'm talking about partitioning. There's two things I do which it doesn't like. Depending on if I use grub or not changes what I do and what it complains about. If I don't use grub then I efi stub and it doesn't like /boot being on vfat instead of a Linux FS. If I do use grub then I have grub do my luks decrypt so /boot is encrypted and Debian doesn't like an encrypted /boot. I've mostly stopped using grub so it's usually the first issue but I do some hobby kernel dev and my kernel requires grub so I have systems with both setups.

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I'm buying this game just because of the attitude they took to Linux. The game itself sounds interesting but I usually don't play many walking simulators so normally would pass. That's not to say I won't play it either, if I'm buying it might as well play it, quite possibly will be cool.

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Quoting: slaapliedje

Quoting: ageres

Quoting: razing32If you really don't like the setup of Arch , try Manjaro or one of the helper scripts.

The problem with distributions derivatives is that their support can be dropped, like Antergos.
If, say, Xubuntu ends someday, I can always use Ubuntu mini CLI installer and simply choose xfce as DE. But I have problems with installing Arch. I tried several times, and succeeded only once, and I'm not sure what was different that time. It's something with a bootloader. I chose its every option in the installer, but the system did not start after installing. So, I don't want to use Arch-based distros if I cannot even install Arch.

Also, I don't see any reason to use Arch. Having a rolling release distro, so I wouldn't ever have to upgrade or reinstall? OpenSUSE is one too. Many software distribute as deb or rpm files only, which can be converted to each other with "alien", but Arch supports neither. More nuisances, no benefit.

The main reason for Arch over OpenSUSE Tumbleweed is probably that Tumbleweed is more of the bleeding edge, rolling release version of OpenSUSE, whereas it's just what Arch does.

So stability wise, Arch is more likely to be stable than Tumbleweed is.

I've tried out Tumbleweed in the past, and while stability wasn't really an issue, I just can't use Yast. It's funny, those that started out Linux with that distribution probably love Yast, anyone who started out with other distributions despise it. I kind of fall into that latter group.

It's the same thing for something like webmin / webadmin, that thing was horrific back in the day, not sure how it is now, but it's just simpler to edit the configs yourself, and not use something that's going to mash over it. Especially for configuring things like the Squid proxy software, where it has a billion options, and there is no decent way to create a UI for configuring it, without losing a lot of the potential functionality.

Anyhow, Arch may have a lack of what most people would say is a real installer, but it doesn't matter because once you have it installed, it just works.

It's also gotten a LOT better than it used to be, some things are just simply 'pacman -S gnome' and you get gnome. I think it takes me about 20 minutes to do a net install of Debian, and maybe another 10m after that of configuring it how I like it. Arch takes maybe an hour for both. Though with Arch, you should have a phone or some other device to read wikis while installing :)

The Debian installer bugs me. It doesn't let me setup my system the way I want. It has a habit of telling me the thing I'm trying to do won't work and that I can't do it when I can. I just don't use it anymore, I have a Debian disk with debootstrap on it and I just install Debian the same way most people do Arch. It lets me get Sid right from the start and it doesn't get in my way. It's also not terribly difficult if you're familiar enough with Linux.

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Quoting: Linas

Quoting: ScooptaI personally run stable on my server because I don't want to have to worry about it breaking...that being said I run unstable/Sid on my gaming PC and have never had it break so I think I mainly use stable for the peace of mind just in case.

Debian Stable one the server is exactly what you should do. When I said that I run Testing at work I meant on my workstation.

Ahh, I see. Tbh one thing I didn't realize is that testing and unstable were separate. I knew they were separate repositories but I thought they basically had the same packages. I've never really looked much into testing. I've always either stuck with stable or unstable+experimental.

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I didn't even know about the free game thing. I have just put expensive windows games that I want on the top of the list. No tux no bucks means this is one of the few ways I feel comfortable getting new games for proton lol. I've had them on my wishlist forever since devs can see I'm a Linux user but I've been hesitant to buy if it meant playing in proton. I like proton but for me personally the jury is still out on whether I want to give my money to a developer that doesn't support my platform.

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Quoting: Linas

Quoting: TobiSGDDebian Testing doesn't security updates in a timely manner.

Quoting: 14I have to throw out a (huge) caveat: security updates in Testing are not managed by the actual security team [External Link]! To me, that says stay away except for offline development or playing around in a VM. It shouldn't be your daily driver or your server.

Do you have information I don't that makes you comfortable recommending Testing?

The primary task [External Link] of the Debian Security Team is to take care of stable releases that exist outside of the regular rolling life cycle.

The security team evaluates security threats, and produces updated packages for our stable and old-stable releases, and release these packages through security.debian.org together with an advisory mail.

The preferred situation is that the regular maintainer of an affected package (who is most familiar with its ins and outs) prepares updated packages or a ready to use patch which, after approval, will be uploaded to security-master. If the regular maintainer can't or won't provide updates (in time), the security team will take the task of creating the updated packages.

Security for testing and unstable is not officially guaranteed, but the team tracks those distributions as well in the security tracker. A number of regular volunteers outside of the team help with triaging issues on the security tracker.

Testing and Unstable still get security updates through the regular the update procedure. If a security issue is discovered, a fix will be uploaded with a high priority that will expedite its migration to Testing.

All updates are uploaded to Unstable first, so it gets all the security updates quicker. But it also gets all the bugs first, some of which would never reach Testing in the first place.

Therefore Testing is good balance between stability and up-to-date packages.

Quoting: TobiSGDExperimental is not a branch of the distro you can install, it is only a bunch of packages that you can install (preferably on a Sid system) if you dare to do so.

Very true. Experimental is just a collection of packages that are not suitable for inclusion in the the main repository. Things that potentially break other things go here. Also things that are out of scope for an upcoming stable release during the freeze period.

Debian 10 is releasing next week, and they are releasing with a stable Linux kernel 4.19 and Mesa 18.3. Therefore Linux kernel 5.0 and Mesa 19.1 are in Experimental right now. They will be uploaded to Unstable shortly after the release of Debian 10, and will continue the regular rolling life cycle.

On my work machine I run Testing as a default, with some packages from Unstable, because I don't want things to break too much when I am at work.

For gaming, I run Unstable with all the latest and greatest software, and Linux kernel and Mesa from Experimental.

You can usually mix the packages relatively safely, because they will fail to install if some dependencies are not met.

For example you can set your default release to be Testing and add the Unstable repository in your sources list.

echo 'APT::Default-Release "testing";' | sudo tee /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/99local-default-release
echo "deb http://deb.debian.org/debian/ unstable main non-free contrib" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/debian-unstable.list

The packages will install from Testing by default, but you can switch to Unstable temporarily like this:

sudo aptitude -t unstable install linux-image-5.0.0-trunk-amd64

Stable is mostly for enterprise environments, where you need stability and predictable upgrade dates. This also makes it a good choice for your not so tech savvy family members that you need to provide tech-support to. Hi mom, I love you. :)

I personally run stable on my server because I don't want to have to worry about it breaking...that being said I run unstable/Sid on my gaming PC and have never had it break so I think I mainly use stable for the peace of mind just in case.

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I still want my 64-bit port of steam. I think it's ridiculous that Steam is still 32-bit. I understand older games will never be updated but I think steam needs to be. I was really hoping that if nothing else that would come out of the Ubuntu fiasco but it's looking like I'll be stuck with 32-bit steam a while longer.

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Quoting: Eike

Quoting: ScooptaNo I don't, I wish there was a way...maybe there is but I don't know it.

I wonder if SteamDB might have this available somehow. Don't know.

Yeah, I was wondering the same thing. Some games are easy to tell based on their files. For example Unity games. There are a very rare few that are 32-bit only. The executable for unity games end with .x86 for 32-bit and .x86_64 for 64-bit. If there's only one executable and it's .x86 then you know it's only 32-bit. But that only works for unity games which are mostly 64-bit anyway, most actually come with both so they work everywhere.

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Quoting: Eike

Quoting: ScooptaI don't play any 32-bit games so steam is the only reason I even need it enabled on my distro.

Do you check this before buying a game? How?

No I don't, I wish there was a way...maybe there is but I don't know it. I just don't buy games very often and everything I play in my library is 64-bit. I guess in theory you could buy, check, and refund but that's inconvenient. I just got lucky that I don't really play any 32-bit games at this point. In my experience 32-bit is mostly source 1 games and indie games that don't use Unity. Almost everything else(outside of proton) is 64-bit in my experience. Of course I'm just a sample size of one. Might be that the games I play I just get lucky with.

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I was really hoping canonical was going to give me the 64-bit steam client of my dreams. I don't play any 32-bit games so steam is the only reason I even need it enabled on my distro. I'm personally disappointed, 32-bit needs to go. It's annoying having to have 2 separate versions of every library so I can run 32-bit software. I'm also a bigger fan of GTK/Gnome so I'm a bit disappointed they chose kwin to contribute to instead of something like mutter but oh well. It's nice to see them continuing to better the Linux space even if it's a project I'll never use.

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