Learning Linux + Distro Hopping/Exploration

Off Topic What Else Are You Playing?
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What up guys. To the question “What Else Are You Playing?”

Learning Linux, distribution hopping and exploration. GD provides an awesome game play journey that we all love. Much like the item acquisition, discovery, and steady stream of new exciting experiences in GD, Linux administration, programming, and Web Development offer loads to explore. I had an unfortunate journey through Windows update hell in Win7 recently, which screwed up 3 legit working installs of Win7. Consequently, it motivated me to seriously consider alternatives. I tried Windows 10 and the UI is annoying to me. Mac = I don’t do apple. So, I’ve been experimenting with several Linux distros.

  • Linux Mint (Cinnamon and MATE Editions)
  • Manjaro (KDE and Cinnamon Editions)
  • Ubuntu (Mate and Kubuntu Editions)
  • Steam OS (dedicated Steam gaming setup)

I’ll soon be checking out ArchLinux for a deeper dive into system customization.

For the potential Linux newbie a good starting point is => http://distrowatch.com/

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Good on you. My distro-hopping stopped once I tried Arch :wink:

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Linux Mint and Ubuntu are definitely the friendliest out of the gate and can usually get whatever you need running with minimal messing around.

That said I really, really like Manjaro for a 3rd place. It’s pretty much a ready to go Arch anyway tho some things can give you a headache.

If it wasn’t for some problems I had with certain things it would be at the top for me.

Sent from my SCH-I605 using Tapatalk

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My issue with Linux was that I could never find a use for it. It seemed neat and you could play around with a lot of things, but all my most used programs and expected experience is on Windows.

I’ve played around with Arch at one point (installing that dual-boot with Windows with certain styles of motherboards is a nightmare…), and it was pretty cool, but I was always left with trying to figure out what I’m bothering with it for.

The main issue with Arch, though, is that it’s fundamentally unstable.

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Using Manjaro (KDE) full time now after trying Ubuntu, Arch and Solus.

I like the balance of automated vs manual work.

GD steam works ok, but can’t get GoG version going yet…

^ I had that problem until I found gaming is now pretty decent and I’m starting developing in c++ as a hobby

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Largely my problem with Linux as well. Fun to mess around with for a bit but then the little problems arise that become bigger problems. Massive screen tearing so you install Nvidia drivers. Assuming everything goes alright with that and you don’t get a black screen in boot you find out that because your TV is your monitor for some reason all text everywhere in the OS is insanely small. So now you have to edit a config file after managing to get into prompt boot after fiddling in grub for ages to get it to do that to resolve that problem only to find out you still have screen tearing out the wazoo during video playback and now you have to try all kinds of things that may or may not work between editing more files, installing Compiz and tweaking settings or tweaking settings in whatever DE you are using. All of which may or may not work.

(^if the above sounds like a clusterf@ck to you, well, that’s how it will leave yer head unless you’ve been hacking away at it since you were a little kid)

I want so bad to like and love Linux and if GD actually ran in it natively I just might switch completely. Until that day tho it is not worth the slew of headaches that go with it just to get things working properly whereas in Windows… They just work.

Sighhhhhhhh

Still every once in awhile I say screw Windows and bash my head against Linux for a bit but always go limping back. Nice and bloody.

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Yeah, my experience was fairly similar to the clusterfuck above. I was installing Linux mostly on laptops, and Linux and laptops just didn’t seem to get along at all. Either it was the wireless drivers, or the graphics drivers, or something else. Desktops were a biiit better and then all the UEFI shit showed up. Trying to figure out the exact magical sequence of actions and commands for grub/syslinux (I did get something installed somewhere eventually but Jesus you need to have another computer with an internet connection next to you) is fun. And I remember having a lot of weird issues with X because I was trying to change my desktop-ui-thing-whatchamacall it and it was not cooperating.

I wouldn’t mind taking a jab at Arch again, though. I liked it the best because it felt the most barebones, while Ubuntu always felt like it’s doing a whole bunch of stuff in the background. Does Win10 tolerate these at all in a dual boot? I think it did but I don’t quite recall. I’m pretty sure a lot of my Linux issues later on were related to the specifics of dual-boot, especially dual-boot and UEFI.

Gaming has definitely gotten a lot better recently, and it should hopefully get better with all the cross-platform tools coming out lately. There are actually some games that work better on Linux (Heretic II in particular, good luck getting that to work right on Windows with OpenGL). I’m just deathly afraid of finding some game I want to play that wouldn’t work on Linux so doing a complete switch from Windows has never looked likely. Especially all the games in the gray area where they are not old enough to be redone or reemulated but are not new enough to have been written with better architecture.

I was wanting to get into Rust development, not sure if it’s terribly platform specific. That and learn emacs and all that. I’m a very Windows-focused developer by trade and diving into the other end of things is nice sometimes.

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Heh, tell that to my 5 year old arch install that has seen multiple desktop environments in its day and still runs great :wink:

I never had any of those headaches you’re describing here, but I really think that is down to hardware issues. You mentioned UEFI, I still own only BIOS systems…the older (relatively speaking) your hardware is, the less issues you’re going to run into (new hardware takes some time to get proper drivers written for…which the manufacturer mostly doesn’t do right away or at all). I’m aware that this is no general rule, though, and your mileage may vary…

I just like the ability to customise your system with Linux, which I can’t really get on Windows. Need some stuff done regularly? Whip up a quick shell script, bind it to a shortcut in your window manager config file and you’re good to go :slight_smile:

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For a home install that works. For a professional install, Arch takes no responsibility whatsoever for releasing updates that will break things, and they had many updates that would break all sorts of things. Updates with restarts are required for many changes. “Arch should never be used for production servers” is something you see frequently, often stated by Arch enthusiasts themselves.

Duh, it’s hardware issues. Limiting your hardware due to the behavior of an OS is not a positive towards said OS. Why bother with Linux and trying to cherry-pick hardware for it when I have Windows? I like being able to upgrade my gaming computer every so often.

A lot of crap is acceptable for a solo hobbyist doing things just for himself. That’s a pretty poor measure of actual quality. A hobbyist user doesn’t care that a game doesn’t run with some video card as long as the game runs with his video card, but a video game manufacturer absolutely can’t think like that. Expectations change when you have lots of users and responsibilities and if you are more concerned with getting things done than being nifty.

Also, a lot of people seriously underestimate the capabilities of Windows. Nobody should be impressed by shellscripts, PS is a thing.

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I have to agree with much of what has been stated above. Many times things just don’t work or behave as one would expect. In my opinion, its largely due to attitudes and experiences… the attitudes and experiences of end users, developers, hobbyist, hardware manufacturers, OEMs (like Dell and HP), etc. I would also go on to say that personal agendas effect the outcomes of software quality, which in turn can effect attitudes and experiences.

There are automatic ways (vs manual ways) of doing things but the automation doesn’t follow the Windows/Macintosh approach. The automation in Linux mostly comes from scripting, which implies the command line interface (CLI). In Windows, most software has a GUI, and automation comes from using the GUI. In Linux the GUI tends to be a pretty UI that just feeds data/commands to the CLI.

In Windows stuff just works, aka working out of the box, aka plug-and-play (PnP), isn’t software automation entirely. PnP tends to come from manufacturer supplied drivers and detection data given to Microsoft/Apple. M$/Apple then includes the drivers/detection data into the OS so hardware is immediately detected, drivers are install, and config. data can be assembled without user involvement. Unfortunately, not all HW manufacturers are willing to publish the drivers/detection data to the Linux community so the full PnP experience isn’t always there.

As stated in the original post, being forced through a hellish, broken Windows Update experience and subsequent full reinstall, motivated me to consider Linux. I’m a reasonably experienced user, so I am capable of learning and mastering Linux. It has been tough at times, but I’m slowly adjusting my attitude away from the Windows mind set. This transition really forces one to learn patience and calm.

I really don’t want to upgrade to Win10, inherit its issues, deal with its learning curve, and content with its spyware. However, all it takes is a single Windows update cycle to break a working, legit Win7/8/8.1 install to force a user to upgrade. For us gamers, all it takes is for M$ to break DirectX 9/10/11 to force us to Win10/DX-12.

As a safety precaution make sure you get your Win 10 free before the free period is over (July 2016). I have gone through the Win10 upgrade for all of my Win7 installs so I can run Win10 at anytime legit if I need to.

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Well, I wasn’t aware we are talking about “professional” stuff here. Sure if you’re using Arch as a server OS you’re bound to run into issues if you stay on the bleeding edge. But that’s why servers usually run other flavors of Linux…Yeah, they might state that, but why is that a bad thing? At least they are giving you the caveat in advance.

Why is it the fault of the OS if they don’t get the “here you you have ready-to-go drivers for our new hardware” treatment from hardware manufacturers? Sure it’s a question of market share and relevance, but blaming that entirely on the OS is not something I’d do. And yes, my gaming computer still dual-boots into Windows 7, but I don’t see a problem with that. Use whatever works best for what you want to accomplish and that’s Win 7 for my gaming and Arch for everything else…

I know that power shell is a thing, but that’s not an argument to go back to Windows for me, as I already have the same functionality I need on Linux. Maybe my example was a bad one…ease of exchangeability of the DE/WM might have been a better one. But even so, it’s not my intention to argue for or against either one of those systems. I was just saying what I enjoyed about my arch install, because OP mentioned it. You have a different opinion about that and that’s fine.

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@powbam:
How long ago did you try to get Linux working with your hardware? What distros and versions of Linux did you use?

@Dargenus:
Arch is known to be a bleeding edge rolling release distro. For some developers a bleeding edge setup can be a desired setup. For a server environment stability and security tend to be a priority with server/network administrators.

As for breaking stuff, M$ is known to break stuff without warning when it suits their agenda. M$ is also known for abandoning platforms they’ve started when it suits their agenda as well (see OLE and the transition to ActiveX). As for taking responsibility when breaking stuff, M$ has taken the “upgrade to the latest version” stance on many occasions (see VB4/VB5 bugs and the push for VB6).

As for UEFI, I’ve had no trouble with it. My mobo is an Asus Maximus VI Formula with EUFI firmware. I had a multi-boot setup with Win7, Win10 and multiple Linux distros installed on a single drive. I wiped the setup to get rid of Win10. I ended up with installing Win7 on one drive and Manjaro Linux on another. Grub and the Windows boot loaders aren’t an issue. EasyBCD on the Windows side will take of the Windows boot loader. A live install USB stick, CD, or DVD will provide you with the command line tools to take care of Grub. You can use either the Windows boot loader or Grub2 as the default boot loader that your BIOS/EUFI firmware loads.

For the most part Windows and Linux users are limited to Intel chipset video, AMD/ATI cards, and nVidia based cards. The quality of the end user experience comes down to HW manufacturer support and willingness to work with the OS owner/distro.

I used Power Shell when it was released, and WSH with Javascript and VBscript before PS. Windows can be a powerful platform, but when it comes to Power Shell the real power comes from the .NET platform, legacy COM, and WMI. Without leveraging .NET, COM and WMI, PS would be noticeably weak compared to what Unix/Linux offers.

M$ and their products aren’t a panacea, but they have the advantage of desktop install base, OEM and HW manufacturer support. Take away the OEM and HW manufacturer support advantage and our view of M$ would drastically change.

How long ago did you try to get Linux working with your hardware, and what hardware was used?

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Oh I’ve been dabbling on and off for years now. The last time was probably a couple months ago. But it’s always some issue that kills it off for me and I also have no interest in wrestling with wine trying to get GD to work so once I get my fill of seeing if driver troubles have improved I just put Windows back on.

I’ve tried many, many distros and I consider myself about intermediate skill level with messing around with it. The main thing is knowing how to search to solve your problems and then copying and pasting into the terminal :stuck_out_tongue:

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Was a pretty long time ago. I’m currently on a desktop I’ve never tried it on, and it has Win10 installed.

I may give it another stab. :smiley:

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As a Linux user since 1996, I can say you can use Linux for everything, specially at work. At work I only need Windows for Microsoft related tasks like Office 365 labs, Skype tests, rare C# development and so on … Windows will never beat Linux for network management, testing, support, development, hacking, as a workstation… unless you have one or more softwares only for Windows…

But for gaming, Linux will never beat Windows unless Valve makes something big next few years (Vulkan is our hope)… Linux has a complicated(frustrating) story regarding graphics drivers, specially AMD/ATI. But now we have the best scenario, much better graphics drivers(official open source), steam pushing and helping game developers to port games to Linux, AAA games running perfectly like Civilization V, Valve games, any many more…

I can suggest, install Windows 10+Classic Shell, get Debian Testing (Stretch) from here, use the netinst for amd64. Install GNOME 3 or Cinnamon(awesome).

Why Windows10? I don’t have any issues with it since update 1511 (solved all my bugs, on my 5 pcs). Even the UI not being the best for everyone, while gaming I don’t see the Windows UI, and we will always get the best performance/drivers/compatibility running the latest version of the OS.

Regarding the hardware, I can say I’m happy with current status of AMD graphics drivers (xserver-xorg-video-amdgpu). Drivers for all other hardware are native and they are not a problem. I have two examples of gaming hardware:

Razer Mouse: Don’t have official software for Linux, we have an unofficial that works called razercfg (for advanced configuration, resolution, etc): https://bues.ch/cms/hacking/razercfg.html
Logitech Keyboards: Don’t have official software for Linux, the unofficial gnome15.org (for keyboard backlight, etc…)sometimes work…

I play “Civilization V” on Linux:D , every other game on Windows10.

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Using ArchLinux for 7 years. Once i’ve found Arch never looked back. But for gaming i am using Windows 7 :slight_smile: