Linux... what distro and why?

[IparryU]

Last thread I can make before closure... but I want to pick at some of your brainz... proably coligny will sound off the most (I wish I had half your bunker)

My Laptop (old one used for playing around) Sony VAIO VGN-N130G
So I am using Kubuntu 12.04 now... I had Fedora, Ubuntu, Jolicloud, and just wanted to test everything out before comitting.

(?)Ubuntus were easiest to get used to, personalize, etc., but this was only 1 week worth of playing about with other distros. Used Ubuntu the longest, have no issues with it, but I am quite sure that there are things (?) out there that may be better...

So... what one do you think is best for personal use?

[cstaylor]

Last thread I can make before closure... but I want to pick at some of your brainz... proably coligny will sound off the most (I wish I had half your bunker)

My Laptop (old one used for playing around) Sony VAIO VGN-N130G
So I am using Kubuntu 12.04 now... I had Fedora, Ubuntu, Jolicloud, and just wanted to test everything out before comitting.

(?)Ubuntus were easiest to get used to, personalize, etc., but this was only 1 week worth of playing about with other distros. Used Ubuntu the longest, have no issues with it, but I am quite sure that there are things (?) out there that may be better...

So... what one do you think is best for personal use?

The Unity interface on the latest Ubuntus will really tax your hardware if you don't have enough RAM. Have you bumped the memory over the standard 1GB?

[yanpa]

I've heard good things about Linux Mint ( http://linuxmint.com/ ) as an alternative to the increasing infantilism of Ubuntu, but I've never tried it myself.

Personally I've abandoned Ubuntu (actually Xubuntu, never could stand Gnome) and gone back to OpenSuSE, now that KDE is about as usable as it was 5~6 years ago.

[IparryU]

The Unity interface on the latest Ubuntus will really tax your hardware if you don't have enough RAM. Have you bumped the memory over the standard 1GB?

yup at 2GB and this hunk o' junk can even run StarCraft 2 quite well (after a fine tuning of windows... slipstream... strip all the shit out). Using Kubuntu 12.04 and even got unity installed... no lags no crashes nada. I was thinking of going back to Ubuntu just

Sorta why I am trying to see what else may be good for me.

I've heard good things about Linux Mint ( http://linuxmint.com/ ) as an alternative to the increasing infantilism of Ubuntu, but I've never tried it myself.

Personally I've abandoned Ubuntu (actually Xubuntu, never could stand Gnome) and gone back to OpenSuSE, now that KDE is about as usable as it was 5~6 years ago.

KDE is great now... Kubuntu 12.04 is clean. I was on OpenSuSE years ago (my cherry popper to linux) but it ran like crap...

[Coligny]

Ubuntu is a strange mix of awesome package management and atrocious user interface.

I also heard good things on mint...

SIdenote at least until 11 , ubuntu got a 2D unity interface for underpowered devices. A quick googling will tell you moar...

[gaijinpunch]

I use Gentoo, mainly due to high customization. It is definitely not for the faint of heart, although it's no Debian or FreeBSD. The community is good, but not great: I often find far more help at linuxquestions.org than I do at gentoo.org.

KDE I like, but you have to keep an eye on it. We used it at my work place for ages, but there are a few poor components that will eat the fuck out of the CPU if they spin out of control.

[cstaylor]

I use Gentoo, mainly due to high customization.

Yes, and drobbins is back in the game with funtoo.

[GrimJim]

Arch is pretty good. A pain to setup, but there is the distro called ArchBang. I am using it now and it is pretty damn good. Since it is based of Arch, and is a rolling release distro, pretty much everything is the latest version. Also, the Arch Wiki is full of information. I think it is worth a try.

I am not sure where Ubuntu is headed. I tried the interface for several months. I was hoping the new HUD would be good. But it was driving me nuts. Mint is a good alternative if you want to have Ubuntu but not Unity. Because Mint is based off Ubuntu.

[IparryU]

I jusrlt swithced back to ubuntu to test out 12.04 and thus far unity is suiting me.

I may try mint for the hell of it though.

Just need to find an efficient way to backup what i got now and be able to revert to that if i donr like mint.

Is cloanzilla good or should i use something else?

[GrimJim]

I have not used clonezilla before. But looks good. I usually just use dd. Which is awesome. It is also pretty simple to use.

I liked this guide the most so far, http://mark.koli.ch/2009/05/howto-whole-disk-backups-with-dd-gzip-and-p7zip.html

You can do things like sending the data over ssh as well.
dd if=/dev/sda | ssh sys@192.168.1.100 "dd of=/mnt/data/laptop_sda.img"

If you clone the whole hard drive with dd, you can load it with Qemu and run it under emulation. Or use a program called testdisk to peek inside and copy out select files.

[sumu ukko]

I have various Ubuntu distros in all of my home PCs and servers, however I agree the su in (not of) the Ubuntu is and will be abused up to the no end.

Debian user death in itself is good if You are up to it. I did Debian before growing too old and switched to Ubuntu.


However, like so many who are mislead for a reason or not in their actual needs... if you get no hard-on for "sudo dhclient", "ifconfig" or even "ls -la", then...

Pick up a Mac laptop, and at the same time... Please Completely Stop Whining on anything which comes to any deeper than actual user interface.

Honestly my 1 yen

Thanks for reading. I take Linux personally, however there is no actual reason for such a behaviour. Except in the case of windows-thing which I do not take seriously for I have no any real monetary or other part-time investments there.

[cstaylor]

You can do things like sending the data over ssh as well.
dd if=/dev/sda | ssh sys@192.168.1.100 "dd of=/mnt/data/laptop_sda.img"

Ouch. Rsync would have been a better choice...

[IparryU]

Ouch. Rsync would have been a better choice...

care to elaborate on that?

[Coligny]

care to elaborate on that?

man rsync...

///amanasshole....

[IparryU]

man rsync...

///amanasshole....

just the man I want to pick at...

I got a Kingmax 4GB (Turbo-Vaccine UD-01) USB Stick and it is not detected on Ubuntu... Windoze OK.
http://www.nordichardware.com/index.php?option=com_content&catid=112&lang=en&view=article&id=20808

I only bought it cause it was the cheapest 4gb usb...

I googled it and couldn't find shit on it...

what can I do?

It does not pop up in disk manager

the LED flashes 3 times and stays off after that.

[cstaylor]

care to elaborate on that?

dd if=/dev/sda means you're block-copying every single sector on the hard disk: slow and wasteful.

Since Grim was doing it over the network, why not use rsync, which is designed for this kind of thing? Unlike Windows, Linux is pretty good at keeping everything you need to transfer in the file system read-accessible when the system is live, so you can just rsync from system 1 to system 2 (or even disk 1 to disk 2 on the same system).

On Gentoo, this is called a stage4 installation.

[Coligny]

just the man I want to pick at...

I got a Kingmax 4GB (Turbo-Vaccine UD-01) USB Stick and it is not detected on Ubuntu... Windoze OK.
http://www.nordichardware.com/index.php?option=com_content&catid=112&lang=en&view=article&id=20808

I only bought it cause it was the cheapest 4gb usb...

I googled it and couldn't find shit on it...

what can I do?

It does not pop up in disk manager

the LED flashes 3 times and stays off after that.

Low level format in windows. Should get rid of the shit they put on it...

On linux...
You tried gparted and gpart ? seems ubuntu don't install them de-facto...
check dmesg, plug it, check dmesg again, look for USB disk event insertion... should give you the place it's coming (/dev/sdxyz)... then try a mkfs on this place...

[IparryU]

I just installed Mint 12 and updating ATM.

Will do this when the updates finish.