arclightLinux distro experiment time! I'm currently using Linux Mint and am fairly happy with it. Regardless, I got a new SSD and want to put something different on my aging ThinkPad. Should it be:
Vanilla Debian
Arch Linux
Something else
Poll ended at .
What I'm loving about this poll is everyone is positive and has an opinion (NixOS is getting a lot of shadow votes). "I'm using <x> but YMMV" and "I like <x> but <z> might be interesting" are surprisingly common responses. Every suggestion is appreciated.
Hm. This process is substantially more frustrating than when I last installed or updated an OS. Issues have been: a) corrupt boot image, b) you have to install from the network oh and by the way your wireless network drivers are NONFREE so have fun finding some for your 10-year-old laptop, c) unless you have been installing this OS since 1987, you will not be able to understand this installation guide - consult your VAX admin for assistance.
Maybe the problem is I'm still trying to use unetbootin to create a bootable USB stick from a Windows box. The alternatives do not fill me with faith :/
I apparently have Software QA Syndrome - any action I take results in baffling edge-case failures with no diagnostics. Opening doors, breathing, sitting quietly in a chair - in 5 seconds everything will be on fire.
I am beginning to suspect this microSD card in the cheap USB adapter. No reason, really. Fresh out of the package SD card of reputable brand and not the cheapest of the line, known good USB adapter. Maybe I've just Quick Format'ted it enough times to burn it out. I wouldn't expect a dozen runs of unetbootin to do that, but I also expected I'd be able to install _something_ by now. Debian and OpenBSD have been total failures, falling back to Linux Mint (what I started with). Nothing is installing; tried YUMI, tried unetbootin. Nothing works.
Or maybe it's this name-brand-not-cheapest-of-the-line SSD that Amazon put in a plastic bag and shipped in a cardboard box with no other packaging. Maybe Jeff needs a new yacht or spaceship so they're just putting random unvetted crap in boxes and dropkicking them onto people's doorsteps. Running a full SMART scan on the new SSD for whatever that's worth. IIRC dying drives only show SMART errors about 10% of the time so passing a SMART scan doesn't really prove anything.
SSD self-test is 30% done, no errors thus far. I'm going to pack for my f'ing trip to DC and try not to think about everything - hardware, software, institutions - everything being so goddamned broken.
I don't believe I am so old or feebleminded that I can't just download a stupid ISO image, burn it onto a USB stick, and tell my laptop to boot from the stick and install an operating system. I have been doing this since 1994. Technology has not changed substantially in a decade. For a while, installing Linux was easier, faster, and more reliable than Windows. This is not some new process for me. Somehow everything just seems shitty and broken and nobody can be trusted not to set the neighborhood on fire or not get their head stuck in a toilet. It's not "things once were better", it's "things are actively worse now and no, you can't blame this on the youngs and their avocado toast"
80% of the new SSD has passed SMART checks. I doubt I'll find anything though I also still doubt I'll have any success installing anything tonight.
Dan Hon@arclight is this a UEFI thing and is there the whole balena etcher thing going on?
@danhon I turned off Secure Boot but left UEFI settings alone. I'm about to punt to a second fresh SD card and use Balena Etcher instead of unetbootin or YUMI.
This should not be such an ordeal but I say that all the time about Python.
Graydon@arclight @danhon there is hardware out there that uses UEFI that will not boot with secure boot turned off. (And may not say so.)
Post-UEFI I've bought hardware from vendors who pre-install linux (and have figured out what to do to the UEFI to get it to work) because the one time I had to try to get linux on a Windows machine it ate three days and didn't work.
Dunno if the hardware you've got was a post-UEFI windows factory install, but those are frequently excessively challenging to linux.
Studio 8502 
@arclight Have you tried the Debian-Firmware netinstall image? You can just flash it to a USB with Etcher and boot it, it has all the non free firmwares for wifi and shit.
Dan Moved to Retro.social@arclight Had this experience lately as I upgrade from 15-odd-year-old machines to newer hardware. Like you, I went with unetbootin first, only to find that modern bioses or whatever don't like it and won't tell you why. Eventually I stumbled somehow across Ventoy, which lets you put multiple images on one USB stick, and which still works, if you can find the increasingly-hidden "Just boot from the damn USB" setting in the bios.
@ifixcoinops Somehow Linux Mint is crapping out unpacking a squashfs volume but it's not clear if that's on the SSD, the USB stick, or in memory. BIOS tests show memory ok and no SMART errors so I'm at a loss to explain it. Debian installer hangs, OpenBSD can't even make a bootable USB drive. I suspect the new SSD is dodgy.
Jevin Sweval@arclight BalenaEtcher is bloatware but it’s bloatware that seemed to work for me 🤷♂️
@jevinskie I probably have that installed; can't hurt trying it
Saagar Jha@jevinskie @arclight Is dd not an option
@saagar @jevinskie Not on Windows, no.
@arclight @jevinskie I figured you were using like WSL or something
Ψ*Ψ@arclight knowing what industry you work in, I have Concerns
@psistarpsiii If things can survive me just standing quietly nearby, they're safe enough for the general public. :)
bit 🏳️🌈 (he/him)@arclight
Have you tried ventoy? https://www.ventoy.net/en/index.html
No need to burn the image, just place the ISOs in a directory and choose at boot time
Have you tried ventoy? https://www.ventoy.net/en/index.html
No need to burn the image, just place the ISOs in a directory and choose at boot time
@bitbln It's on my list, thanks!
-dsr- (not a dog)@arclight
Today is the release of the new Debian Stable - 12.0. Good day to try it out.
Today is the release of the new Debian Stable - 12.0. Good day to try it out.
stephen judkins@arclight if you're running an "experiment" give NixOS a spin, not to denigrate Debian/Arch but they're the same basic design. NixOS is categorically different
@stephenjudkins I may want another SSD for that...
Dreaming of dad jazz.Depends on the need.
If you're looking for something that's bare bones and might be a good learning platform, maybe Arch even thought it's a bit of a "stunt OS". I think OpenBSD might be a good fit in that regard and has the benefit of being easier to install.
If you need a garage/bench/couch/beater laptop then I'd probably just install mint again to leverage your existing knowledge.
@michaelcoyote It's mainly that I've been using Linux Mint since Ubuntu pulled their Unity-desktop-or-the-highway stunt. Not unhappy with it, just curious if I'm missing something elsewhere. Trying not to get too stuck in a rut.
In that case maybe give Manjaro or PopOS a shot. I've also been considering nixos in a vm
Alexandre B A Villares 🐍@michaelcoyote @arclight Manjaro XFCE here...
@arclight I've been using Mint for about 15 years and I would say that they as a group have been pretty respectful about making the kind of changes that would cause me as an end user a lot of heartache..
@michaelcoyote My only complaints have been stability from a few years ago but otherwise they have not gratuitously and drastically changed the UI or package format. That's the main reason I stick with them - they've earned some level of trust.
Steve Streza@arclight debian if you want ol' reliable, arch for more power usery experience that still works well, NixOS if you want something completely different that will require learning but also is very interesting
Fear and Tooting in Las Vegas@arclight I mean, I enjoy OpenBSD, then again I think I may have Issues.
༒ ɐɥɔǝʇɐɯ ʍǝɹpuɐ ༒@amatecha @steevmi1 I cannot fathom the installation instructions. install73.iso apparently isn't bootable, if that's even the ISO I need, assuming I can even install from an ISO and not a floppy image. I really am trying but I feel like I'm back in 1995 trying to configure X11 and struggling to remember my monitor's sync rate. Nothing works today.
@arclight @steevmi1 hrmm, oh are you writing it to a USB stick? I think you would want install73.img . OpenBSD is a bit different and has a bit of upfront learning curve, but it is well-documented. The install guide at https://ftp.openbsd.org/pub/OpenBSD/7.3/amd64/INSTALL.amd64 (for amd64) covers the installation pretty decently. Still, yeah, it’s probably the most “oldschool” modern OS you can run, and the base system is sparse and you install what you need etc.
Josh Simon
lick here for more info@arclight imo, Debian is great when "I want it to reliably work" is a higher priority than "I want it to be nice to use and/or tinker with", because Arch undoubtedly wins there.
@virtulis I'm going out of town for a week, I'm taking my old laptop and I thought I'd pull the drives out and start fresh and see what happens. Debian is getting a lot of votes but I may have to run this experiment a few times for how enthusiastic people are about various distros.
SweetAI Belle @arclight
My thinking on this is that Debian isn't necessarily going to be that different. Sure, Gnome instead of Cinnamon, but Mint is based on Ubuntu which is based on Debian, so a fair amount of the base is the same.
Arch is rolling release, different package manager, and whatever desktop environment you want, so a lot different.
Tip: if you follow the arch install guide, you'll type in a bunch of commands, and get Arch booting to a command line, then have to look up what to install for a desktop environment. And while that could be fun, you could also type "archinstall" instead when you boot up the arch install disk, follow the prompts, and have it do the whole thing for you, including putting on a desktop environment. 
Or you could go with something Arch based. I installed the XFCE version of EndeavourOS recently in a vm, and it seemed pretty nice...
(Or there are plenty of non-Arch, non-Debian/Ubuntu options, of course...)
Andrew Cowie@arclight try Fedora 38. Rock solid on a ThinkPad. Avoid NixOS at all costs.
clod @arclight Consider Fedora Linux! It strikes a thoughtful balance being up-to-date (e.g. Arch) vs stable (e.g. Ubuntu LTS): its kernel and packages are very recent but tested thoroughly on the system before release. Fedora is also known for pushing forward new Linux technologies like Wayland, Pipewire, Flatpak, as well as the latest versions of GNOME!
packy@packy C-shell gives me hives, but I did consider one of the BSDs because this is meant as an experiment, so no, you're totally not out of line weighing in :)
Matt@greppy @arclight So, the choice of shells isn't the reason to use a Linux over a BSD: it's the underlying system differences. For example, if you use
/proc, you want to stay with a Linux. In my case, I want all the benefits of native ZFS, and for quite a while that meant using FreeBSD. But I was a Linux user back in the 90s, and the switch to FreeBSD was completely painless because I didn't need any of the Linux-specific stuff.
Thomas Steen Rasmussen@tykling @arclight @greppy Really? I seriously don't recall taking any steps to install bash or set it as my default shell: it was just there.
Even if my memory is faulty and I did need to do something, the barrier to installing bash was so low it didn't even occur to me that I was doing something special.
Even if my memory is faulty and I did need to do something, the barrier to installing bash was so low it didn't even occur to me that I was doing something special.
@tykling @arclight @greppy Huh. You are correct: according to https://docs.freebsd.org/en/books/handbook/bsdinstall/ bash *isn't* in the default shells. But it's trivial to install the system, log in as root, run
Really, "I don't like the C-shell and its the default" should not be a barrier preventing someone from using #FreeBSD. It is so trivial to replace csh as the default that it should never be part of someone's consideration when they're thinking about whether to use a unix-like operating system.
pkg install bash to install bash and then run chsh -s /usr/local/bin/bash to make it the default shell. (instructions for this can be found in https://docs.freebsd.org/en/books/handbook/basics/#shells )Really, "I don't like the C-shell and its the default" should not be a barrier preventing someone from using #FreeBSD. It is so trivial to replace csh as the default that it should never be part of someone's consideration when they're thinking about whether to use a unix-like operating system.
Anubhav@tykling "/bin/sh" became the default shell even for "root" in #FreeBSD 14 time line (will be widely available whenever 14-RELEASE is released); notice: https://lists.freebsd.org/archives/freebsd-current/2021-September/000648.html commit: https://cgit.freebsd.org/src/commit/?id=d410b585b6f00a26c2de7724d6576a3ea7d548b7
@packy @arclight @greppy
@packy @arclight @greppy
Ross M.@arclight something else: Linux Mint 😂 just installed it on an old ToughBook i5-3320m and it’s great. impressed so far!