The Linux Distro Thread (maybe)

[ej-solutions]

Thought I'd start this one off, rather than continue on another thread.

As a quick catch up for others:

Have a look at Unetbootin, as a means to try out different versions of Linux, without producing numerous coasters (unwanted CDs).
I haven't tried the method of installing to hard drive, only the USB flash drive method (so far).

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Just skimming the surface

Opinions/guidance expressed are intended to benefit the reader (mostly) but no responsibility should be assumed for the accuracy and no warranty is implied/expressed or given - so eBay may pull this post

[grumpy-cook]

Thanks for that OE.

I ran a server version of CentOS for a few years (no GUI). It was very stable and just did what it should. I'll have a look at the desktop versions.

Mageia is based on Mandriva, which I ran before PCLinuxOS. It was quite a nice distro but I had a fair few problems with it. I'll give it a look though.

[grumpy-cook]

This may interest you OE -

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PB1_k0Pv8LM&feature=youtube_gdata

[otherego]

I'll have a look at that - the internet's a touch sedate here tonight.

Puppy (along with its derivatives) is brilliant. A bit like g-c with Ubuntu-based stuff, I'm still not 100% convinced, but I don't know why. (Apart from the fact that they went to a modern kernel that won't boot on an MMX CPU, of course...)

I've not tried CentOS - always thought it was for clever server-people. Looks as if it's still server-orientated and that adding various bits and pieces needs some clever fiddling with repos when it's used on the desktop.The upside appears to be rock-solid stability, and the fact that it will hang in there for years. This might not necessarily be an advantage, of course, given how fast things tend to change. Mostly for the better.

(On which topic, I see eBay's fiddling with the sign-in page - looked just the same as the old one, but with everything bigger. Clearing cookies and cache restored the old one, so I assume some experimenting's in progress. As my engineering friends put it - fiddle, fiddle, fried. OK, they didn't actually say "fried"...)

One of my earliest Linux (and real computing for that matter) experiences was Mandriva 2009 - I really liked its style then, and found it very user friendly.

The fact that Mageia is basically Mandriva without any company politics made it appealing, greatly though I hope Mandriva survives.

So far, I prefer the KDE version - but only 'cos the computer I'm trying it on can't run Gnome 3, so reverts to the "fall-back." I should really try it on something else, too - but the KDE version of Mageia 1 is certainly pleasant.

[otherego]

That's one seriously impressive video.

(And I'm incredibly envious of the 1.8MB/S distro download grrrrrr)

Definitely going to have a look at Saluki, I think. I wonder what equipment he was running it on? Only had a couple of gig of RAM, but probably a more capable CPU and graphics card than wot I'm used to...

[otherego]

Promise this is the last one from me tonight.

Just popped over to Distrowatch - and the new AntiX is out.

(Fear I'm turning into a Sad Person...)

[oxieman]

That's one seriously impressive video.

Agreed, he has a couple of 'Mint Videos' with more to come - thanks for that GC.

-------------------------------------------------------------

OE

Tried DSL in Vbox, it ran but could not install and subsequently save. It bleated about my hardware on probing, not suprised.

Have a G100 Optiplex that might take it some day.

Anyway, your "And how much to allow /var?" question. It occurred to me you could get the answer from your existing Mint installation.

See commands below for my Mint and Debian [Both in VB]
If you have your 'Mail' Logged it will/should give you a higher indication.
You will have to drill down the directory as older logs are commpressed [.gz's].

----
Mint:-
----
teddybear@ted-VirtualBox ~ $ su
Password:
ted-VirtualBox teddybear # du -sh /var
405M /var
ted-VirtualBox teddybear # du -sh /var/log
4.8M /var/log
ted-VirtualBox teddybear # df -h
Filesystem      Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda1       7.0G  3.3G  3.5G  49% /
udev            494M  4.0K  494M   1% /dev
tmpfs           201M  904K  200M   1% /run
none            5.0M     0  5.0M   0% /run/lock
none            501M   80K  501M   1% /run/shm
ted-VirtualBox teddybear #
------
Debian:-
------
teddybear@oxie:~$ su
Password:
root@oxie:/home/teddybear# du -sh /var
347M /var
root@oxie:/home/teddybear# du -sh /var/log
15M /var/log
root@oxie:/home/teddybear# df -h
Filesystem            Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda1             323M  136M  171M  45% /
tmpfs                 506M     0  506M   0% /lib/init/rw
udev                  501M  176K  501M   1% /dev
tmpfs                 506M     0  506M   0% /dev/shm
/dev/sda9             2.8G  120M  2.6G   5% /home
/dev/sda8             234M  6.1M  216M   3% /tmp
/dev/sda5             2.8G  822M  1.9G  31% /usr
/dev/sda6             1.4G  381M 929M  30% /var
/dev/sr0               50M   50M     0 100% /media/cdrom0
root@oxie:/home/teddybear#
-----------------------

Oxie...

[otherego]

Ah, people wot does things proper...

I just click on the Mint icon (bottom left), from the menu which appears click home/username, click the arrow to "Open the parent folder" a couple of times, find the /var folder, right click on it and click "Properties" - which reveal /var to be (at the moment) 432.4 MB. (Now feel a complet cyber-peasant.)

I suspect the size of /var varies, though - is that not where update caches occur? I'm rather hoping so, to be honest.

Meantime this (if it works) is coming to you from a live session of the shiny new antiX-12.

It's running slowly but adequately on a Toughbook CF-27 with a 300mHz P2 and 256 mb of RAM.

Goodness, but eBay is horrid on a slow computer with no NoScript, AdBlock etc. It's amazing how much time is wasted waiting for rubbish like googleanalytics to load (and I hope it enjoys its sojourn in the mighty 256 mb of RAM, 'tho it's doubtless slurping up IP address and goodness knows what else.

Bit late now, but I think I'll try installing this. It looks most impressive. 120MB of RAM in use, no swap, and the ancient CPU lurching up to about 75% with my high-speed *ahem* typing - mostly lower than that.

[otherego]

A little more on DSL - might be of interest to oxie.

The installer seems to be something of a work in progress. When I isntalled DSL on an antique laptop, I couldn't get the installer to work until I partitioned the hard drive with gparted (from a Puppy "retro" cd.)

I had a quick try in VBox - even worse. I had no error messages. The installer simply crashed every time I tried to start partitioning.

Partitioning the virtual drive to ext 2 and setting the boot flag (don't know whether that was essential) in advance enabled the installation to go ahead. NB - I had, in Gparted, to start with "Device > Set disklabel" (just accepted the default) before it would create the ext2 partition.

Main points, then:

Selected Linux 2.4 for the OS type in creating the virtual drive (seemed to result in Guest Additions just working - instant nice resolution);

Using GParted (from a Puppy CD, in this instance - Device > Set disklabel, then create ext2 partition (3 would probably be OK, but I'm only using 128mb of RAM = low performance), and set the boot flag;

Running the partitioner, tell it to install to "hda1" - if you type in /dev/hda1, it then seems to look for /dev/dev/hda1 and crashes again.

Firefox is version 2 - so remember to disable dom.storage (I believe this is a known vulnerability in FF2; might be wrong there) and disable third party cookies as far as possible (not terribly effective?))

To save you checking your notes, to achieve those type about:config in the address bar and press Enter.

Type network.cookie.cookie.Behaviour

Double click on that line when it appears in the main window and change the integer from 0 to 1.

Type dom.storage

Double click on it to change from True to False.

Be interesting to know it any of that helps, or whether you have another curious problem.

(And I had a quick look at the specs for that Optiplex - 64mb of RAM could prove a real challenge, even for DSL - be particularly interesting to see whether Firefox runs on it!)

Must scuttle now...

[oxieman]

Thanks OE - pushed for time at the mo'

Try this on Mint -

sudo apt-get install tree

Terminnal only 😉  Has man page.

I saw pstree [Prcess ID's] on debian which prompted me to check if the DOS version existed for Linux.

Must scuttle myself now.

Oxie...

[otherego]

I'll most certainly have a look at that, oxie - cheers. And you can laugh sadistically at the thought of the confusion which might ensue...

Have you had a look at AntiX? It's not a "famous" distro and the default bookmarks in Iceweasel would have some of our more politically conservative friends spluttering into their gin-and-tonics (hint - the developer, a British schoolteacher living in Greece - think I've got that right - goes under the moniker "Anticapitalista.")

Still not quite as self-explanatory as, say, Mint, but getting close. After a frustrating couple of evenings trying to get Lubuntu and Xubuntu onto an old Toughbook - even resorting to the alternate install CDs - I pretty much gave up.

AntiX-12 (it's on Distrowatch) just installed. No fuss, no bother, and runs surprisingly capable on the 300mHz CPU. (Iceweasel - sort of ethical Firefox - ain't that great, but it does work. As does LibreOffice - Abiword might be better suited to this equipment.) It found my cheapo PCMCIA wireless card quite happily. Getting it working involved a text-based utility (can't remember which; not the first I tried from the control centre menu) - but essentially, using the bits highlighted by default worked a treat.

AntiX seems to be moving increasingly Debian-wards. I've always been a little frightened of Debian, thinking it an Experts Only distro. Time for a tentative look, perhaps.

[oxieman]

Thanks for the info re-DSL - had another 'go' in VBox with some success but still cannot save.

I tried to fool it by creating snapshots [VB ones], I have poss got probs with using a Belkin KVM switch between new mobo and old Foxconn PC's - by alternating [just switching with Foxconn off] seems to change things.

Had probs before - previous scylabub was USB mouse - had to use PS2. Newer Belkins use USB!

Did try Puppy and managed to save something to Host [A couple of 'Slacko files' appeared in root of C: but corrupt when performing a re-run 😞  Chucked it out deleted all traces :^O

Screenshot of DSL - keyboard mapping all to wrong also.

You are a little tinker cos DSL has pstree - just a 'noddy one-off' but you can run with -p switch from terminal. Also the FileMgr shows du and df etc.

Got to go, bloomin' late - am exhasted after watching the 'Mounting Bikes' on de box - Blokes tomorrow..

Take no notice of the time - bottom right.

Just remembered - check out 'Exententions for FF' Called :- Site Identity Button Colors 0.7 - You will approve I am sure 😄

Oxie...

[ej-solutions]

I reckon otherego needs to splash out on a Pi, with its' super fast CPU (equiv. 300MHz PII) and oodles of RAM & disc space.

pi@raspberrypi ~ $ df -m
Filesystem     1M-blocks  Used Available Use% Mounted on
rootfs              1602  1433        88  95% /
/dev/mmcblk0p1        56    34        23  61% /boot

pi@raspberrypi ~ $ free -m
total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:           183        113         70          0         12         63
-/+ buffers/cache:         37        146
Swap:           95          0         95

Certainly a good way of cutting down the bloat and a far cry from W7 🙂

[otherego]

I might just give that a go. Can't remember when I last used the television apparatus, so that takes care of the screen.

This looks as if it could be interesting:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/08/17/firefox_os_on_pi/

I was under the impression that Firefox OS was intended for ARM equipment, and I'm a little wary of any of these telephone-orientated OSs - if only because I suspect they like you to do everything in the cloud/share all your secrets with Google/etc. I'm doubtless completely wrong.

It would certainly be great to have an alternative for telephone users which didn't involve proprietary software, and allowed the installation of applications other than paid-for/proprietary versions from an "app store."

[ej-solutions]

Hmm, interesting. Hadn't spotted that one - I've been concentrating on Raspbian (Debian hard-float for Pi) and the MATE desktop.

What may be of more general interest to you, is that I'm back honing my "minimalist Linux" skills and retraining myself on kernel tweaking.

My foray into Cloud is purely from the running of Cloud server nodes, in the UK & US. Would I trust my main OS to be 'out there'? I think you know the answer. 😉

FF OS vs. Google OS - the Jury's out on that one.

[otherego]

I'm back honing my "minimalist Linux" skills and retraining myself on kernel tweaking.

Envy of other people's talents aside - do remember all those old MMX CPUs that don't offer the CMOV instruction (whatever that is) - and can no longer boot modern terminals.

Must say, I have reservations about the Cloud. Great if you're getting paid lots of money in connection with it, but I'm not convinced that it's necessarily a good thing.

Visions of more and more personal data-harvesting and targetted advertising... Probably unfair. And probably of little concern to the "fone"-using generation, who can't remember what it was like to go through an airport without being searched and made to feel suspected of evil intent.

I have to say, my brief foray into Windows 8 raised my eyebrows. One of the first things they encourage you to do is to open/sign in to a Microsoft account. Fortunately, this isn't essential. As long as you never want to use their "apps store," that is.

At least GNU/Linux developers continue to offer choice and refuge to binary dinosaurs like me for the time being.

[otherego]

Modern "terminals"?

Should we try "kenrnels"?

Oh, for an "Edit" button.

[otherego]

Or "kernels" even.

I'm opening a beer or going to bed.

Probably both.

[oxieman]

Just a brief heads up - VirtualBox 4.1.20 update is avaiable.

Will poss download in a bit as performing other downloads at the mo' - poss leave it to run till done.

Slow connection 😞

Oxie...

[otherego]

Must say, I now stick with whatever version of VBox is available in the repositories. I was terribly pleased with myself some time ago when I worked out how to add a later version than what was on offer in the repos.

And it barely worked.

Meantime, my affection for Maya (Mint 13) is developing thin patches.

1. In Mint 9, resetting the date/time format (replacing the bizarre month/date with date/month, for instance) is simple - find the date and time settings and find what you want.

In Mint 13, in order to customise your " strftime" settings, you're directed to a website.

Which no longer works. Thus demonstrating the inherent fragility of any system which has even some components "in the cloud."

strftime, if you look it up, doesn't look that hard. Does it? Hah!

2. I've installed VirtualBox. In order to enable USB functionality, VBox needs to be added to the appropriate User Group.

In Mint 9, one simply finds Users and Groups, and works it out from there.

Mint 13 only seems to have Users. No buttons to press for Groups. Anywhere. I've been searching for a couple of hours now. It has to be there, probably right under my nose.

But why on earth mess about with things that worked satisfactorily in the first place, especially when the messing around ends up reducing the effectiveness of the system.

Grrr, mutter mutter, sulk...

[otherego]

Aha!

Dawned on my numbed grey matter to seek the reply under Ubuntu 12.04, not just Mint 13. This kind chap provided the answer:

http://maketecheasier.com/add-remove-user-to-groups-in-ubuntu/2012/07/30

The short story:

For some bizarre reason, Ubuntu 12.04 no longer has a Users and Groups application. One either has to get clever with the command-line:

sudo usermod -a -G group username

using your desired group and username as appropriate (dire warning that getting this wrong by forgetting to specify the relevant Group will actually remove the user, which would be fun when you only have one on the system),

or install a cowardly GUI - controlled application (my preferred method):

sudo apt-get install gnome-system-tools

Why on earth omit such a useful tool - which was included in earlier versions of Ubuntu, and therefore Mint?

Windows 8 still refuses to install on VBox, but that's perhaps no great loss. Might bung it on an actual hard drive instead. I tried the last free download - Consumer Preview, I think - and thought it might be worth trying the pre-release "taster."

Be interesting to see how they're doing with TIFKAM (The Interface Formerly Known as Metro...)