Topic: I Don't Do Windows (Read 50619 times)

Rico · « **Reply #400 on:** August 12, 2013, 05:19:00 PM »

Quote from: Thad on August 12, 2013, 12:06:56 PM

I'm not in love with Mint but it may become my regular distro just by default

Somewhere, CyanPrime just popped a boner.

(I wish I could figure out what my brain remembered and processed and why)

Thad · « **Reply #401 on:** August 13, 2013, 03:44:04 PM »

Hell, if he'd just told me 5 years ago "It will recognize your printer without any fucking around on your part"...

Anyway. For all the handwringing about how rolling releases are the devil and will void your warranty and destroy your data and rape a bear, that may have been the smoothest dist-upgrade I've ever done. The only speedbumps I hit were a result of my own overcautiousness. And the fact that my bootloader is still on the OpenSUSE drive.

sei · « **Reply #402 on:** August 16, 2013, 08:31:20 AM »

Yeah, the whole "back up your home folder + software selection before wiping the drive" affair is pretty shitty. It's one thing on a single-user system, but if you've got a server set up with shared folders across different users for managing shared resources and all that, it seems like it would be obnoxious to start backing up each users' individual assets and hoping you didn't park something in /var/www where you'll forget to cover it.

Then again, if you're running a server, why the fuck use Mint?

Also, I don't think I'm touching Arch or any of the DIY bullshit distros. My time is not worthless. I tried LFS a long time ago. Never again.

Thad · « **Reply #403 on:** August 16, 2013, 11:55:08 AM »

I feel like I learned a hell of a lot running Slackware and Gentoo for all those years. But as I've often said before, every day I don't manually edit Xorg.conf is an improvement over a day where I do.

OpenSUSE has proven a maddening combination of the best damn frontend I've ever seen and constant fucking breakages that won't let me use it.

It's not that I'm crazy about Mint. It's just that it seems like the least-worst option just at the moment.

(Rather similar to Revolver or Reloaded or whatever Android mod I'm currently running on my phone because Cyanogenmod got in the nasty habit of not booting back up when I powered it down and I got sick of taking off the case and popping the battery. The one I'm using has periodic issues where it slows down and I have to reboot it, and other annoyances CM didn't, but it's rarely forced me to take the battery out.)

MarsDragon · « **Reply #404 on:** August 16, 2013, 02:06:02 PM »

This seems like the thread to ask for this kind of question, so. I'm in need of a 64-bit Linux VM image for development purposes. I don't really want to make my own because I'm lazy. Where's the best place to grab one? No real preference on distro besides being fairly easy to install things on and maintain.

Brentai · « **Reply #405 on:** August 16, 2013, 04:18:55 PM »

My preference for dev is Debian, not because it's very good on its own, but because Mint and practically every other distro that isn't proprietary or barebones seems to have forked off from it, so you'll probably cover the greatest percentage of their unique idiosyncrasies that way. Also, you can boot it off a USB drive if you don't feel like fucking around with your disk partitions. 'sall here.

sei · « **Reply #406 on:** August 16, 2013, 04:38:01 PM »

Debian for both server and workstation, Brentai?

Brentai · « **Reply #407 on:** August 16, 2013, 04:53:33 PM »

I assume you're not going to do your development on a server. Unless you're talking about development for a server, in which case uhhh I guess you get Fedora since you clearly hate yourself already anyway.

(Unless you have direct control over both your development environment and the runtime environment, in which case you install Ubuntu on everything and tell the rest of the world to go fuck itself.)

MarsDragon · « **Reply #408 on:** August 19, 2013, 08:30:49 AM »

I successfully created a Debian image. Latest version from their webpage, plain 64-bit installation. The only things I have added to the system are git and make.

However, proxies are being a bitch. I'm behind a corporate proxy and some programs seem to not like that. I got the system to recognize one proxy enough to download various things during installation and apt-get works, but not Iceweasel or ping. I've tried giving Iceweasel a proxy under Preferences - Advanced - Network, but no dice. I got git working by feeding it a proxy manually, and it seems happy enough. make, on the other hand, throws "Resolving http (http)... failed. Name or service not known." when I try to use it to build Mozilla's gaia project. I've tried setting the network proxy under System Preferences - Network - Network proxy, but it doesn't seem to do anything.

The proxy I entered during installation and the proxy git is using are different, and I'd like to use the git proxy for everything. How can I change this? (would it even change anything after installation?)

Mazian · « **Reply #409 on:** August 19, 2013, 01:39:17 PM »

The system-wide proxy should normally be set in the "http_proxy" environment variable, but:

way too many programs implement it their own Special Way
if you're using GNOME for your desktop, who the hell knows what madness it's up to for menu-launched programs
everything is terrible

The apt proxy is probably set in /etc/apt/apt.conf, and nothing else will use that setting. http_proxy might catch whatever in Gaia's makefile is trying to talk to the network, though.

Mongrel · « **Reply #410 on:** August 23, 2013, 04:53:18 AM »

Just seeing this headline made me literally laugh out loud and check to make sure I wasn't reading the Onion or something "Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to retire within 12 months, Microsoft share price surges"

Thad · « **Reply #411 on:** September 07, 2013, 07:20:11 AM »

Oh right, the package that makes GTK programs not look like balls in KDE is called kde-config-gtk-style.

Angryoptimist · « **Reply #412 on:** November 09, 2013, 06:26:07 PM »

This may be a subjective impression--and it's been a long time, so I'm a bit fuzzy on it all--but it seems like a lot more people here are using Linux (GNU/Linux, the proper Linux you put on a proper computer) than I remember. That's interesting. I wouldn't have guessed that'd end up happening.

Thad's apparently still using KDE. That seems like the natural order of things.

Since the last time I was here, I've been using Debian as my only OS on my personal machines. It's been treating me well, as it had been, but I've adapted further and further to WM lifestyle; the DEs still aren't doing it for me, though I've been meaning to take another look at KDE for a while now--I've already got it installed, just haven't gotten around to it yet. I'm certainly considering writing with Qt, which is looking pretty nice these days. KDE's involvement with Qt development and its open governance (and how they're using the new features they were involved with) also seems to have borne fruit from what I've heard.

I've also been considering taking a running leap at Awesome, but I'm hampered by how much I utterly, utterly hated it the last time I used it and how I'd probably have to write a ton of Lua code (a task I have, so far, not found enjoyable) to make it liveable to me. Still, if I did it, I might be able to solve every nagging issue I have with dwm and also have a way of updating my window tag filters that doesn't involve recompilation of C code, which is always a plus. I remain tempted.

Apologies if bumping this thread after more than a month of inactivity or unceremoniously reappearing after however long it's been is weird or irritating, but I'm more curious as to whether I can reconnect with this place than concerned about not being able to.

Thad · « **Reply #413 on:** November 14, 2013, 05:07:42 PM »

Nah, it's a good topic.

Having played more with both Cinnamon and XFCE, I am both (1) tremendously impressed by how far XFCE has come and (2) utterly baffled at what the fuck the point of Cinnamon is when we already have XFCE.

Angryoptimist · « **Reply #414 on:** November 24, 2013, 02:13:00 PM »

Just got around to trying out a recent XFCE. Yeah, it's nice. A good, inoffensive desktop environment with all the usual metaphors. It's become rather less spartan than I remember XFCE being, as well. I can see the comparison to Cinnamon, given Cinnamon's stated goals. My only gripe is that I don't see any way to configure the positioning of monitors in the monitor configuration--a minor one,since I'm used to handling that myself with xrandr in my .xsession.

Tried out Awesome again. If you took dwm, completely ruined it, added on that 6-point font, right-click application menu from E16, then added extensibility in the form of a Lua API, you'd have Awesome. I have a completely unnatural hatred for it that does not belong on this Earth.

I had plans to use it's Lua scripting and API to essentially bring it back to dwm as a starting point, but it seems that this will be non-trivial and full of rough edges--I got bored and quit before my study of the documentation really bore fruit. I may come back to this later (the way it handles window rules still remains enticingly not-compiled-in).

After ranting to a friend about about it (who unsuccesfully tried to sell me on E17 again--he took my 'well, it seems okay, but I'm not sure it's for me' as 'I can be convinced that this is good' instead of the 'I hate this, but I don't understand why' I should have said), he recommended CLFSWM to me, touting it's Lisp-programmability. I've been meaning to get (more) into Lisp, but it's that Emacs in the way. I just haven't been able to get past its 'finger feel'. And if I did? I'd probably be writing a ton of code to essentially transform CLFSWM into a WM I actually wanted to use.

Writing code to turn an extensible WM into exactly what I want is beginning to look like more work than it's really worth.

Also: heard that Linux 3.12 has significant gains in FPS/performance for games on the free AMD driver (and possibly all games on all drivers, due to a change in the performance governor code). Not for me, apparently! Though that was on this RC 3.12 kernel that showed up in Experimental--I'll be trying it again when 3.12-proper makes its way into Debian.

Thad · « **Reply #415 on:** December 09, 2013, 04:49:11 PM »

Rumor: Next version of Windows (8.2? 9? 2015?) to be split into three versions: one with the Metro/"Modern" UI, one for desktops with a more "Windows Classic" interface, and an enterprise version that's the latter with a longer, more regular patch cycle.

Just a rumor, but "reverse course on a stupid idea that everyone told you was a stupid idea in the first damn place" is a pretty good description of every MS decision in recent memory, so I'd say it's plausible.

Brentai · « **Reply #416 on:** December 09, 2013, 05:08:33 PM »

Probably still tied to a Microsoft account and a bunch of other terrible things they learned from Apple/Google.

Mongrel · « **Reply #417 on:** December 10, 2013, 06:51:33 AM »

A lighthearted link: Is this guy the funniest tech analyst ever?

Like maybe just watch the guy and assume whatever he says, the opposite is what will actually happen.

Angryoptimist · « **Reply #418 on:** December 11, 2013, 06:38:58 AM »

Quote from: Thad on December 09, 2013, 04:49:11 PM

Rumor: Next version of Windows (8.2? 9? 2015?) to be split into three versions: one with the Metro/"Modern" UI, one for desktops with a more "Windows Classic" interface, and an enterprise version that's the latter with a longer, more regular patch cycle.

Just a rumor, but "reverse course on a stupid idea that everyone told you was a stupid idea in the first damn place" is a pretty good description of every MS decision in recent memory, so I'd say it's plausible.

Well, they'd be in for a real heartbreak. Of their own making, which it seems like it'd be pretty stupid and pointless to set themselves up for. I mean, if you had the versions broken down like this, you'd have to know what the end result would be--else, why would you break it down this way? I mean, it's backpedaling, but it's exceptionally stupid and wrong backpedaling. Then again, that's also pretty Microsoft.

I remember hearing a rumor that Microsoft was considering moving Windows to a more frequent release cycle--like, say, yearly or every couple years--and charging must less for each release--like, say, $20.

That's about the sweet spot for me: I'd pay $20 for Windows. Pay $20 and half-heartedly toss it on whatever I've got lying around, just to look at it? Sure, why not.

Updates don't really have to be that meaty to justify $20; just make the upgrade process relatively painless, don't fuck up Windows too badly, and maybe they've got a persistent solution to their persistent problem of people not upgrading and handing them money. Seems like it might be a good idea, so watch it never happen.

Also, offered without comment because no can brain today: Will Canonical force Linux Mint to license Ubuntu binary packages?.

Brentai · « **Reply #419 on:** December 11, 2013, 08:24:42 AM »

Honestly all MS ever needed to do was make the Metro UI more optional than it currently is. All this "Pick one desktop and live with it" nonsense is silly as hell, and is the most visible symptom of MS following the smartphone philosophy of "Do it our way or not at all". It's kind of inevitable considering that they're currently watching Apple make billions of dollars by doing the exact same shit that MS got sued for, only to a much greater degree. The lesson learned is apparently "If you're going to engage in antitrust behavior then do it all the fucking way."

Problem is that's just going to keep blowing up in their faces. Windows currently differentiates itself by being one of the last proprietary platforms that isn't constantly trying to handcuff the user, and while that could be a powerful sell to MS's Enterprise lifeblood they seem determined to just punt it away and sell themselves as the third-string alternative to foole. If Red Hat or SuSE are paying attention right now they ought to be scrambling like mad to put something together that non-technical people could be comfortable with, because Enterprise Linux could very easily take over as the de facto productivity platform.

News:

Author Topic: I Don't Do Windows (Read 50619 times)