Serious Discussion General Linux Discussion Thread

[TuxTalk]

Please edits and hide Your IPs in the wlan data, thanks.

Internal IP and VPN is on ;-)

 

[lokamoka820]

My LMDE setup.

 

[SeriousHoax]

openSUSE is really an awesome distro, it has a very detailed wiki, and officially supported by software and hardware developers, great choice.

Yeah, and Tumbleweed is very stable for a rolling release distro since they do automatic quality testing via their openQA tool. Sometimes it even gets updates quicker than Arch like last night it received kernel 6.10.11 which Arch hadn't received yet at that time. One of the main advantages of openSUSE is that it comes with BTRFS Snapshot by default. So, if you break something you simply just rollback to a state before the breakage as if nothing happened.
Reminds me of @simmerskool who broke his ZorinOS after installing XFCE.
Actually, I've been using Arco Linux (based on Arch) for the last few days. I really like it as Arch is great and Pacman package manager is blazingly fast at everything from downloading to installation but might just go back to Tumbleweed again because I couldn't make Arch+Grub+Secure Boot to work together. Works fine with systemd-boot+secure boot after signing them using a tool name sbctl. But systemd-boot doesn't support BTRFS Snapshot.

 

[simmerskool]

Reminds me of @simmerskool who broke his ZorinOS after installing XFCE.
Actually, I've been using Arco Linux (based on Arch) for the last few days. I really like it

duh! mea culpa If I didn't mention it, Zorin did send me link to DL 17.2 Pro iso (paid) but I have not (re)installed Zorin yet and may not. IMO MX is a better linux experience than Zorin which tries to be a windows experience (or perhaps enterprise). openSUSE is on my short list to install next, but I want to get a little more polished running MX first as my linux skills, to the extent I had any in the past, need to be refreshed. A friend, who has been a linux guru since linux was first coded recently advised he's running Ubuntu, he ran his own IT company and recently sold it. Ubuntu website says to install it with VirtualBox, and VB wanted to make changes to my network hardware network adapters, and I was not prepared for that and did not want any unintended consequences, so postponted that, and MX is running in VMware. (IIRC @SeriousHoax said something similar about VMw & VB and linux Guests -- unless it was not you...) MX is aok here on VMw (fwiw).

 

[SeriousHoax]

duh! mea culpa If I didn't mention it, Zorin did send me link to DL 17.2 Pro iso (paid) but I have not (re)installed Zorin yet and may not. IMO MX is a better linux experience than Zorin which tries to be a windows experience (or perhaps enterprise). openSUSE is on my short list to install next, but I want to get a little more polished running MX first as my linux skills, to the extent I had any in the past, need to be refreshed. A friend, who has been a linux guru since linux was first coded recently advised he's running Ubuntu, he ran his own IT company and recently sold it. Ubuntu website says to install it with VirtualBox, and VB wanted to make changes to my network hardware network adapters, and I was not prepared for that and did not want any unintended consequences, so postponted that, and MX is running in VMware. (IIRC @SeriousHoax said something similar about VMw & VB and linux Guests -- unless it was not you...) MX is aok here on VMw (fwiw).

Good to know that you got a response from Zorin. Yeah, as I said in my experience VMware is clearly the best for Windows as a guest but VirtualBox is superior for Linux VMs. To give one example, you know some or maybe most mouse nowadays have those side buttons for going forward and backward, those don't work for me on VMware with any Linux host but works with all of them on Vbox.
I didn't have any network interface related issue with Vbox so I can't provide any info on that. I'm dual booting Windows + Linux now and I can run all Linux VMs from both OSs without any compatibility issues.
I downloaded the MX Linux ISO a few days ago. I might install it in a VM tomorrow. I never tried it before but was impressed from what I saw on YouTube and reviews around the web as well as MT members here.

 

[TuxTalk]

I'mß

Good to know that you got a response from Zorin. Yeah, as I said in my experience VMware is clearly the best for Windows as a guest but VirtualBox is superior for Linux VMs. To give one example, you know some or maybe most mouse nowadays have those side buttons for going forward and backward, those don't work for me on VMware with any Linux host but works with all of them on Vbox.
I didn't have any network interface related issue with Vbox so I can't provide any info on that. I'm dual booting Windows + Linux now and I can run all Linux VMs from both OSs without any compatibility issues.
I downloaded the MX Linux ISO a few days ago. I might install it in a VM tomorrow. I never tried it before but was impressed from what I saw on YouTube and reviews around the web as well as MT members here.

Mx is nice , but for me Fedora is superior.
The new 41 version is coming up.

Announcing Fedora Linux 41 Beta - TuxTalk - Open Linux Discussions

tuxtalk.eu

 

[simmerskool]

To give one example, you know some or maybe most mouse nowadays have those side buttons for going forward and backward, those don't work for me on VMware with any Linux host but works with all of them on Vbox.

I probably could have installed Vbox without "damage" to my networking, (I was too "dumb" to copy the exact popup message Vbox gave me, so I'll try again). I am running a very basic MS laser mouse. I used to prefer a large Kensington trackball but had issues on my hardware win10 so went simple. I had run a trackball for years, probably on win7.
If I didn't mention it in this thread, so far I have found chatGPT to be very helpful as I (re)learn linux.

 

[simmerskool]

@TuxTalk I got an email from your eu forum, click the link, but the link went nowhere, not 404, not the login page. I was busy at the time, I'll to login later tonight (fwiw).

 

[lokamoka820]

Yeah, and Tumbleweed is very stable for a rolling release distro since they do automatic quality testing via their openQA tool. Sometimes it even gets updates quicker than Arch like last night it received kernel 6.10.11 which Arch hadn't received yet at that time. One of the main advantages of openSUSE is that it comes with BTRFS Snapshot by default. So, if you break something you simply just rollback to a state before the breakage as if nothing happened.
Reminds me of @simmerskool who broke his ZorinOS after installing XFCE.
Actually, I've been using Arco Linux (based on Arch) for the last few days. I really like it as Arch is great and Pacman package manager is blazingly fast at everything from downloading to installation but might just go back to Tumbleweed again because I couldn't make Arch+Grub+Secure Boot to work together. Works fine with systemd-boot+secure boot after signing them using a tool name sbctl. But systemd-boot doesn't support BTRFS Snapshot.

Yeah, I used Tumbleweed before and really enjoyed it, but I don't like the rolling release nature in general, because getting around 1GB update every day is too much for me, but if I want to use rolling release distro, I will use either Tumbleweed or Debian Testing or Manjaro, all three are very stable from my test.

 

[SeriousHoax]

Yeah, I used Tumbleweed before and really enjoyed it, but I don't like the rolling release nature in general, because getting around 1GB update every day is too much for me, but if I want to use rolling release distro, I will use either Tumbleweed or Debian Testing or Manjaro, all three are very stable from my test.

Yeah, they do get updates a lot though I haven't received too many big updates. Tumbleweed's updates are bigger than Arch for sure as they install recommended packages to give a more complete experience, I guess. Like I noticed while installing MPV, Tumbleweed tells you that it will also install the recommended package yt-dlp something which Arch won't install as it's optional and only needed if you want to play web videos on MPV. Installing of recommended packages can be disabled of course but they suggest not to if the extra packages are not consuming a lot of spaces. I also enabled BTRFS Compression at the time of installation which saves quite a lot of space, but it's not recommended if the CPU is older.
Some expert Arch and Tumbleweed users say they usually update their system once a week, not every day. So that's one way to avoid frequent updates.

 

[lokamoka820]

Yeah, they do get updates a lot though I haven't received too many big updates. Tumbleweed's updates are bigger than Arch for sure as they install recommended packages to give a more complete experience, I guess. Like I noticed while installing MPV, Tumbleweed tells you that it will also install the recommended package yt-dlp something which Arch won't install as it's optional and only needed if you want to play web videos on MPV. Installing of recommended packages can be disabled of course but they suggest not to if the extra packages are not consuming a lot of spaces. I also enabled BTRFS Compression at the time of installation which saves quite a lot of space, but it's not recommended if the CPU is older.
Some expert Arch and Tumbleweed users say they usually update their system once a week, not every day. So that's one way to avoid frequent updates.

If I remember well, Tumbleweed uses a "snapshots" update, which make it more stable but larger compared to other rolling release distros. And I think all distros install recommended packages by default "you can disable as you mentioned" but not Arch and Arch based distros, they always thought other distros are bloated for this reason "MX disabled it by default too". I still use ext4 even when I use openSUSE, just because it is still the standard on Linux world, not because I have problems with BTRFS. About updating period, I used to update Manjaro one every 10 days - month without a problem, but compared to point/fixed release distro the size is big, and I don't need every component of the system to be updated frequently.
By the way, BTRFS Snapshot is not just for openSUSE alone now, SpiralLinux implement it over Debian and Garuda Linux over Arch.

 

[SeriousHoax]

If I remember well, Tumbleweed uses a "snapshots" update, which make it more stable but larger compared to other rolling release distros. And I think all distros install recommended packages by default "you can disable as you mentioned" but not Arch and Arch based distros, they always thought other distros are bloated for this reason "MX disabled it by default too

I see, that make sense especially not being default on Arch.

I still use ext4 even when I use openSUSE, just because it is still the standard on Linux world, not because I have problems with BTRFS.

Yeah, ext4 is solid and reliable. I saw somewhere that apparently ext4 could have more impact on SSD's lifetime due to its journaling feature. I didn't verify this info though. I'm also making use of BTRFS compression feature to save disk space so that's a nice reason for me to use it.

By the way, BTRFS Snapshot is not just for openSUSE alone now, SpiralLinux implement it over Debian and Garuda Linux over Arch.

Oh, didn't know about SpiralLinux but I know that it's default on Garuda but then again, Garuda being based on arch has no secure boot support.
Anyway, I think I'll stick to Arco Linux because VirtualBox hasn't been updated for Tumbleweed yet and manually downloading the rpm doesn't work because of some dependency issues. I need same version of VBox on both Windows and Linux otherwise old version can't run VMs that was opened with new version. On Arch I'm always with the latest version of literally any app so that has its benefits but of course that makes it also prone to bugs. Pacman also does somethings better by default like parallel downloading, showing currently installed apps version vs the version it is about to install, showing updatable packages in a column instead of all in one line and last but not least the overall speed.

 

[Sandbox Breaker]

Qubes and ChromeOS Enterprise (Custom Kubernetes for apps)

 

[simmerskool]

@SeriousHoax & others, is there any issue installing / running VMware & VBox on the same win10 Host? I would not run them together, just wondering because when I started to install Vbox the other day it gave me a popup notice about installing python adapters (network)(I did not record the exact message). Sounds like you have run both.

 

[lokamoka820]

I saw somewhere that apparently ext4 could have more impact on SSD's lifetime due to its journaling feature.

This is because most distros doesn't enable TRIM for SSD, Manjaro and Linux Mint didn't by default, Ubuntu start to enable it recently too.

Pacman also does somethings better by default like parallel downloading, showing currently installed apps version vs the version it is about to install, showing updatable packages in a column instead of all in one line and last but not least the overall speed.

This is why I use Nala on Debian based, it makes every thing clean and understandable, I liked Pacman on Manjaro, so I searched for alternative on Debian and found Nala.

 

[SeriousHoax]

@SeriousHoax & others, is there any issue installing / running VMware & VBox on the same win10 Host? I would not run them together, just wondering because when I started to install Vbox the other day it gave me a popup notice about installing python adapters (network)(I did not record the exact message). Sounds like you have run both.

Yeah, you can use both in the same PC no problem. I have both installed and use them.

This is why I use Nala on Debian based, it makes every thing clean and understandable, I liked Pacman on Manjaro, so I searched for alternative on Debian and found Nala.

I heard about Nala but never really checked it. This is really wonderful. Looks like a child of Pacman and DNF but prettier

This is because most distros doesn't enable TRIM for SSD, Manjaro and Linux Mint didn't by default, Ubuntu start to enable it recently too.

The thing I talked about is different from TRIM. I looked into this matter a bit today and it seems ext4 kind of writes the same data twice. First into its journal before writing to the actual location. Write-ahead logging seems to the name of this method. So, this ensures highest quality of data integrity and can be recovered easily in case of data corruption. But this journaling feature also means there would be more disk space occupied. Probably this twice the amount of data writes doesn't exactly result in twice the amount of disk writes bytes. They must have some optimization to minimize that.
BTRFS on the other hand has copy-on-write feature. Instead of journaling, they keep the old data and write new data on the empty sectors of the disk. This could also result in more space being occupied on this disk but mainly if snapshot feature is used. So, it has the ability to apply compression to reduce those extra occupied disk space.
Anyway, my understanding of this is still not clear so I could be wrong about a thing or two.

 

[lokamoka820]

The thing I talked about is different from TRIM. I looked into this matter a bit today and it seems ext4 kind of writes the same data twice. First into its journal before writing to the actual location. Write-ahead logging seems to the name of this method. So, this ensures highest quality of data integrity and can be recovered easily in case of data corruption. But this journaling feature also means there would be more disk space occupied. Probably this twice the amount of data writes doesn't exactly result in twice the amount of disk writes bytes. They must have some optimization to minimize that.
BTRFS on the other hand has copy-on-write feature. Instead of journaling, they keep the old data and write new data on the empty sectors of the disk. This could also result in more space being occupied on this disk but mainly if snapshot feature is used. So, it has the ability to apply compression to reduce those extra occupied disk space.
Anyway, my understanding of this is still not clear so I could be wrong about a thing or two.

To be honest I'm not aware about all this details, I chose ext4 just because it is the standard in most distros and I read about it is quality of data integrity, but to be fair I read about why BTRFS is the future and that it will fix problems available in ext4 but didn't dive in details.
Thanks for providing such valuable information.

 

[zidong]

Mark My Words: Pop OS 24.04 LTS Is Going To Be The Most Exciting Desktop Operating System Release In Several Years.​

I'm excited too. I can't wait for the release.

​

 

[simmerskool]

Mark My Words: Pop OS 24.04 LTS Is Going To Be The Most Exciting Desktop Operating System Release In Several Years.​

I'm excited too. I can't wait for the release.

​

why most exciting? in 50 words or less
I clicked your link and get "You've been blocked by network security." Running MX here connected via mullvad... maybe they're blocking me rather than visa versa

 

[simmerskool]

I just saw on main forum page a reference to Docker for isolation, never heard of it, how does it compare to firejail? Firejail seems solid to me so far.
EDIT update: chatGPT gave me a comparison between Firejail and Docker, and for my purpose(s) Firejail is good for me. Also running AppArmor.