GNU/Unix users? (including other alternative/open OS’)

Hello!  I use linux on my main pc, and have been using it for some time it seems.  I switched from windows to linux in 2017, that would make 6 years of it being my main OS?  God I cannot believe its been that long..  ANd I suppose if you include the time I used/tinkered with it on my laptops, that would be 10 years? wtf?

ANyways, I like linux quite a bit.  The abillity to so in depth customize the function as well as the style of your OS is very appealing.  There are so many different use cases and configurations for *nix os, and every piece of software has like 5 alternatives, so you can really hone in on what you want your computing experience to be like. 

Let me give you a silly example from my recent life, I spilt coffee all over my mouse while it was on, an since its one of those gamer mice filled with holes to reduce weight, the mouse is totally fucked.   Because im on linux I can just install a tiling window manager, and use my computer without a mouse for the time being, abet slower, and more frustrating lmao.

Very cool! I barely started with a serious system bootable install like a month back but I actually have been messing w/ linux VM’s since about last year (as well as messing w/ hackintoshes lolol)

Yeah ikr? The customizability and openly dissectable environment of *nix is what really pulled me in along w/ the prospects of being able to run my own network servers, ftp, etc. What originally compelled you to pull away from what you used to use?

Oof I hope you get the mouse sitch handled soon! Spills are never fun, but straight up linux makes it very accessible to use your sustem however you need even if exclusively CLI if need be.

I've been a Linux user since late 2000. Oddly enough I didn't join a pubnix until a few years ago, around the same time I discovered SpaceHey in fact. But yeah, all things small web interest me.

@NosyCat that’s legit! how’d you catch wind of all this small net stuff? I’ve known about both spacehey and gemini for the past couple of years now but hadn’t been vigilant about any of it since about a year ago. For that matter, how'd you get into Unix to begin with? 

Since I got the both of you here like this now, before I forget to again, but if you and @slime don’t mind me asking: what distros are yall on??

I wanna check out Debian 12 bookworm badly but rn I j have MX linux on my partition atm. in VM’s i’ve tried proteus, slax, slitaz, puppy, damn small, tiny n knoppix. Some distros I wanna try ouf include: nomadBSD, Tails OS, Qubes, Deb12 ofc, n itd be fun to give Haiku/BeOS a shot.

What initially compelled me?   Well when I was a teenager I found a bunch of old PCs in what was pretty much the trash.  Running xp or 98se on them was fun and all but I wanted to see if I could get some modern use out of em, so I tried out Linux on them ( although now there has been all kinds of modern software backported to xp and 2000 so I'm sure you could do a lot more now if you wished).  I installed Ubuntu 11 or 12 over a win7 p4 machine and was just blown away by the performance increase, and unbuntu isn't even a lightweight distro!!  Another reason I gravitated twords Linux is that programing is just so much more convenient on linux.

What kept me from switching over then was the lack of support for games and some software i eventually found good alternatives for, and back then wine was not nearly as good as it is now, no dxvk either.  But when I learned how to do hardware accelerated vms, and I finally got a cpu with vtd and vtx support I then switch over to Linux and played windows games in the vm.   Now I don't even really have to do that.

Ah, Ubuntu. It's a great start for everyone, it's too bad it gets so much flack, it's very accessible and it's p cool now that it's an integrated platform in Windows 10 and 11 (can't say the same for their own telemetric practice but y'know).

I want to hit up an old machine, burn a linux filesystem/distro over it, and keep it running as a net server to serve files and streams -so- bad but atm I don't got any kind of permanent space or functional extra machine to do that with rn. 

Yeah I've been aware of linux since I was like 12 or 13, which must beeee 15 years ago now ooof, but I've always been scared to approach it out of the fear of messing up ANY computer or let alone having to be responsible to recover it ugh. For real, technology evolving the way it has in just the past decade has enabled me greatly to better and safely try out diff VM's and decide what works right for me for what I wanna do which mostly has to do with music, art, and creative communities. 

Arch Linux! I also wanna try Arch, but now much like previously mentioned, I'm afraid to tackle Arch because I really really really -really- r e a l l y don't wanna mess anything up on installation and have to start all the way back over again lolol. I'll play w/ that in a VM once I finally wipe my entire HDD w/ a debian12 install (hah, the irony!).

I'm particularly interested in the BSD line of OS due to the fact that they're directly and closely tied to the original line of Unix systems and still retain most if not all of that original framework but modernized in a more contemporary environment these days. 

Oh another OS i'll check out in a VM soon as well, as a result of being a member of the SDF Pubnix, is the Plan9 OS that was originally developed by Bell Labs. It seems to be maintained by administration members in the SDF system nowadays. They seem to keep it regularly updated as well, so it'd be cool to cross-examine between BSD and Plan9 and how they implement a system that still primarily employs the everything-is-a-file philosophy. 

OH BTW @NosyCat that reminds me! What pubnix are you a member of?? I also have a username on tilde.club under ~flipperzero and another account on bbs.bottomlessabyss.net under userfxnet (which I also use on SDF) 

Plan9 looks pretty cool but I have personally never checked it out much aside from reading.   I dont hate ubuntu, but I dont like the DE it ships with (Unity). f

oh shit, I almost forgot about all the telemetry bullshit they added to ubuntu, yeah never mind fuck em

Oh oop, my bad i just realized, I had meant that IDK about microsoft's practices about their telemetry policy and how they integrate that w/ Ubunty and WSL within their platform but I have no clue personally about whether that's been implemented into the Ubuntu OS itself. 

How are you liking Arch? Do you use it for programming over work or is it more a personal project situation? I'm using MX because it's a fork of Antix which is already a low-powered portable debian-fork. It makes it easy to find multimedia apps to use for stuff I'm trying to get into like streaming, web hosting, n all that.

Arch has rolling updates, right? Does that tie into the workflow for what you use it for? Goin back to earlier, I know there's Artix which is it's own rolling distro fork of Arch which looks like a p cool way to start off. I've also seen Manjaro too but I run into a lot of criticism about it not being as updated and not being on arch's release schedule which puts it at disadvantage a bit. 

I've been a linux user ever since I built my first computer ~10 years ago. Used to distro-hop but I settled on Arch/Artix years ago and I haven't felt a great need to switch since. The project has a bad reputation for instability but that's not really true any more, it's one of the easiest GNU distributions to maintain.

The main upside of linux and free software in general is that it gives you all the power over your own computer in a way that no other commonly used operating system does. The main downside is that to really exercise this power you have to understand on a deeper level how your computer works. I don't think it is possible to avoid this -- you can only really have power over things you understand, and computers are complicated machines.

Another upside to linux is that you'll learn unix command line tools, which is a slowly dying but absolutely necessary art form in the tech business.

@yak damn that's wild! What was the CPU on it, GPU, RAM n Storage? :o I imagine the machine you're working with now is a powerhouse compared to what you first ran with. 

The way I see it, Unix and Linux OS' are last bastions of original time-sharing operating environments from the golden age of computers and early computer networking. When using the terminal with programs and putting them through online and local operations, my bad if it sounds in any way pretentious lol, but it kinda feels like a small window into how people were using computers back in the 70s and 80s from command line to X window and GUIs before all the Microsoft and Apple stuff. 

Speakin of, wdym when you say unix command line programs and tools are slowly dying in tech business? I previously observed recent years that Red Hat Fedora has had a stronghold over IT tech and security enterprise. Then again, I know I've heard in passing that Red Hat have been goin' through some controversy as of late or at least concerning Rocky Linux a fork of Fedora but IDRK what it has to do with. 

I have used artix before and it's not bad at all.  But I do really like the rolling release nature of arch Linux, because it make it a lot easier to get newer software that I might need straight from the package manager or from the aur.   I'm still trying to get into a tech position (some stuff in my personal life has gotten in the way unfortunately) so I suppose it's not really relevant to my job but it does make doing the things I do in my hobbies much easier.

I will state here though, I do hate the level of pretentiousness that comes from people that use arch.  I don't think it's better or worse than any other distro, I just think it works well for me personally.

>What was the CPU on it, GPU, RAM n Storage? :o I imagine the machine
you're working with now is a powerhouse compared to what you first ran
with.

Oh, absolutely, partly just because hardware has advanced by leaps since then and partly because I have more money. The CPU/GPU were integrated into an "APU" that AMD was selling at the time, don't remember which model. I had a 500G spinning disc and I think 4 gigs of RAM. Back then it played minecraft fine on low settings so I had no complaints.

>The way I see it, Unix and Linux OS' are last bastions of original
time-sharing operating environments from the golden age of computers and
early computer networking.

Yup, although those huge mainframe operating systems are still very much around. Almost all the supercomputers in the top500 are running some variant of unix.

>Speakin of, wdym when you say unix command line programs and tools are slowly dying in tech business?

I mean most people have a knowledge of how to use a command line but much of the tools such as awk, sed, grep, find, and shell scripting in general are not known by a large amount of programmers. Personally I have found these tools to be extremely useful.

To answer some questions: I got started with Linux thanks to my boss at the time wanting to save on Windows licenses at work. It turned out to have many other advantages. Nowadays I main Debian 10, but also got Haiku OS on an old laptop, and Salix OS on another.

As for the small web, I'm not sure? General awareness of the movement coalesced gradually over the past few years, as I joined a pubnix, Neocities, and here. But I've had personal, hand-crafted websites for many years now.

@slime @yak do y'all rec I give the Arch installation a shot in a VM first and see if I'm able to build it competently enough before giving it a shot over a machine partition? 

BTW I see wym slime bout an apparent pretentious culture over Arch and other distros though that might be more default either to an elitism/gatekeeping? or maybe moreso a strong emphasis on maintaining some level of DIY-ethic in reference to people being pointed to "the manual" in terms of FAQs or troubleshooting. 

GL on each of your business, tech, or creative endeavors btw! I'm also trying to make a foothold in some data entry and other related jobs yet w/ other obligations keeping me at bay. Also, I can see how command line tools maybe are falling out of vogue, but when things go south w/ frontends there's nowhere else to turn when you need a fix in case of emergency. 

@NosyCat - I hope your tech biz ventures have been fruitful as a result! Out of what I observe, most of the net is built off Unix (which would explain the :/// directory hiearchy) like how @yak points out. A good majority of mainframes still use large-scale data tape drives even. BTW, what pubnix are you part of? I have a user in SDF, Tilde.club, and The Bottomless Abyss BBS as userfxnet. 

@it's probably mike - I didn't know you could dual-boot macOS and linux distros :o I run Hackintosh VM's and it took a while to get it all installed right, but it was so satisfying once it finally worked after figuring out filesystem and UEFI boot options. Refreshing to know that, if I ever wanted too, I'm always able to multi-boot a mac if i wanted alongside linux aha. 

GL HF btw on your IT work! If they have you guys using modern Windows servers for your systems yeah I can see how it gets tiring fast lolol. I hope the BSD laptop install works really well too, can't wait to hear more on that w/ your updates here :O I'm excited to hear what's next. NGL, compelling me to give my windows boot a go rn j so I can finally get checking out nomadBSD a try already. 

@it’s probably mike - nonono, never be sorry for going into depth about smth youre passionate about, n aaaaa I wanna hear bout the morphOS setup!! I’ll retitle this thread so that it’s more software/OS-inclusive.

I’m actually very unfamiliar w/ these UEFI tools you’re talm bout, but ir sounds hella interesting :0 is it exclusive to Apple filesystems only or is it compatible w/ Windows? I actually recently attempted to give debian 12 a try via my 30gb MX partition so i figured I could format that and replace it with Debian. thing is, i had NO idea debian was also gonna try and install GRUB after I already had it installed tied to MX. Shit got REAL messed up after that, I had to emergency do MX again via usb live boot i formatted from my wifes laptop and I coulda messed it up SO MUCH WORSE LMFAO. Could it help me w/ this or wdu think? 

Mb myself for unloading, i’m real passionate about this stuff and j the past 2 years been deciding to go hard at it and really treat it seriously, but ofc still having fun w/ it all lol.

@flipperzero Thank you! I made a career in web development after that, so yeah. And the influence of Unix is obvious on the internet, and the web in particular, due to their origins.

As for your other question, I'm on Ctrl-C.club, and hang out on IRC every day. We can probably meet there.

@Virtual Insanity @it's probably mike - IDK how y'all feel about this, but I notice and observe a variety of Apple fanboys online who actually 'resent' the fact they can do more w/ their phone in terms of side-loading (related to a previous anti-trust case between past 2 years) feeling like it's somehow "less secure" to have more control over your filesystem and applications than if it were just totally closed off. Some people are j brainwashed or smth idfk.

IG I like that, at least, MS is *somewhat* trying w/ including Ubuntu and Linux kernel via WSL in the Windows system for 10 and 11, but still so problematic that in spite of their stake in the anti-trust cases they decided to implement their own backdoors just to go ahead and make that many steps back further. TF's the point after that? :\ 

@NosyCat - That's hella cool. B^) Hopefully, I'll be able to do the same or similar soon, tryna get my foot in the door via data entry somehow by taking a dive into linux systems like debian and fedora and goin' off that to learn stuff like python and go. I previously built from source an HTTP-to-Gemini Proxy that's available over gemini:// called The Duckling Proxy which actually ran really well. I gotta compile it again tho, that was on an Antix VM. Hoping to do more soon tho. 

I heard of Ctrl-C, they have a gemini host too don't they? Will def give a check soon, I'm also part of a diff indie BBS but idk if they'll go public soon, it's j a private setup a homie of mine has that I met off SDF. 

Since y'all have been so nice sharing your hardware specs and system setups btw, imma go ahead and print out my setup to y'all as well, plus my plans for 'em. :) 

It's a Lenovo Thinkpad L440 w/ an Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-4200M CPU clocked @ 2.50GHz,has DDR4 7853MB RAM, Intel(R) HD Graphics 4600 (HSW GT2), w/ a 500GB HDD on-board, a 30GB ext4 formatted MX Linux partition being my main boot rn via GRUB, and my secondary partition being a 470GB Windows 10 Pre-installed. 

Once I hit up an external HDD/SSD (whichever I decide) to backup whatever I think is important from the Windows 10 partition, backup whatever from the MX partition, format the drive entirely w/ ext4 filesystem and just have at it w/ Debian 12 hopefully if not j MX again or a diff stable OS. 

I attempted Debian 12 to maybe try and hit it up on the 30gb partition, but I didn't format the flash drive properly (which already had an MX live image) and j ran it over a live USB maker anyways, didn't format the partition w/ GParted before running Debian 12's install, and when the GRUB step rolled around there was an error to install due to GRUB already being installed attached to MX so I was left.... without a bootloader! LMAO FUCK! 

I since fixed it tho, and have MX w/ a diff WM goin now. Gonna try again way later more properly :x 

PS - j because I neglected to go into it, but since I've gone on long enough, here's j a quick summary of what I aim to do w/ linux/unix: I've been recently getting tired of using FL Studio as a DAW and being so comfy w/ it w.o pushing myself to do anything more that's productive and worthwhile. I used to have music up under some names, but I'm now wanting to do a clean slate and use LMMS as a DAW to see how that works out. Plus, I don't wanna stay tied to using mainstream social media and music streaming to serve music I wanna share that I created (plus creative control, merchandising freedom, etc) and would like to do that over my own avenues I'm able to maintain myself w.o nothing else budding in on that unfairly and selfishly. So far, the only way I see this being possible is by doing it over a linux system and doing it all myself. (so much for a summary!) 

@Virtual Insanity - Hmm yeah I notice that's the standard to follow for partitions over linux. I wanna hit it up properly for sure, i j don't really know how to properly allocate all of that appropriately so that there isn't anything that doesn't use more than what it needs but also aren't left w/ much than is further required. Is there a guide for this kinda stuff? :X 

My blatant yet forthcoming honesty about my ignorance to properly approaching an aspect of a computer system is probably what also owes to people who desire ease and convenience over freedom and liberation on their systems: willful ignorance, or maybe inadvertent? Lol. The difference i suppose is, I'd like to do something about that. I don't think it's good -to- stay ignorant about that kinda stuff. I guess other people disagree, which i suppose is fine tho if they j wanna use it for right off the bat casual reasons, but for any real computing requires much more than just a closed system that lets you install only from it's own app store? LOL HELL NAH. 

How big to make partitions is a difficult thing to answer, only you will really know the answer when you either get it right or realise you got it wrong and what you probably should have done! 

For me I'm a heavy web user and Firefox eats memory, my system only has 16GB and I can't add more so I opted for a 32GB swap partition.  If you have loads of RAM and you never really find yourself using it all up maybe a couple of gigs would be enough. 

My root partition is 64GB and is almost half full even though I don't have all that much installed on my system.  The version of Mint I'm on uses Flatpaks for a bunch of things and they are way bloated compared to system packages.  Maybe it's a good thing to have browsers in segregated containers, other things not so much. 

My home directory is 100GB-ish and only has about 30GB of stuff on it, but it's not really intended for mass storage of music and photos and so on, my main storage unit is my NAS.  Ideally I'd have my system periodically backup my home directory to my NAS so I could wipe my drive and start over if I really wanted and not loose a thing, but as it stands I'd loose my browser sessions and emails since I last did a backup.  All my really important stuff is on my NAS.

One thing to consider is that is possible to resize partitions (at the end of the partition) without loosing data, but as far as I know it is not possible to change the starting position of a partition without at least potentially loosing your data on that partition.  I think this is the reason why /home is usually near the start of the drive.

So you might have something like -

Boot - /boot/efi - 512MiB

Home - /home - ??GiB

System - / - ??GB

Swap - no mount point - 2GiB (or 32GiB if you're like me)

flipperzero, I believe arch has an official text installer now, so you shouldnt have any issue giving it a spin

@flipperzero Most servers in the Tildeverse network host Gemini capsules. Some of them even do gopher holes. Check out the docs for tilde.club, or ask someone.

@NosyCat - I have a gopher/gemini link running on my tilde.club i just gotta add more to it! Do you have one ? :o Will check out if same tag. 

@slime - I've gone ahead and hit up an external drive I'm waiting on being shipped in soon, so once I save up my files, imma hit this entire laptop up w/ a distro and go from there w/ VM's so Arch is def gonna be one of my first tries. 

@flipperzero Mine is on Ctrl-C.club instead.