OSes Linux discussion

I've recently installed a 2nd Linux OS on my laptop, for educational purposes. It wasn't the easiest thing, but that's fine, I think I learned a thing or two in the process. :)
 
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I'm thinking about partitioning my drive again and putting Linux on. Definitely wasn't pleased with Ubuntu the last time I had it on. I would like to get back to something that kind of gets back to the roots of Linux. Something a little more "It's what you make it". I'm wondering how Gentoo is doing these days?
 
I'm thinking about partitioning my drive again and putting Linux on. Definitely wasn't pleased with Ubuntu the last time I had it on. I would like to get back to something that kind of gets back to the roots of Linux. Something a little more "It's what you make it". I'm wondering how Gentoo is doing these days?
I couldn't tell you too much about that kind of Linuxes, I'm mostly into the more user-friendly, shiny and polished type that can do what I want it to do with a minimum of hassle :) (Well, I do have Raspian on my Raspberry Pi device, but it's not seen a lot of action so far.) Anyway, what (desktop) Linux needs is broader appeal, and like it or not, the terminal is scaring away non-nerd users. Ubuntu did some things right regarding broader appeal, but seems to have lost its way in more recent times.
 
I couldn't tell you too much about that kind of Linuxes, I'm mostly into the more user-friendly, shiny and polished type that can do what I want it to do with a minimum of hassle :) (Well, I do have Raspian on my Raspberry Pi device, but it's not seen a lot of action so far.) Anyway, what (desktop) Linux needs is broader appeal, and like it or not, the terminal is scaring away non-nerd users. Ubuntu did some things right regarding broader appeal, but seems to have lost its way in more recent times.

Well no, I don't even mean that it would have to be all that hands on even. Just have some freedom, Ubuntu and some of them seem so confined and restrictive in ways. You know what I miss using? Other than Enlightenment 14 (no going back to that), but freakin WindowMaker, I think they renamed it to WMaker. The complete solution desktop environments kind of got me down.
 
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Trisquel user here--still living and learning and open to the possibility of switching to Debian, since I know how to avoid the non-free stuff on it after four years of using an FSF approved distro and Canonical is Canonical.

D*mn Small Linux was my first love and I still enjoy minimalism in computing and rescuing perfectly good hardware from the landfill.
 
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So I ended up installing Linux Mint 17.3 and promptly blew it the eff up :) I'll fix it, that's half the fun lol
Mint is based on Ubuntu, isn't it? But not the latest and greatest? I understand it's one of those distros that "just works", with all the closed-source codecs etc that a lot of people end up installing anyway. I've heard good things about it ... Have you played with it any more?
 
Mint is based on Ubuntu, isn't it? But not the latest and greatest? I understand it's one of those distros that "just works", with all the closed-source codecs etc that a lot of people end up installing anyway. I've heard good things about it ... Have you played with it any more?

It was yes, but it has it's own repositories.... I quite like it, and I was able to make it a bit more rugged to get away from the DE feel. I've stopped using it until I can download a new ISO and re-install. Mint's website was compromised awhile back and their ISO replaced with one that included a back door. I installed around that time, so I think the best thing for me to do is wipe it and start over using a fresh copy.
 
I work a lot with databases. Today I learnt that next year Microsoft is going to release their very popular SQL Server database system for Linux:
SQL Server for Linux coming in mid-2017

It will remain closed-source, of course, but at least now a lot of businesses and organisations will be able to run without Windows on the database server.
 
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I think Microsoft are changing their focus. They start raking in the cash when they drop the bombshell that Windows is a subscription service, the server market is going to be peanuts.
 
I work a lot with databases. Today I learnt that next year Microsoft is going to release their very popular SQL Server database system for Linux:
SQL Server for Linux coming in mid-2017

It will remain closed-source, of course, but at least now a lot of businesses and organisations will be able to run without Windows on the database server.
Omg yay!!!!!
 
I think Microsoft are changing their focus. They start raking in the cash when they drop the bombshell that Windows is a subscription service, the server market is going to be peanuts.
I'm not quite sure I understand what you mean ...?

Anyway, I was thinking the motive for a Linux version of SQL Server could be a desire to take even bigger chunks from the Oracle DB market share. I think they've eaten a lot of that cake over the past decade. I'm guessing some companies have a policy of using only Linux on the server side ... A Linux version of SQL Server would also allow such companies to run web applications which run only on SQL Server. And also, there is increasing competition from NoSQL databases which typically run on a wide range of OSes, thereby giving the users a lot more server options than SQL Server which so far only runs on MS Windows.
 
I'm not quite sure I understand what you mean ...?

What I mean is, Microsoft is fixing to be making more money than they've ever made before on Windows licenses. Just imagine if every Windows user on earth is paying $15 - $40 per year for features and updates as opposed to people buying an OS once every 5 - 10 years for $100... It makes Windows domination of the server market seem a fair bit less important than it was once viewed.
 
So I installed Ubuntu Gnome shell edition... But haven't had a lot of time to really set it up the way I want. I figured since I had downloaded Mint around the time of their site getting compromised I had better put something else on here rather than risk I got the ISO with the rootkit lol
 
I've been playing with Arch Linux recently and really like it. I've had it on my laptop for a couple of months, installed it on my previously Ubuntu desktop this weekend and will be installing it on my currently Gentoo NAS and other desktop sometime soon.

I've also been trying Awesome WM as a window manager. I've been using Window Maker since forever so it's taking a bit of getting used to as it is very different but I'm liking what I'm seeing. It's very hackable in the Lua language so lots of potential for making it behave just as I want.
 
I've been playing with Arch Linux recently and really like it. I've had it on my laptop for a couple of months, installed it on my previously Ubuntu desktop this weekend and will be installing it on my currently Gentoo NAS and other desktop sometime soon.

I've also been trying Awesome WM as a window manager. I've been using Window Maker since forever so it's taking a bit of getting used to as it is very different but I'm liking what I'm seeing. It's very hackable in the Lua language so lots of potential for making it behave just as I want.

Nice... I've been thinking about checking out Arch. I used Gentoo pretty extensively back several years ago and was also wondering how it's been progressing.
 
Nice... I've been thinking about checking out Arch. I used Gentoo pretty extensively back several years ago and was also wondering how it's been progressing.

If you liked Gentoo I think you'll like Arch. It is similarly configurable and the base install is very minimal leaving you to choose your prefered desktop environment etc. You just don't have to wait for everything to compile. :)
 
If you liked Gentoo I think you'll like Arch. It is similarly configurable and the base install is very minimal leaving you to choose your prefered desktop environment etc. You just don't have to wait for everything to compile. :)

I originally came from Slackware in a time where most distributions had moved on to glibc2 while Slackware remained on libc5. So if you used Slackware most likely any binary packages would not run, your only option was to download source tarballs and compile what you wanted yourself. For a long time I really preferred compiling from source because it was really the only thing I knew. Gentoo was really neat to me because it did abide to what I was used to while automating it and maintaining dependencies as well :)

Having the choices you describe is very appealing to me. I can understand people liking ready-made work environments, but I'm not really happy with Gnome, Cinnamon, Mate, etc. I may give Arch a try and slap something simple and lightweight on there.