I really didn’t want to install Vista. I didn’t like how it looked or felt so I swapped out XP for Ubuntu. I stayed until Win7 and switched back to windows, but windows 8 rolled around and I went to Fedora. I’ve been here ever since.
So it was 1995, and a new version of Windows came out. Sadly it didnt run on our 486 so we upgraded to a new computer with a Pentium processor (a week before the Pentium Pro was released). My parents got their new machine and i was left with with Windows 3.11.
A friend of mine from school, a few years older, had just come back from a computer show down in Green Bay with a box fully of floppy disks (like 70). That weekend i brought my computer over to his house along with a few other friends and we all installed Slackware. At that point we were all using the Universe of Wisconsin’s dialup service and were able to get online, do some Gopher, IRC and MUDing.
The only other time i ran a non *nix OS would be when work gave me a Windows machine or when I was gaming (Quake, Ultima Online). Otherwise it has been Linux and BSDs since 95
I switched once in college just because I could. But then I switched back when Windows 7 was released.
Then I switched again at work because our product ran on Ubuntu server, and I hate PuTTY with a passion, and it was just easier to manage Linux from Linux. But I switched back again when we were acquired by a larger company that required us to use more productivity tools that didn't run well on Linux at the time and had to to "just work" (Skype for Business, Zoom, etc).
These days I spend most of the workday in WSL via Windows Terminal. At home I run a handful of Linux VMs atop an ESXi hypervisor installed on an old desktop. But when I'm not working, I generally just stay as far away from computers as possible.
I switched once in college just because I could. But then I switched back when Windows 7 was released.
Then I switched again at work because our product ran on Ubuntu server, and I hate PuTTY with a passion, and it was just easier to manage Linux from Linux. But I switched back again when we were acquired by a larger company that required us to use more productivity tools that didn't run well on Linux at the time and had to to "just work" (Skype for Business, Zoom, etc).
These days I spend most of the workday in WSL via Windows Terminal. At home I run a handful of Linux VMs atop an ESXi hypervisor installed on an old desktop. But when I'm not working, I generally just stay as far away from computers as possible.
Manjaro was my intro to Linux, but now that I know more about it, I can’t recommend it in good conscience. Letting their SSL certs expire is something that happens (even though they could automate it), but telling their users to change their clocks so it works is a big no-no.
Worse than that is how they manage packages from upstream. Simply freezing them for two weeks is, in my opinion, the worst of both worlds. You don’t get timely security updates, but you still end up with the issues of being on the bleeding edge - just late. It also means that if you use the AUR (which is really one of the biggest perks of Arch-based systems), it’s possible that the necessary dependencies are out of date.
I think that if one wants “Arch with an installer” they should go with EndeavourOS, or try the archinstall script.
Sure. When it comes to updates, Manjaro is pretty much doing what every single other distro is doing. Updates that are buggy don’t get pushed to the stable branch until they’re fixed up, and security updates tend to get pushed through faster than feature updates. The time period that updates get held up by is not a fixed duration, it depends on the specific package and update and can be anywhere between a few days and a few weeks.
As a concrete example, with some major Plasma updates Manjaro has waited for three or even four point releases (4 / 8 weeks) before considering it stable enough vs the newest point release of the previous major release, and following point releases after that get pushed to stable much faster.
As another point, even Arch has a very similar process… Their policy on pushing updates is far more geared towards pushing updates quickly than towards not breaking things, but otherwise it’s pretty much the same.
Manjaro packages start their lives in the unstable branch. Once they are a deemed stable, they are moved to the testing branch, where more tests will be realized to ensure the package is ready to be submitted to the stable branch
Better privacy, control over the operating system, fully free and open source, practically impossible to get a virus (you still can but Linux viruses are rare), less system utilisation and I was surprised by how easy it was to use. My first reaction when I installed my first distro was “Wow it’s almost as easy as Windows”. That being said I did run into a bunch of problems early on but there’s extensive guidesout there. My first distro was Manjaro but recently, since I started getting angry at the fact that even the smallest system update broke my install and I had to run timeshift restores very often, I had made the switch to Nobara and so far I’m really enjoying it
It was when the third or fourth thing ended up persistently broken after an update and the whole system became too much of a pain to use. I honestly don’t recall if it was XP or Win 7.
I had used a couple of Linux flavours before for a short periods and originally planned to dual boot, but this time, just never got around to putting a new Win partition on and found that I had no need for it anyway.
I got tired of forced system updates and my laptop switching itself on in my backpack - purchased a used Macbook, installed Linux and never looked back. WINE has bridged the gap for running some .NET Framework (not Core) apps I used that can’t run natively under Linux.
I was surprised with how things just “worked”, although I was admittedly prepared since I was using Linux on my HTPC for a while prior.
My desktop still runs Win 10 LTSC though, mainly down to having racing simulation games and a gaming wheel.
If you’re going to use your computer for coding in school, it may be best to stick to whatever they’ll be using? Just so you don’t get left behind in a session by just trying to figure out getting a required software stack installed on your machine
Before I could fully leave windows, I spent a lot of time being lost in Linux distrohopping and ricing without even fully understanding what I was doing. Without a solid setup to live in, Linux had a weird experimental feel and it got frustrating when I wanted stuff done.
Coming to your case, there are 2 different priorities here: daily driving and Linux proficiency. You’re tied into windows for the daily driving bit for now so your main focus should be learning, and that probably won’t need a dual boot right away.
First up is understanding why there are so many distributions. Linux is the kernel, the common skeleton that you can’t use on its own. There are other modular bits that go on top to make a full fledged OS, and the choices of what those are is what makes a distribution. Learn more about the options available for the modular bits - the ones that you should concern yourself with for now are:
package managers: the program responsible for installing and managing software. This is one of the main differences between the major popular variants of Linux(Debian, Arch, fedora etc). For example, on Debian and distros based on it, you’d use apt. That’s why you would’ve probably used apt on Ubuntu, it’s based on Debian.
desktop environment: all the programs involved with the user interface - the main UI itself. This is a subjective thing and people use different desktop environments based on their workflow.
Once you get this modularity based perspective, distributions wont be overwhelming and vague. You’ll understand why people are recommending mint or popOS:
it’s Ubuntu based and there are many popular Debian and Ubuntu based distros out there. You’ll be able to get software easily and if there’s some problem you need to debug, there’s a relevant question and answer out there
mint’s desktop environment is cinnamon, which is simple, clean and not too jarring for people coming from windows
You’ll also know, you can choose whatever you want as long as it’s Ubuntu based for your learning phase. Only at that point I think it will make sense to dual boot. You can boot in for particular reasons instead of a vague “let me understand Linux”. The reasons will be finding alternative software to daily drive, learning how to use the terminal or just getting comfortable with Linux in general. From there, you can find your own way or reach out to the community with questions specific for your use cases.
I don’t have ads within my OS or start menus, I can do whatever I want with it, I can customize it with different desktop environments, if I mess anything up and need to clean install I don’t need to worry about license keys.
Ooo, what do you like about System76? I know they’re well respected, but I’d like to hear about it from somebody who actually uses the hardware, especially since Pop!_OS has caught my attention more than once
My laptop still runs Ubuntu. But the 500 mb boot partition is basically now non functional and since I use luks on the main partition and hate snap I’m just strongly considering moving to pop. I also use an egpu quite frequently.
Sorry. I dont use a system76 laptop, i looked at getting the Lemur when i bought mine, but stock was hard to come by (it was the whole covid and supply chain nonsense).
I ended up getting a razer blade stealth 13 with the 11th Gen intel CPU.
Ultimately I wanted portability to be the primary thing over all else. BUt a GPU was nice to have.
My laptop is solid. But i tend to take pretty solid care of this stuff. Wouldnt necessarily reccomend any razer product to most personally. Their QA is questionable. And I take certain steps to keep it stable (ie: blocking some of their software at the firewall etc)
lol me too. Was pretty risky for me, even going in eyes wide open. Would probably do a lemur or framework next laptop. In fact that may be what I get the wife.
That or a MacBook Air. But I’d like to avoid that.
I’ve heard amazing things about noth Framework nd System76! I’m sure u can’t go wrong with either :) and I feel ya w/ ur avoidance of Apple products, lol
FWIW, I have a galp5, and had a lot of stability issues with Pop. I used it for well over a year, as I thought using their own OS on the machine they sold me would give the best results. Ultimately I spent a lot of time opening support tickets, and trying to work around issues (desktop stuttering, crashes, touchpad randomly would stop responding, etc). I did not find their support team particularly helpful. I finally installed stock Ubuntu, and it’s been significantly more stable.
I don’t plan to buy from them again. If I were buying now, I’d be looking at Framework (probably their upcoming, larger model with the dedicated GPU).
The main thing I like is the hardware support. I knew before purchasing that everything would work, and that helped me feel okay dropping a pretty penny on a new laptop. Besides that, I’d say they’re fine. They aren’t designing and manufacturing their own hardware (at least not back when I bought one); the laptops are pretty standard off-the-shelf stuff. System76 just promises that it’ll all work out-of-the-box. I’ve never used Pop!_OS, so I can’t speak to that. Arch and Debian work great, though.
The only negative I can think of is: once the battery started to go after several years, they didn’t have a replacement in their store, but because it’s a generic laptop, there were new ones available on Amazon. It just would’ve been nice to get it from System76.
All-in-all, I’m a happy customer. I’m keeping my eye on Framework, though. The MNT Reform is also interesting. I don’t like how thick it is, but that’s because it uses 18650s for the battery, which would solve the problem of buying a new battery just to find that all the batteries were manufactured at the same time, so there are no working replacements.
It’s not any battery. They just didn’t do the original manufacturing, so you can find compatible replacements elsewhere.
I bought the System76 Kudu laptop back in 2016, but it is actually a W670RZ model laptop manufactured by Clevo Co. in China (unlike my previous laptop which was a MacBook Pro manufactured by Apple in China). System76 wasn’t the only company selling the W670RZ, so they’re not the only ones you can go to for replacement parts.
Ooo, good to know! It sucks they don’t offer hardware replacements on-site, but it’s good to know that they’re easy to find. And I doubt I’m going to be using Arch anytime soon (due to personal inexperience) but I would like to test Pop!_OS. Thank you for the detailed reply :D
I get a lot of value from my 150.00 ThinkPad T430s but then all I do is web browsing and occasionally compiling software on it so not exactly intensive things. It’s a basic machine. A ThinkPad T series closer to 500.00 would be very functional.
How standard is Python on Unix machines nowadays? I’m guessing some relatively recent version of Python 2 is standard on many machines.
Not sure how many would prefer it, but I’ve always wondered if retiring as a shell language would be a good home for Python. Not sure how well it’d work as a shell without some major changes, but it feels like something could have been done to get to a sweet spot and we could have slowly moved beyond bash to something nicer …?
First, Python2 need not be EOL. I’m clearly talking about some parallel timeline where python as a *nix shell became a project and got traction. Somewhere around ~2000, when python2 was first released, some project works on making the necessary adaptations for a shell and presumably gets that working well.
Second, we’re talking about Bash and Bash scripts, any serious dependency management or package management doesn’t really factor into this, it seems you’re bashing Python as a fully fledged programming language.
The weakest point in my imaginary proposal, IMO, is getting python to work as a shell language. As a scripting language it’s fine and many are happy using it where Bash might be used. But as a shell, and in scripting too, it’s interop with core utils and commands is pretty suboptimal. Ergonomics would at some point require something to be done about that and I don’t know what a successful version of that would look like. If we’re talking about a POSIX standard, maybe all that’d be necessary would be a standard library that wraps everything needed? Or a nicer object/function/syntax for calling subprocesses, which various third party libs have tried obviously. The Xonsh project also comes to mind … a superset of python, which is a great idea IMO but maybe undermines the idea that python2 is everywhere already.
I’m talking about an alternative timeline where python as a good and widely available *nix shell becomes a thing. For that to have every happened it would have had to start with python2. I’m not advocating for python2 to be brought back now or anything like that.
That is not clear at all from your first post. All you did was ask about the current state and postulate that python2 should be commonly installed nowadays. Then wonder if python could be made to act like a shell. None of that indicated you were thinking about some hypothetical parallel past timeline.
In our timeline python 2 is EOL and not installed by default on much if anything these days and should not be used by anything any more (despite some things still needing it - they really shouldn’t any more).
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