Linux Distros

[Bone-A Lisa]

I just recently switched over to NixOS from EndeavourOS, and I gotta say, I'm sold on it. NixOS is a declarative distro, essentially meaning that everything I want to configure / install on my system lives in a single configuration file (or multiple if you break the config up in a sane way). Your hardware config, such as drive mounts, kernel parameters, etc., live in their own file so you can have a unique one per machine. It makes updating my system as simple as editing a file, applying the config, and if something goes wrong, I just roll back that file and apply the previous config.

The config syntax and paradigm does have kind of a steep learning curve to it, though... Being a complete programming language and all. It took about a week of running NixOS in a VM and testing a config to be comfortable trying to switch my laptop over to it. But what is nice, is that once I got the config tailored correctly to what I want, deploying the exact same setup on my laptop took just downloading the config files, applying them, and in 5 minutes my setup was Identical to the VM (again hardware not withstanding). Then I did the same thing a week later for my main desktop machine.

Now my main desktop, laptop, and hopefully soon my work laptop, are all essentially the exact same computer, with the exact same set of apps, and the exact same config. It's so awesome.

I'm probably going to write a blog post on it here soon talking about my experience, and how many of my problems it's solved so far, lol.

[xXWebMasterXx_Gina]

I'll be honest, I don't know a thing about Linux, but with Windows 11 ever approaching, Linux seems like the logical next step    That said, just recently I happened across this OS called "Commodore OS Vision" which as far as I can understand is some sort of themed version of Debian and/or MX Linux? Couldn't tell you for sure, but the Commodore OS sure is eye-candy! It has a bunch of animations and a sleek interface that's supposed to give the feel of what a modern Commodore system might look like. 

At first, I just ran it through a VM, but then I decided to install it on my near broken laptop which takes like 10 minutes just to boot, and wow! I know this is just because of Linux and not the Commodore OS Vision specifically, but now my laptop is like 5x faster. Pretty good for a 5-6 year old machine!   

Though, I am having quite a bit of trouble actually using the system. I had to navigate through so many menus just to figure out how to turn down my screen brightness    I'm also having a hard time grasping how the file system is organized, everything has these really short, obscure names so it's hard just to track down were the exes of the various bundled programs are located outside of the system's quick launch menus.


I know I should be trying to learn more about Linux to use the Commodore OS, but now I just want to learn BASIC and code in the C64 emulator >_<

[PurpleHello98]

I've tried VMs of Linux here and there, although nothing's tempted me enough to switch. I may do so at least part-time soon, though, although there won't be any iPod compatibility, so I can't use it 100% of the time. I'm most interested in Ubuntu Unity and Linux Mint, although I've used the LXDE environment and really liked it. (I especially like that LXDE is still a little skeuomorphic, at least mast I checked!

[ThunderPerfectWitchcraft]

I'll be honest, I don't know a thing about Linux, but with Windows 11 ever approaching, Linux seems like the logical next step    That said, just recently I happened across this OS called "Commodore OS Vision" which as far as I can understand is some sort of themed version of Debian and/or MX Linux? Couldn't tell you for sure, but the Commodore OS sure is eye-candy! It has a bunch of animations and a sleek interface that's supposed to give the feel of what a modern Commodore system might look like. 

As far as I can tell, it is a very small distro, based on an unsuccessful attempt to create a distro from 10 years ago. Nobody cann tell if they'll manage to keep their software up-to-date, and probably they don't have the resources to go for a smooth user-experience. I doubt that it is good for productive use on a system. If you are a beginner, I heavily recommend OpenSuse.

@PurpleHello98 did you try gtkpod or similar software that offer IPod-compability? Both Ubuntu and Mint are not entirely uncontroversial within the Linux scene (if anyone wants more details about this, just ask - don't want to bore you people out with distro-ranting). While both are safer to use than Windows, there are alternatives available that will probably give you a better time with Linux.

[shevek]

I think you can achieve a skeuomorphic look in almost any distro, especially because it simply hinges on the chosen desktop environment and the themes and config files for that. The distro is really mostly about how files are managed, package manager, better or worse for older hardware, lightweight or heavy, etc. I think the most newbie friendly way of customization is offered by KDE, especially since they offer buttons to download themes very easily and already have a lot of customization built in without asking the average user to touch any config file.

The switch from KDE Plasma 5 to 6 recently really rocked my Nvidia optimus system and leaves a lot of themes and customization behind because the creators need to port it first, so that sucks a bit. I had to cleaninstall for a variety of reasons, also due to the expired themes, and choose some new ones. There's definitely a lot of glossy, more frutiger aero aligned options as well, so if the skeuomorphism is your thing, I'm sure you will be happy with theming in KDE Plasma no matter what distro you use, as long as KDE works well with it. I also went with something more glossy now, and will likely also switch to a different and skeuomorphic icon pack once I find one I like and that works.

[almostcorporeal]

personally i use LMDE (Linux Mint Debian Edition) on my pc. i switched over completely from windows about a year ago and honestly i'm in love. i thought my love for the distro would die down after a few months and a handful of terminal installs (i'd only ever used windows prior so the terminal in general was a bit daunting of an idea for me) but i actually far prefer them over windows installers for some reason. i think the only programs i really miss from windows are clip studio paint and musicbee but krita serves me well and deadbeef is probably my favorite music library player i've found for linux. games run fine for me through either steam with their proton integration or through lutris (although installing things through lutris/wine can be kinda annoying lol)

overall i really love linux and have been considering exploring other distros so this thread has given me tons of insight 

[ThunderPerfectWitchcraft]

musicbee ... deadbeef

One of the programs I missed when I switched to Linux was Foobar2000, a really magnificent music player. Had some good alternatives, but soom of them fell out of maintenance.
I have used many, and I currently can recommend Strawberry. qmmp if you are out for a minimal experience. The most crazy music player I found till now was a software named "Aqualung" ;D.

[almostcorporeal]

One of the programs I missed when I switched to Linux was Foobar2000, a really magnificent music player. Had some good alternatives, but soom of them fell out of maintenance.
I have used many, and I currently can recommend Strawberry. qmmp if you are out for a minimal experience. The most crazy music player I found till now was a software named "Aqualung" ;D.

i don't care for foobar (although it's probably closest to what i want) or strawberry. i don't want qmmp from what i've seen (def not a minimal guy)
i've also tried elisa, lollypop, rhythmbox, and vlc. deadbeef is the only thing i've found that i really like lol

im really particular about what a program needs to look like with a music player. i'm also definitely a playlist guy over albums. i like that deadbeef allows me to customize everything so that it can look how i want my player to look and the switching between playlists function of tabbing them itches my brain so gooooood lol

this aqualung player looks crazy as heck! not what i'm looking for but all the functionality it has is pretty neat (:

here's a screenshot of mine to maybe illustrate what i mean a bit better (please dont judge my goofy playlist titles  )

[invader_gvim]

I have left windows altogether and use Debian on everything, although I will be installing AntiX on all future hardware since it is made by someone who agrees with my worldview. I am in the process of getting rid of Android likewise, although I'm just not as knowledgable for phones as computers and I've been so busy.

It feels really fulfiulling because I have successfully made my desktop environment and GUI look how it does on this wonderful site. The terminal looks cool and really people just need to throw caution away and do what looks and feels KEWL.    

[crash-stop]

 A mix really. A lot of my art work relies on flaws I've found ,am finding in older versions of linux so I have machines running linux mint bea 2.1 ( 32 bit) , Legacy os 2017 ( based on a really old version of puppy linux 3 series which has some beautiful video playback errors) , Devuan is my main os but even there I run concurrently Jessie, Ascii, Chimaera and Daedalus ( all non systemd ) Jessie especially even though released in 2016/2017 runs old webcams I had circuit bent and newer versions dont support ( plus older versions of ffmpeg and flowblade ) - the Devuan distros I have archived versions of using refracta tools so i can make an iso from a running system, boot it live and install it without needing to reinstall everything . I also run ubuntu 10.04 and 6.06 ( Ubuntu 10.04 because of the flawed way it renders xavs codec ) 6.06 because there is a read error of h264 which can be exploited and captured ( and both have exploitable errors in the way they render ogv / ogg video ) these I use regularly plus a fully libre version of Devuan called Gnuinos - which is wonderful but unfortunately not long for this world ( and parabola linux for work with arts organisation I'm part of)

[Memory]

@crash-stop: Legacy Linux... does it work in practise? I tried to run a 10-year-old Salix 14.1, a distro with the in-built "dependency hell". Just one little library has to go missing, and the programs relying on it won't install. And unfortuneatly, some maintainers of those tiny gearwheels keep their legacy versions only for a couple of years on their servers.

...or do you just pick those older Linux' to crash them and get some glitch art?

[crash-stop]

Legacy linux often works for me, using debian based things like ubuntu or debian/devuan often means you can still add software from the repositorys as they generally leave the old repositorys up as an archive so I can change /etc/apt/sources.list to reflect that. Linux mint afaik doesnt do that for older versions but the first versions of mint came with multimedia codecs preinstalled ( the main attraction to begin with ) so the bits im interested in like video playback work straight out of the box without having to wrestle with sources.list . Legacy os 2017 is more a standalone with loads of software already installed so again dont need to go through dependency hell there is a newer version of legacy os which is based on antix/mxlinux which again comes with loads of things preinstalled but updateable - I did use salix a while back 2013/15 but went back to linuxmint then before finally swapping to Devuan ( not debian ) because it doesnt use systemd and as I use a lot of older hardware I've found systemd a huge  drag on resources and speed plus its intrinsically bad. Ubuntu 6.06 and 10.04 i can add and subtract stuff quite easily - I use mainly foss or libre stuff so I dont need to run through hoops. I'm not looking to crash older distros , more looking for flaws in the way they handle video - its a rich vein to explore.

I did a talk at Fubar in 2019 which explains some of my methodology and reasoning - its a four part blog post here