The Universal Operating System
August 17, 2018 7:58 AM Subscribe
25 years ago this month, Ian Murdock announced a brand new Linux release. Today, it's one of the most important projects in the free software movement. That's right, Debian/GNU Linux is 25 years old!
Bonus
- Debian on the space station
- All you ever wanted to know about Debian codenames
- Google likes using Debian
- some opinions as to why you should use Debian
- Debian on a Psion Mx5
- Debian on the Nintendo Switch
Bonus
- Debian on the space station
- All you ever wanted to know about Debian codenames
- Google likes using Debian
- some opinions as to why you should use Debian
- Debian on a Psion Mx5
- Debian on the Nintendo Switch
The first time I ever well and truly destroyed the family PC, it was by installing Debian Potato.
posted by muchomas at 8:09 AM on August 17, 2018 [9 favorites]
posted by muchomas at 8:09 AM on August 17, 2018 [9 favorites]
I started using Ubuntu with version Bo which was 1997 so I wasn't quite an early adopter but it's still been a long time. I still have nightmares about using dselect.
posted by octothorpe at 8:15 AM on August 17, 2018 [1 favorite]
posted by octothorpe at 8:15 AM on August 17, 2018 [1 favorite]
Yeah, apt is pretty nice. Most of the package managers have achieved feature parity these days, but for quite a while there it was a real standout in terms of both power and ease of use.
posted by tobascodagama at 8:23 AM on August 17, 2018 [2 favorites]
posted by tobascodagama at 8:23 AM on August 17, 2018 [2 favorites]
Debian Testing has been my weapon of choice for a very long time now. I've tried the rest and Debian is the best.
I was a big Ubuntu fan until the Window Controls On The Wrong Side Debacle of 2010. Shuttleworth's reaction to the howls of complaint from those of us possessed of actual muscle memory was essentially that he'd paid for the world's best design team, so they must be right and we must be wrong despite their inexplicable fondness for blood-bruise colour schemes and dots in grids, and Canonical is his company and he can do what he likes, so suck it up buttercup.
That was the moment when the scales fell from my eyes and I understood why Debian was completely obsessive about being a democracy. The fact that the Debian Social Contract both exists and is taken seriously is, in my considered opinion, the fundamental reason why a distro that is neither the most bleeding edge nor the easiest for newbies to deal with has achieved such longevity and such a loyal user base.
posted by flabdablet at 8:33 AM on August 17, 2018 [15 favorites]
I was a big Ubuntu fan until the Window Controls On The Wrong Side Debacle of 2010. Shuttleworth's reaction to the howls of complaint from those of us possessed of actual muscle memory was essentially that he'd paid for the world's best design team, so they must be right and we must be wrong despite their inexplicable fondness for blood-bruise colour schemes and dots in grids, and Canonical is his company and he can do what he likes, so suck it up buttercup.
That was the moment when the scales fell from my eyes and I understood why Debian was completely obsessive about being a democracy. The fact that the Debian Social Contract both exists and is taken seriously is, in my considered opinion, the fundamental reason why a distro that is neither the most bleeding edge nor the easiest for newbies to deal with has achieved such longevity and such a loyal user base.
posted by flabdablet at 8:33 AM on August 17, 2018 [15 favorites]
I bailed on Ubuntu when they went to that stupid Unity Desktop thing. I'm running Mint these days.
posted by octothorpe at 8:37 AM on August 17, 2018 [2 favorites]
posted by octothorpe at 8:37 AM on August 17, 2018 [2 favorites]
Well apt had to be, for a while there in the early 2000's if you wanted the (really old) stable release but still found yourself dipping your toe into test for the occasional shiny new package (i.e. anything more recent than 2000), ooooh the dependency hell you could get into. aptitude could usually resolve it, but oh god those were some rocky transition years after you could still reasonably compile something shiny and new but before package management quite got up to speed...
posted by Kyol at 8:38 AM on August 17, 2018
posted by Kyol at 8:38 AM on August 17, 2018
Once I was walking down a dark ally in Porto Alegre Brazil with Ian and was able to express my sincere gratitude to him for founding Debian. And Ian responded in the most modest and uplifting way, turning my praise of him into praise of everyone who'd been involved. Ian was not around Debian much after that, and that's how I'll always remember him, shining in a dark ally on a chilly June night.
posted by joeyh at 8:39 AM on August 17, 2018 [21 favorites]
posted by joeyh at 8:39 AM on August 17, 2018 [21 favorites]
Debian is one those things in the special class of things I don't personally use but am glad exists.
posted by srboisvert at 8:39 AM on August 17, 2018 [5 favorites]
posted by srboisvert at 8:39 AM on August 17, 2018 [5 favorites]
Other Linux users mock me for using a distro that moves so slow, but I never have to spend a late night or weekend making my computer not broken so let then laugh.
posted by idiopath at 8:39 AM on August 17, 2018 [8 favorites]
posted by idiopath at 8:39 AM on August 17, 2018 [8 favorites]
Everyone forgets BSD...
posted by Apocryphon at 8:46 AM on August 17, 2018 [3 favorites]
posted by Apocryphon at 8:46 AM on August 17, 2018 [3 favorites]
Other Linux users mock me for using a distro that moves so slow
The thing about the Testing branch is that it doesn't actually move all that slow. I've found it to be a really, really good tradeoff between stability and capability.
By and large it does an astonishingly good job of letting me just update what I want, when I want, and leaving everything working most of the time; and when it doesn't, it's really really rare that backing everything up and then doing an apt full-upgrade causes more problems than it solves.
posted by flabdablet at 8:46 AM on August 17, 2018 [1 favorite]
The thing about the Testing branch is that it doesn't actually move all that slow. I've found it to be a really, really good tradeoff between stability and capability.
By and large it does an astonishingly good job of letting me just update what I want, when I want, and leaving everything working most of the time; and when it doesn't, it's really really rare that backing everything up and then doing an apt full-upgrade causes more problems than it solves.
posted by flabdablet at 8:46 AM on August 17, 2018 [1 favorite]
Everyone forgets BSD
I like the GNU userland way, way better than the BSD one, Linux supports more devices, and I'm slowly warming to systemd. But I'm with srboisvert; there are things I don't personally use but am glad exists, and the *BSDs are right there.
posted by flabdablet at 8:49 AM on August 17, 2018 [3 favorites]
I like the GNU userland way, way better than the BSD one, Linux supports more devices, and I'm slowly warming to systemd. But I'm with srboisvert; there are things I don't personally use but am glad exists, and the *BSDs are right there.
posted by flabdablet at 8:49 AM on August 17, 2018 [3 favorites]
Celebrating 25 years of the Year of Linux on the Desktop.
posted by Thorzdad at 8:50 AM on August 17, 2018 [15 favorites]
posted by Thorzdad at 8:50 AM on August 17, 2018 [15 favorites]
Everyone forgets BSD...
BSD is dying. Netcraft confirms it.
posted by Pogo_Fuzzybutt at 8:59 AM on August 17, 2018 [2 favorites]
BSD is dying. Netcraft confirms it.
posted by Pogo_Fuzzybutt at 8:59 AM on August 17, 2018 [2 favorites]
Everyone forgets BSD
Except for those little BSD derived OSes called macOS and iOS.
posted by octothorpe at 9:00 AM on August 17, 2018 [5 favorites]
Except for those little BSD derived OSes called macOS and iOS.
posted by octothorpe at 9:00 AM on August 17, 2018 [5 favorites]
And they are all just flavors of UNIX!
Basically everyone EVERYONE in the world has a unix box in their pocket. Suck on the billg.
posted by sammyo at 9:03 AM on August 17, 2018 [2 favorites]
Basically everyone EVERYONE in the world has a unix box in their pocket. Suck on the billg.
posted by sammyo at 9:03 AM on August 17, 2018 [2 favorites]
I even use stable. I'm comfortable compiling from source or a vendor bundle if I need the latest hotness from a particular program. Mostly I like having a computer that continues to work without surprises.
posted by idiopath at 9:07 AM on August 17, 2018 [3 favorites]
posted by idiopath at 9:07 AM on August 17, 2018 [3 favorites]
Going by this family tree, about 40% of all distributions are Debian-based.
posted by farlukar at 9:11 AM on August 17, 2018 [2 favorites]
posted by farlukar at 9:11 AM on August 17, 2018 [2 favorites]
I've been using Debian since building my most recent Linux box a few years ago, and am thinking of moving back to Ubuntu once I get the time, mostly due to components being too outdated to use a lot of software with it.
This has bitten me twice recently: first, I wanted to play with Swift on the server side, but it's only supported on Ubuntu and installing it on Debian is nontrivial (I ended up making a VirtualBox VM, running Ubuntu, for it, as that was a lot less hassle than building it and its dependencies.)
More recently, I got a Gemini PDA (a small ARM-based screen/keyboard device resembling a Psion in form), and have been wanting to replace the default Android firmware with something that doesn't function as a data-gathering device for Google. There is a firmware flashing utility for Linux, but it depends on some libraries whose versions on the most recent Debian are incompatible.
I suspect that switching to Ubuntu and remaining eternally vigilant against the Shuttleworthian Fisher-Pricing of the interface will be easier than dealing with a system where attempting to do anything out of the ordinary is a journey into outdated library hell.
posted by acb at 9:13 AM on August 17, 2018
This has bitten me twice recently: first, I wanted to play with Swift on the server side, but it's only supported on Ubuntu and installing it on Debian is nontrivial (I ended up making a VirtualBox VM, running Ubuntu, for it, as that was a lot less hassle than building it and its dependencies.)
More recently, I got a Gemini PDA (a small ARM-based screen/keyboard device resembling a Psion in form), and have been wanting to replace the default Android firmware with something that doesn't function as a data-gathering device for Google. There is a firmware flashing utility for Linux, but it depends on some libraries whose versions on the most recent Debian are incompatible.
I suspect that switching to Ubuntu and remaining eternally vigilant against the Shuttleworthian Fisher-Pricing of the interface will be easier than dealing with a system where attempting to do anything out of the ordinary is a journey into outdated library hell.
posted by acb at 9:13 AM on August 17, 2018
Everyone forgets about BSD, when they're talking about Debian. Probably because Debian GNU/kFreeBSD appears to have been abandoned. You can still run Debian GNU/HURD though, if you're looking for something experimental and unfinished.
posted by sfenders at 9:18 AM on August 17, 2018
posted by sfenders at 9:18 AM on August 17, 2018
There is a firmware flashing utility for Linux, but it depends on some libraries whose versions on the most recent Debian are incompatible.
What utility and what libraries, as a matter of interest?
posted by flabdablet at 9:28 AM on August 17, 2018
What utility and what libraries, as a matter of interest?
posted by flabdablet at 9:28 AM on August 17, 2018
For me, fink vs homebrew and such, and the great things about Debian's package management vs others only highlight that it isn't so much the technical side as the hard working and careful people, and not the code so much that make it good.
25 years of a thoroughly good job.
posted by edd at 9:34 AM on August 17, 2018 [12 favorites]
25 years of a thoroughly good job.
posted by edd at 9:34 AM on August 17, 2018 [12 favorites]
I use APT on a dozen systems. I admit it makes life far easier. But, jeeze, the details are an ugly beast.
My love/hate relationship with Debian mostly consists of shouting, "hooray, you made that work without any effort on my part," followed almost immediately by shouting "why the hell would anyone do it that way, what is wrong with you people!" But, I've got to hand it to the maintainers. Their stuff almost always works. That's a lot better than my average, and suggests they're right and I'm wrong.
I'm still sad that I had to give up slackware. It was thoughtfully designed and beautiful. And so incredibly out of date, as of twelve years ago, that nothing I cared about would actually work without the equivalent of a full-time software maintenance job just tweeking things.
So, congrats, and thanks!
Now, if we could just convince Debian to use numerical release names in all their documentation, instead of forcing casual users to look up random cartoon characters to figure out when specific documentation was written and whether it's likely to be relevant. . . everything would be perfect.
posted by eotvos at 9:40 AM on August 17, 2018 [7 favorites]
My love/hate relationship with Debian mostly consists of shouting, "hooray, you made that work without any effort on my part," followed almost immediately by shouting "why the hell would anyone do it that way, what is wrong with you people!" But, I've got to hand it to the maintainers. Their stuff almost always works. That's a lot better than my average, and suggests they're right and I'm wrong.
I'm still sad that I had to give up slackware. It was thoughtfully designed and beautiful. And so incredibly out of date, as of twelve years ago, that nothing I cared about would actually work without the equivalent of a full-time software maintenance job just tweeking things.
So, congrats, and thanks!
Now, if we could just convince Debian to use numerical release names in all their documentation, instead of forcing casual users to look up random cartoon characters to figure out when specific documentation was written and whether it's likely to be relevant. . . everything would be perfect.
posted by eotvos at 9:40 AM on August 17, 2018 [7 favorites]
Actually I'd say it's not so much dpkg with apt that are the saving graces of Debian so much as the Debian policy guidelines -- they are basically really well suited to the distro and its ideals and are models of clarity.
One guy asked me in the mid-2000s why I liked it so much with all the noise surrounding licensing and so on, why put up with that?
Well, they sweated that stuff... So I didn't have to. Why wouldn't I do that?
posted by northtwilight at 10:04 AM on August 17, 2018 [7 favorites]
One guy asked me in the mid-2000s why I liked it so much with all the noise surrounding licensing and so on, why put up with that?
Well, they sweated that stuff... So I didn't have to. Why wouldn't I do that?
posted by northtwilight at 10:04 AM on August 17, 2018 [7 favorites]
> I use APT on a dozen systems. I admit it makes life far easier. But, jeeze, the details are an ugly beast.Can't remember the details, but I moved away from RPM-based distros when RPM served me a recursive dependency.
posted by farlukar at 10:45 AM on August 17, 2018 [3 favorites]
I'd had Yggdrasil installed on my PC for months before these Jonnny-come-latelys showed up
posted by It's Never Lurgi at 10:59 AM on August 17, 2018 [2 favorites]
posted by It's Never Lurgi at 10:59 AM on August 17, 2018 [2 favorites]
For Ian: .
The great thing about Debian is how much it brings to a computer with little effort to the hardware manufacturer. Every single-board computer I have used run Debian. The Raspberry Pi would be nothing without Debian: it gives them a stable OS base that allows the Foundation to work on its educational goals without having to focus on OS development.
If there is something I would like to see change about Debian, it would be in managing developers. Many developers seem stuck in their roles but tired of maintenance. There should be an easy way for a developer to pass on the baton to someone else when the work starts to feel like a chore. Some packages have nominal maintainers, but they gave up years ago: Debian is still running a roughly 2000-vintage netpbm package, and its keyboard management is from 1999, so there are times you have a keyboard attached that Debian will not recognize to let you customize. There are also sometimes unexpected holes in maintenance: a recent change in the Debian binary executable format meant that GUI users like myself could not run binaries. Users do not really count for much in the Debian world, and this is a shame.
Debian also gives developers the freedom to go off and do something ill-advised, like develop Devuan, which is Debian minus systemd. Good luck with all those layers of sticky tape, guys!
posted by scruss at 11:05 AM on August 17, 2018 [3 favorites]
The great thing about Debian is how much it brings to a computer with little effort to the hardware manufacturer. Every single-board computer I have used run Debian. The Raspberry Pi would be nothing without Debian: it gives them a stable OS base that allows the Foundation to work on its educational goals without having to focus on OS development.
If there is something I would like to see change about Debian, it would be in managing developers. Many developers seem stuck in their roles but tired of maintenance. There should be an easy way for a developer to pass on the baton to someone else when the work starts to feel like a chore. Some packages have nominal maintainers, but they gave up years ago: Debian is still running a roughly 2000-vintage netpbm package, and its keyboard management is from 1999, so there are times you have a keyboard attached that Debian will not recognize to let you customize. There are also sometimes unexpected holes in maintenance: a recent change in the Debian binary executable format meant that GUI users like myself could not run binaries. Users do not really count for much in the Debian world, and this is a shame.
Debian also gives developers the freedom to go off and do something ill-advised, like develop Devuan, which is Debian minus systemd. Good luck with all those layers of sticky tape, guys!
posted by scruss at 11:05 AM on August 17, 2018 [3 favorites]
From the family tree wiki link above - "Almost six hundred Linux distributions exist, with close to five hundred out of those in active development."
Linux for domino cascades
Linux for termite mounds
Linux for hot Jupiter exoplanet atmospheric vortices
posted by thatwhichfalls at 11:14 AM on August 17, 2018
Linux for domino cascades
Linux for termite mounds
Linux for hot Jupiter exoplanet atmospheric vortices
posted by thatwhichfalls at 11:14 AM on August 17, 2018
I have lugged a home directory from one Debian system to the next for many, many years now. It's never let me down.
posted by pharm at 12:26 PM on August 17, 2018 [8 favorites]
posted by pharm at 12:26 PM on August 17, 2018 [8 favorites]
The really cool part is that by and large it's safe to lug the boot and root filesystems from one box to the next as well, and there's a really good chance it will just start up and work. That's something that Debian has always been able to do because its kernels are built with all available drivers configured; Windows kinda sorta started being able to do this around Windows 7, and has it mostly nailed down in 10.
Both my desktop Debian boxes are running installations that started as full-disk ddrescue clones of the installations on earlier boxes; I'm up to the fourth generation on one of them and fifth on the other.
posted by flabdablet at 12:57 PM on August 17, 2018 [1 favorite]
Both my desktop Debian boxes are running installations that started as full-disk ddrescue clones of the installations on earlier boxes; I'm up to the fourth generation on one of them and fifth on the other.
posted by flabdablet at 12:57 PM on August 17, 2018 [1 favorite]
I could never get it installed correctly and gave up on it. Granted, this was in 1997 or so and version 1.13, and I now use Ubuntu on all the things that aren't Macs or Windows, so ultimately I owe some gratitude to both Ian and Debra.
posted by mrg at 2:02 PM on August 17, 2018
posted by mrg at 2:02 PM on August 17, 2018
I came to a realization last month: 90% of my software has Linux versions. And I'm not one of those web-and-Netflix people, I make my poor laptop work. Now that Steam is making a renewed effort to get its Windows games working on Linux too, if that works out it'd put me up to 99%.
posted by JHarris at 3:58 PM on August 17, 2018
posted by JHarris at 3:58 PM on August 17, 2018
The really cool part is that by and large it's safe to lug the boot and root filesystems from one box to the next as well, and there's a really good chance it will just start up and work.
My current home server is the result of ripping the drives out of my old Intel based server that cooked its MB and dropping them in an AMD based HP microserver. And having the thing boot and just work. I kind of blinked at it a few times and said to myself, I'm pretty sure that's illegal. It's running Debian stable.
posted by deadwax at 6:21 PM on August 17, 2018 [4 favorites]
My current home server is the result of ripping the drives out of my old Intel based server that cooked its MB and dropping them in an AMD based HP microserver. And having the thing boot and just work. I kind of blinked at it a few times and said to myself, I'm pretty sure that's illegal. It's running Debian stable.
posted by deadwax at 6:21 PM on August 17, 2018 [4 favorites]
I loved switching distros and tooling around in different flavors of Ubuntu, Arch, and Antergos until I became an engineer, when software that just works became dear to my heart. Now I use Chromebooks and Debian because I *don't* want to debug anything. It's easy to pass on Debian because it's "so stale" but when you switch to it and things just work and nothing changes, it's like you finally become in on the joke.
posted by hexaflexagon at 8:59 PM on August 17, 2018 [2 favorites]
posted by hexaflexagon at 8:59 PM on August 17, 2018 [2 favorites]
I also switched over to Debian back when Ubuntu decided Unity was a step forward and Gnome was busy removing features. Ever since then I've been on XFCE, which has a lot in common with Debian. Glacial pace of change, doesn't care too much about the shiny shiny new things, tends to just work and get out of your damn way.
If only it were this way with every OS.
posted by Juso No Thankyou at 9:27 PM on August 17, 2018 [2 favorites]
If only it were this way with every OS.
posted by Juso No Thankyou at 9:27 PM on August 17, 2018 [2 favorites]
Happy Birthday Debian. Too bad you weren't around at first and flew under my radar for so long afterwards. You messed with my head recently, but it's probably partially my fault for using Sid. But more for hacking Sid for years while just cloning a drive into a new machine until past tweaks were too entangled to fix. I'm on stable at the moment, but probably only until I get around to reading up on LVM snapshots so I can go back to Sid with a safety net. (plus my config now is trimmed down to the essential and the historical cruft is gone).
I went Apple II over IBM PC, Amiga 1000 over Mac Classic, then it was SunOS on VT100's and Sun3/[56]0's. Then Slackware because it was all there was if you discount Yggdrasil. Then RedHat at some point and Mandrake because it worked better on the laptop. Then Gentoo (because I had a distcc cluster at my disposal). More RedHat/CentOS because work and appliances and clusters. Then Ubuntu in a mad panic because I was getting ready to take a trip and I needed a working laptop tonight!
Then I did Ubuntu for a while until they went all off the rails and broke the one thing I had made for the desktop along with all of their UI nonsense. Then It's been Debian, mostly Sid.
I like them, but they still piss me off sometimes. LiveCD boots, looks decent, do a net install, add task-desktop-lxde, expect good.... WTF? why didn't you pick up HiDPI screen and everything is fucking tiny as fuck. Doesn't matter It's a Unix system; I know this. I just sorta wish I didn't have to do that myself (modulo actually using Gnome/KDE/etc).
So Happy Birthday Debian! We have issues, but it's mostly not a big deal. :)
posted by zengargoyle at 11:47 PM on August 17, 2018
I went Apple II over IBM PC, Amiga 1000 over Mac Classic, then it was SunOS on VT100's and Sun3/[56]0's. Then Slackware because it was all there was if you discount Yggdrasil. Then RedHat at some point and Mandrake because it worked better on the laptop. Then Gentoo (because I had a distcc cluster at my disposal). More RedHat/CentOS because work and appliances and clusters. Then Ubuntu in a mad panic because I was getting ready to take a trip and I needed a working laptop tonight!
Then I did Ubuntu for a while until they went all off the rails and broke the one thing I had made for the desktop along with all of their UI nonsense. Then It's been Debian, mostly Sid.
I like them, but they still piss me off sometimes. LiveCD boots, looks decent, do a net install, add task-desktop-lxde, expect good.... WTF? why didn't you pick up HiDPI screen and everything is fucking tiny as fuck. Doesn't matter It's a Unix system; I know this. I just sorta wish I didn't have to do that myself (modulo actually using Gnome/KDE/etc).
So Happy Birthday Debian! We have issues, but it's mostly not a big deal. :)
posted by zengargoyle at 11:47 PM on August 17, 2018
Ever since then I've been on XFCE, which has a lot in common with Debian. Glacial pace of change, doesn't care too much about the shiny shiny new things, tends to just work and get out of your damn way.
Both my desktop boxes run Xfce as well. I switched to it after a careless
I'd become comfortable enough with GNOME 2, after using it on previous boxes running Red Hat 9 and Ubuntu, that I hadn't really bothered exploring other desktop environments much. But GNOME 3? I can't get behind that.
Xfce has been just fine. I like its panel better than the GNOME 2 one. I like its stability. I like lots of things about it. But the GNOME people have burned me once, and I don't want to give them the chance to do it again, and Xfce is built on top of GTK+, and GTK+ is part of GNOME, and GNOME is now built on GTK+ 3 which suffers badly from second-system syndrome compared to GTK+ 2 as well as being functionally incompatible with it.
Xfce is in the process of being shifted over piecewise from GTK+ 2 to 3. This distresses me because GTK+ 3 is infected by the same visual ugliness brain worms that gave rise to everything wrong with GNOME 3. Which you'd think would be an issue that could be dealt with by theming, but the simple fact is that the GTK+ 3 theming interfaces are so fucking unstable that the only themes that actually remain available for any length of time are the ones from the GNOME team itself, which is apparently Brain Worms Central and has no taste whatsoever.
So I'm in the process of grieving the decline and fall of Xfce, and have started playing with LXQt on new installations like the one on my laptop. So far the experience has been moderately positive, but the fundamental point is that it's been increasingly positive as LXQt has been maturing. And since the Qt team apparently does have a certain amount of taste, even the switch from Qt4 to Qt5 was nowhere near as bad as it could have been. I'm quite looking forward to a future that has no GTK left in it.
posted by flabdablet at 12:21 AM on August 18, 2018 [2 favorites]
Both my desktop boxes run Xfce as well. I switched to it after a careless
aptitude full-upgrade had forcibly switched me from GNOME 2 to GNOME 3, my eye having been off the ball long enough not to notice that GNOME 3 was even a thing.I'd become comfortable enough with GNOME 2, after using it on previous boxes running Red Hat 9 and Ubuntu, that I hadn't really bothered exploring other desktop environments much. But GNOME 3? I can't get behind that.
Xfce has been just fine. I like its panel better than the GNOME 2 one. I like its stability. I like lots of things about it. But the GNOME people have burned me once, and I don't want to give them the chance to do it again, and Xfce is built on top of GTK+, and GTK+ is part of GNOME, and GNOME is now built on GTK+ 3 which suffers badly from second-system syndrome compared to GTK+ 2 as well as being functionally incompatible with it.
Xfce is in the process of being shifted over piecewise from GTK+ 2 to 3. This distresses me because GTK+ 3 is infected by the same visual ugliness brain worms that gave rise to everything wrong with GNOME 3. Which you'd think would be an issue that could be dealt with by theming, but the simple fact is that the GTK+ 3 theming interfaces are so fucking unstable that the only themes that actually remain available for any length of time are the ones from the GNOME team itself, which is apparently Brain Worms Central and has no taste whatsoever.
So I'm in the process of grieving the decline and fall of Xfce, and have started playing with LXQt on new installations like the one on my laptop. So far the experience has been moderately positive, but the fundamental point is that it's been increasingly positive as LXQt has been maturing. And since the Qt team apparently does have a certain amount of taste, even the switch from Qt4 to Qt5 was nowhere near as bad as it could have been. I'm quite looking forward to a future that has no GTK left in it.
posted by flabdablet at 12:21 AM on August 18, 2018 [2 favorites]
I started using Ubuntu with version Bo which was 1997
Is this one one of those elaborate niche trolls?
posted by pwnguin at 12:58 AM on August 18, 2018
Is this one one of those elaborate niche trolls?
posted by pwnguin at 12:58 AM on August 18, 2018
All this talk of XFCE, MATE, KDE, LXDE, GNOM-E, and the DE in general, makes me glad I still just use E. That it's gone from extravagent graphical excess to lightweight and simple, largely by standing still for much of its 22 years, is a source of philosophical comfort in these troubled times.
posted by sfenders at 4:11 AM on August 18, 2018 [3 favorites]
posted by sfenders at 4:11 AM on August 18, 2018 [3 favorites]
I started using Ubuntu with version Bo which was 1997
Is this one one of those elaborate niche trolls?
Oops, meant Debian.
posted by octothorpe at 4:12 AM on August 18, 2018
Is this one one of those elaborate niche trolls?
Oops, meant Debian.
posted by octothorpe at 4:12 AM on August 18, 2018
Devuan is the UKIP of Linux distros: defined only by hating one thing and supported by moaning pensioners.
Spoken like a systemd True Believer :-)
But even a cursory reading of the Devuan rationale page reveals that the "moaning pensioner" dig is not actually a reasonable position.
If Devuan's main concern were the endless perpetuation of the weird and creaky System V init architecture then sure, the dig would have a point; but it isn't. There are sound technical reasons for disliking systemd and wishing to prevent it taking over the whole Linux world, especially given the existence of alternatives that provide the same kinds of services as systemd does, but without using APIs that require the adoption of an entire single-vendor ecosystem.
For me, systemd is in the class of Things I Will Hold My Nose And Put Up With, not Things I'm Glad Exist.
posted by flabdablet at 5:11 AM on August 18, 2018 [4 favorites]
Spoken like a systemd True Believer :-)
But even a cursory reading of the Devuan rationale page reveals that the "moaning pensioner" dig is not actually a reasonable position.
If Devuan's main concern were the endless perpetuation of the weird and creaky System V init architecture then sure, the dig would have a point; but it isn't. There are sound technical reasons for disliking systemd and wishing to prevent it taking over the whole Linux world, especially given the existence of alternatives that provide the same kinds of services as systemd does, but without using APIs that require the adoption of an entire single-vendor ecosystem.
For me, systemd is in the class of Things I Will Hold My Nose And Put Up With, not Things I'm Glad Exist.
posted by flabdablet at 5:11 AM on August 18, 2018 [4 favorites]
I'd had Yggdrasil installed on my PC for months before these Jonnny-come-latelys showed up
I’m pretty sure that I’ve still got a Yggdrasil CD kicking around somewhere, but I don’t think I ever installed it.
I’ve been using Linux since before it had distributions. The first one I used must have been MCC Interim, and maybe SLS but in those days I was probably just compiling most things for myself. I think that Debian was the first real significant distribution that I embraced, and I’m still using Ubuntu on servers today.
I’m not a Linux-on-the-desktop person because I know that tweaking things endlessly would consume my life.
posted by jimw at 10:49 PM on August 18, 2018
I’m pretty sure that I’ve still got a Yggdrasil CD kicking around somewhere, but I don’t think I ever installed it.
I’ve been using Linux since before it had distributions. The first one I used must have been MCC Interim, and maybe SLS but in those days I was probably just compiling most things for myself. I think that Debian was the first real significant distribution that I embraced, and I’m still using Ubuntu on servers today.
I’m not a Linux-on-the-desktop person because I know that tweaking things endlessly would consume my life.
posted by jimw at 10:49 PM on August 18, 2018
I'm on the BSD side. The rise of systemd has been a weird thing to watch. Being so Linux specific is abstractly a bad decision but also I'm glad they did it.
posted by vibratory manner of working at 11:16 PM on August 18, 2018 [1 favorite]
posted by vibratory manner of working at 11:16 PM on August 18, 2018 [1 favorite]
Everyone forgets BSD...
Oh, I quite fondly recall spending lunchtime reading Lynne Jolitz and William Jolitz documenting the port in Dr. Dobb's Journal
posted by mikelieman at 4:08 AM on August 19, 2018
Oh, I quite fondly recall spending lunchtime reading Lynne Jolitz and William Jolitz documenting the port in Dr. Dobb's Journal
posted by mikelieman at 4:08 AM on August 19, 2018
I remember in 2003 or so having my laptop at a university LUG meeting (remember LUGs?) when one of the other folks asked me if I had used foo, because it was great (not that I remember what it was now). I thought it sounded interesting and said I'd check to see if it was already on my machine or not. He leaned over my shoulder and watched me type
"Debian," I said.
As I think about it, he might have been telling me about netcat, in which case we both improved each others' lives a lot that day.
posted by fantabulous timewaster at 8:01 PM on August 19, 2018 [6 favorites]
"Holy crap," said my friend, "that's how you install things? I want this!"19:37 $ foo bash: foo: command not found 19:37 $ sudo apt-get install foo Computing dependencies ... Downloading three little piddly things you need ... Installing foo ... 19:38 $ foo [Interesting things happened]
"Debian," I said.
As I think about it, he might have been telling me about netcat, in which case we both improved each others' lives a lot that day.
posted by fantabulous timewaster at 8:01 PM on August 19, 2018 [6 favorites]
Hey, our LUG - GTALUG - Greater Toronto Area Linux User Group - still exists and meets regularly. We might be a little bit middle-aged mansplainy, but we've got a CoC and we use it.
→ sound technical reasons for disliking systemd
Didn't really find many sound ones there. The whole "grar every unix service must do less" is the OS equivalent of originalism: as if the author has a direct line to mid-1970s Ken and Dennis's brains and has their authority to shape the system of the future. Truth is, today's idea of less would be impossibly complex compared to how things were for Bell Labs of the 70's. You can only pretend to solve complex problems with simple solutions.
posted by scruss at 10:13 AM on August 21, 2018
→ sound technical reasons for disliking systemd
Didn't really find many sound ones there. The whole "grar every unix service must do less" is the OS equivalent of originalism: as if the author has a direct line to mid-1970s Ken and Dennis's brains and has their authority to shape the system of the future. Truth is, today's idea of less would be impossibly complex compared to how things were for Bell Labs of the 70's. You can only pretend to solve complex problems with simple solutions.
posted by scruss at 10:13 AM on August 21, 2018
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It's been many years since I've run a straight Debian system, these days I run Ubuntu. But you don't get to Ubuntu without Debian.
posted by Nelson at 8:03 AM on August 17, 2018 [14 favorites]