Subj : Re: For you SBBS Sysops o
To : Accession
From : Gamgee
Date : Sun Jun 30 2024 08:40 am
-=> Accession wrote to Gamgee <=-
G> Yes, I would agree with all of that. Graphics drivers almost certainly
G> the cause of such problems, and many others.
Ac> Proprietary graphics drivers, to be specific. This was before there
Ac> were any open source drivers out there. When open source drivers were
Ac> introduced, there were problems at first, but then most of the graphic
Ac> related problems went away.
No doubt. I am a combat-wounded veteran of the Nvidia Wars. ;-)
G> I guess it's mostly the (assumed) philosophy that "let us manage all
G> your startup processes the way we think is best, and you don't worry
G> about the details". I know that isn't quite accurate, because you can
G> of course tweak systemd like most anything else, but that's as close as
G> I can come to a reason. I like to know exactly what's happening and
G> have as much control over that as I can. Another claim is that systemd
G> does things "in parallel all at once" and thereby reduces boot time. I
G> don't care one little bit about that, as I don't reboot often and don't
G> care if it takes 12 seconds, or 14 seconds.
Ac> Yeah, I don't care about losing a couple seconds on boot time,
Ac> whatsoever. I make just about every one of my systemd startup scripts
Ac> myself, so in a sense, I'm pushing the 'what to do', and systemd takes
Ac> care of the "how to do it".
That's cool, and I could live with that. Perhaps some of my resistance
is the lack of time/motivation to learn enough about it to be able to do
that. I'm only a few years from retiring, so maybe I'll get there then.
Ac> I guess I'm all for moving forward as long as it doesn't take away from
Ac> the original goals.
Hard to argue with that - although I've always believed the Unix
philosophy was (paraphrasing) "Each tool should do ONE job, and do it
well." I feel like systemd wants to "Do all jobs, and sort of do them
well enough". Haha! Not completely accurate but you get the idea.
G> Yes, I've toyed with Manjaro a few times and liked it OK. I suppose
G> those are the two most popular desktops, with Gnome only being there
G> because of Ubuntu, IMHO. I used to love Gnome but it became so
G> dumbed-down looking (I think it looks like a Fisher-Price toy) that I
G> moved (years ago) to XFCE and love it. Kind of Gnome-ish but light and
G> fast, and very configurable.
Ac> Gnome is definitely different from how it used to be. Once they began
Ac> catering to tablets and touchscreens, I lost interest. However,
Ac> nowadays, they definitely still do that, but have relaxed the focus
Ac> they used to have on that a bit to continue to do actual desktop
Ac> environment kind of stuff.
Ac> I didn't mind it, and to be honest, I may have liked it a little bit
Ac> better (aesthetically) than whatever direction they went with KDE. The
Ac> bouncing icon next to the mouse pointer was cool 10 years ago, not now.
Ac> The default window borders aren't all that exciting. However, programs
Ac> like Konsole I like better than Gnome Terminal, Konversation for IRC,
Ac> KTorrent, K3b, Kate, and a couple others are better than the Gnome
Ac> variants, if Gnome even has a variant of some of those.
I've never been able to stand using KDE. Not sure exactly why but I
just don't like it. Maybe it reminds me of Windows a little. I have
always used and loved K3b for burning discs though, but that's the only
app I like.
G> Next time you're bored, spin up a VM with MX Linux (xfce desktop) and
G> see what you think. It's about the only one I like any more.
Ac> Thanks for the heads up, I've downloaded the XFCE as well as the
Ac> Fluxbox (brings back memories) variants, and will give them a shot in
Ac> the morning and get back to you.
Ac> The only issue I see is that it's Debian based. The first thing from
Ac> Debian that turns me off is that it's usually so far behind the times
Ac> (I get it, their main focus is stability, but damn). For example, MX
Ac> XFCE 64bit uses a 6.6 kernel, and here on Archlinux I'm using 6.9.7
Ac> currently, and it's rock solid stable. *shrug*
Ahhhh, yes it is Debian-based, but is NOT the same as Debian-stable.
Forgot to mention - there is a version of MX called "AHS" (for advanced
hardware) and that's what I'm using. After installation and a routine
update, 'uname -a' reports this:
Linux rivendell 6.9.6-1-liquorix-amd64 #1 ZEN SMP PREEMPT liquorix
6.9-5~mx23ahs (2024-06-25) x86_64 GNU/Linux
So... not bad. That's probably the version you want, assuming fairly
recent hardware (and I've run that version just fine on 7-8 year old
hardware).
G> I use Linux as my daily driver, on mulitiple desktop/laptops, so it's
G> important to me. Servers/BBS run on Slackware, and even my daily laptop
G> has been Slackware for many years. Transitioning to a new laptop and
G> decided to go with MX Linux, as it's just less work. The only two
G> Windows computers in the house are my work laptop and my wife's desktop.
G> :-)
Ac> Understood completely. My main PC here is Windows, just because I have
Ac> a Steam library that would cripple most people here. I still like to
Ac> play AAA games, and Linux just hasn't convinced them to port their
Ac> stuff just yet.
Nice, and no argument here about Linux gaming. It's come a long way but
not yet (and likely never) will it catch all the way up.
Ac> Anything BBS/FTN/server related though, goes straight to my server
Ac> machine, running nothing but Linux. I may have a 'tinkering' FreeBSD VM
Ac> just to mess around, but it will most likely never go further than
Ac> that.
Same... I've always felt like I "should" learn/use a 'BSD, and have
gotten various flavors running, but eventually said "OK, now what?".
"What does this do that I can't already do on Linux?". "Why put any
more effort into this?". And that's the end of it.
R/
Dan
... Users come in two types: Those who have lost data, and those who will.
--- MultiMail/Linux v0.52
� Synchronet � Palantir BBS * palantirbbs.ddns.net * Pensacola, FL
