Seriously considering making the switch to Linux as my desktop

[Red Squirrel]

It's something I've been wanting to do for a while, and over time I've been "prepping" myself by trying to use software that is available in Linux or has a Linux equivalent. My biggest hold back was Ultima Online as I ran a shard so I was constantly in that game to test stuff, and it is sorta .net based, but I've since shut down my server to persue other projects. Now the only thing I may need windows for is gaming, and I will either see how it goes in a VM, or just dual boot.

I do mostly coding, occasional photo/graphics editing and occasional video editing. I will have to try out the new Gimp as I hear it has window mode now which will make things nice. I do lot of stuff with VMs too, and there's Virtualbox for that. I have two Nvidia graphic cards which are known to have good Linux support. The more I think about it, I think I'm pretty much ready to take the plunge. The hardest thing will be gaming and video editing but I can VM or dual boot for games, and for video editing, it's not like I do it that often and I may be able to just use a VM for that if I don't find decent Linux software for editing.

I'm thinking of going with Ubuntu, and sticking with the LTS editions. I hate having to upgrade my OS often (I only recently got off XP). I am not impressed with Gnome 3 / Unity though, has this improved now, or did it get scrapped, or is there an easy way to switch to normal Gnome?

Or is there another Distro worth looking into? My main requirements are long term support (ex: not something where they release a new one every month and the other one becomes obsolete) and easy enough to find packages for so I can do yum/apt and find stuff and not have to always go by source and hunt after dependencies. I'm thinking Ubuntu because it fits both those requirements, but I'm open to other suggestions.

 

[lxskllr]

Look at Xubuntu, Kubuntu, and Lubuntu. Also check out Mint with the MATE(Gnome2 fork), and Cinnamon(tweaked Gnome3) desktops. You could also run Debian stable. That's about a year away from an upgrade, but after that, you should be good to go for a couple of years.

I use Debian with Xfce. My *buntu choice would be Xubuntu. You should try them all though, and see what you like.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Good point, why just stick to one, I'll try em all in a VM and set them up like I would do my work, and actually work from it and see how it goes, then I can probably pick that way. Thanks for the choice ideas though, I'll give those a try. I'm guessing Xubuntu and the others are forks of Ubuntu so all the same packages available on Ubuntu should work right?

 

[lxskllr]

I'm guessing Xubuntu and the others are forks of Ubuntu so all the same packages available on Ubuntu should work right?

They're community spins. You don't get Canonical support with them, but the standards are higher than me just slapping something together. I believe they require certain standards to be met to use the Ubuntu name, and graphical style. The one exception is Kubuntu. 12.04(current) is the last release to have official Canonical support. It'll continue on as a community spin, but it wasn't popular enough to continue with its "official" status.

To answer your question, all the *buntus use the same repos. Mint also uses the Ubuntu repos, and adds a little bit of their own stuff.

 

[Madmanden81]

I'm really impressed with Mint 13. Looks great and easy to install.

 

[VinDSL]

I'm thinking of going with Ubuntu [...]

I am not impressed with Gnome 3 / Unity though, has this improved now, or did it get scrapped, or is there an easy way to switch to normal Gnome?

You will NOT be stuck with Unity/Gnome3, if you go the Ubu route.

You can install whatever desktop environment & window manager you wish. Seriously!

I'm booted into Ubu 12.10 (dev release), Linux 3.5, Xorg 1.12, nVidia 302.17, blah, blah, blah.

But, I running the LXDE/Openbox DE/WM on top of UbuQQ. No big deal.

Here's how it looks (today)...

Looks nothing like Unity/Gnome3. It's more like "normal gnome", yes?

Yet, Unity & Gnome-shell is a click away, if I wish...

Hold your nose, and dive on in. The water is fine!

 

[lxskllr]

You will NOT be stuck with Unity/Gnome3, if you go the Ubu route.

You can install whatever desktop environment & window manager you wish. Seriously!

I had gotten a paragraph in getting ready to suggest installing Lubuntu, and then adding the other DEs manually, and then deleted it. I figure for trying out in a vm, using each one by itself is better for getting the feel of what each spin is about. On a practical level, it keeps you from bringing in a ton of dependencies you may not want to keep. Once they're installed, they do a good job of hiding, and are hard to completely get rid of. I'm a fan of GTK, and installing KDE stuff brings in a ton of their QT dependencies. The reverse is also true for KDE users.

For my permanent setup, I like starting with the closest match, and then adding extra stuff as needed. That keeps the size down, and makes the experience a bit more unified. If I could only do something about the ugly Calibre styling...

 

[mv2devnull]

The 'yum' package manager in the Redhat-based distros now offers a "transaction history", which formally provides an "undo". That could in theory uninstall whatever was drawn in as dependency.

I have to agree though that focused test installs to VM's is a much easier route. If the installers allow automation (RH's Anaconda calls it "kickstart" file), then the common install set & customization would be same every time and just the to-be-tested package needs manual attention.

 

[VinDSL]

I had gotten a paragraph in getting ready to suggest installing Lubuntu, and then adding the other DEs manually, and then deleted it. I figure for trying out in a vm, using each one by itself is better for getting the feel of what each spin is about. On a practical level, it keeps you from bringing in a ton of dependencies you may not want to keep. Once they're installed, they do a good job of hiding, and are hard to completely get rid of. I'm a fan of GTK, and installing KDE stuff brings in a ton of their QT dependencies. The reverse is also true for KDE users.

For my permanent setup, I like starting with the closest match, and then adding extra stuff as needed. That keeps the size down, and makes the experience a bit more unified. If I could only do something about the ugly Calibre styling...

All true!

I know, what I'm doing is counter-intuitive. Ppl usually run LXDE because it's a lightweight distro, so called. I'm running it because I l-o-v-e the interface, e.g. the look 'n feel. It's just a pleasure to use! There isn't one thing that I don't like about LXDE/Openbox, per se.

Having said that, Lubuntu bugs the shit out of me! Don't mean to knock the devs - it just isn't my cup o' tea. Too MacOSX-ish, or something. Never have put a finger on it - gives me a "cold prickly", instead of a "warm fuzzy", you know?

If someone doesn't feel comfortable rolling their own, OOTB Peppermint Two OS is a great LXDE distro. That's what I'm running on my portables. Cannot imagine liking it on the desktop, though.

Personally, I'm having a blast with all the Gnome 3 cruft available in the background. I can run GiMP 2.8, Nautilus, GTK-3 themes/icons sets, et cetera, in LXDE, because all of the dependencies are met.

That's the plus-side of bloat. LoL!

 

[Paperlantern]

I went mint exclusively for several months a year and a half ago or so when I didn't have a win7 license to my name, was too broke to buy one and couldn't find any of my old OEM xp licenses anywhere and the ones I did have we're used. It was sorta necessity but it helped me get over that first hump. I will say this though, VMs often don't do the true "look n feel" as vin puts it, full justice. I installed Mint 12 a while back as a vm to try it out, see if I'd go up from 11 and didn't see the reason to. However on a whim I slapped a hard drive in the same rig I was using and installed it just so I could play with it, actually on the hardware it would be on, and it was night and day from a vm. I strongly suggest at LEAST running it on a live cd if not doing a full install on a spare HDD and test drive it for a few days to REALLY see if it's what you want. Regardless of which flavor you choose.

 

[weovpac]

You could also run Debian stable. That's about a year away from an upgrade, but after that, you should be good to go for a couple of years.

+1

I would go with Debian stable, with backports when needed. Updating Debian to new stable should not require a fresh install, as long as you read and follow the release notes.

 

[Red Squirrel]

I'm running Xubuntu now, so far so good. I tried Kubuntu as well and it too was pretty good. What sucks is the live CD is terrible to use as the screen flickers all the time. Apparantly some issue with nvivida. When I install it it works ok though. Now I just need to decide what to settle with. I should probably try lubuntu as well. Instead of VM I'm actually installing that way I can get a feel for hardware compatibility, dual screen behavior and stuff like that which I would not see in a VM.

 

[ThatsABigOne]

I tried Xubuntu and Lubuntu. I fell in for Lubuntu as for some reason Xubuntu uses a lot of ram for being a lightweight distro.

 

[lxskllr]

I tried Xubuntu and Lubuntu. I fell in for Lubuntu as for some reason Xubuntu uses a lot of ram for being a lightweight distro.

Calling Xubuntu light was always incorrect. It's only marginally lightr than Gnome2.

 

[ThatsABigOne]

Calling Xubuntu light was always incorrect. It's only marginally lightr than Gnome2.

That's strange, I know. Heck even DistroWatch and Wiki say that it is a 'lightweight' distro...

 

[Nothinman]

Calling Xubuntu light was always incorrect. It's only marginally lightr than Gnome2.

It seems that virtually anything that's not Gnome or KDE gets called lightweight these days.

 

[Red Squirrel]

So I made my final decision, I went with xubuntu. Having lot of issues getting windows dual boot to work, ended up crapping it out and had to format the whole drive and zero out the MBR for ANY os to work but now I got Linux going, I'll deal with Windows later, it refuses to install again on that disk. I'll probably just buy a separate SSD to save me trouble from trying to get dual boot to work. It used to be simple, but it seems it's more complex now. I'll just do it at the hardware level using a power A/B switch or a set of relays or something. Simpler and being able to select an OS by pushing a physical button will be kind of cool.

I still have lot of stuff to configure though, but so far so good.

 

[Zunhs]

You could switch OS disk in BIOS if you want too.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Actually yeah, never even thought of that. I can just make sure both drives are set as bootable and then select with the boot menu.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Still in the early process of getting setup with stuff, but getting there.

So far I'm really impressed at how far things have come as far as Linux on the desktop.

I did not have to fight at all with ANY of my hardware. Even my printer works. The only hardware issue I'm dealing with is my keyboard and mouse, but I think given they're MS they probably don't have the best Linux support so I will probably just buy a new set and hope they work better. The keyboard buttons don't work properly and I do not get any options to change them such as assign shortcut keys. The mouse is also very finicky, but TBH it was that way in Windows too just not as bad. The scroll wheel does not have "steps" so when I scroll it's just all over the place.

I'll probably look at going Logitech.

I also love how dual monitors is actually well implimented in Linux. I Windows when you open an app it's pretty much rolling a dice as to what screen and where and what size it will end up. Sometimes it's based on when you last opened it, other times it's not, some times it's based on the last time you closed it 3 times ago, it's sporadic. In Linux it's simple, it opens on the screen where the action was initiated. This is how it should be! It's the little things sometimes that can make a difference.

I still have lot of learning to do though like figure out how desktop/start menu icons work, how stuff gets executed etc. But baby steps.

And the speed. OMG everything is so snappy. It was fairly snappy in Windows 7 too given I have a SSD, but certain things still took longer than they should, such as logging in. (about a minute for that). In Linux it's like 30 seconds from power on to being on the desktop ready to use. And that's because of this black screen at startup before it starts booting, which I need to troubleshoot. Cut out that black screen and it's like 15 seconds.

 

[Zunhs]

The black boot up screen is there by design. I would rather it showed it was doing something so people don't think it is frozen.

 

[Red Squirrel]

The black boot up screen is there by design. I would rather it showed it was doing something so people don't think it is frozen.

Oh is that what it is? Is there a way to make it show what's actually going on? The first time I saw it I thought it failed to boot so I ended up reinstalling.

 

[Zunhs]

Open terminal

sudo nano etc/default/grub

change to
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT=""
from
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash"
Exit and save {Edit: Exit and save in nano: Ctrl+x, y, <Enter>}
After that you need to run

sudo update-grub

Reboot

I think they chose to hide it to not worry people if it looks weird when hardware driver's are not found.

I was wrong earlier though. The Xubuntu boot splash is not supposed to be black and you might need to set the resolution in grub if you want to see it.

`GRUB_GFXMODE'
Set the resolution used on the `gfxterm' graphical terminal. Note
that you can only use modes which your graphics card supports via
VESA BIOS Extensions (VBE), so for example native LCD panel
resolutions may not be available. The default is `auto', which
tries to select a preferred resolution.

 

[Zunhs]

Open terminal
{Edit 2: forgot the / before etc}

sudo nano /etc/default/grub

change to
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT=""
from
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash"
Exit and save {Edit: Exit and save in nano: Ctrl+x, y, <Enter>}
After that you need to run

sudo update-grub

Reboot

I think they chose to hide it to not worry people if it looks weird when hardware driver's are not found.

I was wrong earlier though. The Xubuntu boot splash is not supposed to be black and you might need to set the resolution in grub if you want to see it.


`GRUB_GFXMODE'
Set the resolution used on the `gfxterm' graphical terminal. Note
that you can only use modes which your graphics card supports via
VESA BIOS Extensions (VBE), so for example native LCD panel
resolutions may not be available. The default is `auto', which
tries to select a preferred resolution.


`GRUB_GFXPAYLOAD_LINUX'
Set to `text' to force the Linux kernel to boot in normal text
mode, `keep' to preserve the graphics mode set using
`GRUB_GFXMODE', `WIDTHxHEIGHT'[`xDEPTH'] to set a particular
graphics mode, or a sequence of these separated by commas or
semicolons to try several modes in sequence.

Depending on your kernel, your distribution, your graphics card,
and the phase of the moon, note that using this option may cause
GNU/Linux to suffer from various display problems, particularly
during the early part of the boot sequence. If you have problems,
set this option to `text' and GRUB will tell Linux to boot in
normal text mode.


{Edit 2: added an example and the text about GRUB_GFXPAYLOAD_LINUX}

I like to see the scrolling text so I use

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT=""
GRUB_GFXMODE=auto
GRUB_GFXPAYLOAD_LINUX=text

{Edit 3: if you want you could try this too}
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="splash"
GRUB_GFXMODE=1920x1200
GRUB_GFXPAYLOAD_LINUX=keep

and change 1920x1200 to your display's resolution.

 

[Red Squirrel]

It did not work at first but I played around with that and other settings and googled some more, and I also had to enable verbose mode in /etc/default/rcS.

Interestingly, this seems to have sped up the bootup process too. Now the only issue I have is I can't stop rebooting my computer because I can't believe how fast it boots up. :biggrin: I'm going to reboot again just because...