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1 • systemd hahaha (by RoestVrijStaal on 2015-02-09 02:01:34 GMT from Europe)
Quote:
"(...) One feature being removed from systemd is read ahead, a process designed to decrease boot times by anticipating data needed during boot time. Poettering reports all systemd developers now use SSD disk drives rather than spinning disks, making it impractical to test the read ahead feature. "
When someone need an example to explain the hate against systemd, this is a good one.
1) One of the intended goals for systemd (quicker boot of the operating system) has been put on the second tier.
2) Because developers of systemd assume their machine configurations are the same as in the rest of world.
I didn't know the ivory tower where Poettering et al in reside is that tall.
1) Not everyone has or could afford an SSD (especially in emerging markets where Linux could get attempts to hold foothold).
2) Linux is often used as "second life OS", e.g. its installed to replace the Windows edition on the machine. Because that edition is EOL and the machine can't meet the minimum system requirements for the last Windows edition which still gets updates.
3) How hard could it be to build and use a test system (or better, test systems) of old spare parts?
Sidenote: Why does Distrowatch lack BBcode?
2 • Live Distro cd (by Jo Aylor on 2015-02-09 02:26:16 GMT from North America)
Hello all I used to be a Mac fan now I am moved on to Linux.
My Question is:
I need a live cd distro to run on a early amd64 and a 386
512 meg of ram to 1.5 meg of ram
there is no hard drive, needs to run from ram,
has DVD Writer and 2 USB slots,
needs print drivers for Brother printers, canon, epson, dell.
needs pdf reader,
needs vlc,
needs eithernet no wifi,
needs to read media from dvd cd usb with the live distro cd removed.
when the media cd, dvd or usb is inserted it need to show up on desktop
so newbee will find it.
I am dealing with a user that has not ever use computer and is not realing wanting to learn, but wants to watch movies, and read pdf and text files,
Maybe later type and print.
and maybe later use the internet if they ever order internet service.
Ive not found a live distro that lets you remove live cd and new media dvd or usb
shows up on desk.
I found one that lets you remove live cd and find videos on dvd but did not
let pdf files show up on that same disk with avi files on it.
3 • Crunchbang (by linuxista on 2015-02-09 02:33:23 GMT from North America)
I don't see too much of a problem for #! emigrees. The only thing to mourn is what improvements might have been to #!. It certainly was the coolest Openbox setup around, but any real OB users won't find it hard to port their config files, themes, conky restart scripts and whatnot from their #! setup to their replacement distro of choice (preferebly starting with one of the lighter desktops). An openbox desktop is easy enough to install in any distro. You could even stay with Debian, though I remember having some problems with the #! gtk2 themes when I tried to upgrade to both testing and unstable. Not a huge obstacle though, and probably not exclusive to Debian. There are plenty of other themes that would get you fairly close.
4 • @2 live distro (by linuxista on 2015-02-09 02:47:59 GMT from North America)
If the computer is new enough that the bios supports booting from a USB, why don't you burn the iso to usb with permanence. The advantages are 1) you can install whatever apps you want and they will stay there 2) you can run in ram or from the usb itself without occupying the optical drive, 3) you could pretty much install the distro you want as long as it had a fairly light desktop. Probably lxde would be the simplest and lightest for a newbie.
Distros that make it easy to load into ram, write to a USB with permanence, and are light on resources, off the top of my head, are Puppy Linux and Knoppix. You might want to look for the 700MB version of Knoppix instead of the 4.4 GB iso kitchen sink, multiple desktop version. A newbie might be overwhelmed by the hundreds of apps in the menu.
You could even install Lubuntu with permanence using whatever the Ubuntu usb writing app is. (somebody help me out.)
If the USB doesn't work, Puppy and Knoppix both allow you to boot into ram from a CD and they're light and should do everything you need.
5 • #! and Linux as a Culture (by BKL on 2015-02-09 02:58:12 GMT from North America)
I watched a video the other day where the speaker talks about why Linux "Sucks". Most of his position is based on qualms with Ubuntu/Canonical and their direction, but his REASON for it I think mirrors Philip's reasons for stopping his awesome project: that Canonical is "bad" because it uses its money and influence to fork major facets of the Linux software community, with the creation of Unity, Wayland, etc. while also relying on marketing tactics like including Amazon search results in your desktop search by default. His point was that all of that money, time, and energy could have been spent just making debian more accessible or improving the support and quality of the parent distribution. I found a similar issue with Manjaro recently (as well as Netrunner, to a lesser extent), that trying to be "like" Arch but focusing on supporting a very specific installation and user setup experience (Desktop), which could have just been included in the Community Contributions page of the Arch forums, rather than creating a new project. And maybe just put the effort into making sure the package tree for Arch is better.
Having said, I will miss the Crunchbang Project's take on a minimal, complete, OOTB Debian experience, and I have found some of the default configurations are still found in theme managers for other desktop environments. So his impact will be felt, but I understand his decision.
6 • Crunchbang Linux -> antiX Linux (by Jason Hsu on 2015-02-09 03:09:04 GMT from North America)
Crunchbang Linux won me over even though I never liked the default interface (no UI). Fortunately, adding LXDE makes it look and feel similar to Puppy Linux, antiX Linux, and Linux Mint. The under-the-hood aspects of Crunchbang Linux won me over. DVDs work out-of-the-box, the Debian Stable base is low maintenance, and Crunchbang Linux is so quick and lightweight that it works well on 10-year-old PCs with no resale value.
I'll be switching from Crunchbang Linux to antiX Linux, which has made substantial improvements recently. DVDs now work out-of-the-box, it has switched to a low-maintenance Debian Stable base, and it is still a quick and lightweight distro that works well on 10-year-old PCs with no resale value. antiX Linux also has a few advantages over Crunchbang. antiX Linux STILL fits onto a CD, includes pre-installed LibreOffice, and has a default desktop (now Xfce) that looks and feels a lot like Puppy Linux and Linux Mint.
I see Linux Mint Debian Edition with MATE (lighter than Cinnamon) as an alternative to Crunchbang Linux. Because it bypasses the heavy Ubuntu overhead, it's much lighter and faster than Ubuntu-based Mint. LMDE is slightly heavier than antiX and Crunchbang, but you'd have to use an old computer (at least 10 years old) to notice the difference. Just as Crunchbang and antiX switched to a Debian Stable base, LMDE is in the process of doing so right now. If LMDE can provide all of the merits of Ubuntu-based Mint in a lighter, faster, and low-maintenance package, it could one day take over as the "main" edition of Linux Mint.
I understand that many users of Crunchbang Linux don't like having a DE and thus wouldn't like antiX Linux or Linux Mint. Given the substantial following Crunchbang Linux has, I see a good chance that somebody will start a new distro similar to Crunchbang. (It would be analogous to MATE as the replacement for GNOME 2.)
7 • Guix System Distribution & GNOME (by lateForDinner on 2015-02-09 03:23:49 GMT from North America)
I've been reading up on Guix packaging & I think we should help/encourage the GNOME project embrace this new package manager (tho I doubt I will be much help as I am new to this & the time factor). & as the Guix System Distribution uses dmd hashing out the systemd dependency should be interesting.
8 • Crunchbang (by jaws222 on 2015-02-09 03:49:06 GMT from North America)
Crunchbang has been my favorite distro for a while, but like SolusOS and SalineOS that also went away I have and will once again move on. SalentOS is a pretty reliable Openbox alternative as is Manjaro's Openbox version but if I stick to a Debian-based I think Point Linux with Mate will be the next move for me. SolydXK is also pretty good. The thing with Linux is you never really run out of alternatives. Crunchbang was one of a kind though and will be missed.
9 • systemd - is there a list of distros that do NOT use systemd have no such plans? (by Hal King on 2015-02-09 03:52:24 GMT from North America)
Seems I have an old computer (10+ year old Compac) that chokes systemd. I have been recently testing new distros and all (except Slackware) freeze up during install while 'configuring hardware' clock stops and everthing goes dead. I went ahead and manuaally setup the boot and tried it, noticed the halt occurred during startup of SystemD Login Management Service. Checked the others that ere causing proplems -- all were systemd.
Now I was partuculay selecting distros for old computers and 'legacy' systems -- why are they using systemd???
Does DistroWatch have a listing of Linux distros that do NOT use systemd? It's a bit painfull to sort thought each one.
10 • #! landfall (by Milo on 2015-02-09 03:58:59 GMT from Europe)
http://crunchbang.com/forums/viewtopic.php?id=30087 lists a few distros similar to, if not inspired by, CrunchBang.
http://crunchbang.org/forums/viewtopic.php?id=28202 lists distros created by current and former CrunchBang community members, with some overlap of the previous list.
There are likely similar threads.
corenominal said he would leave the CrunchBang forums up, so I'm sure people will continue discussing planned migrations there. Perhaps someone will even fork CrunchBang.
11 • Reply to 9 systemd (by Jean Guy on 2015-02-09 04:38:29 GMT from North America)
How about this:
http://without-systemd.org/wiki/index.php/Main_Page#GNU.2FLinux_distributions
12 • #! Crunchbang (by Leonard Ashley on 2015-02-09 05:06:47 GMT from North America)
Very saddened about Crunchbang, however do respect Mr. Newburough's thoughts and decision. However, it is not difficult to apply openbox to just about any distro and have a fully customized openbox along with an editable menu. I would recommend using Debian Testing for the base distro with LXDE.
13 • Kudo's to/for Netrunner (by randymcd on 2015-02-09 05:28:31 GMT from North America)
I switched to Netrunner after reading about it on DistroWatch. For the past three months I've installed 20 to 25 different distributions. And Netrunner is the first to work correctly on the first installation. It's neat, clean and everything actually makes sense. Finally found a home (away from that monster soft !) Thankyou Netrunner!
One question - why is so much extra crap installed with most desktops (especially KDE)? Under windows we had a program called decrapifier - it seems like Lynux is going to be needing that soon. Most distributions assume too much! I don't want Firefox, I hate 90% of the KDE stuff - just give me an operating system with the means to install applications/utilities of my choosing.
Maybe now I'll learn how to spell Linux and figure out a few other terms!
Randy
14 • #! Crunchbang (by Rose on 2015-02-09 05:37:51 GMT from North America)
I'll miss Crunchbang and I Just wanted to point out there's still an Ubuntu based openbox distro that isn't on this site for some reason(probably because it hasn't been around too long). It's called GoBang and in my opinion, they've done more innovative things with the openbox environment than #!.
Site: http://gobangos.sourceforge.net/
15 • SystemdRescueCd funny tipo (by lateForDinner on 2015-02-09 06:08:10 GMT from North America)
Any publicity is good publicity & systemds got alot from this site. Jesse you've got it on the brain. SystemRescueCd doesn't appear to even have systemd in its repository. Thanks for the site tho I spend to much time on it
16 • GoBang (by linuxista on 2015-02-09 06:24:45 GMT from North America)
GoBang looks interesting. Could you elaborate on what sorts of innovative things they've done with Openbox?
17 • @randymc non bloated KDE (by Crow on 2015-02-09 06:29:50 GMT from North America)
@randymc try PCLinuxOS MiniMe, it's a bare-bones KDE for experienced users, you won't be disappointed.
18 • zug zug (by orc on 2015-02-09 06:40:07 GMT from Planet Mars)
systemd feels like some plot hatched in some dark lair with the intent to fracture the Linux community.
Now who would have the money, time, motive, and resources to plan this type of attack?
19 • GoBang (by Leonard Ashley on 2015-02-09 07:12:27 GMT from North America)
To maybe help a little with the question about GoBang, it is an openbox Debian based distro, It is only offered in 32bit and in my opinion could and should be released as 64bit as well. It is definitely a great looking distro and has a plethora of settings and attributes. I used it for about 6 months until I built a 64 bit machine, and stayed strictly 64bit, but do miss GoBang. It is worth looking at if a 32bit distro interest you. Actually there is nothing out there that I know of is comparable to Crunchbang, my suggestion would be to take it all the way to Sid and comment out "waldorf" in the source file, run it as a Debian distro. Still keep Crunchbang, I believe I maybe correct on this. There could and are some cb- apps that won't be upgraded.
20 • replacing Crunchbang (by greenpossum on 2015-02-09 07:59:58 GMT from Oceania)
Vale Crunchbang and thanks Philip for a cool distro that powered some of my old machines. I'll probably switch to LXDE Debian on the more RAM equipped ones and to AntiX for the RAM constrained ones. It shouldn't be too difficult for me, only a handful of the packages are from #! and the rest from Debian.
21 • Systemd features (by Microlinux on 2015-02-09 08:27:11 GMT from Europe)
Future versions of systemd will also include a spellchecker, a streaming audio server and a first-person shooter.
22 • replacing #! (by maroman on 2015-02-09 08:31:18 GMT from Europe)
two years ago I've made a decision to choose semplice instead of cb. semplice linux is nice distro (based on debian sid) with clear strategy. unfortunately the latest stable edition is more than one year old since the team is trying to build own de based on openbox (the last published version 7 is very experimental). moreover the team is so responsible that even having vanilla debian I've never had any problems.
on the other hand there is nice wattos both openbox (32b) and lxde. seems to be natural replacement.
and finally on the list of distros w/systemd. the list might be not valid soon since some distros are based on debian wheezy at the moment. for example point linux. great, rock solid and really complete distro however version 3 (now beta) is with systemd (testing)
23 • replacing #! (by Chris on 2015-02-09 08:56:42 GMT from Europe)
There's a great little Ubuntu Trusty+Openbox distro called Madbox, which I had been using whilst waiting for Crunchbang Janice to come out. I must confess that Madbox is doing its job so well that I don't have huge problems staying put with it going forward. And if not, then thanks to Crunchbang, I would very comfortable 'rolling my own' personal distro from vanilla Debian going forward.
For a slightly more "full" (but still minimalist and lightweight) experience, I have enjoyed using PeppermintOS.
24 • @2 live distro (by Helper on 2015-02-09 09:22:20 GMT from Europe)
I would recommend Porteus. It is small and can be run from an usb-stick. You can install additional apps and they will stay.
25 • @9 (by sam on 2015-02-09 09:29:59 GMT from Europe)
Have you tried replacing the CMOS battery on your motherboard?
26 • @19 GoBang (by ILoveLinux on 2015-02-09 09:40:22 GMT from Europe)
Hello Leonhard Ashley,
I'd suggest you take another look at http://gobangos.sourceforge.net/. There's a 64bit ISO image alongside a 32bit ISO image now available (v. 2.04.2, published 2015/11/01).
27 • CrunchBang (by Ariel on 2015-02-09 10:10:35 GMT from South America)
I'm quite sad about Crunchbang news, but what can I do about it?. So far I added Debian's Jessie repo and performed a dist-upgrade and moved on...Thanks Philip Newborough for that amazing distro :-)
28 • @22 - replacing crunchbang, and semplice (by Hoos on 2015-02-09 10:43:51 GMT from Asia)
Crunchbang and semplice (Sid) are both good but different in philosophy.
One is monochrome, minimalistic, and encourages a hands-on approach to editing text files and scripts. It nevertheless exudes cool.
The other also looks good but in a more cheery colourful way. The developer appears to have the intention of making openbox configuration and customisation more GUI-based instead.
The latest "stable" image available is version 6. However, because it is a rolling release, installing from that old image means you have a year's updates to apply and this could cause problems.
Version 7 is not yet officially released and only a "preview" version is currently available. It's more a look into the developer's vision and the direction he wants semplice to take.
My point is that you should not use semplice expecting it to have the same vibe or approach as crunchbang.
29 • systemd (by jg on 2015-02-09 11:16:36 GMT from Europe)
The latest news on systemd - i.e. discontinuation of read-ahead - is really stunning. Didn't we hear for the last 2 years or so that the prime reason for implementing systemd was a massive speed-up of boot time? And the reason for dropping one of the prime features - an obvious result of systemd developers getting more affluent working on this not really clear by whom funded project - getting new, better toys to play with? Who in his right mind, running a multi-million or billion $ project, would deploy a system controlled by a feature of no clearly defined tasks which at the same time can both send and receive messages over http??!!!! (presumably to - insert your favorite three letters here). Let me repeat - no clearly defined purpose or tasks, which change for no valid reasons and unannounced - is this the way for a serious development to go? Is it really the way to go for Debian???
30 • CrunchBang (by S. K. Biermanns on 2015-02-09 11:30:17 GMT from Europe)
I'll let CrunchBang on my Notebooks as long as Wheezy is supported in the background. It is a solid and stable release with OpenBox - and no distro yet could fill the gap that CrunchBang let behind, neither Viperr nor ArchBang nor Vsido.
31 • GoBang (by Leonard Ashley on 2015-02-09 11:40:29 GMT from North America)
@26 ILoveLinux. Thank you for graciously correcting me. I did check it out and downloaded, installed. Quite a beautiful Ubuntu/Debian 64bit distro, and quite pleased. Very impressed with the coloration, and it has still, as always the sophisticated look and feel of a superb distro. I am pleased, glad very much that @16 Linuxista reminded me of a distro I once used. Thank you. Fluxbox reigns. Sincerely
32 • Crunchbang replacement (by Bonky Ozmond on 2015-02-09 12:45:11 GMT from North America)
I have an older Machine running AntiX Fluxbox..which I cannot fault...in fact it prefer Fluxbox in many ways .1 being Editing not using xml...
my other Openbox based machines have a variety of Salix / Slackel, I have a Manjaro Openbox which has been running since its inception with no issues and is my main daily machine...Sadly they dropped it from being a main edition to community edition and is no longer maintained....Though they do an excellent PEKwm distro..
I only have 1 non DM type machine (for marital bliss reasons) which is Calulate linux the Gentoo based distro
33 • #! Replacement (by hirisc on 2015-02-09 13:13:34 GMT from North America)
Thank you Philip Newborough and the CrunchBang Team. I have used #! for a very long time and it's served me well. I love that my older laptops I use for testing have never faultered. I will continue to use #! until I can find something that runs as smoothly without eating resources. Going to miss this Distro!
34 • #! (by fgibbs on 2015-02-09 13:13:52 GMT from North America)
I've been using #! for a number of years, having used it when it initially came out and then returned to it some time later. I view it as a very valuable distro as it offered none of the usual bloat and allowed for a very lean systems, for which the user could add whatever he chose to add. I want to thank Philip and the #! community for giving the users true choice in what we installed. I don't recall reading what Philip's plans are for the future, but I plan to begin the long, arduous task of finding another distro to replace #!. It won't be easy, but perhaps I'll find another amazing option waiting in the proverbial wings. Cheers, Philip, for many good years working in the environment you created; it will be missed.
35 • #! Replacement (by dragonmouth on 2015-02-09 13:17:20 GMT from North America)
Hasn't antiX development been put on the back burner because anticapitalista is concentrating on MX Linux? The most current version of antiX is over a year old.
36 • Crunchbang replacement (by Doug on 2015-02-09 13:37:01 GMT from North America)
I'm sad to see #! go. Superb distro with a great user community.
I downloaded the latest Lubuntu to see the current state of LXDE. Found it quite pleasing. However, I've been "burned" by various 'buntus in the past and don't agree with their development priorities. Debian Stable for me.
When Debian Jesse becomes Stable, I'm going to install it along with the task-lxde-desktop package.
I was surprised to see in "Debian GNU/Linux Installation Guide" for Jessie that XFCE is not that much heavier than LXDE, so it is a reasonable choice for relatively lightweight DE.
I prefer LXDE. Not as light as a [Open|Flux]Box but less fuss to install and configure. I'm lazy.
Some of the other commentators in this thread and the #! forums have mentioned a number of lesser-known distros, but my experience with distros like these is that they tend not to be well documented and do not have enough maintainers. Issues are more frequent and harder to resolve.
One unique thing about #! was that corenominal had extremely high standards for quality as well as fit-and-finish. I've never used any other "small" distro that compared. Given that, I prefer to move to bog standard Debian Stable with a DE that is well documented and maintained. Less hassles, better docs, and more people working on the inevitable issues.
37 • Is Lennart for real? (by cykodrone on 2015-02-09 15:23:46 GMT from North America)
"Poettering reports all systemd developers now use SSD disk drives rather than spinning disks, making it impractical to test the read ahead feature."
I use an SSD for the OS host drive, I use an HDD for files storage and backup (I create links to constantly edited files that reside on the HDD), so under systemd(evour) (pardon the pun, I couldn't resist, lol), that HDD would no longer have read-ahead? I still don't completely trust SSDs to be a 100% secure data storage solution, I've had HDDs last more than a decade!
Sorry, I have to laugh at all of the early systemd adopters, if this is a sign of things to come from the systemd camp, you're in for a silly and bumpy ride.
I would hazard a guess there are still some servers employing HDDs in and not in Raid configurations, I guess RH doesn't want their business anymore. *shaking head*
Bottom line, Lennart wants to dictate what hardware we're to use now?
Love the ArchBSD logo, I get a kick out of some of the logos people come up with. Looks like an interesting project.
I like Korora, nice bunch of people, but that screenshot looks like the result of feeding a baby the wrong food and what you'd find in its diaper, lol.
38 • ArchBSD Needs Some Love... (by PMcCartney on 2015-02-09 15:42:57 GMT from North America)
Since I've been an Arch Linux user for a number of years, I decided I would give ArchBSD when it first came out. IMO, it ran great for being such a new system at the time. It still had many kinks to be worked out, but I really liked having pacman as a BSD package manager.
I've installed ArchBSD one more time since then, and it ran pretty much like it's Linux counter-part. However, due to the lack of packages available, I went back to Arch Linux.
As I am hoping, I know it will only be a matter of time before ArchBSD catches up with Arch Linux. I really hope there are enough BSD and Linux enthusiasts who see this as an up and coming distribution, and it's ranking in the Distrowatch top 100 climbs much higher in the very near future.
39 • antiX Development (by Chris Whelan on 2015-02-09 16:33:02 GMT from Europe)
@ no35
The reverse is more the case just at the moment; anti is busy with antiX development, whilst plans are being made for future versions on MX
40 • CrunchBang's sad departure (by Barnabyh on 2015-02-09 16:42:12 GMT from Europe)
Philip's offering was extremely tight, with that I mean well thought through, integrated, polished, tested and very stable. Have been using it as my main desktop now for over two years, since early November 2012. My only regret is that I didn't try it earlier. It has set standards and will certainly be missed.
I am planning to move to Devuan or another non-systemd Debian derivative for all those moments when Debian seems best. Still running #! on a laptop and an external USB drive, as well as Wheezy Xfce on another laptop which replaced a Sidified #! install I wasn't happy with after upgrading for many months. No bugs, just the systemd issue.
Apart from that, I may spend more time on Slackware again and revive my SlackBang approach.
Also BSD is still waiting in the wings. Tried Debian kfreebsd for similarities sake which wouldn't even boot. I feel drawn to OpenBSD and maybe that will one day take over if Debian people keep messing around, although it's hard to replace the convenience of Debian. Crux and Kwort (Crux with Openbox) may be another alternative.
41 • Evaluation of Korora 21 and Simpilicity 15.1 (by Justinian on 2015-02-09 16:44:17 GMT from Asia)
Am posting this while trying out Korora 21 Cinammon live on a low-powered system. Seems really appropriate for desktop installation. Please review it and the amazing Simplicity Desktop edition as well.
42 • Looking for a compact distribution 4MLinux-11.0-allinone-edition (by Bobbie Sellers on 2015-02-09 16:53:09 GMT from North America)
Apparently not a few of the posters are looking for such.
I do not see 4MLinux-11.0-allinone-edition mentioned.
Tried out recently and it looks designed for the people
seeking a distribution suitable for older, lower specced
machines.
It has some excellent tools and JVM window manager.
And from the stuff in the Games menu the guy has a
sense of humor. The gui filemanager looks as useful
as Dolphin on KDE. and all this goodness fits into
389.9 megabytes so it works on a CD.
43 • #! (by Thom on 2015-02-09 17:25:17 GMT from Europe)
Philip Newborough decided enough is enough and has the smarts to walk away. Good for him. I had fun with #! (I still do, actually), since the *box WMs are so configurable. As an exercise in how far you cant take simple and make it work, #! was a revelation. I wish Philip the best in what ever direction he takes his life and thank him for sharing his efforts.
44 • CrunchBang (by Hugo Masse on 2015-02-09 17:50:12 GMT from South America)
I am also saddened by the news of this superb distro coming to an end. I have read some who say you can just install openbox on top of vanilla Debian and that's it but, as Doug in #36 says, the OOTB experience is never the same.
For instance, I am working on a fresh install of WattOS miniwatt (Wheezy + openbox) but the OB menu is configured to work with pcmanfm (not installed) and so, it's useless OOTB. When I try to open openbox from terminal I get the message: "A window manager is already running on screen 0".
I know this belongs in their forums, but registration is not currently available so, to be honest, I give up: CrunchBang is CrunchBang and there is no way to substitute it. I thought my good ol' netbook was going to die with LM13 and CB on it but it looks like it will be just Maya.
On the other hand, I'd like to know if anybody is going to make it possible to continue using CB until Wheezy falls out of maintenance? I have read in the CB forum that there are plans to fork it but no news of anyone making sure the next upgrade won't break the few but crucial CB native packages?
45 • Crunchbang replacement (by All Gore on 2015-02-09 18:11:06 GMT from Europe)
Having been a Debian user for many a year, now that the project is stumbling from one side of the road to the other like a headless chicken, I have give Lubuntu LTS a try and I am loving it. It is a pity that Ubuntu will also adopt systemd.
AntiX seems the way to go for those willing to stay with Debian. Other options are listed here:
http://without-systemd.org/wiki/index.php/Main_Page#GNU.2FLinux_distributions
Yet another possibilty is installing OpenBox on top of your distro of choice.
Yesterday I also tried Lxqt 0.9 and, even if the project is not mature yet, it seems this could become the leading free DE of the future. it is still lacking features but it is relatively light on resources (namely CPU), it showcases pretty sane defaults and it has the great advantage of Qt's portability.
46 • Siduction KDE VS Netrunner (by muthu on 2015-02-09 18:27:19 GMT from Asia)
Hi Randy , why dont you try siduction KDE. The installation is not easy like netrunner. But You get a very lightweight KDE in Siduction. I have no doubt about it.
47 • systemd, readahead, and faster booting (by Scott Dowdle on 2015-02-09 18:48:46 GMT from North America)
@1 and @29 - readahead is one component that aids in faster booting.. under certain conditions. readahead existed before systemd and was added to systemd. For various reasons, readahead has become less needed (not only because of SSD drives) and less useful over time... and systemd dropping support for it is really not a big thing. Really. There are still several other features of systemd that make for faster booting. While faster booting is often associated with systemd because of its parallel service startup and small, deterministic service unit files, it certainly is not the main focus or main feature of systemd.
48 • Crunchbang #! (by Martin on 2015-02-09 19:53:31 GMT from Europe)
So sad to see the end of this distro, I do hope it can be forked and prosper with someone else at the helm. I have used it on several machines for many years now, and always found it delightful to use, a lightweight, fast, no frills distro that did exactly what you asked of it. I mourn its passing, and thanks to all who helped develop it including of course Philip!
49 • Crunchbang. (by writelevelzero on 2015-02-09 20:17:52 GMT from North America)
Sad about Crunchbang. I was rather fond of it. Ran well on low-spec computers as well as brilliantly in a virtual machine. Everything just worked. Turned me on to Openbox.
Time to thank the developer for the good times, and wish him well for the future.
50 • #! Rejuvenated (by 1EyedWiily on 2015-02-09 20:31:35 GMT from North America)
So sad to hear about Philip Newborough leaving the project. I understand, sometimes thing change and it is time to move on, especially if the current "thing" is not your passion as much anymore. Continued success to you, Mr. Newborough and all your future projects. Thank you for Crunchbang. :)
Hopefully, the project lives on, as a "official" successor to carry on the #! ideals. Crunchbang is a excellent distro for the ageing hardware, to help keep them alive and well (I like it.), also for anyone who likes a minimalist desktop (Count me in.). Crunchbang was great at being a distro, that did its job as an O/S, and got out of the user's way. There was no resource "hogging", it was about leaving the resources to the programs, to get work done, play a game or watch a movie. I was glad when #! went to a Debian base, from Ubuntu based. IMO, much lighter.
Please do keep the logo, on the Crunchbang "rebirth" or damo's logo is quite clever http://crunchbang.org/forums/viewtopic.php?id=38944&p=5. :) My 2 bits, for new names: BangersMash, Crunchbang Redux/Reloaded, CreamBlast, CrackBreak, etc. etc.
51 • #! (by Tony on 2015-02-09 21:51:55 GMT from Europe)
Oh poor #!. I will miss it for sure but I've learn some things from this distro - how cool can be a Debian stable distro + Openbox. I've used it for 6 months 1 year ago and I was very happy with it and I've used it on a very old machine Intel Celeron 2, 512 RAM. I will consider trying GoBang I sound interesting to me. As for my more powerfull machines distros like MiniNo and WattOS will be the best.
52 • @1, @29 systemd readahead (by linuxista on 2015-02-09 22:12:18 GMT from North America)
The fact that the devs had SSDs was only one factor in discontinuing support for readahead, so it's not just pure arrogance, etc, etc.
On the mailing list, Lennard said in the heads-up post:
[…] nobody tries to optimize it in any way. And it probably needs a lot of looking after and love to still be useful as general purpose systems, instead of just slowing them down…
And there was a “confirming” reply from a third-party developer (Auke Kok):
heh, ouch X_X
I can understand your sentiment, though. I’ve identified plenty of cases where readahead just isn’t working out well at all, and the constant tweaking has left it … quite a bit messy.
* systemd's readahead implementation has been removed. In many circumstances it didn't give expected benefits even for rotational disk drives and was becoming less relevant in the age of SSDs.
53 • #!, etc. (by Corbin Rune on 2015-02-09 22:33:59 GMT from North America)
I only messed with #! as an aside during my time using Debian. Although, I give that time credit for getting me started on futzing about with WMs in general.
Needless to say, while losing a distro's not a thing I'll cheer about, at least there're a lot of options to replace it with, both Debian-derived and not.
Other stuff:
RE: systemd/readahead - I'm not the biggest fan of systemd (don't really love or hate it), but judging from Mathias Geniar's Fosdem notes, it seems less that Poettering and Co. yanked that support to be jerks, and more the lack of anyone interested in maintaining that code. Sure, I'll agree that such a thing sucks ... but, what can you do? (while maintaining systemd as "your" init system of choice.)
54 • reduced HDD support? (by M.Z. on 2015-02-09 22:37:47 GMT from Planet Mars)
I've been fairly neutral on the whole systemd thing up to now, but removing support for speeding up spinning hard drives because you can't be bothered to use old hardware? That is a massively stupid move. What a bunch of elitist butholes. It can't be that hard to find hardware that is a little bit older, I've got plenty of old hardware for free. Also, last time I checked you could still buy new spinning HDD, so it isn't like the hardware have been off the market for 10 years. And it both stupid for people with old hardware, and for those who prioritize space over speed, but still want a decent boot time. I could see some people having lots of mutimedia files & other data getting a big multi terabyte drive & skipping the SSD for cost reasons. Why wouldn't they want to boot fast too, especially given that they are already booting slower? If people weren't putting down money for old school spinning HDD they wouldn't be selling then on newegg, and some of those multiple terabyte drives are fairly expensive. Why do the morons at systemd want to antagonize users?
I have been perfectly willing to mostly ignore the controversy, & even defend systemd a little while taking a wait & see approach. Now they have gone pissed me off. I largely agree with #1 & #29, this is stupid. If I don't see some sort of course reversal I'm seriously going to start to actively root for anti systemd crowd. 'We know there is a lot of that type of hardware, but don't have any cause we tossed it all out' is not a reason to stop supporting a feature. It is idiocy.
@9
The list put up by #11 looks fairly comprehensive. I highly recommend PCLinuxOS for an easy to setup home user system, and there are numerous others on the list like Slackware & Gentoo for a more hands on install. I also keep hoping to see PC-BSD get better support for my hardware because it looks both different & easy, but It never seems to work for me.
55 • @44, Hugo (by Barnabyh on 2015-02-09 23:06:49 GMT from Europe)
Hugo, you can continue using CB Waldorf for as long as Wheezy is still supported. All security and other updates are coming from upstream Debian, CB packages (mostly customizations, scripts and themes) haven't changed since release.
So there's still a lot to enjoy for possibly years to come. You know about using backports with stable?
56 • Crunchbang demise (by James on 2015-02-10 00:26:23 GMT from Oceania)
One of the highlights of Crunchbang was the technical knowhow in the community; I hope this continues - the distro will be sorely missed.
As for me I've already switched repository to Jessie / Debian Testing.
The only issue I've found in switching over to systemd is that the legacy SLim manager has to be replaced with xdm or similar to get back to a graphical desktop.
57 • Gentoo and Slackware are systemd free (by dhinds on 2015-02-10 00:38:06 GMT from North America)
It's not just Debian. Fedora, openSUSE and Arch have all adopted systemd.
Calculate-Linuux.org had KDE and Xfce editions of their Gentoo Overlay. Plus Devuan and a Manjaro Community version with openrc are being developed.
58 • @55 That's what I thought but (by Hugo Masse on 2015-02-10 00:54:23 GMT from South America)
Thanks, Barnabyh (@55). That's what I thought when the person who had just discovered it broke the bad news to me and I replied it was safe to use CrunchBang as long as Wheezy was supported.
But then I came across this post in the CB forum: http://crunchbang.org/forums/viewtopic.php?pid=417099#p417099
"That's twice I've seen this. Aren't there a few #! specific packages? Like if a security hole is found in compton, you won't receive a security update for it because your #! system will have compton-git installed, unless corenominal releases an updated package."
And now I wonder if the next upgrade will break CrunchBang...
59 • CrunchBang (by jwz on 2015-02-10 01:03:33 GMT from North America)
When I decided to jump to Linux I tried more distributions than I care to admit. They all had their advantages and disadvantages, none of them seemed to fit me. When "Waldorf" came out, I found just what I was looking for. Mr. Newborough found what was - for me - the perfect balance. I had enough to be productive right from the start, yet it spurred me to take a look under the hood and experiment a little. Thank you sir. And many thanks to all the contributors on the CrunchBang forums, I've learned so much from you. My plans now that CrunchBang is closing shop? Well I've already slid Debian "Jessie" up underneath CrunchBang, I've got a barebones load of "Jessie" on a separate partition which I'm building up as time allows. I have no doubt that whatever I come up with there will be heavily influenced by my experiences with CrunchBang. I don't think #! is just going to go away...
60 • @1 and @29 - systemd and boot times (by Ricardo on 2015-02-10 01:16:53 GMT from South America)
Systemd was never about boot times, at least not a main goal. Socket activation and parallelization of startup of services is a main goal, faster boot times is usually one of the byproducts of such parallelization, not only for systemd but for other init systems as well.
That said, I don't believe that "we all use SSDs now" is a valid excuse for dropping read ahead support, although I never used it and don't know how useful it is for speeding up the boot process (I have a laptop that I reboot about once a month if I need to, the rest of the time it's suspended or hibernated when I'm not using it).
61 • @47, @52, systemd and readahead (by Ricardo on 2015-02-10 01:50:46 GMT from South America)
Thanks for clarifying the reasoning for dropping readahead, I posted without seeing both your replies.
62 • SliTaz Gives OpenBox Not SystemD (by Arch Watcher 402563 on 2015-02-10 01:53:27 GMT from North America)
Crunchbang and SystemD exiles might try SliTaz. For Jo Aylor: SliTaz can run in RAM.
The moving-target mission statement of SystemD gives me the shivers. Obviously this group of devs doesn't care about users but its own conveniences. What trouble to fetch old boxen off Craigslist for dev and test. I never did think boot time a real reason, just a cover story. SliTaz boot time beats any SystemD OS.
ArchBSD is cool. I tend to think BSD has a better build setup than Arch. A lot (and I mean a lot) of Arch updates last year were minor, dash-dash-dash-bump rebuilds. Something seems amiss with the devs or their workflows, that they have to keep recompiling over and over. AUR is still often broken. There is no decent QA on it, certainly no one doing automated build tests, or even MD5 sum checks, which are often wrong. So the appeal of a BSD environment is real.
I think ArchBSD symlink/directory conventions are just matters for PKGBUILD files and $PATH. I don't know that pacman has anything to do with them. These minor tweaks could be mass sed'd perhaps?
63 • @56 • Crunchbang demise (by Georgia on 2015-02-10 01:54:29 GMT from North America)
"One of the highlights of Crunchbang was the technical knowhow in the community; I hope this continues - the distro will be sorely missed."
Yes I'm always impressed how each distro has its own culture. I hope that those who helped build CrunchBang go on to take their skills to one of the "big tent" non-commercial distros. I wish Philip and crew every success in their future efforts.
64 • @9 systemd-free distros (by Ricardo on 2015-02-10 01:59:48 GMT from South America)
There's Slackware and its derivatives, there's also Debian pre-Jessie and its derivatives which still have a couple of years of support.
I think if you go through the Debian derivatives here on Distrowatch you'll find a lightweight distro that works on you gear.
65 • @9 re: 'configuring hardware clock' (by Ricardo on 2015-02-10 02:02:59 GMT from South America)
Just out of curiosity, have you tried disabling ntpd/chronyd on the distros that failed to boot for you? Maybe from a live media after you installed them?
66 • #! goodbye (by snowpine on 2015-02-10 03:35:30 GMT from North America)
CrunchBang was one of my favorite distros. Thanks to Philip for his hard work!
67 • Crunchbang (by David on 2015-02-10 04:30:59 GMT from North America)
Crunchbang originated here on Distrowatch right about the same time I became interested in linux and installing various operating systems.It was one of the first ones I tried and I liked it very much.It was an easy install and was fun to play with.The community was also great.
68 • Readahead (by mandog on 2015-02-10 09:56:23 GMT from South America)
readahead has been used for years by Ubuntu so how are you all asumiming its a systemD feature as its not only works with it, Its not even used by default you have to enable it anyway on Arch, I have not used it for months and still have the same bootime without it 10s to working desktop Openbox, 35s for Gnome3 that is on spinners I do not see any point of SSD just for faster booting.
69 • ref: 'transparantly' working with encrypted e-mail (kmail) (by P. Faasse on 2015-02-10 16:29:57 GMT from Europe)
For me, encrypting e-mails started as a failed experiment some years ago. My current 'Homebase' is Slackware 14.1, but i suspect that many KDE distros suffer from the same, and have done so for some time.
At first glance KDE's kmail should support encrypted / decrypting / signing e-mails out of the box, and on the fly. Still, I found 'it just did not work'.
The problem I found was signalled by the fact that Kleopatra reports in its startup self-check: 'Gpg-Agent Connectivity/not reachable'. kmail has similar problems contacting the gpg-agent. Other kde-apps report similar problems.
It took quite some www-searching to find out how to remedy this. The slackware pgp setup is almost complete. There is however a missing link between kde and the pgp-agent which makes that the kde-applications have no access to the gent. I ended up adding two script files to my ~/.kde/env resp ~/.kde/shutdown directories.
~/.kde/env/gpg-agent-start.sh:
---------------8<-------------------
#!/bin/sh
GPG_AGENT=/usr/bin/gpg-agent
## Run gpg-agent only if not already running, and available
if [ -x "${GPG_AGENT}" ] ; then
# check validity of GPG_SOCKET (in case of session crash)
GPG_AGENT_INFO_FILE=${HOME}/.gpg-agent-info
if [ -f "${GPG_AGENT_INFO_FILE}" ]; then
GPG_AGENT_PID=`cat ${GPG_AGENT_INFO_FILE} | cut -f2 -d:`
GPG_PID_NAME=`ps -p ${GPG_AGENT_PID} -o comm=`
if [ ! "x${GPG_PID_NAME}" = "xgpg-agent" ]; then
rm -f "${GPG_AGENT_INFO_FILE}" 2>&1 >/dev/null
else
GPG_SOCKET=`cat "${GPG_AGENT_INFO_FILE}" | cut -f1 -d: | cut -f2 -d=`
if ! test -S "${GPG_SOCKET}" -a -O "${GPG_SOCKET}" ; then
rm -f "${GPG_AGENT_INFO_FILE}" 2>&1 >/dev/null
fi
fi
unset GPG_AGENT_PID GPG_SOCKET GPG_PID_NAME
fi
if [ -f "${GPG_AGENT_INFO_FILE}" ]; then
eval "$(cat \"${GPG_AGENT_INFO_FILE}\")"
eval "$(cut -d= -f 1 < \"${GPG_AGENT_INFO_FILE}\" | xargs echo export)"
export GPG_TTY=$(tty)
else
eval "$(${GPG_AGENT} -s --daemon --write-env-file ${GPG_OPTIONS})"
fi
fi
--------------------------8<--------------------------------
and ~/.kde/shutdown/gpg-agent-stop.sh
--------------------------8<---------------------------------
#!/bin/sh
## The nice way
if test -n "${GPG_AGENT_INFO}"; then
GPG_AGENT_PID=`echo ${GPG_AGENT_INFO} | cut -d: -f2` && kill ${GPG_AGENT_PID} ||:
unset GPG_AGENT_INFO
fi
## The not so nice way
## NOTE: a root login will kill *all* users' gpg-agents
#killall gpg-agent
## clean/remove .gpg-agent-info
rm -f $HOME/.gpg-agent-info --------------------------8<---------------------------------
The scripts should not be all too cryptic themselves: This is intended to start the gpg-agent on kde session start, and provide environment vars and a file ~/.gpg-agent-info to kde-applications so they can 'find' the gpg-agent program for the session. The shutdown script stops the agent when the session is closed.
After adding these scripts and a re-login to the kde session, kleopatra can now find the gpg-agent, and allows you to generate your public/private key pair (File->new certificate). The certificates of your friends can be imported too with kleopatra.
Similarly, kmail configured to find and use your key (Settings->identities->tab cryptography, change PGP key).
After that, encrypting/signing mail when sending is a matter of switching on/off signing/encryption at will or automatically when composing a mail. When receiving encrypted/signed mails, kmail will check/uncrypt (if the sender's key is imported in kleopatra) transparantly, and indicate the encryption/signing status when the mail is viewed.
You can (kmail's settings) also set the default to encrypting/signing, to automatically crypt/sign mails to receivers you have the public key of.
NB: There is no remedy for the 'issue' that very few mail receipients provide their public key ( ;-) ), but the local system should now be all set up.
I do not know if this is the 'one true way' to go with kde/kmail, but this has un-failed for me my experimenting with encrypting mail. I've tried with mail-to-self, a few friends and mail from another (@work) mail account, and with these two files -and some keys..- this has been the easiest way (no cut&paste :-) ) for me to send/receive encrypted mail yet.
This is -for me- not new: I have 'carried' these two scripts from one slackware version to the next for some years now. As far as I've been able to determine they form the 'missing link' to allow easy gui-based access to encrypted/signed kmail in kde. Frankly, I wonder why this missing link has not long since been added to a standard kde / slackware setup :-)
70 • #! Crunchbang (by fox on 2015-02-10 17:34:30 GMT from North America)
This was a real gem; light and fast with an interesting visual appearance. I am sorry to see it go, and I appreciate all the work that Philip Newborough put into this. However, I have to disagree with him that it no longer holds value; I think that the active Crunchbang forums indicate otherwise. Having tried openbox in Debian without the benefit of Philip's scripts, the value to a non-advanced user of Crunchbang's addition to a Debian base is readily apparent. I hope that someone will be able to keep this going with an update using the next version of Debian or (and some may disagree with this), the adaptation of Crunchbang to the current LTS version of Ubuntu.
71 • Fedora 8 (by SilentSam on 2015-02-10 21:07:28 GMT from North America)
I never knew that Fedora 8 was the most popular release of Fedora... Makes sense though, as it was my favourite release thus far. Interesting to see those stats.
72 • crunchbang's_demise (by gee7 on 2015-02-10 22:50:36 GMT from Europe)
@51 1EyedWiily: "My 2 bits, for new names: BangersMash, Crunchbang Redux/Reloaded, CreamBlast, CrackBreak, etc. etc."
For my own suggestion, it would be Hashtag Linux or even Hashpipe :-)
Thank you, Philip Newborough and team, for the years you have tended #! and pleased so many users.
It was a breath of air amongst heavyweight distros, light and flexible and quietly beautiful in its unique way.
I have had Crunchbang Linux as part of a multi-boot for the last couple of years and on reading the news of its demise today, I did an apt-get update && apt-get upgrade, and then nano /etc/apt/sources.list and changed the sources to those of Debian 8 Jessie. I may at some time in the near future remove systemd.
After repeating the update and upgrade commands, and keeping my fingers crossed that this dist-upgrade hadn't broken anything, I rebooted and found the system running smoothly. I checked out half a dozen applications; even flash worked out of the box, I watched a clip on the Daily Telegraph and started up a BBC iplayer programme.
I could of course have commented out the Crunchbang line in sources.list and then would have received Wheezy security updates until the end of Wheezy's life, but while Jessie is only producing a few updates at a time, I thought it easier to update from Debian 7 to Debian 8 now. As it was, I had to download about 390 Mbs of updates.
Let's hope someone with time and enthusiasm can take over the reins, it is a worthy project, and really useful for older computers, though can, I should think, be fun on modern, powerful gear. Good luck, Philip.
73 • chrunchbang (by greg on 2015-02-11 10:12:32 GMT from Europe)
ToriOS has potential to replace #!. But they are still in beta. still an OS will use very little ram and is superlight.
@system - Ha, ha... & WTF!?
74 • Crunchbang (by Mark Johnson on 2015-02-11 13:07:45 GMT from Asia)
I kind of agree with corenominal, sort of, about the value of #! vs vanilla Debian... but, the community that has gathered around #! is much kinder, gentler, and more forgiving than the Debian community. That is largely because Debian caters to SO many people, many of whom are not on the same level. Crunchbang typically draws mid-intermediate linux desktop users. The kind of folk that read the manual, but may not understand what it means, or may not have a few pieces of information they need to complete a task.
I'm sure if the Crunchbang website is done for then the folk there will disperse and do good things for the linux community elsewhere (many already do), but I think its a significant loss to a significant group of users.
75 • systemd (by Brian Grainger on 2015-02-11 18:00:34 GMT from Europe)
Would anybody care to comment on:
Some of the upcoming features which stand out include service oriented firewall support, incorporating network interface management into systemd, remote network support for the journald logging software over HTTP connections and new Secure Boot checks to insure the boot process has not been compromised.
Is this good or the function creep we were warned about?
76 • @75, systemd (by Eddie on 2015-02-11 19:57:02 GMT from North America)
It is good. There is no function creep like you've heard. Everything is out in the open. Nothing is hidden. Also despite some people trying to make something out of nothing, "read ahead" has not worked properly for quite some time in my opinion. Anyone can still use it if they feel the need but I can't imagining why they would. #68, mandog, has a very valid point.
77 • systemd(proc-mgmt) (by Kragle von Schnitzelbank on 2015-02-11 23:54:10 GMT from North America)
The biggest problem with systemd(process-management) has been hype from a firm's-darling developer scaring everyone else; second biggest is tied between pushing out buggy code and dependency-creep.
DebIan developers felt competent to deal with it, but not eager to multiply support branches.
Fedora's always been primarily for RH distro pioneering - no surprise there's zero interest in supporting "older", less-fashionable hardware. Of the geeks, by the devs, for the bucks. Favored by mover-and-shaker hardware and software firms.
Neither moral or evil, just typical socio. Same-ol'. So?
78 • Creep (by Barnabyh on 2015-02-12 00:35:48 GMT from Europe)
Continued new additions means it's a moving target not a finished, mature product and we/you're all beta testers for Redhat. How can a new feature be considered well tested when it's just been added?
For myself, am currently trying Antix-14 alpha 4 which looks really nice and works better than the alpha label might suggest. Actually no problems. All with sysv init. Might be my eventual replacement of Crunchbang and Debian 7 installs.
Hope it's ok to post this link. http://sourceforge.net/projects/antix-linux/files/Testing/antiX-14R/
79 • Transition from Debian (by cykodrone on 2015-02-12 01:10:24 GMT from North America)
Tore down my dual SSD Raid, unplugged one drive as a backup in case the one in use dies, installed PCLinuxOS MATE (coming from Debian 7.8 Xfce), configged it to the boobs and it's running like a dream, no muss, no annoying GUI bugs (yes, there were lots in Wheezy), I even mastered my custom right click 'open with' shred launchers (1 pass for SSD, 35 passes for the HDD, running in xterm), that was a challenge but I won the battle, lol.
If your AMD based BIOS has the IOMMU option (disabled by default) like mine, pass iommu=soft to the kernel, live or installed.
PCLOS MATE feels a little retro but it's like an old comfy pair of slippers, no surprises and no systemd.
80 • Transitions (by Barnabyh on 2015-02-12 09:59:39 GMT from North America)
Nice one, we're in there together cyko. Have tried PCLOS MATE as well and was quite impressed, nice icon theme too I haven't seen before but most importantly it seemed to run well.
There are still lots of options around, although bucking the trend has become a little more difficult when compared to several years ago.
81 • @80 PCLOS icons and themes (by cykodrone on 2015-02-12 12:38:28 GMT from North America)
Oh my lord, that stock icon set is insane, lol, first thing I did was install the elementary set from the repo, that and switch to the BlueMenta theme with the BlackMate window borders (saved it as 'BlackMenta'). The 'win8' mouse cursor theme is kinda nice so I just left it (the precision text I-beam is very welcome after using DMZ for years), there's a screenshot in FDN's non-Debian desktop screenshots thread. This is like running ex pee without the viruses, lol, and with way better apps.
I made donations to PCLOS years ago and talked to Bill a few times, he's a nice guy, you gotta admire his stick-to-it-ivness, I'm gunna start making donations again, keep the distro alive, he deserves it.
82 • Crunchbang alternative (by mechanic on 2015-02-12 18:15:32 GMT from Europe)
Try go-bang -
http://gobangos.sourceforge.net/
- not so much hand-holding but some support info in a wiki.
83 • bad messaging (by M.Z. on 2015-02-12 18:37:40 GMT from Planet Mars)
@76
Well, assuming that the point you & others have made about read ahead not making a difference is true, they still have very bad messaging. The headline everyone should have noticed was that it didn't really do anything anyway, and we shouldn't have heard they didn't support it because they were all rich jerks with fancy new SSD drives. It's just stupid to imply that you can't be bothered because your nice new stuff means you don't care about common hardware that is still in production and still commonly used. If your going to remove something try to think about messaging for a few seconds and tell us about the merits of the decision from a technical standpoint, not about your new toys & how they don't need that old feature anymore. Just stick to technical reasons & leave your hardware out of it, unless your fishing for important new hardware that you can't get some other way.
84 • @79 • Transition from Debian by cykodrone (by MiRa on 2015-02-12 18:46:01 GMT from Europe)
"...installed PCLinuxOS MATE (coming from Debian 7.8 Xfce)..."
Have you tried the PCLinuxOS Xfce Community remaster spin?
Who knows, as you like this DE you might like it too... :)
85 • @83 (by Milo on 2015-02-13 02:08:03 GMT from Europe)
I agree that developers sometimes make assumptions in their communications (whether these be presentations, email, etc) that other people already possess background context and a certain level of familiarity, so they don't provide that context, and only focus on providing additional information (these are essentially talks by developers for other developers, which are then picked apart by the general public).
That being said, given that systemd and Lennart Poettering are involved, there would be people chomping at the bit to express vociferous reactions anyway, regardless of what Lennart said, what Lennart didn't say, what notes Mattias took from Lennart's talk, what notes Mattias didn't take from Lennart's talk, what was reported from Mattias' notes by various websites, what wasn't reported from Mattias' notes by various websites, etc. While I think Lennart Poettering should constantly and consciously work on improving his interpersonal skills, I can't blame him or other systemd developers alone for fueling all the negative feelings. The hate parade has taken on a life of its own, and at this point is probably self-sustaining regardless of what happens with systemd.
86 • GoBang (by linuxista on 2015-02-13 03:04:08 GMT from North America)
I tried gobang live off of a usb stick. It's a pretty nice Openbox desktop built on top of Ubuntu LTS 14.04. It's not quite as stylish as #!, but it's not bad. One of the things this implemenatation of OB excels at is giving you a variety of theming choices to chose from for wallpaper, conky, tint2, and of course window borders. Everything worked well. The only bug I had was trying to open what appears to be a master GoBang theming gui/script. It segfaulted I think. If you wanted to run OB on top of an Ubuntu LTS, I think this would be worthy of consideration. Or if you wanted to cannibalize some of the scripts and pipemenus for you own OB desktop, it's also worth a look.
As I booted live off a usb, I don't know about the installer. I also don't know whether the bug I experienced is just in the live build. I didn't check out things like printing or Samba. I believe the codecs were all there.
87 • Transition from Debian (by All Gore on 2015-02-13 19:29:25 GMT from Europe)
I have completed the migration of two computers from Debian Testing to Lubuntu LTS. Two more and I will be done. No issues so far. Hopefully by the time that Lubuntu LTS had reached its end of life and/or had become obsolete there will be already a similar systemd-free distro to migrate to. Otherwise, Manjaro-OpenRC looks very tempting an option...
88 • The downward spiral of desktop enironments (by john on 2015-02-15 11:59:57 GMT from Europe)
So, people aren't from nation-states anymore? just continents? Is this political correctness gone mad? I'm from Wales, BTW :)
So what happened to the DE biggies KDE and Gnome when they transitioned from KDE 3.x to KDE 4.x, likewise Gnome 2.x to Gnome 3.x?
They dumbed themselves down to suit a a growing audience who preferred to twitter and facebook their time away on social media with tablets and left those of us who use Linux/GNU as workstations behind.
Don't get me wrong. I fully support a DE for dummies such as KDE 4 and Gnome 3 (and perhaps Unity) but I deplore the abandonment of these DE's leaving those of us who actually create things with computers in the lurch.
I for one have no intention to just merge into the passive consumer crowd of bird brains.
MATE (pronounced matAE, or some such thing, how pretentious) is a an attempt to keep Gnome 2 going on, but remains buggy and unpolished compared to Gnome 2.2 retired a few years ago. Ditto for Trinity.
Perhaps the most frustrating thing about these new fangled DE's is the fact that they are not as configurable as the superior older ones. They seem to be designed with a "we know what's best for you" patronising attitude.
Add to that the increasing bloat and hardware requirements to maintain performance, and it's fair to say that on the whole Linux/GNU OS's are going down the same stupid hole as Windows.
I've been using Linux based OS's now for going on 12 years and although things were getting better up to around 2010, I have seen a steady decline since then.
BTW, I have migrated to a LXDE DE lately. It's a bit like going back to 2005, but still better than the current range of dummy desktops.
89 • @88 • The downward spiral (by Bill on 2015-02-15 14:22:10 GMT from Planet Mars)
I agree 100% with you John, and I am from NC, USA btw. ;-)
Here in America there is a new saying for schools, "no child is left behind."
Since we work with special needs foster kids we have come to see it really means, every child is moved forward whether they learn or not. In the fast food restaurants, the computers have large pictures of fries and burgers because no one can add numbers any more. The notepads and smart phones all have large icons because no one can spell any more. And so now I guess the DE's are going the same way and they have very large and ugly icons because no one can read or think any more. But hey, no one is left behind except maybe for us dinosaurs who still know how to read, spell, add, and count change back.
Linux for Dummies has arrived.
90 • Linux (by Dave on 2015-02-15 17:15:50 GMT from North America)
Yes linux for dummies has arrived,but Linux for those who like to tinker remains.Although I agree the desktop has changed a lot,there is still an interface to satisfy all.
91 • Mars? (by john on 2015-02-15 17:24:59 GMT from Europe)
@89
Planet of Mars? How did you manage that!
92 • Not true of KDE 4.x (by M.Z. on 2015-02-15 20:24:18 GMT from Planet Mars)
@88
You are so horribly wrong about KDE 4.x it isn't even funny. Have you actually tried KDE in the past couple of years & opened the system settings? There are layers and layers of customization & settings. There are 32 options on my PCLinuxOS system, and most of them have sub-menus down the right side and/or tabs. It feels to me like there is no end to the options in KDE 4.x. And on top of that you can download new plasma desktop themes, window decoration themes, icon themes, desktop effects, activity templates, and widgets, and _More_, all right in the desktop interface. Did I mention that unlike Gnome 3 I have _Not_ seen these downloadable things break between releases? Gnome 3 and KDE 4 are like night and day in terms of customization and sane design. If anything KDE 4 has _barely_ positioned itself on the sane side of giving users waaay to many options. If you think KDE 4 is dumbed down go play with the settings for a few weeks & get back to me.
All that being said, I find what you said to be fairly true of Gnome 3, but it is quite the opposite story over at KDE 4. I liked the Gnome 2.2x versions that were out when I started using Linux, but I switched to KDE 4 because it had more options & better customization. I was saddened to see how bad things got in Gnome during the 3.x releases, & it is only getting worse. I am more than happy with recent KDE 4 releases though, & find it liberating to be able to do so much more with my desktop than I would have thought possible while on Windows or Gnome 2.
@91
I'll have you notice that all of my posts have been from planet mars, & proudly so! Okay, so I'm not really there, but I can drive over to US 1 & see the VAB & rocket launch pads just a few miles from my house. Somehow I doubt that they really know how close I am to the space center though. Not sure how that mars thing happened.
93 • @90 - For dummies, of course (by Ben Myers on 2015-02-16 00:23:46 GMT from North America)
And all of the Linux desktops for dummies follow the dumbest of all: Windows. Microsoft has long been on a crusade to hide the poor dumb user from any useful information. If you really want to know about the IP address of your Windows computer, run IPCONFIG from the command line. Even an iPhone provides better information and easily.
Not only do I want a DE that can be customized easily, I want a DE that tells you useful things about the hardware and the state of the hardware.
Number of Comments: 93
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