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1 • Yaru (by Tim on 2021-06-28 00:58:54 GMT from United States)
I've been running Ubuntu MATE 21.04 for several months now, and I agree it's a solid release that just works. I'd recommend it to anyone.
It does have a nice shiny new thing, and that's the MATE implementation of the Yaru theme, which I think looks really great.
2 • Mate & Termnal (by vern on 2021-06-28 01:11:04 GMT from United States)
I've used Ubuntu-mate for quite a while. I've seen it matire quite a bit over the years.
My Terminal is bash. Nothing else. I've been force to use zsh. Tried it for awhile. Didn't like it, or more use to bash to change.
3 • Shells (by Jules on 2021-06-28 01:17:59 GMT from Australia)
Hi,
I use bash shell both in work and play these days.
In the past and in the workplace,
I did use ksh shell, but switch to bash at some stage
as it was easier to show and explain to non-linux (wintel)
people for scripts and automation processes.
This came in handy when moving data to and from linux
to windows and visa-versa.
Long live linux.
.
4 • "SHELLS" - Command Line Interfaces (CLI), vs. GUI, & WIMP. (by Greg Zeng on 2021-06-28 04:11:34 GMT from Australia)
Old timer here, so the question of the week puzzled me. Unix & Linux are new operating systems that did not use WYSIWYG WIMP display menus. Before these systems were created, microcomputers used DOS in several brands. DOS had applications that gave us menu systems, a GUI that avoided CLI. Menu systems allowed "normal" people (not geeks, not computer experts) to then use applications, independent of the operating system.
"Shells" (a pedantic, intolerant CLI option) allowed some to claim the status of being "different" from the most users of computer applications. Application users like myself are very puzzled by these bookish users.
About two thirds of Distrowatch readers seem to have CLI to assist their application use. Most Linux users prefer GUI, either in the form of WIMP, or hardware-bodywear links. Linux is most used on smartphones, tablets, cloud, smart watches, and IoT devices (electrical gadgets usually). As AI moves into WIMP, automation and bodywear, we should see the decline of CLI & shells. Open source expert opinions on these matters are conducted by we Wikipedia editors: "Comparison Of Command Shells". Dates of these user display controls to the operating systems are in that Wikipedia.
5 • CLI is a shell game for bookish usrs (by Trihexagonal on 2021-06-28 04:30:47 GMT from United States)
I use sh for the usr account and csh for the root account on my FreeBSD boxen.
I like rxvt-unicode for a terminal emulator and have one instance of it open with the desktop from ~.xinitrc for easy access and keep it open and shaded when not in use.
6 • #4 UNIX, DOS timeline (by vern on 2021-06-28 04:35:43 GMT from United States)
UNIX began in the early 1970's, DOS August of 1980. So UNIX predates DOS by almost a decade.
See this for DOS:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_DOS_operating_systems
See this for UNIX timeline:
https://unix.org/what_is_unix/history_timeline.html
I worked for Bell Labs, and my teletype was tied into a DEC PDP-7 minicomputer, running UNIX.
DOS came much later.
7 • Favorite Shell (by PRifici on 2021-06-28 04:39:12 GMT from Australia)
I'm going to be in the minority I think but my favorite shell is by far PowerShell. I'm a big fan of object-oriented scripting and I have to work with a lot of Windows/Microsoft environments at work.
8 • Bash (by Andy Figueroa on 2021-06-28 04:44:09 GMT from United States)
I've used csh and zsh under Unix, but on Linux, bash is excellent. There is little justification to mess around outside of special and rare use cases.
9 • SUSE and openSUSE are the same ? (by OneHue on 2021-06-28 07:02:39 GMT from Mali)
With binary compatibility, what is the difference between SUSE Linux and openSUSE ?
10 • @4 SHELLS (by Alexandru on 2021-06-28 08:17:26 GMT from Austria)
Linux has shells not because something is missing from GUI, but because certain things (e.g. scripts) are more easy to achieve in CLI. All modern OSes have shells - MacOS and Windows are not exceptions. Windows introduced Power Shell exactly to facilitate CLI scripting.
You can think of GUI vs CLI interface with OS as sign language vs natural human language when interacting with people. When you do not know the language of country you are visiting, you will probably use sign language of some sort. It is more intuitive and doesn't require special knowledge to be understood. However, if you are going to live in that country, you sure need to learn the spoken language. It is much more expressive and people naturally use it for communication. The same is true also for human--computer interaction. If all you need is to perform some simple tasks, you can find a program with this minimal set of functions that exposes them in GUI. Howerver, if your intention is to express some more complex instructions, some lengthy batches of commands, some actions depending on system state or user input or some information / data fetched from internet etc, you certainly will want to use shell scripts for these.
11 • Anbox (by Anbox? on 2021-06-28 08:33:48 GMT from Germany)
Alongside the version we al know they're actually making a new anbox: https://github.com/Anbox-halium/anbox-halium
That page suggests it's still at a very early stage but this video suggests it's pretty promising.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-mDiOrrFCgU
12 • SUSE and openSUSE (by A on 2021-06-28 09:21:53 GMT from United Kingdom)
@9 - It's mostly the price, I think. SUSE is like RHEL, an expensive and supported enterprise product while openSUSE Leap is more like CentOS (as was) or Rocky Linux in that it's a free version of the same thing. I think openSUSE has more packages available, but I'm not sure.
I have to admit that I don't really get openSUSE Leap. It has ancient packages like Debian stable, but each release (15.2, 15.3) has breaking changes and requires a disruptive full system upgrade every 12-18 months. You get all the problems of LTS distributions with none of the lengthy support and stability. They still make you get codecs from an outside repo like it's 2004 (even fully free Debian plays .mp4 files out of the box these days). It's a nice distro, but with too many weird issues that other distros have fixed over the years.
13 • Ubuntu Mate (by James on 2021-06-28 10:01:29 GMT from United States)
I have used Ubuntu Mate, (LTS versions) for about 6 years. I couldn't be happier with my OS. It also has a great forum, where people are both friendly and helpful. The one real flaw to me is the Software Boutique, but Synaptic is easily installed to correct that problem. If you are looking for a fast, easy to use OS with a traditional desktop, give Ubuntu Mate a try. Also being community developed it lacks some of standard Ubuntu's more controversial elements.
14 • Go fish, you'll like it (by Ista on 2021-06-28 11:06:42 GMT from United States)
I started using fish from my smart phone to ssh into my computer and start working during my commute. The predictive completion feature made it usable in that environment, where typing was tedious and slow. I've since switched to fish everywhere, and find bash now feels very primitive. Give fish a try, you'll like it!
For PowerShell / object oriented fans https://www.nushell.sh/ is worth keeping an eye on, though it is still new and incomplete.
15 • shells etc (by Otis on 2021-06-28 11:46:46 GMT from United States)
The very first advice I received in Linux included the great little phrase, "Crack a shell.. then..." I was hooked forever.
Bash, of course (what's all that other stuff?).
About Suse, yeah I just tried the 15.3 and (@12) "It's a nice distro, but with too many weird issues that other distros have fixed over the years" bore itself out (again). *sigh*
16 • shells (by Dale G on 2021-06-28 11:49:49 GMT from Luxembourg)
If you search for Linux and script you will find huge numbers of tutorials and examples for bash. If you want your OS to do something you can't find in a GUI, you can use bash for many things.
Once you try yad or zenity and cron and Conky you will realise that your former OS did not let you do anything you want but rather anything they wanted to allow and probably in a subpar interface.
17 • SUSE and openSUSE are the same ? (by OneHue on 2021-06-28 12:13:17 GMT from Mali)
@12 - Thanks for the info. I used in the past a HP Probook laptop preinstalled with SUSE 11 packed with two CDs just like Windows. It was a good experience until the day I installed the SP. Since then, I became a Debian user. I hope that it will change.
18 • Favorite shell (by Tim on 2021-06-28 12:27:33 GMT from United States)
My favorite shell is ksh, which I used for a couple of decades on UNIX systems at work. However, the shell I use at home on my Linux systems, as a retired geezer, is bash. I learned a long time ago to stay with the default shell in order to avoid sneaky incompatibilities.
19 • Shell game (by Tad Strange on 2021-06-28 12:32:53 GMT from Canada)
@4 said it well enough for me. All I use terminal for is software maintenance, and even then, only if needed. While I can appreciate what can be done with them, I see little reason to extol the virtues of ancient technologies.
Now for my own OT segue - I bought an HP 7 series laptop, with an 11th gen i5. I took out the HDD and put in an SSD, planning to leave windows on the NVME drive and install Manjaro on the SSD.
Manjaro won't recognize the SSD. I tried several recently released distros (Thanks to whomever suggested Ventoy a few weeks back - what a time saver), and eventually settled on Kubuntu**.
Looks like anything with a 5.11 or 5.12 series kernel will recognise the secondary storage, but Manjaro, stuck on 5.10, will not.
**I've had enough minor but nagging issues with vanilla Arch and Endeavour that I don't want either on my daily driver; Manjaro is as Arch as I want to Arch.
20 • Bash resources and tips (by uselessmore999 on 2021-06-28 12:47:47 GMT from Germany)
As the Web is full of trash concerning Bash, just let me mention a few serious resources:
1. bash(1), i.e., the manual page.
2. Bash Reference Manual: https://www.gnu.org/software/bash/manual/
3. Greycat's Bash Guide: https://mywiki.wooledge.org/BashGuide
4. Greycat's Bash FAQ: https://mywiki.wooledge.org/BashFAQ
5. Greycat's Bash List of Bash Pitfalls: https://mywiki.wooledge.org/BashPitfalls
Additional bits of accumulated wisdom:
1. If you're a beginner and/or not used to being on the receiving end of abusive behavior, don't ask your questions in #bash on Libera.
2. Use shellcheck: https://www.shellcheck.net/
3. Learn a less terrible programming language.
4. Write a less awful shell, and write it in a “safe” language.
21 • Shell (by dragonmouth on 2021-06-28 13:14:50 GMT from United States)
What is my favorite shell is a meaningless question. Because the vast majority of distros have BASH as their default shell, I am forced to use BASH. Yes, I can theoretically replace BASH with some other shell. If write ups on how to do it were as numerous as write ups on how to replace one's Desktop Environment or one's Window Manager perhaps I would. However, information and instructions on alternate shells, and especially alternate shell scripting, is scarcer than hen's teeth.
22 • Elvish Shell (by mjohn on 2021-06-28 15:15:30 GMT from United States)
I've been using the elvish shell for the past year and a half and have really enjoyed the approach and design of it. Recommend checking it out.
https://elv.sh/
Before that I'd used zsh for about a decade.
23 • Shell (by Tuxedoar on 2021-06-28 16:02:46 GMT from Argentina)
I use bash as my shell, because it's the default one in Debian. So far, it hasn't gotten in my way. Still, since I haven't tried something else, I can't really say that it's my "favorite". Thus, I voted "other" for the opinion poll.
Cheers!.-
24 • ..another suse... (by ric on 2021-06-28 16:07:01 GMT from United States)
@9 & @12...you may wish to check out - geckolinux. it's a spin of opensuse with tweaks. uses opensuse's repos. there's stable (leap) and rolling (tumblewee) versions with many de's to choose. i've been using geckolinux rolling (tumbleweed) on my +15 yr old computer with no issues. about a year now? my only nitpick is updating snapshots (easy with tumbleweed-cli) is that sometimes takes over an hour - most likely the result of a very old computer/hard drive (yes, still original sata hd :-) ). and, the developer is very responsive and cordial. https://geckolinux.github.io/. peace - cheers.
25 • Suse/Gecko (by Otis on 2021-06-28 16:30:05 GMT from United States)
@24 yep I've been down the Geckolinux road. It does have the codecs etc, but it's still Suse and still has that "heavy" feel and other not-to-my-liking aspects to it. Your mileage may vary.
26 • Shells (by Hello on 2021-06-28 16:34:53 GMT from United States)
Been using dash ever since the Ubuntu distros changed over to it as the default shell. Didn't even notice it at first until I ran into a bash function that dash couldn't do. Found out how to work with it more effectively and never went back. The speed increase is so massive that I wouldn't be able to go back to bash anyway. At least 4x faster plus there's not really that much to learn as it's mostly bash compatible.
27 • Topics (by Cheker on 2021-06-28 17:16:36 GMT from Portugal)
Ubuntu MATE is tied with Xubuntu as my favorite *buntu spinoff. I played around with both of them a fair bit and even contributed translations.
Bash is my go-to shell, because it's the default pretty much everywhere and learning another one isn't a priority. The predictions in Kali's shell were kinda nice (I think that was fish?) but I don't need them that badly - I rely a lot on aliases.
28 • Shells and Rocky (by Ricardo Shillyshelly on 2021-06-28 17:27:36 GMT from Romania)
It would appear that bash is the default in most distros, sooooooo, bash it is. While I get the need for a distro like Rocky, I'm not a huge fan of clunky workstation OS's that are not very multimedia friendly, and that so-called init that thinks it's a kernel or OS, ick, no thanks. They're good for something, adding 'alien' repos, making a mess (like kids with finger paints, or mud), then trying to fix/troubleshoot it, hours of fun.
29 • Q&A correction (by aaro on 2021-06-28 17:52:58 GMT from Venezuela)
Just to point out that FreeBSD uses by default "sh" for regular users and "tcsh" for root.
https://docs.freebsd.org/en/articles/linux-users/#shells
30 • Shells (by Robert on 2021-06-28 18:14:55 GMT from United States)
Bash for me. I tried to use tcsh in my time with freebsd and hated it. I used ksh for a bit in openbsd and it was okay, just missing a lot things I liked on bash. Maybe it could be configured to be more like bash, but at point why not switch shells and save the effort?
I've heard about zsh and fish and how amazing they supposedly are, but bash does everything I need it to do so I haven't felt the need to experiment further.
31 • FreeBSD shell (by Jesse on 2021-06-28 19:25:50 GMT from Canada)
@29: I think the documentation you linked to is backwards. The last two times I set up FreeBSD the root account used /bin/sh (sh) as the default shell and regular user accounts used tcsh. I just checked with another machine someone else set up (so I can't confirm 100% it still has its defaults) but there the root shell was csh (not tcsh).
32 • Favourite shell is… (by TheTKS on 2021-06-28 20:39:19 GMT from Canada)
Whichever is the default.
So I’m not an advanced shell user, but I do use a shell for at least some basics every time I run a Linux or a BSD. Occasionally, I even use Powershell on Windows.
“pedantic, intolerant CLI option” and “bookish users”… I didn’t expect this poll question could provoke so strong an emotional response. Shell, GUI… I use what’s most useful and efficient for me. Sometimes using a shell is just quicker for me, even when I know the exact steps to the same function done graphically.
TKS
33 • Shells (by Nate on 2021-06-28 20:47:22 GMT from United States)
I switched from bash to zsh years ago and never looked back. The autocd feature, extended globbing, and exceptional completion system make it way more comfortable for daily usage. Note that's for an interactive shell. For scripting, if I have something to script which might benefit from speed, I'll go for either dash or mksh.
I also played around with the ion shell from RedoxOS for a while, and while it's somewhat immature it is excellent. If I wasn't so comfortable in Zsh already I might consider switching.
Lots of comments here refer to the cli as a legacy technology or worse. I disagree. By all means, use the gui of that's what you're comfortable with. But id like to point out that there is actually a new generation of command line tools like sd, fd, ripgrep, the silver searcher etc that are thoroughly modern and exceptionally useful. Maybe it's not what you like, but don't be dismissive.
34 • Shells (by Christian on 2021-06-28 21:00:48 GMT from United States)
Hello,
I mostly work with BASH shell, but have a lot of calls to EXPECT, which in my humble view, is a shell.
Concerning Windoze, I see potential to get things done with scripts, but the options are so inconsistent.
Then again, I have lived in an age where ssh -p for a port crashes with scp -P
Can't win everything.
35 • Shells... (by Sitwon on 2021-06-28 22:10:20 GMT from United States)
zsh is technically superior to bash in a number of important ways... but it sadly doesn't matter.
Bash enjoys the privileged position of being the defacto Linux shell. It's present on nearly every Linux distro, even when it's not the default. Unfortunately that forces those of us who want our scripts to be portable to use bash even if we would prefer to use zsh.
Honestly, bash is "fine" most of the time. It's sufficient. And shell scripting is often regarded as an afterthought, so there is little impetus to drive adoption of alternatives like zsh. Bash's shortcomings are well known, well documented, and Stack Exchange will happily provide you with one-liner workarounds for each of these flaws.
Is some small, technical improvement that only developers would appreciate justify adding a whole shell to the list of dependencies when the defacto shell is "fine" with maybe an extra line of ugly workaround for a corner case that's unlikely to affect most users?
Almost always the answer is "no".
36 • FreeBSD default shell (by aaro on 2021-06-29 00:28:49 GMT from Venezuela)
@31:
Dear Jesse,
/bin/csh and /bin/tcsh in FreeBSD are the same binary file, so they're the same shell in FreeBSD. So it's correct the root user has tcsh (or csh) by default. For regular users the default is /bin/sh
Here some outputs from my FreeBSD 12.2-RELEASE laptop:
aaro ~ % uname -a
FreeBSD cq60 12.2-RELEASE-p7 FreeBSD 12.2-RELEASE-p7 r369890 MYKERNEL amd64
aaro ~ % diff -s /bin/csh /bin/tcsh
Files /bin/csh and /bin/tcsh are identical
aaro ~ % su
Password:
root /home/aaro # adduser
Username: aaro2
Full name:
Uid (Leave empty for default):
Login group [aaro2]:
Login group is aaro2. Invite aaro2 into other groups? :
Login class [default]:
Shell (sh csh tcsh zsh rzsh bash rbash git-shell nologin) [sh]: ^C
root /home/aaro #
37 • Shells (by Joseph on 2021-06-29 02:02:11 GMT from United States)
My favorite shell is Xonsh (https://xon.sh/) because it is based on the Python programming language. All Python is valid Xonsh code and it has additions to facilitate its use as a shell. You get the ease of use of Python combined with the "batteries included" of Python's standard library and the ability to import from the selection of over 300,000 open source Python modules!
38 • Both these fine FreeBSD usr are correct (by Trihexagonal on 2021-06-29 02:39:45 GMT from United States)
@6 and @36
I just wanted to confirm your statements for the record.
FreeBSD can trace its roots back to UNIX proper.
/bin/csh and /bin/tcsh are the same sizefile.
Bash gets pulled in with another 3rd party program I build from ports,
The default shell for the usr account is sh and csh for root:
root@bakemono:/ # cat /etc/shells
/bin/sh
/bin/csh
/bin/tcsh
/usr/local/bin/bash
/usr/local/bin/rbash
root@bakemono:/ # ps -p $$
PID TT STAT TIME COMMAND
76680 0 S 0:00.05 _su (csh)
root@bakemono:/ # exit
exit
jitte@bakemono:~ $ ps -p $$
PID TT STAT TIME COMMAND
67540 0 Ss 0:00.04 sh
jitte@bakemono:~ $ uname -a
FreeBSD bakemono 12.2-RELEASE-p7 FreeBSD 12.2-RELEASE-p7 GENERIC amd64
jitte@bakemono:~ $
39 • CLI (by ChooseAName on 2021-06-29 06:53:51 GMT from Spain)
I hate CLI. Fortunately it is no longer necessary in Linux since a lot of years ago.
40 • Clunky workstation OS or clunky user? (by whoKnows on 2021-06-29 07:16:50 GMT from Switzerland)
@28 • (by Ricardo Shillyshelly from Romania)
I am using Springdale (RHEL) for video-cut, without adding 'alien' repos and without any mess.
It looks more like another user-issue, than an OS-issue.
Many companies do the same ...
41 • Shells (by penguinx86 on 2021-06-29 08:55:30 GMT from United States)
I like the sh Bourne Shell because it's the old time standard. it works on every system, even at a low level when you can barely boot to init level 1 and the /usr partition won't mount.
42 • Weekly (by eganonoa on 2021-06-29 10:17:28 GMT from Belgium)
A particularly strong Weekly this one. Thank you for it. I thought the review of Ubuntu Mate was great. I got a real flavor of how things have developed from the last time I used it. Seems like some really impressive progress, and I love reading about upstreaming changes into Debian! Kudos to the Ubuntu Mate team.
43 • Shells (by Romane on 2021-06-29 10:42:21 GMT from Australia)
I voted for 'bash', but primarily because that is the default on my distro-of-choice. With time, have become comfortable with it, but not, it must be stated, knowledgeable - have to do much search-engining to be able to write even simple scripts)
44 • shells (by James on 2021-06-29 11:00:50 GMT from United States)
Bash is the default on my installation, so I voted bash. But mostly I just use the GUI. Not a command line guy. Besides having no desire to learn a bunch of commands, I am a very poor typist. I do have a cheat sheet to copy and paste if I would ever need the command line.
45 • rlxos (by Somewhat Reticent on 2021-06-29 13:17:20 GMT from United States)
A base OS and (well-contained?) apps. Sounds like starting over, yet again.
May the dev(s) find a way to bar trolls from inserting middle-layer garden-walls as "apps", and thus avoid dependency-snarls.
And avoid the temptation to insert monopolism.
46 • Ubuntu affecting Debian (by Otis on 2021-06-29 15:38:54 GMT from United States)
..instead of the other way around.
I need help understanding this about Ubuntu (Canonical/Microsoft) upstreaming to Debian. Systemd has infected Debian of late, and now we see this development. It's being portrayed as a good thing. Perhaps I don't understand fully what they are doing (and what they and other distros have been doing all along).
Please just a quick explain: Why is it good? Why could it be bad? Does this smack of anything nefarious in the Canonical long term strategy?
47 • Shells (by Dave on 2021-06-29 16:31:30 GMT from United States)
For short scripts, I use Bash, but for day to day just running simple CLI commands I use FISH as its autocomplete feature makes it easier on my hands (severe cervical radiculopathy - the only thing worse than typing is using a mouse for extended periods of time).
48 • @46 Upstream fixes (by Cheker on 2021-06-29 17:08:53 GMT from Portugal)
"One key item mentioned in the Ubuntu MATE 21.04 release announcement is that their fixes have been pushed upstream to Debian. This means that fixes which appear in Ubuntu MATE 21.04 will not only be available to other flavours of Ubuntu, but improvements to the MATE desktop should also appear in Debian and its dozens of derived distributions. "
"(...)improvements to the MATE desktop(...)"
So Debian gets a better MATE. That seems to be it, no grand conspiracy.
49 • @46 (by dragonmouth on 2021-06-29 19:23:56 GMT from United States)
Whether the "systemd infection" is a good thing or a bad thing depends on whether you believe that Linux philosophy of each app doing one job but doing it well should prevail or whether Linux should have one supervisor program that controls the running of each and every app.
50 • Shells (by Cág on 2021-06-29 20:58:29 GMT from Austria)
I picked dash because it's one of the smallest shells while being POSIX-compliant with no bells nor whistles. I don't even use libedit (history). Statically linked against musl libc it occupies around 150-160 KiB of disk space vs >1MiB of dynamically linked bash. Not comparing their speed and the amount of bugs here.
51 • Shells - tcsh (by John on 2021-06-30 01:21:27 GMT from Canada)
I have been using tcsh for a long time, I have tried others over the years and zsh came close, but still tcsh had something that keeps me using it.
For me it is the only one that does not drive me crazy for interactive use. Eventually I will do something or something happens in the others that makes me run back to tcsh :)
52 • To shell or not to shell (by far2fish on 2021-06-30 07:53:23 GMT from Denmark)
I started out with ksh some 20 odd years ago, but quite early I switched over to bash. Has been running that happily since this year, where I chose to run zsh with the oh-my-zsh fraemwork on top. Using starship as theme, and I love all the plugins that can be configured in zsh.
53 • MATE 21.04 (by spellchecker on 2021-06-30 12:09:03 GMT from United Kingdom)
So how is it wiith retina displays? Stock Ubuntu is fine, Xubuntu not so good.
54 • zsh these days (by CS on 2021-06-30 15:00:08 GMT from United States)
Mac switched everything to zsh a few releases back because Bash switched license to GPLv3 starting in version 4 and GPLv3 is too radioactive to touch. This was the first time I tried zsh and I find it pretty similar for what I do, nevertheless I had to standardize on zsh.
It's a great example of how a toxic license impedes progress, forcing major segments of users to another ecosystem.
55 • tivolization/GPLv3 (by Otis on 2021-06-30 15:23:04 GMT from United States)
@54 I'm seeing something different in GPLv3 (bash) than is stated as "..too radioactive to touch."
"Tivoization is a dangerous attempt to curtail users' freedom: the right to modify your software will become meaningless if none of your computers let you do it. GPLv3 stops tivoization by requiring the distributor to provide you with whatever information or data is necessary to install modified software on the device." From https://www.gnu.org/licenses/quick-guide-gplv3.en.html
Feeling "forced to another ecosystem" seems to me like being allowed to make choices as we see fit.
56 • Shell and MATE user (by AdamB on 2021-06-30 22:02:08 GMT from Australia)
I use shells heavily, including on machines that are running a Desktop Environment. I have machines and virtual machines running server OSs which I SSH into. So far I have used Bash because it has always been the default.
I use aliases heavily, and have spent some time optimising my prompt, which makes a difference to ease of use. I have not found scripting in Bash to be easy to learn - if I had a lot of scripting to do, I might investigate alternatives.
I recently installed GhostBSD on one of my machines, using the MATE D/E. I selected Bash as the shell for my user account, and tried to use csh for root, but it was too difficult to recreate my preferred environment.So I changed root's shell to Bash - everything is on one partition anyway.
On Windows machines, I usually install Cygwin.
When Ubuntu changed to Unity, I migrated to Mint MATE,and I still have a couple of netbooks running that. When Ubuntu MATE appeared, I used that for new installations, or else MATE on Arch linux. However, because of the recent problems with systemd-resolved, I have converted some of my machines to either Devuan or Void - using MATE in both cases.
I experimented with Ubuntu MATE 21.04 on an external USB SSD, to get up-to-date ZFS, but having set up an encrypted dataset on a ZFS mirrored pair, I then installed Devuan Chimaera (which has up-to-date ZFS) on that machine, because I am not comfortable with Ubuntu's increasing reliance on Snaps.
I am suspicious of "improvements" to MATE.
57 • @56 Mate (by Hoos on 2021-07-01 02:21:47 GMT from Singapore)
Re: being suspicious of Mate improvements
Do you have any proof they have, for instance, added hard systemd dependencies to mate? Or made it not work with other inits? Added telemetry?
If not, and there is no other suspicion of nefarious additions, it seems strange to point fingers at them.
Also, as I understand it, Ubuntu Mate is a community project rather than an official Canonical one. So it's not Canonical pushing it upstream but the community project team.
And I say this as someone who doesn't even like Mate that much (prefer xfce).
58 • @55 Tivoization (by A on 2021-07-01 09:10:19 GMT from United Kingdom)
@55 - The fact that they coined the term "Tivoization" rather than something more universally comprehensible to English speakers reinforces just how USA-centric the FSF and GNU are. I had to click the link and Google the term to find out that it refers to a US brand of TV set-top box. These organisations have always been irrelevant outside the lawyer-land of the US - Stallman continually bores on about US politics of little interest to the rest of the world on his own site.
59 • Mate (by Otis on 2021-07-01 12:09:41 GMT from United States)
@58 I don't feel suspicious of Mate improvements per se, and freely admit that the remarks about Ubuntu/Canonical upstreaming to Debian made me think of things other than Mate itself. Indeed, that aspect of it did not even enter my mind (again, as I did not understand fully what the upstreaming was about and only focused on the corporation trying to influence Debian..looks naive now on my part now).
Meanwhile, the bits about that coined word are interesting.. as I looked at that site and found a reasonable explanation of GPLv3, which I needed. Perusing the page I noticed that coined word and the blurb and found it interesting, even though the U.S. centric notions about some of it are not lost on me.
60 • Coined (by lol on 2021-07-01 13:02:54 GMT from Canada)
Ah, I see they still use the made-up "Digital Restrictions Management".
Hard to take an entity seriously when they can't resist using one of RMS' butthurt colloquialisms rather than the proper expansion of DRM.
I'm surprised there isn't an "M$" or five salted throughout that manifesto.
61 • MATE and HiDPI (by spellchecker on 2021-07-01 13:51:57 GMT from United Kingdom)
@53 - Ubuntu MATE seems to work well with HiDPI / retina displays - after some fiddling with grub it coexists with the stock Ubuntu install quite happily. Hopefully other variants like Xubuntu will follow when 21.10 comes out.
62 • Rocky (by mchlbk on 2021-07-01 13:53:33 GMT from Denmark)
Like Centos, Rocky appears to make a very good base for a stable and snappy desktop os. I tried it this week and it appears to offer an exact similar experience.
Dedoimedo has a decent guide if anyone is interested.
63 • DRM (by Jane F. on 2021-07-01 14:50:41 GMT from Germany)
@60, the expansion of DRM to Digital Restrictions Management is far more accurate than "the proper expansion". Why should those who wish to restrict and limit the customers get to define the term and attempt to obfuscate what they are really doing? Accuracy is important. Marketing, less so.
64 • @57 MATE improvements (by AdamB on 2021-07-01 15:42:32 GMT from Australia)
My only concern, at this stage, is with theming. One of the current trends is towards a very flat appearance, which is not in accord with the way my brain works. Another trend is towards low contrast, which is not in accord with my eyesight.
Some of the themes available in Gnome2, and early MATE versions, worked well for me, but some recent distros do not have these older themes available by default. I am now attracted to dark themes, to reduce eye strain, but they need to be exceptionally well designed, in order to avoid contrast problems - and I find the flat look to be more of a usability problem on dark themes.
I am not as enthusiastic as the Ubuntu developers about the Yaru theme. Incidentally, my understanding is that the Mint team had a lot to do with the development of MATE.
Technical improvements will be necessary to keep up with hardware and display-server evolution, and MATE works well on GhostBSD, so there seems to be no problem with dependencies at present.
65 • Zealot linguistics (by uselessmore999 on 2021-07-01 17:43:57 GMT from Germany)
'the expansion of DRM to Digital Restrictions Management is far more accurate than "the proper expansion".'
No, it's not, because that proper expansion is a proper name. And trying to do “righter†by making proper names “more accurate†is complete nonsense. This is zealot linguistics and has nothing to do with serious criticism. Quite on the contrary, it's an activity for childish lunatics that rightfully turns any half-way sane person off.
You can still define the hell out of Digital Rights Management all you like, without changing the name.
Also, the reasoning that calling it Digital Restrictions Management was “far more accurate†than using the proper expansion is blatantly shallow in the first place. “Rights management†of any kind does, by nature, have a lot to do with restrictions anyway, may they be good or bad. Civil rights, for example, imply a lot of (in this case very reasonable) restrictions.
66 • DRM - a thorny weed by any other … definition, designation, … (by Somewhat Reticent on 2021-07-02 13:43:59 GMT from United States)
A "proper name"? Doesn't identify a person, place, or thing without describing it.
More of a marketing buzz-phrase. Not trademarked. No 'Truth in Labeling'.
Many alternative meanings of the acronym are available.
Defect Requirement Method
Denied Rights Mandate
…
depends on Point-Of-View of Beholder, eh?
Number of Comments: 66
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