Do any of you use Linux? If so, which distribution?

[StatGuy2000]

Hi everyone. I've been considering switching out of using a Windows laptop in favour of Linux. What I'm curious of is do any of you here on PF use the Linux OS. If so, which distribution do you use (Ubuntu, Fedora, etc.)? What has been your experience using Linux?

Appreciate any insights any of you may have.

 

[S.G. Janssens]

I have been using Linux for about 15 years now and since the Winter of 2005 I use it exclusively. For me, it is a delight because a lot of the software I use (e.g. $\LaTeX$, compilers, shells and newer programming languages such as Julia) is easily installed, kept up-to-date and put to work in harmony. However, my dear mom (who knows nothing about computers) also uses Linux (although she is probably unaware of it) and it let's her do all her everyday computer tasks: surfing the web, typing email and documents, playing media, making a photo album etc.

In the early 2000s Linux was a lot less user friendly than it is now, particularly because setting up devices required more work. I feel that presently installing and operating Linux is not more complicated than installing and using any of the other two mainstream systems. For this latter statement to hold, I assume that one installs one of the more user friendly distributions.

A "distribution" is a smaller or larger collection of software built around a common core (essentially the Linux kernel, possibly augmented with some critical userland tools) with the purpose of providing the user with a well-balanced working environment suitable for the distribution's intended purpose. In fact, you could choose to start with merely the kernel and build your own distribution yourself, but I would not recommend this to a beginning user, or perhaps to any user for that matter, unless you study CS or you are otherwise motivated by technical curiosity.

For the past decade, Debian has been my distribution of choice. It is very stable, well-maintained and it comes with a ton of easily installable software packages. There are many other distributions that often derive from one another. (For example, Ubuntu is a popular distribution for beginning Linux users that is based on Debian.)

Others surely have other favorites. I would advise you look around on Distowatch a bit and choose one of the bigger distributions. These have an active user base that you can easily turn to for support, should you need it. (You can send me a message too, when you are stuck and the web does not help.)

 

[deskswirl]

I experimented with Ubuntu 6.06 in 2006 and was intrigued mainly as a way to get life out of old hardware.

Starting from 2011 I've kept a Ubuntu partition or as the main OS on a non-networked computer (10.04 LTS). Due to a personal preference over the Unity shell I started using Debian in 2014 (with MATE) and use it for most simple tasks: spreadsheets, word processing, and programming (c and Mathematica).

The LibreOffice formatting is not as nice as Microsoft Office (which is still terrible in the 2016 version, in my opinion) so I have kept my Windows 7 partition for now. I have also intermittently used Arch, DSL, Lubuntu, CentOS, and Fedora. Also some of the browser plugins for Firefox (Iceweasel) and Chrome are not always the most reliable although they have been improved considerably in the past 3 years.

I would not recommend starting with Debian unless you have a lot of time on your hands or you might become frustrated quickly. I would however recommend Ubuntu to beginners due to the larger userbase and the ease with which it is to get wifi peripherals working correctly.

Regardless of what distro you choose I would recommend reading The Linux Command Line: http://linuxcommand.org/tlcl.php and following it command by command because inevitably you WILL need to look under the hood to diagnose package or library issues if you ever plan on updating your distro or installing software.

 

[nsaspook]

I've used Debian (32 and 64-bit) since it's early releases and have systems (with incremental hardware upgrades over that time period) with over a decade of total run-time. If you're looking for a simple plug&play experience then it's not the best of distributions but if you want years of stable operation for a server or critical development system it's what I would recommend for the long term user.

 

[john101]

I use Zorin today. It has options for a number of gui styles. eg, ubuntu, win7, mac with lots of configurations to set up including a preconfigured compiz cube. I like that. It's based on Ubuntu which is based on Debian.

Basically it's Debian or Slackware OS's. Both have adherents with good reasons why one is better than the other.

I'd like to try Arch linux in time. I've tried OpenSuse, Kali (interesting), Ubuntu, Red Hat (which was the first I tried back in the 90's and it convinced me Linux is the way to go but it took time for it to become the user friendly OS it can be today) and a few others. It's easy to try the various distros.

They are readily available as downloads and torrents.

edit add: I always keep an eye on Trisquel GNU/Linux. I like the idea. I came across it because of interest in Richard Stallman and the Free Software Foundation.

 

[QuantumQuest]

After some years dealing with Unix, I remember installing a commercial distribution of Red Hat 9 on my home PC. Several problems with hardware arose but that was mainly not related to Linux itself. Linux was in need of more testing and improvement, but it was early enough for vendors to take it into account for home users. After that I installed and played with Fedora Core 6. Because I was experimenting with multi - boot configurations back then, I had some very hard times with partition management and loading of OSs. Finally, with the use of commercial partition management software that handled the boot loaders of each OS (no easy task at all), I ended up having several distros on two PCs and I started to use Debian 4.0 for programming and some deep dives to the core. I also used Mandriva 2007.1 and later OpenSuse 11.1. One distro I found really great back in 2007, was PCLinuxOS. Great windows system, graphics, extremely simple even for the novice user and with great hardware support. Next, I worked with Debian 5 and Ubuntu.

Today, Linux enjoys full vendor support thanks mainly to its great community as a whole and I agree that Ubuntu is a very user friendly distro, even for beginners. I use it along with some other distros in a virtualized environment (full operation), as there is no point for multi - boot configurations anymore. I currently don't use it in my work but I'll never stop using it for deep dives in programming. A very enjoyable task is also to get involved to the development of some Linux distribution and see what hard times means in programming first hand, but in a good sense for real lovers of programming. Recently, Microsoft has started making great leaps towards the Linux world, not only in cloud (Azure) but with several tools developed for Linux. That is definitely a good thing for Linux itself.

One thing already mentioned in the thread, is the use of some command shell. That's the real interface of the "heart" for any Linux distro and sooner or later something that a beginner Linux user must master. In fact the whole thing of interaction with the system, is just a different - to Windows or other OSs, set of procedures and it just needs some time to getting used to.. And it gives back way more freedom regarding all aspects of computer use.

 

[Jozape]

I used Scientific Linux for 2 years, but for the past 2 years -- year 1 overlapped with my use of Scientific Linux -- I have been using OpenBSD. OpenBSD lacks the newest fashions in software -- like Julia -- but the packages and ports trees have most of the essentials. The packages and ports trees are managed excellently; I have yet to run into any problems adding or deleting any software from these trees. The system in general is easy to understand and designed to work. This is aided by the excellent documentation, which is second to none if we are only judging documentation by the manual pages. The answer to a question is usually only a command away. The base system doesn't enable much by default, so knowing what your system is doing is easier to grok from the start, since you have to configure it. Thankfully, configuration is easy, aided again by the excellent manual pages. Most if not all configuration files have a manual page in section 5.

OpenBSD is probably the most secure general purpose operating system and what gives it fame, though I'm not sure how relevant that is to most scientists.

OpenBSD has some weaknesses, besides having fewer packages and ports than some Linux-based operating systems: OpenBSD supports less hardware because of the developers' unwillingness to support hardware that is not documented and because OpenBSD has fewer developers than Linux. OpenBSD is usually slower because of the developers' goals of having an understandable and maintainable system. OpenBSD does not have patches for releases older than a year. OpenBSD has fewer users than the most popular Linux-based distributions, so there are fewer users that can help.

The documentation is not aimed at newbies, so I'm hesitant to recommend it as an operating system for newbies who are studying by themselves. If you know a user that can teach you OpenBSD though, OpenBSD is probably a great learning tool due to its simplicity.

EDIT: OpenBSD is not a Linux-based operating system if I didn't make that fact obvious, but OpenBSD is very similar and shares many of the same tools.

 

[Borek]

At the moment I have Raspbian on a "server" (basically for log backups and some automated remote site maintenance) and Debian as a fast VM (for things that take ages on the Raspberry, like grepping gigabytes of logs), but I spend 99% of my time under Windows. Linux is there just for some tasks that are easier to do from the command line (at least for me).

Neither system is kept up to date, as it generally doesn't matter for things I am doing, I just check now and then if there are no reports about alarming security problems.

 

[fluidistic]

Nowadays I'm using Arch linux and Manjaro on my 2 laptops. I don't need Windows or any other OS for now, Linux does the job for me.
Web browsing, some programming, writing Latex documents, Impress (the "power point" equivalent from LibreOffice) presentations and just having fun with Linux (err GNU/Linux, sorry RMS) itself.
I've started with Ubuntu some years ago. Then I tried a few others but Lubuntu and Gentoo are the ones that I sticked to the longest as well as the ones I've mentioned I'm currently using.

 

[Sophia]

I use Linux Mint. I started with 17, then followed 17.1 and 17. 2 and finally, I upgraded to 18 this week.
I tried Ubuntu, Fedora, Bodhi Linux, Kubuntu, Xubuntu in the past but I always returned to Mint Cinnamon.

I'm very satisfied with the system and wouldn't go back to Windows. At first, it looks complicated and I had to ask for advice on the LM forum often (very friendly and helpful people!). But I set everything up quite fast and once I solved simple beginner's issues, everything's running great and I had no system problems for a very long time.

One problem I often have after clean install is that wifi doesn't work for some reason. I did several clean installs of various distros on two computers, so I did a clean install maybe 10-15 times. I highly recommend that during the install, you have another device at home with a reliable internet connection. Don't rely on functional internet when you turn the machine on for the first time. But in most cases, I had a working machine in 30-60min including time for actual installation and googling for solutions.

What I like about Linux is that it's stable, reliable and secure. In my experience it is also faster compared to Windows.
Negatives include mainly that some programs and games only work on Windows. You can use Wine for linux or Windows Virtual machine to solve the problem. But sometimes it was quite hard or impossible for me to make certain software run on Linux. But for me, these were rare occasions and overall, I find Linux superior to Windows and I enjoy using it.

Linux mint is very beginner friendly. It is meant to be the first distro you try after switching from Windows to Linux. It also has a cool option to set the level of risk you want to take with updates. You can choose to update only packages tried and approved by the LM team or you can be adventurous and accept all new packages. There are a few options between these extremes and they are color coded and numbered so that newbies understand what are they doing and what level of risk are they taking with the updates. This distro is used by newbies and elderly people because it's difficult to ruin the system unless you try hard :)

 

[Stephen Tashi]

Hi everyone. I've been considering switching out of using a Windows laptop in favour of Linux.

What advantage do you expect to get from switching? Do you like to "fool with computers" just for the sake of learning how to do it? (To some extent, I do.)

A big consideration is whether you will be obligated to exchange "Windows compatible" information with people. It's usually possible to handle files designed for Windows in Linux, but you may have to learn a different procedure for each type of file.

I use Fedora. The biggest disadvantage to Fedora is that support (in the form of updates) for a given version of Fedora is only available for a few years. So I either end up using an "unsupported" version or I have to upgrade or install a new version more frequently that I wish.

To efficiently use Linux (and perhaps Windows too?) you must learn to do a certain amount of work using the command line. I tried Ubuntu many years ago and felt an aversion to using the obligatory (in Ubuntu) "sudo..." in front of administrative commands. I prefer the (naughty) practice of logging in as "root".

Before you pick a version of Linux, see what forums and blogs are available that give information about that version. With Fedora, I find fedoraforums.org useful. The last time I looked at an Ubuntu forum, it was not well organized. There were many unanswered posts. Many of the posters weren't literate in English and many threads were not useful. Perhaps an Ubuntu user can direct you to good sources of information.

There can be drastic changes between different versions of Fedora. If you look up information that is several years old, it may be obsolete. (e.g. the replacement of the update command "yum" by the newer command "dnf").

 

[eys_physics]

I am using Linux Mint Debian. It has worked well for me. Maybe, for a newcomer the ordinary Linux Mint is more convenient. It has a larger amount of users. My experience is that when problems occur in Linux, you can solve them quickly by using Google or forum. Obviously, Linux is different from Windows. You will have to learn to use new software.

 

[Greg Bernhardt]

I was a Mandrake user in high school, but it appears to have died

 

[NTL2009]

I first tried Linux in 2009 (my handle here and on some other tech forums actually stands for 'New To Linux 2009'). At the time, I wanted a netbook for a trip. I don't like Windows, and the Apple versions were ~ $2,000 at the time. I found an ASUS PC901 from Amazon that came with linux, for ~ $280. I was initially super impressed with the built in linux (Xandros) - I was on my network, browsing, printing in no time, no troubles! But... I got stuck in a loop trying to make updates, ran out of memory, and it just got dragged down. There was a lot of locked down apps that I could not eliminate. After some reading, I worked up the nerve to install Ubuntu, (a variant for that machine I think), and that was great. I couldn't believe all the stuff I did on that little thing. OpenOffice, Sketchup, music programs, audio editing, browsers, email.

I was easily able to configure it with as many virual desktops as I wanted (workspaces), which really helped the useability with a small screen (9").

I was so happy with it, that when my iMac died, I decided to buy a windows laptop and install Ubuntu, and use it as my daily machine. I have not looked back. I now run Xubuntu (just didn't care for Unity), and I love it. It is so configurable (and the configurations are all done through GUI interfaces) - I have everything set up just as I like it. Like comfy shoes.

When I need to do something on my wife's MacBook, I just go nuts. Only recently did they get multiple tabs for the Finder. It hides stuff from you w/o telling you (searches do not include the system files unless you jump through hoops). I find it easier to use for almost everything, and I came from the Mac world.

... One thing already mentioned in the thread, is the use of some command shell. That's the real interface of the "heart" for any Linux distro and sooner or later something that a beginner Linux user must master. ...

I don't see it that way. I rarely get into the terminal (well, I'm currently writing some Python scripts for an external application, so that doesn't really count). The installer is GUI based, the set up is all GUI. I barely know my way around the command line, even after all this time. And I've installed on several different systems. It's easy.

Now, when you discover some sort of problem, often times the fix will be described with a terminal command. At first I thought this was odd, often there was a GUI method to do it. But then I learned that a cut/paste of a command is easier than describing how to go through a dialog box, and that box may change over time - the commands are more stable.

But I don't consider a cut/paste as 'mastering' the command line. It's just a pragmatic method for those sorts of fixes.

I can toggle hide/show hidden files with Command-H in my file manager on Linux. On a Mac, I need to execute several commands in the terminal (hide or unhide, then restart the finder)!

There is a lot you can do from the terminal, but you rarely actually need to (outside of copy/paste) very often at all.

-New To Linux 2009

 

[QuantumQuest]

I don't see it that way. I rarely get into the terminal (well, I'm currently writing some Python scripts for an external application, so that doesn't really count). The installer is GUI based, the set up is all GUI. I barely know my way around the command line, even after all this time. And I've installed on several different systems. It's easy.

So, does this mean that there is no need for a user to learn the command shell? What about power users, programmers and developers in general? The whole thing depends on how you use your Linux system. Saying

That's the real interface of the "heart" for any Linux distro and sooner or later something that a beginner Linux user must master.

I mean that it will be advantageous in every use case, to learn the command shell. Even for someone who doesn't want to get a deep dive into the internals of Linux, command shell will help to do his/her work way faster in most cases. That was the meaning of "must" in my phrase. The first part of my quoted phrase tells why.

 

[NTL2009]

So, does this mean that there is no need for a user to learn the command shell? What about power users, programmers and developers in general? The whole thing depends on how you use your Linux system. Saying

I mean that it will be advantageous in every use case, to learn the command shell. Even for someone who doesn't want to get a deep dive into the internals of Linux, command shell will help to do his/her work way faster in most cases. That was the meaning of "must" in my phrase. The first part of my quoted phrase tells why.

OK, it was just the "must" that kind of threw me. No doubt it is advantageous, knowledge is always good. And once in a great while I wish I were more proficient when I'm interested in something out of the ordinary, but I don't see it as necessary to run/use Linux. But it depends on what 'work' you are talking about. I can install software w/o the terminal, I can use LibreOffice w/o the terminal. I just don't see it as a 'must' - more of a 'want' for those who want to dig into it.
I just looked through the folder where I kept track of problems when I installed 14.04, and there are very few issues that required me to get into the terminal, and those were copy/paste solutions. I didn't need any proficiency with terminal commands for that.

I fear that people that could benefit from Linux are scared of these statements about the terminal. Like I said, I rarely get in there out of any normal need, and when I do it is almost always a simple copy/paste from a trusted site with a solution. Lots of people could handle that, not just people interested in how things work 'under the hood'.

There is a terminal (console think they call it) on my wife's MacBook. But I doubt that viewing Facebook could be done 'way faster' through the console. She gets along fine w/o the terminal (though I have used it on her Mac for some troubleshooting - again, copy/paste).

 

[Sophia]

I agree that there's little need to learn terminal commands if one is an average user.

In the rare situations I do need it, I only copy paste from the solutions I find on the Internet. It's easy and fast. And actually installing a program is easier in the terminal than using gui.

So if even I can use this system, everyone can! I have no education in IT or programming.

 

[QuantumQuest]

I fear that people that could benefit from Linux are scared of these statements about the terminal

Scared of what? Learning command shell is just something that you get used to with time, provided that you like to do it. If anyone doesn't like it, is a whole different story. For me, as a developer, is a real have to but I fail to see how an average user would be scared with command shell.

But I doubt that viewing Facebook could be done 'way faster' through the console.

I didn't talk about Mac. Thing is that in Linux that I talk about, all are about the command shell. Now, if someone can do his work without using it it's just fine but there's no reason to demonize it.

 

[john101]

My separation with windows and a lean towards Linux started with win95. I liked the disk operating system being separate from the gui as in pre fat32 windows-dos. It's in dos I grew to like the command line. Linux keeps that. You can set up different gui's and not use any. From memory you could still boot into dos in xp. (?, maybe it was 98) after that to hack the windows gui (or dos) I boot into linux to look at a windows installation and make changes that appear impossible from a windows boot.

I finally dropped windows some years ago ( except for a couple of specific purposes eg to easily access my iphone or use a specific program not in Linux, eg Meesofts ImageAnalyzer, and for that I have no reason to go beyond 7) when I became aware Linux had become the easy to use thing it can be.

I don't use the command line/terminal much but it's nice to know it's there the way I like it to be and that there is plenty of help around to learn how to use it.

 

[Stephen Tashi]

So, does this mean that there is no need for a user to learn the command shell?

And learning the shell is a task different from learning commands. (It similar to the distinction between learning a programming language versus learning all the options and settings of a complicated program that someone has written in that language.) The main task in the terminal interface is understanding the syntax and meaning of various commands. Many command-line users don't master a large number of commands. Instead they master the art of using the "man" command to get documentation about how to use a command.

You can use commands from the command line without appreciating the "shell" as programming language. If you want to read or write command "scripts" then you need to understand the shell as a programming language.

I agree that people can use Linux (or Windows) without using a terminal interface very often. However, if you only use gui interfaces, you limit what level of detail you are exposed to and sometimes you need to get into the details to analyze why something isn't working.

What about power users, programmers and developers in general?

They better learn how to use the command line interface!

 

[nvoucye]

For newbies, I recommend Ubuntu, which is quite easy to use.

 

[stoomart]

Which distribution do you use (Ubuntu, Fedora, etc.)? What has been your experience using Linux?

Just depends on the purpose: RedHat/Oracle for production servers, CentOS for lab/home servers, OpenBSD for hardened network services, and Fedora/Debian for personal systems.
I've been a Linux guy since I was 13 (1995) but have yet to ever be satisfied enough to complely ditch Windows, good luck!

 

[nikkkom]

I use Fedora. The biggest disadvantage to Fedora is that support (in the form of updates) for a given version of Fedora is only available for a few years. So I either end up using an "unsupported" version or I have to upgrade or install a new version more frequently that I wish.

I installed Fedora Rawhide - it never becomes obsolete, since it is a rolling release. (However, it also means it is more likely to break).

 

[Dr. Courtney]

Ubuntu.

 

[Rubidium_71]

Yes, my media server runs on Linux. It's the Raspbian OS on a Raspberry Pi 3B board. It's a little more work to configure than Windows, iOS or Android but once it's set up it's reliable.
My youngest brother installed Ubuntu on his laptop, he had become very frustrated with Windows 8 at the time. He loves it and still uses Ubuntu today.

 

[Routaran]

If so, which distribution do you use (Ubuntu, Fedora, etc.)? What has been your experience using Linux?
Appreciate any insights any of you may have.

I originally started with Ubuntu as most new linux users often do. It's a good way to transition as it comes with a lot of GUI tools. After about a year, I left Ubuntu for the same reason I gave up on windows, too much bloat. I eventually landed on Debian as their philosophy is one i really liked. I've been using it for the last 3-4 years now.
They tend to stay behind a little bit on adopting the latest technologies but it means they use well developed software and as a result, Debian is fantastically stable, Debian systems are rumored to go over a year without a restart(uptime is into months for me now). The package repositories are very large and well supported and the system is free of any kind of bloat
I currently use it on all my systems at home; a file server, desktop and a couple notebooks. At work, I built a computational cluster with it and use it as my primary driver in a Windows domain environment.

I would suggest you look at the Ubuntu route as I did or Mint. It will probably offer you the easiest transition. Fedora is also another really good option but I feel the other two are easier.

 

[Rubidium_71]

Anyone have experience with Tails or Qubes?

 

[Routaran]

Anyone have experience with Tails or Qubes?

what would you like to know?

 

[JorisL]

At the moment I'm on openSUSE which I quite like. What little experience I have with yum and apt-get leads me to consider zypper the superior package manager (of those three). I'm starting on my fourth year of using it exclusively I think.

For me a big reason to stick with it is the natural feel to the command line interface. I use make to update my resume (typeset in LaTeX) depending on the language (make dutch for example). Cleaning folders is another thing I do using the CLI, it's so much easier for me (check contents in seconds without opening a new window? Yes please).
Another example is programming, I'm learning some node.js and it comes with its own package manager. Other technologies are quickest in the command line as well. For me that was and is the biggest advantage along with the package manager.

I planned on installing arch a while back but I'm putting that on the back burner because it's not as simple as Suse.

As an alternative to ubuntu there's linux mint these days which looks really nice, check the slideshow at https://linuxmint.com/screenshots.php

 

[Cod]

I use Arch Linux on my laptop; however, I would not recommend it for anyone new to Linux. To utilize everything Arch Linux has to offer, you have to be very comfortable and confident with using the command line. A package manger was introduced a few builds back; however, there is still a lot of manual labor involved compared to other distros.

If you don't have any experience with linux, I recommend Ubuntu or Linux Mint (as others have mentioned). Also, take the free Introduction to Linux course from eDX (https://www.edx.org/course/introduction-linux-linuxfoundationx-lfs101x-0). Its self-paced and taught by Linus himself. I highly recommend the course for someone brand new to Linux.

 

[UsableThought]

I ran Gentoo for many years, from about roughly 2000 or 2001 to maybe 2008? I just visited their site & they are still there, plus the philosophy seems the same as when I used it: https://www.gentoo.org

The attraction of Gentoo is a bit weird: you can compile the kernel & all software packages with flags for your particular hardware, thus making it very efficient in terms of memory usage. However since memory has steadily become cheaper, I think the appeal of this is less than it used to be. And compiles take a long time. Other than that, Gentoo is very much a get-under-the-hood-and-tinker system. It was my first distro, but I'm not sure I'd recommend it to others starting out. But I do think it was more fun for me than running any of the standard distros, because back then I really did love to tinker. For window managers I usually used KDE, but toyed a bit with Fluxbox; wasn't a big Gnome fan.

Also, I agree w/ those who believe that learning the shell (e.g. Bash) and related programs is a good thing. And also C, Python, etc. - these are all very friendly to Linux and so Linux is a good way to learn them, fast or slow as you like. If I ever get a yen for doing more command line programming, I'll probably install some version of Linux again.

Plus a neat thing about Gentoo was the user community; and I imagine many other distros are like this too. Very active forums with great mutual support.

But for me, once I lost interest in tinkering, Linux wasn't worth it - big time suck, at least with Gentoo; and worse, with a few exceptions the windowed applications just aren't as smooth as those for Mac or even for Windows. Yes, you can run Windows on Linux via Wine, and if you have a fast machine you usually will be able to run stuff like Microsoft Word without a problem. But I think I'd miss all the cool small applications that I use all the time on Mac. Plus if you find you just want a few favorite Linux apps, whether a GUI app like bluefish or a command line tool such as pdftk, a good deal of it is available on Mac via X11/XQuartz and MacPorts.

Yet even so Linux used to give me an altruistic, "fight the power" feeling which was worth something all by itself. And you have to love all those desktop screenshots that people share:

 

[jim mcnamara]

Started with UNIX in the late 1970's. FWIW, Xenix (kind of unix for PC's owned by Microsoft), was interoperable with early Microsoft OS releases. So Windows in a sense is a descendant of UNIX. And I'm fine with both.

So now, Linux is converging back onto Microsoft "turf" in a sense. Windows 10's "upgrade as malware" apparently pushed new people into Linux.
http://www.computerworld.com/article/3080102/operating-systems/how-windows-10-became-malware.html
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/2...ows-10-upgrade-sales-pitch-went-too-far.shtml

Basically distros (versions of Linux) are a kind of distraction. If you like windows stick with it. If you can't afford the cost of staying current with windows, get a linux version that somebody you know really well already has and likes. For example, Linux Mint, Ubuntu, Debian and some others, except for about 20 minutes of following directions to install it, run very like windows. Local computer shops here charge about $40 to install whatever Linux, either standalone or dual boot with windows. So you can bring up either one on the same machine.

In all honesty people like choices, and this has spawned the development of lots of linux flavors. My only suggestion - get a version that is actively supported.
Debian family is an example. You can tell by the list of updates, usually on the download page.

And yes, I do run Linux on a high end box with an i7 cpu, ssd's and a too-expensive, too-hot graphics card. Windows is on the same box. When I need software, I check the Linux world first.

 

[NTL2009]

...

If you don't have any experience with linux, I recommend Ubuntu or Linux Mint (as others have mentioned). Also, take the free Introduction to Linux course from eDX (https://www.edx.org/course/introduction-linux-linuxfoundationx-lfs101x-0). Its self-paced and taught by Linus himself. I highly recommend the course for someone brand new to Linux.

Thanks, I was unaware of this course. I've been using Linux since 2009, but never did any formal training at all, just plug and chug and search out problems or things I needed to get done. I started the course, though I knew some it so far, a nice organized approach to fill in all the pieces is something I think I'll benefit from. Especially pronunciation of all these terms! So 'etc' is 'et-see', I think I read that, but maybe now it will stick.

 

[newjerseyrunner]

I have a bunch of distros that I use for different things.

I use Ubuntu for regular development or just general computer usage.

I used Fedora also for development and debugging because it's more like Redhat.

I use Redhat and CentOS for servers, both dev and production.

 

[Rubidium_71]

what would you like to know?

How user friendly is it ? Is Qubes easier to use than Tails? How difficult is it to dump Windows and use Tails instead? My intention would be to browse the web with it, use Gimp, Audacity and Banshee.

 

[newjerseyrunner]

What will you be doing exactly that you want to use Tails? Tails is usually a minimal installation and if you want user friendly, you need a UI. Linux can go two ways: lay users and power users. Lay users just want it to replace Windows for them, but give them most of the same tools. Power users often don't even install a GUI. Since you mention web browsing, Gimp, and Audacity, Ubuntu would probably be best for you.

 

[litup]

I record audio professionally, bands and such and use windows 7 on a Thinkpad with Cakewalk sonar platinum DAW and wavelab and some nice I/O's

I use a Tascam 16-08 I/O and it requires windows or mac. Are there linux versions that have audio DAW's as powerful and versitile as what I already have? Also, what about audio I/O's like my Tascam? Are there any ready for linux. That 16-08 is really great, 8 XLR mic ins,preamps and limiter/compressor, 2 more instrument ins on 1/4 inch jacks and fiber inputs and outs also. Anything close to that for linux? What I have now is powerful and stable but would like to squeeze the most capability out of the CPU's onboard and such.

 

[Rubidium_71]

Ubuntu would probably be best for you.

That's what my brother uses and he likes it a lot. However, I still think security is a valid concern. He says he doesn't worry about it because he's not running Windows anymore, but from what I read there can still be security problems with Linux. Maybe running Ubuntu through Tor directly would be the most user friendly/secure method?

 

[JorisL]

That's what my brother uses and he likes it a lot. However, I still think security is a valid concern. He says he doesn't worry about it because he's not running Windows anymore, but from what I read there can still be security problems with Linux. Maybe running Ubuntu through Tor directly would be the most user friendly/secure method?

Changing your habits would be the best method.
And using Tor to visit anything is useless if your habits aren't adjusted as well.

 

[Jozape]

That's what my brother uses and he likes it a lot. However, I still think security is a valid concern. He says he doesn't worry about it because he's not running Windows anymore, but from what I read there can still be security problems with Linux. Maybe running Ubuntu through Tor directly would be the most user friendly/secure method?

You seem to be equivalating anonymity with security. That is a false equivalence. Anonymity is a form of security, but it's only one form, and you won't have much anonymity with Tails and Tor if you don't use them correctly.

 

[Rubidium_71]

Changing your habits would be the best method.
And using Tor to visit anything is useless if your habits aren't adjusted as well.

I don't recall mentioning any of my "habits." I'm not sure what you're assuming about me there.

You seem to be equivalating anonymity with security. That is a false equivalence. Anonymity is a form of security, but it's only one form, and you won't have much anonymity with Tails and Tor if you don't use them correctly.

That was the reason I asked the question in this thread, I was curious what the actual advantages might be to using Tails, Qubes or something similar. I didn't intend to equivocate anonymity with security as an absolute. My experience with Ubuntu is very limited and I have no experience with Tor at all, just a few things I've read.

Thanks for the input, I'll obviously have to do some more research on the subject.

 

[Routaran]

I don't recall mentioning any of my "habits." I'm not sure what you're assuming about me there.
That was the reason I asked the question in this thread, I was curious what the actual advantages might be to using Tails, Qubes or something similar. I didn't intend to equivocate anonymity with security as an absolute. My experience with Ubuntu is very limited and I have no experience with Tor at all, just a few things I've read.
Thanks for the input, I'll obviously have to do some more research on the subject.

Qubes and Tails aren't really meant for the same task.

Qubes focuses on providing security by spearating activities you do into specific containers and preventing each container from ever interacting with each other. It will be up to you to separate your activities into containers and then add the programs you wish to use to those containers. Then ensure that you stick to that segregation of activities for it to be effective. If something goes wrong with one container, it will not affect your applications/data in another. For example: if you make one VM for banking and finance, and another for surfing the internet, then getting infected on the internet VM won't compromise your banking/financial data. On a normal system everything would be compromised.

Tails on the other hand is focused on providing privacy while surfing on the internet. It runs off a Live disk and entirely on RAM so it leaves no evidence that it was ever run on a system. I wouldn't call Tails a security related distribution (depends on how you define the term really, for me security and privacy are distinct domains), it's geared towards trying to protect your identity on the internet. It does things like use Tor to protect your source IP, it spoofs its responses to servers to make it appear like it's a windows system and not linux, etc.
To use it effectively, you will have to make sure that you don't really do anything that you have done on regular internet while on Tails and vice versa. Otherwise, its pointless. Remember, companies/governments already have a very accurate profile of your internet behaviours so switching to Tor and then still going to your same 5 fav sites isn't going to really protect your identity.

With respect for to your desire for greater security: The overwhelming majority of malware on the internet is built for Windows. Windows binaries do not work on linux so they are all harmless. Switching to any Linux distribution will make you much safer simply by the virtue that it's not Windows.
That said, it's not immune to being attacked as evidenced by the recent Dirty COW vulnerability that was discovered in the linux kernel. Using Qubes will provide more security for a user as it will effectively isolate the compromised portion of the system and prevent any of your other activities from being affected. But behaviours count. Let's say your internet VM is compromised and your physics forum password stolen. If you are using the same password on your banking site, then Qubes will not protect you. This is what I believe the others meant by habits.

 

[Rubidium_71]

@Routaran

Thanks very much for the detailed info and clarification. This is exactly what I was looking for. :)

 

[smokingwheels]

There is Raspberry Pi Pixel OS Beta (Debian Jessie based) for x86 Pc and Mac, I have be using it on old hardware and it flys granted its only on a USB stick ATM.
I use Ubuntu 14.04 with a ThinLinc server on an old Quad core, like Ms terminal service except Free for upto 10 users.
I also use Debian 8.6 Jessie 32 bit in low end clouds run various things, saves me money on the power bill.
The best thing I like is all the commands work thru different flavors...Not like Mr tumble dry..
Win 10 on old notebook = 12 hours of thrashing my HDD.

 

[kevnjohn]

I was Ubuntu user 2 years back but my experience was not good.

 

[HyperTechno]

I do. I have dual booted Fedora 27 and Windows 10. I find my self always selecting Fedora from the grub menu, because it feels so smooth and refined, even though the battery life is not good. On windows 10, in general usage, I get around 8 hours of battery on my laptop, but on Fedora, same usage gives me only around 6 or 5.5 hours of battery life. But the upcoming Fedora 28 version is going to come up with built in power optimizations and I'm looking forward to it.
(I'm by no means an experienced linux user, I'm a newbie).
My first linux distro was Ubuntu, don't remember the version. I dual booted it with windows 7 on my old Pentium 4 desktop computer which is now is pieces. Then, many months ago I dual booted Ubunto 17.04 on my laptop with windows 10. Then, about 2 weeks ago, decided to try Fedora and dual booted the 27 with windows 10.(Removed ubuntu).
I like Fedora better than Ubuntu for some unknown reason. I hope to install the Ubuntu 18.04 which is coming later this month on my laptop so that it would be a triple boot, such that I have something from Red hat and something from Debian and something from Microsoft.
I really like to get rid of windows once and forever, but I need it for my studies as I need to use Visual Studio and other windows stuff. Besides, the greater battery life doesn't let me remove windows. ;-)

 

[Dr Transport]

Rereading this thread has reminded me of some of the flavors of Linux I forgot existed. So to get to it, I used Mandrake in the early 2000's then switched to RedHat. I then got away from the whole 'nix thing for a while because we totally switched to Windows at work. I did screw around with Ubuntu the really dropped back to Windows full time at home.

For the past year, the two places I worked (one of the major aerospace companies and the other is an division of the government) one uses Redhat, the other Debian 8 (the guy in the group refuses to upgrade because of his complete paranoia against change, i.e. if he was 30 years younger he'd be diagnosed with Asperger syndrome). Anyway, I had to re-learn my Linux skills so I started with Manjaro, but was unhappy with it and I messed around with updating an old notebook to Debian so I had a machine at my house as opposed to my apartment (I am a geographic bachelor) and that went quick and easy so I just reloaded my other box with Debian 9 and am in the process of getting everything loaded and running. One of my co-workers is big into GNU Radio, so he helps me when I get stuck which isn't often. My supervisor is a whiz at it, he runs everything from the command line and knows more than most. I never worked over multiple systems, just on a dedicated machine/cluster and he just spouted off rsync commands like they were second nature, not to mention writes, compiles and debugs FORTRAN code from the command line (we argue who wins the nerd contest every month, usually it is him).

Switching is easy, but if you run Windows software and are used to it, you need two boxes (I never am able to get a dual boot running).

 

[HyperTechno]

I never am able to get a dual boot running.

Why?. Even on UEFI, it shouldn't be that hard.

 

[Dr Transport]

Why?. Even on UEFI, it shouldn't be that hard.

It's not, but the last couple of times I did it wasn't that easy and I dorked up my system that I was trying to install next too...