Linux in every home. Which distribution to choose?
This article is an attempt to share my personal experience of choosing a Linux distribution, indicating a few unexpected, as well as quite expected, rakes. 
Writing it is caused by an opinion that has been formed and needs to be quit on whether Linux should be used at home at all.
Somehow it happened that Win XP was simply tired of it, and my greed did not give me money for Win 7 (the illegal version does not allow me to put a conscience that has become brazen recently).
I wanted something airy, beautiful and free ... well, I also wanted adventures, which finally pushed me to try a full migration to Linux.
The computer is a laptop ASUS F8Sg with the following devices on board:
As the first distribution was chosen fresh brainchild of the French community under the caressing ear called Mandriva 2010.
This choice was made mainly because Mandriva 2008 had a second system on a laptop for a long time, but only for informational purposes, on a 10GB partition (which I eventually took away from her and fed the insatiable Windows safely).
Deciding what to experiment - so experiment, the version downloaded x86_64, of course, PowerPack.
Well, now the points.
Mandrivov's default "sneakers" are bright, shiny and multifunctional. Convenient (IMHO) file manager Dolphin, heaps of plasmoids, gadgets, widgets, etc., allowing you tolitter decorate the desktop.
BUT: Plasmoids that require an Internet connection (for example, viewing the weather forecast) do not allow the desktop to appear on the desktop until they establish their network connection. Those. With the Internet turned off, we see a black screen with a mouse cursor for 3-5 minutes. The system is fully functional. And if the Internet falls off during the work, the desktop freezes, although all running applications are available. There are certain methods to circumvent this problem (maybe this is generally a special case of my system), but the fact of the possibility of such a bug in the office. release causes slight bewilderment.
')
The installer software in Mandriva RPM-based is quite convenient.
BUT: picking up the sound in the clips of the .mts format and having read that Pulseaudio can be harmful, I decided to demolish the latter. And, unfortunately, through the GUI. He ticked, pressed the delete button and calmly went to pour some tea. My surprise was great when, in the deletion status, I saw a drakconfig package that could not go along with Pulseaudio. I stopped the process, in the end - half of the packages related to KDE turned out to be safely evaporated. After that, my eyes became like a penguin in Mandriva. Someone will say - through the console you need to delete, or look at the list of dependencies. But then again - the system does not have the right to be called “Linux for all”, if such, to put it mildly, chilling rakes with teeth really are hidden half a meter hidden in it. The whole KDE should not end up depending on one side package, and no one is obliged to do something through the console if there is an alternative in the form of a full-featured GUI.
The next problem - attempts to install the second package immediately after installing the first (via the GUI) result in a warning about missing packages and the installer GUI must be restarted. The confirmed bug is in errata , but still not cured.
Yes, I was also pleased with the timely offer to “upgrade” to Mandriva 2009.1 at the first launch of the system. But it is, in principle, not terrible, the elimination is in the same errata .
Internet access by my provider is organized as follows: a LAN (as a nicer option from a wireless access point) is distributed to a LAN, and a PPPoE tunnel is established for going out to the world.
I won’t tell about PPPoE for Linux - the topic is pretty beaten up and all the rakes and ways tocatch them jump over are described in more than detail for almost all distributions. It all worked in general, chocolate.
BUT: Wi-Fi - and here hello, rake new, maple. When connecting to the Internet through an access point, the provider found a drop in speed at irregular intervals. Slow speed was not found in the output of the iwconfig command, but it was more than palpable. Tests on speedtest.net showed 0.6 / 0.3 Mbps instead of 6/6 Mbps. The only thing that cured was laying down the wlan0 interface and reconnecting it again.
A bunch of various diagnostics, experiments and excavations in the system logs showed that the problem is with wi-fi, not with pppoe or the provider as a whole. Bottom line: congratulations to all the lucky owners of Intel AGN 4965. The standard iwlagn module supports it crookedly up to the current stable kernel 2.6.32.2 (judging by the forums). Salvation one - ndiswrapper. Well, or the rejection of radio waves in favor of the good old copper.
Ndiswrapper under x86-64 managed to get to work (not through the GUI-installer curve, but through the console), but only WinXP-shnye 32-bit drivers of the 4th version from Intel (NETW4X32.INF) went. The process with active network use ( download like us, download better than us! ) Loads the second CPU core up to 80%.
Proprietary drivers were installed without problems, Compiz and others like it worked adequately. Launched under wine HOMM 5, Half-Life 2 went quite playable (this also applies to sound - there were no problems). The only thing was that when pixel shaders were turned off in the wine settings, there were problems with graphics in the Valve product - for example, the absence of a spot of light from a flashlight. If pixel shaders were turned on, then fps dropped sharply. It was decided to install the -directx 81 flag when starting the game.
By the way, if anyone knows, the winetricks utility is very convenient for installing all kinds of junk, incl. and DirectX.
Rollers .mts in the end lost the best of all Dragon Player, coming along with the system. My favorite smplayer video stream mercilessly accelerated, and it was not treated in any way, and VLC periodically produced poor artifacts and color defects in the image.
There were no common problems, even under wine everything went with the default settings - no shamanism with the emulation level and driver type. Very surprised.
But Amarok seemed completely crooked. Just hang on startup and everything, because of what was suddenly and mercilessly sent to / dev / null, the benefit of alternative players in bulk.
Neither Bluetooth, nor the card reader, nor the camera, nor the wired network card had any complaints. Everything started at the very first launch and never forced me to rummage through community forums followed by “witches” in the console.
Flash - earned with terrible bugs, including the installation of the latest 64-bit Adobe Flash Player for Linux.
KDE periodically, without any external influences, disrupted the tower and the workspace was corny. GNOME, of course, could have been set, but everything else has discouraged it from doing that.
The list of applications bundled with PowerPack is sooo impressive. Whether it’s a plus is a personal matter for everyone, but sometimes it saves time on the final choice of a utility for a specific task.
Yes, and also - the speedboot system, which is positioned like an OS booting accelerator, besides the fact that it sometimes gives bugs , it also (subjectively) does not speed things up.
In general, from the errata list, I have caught far from everything, but there is no point in telling something about it, since it’s not too scary and quickly fixable.
However, the above, in my opinion, make Mandriva 2010 unworthy of the slogan “Linux for all”, which they themselves proclaimed. Still, this is the official release, and please kindly cut out at least those shoals that appear already on a completely fresh system, without additional packages and settings. Otherwise, do not even offer to buy such a craft, albeit under the pretext of constant support.
The result of all this fuss was the opinion that, it seems, in vain I took the 64-bit version, of course, but still, I don’t want to do more experiments with Mandriva at all. And it's time to choose a new system to try to give it a human face.
Not wanting to hear the sweet “bubuntoid” in his address, I decided to gossip and take not quite Ubuntu, but Linux Mint. Again, because I’ve already run into it (on usb-live), and then the Rosinka release came in time.
On Habré there have already been several articles on the experience of using Mint Rosinka ( one , two ), but the more opinions the better, isn’t it?
Go.
The default GNOME is not as defiantly bright as KDE, but more stable and less resource intensive. Nautilus is not as flexible in settings as Dolphin, gadgets / widgets and the like are less, but there are no adventures with plasmoids and freezing of the desktop without the Internet. The only thing is that it seemed that the widgets for monitoring system resources do well for these resources themselves, except perhaps the simplest applet from the default set.
The software installer is convenient and without glitches detected (unlike Mandrivovsky). But installing applications from the console using apt-get is still more convenient and faster. Upgrading the kernel from 2.6.31-14 to 2.6.31-20 through Ubuntu Tweak was simple and without surprises.
With wi-fi, the problem, naturally, has not evaporated (and there was still hope for a miracle). And a new problem was added - wireless networks refused to work with the standard NetworkManager. Moreover, I don’t understand how, but I didn’t manage to configure wlan0 through the console if I had NetworkManager in my system (this may have been affected by a small but still available curvature radius of my hands and I’m too lazy to understand) Solved the problem radically - cutting NetworkManager and installing an alternative in the form of Wicd. Immediately, grace came, wicd in all respects more convenient and better.
Ndiswrapper set also through the console, the driver went the same as under Mandriva (NET4X32.INF). It was necessary to additionally blot out the standard iwlagn module in /etc/modprobe.d/, otherwise ndiswrapper was ignored by the system.
The process with active network use in the same way loads the second CPU core up to 80%.
And most recently, for no reason at all, the wireless network, as they say, has suddenly ceased to work. Neither a reboot nor a rollback to the iwlagn module with subsequent return helped. Saved only by reinstalling win drivers for ndiswrapper. Still, ndiswrapper is a crutch, albeit with hydraulics and airbrushing, but a crutch.
There are no problems with proprietary drivers.
With the launch of Half-Life 2, everything is similar to Mandriva. You can play after a little drank. But you shouldn’t expect anything else, and the Wine developers deserve a monument during the life and fierce hatred of the whole Microsoft company.
Movies .mts in the end better than anyone else loses again some nondescript player that comes with the system. Strange situation, if someone managed to make smplayer reproduce them normally - please report it.
There were no common problems, but under wine the default settings did not go, it took the OSS driver instead of ALSA and full emulation. Even so, the sound periodically crackles.
Everything started right away and without tricks.
The built-in default tools allow you to conveniently adjust the frequency of the processor, whereas in Mandriva you had to install cpufreq-utils and also process them with a file.
With GNOME Mintovsky there is a feeling of speeding up the system and reducing its workload, even with all sorts of pribluda like Compiz ʻa.
Downloading without any speedboot affects its speed (15 seconds), the machine turns off for 2-3 seconds (in Mandriva an order of magnitude longer).
Mandriva 2010: FAIL was for me after all.
Linux Mint Rosinka: WIN has become for me. Apparently, the concept of Ubuntu is closer to me (like the vast majority of Linux home users).
I am tough against win-linux holivars. For some reason, many who are related to IT and are ardent supporters of Linux, either from a desire to troll, or from sincere beliefs, and anti -indo battles are being fueled everywhere and everywhere. At the same time, they also swear in vain “blond accountants” and other “office plankton” for curvature and woodiness, forgetting that computer skills are not genetically embedded in a person, that his absence is not an indicator of mental development. Similarly, a financier or a lawyer can consider an IT guru a stoolosov cudgel because he has no idea about debits / credits or the fifth amendment to the third article of the constitution.
As long as the Linux configuration will be associated with digging in numerous configs, regular console tinkering, log parsing, etc, it will be in demand only among very inquisitive users with a tendency to enjoy the above processes.
Can you say that my wife uses Linux at home? Yes. Is he happy with her? More than. But would he set it up himself so that he could comfortably work and spend time watching movies or walking on the Internet? It is doubtful. She would not have configured Windows, of course, but here every win-user has a friend / brother / matchmaker / neighbor whose playful little hands will master at least the installation of drivers, codecs, etc.
However, for example, it is simpler: to explain to the user by phone, where to download such a utility, which buttons and in which case to click in it, keeping in memory the GUI of the utility itself, or turn the user into a kind of KVM switch introducing do you need commands in the console and reporting the output? A colleague who had recently encountered the support of linux stations was convinced of the effectiveness and simplicity of the second method. Yes, and my wife is quite able to master the input of a dozen commands to the console from dictation, there were precedents.
Linux is definitely great. It really gives a feeling of freedom. And I have already chosen it for myself. But even having IT training, faced with working with setting up servers for Linux and FreeBSD, knowing a bunch of people who have been successfully and successfully administering * nix, I still haven't finished bringing my home system to the form that suits me completely (and not only because that the possibilities of Linux are endless). So Linux gives freedom only to those who really need it.
Well, Windows is not evil. The popularity of this system is based on its very unprepared user-oriented philosophy, and so far it is invincible. For me, with Windows in general, life was very boring, because I saw the blue screen once in my life, and the serious virus itself clung to the last time at school, when the words firewall and endpoint security were not even in the lexicon. Everything was set up once, quickly and for a long time.
However, recent trends still allow us to hope that he is coming. And it is definitely a pleasure to become one of those who decided to switch to the “bright side” :-)
Writing it is caused by an opinion that has been formed and needs to be quit on whether Linux should be used at home at all.
Somehow it happened that Win XP was simply tired of it, and my greed did not give me money for Win 7 (the illegal version does not allow me to put a conscience that has become brazen recently).
I wanted something airy, beautiful and free ... well, I also wanted adventures, which finally pushed me to try a full migration to Linux.
The computer is a laptop ASUS F8Sg with the following devices on board:
- built-in camera
- Intel AGN4965 wireless adapter
- network card Realtek RTL8111 / 8168B
- Ricoh card reader
- NVidia G9300M graphics card
- Sound - Intel HDA 82801H
- Bluetooth adapter
As the first distribution was chosen fresh brainchild of the French community under the caressing ear called Mandriva 2010.
This choice was made mainly because Mandriva 2008 had a second system on a laptop for a long time, but only for informational purposes, on a 10GB partition (which I eventually took away from her and fed the insatiable Windows safely).
Deciding what to experiment - so experiment, the version downloaded x86_64, of course, PowerPack.
Well, now the points.
Appearance
Mandrivov's default "sneakers" are bright, shiny and multifunctional. Convenient (IMHO) file manager Dolphin, heaps of plasmoids, gadgets, widgets, etc., allowing you to
BUT: Plasmoids that require an Internet connection (for example, viewing the weather forecast) do not allow the desktop to appear on the desktop until they establish their network connection. Those. With the Internet turned off, we see a black screen with a mouse cursor for 3-5 minutes. The system is fully functional. And if the Internet falls off during the work, the desktop freezes, although all running applications are available. There are certain methods to circumvent this problem (maybe this is generally a special case of my system), but the fact of the possibility of such a bug in the office. release causes slight bewilderment.
')
Software installation and update
The installer software in Mandriva RPM-based is quite convenient.
BUT: picking up the sound in the clips of the .mts format and having read that Pulseaudio can be harmful, I decided to demolish the latter. And, unfortunately, through the GUI. He ticked, pressed the delete button and calmly went to pour some tea. My surprise was great when, in the deletion status, I saw a drakconfig package that could not go along with Pulseaudio. I stopped the process, in the end - half of the packages related to KDE turned out to be safely evaporated. After that, my eyes became like a penguin in Mandriva. Someone will say - through the console you need to delete, or look at the list of dependencies. But then again - the system does not have the right to be called “Linux for all”, if such, to put it mildly, chilling rakes with teeth really are hidden half a meter hidden in it. The whole KDE should not end up depending on one side package, and no one is obliged to do something through the console if there is an alternative in the form of a full-featured GUI.
The next problem - attempts to install the second package immediately after installing the first (via the GUI) result in a warning about missing packages and the installer GUI must be restarted. The confirmed bug is in errata , but still not cured.
Yes, I was also pleased with the timely offer to “upgrade” to Mandriva 2009.1 at the first launch of the system. But it is, in principle, not terrible, the elimination is in the same errata .
Network
Internet access by my provider is organized as follows: a LAN (as a nicer option from a wireless access point) is distributed to a LAN, and a PPPoE tunnel is established for going out to the world.
I won’t tell about PPPoE for Linux - the topic is pretty beaten up and all the rakes and ways to
BUT: Wi-Fi - and here hello, rake new, maple. When connecting to the Internet through an access point, the provider found a drop in speed at irregular intervals. Slow speed was not found in the output of the iwconfig command, but it was more than palpable. Tests on speedtest.net showed 0.6 / 0.3 Mbps instead of 6/6 Mbps. The only thing that cured was laying down the wlan0 interface and reconnecting it again.
A bunch of various diagnostics, experiments and excavations in the system logs showed that the problem is with wi-fi, not with pppoe or the provider as a whole. Bottom line: congratulations to all the lucky owners of Intel AGN 4965. The standard iwlagn module supports it crookedly up to the current stable kernel 2.6.32.2 (judging by the forums). Salvation one - ndiswrapper. Well, or the rejection of radio waves in favor of the good old copper.
Ndiswrapper under x86-64 managed to get to work (not through the GUI-installer curve, but through the console), but only WinXP-shnye 32-bit drivers of the 4th version from Intel (NETW4X32.INF) went. The process with active network use ( download like us, download better than us! ) Loads the second CPU core up to 80%.
Video
Proprietary drivers were installed without problems, Compiz and others like it worked adequately. Launched under wine HOMM 5, Half-Life 2 went quite playable (this also applies to sound - there were no problems). The only thing was that when pixel shaders were turned off in the wine settings, there were problems with graphics in the Valve product - for example, the absence of a spot of light from a flashlight. If pixel shaders were turned on, then fps dropped sharply. It was decided to install the -directx 81 flag when starting the game.
By the way, if anyone knows, the winetricks utility is very convenient for installing all kinds of junk, incl. and DirectX.
Rollers .mts in the end lost the best of all Dragon Player, coming along with the system. My favorite smplayer video stream mercilessly accelerated, and it was not treated in any way, and VLC periodically produced poor artifacts and color defects in the image.
Sound
There were no common problems, even under wine everything went with the default settings - no shamanism with the emulation level and driver type. Very surprised.
But Amarok seemed completely crooked. Just hang on startup and everything, because of what was suddenly and mercilessly sent to / dev / null, the benefit of alternative players in bulk.
Equipment
Neither Bluetooth, nor the card reader, nor the camera, nor the wired network card had any complaints. Everything started at the very first launch and never forced me to rummage through community forums followed by “witches” in the console.
Additionally
Flash - earned with terrible bugs, including the installation of the latest 64-bit Adobe Flash Player for Linux.
KDE periodically, without any external influences, disrupted the tower and the workspace was corny. GNOME, of course, could have been set, but everything else has discouraged it from doing that.
The list of applications bundled with PowerPack is sooo impressive. Whether it’s a plus is a personal matter for everyone, but sometimes it saves time on the final choice of a utility for a specific task.
Yes, and also - the speedboot system, which is positioned like an OS booting accelerator, besides the fact that it sometimes gives bugs , it also (subjectively) does not speed things up.
In general, from the errata list, I have caught far from everything, but there is no point in telling something about it, since it’s not too scary and quickly fixable.
However, the above, in my opinion, make Mandriva 2010 unworthy of the slogan “Linux for all”, which they themselves proclaimed. Still, this is the official release, and please kindly cut out at least those shoals that appear already on a completely fresh system, without additional packages and settings. Otherwise, do not even offer to buy such a craft, albeit under the pretext of constant support.
The result of all this fuss was the opinion that, it seems, in vain I took the 64-bit version, of course, but still, I don’t want to do more experiments with Mandriva at all. And it's time to choose a new system to try to give it a human face.
Not wanting to hear the sweet “bubuntoid” in his address, I decided to gossip and take not quite Ubuntu, but Linux Mint. Again, because I’ve already run into it (on usb-live), and then the Rosinka release came in time.
On Habré there have already been several articles on the experience of using Mint Rosinka ( one , two ), but the more opinions the better, isn’t it?
Go.
Appearance
The default GNOME is not as defiantly bright as KDE, but more stable and less resource intensive. Nautilus is not as flexible in settings as Dolphin, gadgets / widgets and the like are less, but there are no adventures with plasmoids and freezing of the desktop without the Internet. The only thing is that it seemed that the widgets for monitoring system resources do well for these resources themselves, except perhaps the simplest applet from the default set.
Software installation and update
The software installer is convenient and without glitches detected (unlike Mandrivovsky). But installing applications from the console using apt-get is still more convenient and faster. Upgrading the kernel from 2.6.31-14 to 2.6.31-20 through Ubuntu Tweak was simple and without surprises.
Network
With wi-fi, the problem, naturally, has not evaporated (and there was still hope for a miracle). And a new problem was added - wireless networks refused to work with the standard NetworkManager. Moreover, I don’t understand how, but I didn’t manage to configure wlan0 through the console if I had NetworkManager in my system (this may have been affected by a small but still available curvature radius of my hands and I’m too lazy to understand) Solved the problem radically - cutting NetworkManager and installing an alternative in the form of Wicd. Immediately, grace came, wicd in all respects more convenient and better.
Ndiswrapper set also through the console, the driver went the same as under Mandriva (NET4X32.INF). It was necessary to additionally blot out the standard iwlagn module in /etc/modprobe.d/, otherwise ndiswrapper was ignored by the system.
The process with active network use in the same way loads the second CPU core up to 80%.
And most recently, for no reason at all, the wireless network, as they say, has suddenly ceased to work. Neither a reboot nor a rollback to the iwlagn module with subsequent return helped. Saved only by reinstalling win drivers for ndiswrapper. Still, ndiswrapper is a crutch, albeit with hydraulics and airbrushing, but a crutch.
Video
There are no problems with proprietary drivers.
With the launch of Half-Life 2, everything is similar to Mandriva. You can play after a little drank. But you shouldn’t expect anything else, and the Wine developers deserve a monument during the life and fierce hatred of the whole Microsoft company.
Movies .mts in the end better than anyone else loses again some nondescript player that comes with the system. Strange situation, if someone managed to make smplayer reproduce them normally - please report it.
Sound
There were no common problems, but under wine the default settings did not go, it took the OSS driver instead of ALSA and full emulation. Even so, the sound periodically crackles.
Equipment
Everything started right away and without tricks.
Additionally
The built-in default tools allow you to conveniently adjust the frequency of the processor, whereas in Mandriva you had to install cpufreq-utils and also process them with a file.
With GNOME Mintovsky there is a feeling of speeding up the system and reducing its workload, even with all sorts of pribluda like Compiz ʻa.
Downloading without any speedboot affects its speed (15 seconds), the machine turns off for 2-3 seconds (in Mandriva an order of magnitude longer).
And finally, the conclusions
Mandriva 2010: FAIL was for me after all.
Linux Mint Rosinka: WIN has become for me. Apparently, the concept of Ubuntu is closer to me (like the vast majority of Linux home users).
And now a little bit of lyrics
I am tough against win-linux holivars. For some reason, many who are related to IT and are ardent supporters of Linux, either from a desire to troll, or from sincere beliefs, and anti -indo battles are being fueled everywhere and everywhere. At the same time, they also swear in vain “blond accountants” and other “office plankton” for curvature and woodiness, forgetting that computer skills are not genetically embedded in a person, that his absence is not an indicator of mental development. Similarly, a financier or a lawyer can consider an IT guru a stoolosov cudgel because he has no idea about debits / credits or the fifth amendment to the third article of the constitution.
As long as the Linux configuration will be associated with digging in numerous configs, regular console tinkering, log parsing, etc, it will be in demand only among very inquisitive users with a tendency to enjoy the above processes.
Can you say that my wife uses Linux at home? Yes. Is he happy with her? More than. But would he set it up himself so that he could comfortably work and spend time watching movies or walking on the Internet? It is doubtful. She would not have configured Windows, of course, but here every win-user has a friend / brother / matchmaker / neighbor whose playful little hands will master at least the installation of drivers, codecs, etc.
However, for example, it is simpler: to explain to the user by phone, where to download such a utility, which buttons and in which case to click in it, keeping in memory the GUI of the utility itself, or turn the user into a kind of KVM switch introducing do you need commands in the console and reporting the output? A colleague who had recently encountered the support of linux stations was convinced of the effectiveness and simplicity of the second method. Yes, and my wife is quite able to master the input of a dozen commands to the console from dictation, there were precedents.
Linux is definitely great. It really gives a feeling of freedom. And I have already chosen it for myself. But even having IT training, faced with working with setting up servers for Linux and FreeBSD, knowing a bunch of people who have been successfully and successfully administering * nix, I still haven't finished bringing my home system to the form that suits me completely (and not only because that the possibilities of Linux are endless). So Linux gives freedom only to those who really need it.
Well, Windows is not evil. The popularity of this system is based on its very unprepared user-oriented philosophy, and so far it is invincible. For me, with Windows in general, life was very boring, because I saw the blue screen once in my life, and the serious virus itself clung to the last time at school, when the words firewall and endpoint security were not even in the lexicon. Everything was set up once, quickly and for a long time.
However, recent trends still allow us to hope that he is coming. And it is definitely a pleasure to become one of those who decided to switch to the “bright side” :-)
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/92477/
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