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2 yr. ago

  • toolbox vs distrobox. Which one to use?

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  • Distrobox is directly inspired from Toolbx and was created because of limitations of Toolbx and how Toolbx' maintainers didn't want to implement some features at that moment in time.

    Currently, Distrobox is almost a superset of Toolbx. Though, I've come to the understanding that Toolbx does better at some tasks.

    If you would like to stick to just one of them, then Distrobox is probably still the better one and should be preferred. However, if its added functionality doesn't do it for you, then please feel free to continue using Toolbx.

    Why is toolbox preinstalled and not distrobox?

    Because Toolbx predates Distrobox and is developed by developers that are associated with Fedora and even specifically designed in hopes of solving some issues pertaining to Fedora's Atomic distros.

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  • Thanks a lot for this excellent write-up! I believe it has successfully fulfilled its purpose.

    To make myself absolutely clear: I believe that we agree on our general sentiment towards systemd; I don't like how it has almost ostracized other inits, nor do I like how ever-impactful it has become across the board so much so that even the most established DE (read: GNOME) has had hard dependencies to systemd in the past[1].

    And this is where i think you’ve contradicted yourself. IMO, the only reason opponents use it is not because it’s so great but because it’s so entrenched in whichever distro they’re using.

    Got it! I see now why you might have perceived that as a contradiction. And honestly, you might be correct! I assumed that systemd is used for how it might enable the full system AppArmor policy[2] and other features that Kicksecure has become known for. Honestly, I'm not an expert on Kicksecure myself. I just like the project and even try to import some of their systemd-related features and/or configs on my daily driver.

    Based on past readings, the idea that systemd was (ironically) still preferred on Kicksecure for security-related features stuck with me. But, honestly, it could have been my misunderstanding and instead they might have chosen to make the best out of it as not using systemd would have increased the maintenance burden tremendously.

    This conversation has opened the possibility to me that Kicksecure's maintainers might have stuck to systemd for non-security reasons. Ultimately, your contribution by addressing that point has been immense. Thank you so much for the insight and for being patient with me 😊!

    1. I believe this has since been resolved.
    2. Based on the following statement: "AppArmor can do this by loading a profile for systemd in the initramfs." found here
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  • Thanks for the answer! I got some pointers 😉.

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  • the best os-design there is: the unix-like system.

    Couple of questions:

    1. Is there even any scientific basis to this statement?
      1. If yes, would you be so kind to cite sources as I got trouble finding peer-reviewed articles on the matter.
      2. If not, would you be able to make a logically sound argument on why that is the case?
    2. Why Unix-like and not Unix? Wouldn't Unix be the actual "original vision"?
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  • In case you're bored enough to read my ramblings and/or interested in what I understood and how, then consider reading the spoiler below.

    Fam, you're all over the place.

    Because you did an awful job at pointing at the supposed contradiction, I'll have to analyze your excuse of an elaboration so that it somehow starts to make sense if at all:

    A contradiction consists of N statements that logically contradict with each other; for the sake of making it more precise we'll refer to these statements as P, Q, R, S etc. After we've established this, we can move on to find what these alleged statements are from your comments. My best take would be:

    (Supposed) Contradicting Statements:

    • P: systemd is the only init that's beyond a particular level of excellence and/or feature set.[1]
    • Q: Some combinations of distro + DE are cumbersome and unwieldy at best if systemd is not used.[2]

    Perhaps some other related statements that are either implied or a given/fact:

    • R: Kicksecure uses systemd as its init.
    • S: Modern distros use an init.
    • T: Default init is chosen based on preference[3].
    • U: Kicksecure has to use systemd because P despite not being in favor of some aspects of its design.

    Please feel free to notify me if I missed the mark!

    Don't you think that P and Q are actually complementary to one other?

    No, not at all.

    The crux might be here. But I'm not sure where exactly you might have tripped over. Was it because I said "opponents" instead of "(some) opponents"? Was it because I said "out of necessity", while elsewhere I said "don’t allow any differentiation in init or make it very cumbersome and unwieldy at best", but in this case they aren't contradictory statements. Was it the fact that Devuan exists? But, this assumes that any of the inits found on Devuan are somehow as mature and feature-rich as systemd. Which, unfortunately, is simply not the case. (I'm hopeful that dinit and s6 might reach maturity soon, though.)

    So trying to use Kicksecure without systemd would be very cumbersome and unwieldy at best.

    Exactly, that was my point.

    Perhaps Madaidan should’ve used Devuan as a starting point instead.

    It's a team effort, I don't even know if he started working on Kicksecure from its inception[4]. They might also simply be victims of the sunk-cost fallacy. Furthermore, I wouldn't be surprised if -to them- systemd's pros simply outweigh its cons. Which, curiously, gets us back to the entire point of my original comment; viable alternatives to systemd don't exist. This painful truth is not only sad and unfortunate, but perhaps even worrisome for the future of Linux.

    1. From: "systemd has become so good that even opponents can’t deny its merits and continue to make use of it for the time being out of necessity"
    2. From: "some combinations of distro + DE don’t allow any differentiation in init or make it very cumbersome and unwieldy at best."
    3. Preference is arguably too broad of a term, but I wanted to make clear that distro maintainers have different priorities.
    4. This page suggest otherwise, simply because someone else is referred to as founder. Though, ultimately, I don't know.

    If not 😜; did I understand you correctly in that the mere existence of Devuan is the supposed contradiction?

  • What do you think about this?

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  • I mostly want to discourage distro hopping with the belief that they’re missing out on a program or desktop, only to end up on windows because they’re tired of reinstalling everything.

    Thank you for being thoughtful! I just wanted to add some nuance with my previous comment.

  • What do you think about this?

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  • One important thing you need to know about distros: they’re all the same under the hood.

    This is true for the traditional model in which the package manager is the main differentiator between distros. Therefore Arch, Debian, Fedora, openSUSE etc and their derivatives (which make up about 90% of the distros found on DistroWatch) are indeed mostly the same.

    But the likes of Gentoo and NixOS etc don't quite fit the bill. Granted, a new user should only very rarely (if ever) start their Linux journeys on any of these advanced distros.

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  • How so? I literally don't see it. My apologies if I come across as obnoxious, but I simply don't understand how I might have contradicted myself. I never explicitly mentioned Debian anyways, so why did you feel the need to mention that as somehow being related to a supposed contradiction.

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  • is there any reason why I should even care about the freedom of init system?

    Freedom of choice! It's troublesome if distros and/or DEs rely so heavily on systemd to do their bidding. So much so, that some combinations of distro + DE don't allow any differentiation in init or make it very cumbersome and unwieldy at best. I'm not interested in making systemd a necessary part of Linux. Therefore other inits not only have to exist, but should be 'competitive' as well. Which, to be frank, is currently not the case.

    Another concern is that systemd is by no means a minimalist approach. Which beyond bloat, also has security implications. More information can be found in this (infamous) guide by Madaidan; security researcher on multiple distros known for taking security and privacy very seriously like e.g. Kicksecure and Whonix. Interestingly, while Madaidan discourages the use of systemd in that guide, it's still heavily relied on in Kicksecure; one of the distros he works on. I think this is a perfect illustration of how systemd has become so good that even opponents can't deny its merits and continue to make use of it for the time being out of necessity.

  • Comparison between NixOS vs blendOS vs Vanilla OS: what to pick and why?

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  • Lots of great answers here already so I will only address a couple of things that haven't been mentioned:

    Regarding Fedora Silverblue:

    • Currently, Fedora Atomic Desktops are in a major shift to accept OCI container images for delivery of packages. This means that the built image becomes one compliant to OCI and that we boot into an OCI container as our system. As OCI images are relatively declarative (not to the extent that NixOS does (yet)), it becomes possible to have a set of config files (most importantly, the so-called Containerfile) in which your system is 'declared'/'configd'. In case you're interested into how this looks/works, consider taking a look at uBlue's startingpoint or if you're more interested in the scope of configuration into Bazzite and/or Bluefin.
    • apx is available as a COPR on Fedora Atomic Desktops.
    • Nix can be installed on Fedora Atomic Desktops using Determinate Systems' installer.

    Regarding Vanilla OS:

    • They're also moving to a model that's very close to where Fedora Atomic Desktops is heading towards. So, expect a similar way to config/'declare' your system.

    What are your thoughts on the ~three~ four distros mentioned above?

    It's a question of polish if you'd ask me. With Fedora Atomic Desktops and NixOS being advantageous due to being more established and better funded. I wouldn't write off Vanilla OS yet as they seem to know what they're doing. Though, I wouldn't keep my hopes up for blendOS as its main developer was unaware of which MAC was configured by default on blendOS (spoiler alert: none, at least at the time).

    Furthermore, NixOS is literally its own thing and unfortunately infamous for its steep learning curve. If you can afford to learn and conquer NixOS, then NixOS should be the recommendation; unless (like me) you seek SELinux on your systems.

    Between Fedora Atomic Desktops and Vanilla OS; Vanilla OS is still in its major rewrite/revamp. The alpha builds are there, but I wouldn't recommend using those on production machines. Fedora Atomic Desktops, on the other hand, has been going strong for a while now and the uBlue-team has even succeeded in making the OCI-stuff accessible for the general (Linux) public. So if you want to switch now and NixOS is/seems too hard; then Fedora Atomic Desktops it is. On that note, I recommend to check out the uBlue project.

    Which ones are the most interesting, and for what reasons?

    Honestly, all of them are really interesting, but NixOS does the most unique stuff; with only Guix doing something similar within the Linux landscape. To give you a taste of some of the wild stuff found on NixOS; there's the so-called Impermanence module which -to my knowledge- happens to be the closest thing to a usable stateless system we've got; period. Consider reading this excellent blog post in case you're interested to know what this entails.

  • Sell Me on Linux

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  • Thanks for pointing that out! It has since been fixed.

  • Sell Me on Linux

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  • What is a reliable yet affordable option to get started?

    Unfortunately, good affordable hardware on which Linux is properly supported is hard to get by. I'm personally fond of vendors like (in alphabetical order) Framework, NovaCustom, Star Labs, System76, Tuxedo. But other vendors like ASUS, Dell, HP and Lenovo are known to sell devices that do a considerable job at supporting Linux; consider to check the compatibility/support for their devices through resources like linux-hardware.org.

    Are my concerns based in reality or is Linux going to be able to handle everything windows does without issues?

    Regarding video types; I don't think you should have any problems regarding those; on some distros it might not be supported by default, but that should be solvable with a single command. Relying on flatpaks[1] instead is another viable solution and is enabled by default on a lot of distros. Moving on to word document templates; I suppose the suite of cloud-based services found in Microsoft 365 should work regardless. As for the question if the templates would work on LibreOffice, ONLYOFFICE and the like; I simply don't know. On to familiarity of OS and using it for business purposes; most distros that are friendlier towards newer users have been setup with sane defaults. Therefore, I don't think there's a lot that could go wrong as long as you're interacting with a GUI. When interacting with a command-line interface, note that information found on the internet is often times outdated. Therefore, if you're hesitant or unsure; consider interacting with the community for some help. We're all in this together!

    is Linux going to be able to handle everything windows does without issues?

    You should be totally fine aside from some software that's known to not support Linux at all.

    What else might I need to know to use Linux comfortably from the get go?

    Ask yourself the following questions:

    • To what degree are you interested to learn how it all works and to experience what Linux offers?
      • If you see it primarily as a means to an end, then pick a distro that does an excellent job at accommodating your workflow without requiring you to relearn more than necessary.
      • If instead, interest in Linux itself is the main driving force behind the switch, then please be mindful that the Linux rabbit hole is very real.

    Is it going to take a lot of time and effort to get Linux running how I need it to?

    Somewhat related to the previous question*. Like, there are distros out there that I can install for my grandfather and he wouldn't even notice the difference. But even some (relatively) mainstream-distros can be daunting for so-called power users of Windows. E.g. I would argue I was your average Windows-user; play games, browse the internet, email, write documents, video-editing, run software required for my studies etc. It took me about two weeks before I was 'comfortable' on Linux. And even then, some of the software I used for e.g. video-editing just didn't want to play nice[2].

    So, yeah, sell me on Linux, please.

    If you want freedom and control over your devices, there's simply no viable alternative.

    1. Software management on Linux -at least on the surface- is closer to Android/iOS than to Windows. You should rarely (if at all) feel the need to find software through your browser. Instead, you should interact with so-called package managers. This can be achieved through either a command-line interface or a storefront with a GUI that behaves like those found on Android/iOS etc. Coming back to Flatpak; this is an (upcoming) universal (read: (mostly) distro-agnostic) package manager that tries to solve a lot of problems that traditional package managers have had. There's still a lot of ongoing work for it to achieve its design-goals to the fullest, but even in its current iteration it works excellent and therefore it's unsurprising to find it enabled by default on a significant chunk of the Linux landscape. Software that are packaged using this technology are referred to as flatpaks (or flatpak if singular).
    2. In retrospect, this seems to be primarily rooted in the fact that my machine isn't that powerful in the first place. On Windows, it managed because it was better optimized for it. Unfortunately, on Linux, this was not the case.

  • How do y'all deal with programs not supported on Linux?

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  • A lot of programs I work with very often are Windows-exclusive, and alternatives supporting Linux are rare.

    Consider mentioning the programs you work with. On a general note, Wine can be used to make Windows-software work on Linux. Bottles can be used to that effect as a front-end. Furthermore, for a more sophisticated solution; consider taking a look at CodeWeavers.

  • Newbie with questions about Debian

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  • Regarding 4; I suppose you're looking for the ArcMenu extension if you wish to continue using GNOME as your Desktop Environment (will be abbreviated to DE from here on). Though GNOME's workflow is considerably different to Windows'. Therefore, you might be interested into looking elsewhere unless you're actually interested to continue GNOME. FWIW, GNOME is one of the most popular and most polished DEs out there, but it's very opinionated; which rub some folk the wrong way. I personally like it, but others might differ on this. Lastly, GNOME is NOT particularly known to be light. Therefore, if you're not happy with how it runs; e.g. frame skips with animations or just high RAM usage overall, then perhaps consider Xfce or Lxqt. If you're not discontent about the performance on GNOME, then you could also consider KDE or Cinnamon as those might 'feel' more 'modern' than the aforementioned Xfce and Lxqt.

    Regarding 5; Ubuntu gets a lot of hate due to:

    • how they're forcing Snaps (their in-house universal package manager; therefore a direct competitor to Flatpak) onto its users. So much so that even attempting to install some packages through apt will result in the Snap being installed instead; which is basically unprecedented within the Linux landscape.
    • some mishaps in the past resulted in very bad PR; especially to those that are privacy-conscious and/or F(L)OSS-advocates.

    You'd have to get to your own conclusions though. It's probably still the most used distro and therefore you might expect some QoL-features are only found within. If you're inconclusive, just try it out and consider reporting back to us on how it went. Regarding old hardware; the DE is the most important factor anyways.

  • Gaming on Fedora Silverblue

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  • Silverblue + distrobox is enough for me.

    Aight. Hope to meet you next time your hand and fingers start tingling and itching 😜.

  • What can we do about major sites blocking VPN providers?

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  • I don't know if it even works, but have you considered relying on their Stealth protocol? While its absence on Linux (and Windows) means that you might not even be able to make use of it in the first place, I'm still interested to know if it makes any difference.

  • Gaming on Fedora Silverblue

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  • I super appreciate all of the tips!

    It has been my pleasure 😊!

    I thought I was good installing Bazzite with a fresh install using an ISO, made sure to pick the NVIDIA option… it just failed to load the drivers, and showed a gray screen switching to open drivers.

    Very strange. Consider reporting this as a bug on their Github or ask assistance on their discord server.

    I played with NixOS in a VM. I have sooooo much to learn… so I think I will just install the package manager, and gorge on the cake I get to keep.

    NixOS, while excellent at what it offers, is indeed very different from almost anything else. I wish you the best of luck if you wish to conquer it, but I've personally put it on my backlog; I hope to return to it eventually, but not now. Perhaps consider using Fleek, which would be Nix-made-easy. Obviously, it isn't as powerful, but perhaps a new user doesn't need that much power in the first place 😉.

  • Gaming on Fedora Silverblue

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  • You may be happy, or perhaps dismayed, to learn that I finally installed Bazzite on my desktop.

    Well played! Welcome to the cool kids club! I've actually used Bazzite myself for a short while a couple of months ago. It felt like a holiday destination with lots of cool stuff, but it was more opinionated than what I'm comfortable with. So I returned back home (read: custom uBlue image) afterwards, where I am in command for what's found inside and where I am free to do whatever I will. Though, I did pick up some of the things I liked from Bazzite 😜, so it was not for naught 😉.

    I did a bit tonne of sampling, with BlendOS and Vanilla, trying things out, but Fedora wins.

    Very interesting! I've got my own reasons for preferring Fedora cough security cough, but I'm very interested to know your findings! I'd have to admit that Vanilla OS' upcoming 2.0 Orchid update is very tempting though.

    I have Fedora Silverblue on a usb in case Bazzite does not like my computer,

    Hmm..., perhaps consider the following:

    1. Rebase back to Silverblue with rpm-ostree rebase fedora:fedora/39/x86_64/silverblue (assuming you're already on Fedora 39).
    2. After you've booted into Silverblue, pin the Silverblue-deployment with sudo ostree admin pin 0.
    3. While still in the Silverblue-deployment, rollback to Bazzite with rpm-ostree rollback.
    4. Reboot, and you should notice that you have one additional entry in the GRUB-menu. That's the Silverblue-deployment where you can always fall back on; just in case*.

    The above steps do assume that you haven't pinned any prior Silverblue-deployments; as you don't necessarily need multiple Silverblue-deployments 😅. Furthermore, they assume no additional steps involving Nvidia; but that's mostly because I don't have any experience dealing with that (thankfully).

    I swear I will just jump onto the NIXOS (or guix) bandwagon if I ever decide to switch again.

    FWIW, you can install both Nix and Guix on Silverblue.

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    What in your opinion is the worst Linux Distribution ever made?

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  • I have something like 70 AUR packages installed and it’s very seldom I have problems.

    I'm glad to hear that you're able to dodge problems more often than not. But even if you wouldn't have any problems at all, it's undeniable that the model of Manjaro + AUR is fundamentally broken. No amount of copium, Stockholm-syndrome or masochism would change that.

    There isn’t any significant difference in AUR compatibility between Manjaro, Arch or any other Arch based distro. I believe this to be an often misunderstood issue.

    Don't you think that Manjaro's model of holding back packages conflicts with the AUR that primarily targets Arch which (by design) doesn't hold back packages? And, if you agree that it conflicts, don't you think that this actually is a very significant difference as two distinct programs/binaries/software/whatever might rely on two different versions of the same dependency? It's like a schoolbook example of what dependency hell is*.

    When you install an AUR package it will work now, on the current state of the distro (current package versions). Later, as you upgrade packages, AUR packages will gradually start failing to work. This is the same on any Arch distro and it depends on how often you upgrade. If anything, by delaying packages by 2 weeks Manjaro will also delay potential incompatibility.

    Fam, with all due respect, I'd like to invite you to educate yourself on this matter. Because, apologies for saying this, there's just an awful lot of misinformation, conflation and confusion present in this paragraph.

    TLDR is that all AUR packages will break eventually and have to be reinstalled periodically, on any distro.

    I agree that packages everywhere on all distros may break at some point; that's just how software is. Though, nothing condones taking on a defeatist stance towards package breakage.