Thinking about Linux?

[Doan the Nado]

Doyleman pm'd me a while back with a question about Linux. While cleaning up my message box today, I came across it and was reluctant to delete it because I felt it had some valuable information in it. For that reason, I have replicated his question and my answer below.

I think I recall you saying that you use linux.

I've been tossing the idea of whether I should get it, but I havent a clue what distribution (or whatever its called) to get. Ubuntu so far is what I'm looking at. Any suggestions?

Yes, indeed, I do have a few suggestions. As far as Linux goes, so far, I have tried Ubuntu, Gentoo, and Debian (in that order). Before that, I used FreeBSD, which is also an open source, Unix-based operating system, so that did factor into my preferences a little bit. So anyways, I will give you an overview of my experiences.

First of all, most open source OSs are Unix-based. Unix is a philosophy that has been around for a long time (40 years?). It is based on the idea that every file is a stream of bytes, often ascii (plain text). This means that everything that controls how the system works is stored in a normal file somewhere on your computer, in contrast to an OS like Windows where you have things like the registry and other generally inaccessible objects. Another Unix trait is that it is hard to escape the command line. They are making great strides in making everything possible to do from a desktop interface (like Windows), but the fact is that there are simply a good number of tasks that are much easier to do from a command line by typing something in than by pointing and clicking. In fact, there are many tasks that I never would have envisioned doing with Windows that are trivial in a Unix environment. Finally, Unix has the idea (not always followed) that most programs should be small utilities that do one thing well, and by chaining these programs together, you can acheive great functionality. So anyways, that's a quick intro for you...

My first exposure to a Unix system was with our university's student login environment. It was weird to get used to working from the command line and to get used to something that was not Windows, and honestly, I didn't like it much at first. Besides, their Unix version was Solaris, and OS that has been around for years and lacks some of the modern advancements that have been made in Linux. So yeah...

Last summer, I got a job working at a company called Interhack, and all of their computers run FreeBSD, another Unix system (but one which is also not Linux). Being forced to work in an entirely new environment was very strange, but since I was somewhat forced to, I just jumped right in, using Google a lot and asking for advice at times in order to find my way around. By the end of the summer, I was totally converted to the Unix philosophy, and I knew I wouldn't be able to have Windows on my home PC any more.

I first tried to install FreeBSD at home, and I immediately ran into problems on my new computer because FreeBSD is a little behind Linux in terms of having drivers for different hardware like ethernet cards, sound cards, wireless cards, etc. After many attempts and much frustration, I decided to give Linux a try.

I first installed Ubuntu, and thankfully, everything was completely recognized automatically. The installation was very simple and went off without a hitch, and in less than a half hour, I was booting my computer up directly into a desktop environment. All the typically needed programs were there: a browser (Firefox), a mail reader (Evolution), a chat program (Gaim), an image manipulater (GIMP), an office suite (OpenOffice), and countless other typical applications. If you pretty much like Windows but are just looking for something a little different (and more customizable!), then Ubuntu is a great choice. On the other hand, I had worked in a very different environment over the summer which focused on using the command line, and I didn't like the idea that Ubuntu booted directly to the desktop. I wanted to get my hands dirty, in a way, and I felt like Ubuntu hid a lot of the things that I was actually interested in. Of course, it was possible to dig down and find them, but I'm still not sure what is done automatically and what I need to edit in order to change this behavior. In short, I quickly tired of my Ubuntu experience.

The next Linux distro I found was Gentoo, and I absolutely love it. When you first install it (a very lengthy process), it is basically the bare minimum. From there, I was able to install only what I wanted to, and make sure that every program on my computer was there because I needed it or wanted it to be. This means that it does not boot directly to the desktop, it does not have a default method for setting up internet connections, it has next to nothing, until you put it there. Call me crazy, but that is exactly what I wanted. Additionally, while installing it, I learned a lot about how everything works. The install process is somewhat difficult and far from automated. Instead, you go to the Gentoo website and either have another computer running, or print the entire thing out, and you follow a step-by-step guide to installing the operating system. It can take a very long time - I think it took me about 5 hours. So that is a bit of a drawback if you're not into that sort of thing.

The interesting thing about Gentoo is that everything is compiled from source. So when you download a program in Windows or in many versions of Linux, it is already compiled for you: certain files are simply put into the necessary places and then you are ready to go. With Gentoo, any open source program is actually first downloaded in source form, and then compiled on your own home computer. The nice thing about this is that you can set certain options to be exactly what you want them to be, you can leave out certain functionality that you won't use anyways, and you can make sure that everything is optimized for your own computer. And this is all handled automatically. So to install Firefox in your computer, you simply type in the command line:

emerge -av firefox

You will then get a list of all the other programs that will be installed (that is, Firefox needs several other programs in able to work properly), and from there you can install everything. The only problem with this approach is that compiling takes a long time, especially if you have a slow computer. My computer was brand new, so this was not an issue, but if you have an older computer, this can be pretty major, I suppose.

So in my mind, Gentoo is absolutely the best, if you are patient, want to get your hands dirty, and don't mind programs taking a little time to install. I have complete control over my computer and I absolutely love it. However, I have a laptop which is substantially slower than my home computer, and I wanted to put Linux on it, so I figured I better try something else.

I first tried Debian. Ubuntu is based on Debian, meaning that nearly everything that is in Ubuntu is also in Debian. I tried to install it, had a few problems getting things like my touch pad and laptop screen working, and I didn't have a lot of time to try to fix the issues. For various other reasons that I don't remember, I was generally not impressed with it, and decided to give Ubuntu another shot.

Ubuntu was pretty good for my laptop. It recognized everything properly (I had to do a few things to get the wireless working right), and I found that I could actually install a minimal version where I had some control over my computer. I still like Gentoo better, but Ubuntu has been plenty good for what I needed it for, it's just not my thing.

So to summarize, Linux is all about trying something new and experimenting. There are still other distributions I would like to try out on the laptop, but I am very happy with Gentoo, and don't expect to find myself leaving any time soon. If you want something that is a similar experience to Windows (but also quite different), Ubuntu is definitely the way to go, and is a good way to get exposed to Linux. Eventually, though, I think that if you really want to understand what is going on in your computer and be able to have everything tailored to you, Gentoo is the way to go.

Oh, and I don't want you to think that I don't have a graphical interface in Gentoo, I absolutely do. Most of my work is done in a typical desktop environment: programming, chat, internet, etc. The main difference is that most system administration stuff (adding users, installing programs, updating my computer, setting up internet connections, etc) that I do is done from the command line, and I really like it that way, but it is completely understandable if you would want that stuff done automatically or from a nice GUI interface.

But anyways, that's my long-winded reply to your short question. If you have any more questions, feel free to ask away, and if you do decide to go with Gentoo at some point, let me know when and I can try to be available by phone to help you through it, because no matter what, your first experience will probably be a bit like trying to drive somewhere when you don't actually know where you're going. Don't let that get you discouraged, though. Once you get everything set up, in my opinion, the Linux experience is so much better than the Windows one. I could go on and on, but I think I'll stop here. Let me know what you decide and how everything goes.

[BloodKnight]

Wow, that's quite a lot of info on Linux. ;D

I haven't considered it much, because I'm not for totally customizing my desktop from scratch, and command lines? Screw 'em. That's why I like Windows, but at least it's good to know that there a close Linux alternative.

[thetruecoolness]

All I know is I can't stand Gentoo. Took me like 10 hours to install it and it took like an hour and a half to install Firefox (and my computer isn't that much of a slouch), and it really didn't seem to run any faster or better than a precompiled version. So if you want you can download almost any linux program, to my knowledge, as source and compile it yourself if you're into that, on any distro. Of course you can usually get some kind of packaged version of it as well for whatever Distro you have.

I know I don't use Linux, but that's mainly because I have quite a few programs that only run on Windows, and it seems most of the jobs out there (or around me at least) all use .NET, as it seems to be the new thing sweeping the programming world. But for my side projects I still use mainly open source languages and environments, just on Windows. So at some point I will likely try out Linux again, probably Ubuntu since it's based on Debian and seems a little easier to deal with. I've also used Fedora and Mandrake, but they do leave something to be desired if you want to do something complicated it seems. I usually find Linux to be too much of a hassle to deal with, and program dependencies get to be a real pain, since to install one program you typically need about 5 to 6 others and they usually don't all come together due to licensing issues or something like that.

So I don't know, I think Windows is decently customizable if you take the time to really learn it. Sure it has a lot of bloat ware, and a terrible search engine, but it normally gets the job done, and typically without a whole lot of hassle. So I think each operating system has it's strengths and weaknesses, and all of them are fairly equal, just some are more suited for certain tasks.

[Doan the Nado]

thetruecoolness said:

All I know is I can't stand Gentoo. Took me like 10 hours to install it and it took like an hour and a half to install Firefox (and my computer isn't that much of a slouch), and it really didn't seem to run any faster or better than a precompiled version.

[...]

I usually find Linux to be too much of a hassle to deal with, and program dependencies get to be a real pain, since to install one program you typically need about 5 to 6 others and they usually don't all come together due to licensing issues or something like that.

Yes, Gentoo does take a long time to install. I tried to indicate this with the "very lengthy process" comment, and I did also mention that it took me about 5 hours, but I already had some experience with other systems.

You mention that program dependencies are a real pain. To install Firefox, you need about 20 other programs. This is why it took so long to install Firefox: it had to download and install the gtk widget set, networking libraries, various other C++ libraries, spell checking programs, fonts, and all kinds of other things. The thing I really appreciate about Gentoo is that it handles all of these dependencies really well. I have never installed a program from their distro and had it not work because I was missing something else that was needed: it was all done automatically.

And even though it takes a long time to install the OS and the software, the great thing is that Gentoo is so stable that I haven't ever had to wipe it clean and restart. I couldn't keep a Windows install for more than a couple of years without doing this (registry creep, bloatware, etc), and a ton of Ubuntu users find themselves starting from the beginning when they break something.

Gentoo is great in that it offers cutting edge software (as soon as a new version is released, it shows up in the repositories and is automatically downloaded with "emerge --update world"), but still manages to maintain a solid system. Additionally, when I was looking for an OS after buying my new computer, Gentoo was one of the few operating systems offering good 64-bit support.

As far as not noticing Firefox running faster because it was compiled, that is not something that you will notice with Firefox. The bottleneck with Firefox is the speed of the network. The thing you will notice is that your installed programs will take up much less space (you don't use KDE? Then you can compile it without KDE support, and so on), and computationally intensive programs will run faster, such as games. The easy reason that native compilation is better is that it better supports new processors. When you download a precompiled binary (as is typically done in Windows), it is compiled for a generic intel instruction set that is supported by all processors. If you compile it for your specific machine, instead, then advances that are made on processors can actually help the performance of your applications.

Your programs that "only run on Windows" will actually probably be able to run on Linux. Many people are playing World of Warcraft 3 on Gentoo using WINE, and reporting equal or greater performance to what they get in Windows. Google actually bought a startup company which ran on some kind of Windows server, and they are running the entire Windows server on top of Wine on one of their Linux machines.

I really hope you give Linux, and specifically Gentoo, another try. It really does take some effort to get things up and running, I will admit that, but once you go through all that, you will really understand your computer well, and the hassle is mostly over. I now leave my computer on for months at a time without ever having to restart it. Why is that important? I can set up an outward-facing HTTP server or leave sshd running and get to my computer from anywhere.

Finally, I think it is a good idea for anyone to try to get familiar with a new environment. As long as everyone depends on Windows for their needs, Microsoft will be able to continue to put out sub-par products and to place the needs of others above those of their customers. If there's a real risk of people leaving for a new platform, they may actually be motivated to put the customer first again, as it should be.

Oh, and one last note from my FreeBSD computer:
[brandon@doanserver ~]$ uptime
3:09PM up 37 days, 21:44

[thetruecoolness]

Yeah you have a point, but I hope they improved Gentoo a bit, because watching compile messages fly by for a couple of hours gets really tedious. But yes it is nice to not have memory leaks, though not all of them can be completely blamed on MS as usually it's other programs that cause the leak. As for the programs that only run on Windows I'm referring to my TV Card and an MPEG2 cutting program I have. I guess there may be a free one for the second but I haven't found one that performs as well as the one I have. It's very fast and good at what it does and doesn't try to reencode the file like a lot of MPEG2 editing programs will do.

But I see your point and will start trying Linux again once I get my second computer up and running again. Though since I live with my family at the moment, they really aren't keen on the idea of me having on two computers at a time.

[Doan the Nado]

Oh, some other things regarding compilation: if you want to get Gentoo up and running quickly, you can start from a "Stage 3 Tarball", which I haven't done, but I hear that advice all the time. Presumably, it contains much of a standard Gentoo installation already compiled and set up.

To speed up general compilation, there are a few things you can do.

The first (which I have done), is to install the program ccache. This program caches compilations so that if a file is going to get recompiled, the binary is instead pulled from the cache. Sometimes a new version comes out with small changes, and ccache can speed up compilation of these new versions tremendously since much of the files are pulled from the cache instead of recompiling.

The second, if you have sufficient memory, is to use a utility which mounts a temporary filesystem into memory which is used for compilation. Now, compilation can occur much faster because reads and writes happen in memory instead of on disk. It can also presumably extend the life of your hard drives by making them work less: they load the program once to memory, and then don't do anything again until it's time to write the final binaries. I do not utilize this option yet myself because I only have 1G of memory and my girlfriend and I are both typically logged in at the same time (yes, on the same computer, working side-by-side), so using a ton of memory for compilation is somewhat infeasible. I plan on ordering 2G more at some point, and when I do, I will definitely get this setup going.

Another option, if you have multiple computers, is to use distcc. This program runs in the background on your computers, and when one computer needs to compile a program, it can talk to other computers on your network using distcc: it will send files over for compilation and the compiled version will come back. I only have one Gentoo computer, so I haven't done this yet, either. At some point, I may put Gentoo on my girlfriend's old laptop (I really like it a lot more than Ubuntu), and I'll probably use distcc at that point to install programs on the laptop.

Finally, if you have several Gentoo computers, I know there is a way to set it up so that updates occur once and cascade to other computers (assuming you wish to have identical software on all of them). I have not done much research into this area since it's something that I'm not likely to use soon, but I am certain that there are HowTos which describe how to put together a setup like this.

Here is one more note that might help you, if you're interested in giving Linux another shot right now. It's pretty easy, actually to set up a dual boot install of both Windows and Linux. One such method would involve using Ubuntu. Put in the install disk and access the special partitioning options. Do the following:

1. Shrink the Windows partition to the first part of the disk only and make it as small as possible (leaving about 10% empty).
2. Make the second partition a Linux ext3 partition named /home , as large as possible (after accounting for 3 and 4)
3. Make the third partition a Linux ext3 partition, named / (Linux root), about 10G.
4. Make the fourth partition a Linux swap partition of about 2G.

Make sure that it is set up so that the first partition is not formatted. This will leave your Windows installation intact. Start the Ubuntu install, it won't take too long, and once it's done, Grub will be configured to allow you to boot into either Linux or Windows. Now, make sure to set up a user account on your Ubuntu installation; in doing so, you should get a folder for yourself in the /home directory.

Now, boot into Windows. Download and install Ext2 for Windows and set it up so that your second (/home) partition appears as a normal drive in Windows. Now create some folder under your /home/{username} directory for Documents, and change your My Documents settings to point to this directory (it will also ask if it should copy everything over. Do this). Now, you can share all of your work (if it is stored in My Documents) between both of your installations: you can get to all of your documents and media here easily no matter which system you're booted into. If you use Firefox, I can also show you how to share profile information across both installations, so that if you add a bookmark in Linux, it appears in your Windows version. I thought it was pretty neat how easily Windows and Linux could co-exist on the same machine.