Which OS you prefer

[StrayKAT]

yup, free, dude from support listened to my request and nagging and had mercy on me....in the end, I had 5 or 6 custom bioses on drive, mentioned nowhere on their web...took him a day or two to build each one though...

That's cool. To be fair to SM, they've had good support too, and even allowed me access to a private SFTP for early software updates.. but they've never actually built anything for me. lol

 

[GoldenX]

Now that's just awesome.

 

[lexluthermiester]

I had no idea Mint was even around that long.

Oh yeah, Mint has been around since 2006. It got very good in 2009 and has really come into it's own in the last few years. It is literally a hop-skip-jump from becoming my main OS.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_Mint
The XFCE desktop version is the one I prefer, but Cinnamon and Mate are very solid too.

Although that's a longstanding case in point of bad Linux names btw. It was named after Debra and Ian Murdock (RIP).

Exactly, it's pronounced Deb-Ian.

 

[StrayKAT]

Oh yeah, Mint has been around since 2006. It got very good in 2009 and has really come into it's own in the last few years. It is literally a hop-skip-jump from becoming my main OS.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_Mint
The XFCE desktop version is the one I prefer, but Cinnamon and Mate are very solid too.

Exactly, it's pronounced Deb-Ian.

I suppose if it wasn't for games, just about anything could become my main OS.

Although there are some things I actually like about Windows too. It's not something I just tolerate (that used to be the case).

 

[Gorstak]

I just installed centos7

 

[StrayKAT]

I just installed centos7

I'm curious what's going to happen to that, now that IBM is in charge.

Like I said at the start, corporate takeover is getting interesting... for better or worse. In this case, maybe for the worse.

On the better side, looks like Intel actually wants to support gaming on Linux on their upcoming GPUs (first I heard they were targeting just the Pro market. Guess not).

https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Intel-dGPU-Will-Do-Linux-Gaming

 

[GoldenX]

Years suffering with the stupid intel driver, and finally they start using Gallium for their dGPU.

 

[StrayKAT]

Years suffering with the stupid intel driver, and finally they start using Gallium for their dGPU.

What's wrong with it?

What would rock is if they supported RST/Optane configs on Linux. I can only use it in Windows.

 

[GoldenX]

What's wrong with it?

What would rock is if they supported RST/Optane configs on Linux. I can only use it in Windows.

Huge CPU overhead, no gallium-nine support, no gallium goodies like osd info, automatic gl_thread (very important), very hard to get OpenGL 4.6 support (they need to rewrite most of the driver).
I would love an Optane driver, even if privative. But you can do a manual config using it as swap and setting the swapiness at the highest value. Or as a normal drive and using it as root.

 

[StrayKAT]

Huge CPU overhead, no gallium-nine support, no gallium goodies like osd info, automatic gl_thread (very important), very hard to get OpenGL 4.6 support (they need to rewrite most of the driver).
I would love an Optane driver, even if privative. But you can do a manual config using it as swap and setting the swapiness at the highest value. Or as a normal drive and using it as root.

Well, I should say the "smart" features of Optane management, rather than support itself (which works). The app will understand when to place recently used files.. or let you "pin" specific applications to run on the drive. It kind of seems trivial to port over a similar app to Mac or Linux, but it'd be nice if they did. edit: Same goes for the CPU/Turbo Max app, which allows you to pin programs to specific cores.

 

[Gorstak]

removed centos7 after about 3 hours of trying to get steam to install...@ mint now and everything works...installed steam and football manager 17 without issues, and only other soft is firewalld...i tried to install bastille first, but some dependencies are missing and the package is gone from aptitude. I don't know how to get that standard security baseline centos7 offered during install with mint though...centos7 was rock solid, safe and very fast, and I wish i could get that in mint...for some reason, while I was on centos7, something exploded in my 2nd router and tv was gone...turning it off and on again helped...

 

[StrayKAT]

One thing I'd be worried about is I use different mod managing applications and third party tools and patchers that manipulate game files . Some games are unplayable without it (VtM Bloodlines, for example). Hell, I'm not even sure first party apps run either (like Bethesda's Creation Kit).

It's great that Linux is getting better at games, but the whole ecosystem of Windows is an advantage for gaming. All of the small shit adds up.

 

[Gorstak]

fm17 is built with linux in mind, and this isn't through wine, it's native. It's easy to get things working on linux if you have a coder that knows what works on both platforms.

 

[StrayKAT]

fm17 is built with linux in mind, and this isn't through wine, it's native. It's easy to get things working on linux if you have a coder that knows what works on both platforms.

Oh, I didn't mean to relate my post to native games. Just that my library is full of old games that don't even work without patches.. or I don't want to play without editors and modding. Some games are even "remastered" and have new life breathed into them through fan made tools, like Morrowind stuff that updates DX capabilities and shaders. Or some Deus Ex and Thief overhauls. Windows is a truly awesome platform for gaming.. and not just for the large selection of games. But how you can control the games as well.

More power to the Linux world, but I don't think they know what they're up against. I saw an interview where Linus thought they weren't popular on desktops simply because Windows is preinstalled.. but it's bigger than that. There's probably some truth to it when it comes to old boomers who just use office and email apps.. but not gamers.

 

[Gorstak]

most linux distros are very difficult to use for windows gamers. Or better put, oobe isn't exactly user friendly, plus, not that many games available. I don't really care. Sure, I'd love to play on linux, but my gaming days are gone, and it's up to some new kids to make it happen. I don't mean through emulation stuff, but for real. Linux simply isn't as popular as windows are, and that's mostly because of it's complexion. If every distro at least had a nice gui for software installations, without all sorts of errors, they would attract more people, and than it would be a profitable market for gaming companies. Linux is still mostly looked at as: oh that geek's os...a regular plumber really wants to shoot people in call of duty, barely even knows how to install it under windows, let alone linux. The most popular distro is mint and it's precisely because of somewhat better oobe then others. First of all, no errors, 2nd it's fast, and 3rd it's easy to install whatever you want to install. You got synaptic, you got software manager, you got aptitude, you got terminal, take your pick. I wanted to install steam, and that happened a few seconds after I clicked it in software manager, albeit without asking me where I want it installed. I want to install browser I'm used to, like chrome, it's available and install's without issues in seconds. That's what you get in windows and people are used to, and that's what you should get in linux. Now I want this us goverment security baseline, and been googling for the past hour, so far found this https://github.com/adumont/redhat-server-hardening but not sure what to do with it. And that's linux's flaw, taking an awful lot ammount of time. After I manage to get security baseline working in mint, if I do it that is, next goal is stripping the os to bare bones and removing all personal data and making my own distro out of it, which will prolly take me a month to learn how to do it properly.

 

[johnspack]

Mint ect are cute, but if you want full blown gaming support, use Ubuntu or derivitaves like Kubuntu. If you install full winehq wine you can run many windows games and apps with no issue. Kubuntu also has an interface that will be easily recognizable by windows users, with a nice friendly start menu button et al! It also contains all codecs if you choose to install them during the install phase. It contains an office suite, and many multimedia apps to get you started, but there are 1000s more to choose. I ran windows for 20 years... I mainly use Kubuntu now, because it does what windows does, and a whole fing lot more!

 

[Gorstak]

never tried kubuntu...yesterday i tried something similar, chaletos...got some errors during the install procedure and gave it up. Mint is here for a long time and is quite a polished product. I will try kubuntu too, but so far, I'm happy with mint. Btw, mint uses debian packages, like ubuntu does.

 

[StrayKAT]

I thought Mint was an Ubuntu derivative.

 

[Gorstak]

it is

 

[lexluthermiester]

Mint ect are cute, but if you want full blown gaming support, use Ubuntu or derivitaves like Kubuntu.

I thought Mint was an Ubuntu derivative.

It is, literally a direct derivative of Ubuntu. The changes made have nothing to do with game support and is identical in that respect, as is Peppermint.

 

[StrayKAT]

It is, literally a direct derivative of Ubuntu. The changes made have nothing to do with game support and is identical in that respect, as is Peppermint.

That's what I thought. Just checking... since it was kind of plausible that it got so big it became it's own distro fork in it's own right. Kind of like Ubuntu itself isn't really Debian anymore.

 

[lexluthermiester]

it became it's own distro fork in it's own right.

It has in a way.

Kind of like Ubuntu itself isn't really Debian anymore.

True, but the whole idea of using a common base of code is to maintain compatibility and a unified foundation of doing certain things. So while Mint is based on Ubuntu which is based on Debian, they all share common base code which keeps the code ecosystem intact, which gives a high level of assurance that a program written for Debian will still work on Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Mint, Peppermint and any other distro's that use the same code base. Generally speaking 99% of programs written for Linux are supposed to work on all versions of Linux, but in practical usage, it's more like 95% with varying levels of optimization from distro to distro.

 

[GoldenX]

And hard to fulfil dependencies.

 

[Frick]

Lubuntu 16.10 on the HP 2510p in sig. With the SSD it's flying, and I keep coming back to it. I've tried a bunch of supposedly lightweight distros on it, but the only other one I like is Slitaz, which is too hardcore for me.

 

[GoldenX]

Lubuntu 16.10 on the HP 2510p in sig. With the SSD it's flying, and I keep coming back to it. I've tried a bunch of supposedly lightweight distros on it, but the only other one I like is Slitaz, which is too hardcore for me.

Why not use 18.04 or 18.10 then?