Linux Distros, User Evaluations

[TWPonKubuntu]

I agree with the prior comment "It's all Linux", and the DE makes a big difference.

Woodsmoke; That's a good overview of the Linux GUIs.

This evaluation shows what we all expect, KDE is most "Customizable":

http://www.datamation.com/open-sourc...omization.html

[GreyGeek]

When I used Knoppix for several months it was featuring KDE and RPM. It was the first distro I used that was burned onto a single CD and when booted automatically installed the distro to the HD. It also featured a color console with sound during the install. At first I loved it because I didn't have to go to OSS and pay for another sound driver and I didn't have to compile the Bamboo etho driver, and it automatically ran XF86Config and reduced setting up the monitor to answering a few questions it could not answer on its own.

It was the distro that I mentioned when I talked about adding an app which caused the entire KDE desktop to upgrade to the next version, which worked out great. A couple weeks later I added another app which forced the downgrade to the previous KDE version, but the reboot failed and I decided to switch to Kannotix (sp?) for a month or two before I moved to Mandrake, IIRC.

[woodsmoke]

Well, I've used just about all of them over the past many years.

To me there really are just "three" --- "styles" of GUI (the window manager) which is what really pulls "most" folks to a distro.

a) the "classic", in other words for "most folks", the windows 98 experience, a small panel at bottom, a small launcher, etc. One can applyh third party launchers, etc.

b) The "classic" expanded / reimagined this includes Kubuntu, KDE, larger more expansive launchers, a "file folder" that can be put on the desktop that defaults to larger more expansive, (yes one can easily add "activities", etc, but basically an "expansion of possibiilties" of the classic.

c) totally different, Unity, Xfce, Sawfish, afterstep/nextstep, reliance on things like Conky as a default item, right clicking on the desktop for a launcher as default, Enlightenment( animated desktop, etc) the Adrieanne talking desktop on Knoppix, etc.

A) For me, it is just EASIER to use the KDE experience and I will continue with it as default.

But, I really DID make a decision today, because I had to do a simple thing: format a Kingston usb drive. WHAT A HASSLE, there are volumes of posts about chmod, etc about this furshlugginer piece of drek on the net but, I pulled out my usb drive of Knoppix and just formatted the piece of trash in two clicks.

(the only reason I have it is because they were a "gift" to the instructors of the department a few years ago at the pre-semester meeting, I actually made the mistake of purchasing one of them a few years ago and it will NEVER happen again.

B) Knoppix is "discussed" as a "niche" distro, it uses LXDE etc. but the big thing is that it is "for formatting stuff, etc, / disc rescue "

I beg to differ.

It is "just a distro that has a bunch of tools added in but it can be a "regular" distro also, and I have used it as such a few years ago,

It may require some knowledge and effort to add in applications that a user wants particulary, but.... it is basically a "classic" distro with tools".

So, If I ever move away from KDE, I'll use Knoppix or Kali since it has penetration tools, etc. ( which can be loaded into Knoppix of course).

Below is a listing of all of the Linux window managers.

http://www.gilesorr.com/wm/table.html

woodjustsayinsmoke

[TWPonKubuntu]

No, what led you to suspect that?
...
So far *knocks on wood* my Plasma rock solid stable. Occasionally an app crashes but that is getting increasingly rare.
It may come as a surprise to many folks but KubuntuForums.net is NOT a bug reporting facility. Most developers do not have time to peruse the many internet forums where folks can post complaints about problems they are having. And, judging by the information many of those posting complaints supply, it wouldn't do devs much good traversing these pages.

No, it's just that comparing speeds between 32 and 64 bit doesn't make sense... I'm on 32bit.
Thanks for your feedback though.

I do try to report these glitches to https://bugs.kde.org/
Sometimes I feel my reports fall through the cracks and are not noticed. Hence my statement about the squeaky wheel getting the most grease.

I hope more people do report glitches like mine, so I do post here to let others know they are not the only ones experiencing trouble.

Again, thank you.

[GreyGeek]

GG, are you running 32bit?

No, what led you to suspect that? Thinking that a 32bit Kubuntu Plasma desktop is more stable that a 64 bit?

My report is only my subjective observation of speed for operations that I do everyday.

That's all mine or anyone else's is ... purely a subjective report dependent on the type of hardware and the skill of the user. As a retired programmer I can say that it is definitely harder to debug one's own software because programmers subconsciously circumvent bugs in their own work, or, they know what is expected at each user input and "test" only those expected inputs. They would never put a phone number in a field labeled "Address 1:", but clerks do, all the time.

The shutdown/restart problem is almost certainly due to the specific shutdown commands for my laptop (Dell Latitude D820). Some distros recognize it, others do not.

In my Kubuntu 16.04 with Neon added to the sources.list as an experiment, I experienced shutdown failure from the desktop, but when I logged out first and then shut down from the login screen it proceeded normally.

The problem with Plasma crashing is still a mystery to me. I'm not finding this reported (at least not frequently) when I do a web search, but, as noted earlier, the use of 32bit systems is decreasing. Without a large number of complaints, there is little incentive for the the devs to address it. My wheel isn't squeaking enough to get their attention...

So far *knocks on wood* my Plasma rock solid stable. Occasionally an app crashes but that is getting increasingly rare.
It may come as a surprise to many folks but KubuntuForums.net is NOT a bug reporting facility. Most developers do not have time to peruse the many internet forums where folks can post complaints about problems they are having. And, judging by the information many of those posting complaints supply, it wouldn't do devs much good traversing these pages.

The proper place to file a bug report is here: https://bugs.kde.org/
Once you attempt to file one you'll get an idea of the kind of information they need to solve a problem and you'll be prepared to collect that information the next time you have a problem. The best kinds of problems are those that are reproducible. Just listing steps 1, 2, 3 and 4 and the app breaks. Then, telling them what you think was supposed to happen and then telling them what actually happened gives much better info. If you can trap syslog messages and supply those that is important too.
Now that Kubuntu 16.04 is running the systemd init system there are systemd and systemctl tools that aid in collecting info.

I wish I could attribute the Plasma crash to a hardware problem, but some KDE distros don't crash, so I'm still looking at a software glitch.

More testing will ensue...
Thanks for your input.

Some distros are more compatible with certain hardware than others. You use what works for you. It's all Linux!

[GreyGeek]

.... I've been considering a move away from Canonical but now that it seems they're playing nicer so maybe I won't have to.

So was I. I even replace Kubuntu 14.04 with Mint KDE 71.3 for the first three months of this year .... but their implementation of Btfs didn't fit my needs. Other than that Mint was a fine distro, as are most that I try, but most just do not have the flavor of Kubuntu, and its flavor fits me to a tee.

[TWPonKubuntu]

GG, are you running 32bit?

My report is only my subjective observation of speed for operations that I do everyday.

The shutdown/restart problem is almost certainly due to the specific shutdown commands for my laptop (Dell Latitude D820). Some distros recognize it, others do not.

The problem with Plasma crashing is still a mystery to me. I'm not finding this reported (at least not frequently) when I do a web search, but, as noted earlier, the use of 32bit systems is decreasing. Without a large number of complaints, there is little incentive for the the devs to address it. My wheel isn't squeaking enough to get their attention...

I wish I could attribute the Plasma crash to a hardware problem, but some KDE distros don't crash, so I'm still looking at a software glitch.

More testing will ensue...
Thanks for your input.

[GreyGeek]

My Kubuntu 16.04.1 installation shuts down or reboots properly from the desktop. My basic install booted to the login screen in 30 seconds and from there to the desktop in 15s. As I added apps the times increased. Now, with my favorite apps and services my times are 60s and 50s. If I install aiccu and connect to my IPv6 tunnel it adds 24s to my first number. My desktop snaps. My two most used apps, Dolphin and FF appear within a second or two.

I have 540GB of free HD space. While importing 5,200 emails the app got into a loop and ate ALL of the 540GB. Dolphin reported 0B free space. I was running in swap. I deleted a 1.8GB ISO file and stopped the import. I deleted the import folder and recovered the 540GB. KMail never complained. When I powered down my box it took 150s. The next boot up was normal, nothing was lost except the imported data, which I'll import another way because KMail can't eat its own dog food.
It may be that your ISO and/or burn was defective.

Oh, I installed PlayOnLinux so I could install and run a Windows based PLC system called IQAN, from Parker. POL/WINE added 10-15s to my boot time as well.

I think you'll find that Mint uses Systemd as well and every app or utility that creates a socket, service, timer, cgroup or other systemd unit will add time to the boot process. You can see what's been added by using
systemctl list-units --all

You can see the timing of the various services using
systemd-analyze blame




Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[TWPonKubuntu]

Testing Linux Mint now.

First thing I see is that Plasma still crashes, even during the install process.

It took three tries to get the install to complete. Poor internet connection is the probable cause here.

One good thing (kind of) is that Plasma, even though it crashes, does recover (restart) much faster than Kubuntu 16.04.1.

Another good point is that Mint now does a proper shutdown and/or restart. Kubuntu 16.04.1 will not complete either, requiring a hard shutdown (power key).

I still have to install Apache, PHP 7, MySQL, Phpmyadmin and recreate my dev environment. More later.

Speed seems to be overall faster then Kubuntu 16.04.1.

Also, Mint recognized all three of my wireless devices (internal and two external). Again, better than Kubuntu.

[TWPonKubuntu]

Greygeek, I've replaced it with Mint and am testing that at the moment.
I'll try again in a day or so.
Thanks

[GreyGeek]

IF you still have it as guest OS trying this:
systemctl list-unit-files is-failed
to see which units failed to load. Then you can look at their unit files and see what happended.
Also,
systemd-analyze critical-chain
may show a break.
systemctl list-units --all | grep sound
will show the sound services.
https://freedesktop.org/wiki/Softwar...emd/Debugging/

[TWPonKubuntu]

To continue this thread. I've been testing Lubuntu 16.04.1 on my laptop, with mixed results.

The biggest "gotchas" are:

1) Audio does not work, although it plays the video portion, with no sound. The default driver (ALSA), is not happy with my hardware. Other drivers are available, but their are some incompatibilities which require removal of the default drivers BEFORE installing another driver. Not user friendly.

2) The actual LXDE user interface works, video display on the monitor is fine, but it looks a little un-polished, at least when compared to Kubuntu 14.04. Where KDE offers adequate choices for most configuration options (pulldown lists or text descriptions of options), LXDE expects the user to already know the options and frequently advises the use of command line for execution and configuration. There are few instances where the F1 key works and there are no (in my experience) option to request help for individual configuration options.

3) The developers have a strong aversion to allowing the user to enter root level access. They have disabled most options to execute as root. This is a PITA when I really need to do simple things like create a folder or file using root ownership. Command line is what is again advised. Sure makes working with LXDE slower than KDE.

Conclusion: I will not be using Lubuntu for website development. It may have a small footprint, but at the cost of slower work flow. Lubuntu is built by knowledgeable Linux users, who appear to know everything by rote memory...

More testing of other distros will be needed.

[woodsmoke]

vinny, i apologize that is on Neon.

GG............THAT is why you ARE the great Grey One and I'm just the doof woodsmoker!

woodsmoke

[vinnywright]

The only "obvious" "problem" with Neon is that the central search bar for FF is non functional, one has to use the upper right search bar.

? ,,,,I do not have this problem on my Kubuntu-16.04-Neon/dev/stable

VINNY

[GreyGeek]

Woody,
I applied a ton of the "hints" suggested in this link and it has made FF a lightening fast browser with no ad block addon, but no ads, functional scrolling and search. FF48 is a whole new browser. Here are my setting changes. If an Item doesn't appear then I added it.

accessibility.typeaheadfind.flashBar;0
app.update.lastUpdateTime.addon-background-update-timer;1473562278
app.update.lastUpdateTime.blocklist-background-update-timer;1473562398
app.update.lastUpdateTime.browser-cleanup-thumbnails;1473621565
app.update.lastUpdateTime.experiments-update-timer;1473562158
app.update.lastUpdateTime.search-engine-update-timer;1473621445
app.update.lastUpdateTime.xpi-signature-verification;1473562518
browser.bookmarks.restore_default_bookmarks;false
browser.cache.disk.capacity;358400
browser.cache.disk.filesystem_reported;1
browser.cache.disk.smart_size.first_run;false
browser.cache.disk.smart_size.use_old_max;false
browser.cache.frecency_experiment;1
browser.customizemode.tip0.shown;true
browser.download.importedFromSqlite;true
browser.download.lastDir;/home/jerry/Downloads
browser.download.panel.shown;true
browser.laterrun.bookkeeping.profileCreationTime;1 473386844
browser.laterrun.bookkeeping.sessionCount;28
browser.laterrun.enabled;true
browser.migrated-sync-button;true
browser.migration.version;37
browser.newtabpage.enhanced;true
browser.newtabpage.storageVersion;1
browser.pagethumbnails.storage_version;3
browser.places.smartBookmarksVersion;8
browser.preferences.advanced.selectedTabIndex;3
browser.reader.detectedFirstArticle;true
browser.rights.3.shown;true
browser.safebrowsing.provider.google.lastupdatetim e;1473623224156
browser.safebrowsing.provider.mozilla.lastupdateti me;1473621353786
browser.safebrowsing.provider.mozilla.nextupdateti me;1473624953786
browser.search.countryCode;US
browser.search.hiddenOneOffs;Google
browser.search.region;US
browser.sessionstore.interval;30000
browser.sessionstore.upgradeBackup.latestBuildID;2 0160728203720
browser.shell.checkDefaultBrowser;true
browser.shell.mostRecentDateSetAsDefault;147361773 0
browser.slowStartup.averageTime;4927
browser.slowStartup.samples;3
browser.startup.homepage;https://duckduckgo.com/
browser.startup.homepage_override.buildID;20160728 203720
browser.startup.homepage_override.mstone;48.0
browser.tabs.loadInBackground;false
browser.tabs.remote.autostart.2;true
browser.urlbar.daysBeforeHidingSuggestionsPrompt;0
browser.urlbar.lastSuggestionsPromptDate;20160911
datareporting.healthreport.uploadEnabled;false
datareporting.policy.dataSubmissionPolicyAcceptedV ersion;2
datareporting.policy.dataSubmissionPolicyNotifiedT ime;1473386907783
datareporting.sessions.current.activeTicks;484
distribution.canonical.bookmarksProcessed;true
dom.apps.reset-permissions;true
dom.ipc.plugins.flash.subprocess.crashreporter.ena bled;false
dom.ipc.plugins.processLaunchTimeoutSecs;15
dom.ipc.plugins.reportCrashURL;false
dom.ipc.plugins.timeoutSecs;15
extensions.blocklist.pingCountTotal;4
extensions.blocklist.pingCountVersion;4
extensions.pendingOperations;false
general.smoothScroll;false
general.smoothScroll.pages;false
image.mem.max_decoded_image_kb;512000
layers.acceleration.force-enabled;true
media.getusermedia.screensharing.allowed_domains; (I deleted the contents- a bunch of URLs of screen space stealers)
mousewheel.min_line_scroll_amount;40
network.cookie.prefsMigrated;true
network.disable.ipc.security;false
network.predictor.cleaned-up;true
network.protocol-handler.app.mailto;kmailservice5 (add %U if url is not decoded)
privacy.donottrackheader.enabled;true
privacy.trackingprotection.enabled;true
privacy.trackingprotection.introCount;20
security.ssl3.dhe_rsa_aes_128_sha;false (this and the next cypher algorithms have already been broken by black hats and govs)
security.ssl3.dhe_rsa_aes_256_sha;false