The small linux problem thread

I have a question not a problem for all the linux gods here.

I’m looking for a distro for a non-technical parent that is noob friendly, stable, relatively new kernel, relatively secure and does things the right way.
Ubuntu is using its own tools instead of the standard like Mir instead of Wayland.
Mint is far too behind on the kernel version.
Debian is stable but people say everything in there is old as Dinosaur.
Arch is very fast but apparently the security is lacking.

I hear good things about Solus.

I’ve never had a problem with Solus on the stable (default) repo.

My mom (can’t figure out how to turn on a desktop) has been running this for about a year now.

Debian testing stays relatively new until the stable freeze. I use Debian SID/Unstable. Only update when you need. Caveat is that only stable and testing get security updates. It isn’t uncommon to roll through one or two package version bumps a week on unstable though so why backport security fixes when they should be in mainline already.

My issue with Debian is the stability. It’s definitely “stable” as far as the individual packages go, but apt is the Achilles heel of the distro. I’ve never seen a package manager have so much trouble with simple updates.

your version of /etc/passwd differs from the distribution provided version. Which version would you like to use?

Yeah… No thanks.

My result with uname -a is:

Linux **censored-localdomain** 4.14.8-300.fc27.x86_64 #1 SMP Wed Dec 20 19:00:18 UTC 2017 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

Looking at the readme for version 384.98 (recent version provided in the rpmfusion repo), It states that the kernel version must be greater than 2.6.9, which my kernel version definitely is.

Edit: I think I may be on to something! I ran sudo akmods and got this:

Checking kmods exist for 4.14.8-300.fc27.x86_64            [  OK  ]
Ignoring nvidia-kmod as it failed earlier                  [WARNING]

So I ran sudo /usr/sbin/akmods --force to see if I can get it to work. Hopefully the machine will work now!

Edit2: IT WORKS!!! However, it is really strange that akmods was not able to do this automatically.

Good user friendly distros IMO.

  1. openSUSE <— From experience, very hard to break even as root. Rolling release or Annual. Probably the most stable Rolling release you will find.
  2. Solus
  3. Zorin

I could second openSuse. Even tumbleweed is pretty new user friendly. Just force zypper to update the system weekly with a cron job and disable the “updates are available” message.

I know that this will start a holy war but APT is one of the best packages managers ever created and caused the creation of dnf and zypper and other modern package managers. Not that I did not say THE BEST because that is a value judgement and an opinion.

With that said your issue is not with apt, but the Debian maintainers. Debian does a lot of backporting, security fixes, and expands config customization because it is the “Universal OS”. They support so many different platforms, CPU architectures, and foreign kernel compatibility (kfreeBSD, HURD, mach, and etc) that sometimes the maintainer version contains additional tweaks.

You also get that message when you have customized a config file that mainline would normally overwrite blindly. DPKG is giving you the opportunity to preserve your configurafion, blindly accept the new configuration, merge your configuration and the maintainer’s “vanilla” confifuratuon, or manually pick pieces of the maintainers config and add them to yours.

The above also goes for custom compilesd packages not done the Debian way or when manually tampered with.

I am not saying that you have to like it, but your reason for disliking it is based on a technical misunderstanding that presents itself as an annoyance. You can also force APT and dpkg to force the maintainer config/version or you can configure them to never ask again for all packages or on a per package basis (with pinning).

Also, mixing Ubuntu sources with Debian sources can cause your mentioned issue. But that is asking for a world of hurt. :wink:

1 Like

If you don’t need to mess with Nvidia drivers (though negativo17 repo is pretty good even for non technical people) each fedora release is supported for 2 years and it’s easy to upgrade after that. Gnome software is easy to use so install and add on rpmfusion and they are good to go. Dnf can be set to auto update in the background or they can do it through gnome software themselves.

Opensuse is probably also a decent choice though not sure I’d recommend tumbleweed to a non technical user.

I’ve no experience with solus

Glad that you got it to work. I know that NV is usually a few weeks to a month behind when a new kernel is released.

It is possible that they are using a deprecated call that is not fully compatible. I have been away from the NV game since 2003

I doubt it. I can have a discussion without turning into a raging asshole (at least on the internet, I can)

Yeah. You’re absolutly right. That said, it has left a sour taste in my mouth because any time I use a debian based distro, this happens. I know there’s configuration for it, but yum, pacman and other package managers handle this silently and a bit more intelligently IMO.

1 Like

What about printers and scanners? Do they work ok? I was very surprised that wireless headset from Corsair actually works with Mint 18.1 without having to configure anything. It was actually easier to change sound output in Mint than in Windows 7.

However the USB dongle or the driver seems to intefere with the trackpad. as soon as I enable the headset the trackpad with the buttons stops working. Remove the dongle and it works again.

I am actually planning to use that for myself. Suse Leap i think has the best balance between stability, security, and how new the packages are.

Lot of people say that bleeding edge distros are easy to break. I don’t think I could use that myself and I am technical person.

I have Fedora 22 installed on spare laptop and to be honest it’s rough around the edges. There are many small things that are missing/switched off by default. Once I was formatting a USB on it and Fedora didn’t even show any progress bar or percentage just nothing. After few minutes I took the USB out thinking it was done and then it threw an error telling me that the format process was interrupted. Well yeah how was i supposed to know when you didn’t tell me how long it will take? When i plugged it back it in, fedora played a sound but didn’t show any new device. Ugh…what now? I plug in into windows and it asks me straight away. In order do use this device it needs to be formatted. Would you like to format now or cancel? Thanks that’s what I needed.

See this is just one of many things on fedora that is not thought out. Using fedora feels very bare bones.

Depending on the printer/scanner, obviously. My Epson WF 2540 works just fine, in fact, Solus automatically detects it when I’m on the network it’s attached to, downloads the driver package (if needed) and configures the printer.

SuSe does things a little different with automated testing. This allows their bleeding edge to not break the system. Packages that do not pass muster are held back and manually investigated. openQA and OBS makes this possible. Some of the other distros are starting to adopt this approach.

https://build.opensuse.org/

https://openqa.opensuse.org/

For the record, I try to like SuSe, but I just can’t come to grips with using it as my Daily. The SuSe way is good or even better than Debian but like Ubuntu, SuSe goes off the beaten path some times. They genuine believe that they do things better than other distro, even if their methodology is arcane at times.

I feel the exact same way. There’s just something about it. While Debian based and RPM-based distros feel “similar” in some way, SuSe seems to be dancing to its own song just outside the party. It’s odd and I don’t like it.

It’s worth noting that fedora 22/gnome then is miles behind where 27/gnome now is. There’s also a good up to date KDE branch.

3 Likes

Similar suggestions kept me out of OpenSUSE land … But now it is my daily driver :D. Possibly the best linux experience so far - amazing package choice, Yast, simple things that make life easier like “one click install”. And also I don’t get issues with non-foss apps I use for work (otherwise I’d probably stay on Fedora which I also like quite much) which are sometimes a bit hit and miss on distros closer to bleeding edge.
I get what you’re saying though. SOme of their default choices are… odd. For example filesystem - by default installer wants to set up btrfs and xfs. While it may be interesting for a quite specific professional (or if you’re doing a test install you want to play for a week before wiping it out and doing a proper install - and thus might want to try snapshot feature when you break things), for regular desktop use it is one of the worst choices I could think of - you can as well set you file system on fire.
Another one is “wicked” network interface. Ok, I understand in many ways it is better. But as noone did integration with desktop environments , new users will be immediately put off by inability to configure network through the GUI desktop of their choice (Gnome, Xfce etc). Or worse they could think something is wrong as the desktop will tell them there’s no network :wink: . It really should be installed / set as default on a desktop system ONLY if the actual desktop integration was ready.

In both cases you need a bit of experience to know you might want to change those so they won’t hamper your experience. Thus while I totally love it at this point in time I wouldn’t recommend OpenSUSE for someone starting out with Linux. But in this instance Fedora usually does the trick - a couple of my non tech-savvy friends installed it on their laptops and seem to enjoy it

1 Like

Here is the reasoning for using BTRFS and XFS by default. (Straight from the horse’s mouth)

Sure can
btrfs on / primarily to leverage the full power of snapper for system snapshots and rollback, including ‘boot to snapshot’ which is in Tumbleweed. http://snapper.io/

XFS for data, because XFS is a damn good filesystem for data and doesn’t have the few edge cases that btrfs does where it sometimes isn’t the best filesystem for certain profiles

for example, databases, lots of tiny writes have a sometimes will slow down a btrfs filesystem… that said, current Tumbleweed builds disable COW for those subvolumes that are going to contain databases…so…yeah… let me rephase

XFS for data, because you probably don’t need the extra features BTRFS brings for your data. :wink:

Opensuse Chairman.

I just tried getting Canon Pixma MP140 to work in Mint just to find out it doesn’t work on windows either. T_T
I’m getting error 5E cartridge not recognised. I read up on this and apparently when the printer detects that a cartridge is empty it keeps that information along with its serial number. So even after you re-fill the ink printer will say no. (some say that printers only have enough memory to store 4 serial numbers, so if you use 5 different cartridges in cycle then you might be able to avoid this problem.) I tried resetting the ink level using various methods and cleaning the nozzle head but nothing works.

Looks like new cartridge is needed however I doubt I would get it to work in Linux because canon says my printer is not supported. They could have at least leave the old drivers in there.

Sounds like you got a really shitty printer.

I stay away from Canon because they do that on purpose. non-canon ink cartridges tend to not work as well. There’s a lot of shit that goes into printing that really pisses me off.

If Canon doesn’t make drivers for it, you’re probably SOL. Sorry.

1 Like