Crass Spektakel

PopOS is a sure way of getting into ten times more problems than Ubuntu.

Seriously, I know them all. Started with NetBSD in 1991, used pretty much everything.

If your system isn’t super weird then Ubuntu is the most relaxed experience you will ever have as a newby.

(And yes, I am not using Ubuntu currently. But then, I hat 35 years of POSIX/Unix/Linux experience)

I am an old timer. I started with BSD before there was even a Linux. NetBSD on an Amiga 3000 before the AT&T law suite against NetBSD, then heared about Linux which was twice as clean as NetBSD and without legal issues - Later NetBSD removed all legal issues nonetheless.

First Linux was a Watch-Tower Distribution, basically a big RAM-Disk with a rudimentary Linux system which you copied to HD. No package manager, nothing. tar, make was the way to do installations. Shortly after Slackware and SuSE which basically was the same back then. Then a lot of SuSE then Debian, then Ubuntu. Don’t care much about the distribution nowadays as long as it is DEB-based.

But now something to scare all of you: Today my most used POSIX environment is… Cygwin. Well, I got a Windows-Notebook for development and a VM is really clunky in comparison to a fully integrated POSIX-layer like Cygwin. For developing Stuff it actually matters very little if you use BSD, Linux, Cygwin or even Solaris.

fvwm95 is nice though…

But for me my secret forbidden love is still AmiFVWM, an FVWM clone with the look of AmigaOS 3.1.

#You are perfectly right.

All major distributions offer all major Environments. I currently use either Debian or Ubuntu and usually install by booting the Netinstall.iso right from the official Servers which installs just the base system without any GUI at all. Then I use tasksel to select the environment. Ok, not every Environment is part of Tasksel but often it is just adding another Repository and running another apt install operation.

And yes, on my experimental computer I often install a dozen environments just because I can. Selectable at Login-Screen.

But now somethings VERY important from someone with 35 years of POSIX experience:

If you are a newby FOR GODS SAKE USE UBUNTU.

And if you are a pro… Ubuntu still is a very good option. Only if your have VERY GOOD REASONS which you COMPLETELY UNDERSTAND, only then use something else. Which is Debian for me.

I beat that. When I first installed a BSD in 1988 - I was 16 and stupid - I thought I would copy files like on Amiga or MSDOS by “copy filename c:” and did cp filename /dev/sda.

You only do that ONCE.

I have used Linux since 1993 (Slackware, Suse and Debian) and Ubuntu since 2006. I consider switching back to Debian because I hate snap and other containers for Of-the-Line Software and while I can uninstall snap and install a De-Snapped Firefox directly from Mozilla I hate doing this Extra-Work.

Dudes, even the “newer faster” Firefox-Snap is still taking three times as long to start and uses twice as much memory and on my work computer, a Core2 Q9550 with 8GByte of memory, this is VERY noticable. Yes, the system is old but for work more than enough. My i7 is only for games and I don’t mix work and fun.

Oh, and then there is that old neighbour who is using a Pentium4 3Ghz 3GByte RAM, which is 32Bit only. He is like 80 years old and doesn’t want to buy a new computer and his old rig does everything he wants. Ubuntu simply doesn’t support it anymore. Supporting old computers is something Linux does outstanding (Windows 11 dropping two year old systems is fucking sick)

at least you avoided a “useless cat” by using “more” instead. Respect Bro!

Me last Thursday:

user@work5:~$ [CTRL-R] ls

user@work5:~$ ls

me: “That will do…”