The Linux Thread - The Autist's OS of Choice

[SchizoDaemon]

Telling people to install multiple extensions just to make their desktop environment usable is pure copium.

It's just a suggestion of what I've found to work. I think it is usable beforehand. I've had to use plain GNOME on work machines, and it is fine IMO.

The older Gnome 3 versions were very buggy, though. I was using a CentOS 7 machine on a contract, and that had GNOME from 2014. There were quite a number of annoying window management bugs. These no longer exist.

Gnome 2.x was great - does anyone know what made the gnome foundation go full retard with the complete redesign?

I tried using Mate (which is the existing fork), and I didn't get on with it. I remember liking Gnome 2.X something on SUSE 9.2.

The redesign happened around the same time as the KDE 3-4 fiasco. I didn't exactly like KDE 3, but it was solid and functional.

The original GNOME Fallback session that shipped with CentOS 7 and CentOS 8 were legitimately fantastic stuff... but unless I'm horribly mistaken, GNOME Fallback no longer exists. I would've never attempted fiddling with Dash2Panel if the GNOME team, in their infinite "wisdom," decided to nix a genuinely useful alternative to GNOME Shell. I didn't need GNOME Tweak Tool to give me back my minimise and maximise buttons on the Fallback session. I was able to do much more and have a great time doing it in the fucking fallback session. Why they nixed it is beyond me.

I didn't like that fallback shell. I used to RDP into the machine from a Windows machine, and I had that shell, and I couldn't get on with it. Instead I used Citrix (as horrific as that is) to have proper Gnome.

I dunno man. The GNOME team from 2011 through the present day feel like they started LARPing like coked up studio execs in the 80s enabling each other's bad ideas, followed by recrimination behind closed doors once they come down.

I agree. I do not like the developer at all. However, I do like GNOME.

 

[Taser Confetti]

I tried using Mate (which is the existing fork), and I didn't get on with it. I remember liking Gnome 2.X something on SUSE 9.2.

The redesign happened around the same time as the KDE 3-4 fiasco. I didn't exactly like KDE 3, but it was solid and functional.

I switched to MATE almost immediately when Gnome 3 came out and found it a safe enough refuge. Eventually switched to KDE because I just want shit to work and leave me alone.

 

[SchizoDaemon]

I switched to MATE almost immediately when Gnome 3 came out and found it a safe enough refuge. Eventually switched to KDE because I just want shit to work and leave me alone.

I can't get on with either of them. I like cinnamon, but there are lots of odd bugs, e.g., the screenshot utils had double title bars, and I had network notification come on constantly when logging back in even though I turned it off.
I also use a KVM and have odd issues when switching between my work computer and my actual PC. These don't happen as often on Gnome.

 

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I'm going to be honest guys, what exactly do you DO that makes you pick a fringe distro over Ubuntu, Debian or Arch? I'm 2 weeks into my Debian install with update notifications off and... it's perfect. I don't get it, like what EXACTLY are you doing that makes a fringe OS more worthwhile?

I have been using Linux for more than 20 years and I refuse to allow the failure of Debian and Ubuntu to resist their subversion by disgusting Red Hat pedofreaks making enemy software like systemd and Wayland to stop me using Linux the right way, like I always have. Devuan and AntiX aren't 'fringe distros'- Debian is.

 

[Ferryman]

All I'm seeing is fragmentation for the sake of fragmentation that will result in linux development getting more hamstrung in trying to account for every fucking distro known to man.

Bad framing, "fragmentation" and "fringe" in this context are just FUD buzzwords that imply if $"FRINGE"_DISTRO didn't exist, people would automatically pivot to dev for $MAIN_DISTRO instead. This is simply untrue. I'll speak for Guix since that is what I use and contribute code to. I use Guix because it has the best packaging UX out of any other distro I've seen so far, making it trivial to write your own package definitions for whatever software you want. Because it is declarative, it lets me write configs for my machines from my main computer, then instantly apply them, and have the machine ready to go as soon as they compile. The packagaging UX, the Scheme configs, the adherence to Free Software make it unique and irreplaceable to me. If I wasn't using Guix, I would likely be using Void, Gentoo or FreeBSD, because the bigger and more centralized a project, the more bullshit you have to deal with upstream. Debian is now Jeeted, Canonical are a pack of retards that should be strung up by their thumbs for the abomination that is Snaps, and Red Hat are malicious Microsoft-tier corpo rats that have a vested interest in centralizing the Linux ecosystem under their banner through projects like Wayland, FreeDesktop, Fedora, Systemd (not directly RH but in the same boat) and so on. The more centralization, the less user choice you have. Its like the whole Wayland vs X11 thing from a few pages back, it isn't so much which is "better", but that you retain the capacity to choose. Systemd, Wayland and others are an attempt at centralizing an ecosystem that is supposed to be use-case based and decentralized by default. That is why there is so much bitterness towards XLibre or "protest distros", or people using phrases like "fragmentation" or "fringe" to denounce people who don't want to tow the kosher line.

TLDR: Sovreignty over my own stuff and not having to deal with paper pushers trumps any "fragmentation" concerns. I just don't like being told what to do.

 

[Sneed Chuckson]

I'm going to be honest guys, what exactly do you DO that makes you pick a fringe distro over Ubuntu, Debian or Arch? I'm 2 weeks into my Debian install with update notifications off and... it's perfect. I don't get it, like what EXACTLY are you doing that makes a fringe OS more worthwhile?

Because the majority of people here are using web browsers, playing steam games and watching shit on Netflix etc. Something that can easily be achieved with a basic popular Linux distro.

I use arch btw which is a basic and popular distro, but I would use a "fringe" distro for the same reason I picked arch and not ubuntu, or windows for that matter. I want a certain degree of control over my computer. For my purposes, the control that arch gives me is enough (I don't particularly care about systemd for now). I do not like RedHat for the reasons @Ferryman mentioned. The push against "fragmentation" (read: the push for centralization) is anti-linux. If I wanted a centralized, corporate-managed operating system that works Well Enough™ I'd use mac or windows (is what I would have said if windows was functional). I recently decided that I do not like flatpaks and I removed the flatpak system from my computer. That would be firmly impossible if we all lived under redhat's or canonical's worldview, if they decided everyone has to use it then that's that. That's exactly what they did with x and wayland. I don't like that they want to deprive me of the choice.

 

[SchizoDaemon]

I tried Debian in 2001/2002 and my experience with it was actually quite similar.

 

[acid_ra1n]

I like how "protest distro" is used as an argument against breaking away from retardation. Artix has been a consistent blast and I'm trying Dinit out this time, quite impressed with its performance.

Its not even an accurate term because protest doesnt provide an alternative
Liberated systemd is protesting age verification by stripping out that code but artix is providing alt init support on a good distro base
By that logic linux mint and ubuntu are protest software