Another Testimonial

[Vizitor]

Hi,
Read this if You are in isolation, or have nothing better to do

/For me, the most annoying things in Linux world are created by CUPS, smbclient and systemd./

When gnome3 was released, I escaped from Ubuntu to Linux Mint, and, 6 yars ago to ArchLinux.
I thought rolling distro will be a good idea ... So I learned that having rolling distro means fresh bugs.

Last one that overloaded my patience was systemd - fukkingMe at reboot/shutdown:
"A stop job is running for User Manager for UID 1000" and force me to wait for 2 min, sometimes longer.
Although it was first seen on April 2019, suddenly it happen to me nowadays.

Here's what mr.Smarty-pants have to say about it:
"this is most likely some user service (i.e. a service that runs inside the user systemd instance) that blocks shutdown"
Well, of course it is, it is readable from shutdown message for TWO fkkn mins!
As You can see on that link, it is anniversary time for that bug.

So after 6 years of Arch (not an expert, just user), I installed LMDE4. Stable OS, no rolling bugs. Instead, it have one stable bug/unability that bothers me:
You can't use nvidia's g-sync on Cinnamon.
---> solved by installing MATE DE

Now I have one missing thing: second Linux distro.
I like to having two of them if anything goes wrong - reboot to other Linux, and fix the problem, usually by running rsync restoring from backup.

I tried Centos8 - it belongs to minority of Linux distros that allows You simple encrypted installation without LVM.
It was great until installation of proprietary nvidia drivers rendered system unusable, and I didn't have nerves to bother with it. Especially when I read that after every kernel upgrade I will have to pass the same procedure.

Now, MX Linux... hmmm.. XFCE (=works with g-sync), no systemd.., maybe perfect candidate.

Installing MX
Majority of Linux distros use unavoidable LVM setup when asked to use disk encryption.
When I saw MX allows encryption without forcing LVM - it was an good omen . Also, it is LUKS2.
Many Linux distros use hardly avoidable "You MUST have SWAP - or else!" option during installation -- MX allows me to easy skip that.
Installation on nvme was successful.

Immediately after installation of nvidia proprietary drivers and rebooting, i noticed frame rates of monitor changing numbers!
Wow! I couldn't make g-sync on Cinnamon, and this one is running it without asking! Good omen No.2!
I learned that g-sync on desktop (meaning: Not in fullscreen game) is not good, because frame rates are 2-10 which makes mouse kinda laggy, and there are noticable thiny flickering.
So, to regulate g-sync on MX, there is just one setting:
MX Tweak > Compositor > VBlank
When gaming - it must be "auto", when not gaming - to "off"
XFWM does not have to be Off.

Installed Steam with Flatpak, to avoid bloating system with 32bit-libs in case of "normal" Steam installation.
Also, I installed it with option --user to have some additional system restrictions.

Code: Select all

flatpak remote-add --user --if-not-exists flathub https://dl.flathub.org/repo/flathub.flatpakrepo
flatpak --user install flathub com.valvesoftware.Steam

Installation on this way creates .var directory in user's home directory. And previously, I have mounted additional disk forthat purpose in /etc/fstab:

Code: Select all

UUID=xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx /home/username/.var ext4 nofail,rw,noatime 0 2

By Doing this, I can use same Steam games on every other Linux distro on same computer (avoiding double insallations), assuming same setup was followed.

Note: For some games MX xfce4-panel must be set to "autohide"

Next:
couldn't use scanner canoscan lide25 ---> solved by adding myself to group 'saned'
couldn't use printer hp p1102 attached to usb on NAS by smb ---> solved by installing driver from here
couldn't use conky+hddtemp+smartctl although I changed them with "chmod u+s" - which works on other distros. ---> solved by some tricks.

For now, that's all.
I don't think even MX Developers are fully aware how great system they made!
Thank You, Developers! Now just don't touch anythyng and take 5 years vacation

Edit: typo

[Skara_Brae]

When gnome3 was released, I escaped from Ubuntu to Linux Mint

Sounds about the same as my "story".

My first real Linux install was Ubuntu 7.10 (back in 2007) and then 10.04, until Gnome 3 came out, at which point I "defected" to Linux Mint and never looked back.

I remember trying SuSE Linux, sometime back in the 1990s, which was not at all a big succes.

Mandrake Linux, in the Windows Millennium era, was quite good.

So after 6 years of Arch (not an expert, just user), I installed LMDE4.

Running LMDE4 here, too, on an old Core i5-3450 computer of mine (which is having a mysterious hardware problem - probably the beginning of the end of this 2012-era machine).

Except for the basis being Debian and not Ubuntu (like Linux Mint), I do not see many differences between Mint 19.3 and LMDE4. LMDE surely is not harder than Linux Mint, as is claimed.

I don't think even MX Developers are fully aware how great system they made!
Thank You, Developers! Now just don't touch anythyng and take 5 years vacation

A few years ago I tried Peppermint Linux on my old (and now gone) Core2Duo machine, but Internet connection dropped regularly... (which did not happen with Debian, later on), so I did not keep it. I tried OpenSUSE Leap 15 on this machine: it was slow as a turtle on sedatives...

I will stick with Linux Mint as my "main" Linux distro (and with MX Linux in dual boot on this ancient HP "dc5100" computer that I have).

I really "like" Debian based distributions (Ubuntu; Xubuntu; Linux Mint; LMDE; Bunsenlabs Linux; MX Linux now). A big "Thank You" to the (...late ) Ian Murdock.

MX Linux surely seems to be a very nice and good distro!