rm -rf /

On a serious note: install VMWare / VirtualBox and mess around with ubuntu or debian.

rm -rf ~/.steam/steam/SteamApps/common/Counter-Strike/

http://www.debian.org/
good place to start..

commands identical to rh? otherwise you can just dl from piratebay

???
al linux distros have the same commands...

and why would you pirate rhel when you can download fedora for free?

rhel is free too, they just make it harder to get to than the paid option with support

Things are generally similar so I would agree that it doesn't really matter that much which distribution you go with, if you're not planning on using the (distribution dependent) GUIs for things.

There are differences in how things are configured though. Some of which may easily confuse someone who isn't aware of the differences, such as whether you need to use sudo and the different package managers used to install packages.

Probably the answer is to install several different distributions, so that you can see how similar they are, and also what is different.

That's the best answer in this thread!

sudo? what are you talking about? that's a simple, trivial configuration parameter. more important are things like filesystem layout and init system. these are very different from distribution to distribution. most anything else is the same. (apart from package set, kernel choice, and such.)

Install gentoo or arch, it will give you some perspective how linux looks like from the inside.

Install gentoo

Install gentoo

lol gentoo, way to recommend the distro type with biggest learning curve to a newbie.

i agree about arch (and use arch). + if you get stuck somewhere there's 99% chance you'll find the answer on their wiki

Man that's the point. If you wanna learn -> go to the deep see (with sharks)

there's 99% chance you'll find the answer on their wiki

same with gentoo ...

you can't start off with gentoo imo.

you actually need to know about programming to use gentoo (make flags, etc). if you plan on just compiling by defaults (and not use any of advantages a source distro offers you) do yourself a favour and grab a binary distro.

Well when I came to new job not knowing linux completely there was no excuse for me. My associates told me: wanna learn linux and work with us, start with gentoo. So I started from the scratch with a little bit of help and hours spent on reading gentoo wiki. Now I can move on with most of the distros that exists so that was a good lesson for me. I would encourage people to do the same.

Ofcourse this is just my opinion and not everyone has to agree with me

Not much point in using anything but the standard cflags. If you follow the handbook then gentoo really isn't that difficult at all.

Following the handbook once while installing gentoo is in itself a great learning experience for beginners in Linux. Because you have to set it up piece by piece, you end up having a decent understanding of how Linux works.

agree! the standard gentoo setup using the handbook is not that hard (if you're smart to google what kernel options you need). for vmware there are also some tutorials up telling you which kernel modules you actually need for it to work.

but the cool thing is that the gentoo handbook tells you a lot about how the os works.

+ gentoo is well documented.

(which ubuntu is too).

I learned linux by buying a root server and messing with it. probably not the smartest way, since if you don't know about security, it can end bad. the easyiest way would be setting up some ubuntu-server on some old pc on your home and ssh'ing in or setting up ubuntu-server in vmware.

that way you don't have to worry about gui and are not tempted to use it too much. try setting up some basic applications (httpd, mailserver, useraccounts) and you'll have a handful to do for the first couple days.

no, you don't need to know anything about "programming" to use Gentoo. don't be silly.

Gentoo Gentoo on Wikipedia
& the cpu has to emerge (from freeBSD) all the new stuff from ebuilts ... low processor spec will means to wait for a loooooooooooooooooooooooooooong time

the same to SABAYON SABAYON on Wikipedia wich provides a sort of package management

Sabayon is awesome. I am using it right now for work.

Why not linux from scratch?

I tried that once. Good luck trying to match lib versions for all apps at the same time.

I didn't really know LFS when i was writing that post. Now yeah.

Thanks so far. I'll try and install debian and see how I get on with it. Thank you

Linux Mint is a very user friendly distribution of Linux.

If he wants to learn more than standard user then he should choose some less user friendly distro. Debian is a good "balanced" choice, not so easy as ubuntu/mint bot not so harsh as gentoo and other distros for true bastards operators from hell ;)

Linux as a career path?

why not? many companies have dedicated *nix admins
we have a team of like 6-8 i think

> want to learn it as a possible career path
learn centos then. redhat is the biggest thing in corporate linuxes right now, and centos is a free community supported version of redhat.

install it into windows 8 hyper-v (which is a free thing, you just need to install it in windows components).

btw, dive deep into virtualization. it will help you in future. vmware, kvm, hyper-v, ucs.

This.

Dont use hyper-v tho :)

why

hyper-v is not that bad nowadays. plus it comes free as a part of windows 8, even home version. i have a small virtual centos server on my desktop computer to test some things. it boots with the main os and shutdowns with it. most of the time i don't even remember about its presence.

fedora is the community version of rhel...

Not really - CentOS is Redhat rebuilt from source, while Fedora is Redhat plus updates by the community, and tends to have "new" experimental things that haven't yet made it into RHEL.

If you want to learn about RHEL without buying it, get CentOS.

yes, really. rhel releases fedora as well, making it the community version of. :)

Fedora is not 100% binary compatible with an equivalent rhel release. CentOS is.

yes, i know that, but fedora is still the offical community release of rhel.

SUSE SLES too ...

SUSE on Distrowatch
OpenSUSE on Wikipedia

i said biggest thing in corporate linuxes :)

CentOS is used a lot but oddly enough it's the only linux version which crashes regularely when running on my laptop in vmware or virtualbox.

Not saying that'll be the case for him but might wanna keep that in mind.

more crashes - more red-eye fun to debug and fix! and more experience if he is really into learning and getting things done. :)

Download Red Hat, it's free to download (https://access.redhat.com/downloads/)...or get an older version off piratebay (we use 4 & 5 at work but its version 7 on their site)
alternatively you could download Oracle Linux (it's free)

I doubt there's value (money) in learning any alternatives to these 2

oracle users: http://www.oracle.com/us/oracle-customers-linux-wp-1728222.pdf

once again, all linux distros have same kernel, same set of commands, (mostly) same shell (bash/zsh/...)

if you learn one, you'll learn it all. difference lies in the package management and release cycle.

so yeah, stop spreading shit like "if you want to make use of linux use distro x", it doesn't matter what distro you start off with, even ubuntu is fine.

messing with ASM in RH4 or RH5 involves different actions so I doubt different distros will be identical, otherwise theres no need for different distros if the only differences are a different GUI theme or flash + firefox included

esdf is right. Difference is in dedicated software that RHEL provides but rest is almost the same

ASM? uh, what? dude, just stop. you're making me cringe so hard with your total bewilderment and pretense.

1. http://nixsrv.com/llthw
2. I would also recommend setting up an old computer, Raspberry Pi or virtual machine on your network, and trying to admin it from your computer.

In terms of what distro, I would say Ubuntu, Debian or any distro derived from these two. (Lubuntu, Kubuntu, Mint).
Arch will also teach you a lot about GNU/Linux however, I would recommend using the former distros first just to get started.

You kids been watching Jurassic Park again?



Sorry, but a 13 yr old girl would not know a unix system in 1991 and she defintely would not know FSN.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hjjydz40rNI
Maybe if this was her older sister.

Thats fucking awesome haha

I reckon just setup a few websites and services on a centos linux server, doing everything on the bash. I wouldn't bother installing a OS if you don't plan on using it. Rather using something daily, maintaining websites and services will teach you more.

he said he wanted to learn Linux, not play around with LAMP =/

shut up. you act like a twelve year old.

Ignore most people above. If you really need to learn unix/linux dont go for this distro / that distro just install anything you got be it debian / ubuntu. Irrespective of what distro you got the only thing you need to know is how do you get a terminal in it, your learning is inside that terminal window, everything else is meaningless. (I will suggest ubuntu because 1. it already comes bundled with most useful stuff 2. if you get bored at least you can watch youtube on a browser without needing to know how to install flash player in it, which is the case with most other distros)

The difference between unix/linux and windows is that everything is text based, so you can access the internals of the OS in a more direct way but this should not be your primary objective for learning. You will learn to access OS internals as time progresses.

1. First learn basic commands for everyday use (how do you list directories, how do you find a file, etc etc)
Follow this tutorial or something equivalent:
http://www.ee.surrey.ac.uk/Teaching/Unix/

The best way to learn basics is to force yourself to use unix/linux as your only computer. You WILL learn the basics in no time!

Moving beyond basics it is hard to learn linux/unix for the sake of learning it. You need to pick up a task/project, be it web programming or some other kind of programming or something not programming at all. Point is to do this task on unix/linux and it will force you to learn more advanced stuff.

2. As soon as you feel confident about basic commands move towards tasks that require using multiple commands in a chained fashion (using a pipe) or dumping something in a file which is later parsed by another command etc

3. As you do step 2 you will naturally feel the need to do something more powerful to achieve automation. This is the time when you can learn basic shell scripting.

4. This is when you can try to learn some more fundamental things about how the OS itself works.

I deleted my suggestion above because this is so much better.

Thanks very much for your input :) Much appreciated.

how do you get a terminal in it? wut? uh, init 3 maybe? Ubuntu comes bundled with jack shit. it's really awful for that, actually.

not trying to be a dick, but really--in my day X was XFree86 and initrc was set to init a multi-user CLI on boot for most distributions. the whole GUI thing is a pretty recent phenomenon.. well, recent as in 10-15 years. I guess I'm getting old. the point remains; I agree with you, in fact--the terminal should be a starting point for anyone. the GUI obsession is silly and detracts from the experience of what it means to be "Linux" (or UNIX or BSD or whatever similar operating environment.)

that's a good thing if you want to have a functional desktop, but not so much if you want to learn how the internals of some system work, naturally. and I agree that using Linux or whatever as your only environment, particularly with emphasis on the terminal, is the best way to learn. it's like how I learned to type, for example. in elementary school, we had typing class weekly, but I don't think I typed any faster than some 30 or 35WPM, or something like that. then I got internet access, and I chatted online all day, and the next week I typed 45WPM, and the next 65, and so on, and now I type in the range of 150WPM. you dive head first into something and you will learn it. people are intimidated by these things, that's what makes them "hard," but they aren't hard--they're just tools! they were designed with the purpose of being usable by humans to accomplish some task. making them difficult would be counterintuitive (unless you're having a laugh with something like Malbolge.)

I've had bouts here and there where I used terminal-only for months at a time, or some variation thereof on different distributions with different configurations. I have to say that using only CLI with elinks to browse for several months and BitchX to chat all day was one of the most fun experiences I've had on a computer. I really didn't need or care for all the fancy fluff that comes with a modern operating system. I didn't need it, either, because I knew what I was doing and wasn't limited in any significant way. it's something I'd recommend to anyone who is seriously interested in this stuff.

you are right. nobody learns anything from school, most often, because they don't care for it. it's just a bunch of non-contextual information shoved down their throat. but they go and pick up a guitar or something with a goal in mind, and they make use of it as an instrument in achieving a task. that's how people learn pretty much anything.

some very good guide books that are good for terminal commands out there.i like books over websites. my preference. internet sites are free of course

i like this one a lot: http://www.informit.com/store/linux-phrasebook-9780672328381

butcher is right though. its very hard to take it to the next level without a task or a project.

good luck!

:(){ :|:& };:

this :]]]

my recommendation is archlinux, that's what i'm using at least.

they have a pretty thorough wiki and helpful community over at #archlinux (on freenode server), so if you get stuck anywhere you'll get the answer in 100% of cases on one of those two places.

in terms of plug and play, arch ain't really that simple. it requires you to build your desktop from scratch (or tty to be more precise), but again - just have the arch wiki open and you'll be up & running in no-time + learn a thing or two.

since when you install arch you only have tty (shell prompt) you're required to install desktop/wm of your choice. i prefer this to preset distros because it gives me the freedom to put on my system whatever i want, with minimal or no additional garbage & mess that'd come in distros such as mint or ubuntu.

This is just lost time, learn some technology instead

IT who started over directly on a specific technology with little to no understanding of the basic OS underlying mechanisms are by far the worst.

Linux/UNIX is nothing by itself and learning particular linux distro is even worse: because it will take your time and memory for many things that is specific to selected distro ONLY - that is major point. Of course you must have knowledge about OS internals if its matters but for most applications there is no such need

Define technology...

Java, .Net, web frameworks, or things like BGP, DNS (i.e. TCP/IP networking), etc.

Ah ok.

How many of you nerds actually need to use linux over windows 7, and how many of you use it cos you think it makes you superior and lie about your use of it?

In my case I need to use Linux on a daily basis as I'm developing software that runs in an embedded Linux environment. I do run Linux in a VM and do many things in Windows though.

All my home PCs are Windows (which I rarely use in preference to iOS devices!) apart from one Linux box that has been switched off for about 2 years.

I use it cos I am superior and I don't lie about it.

linux as a desktop os is a joke.

but it is quite good as a server platform.

are you living in 2006? :)

linux as a desktop os is superior to windows, specially win8. so what, some games don't work - big deal :)

I use the CVS version of Wine and usually most games run properly. Those that don't, you can run on a VM (depending on game requirements and your HW, of course).

There is no problem with using Xen with pci passthrough for HVM and Windows. You can use virtual machine with your hardware.

i only wine sc2 so wouldn't know for other games, but nice to hear it works.

don't even get me started!

i check it from time to time, various distros. every one of them is ugly like mofo and if you make one step out of usual workflow - you will get burned. it can be used by total noobs who just want to run their firefox or by redeyed nerds who can't imagine their life without patching and recompiling. linux is a uncomfortable thing for power users inbetween, who just want to make their job done.

every run of package updater on linux is a step into abyss - you just don't know, what will break this time. and drivers. oh, the drivers.

tl;dr you didn't even try any of the modern desktops or distros.

specially package updates breaking is so 2006, or older. you basically got no real arguments. nice try tho.

p.s. drivers, dno i have an nvidia card and it's all good there.

Until some time ago, ATI hardware on Linux was some kind of a nightmare. But I heard that ever since they open sourced the drivers it has been much better.

tried ubuntu 12.04 last year. still ugly looking rendering and interface, still had problems with nvidia drivers and wifi. some of friends who use fedora and oracle linux are constantly bitching about amd drivers.

like i said, i'm on nvidia. i know of ati nightmares, that's the reason i dropped ati back in 06 and never looked back.

ubuntu is pushing their own fork/spinoff of gnome3 called unity which looks and feels horrible. try gnome 3.8, cinnamon, kde 4.10, xfce/lxde, even window managers (awesome for productivity).. there's a shitload to try from.

heeeere it comes. i want my os to just work. somehow it's not a problem for windows and osx. i'd rather pay a little extra for normal os than tweak a work of some student.

you're russian so my guess is you didn't pay for shit to start off with.

also, just because everything doesn't work for you out of the box doesn't mean it's shit for everyone else.

my windows 7 (and it was an original copy) used to blue screen of death every time i opened youtube page and i'm pretty sure i was 1/10000.

1. hehe. biased and wrong. $40 for windows upgrade and $20 for osx upgrade worth much less than time that could be spent on tweaking some linux distro to be even remotely usable as a normal desktop os.

2. just admit the obvious, linux just doesn't work oob. windows and osx most of the time do. you just need to install a couple of drivers on windows. osx already has all the drivers you need.

i can't admit. for me it worked ootb on every distro i tried (fedora, ubuntu, arch, mint, chakra), but you are free to find someone who had problems ootb:)

I just had ATI nightmares, other than that linux has been nice to me.

yup. I'm getting old. I used to enjoy the challenge of compiling everything from source and updating constantly. when you just want something that works, Windows wins hands down.

additionally, I have tried many, many modern distributions many times. every time I'm disappointed horribly. and I want to not be. I really do.

yes I was wondering too why you would want to learn programming skills just for the sake of getting to know an operating system, which should basically just provide the framework in which you run your applications.

the classic textbook on operating system concepts is probably the one by Silberschatz - 'Operating System Concepts'

I use OSX, it totally rapes linux by the virtue of working without any problem whatsoever.

I use linux because I like it and prefer the possibility of doing whatever I want with my system any given moment.

Windows 7 is a nice os, but it doesn't offer any improvements over my linux distro. When MS makes a proper os I'll move to it, but seeing the path they took with win8, it ain't gonna happen anytime soon.

Linux is pretty bad as a desktop environment. every year is perpetually supposed to be "the year of Linux on the desktop," and every year it falls quite short. I prefer Windows in some capacity, and I use it on my desktop computers, but I've been very interested in switching many times over the past few years (I have, of course, used Linux on my desktop at many points in the past for various reasons, none of which involved a sense of superiority), because I do not like the DRM or political aspects of it. it's that simple. I don't have any money; maybe it'd be better if I did and I purchased the software, but the fact that they make it difficult to do security updates and such when you pirate their software makes it somewhat undesirable.

additionally, as others have said, the freedom and intimacy it gives you with the way your system operates is fun, challenging, and desirable. (not sure why I can't edit my post so I'm replying.)

if you have to ask here about where to start I don't see a very bright future for you.

Haha :) Thanks buddy.

Installing Gentoo taught me the most.
I use Debian as main OS, I got annoyed with emerging everything.

Yeah after a while emerginn becomes boring. That is why i use sabayon now :D

I suggest you check out Linux From Scratch.

learn bash,

http://tldp.org/LDP/Bash-Beginners-Guide/html/index.html
http://tldp.org/LDP/abs/html/index.html

learn vim,
http://www.openvim.com/tutorial.html
ftp://ftp.vim.org/pub/vim/doc/book/vimbook-OPL.pdf

learn your package manager (be it aptitude, pacman, yum...), you'll be using it nonstop.

grab arch, screw the ubuntu suggestions. arch is easy enough for everyone to start off with, and deep enough for advanced users. it's like gentoo, just with binary packages instead of sources.

what to do when you're set up and know some basics? well... start breaking stuff on your distro. it's fun and it'll teach you a lot :)

"but I want to learn it as a possible career path."

Then don't learn it.

It would be much better to learn stuff about embedded software than about linux.
Also just learn some regular expression language while you're at it ;)

Sure linux is used at some places and it's really usefull. But to aim for a job where "you need good linux skills" (over the above mentioned skills) is like going on an airplane ride expecting it to crash.

This. Linux by itself isn't very useful. Unless it's used as a platform to host some kind of a project (web, embedded, mobile, etc.) there isn't much of a career in it.

Even if it's used as a platform to host a kind of project there is, often, only 1 guy responsible for setting up the platform etc. while the developement group can grow up till quite large sizes.

The developers themselves however don't need a lot of linux skills.

For instance I work on a project which runs on a linux server.... and all (linux dependant things) that I have to know is how to start and stop processes, how to browse directories and how to start a shell thingy.
The rest is just java / php / sql.

the problem is, maybe he thinks a dev job is shit
i came back from china after such a realisation because the joys of uni had deceived me

dont waste your time on stuff you dont find interesting

I don't know what he thinks.

But if anyone wants to learn unix as a career path then I would advise against it.
Because either (A) there are very few jobs in it or (B) there are other more valuable things to have than good unix skills to get the job.

A) I hardly ever see a job opening which describes that the person has to be working with unix. (There are a few 'developing for unix systems' but that's different)

B) few programming assignments deal with unix and therefor it is usefull to have but it's obligatory that you know how to program first.

If you already know every programming language etc it might become usefull.... but then you probably wouldn't ask where to start on esr (I could be wrong on this :p).

.nl jobs: http://jobsearch.monster.co.uk/jobs/?q=linux&cy=nl
.uk jobs: http://jobsearch.monster.co.uk/jobs/?q=linux&cy=uk
.uk jobs: http://www.jobserve.com/gb/en/JobSearch.aspx?...43BB1F19E4

obviously he'd be looking at the more entry level jobs

well just click on a few of them... and look at the 1st required skill.

It's often either high knowledge of networking or good programming skills in java/php/python/perl etc.

Only very few of them really require unix dependant skills.

(I could do most of those jobs.... and my unix skills are average at best)

Depends, Unix/IRIX is good if you want a job in military that sort of stuff, a lot of them still use it.

It works both ways, it might be niche, but there will be less people going for the job.

you're one step above Dird in pretending to know what you're talking about. ironically, you're the one spouting off about ego and apparent "superiority." stop. now. you know nothing.

oh hell yeah i wanna see a jamerio/tyryl argument GO GO GO

More appropriate if you have the knowledge of a hacker in the field, or if you are already coming from another branch in the military and have good recommendations -like being able to study anything related up to 10 hours a day, or if you just paid the right people to get the job -in which case you would just be some sort of vague administrator -the one that don't touch the keyboard just tell the specialists what to do. Either case, having minor/medium knowledge in this won't get you there -unless you are member of a minority, here we go again.

Thanks very much for the big response guys, much appreciated. I'm going to try out ubuntu from a USB stick this weekend then when I feel confident with the basics I think I'll try Gentoo or Centos as main OS on both my home machines. I used to be hugely into software and hardware as a kid - self tought building, networking, overclocking etc between the ages of 13 and 18. Then I lost interest of it all.

Coming to you from Ubuntu :) all systems are go! - I don't know what the hell I'm doing.... ;)

After a few months take the jump to gentoo, debian or arch. You'll learn a lot more about linux from those.

Alternatively you could use freebsd but you'll receive irrational hate from linux zealots.

WE could care less >8-)

:->

Some fun things I remember doing when I first migrated to linux:
Download/configure a conky install https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conky_(software)
Download/configure mplayer and integrate it into conky https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MPlayer
Download/configure xbmc to use your box as a media server https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XBMC
And most importantly download The Battle For Wesnoth, truly the greatest open source game https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Battle_for_Wesnoth

Thanks very much for everyone's contribution of info, greatly appreciated! I'll probably report back in time wanting more direction :) Thank you :)

Now install Windows on a VM, run your apps in seamless mode and never go back again. ;)

just get on the "linux haters" bandwagon already and stop deluding urself :)

joke aside, really, there's no reason to be using it as desktop os unless you do work. If it's for personal use, you just end up using more time on tinkering that doing what you want to do with your computer. I've been there.

"no reason"? i see this http://www.esreality.com/post/2478197/help-me...tr-driver/ and smile :d

hahaha, have you tried tinkering with those xorg/evdev mouse drivers on anything linux? no? but good find :)

yes, it's not pretty but pretty much do-able unless you prefer driver insanity to config fiddling.

man evdev

You don't even need internet connection. If you actually need to change something because evdev works out of the box. Better than reverse engineering binary drivers.

classic rtfm. Don't care, and don't want to. fuck linux, it's not working good enough for what im using it for.

This is what I said: "If you actually need to". 99,999% people don't.
Look at the windows guy's thread and what happens when you need to fix something on windows.

are you trolling without knowing, or are you just trolling?

Sounds like me when I got my first PC running Windows 95 and I had no clue what I was doing.

I have no idea what anyone in this thread is talking about.

Linux. (and in the case of Dird and Jamerio, random stuff that they think sounds intellectual.)

I saw a vid of ZevenOS Neptune with KDE from Linux4UnMe

ZevenOS Neptune 3.2 - Kubuntu Killer!

it's based on Debian Stable, not Ubuntu

Just installed Arch on my laptop. Wouldn't really recommend it to a noob, Community "newbie" forums also aren't quite newbie friendly, I noticed.

Interesting, first distro I used was Arch when I was a newbie and it seemed very newb-friendly. I could get around it easily enough because the installation process kind of teaches you how to do the basic stuff when you're installing it.

i'am wondering what are the differences between distros and loading speed's, not just the gui ?
What gui do you prefer, not just for the laptop useage ?
pls name more as one >8-)

stop jumping distros, it doesn't matter half as much as you seem to think. start with one that has good community support because that's something you will need sooner or later unless you know what you're doing.

eg. you know next to nothing about linux but are fine with learning new things: get ubuntu, mint or fedora as their forums and wikis are good.
eg. you want steam: while it runs on fedora you should probably use ubuntu or mint as valve and canonical are working on steam for linux.
eg. you want quake and know your way around linux: it doesn't fucking matter ;)
eg. you want something pretty to show people that linux isn't for nerds: get elementaryOS.

the difference between debian based and fedora based distros is mostly the package manager (yum or apt-get) and hence the available packages (rpm or deb). for newbies it's a good idea to choose one and stick with it to avoid confusion.

choosing a gui (as in desktop manager) also depends on what you want and need. a lot of people hate on the design of both gnome 3.x and unity and switched over to either kde, xfce or cinnamon. none of this really matters for gaming, it's a preference of style. i'd avoid mate as the dev teams seems undecided if they stick with gtk2 or move to gtk3 (which seems like a nice way to get fucked over in the near future :p).

/edit: i'm using kororaa (which is based on fedora and adds a bunch of non-free extras) with cinnamon, cairo-dock and nemo.

I didn't notice an difference between any of the distro's I tried in terms of loading speed. The major difference is the location of certain configuration files and the package manager. I went from Mandrake (now Mandriva) to Ubuntu, so basically I went from RPM to DEB packages. I've been working with Debian-based distro's mostly, but the packages are never "up to date". In Debian if you want a more up to date install, you'll have to enable the testing repository, or the unstable, or experimental. And it was still behind on things, but I can understand why. Now with Arch, I'm running (nearly) the latest versions of all software.

About WM/DE, I only use 2. It's either Gnome 3 or Xfce. When I first started Linux I always used KDE, but there was a version update that caused so many problems than many Linux users still remember the mess KDE created. They have pulled their shit together now, but I was so accustomed to Gnome that I didn't switch back. I tried Unity briefly, but after a week I just couldn't continue with it. I tried it again for a week some time later, but Unity isn't cutting it for me. I tried Gnome-shell and I was immediately sold. For some reason I really like it and I feel it improves my work-flow, while others will find that it actually slows their work-flow, which brings us to the beauty of Linux. You can use whatever you want.

I heard a lot of good things, actually I didn't hear 1 bad thing, about elementaryOS so I tried it. Utter shit, plain and simple. I don't know what makes elementary to captivate people like that. Pantheon felt so weird..

Finally, I don't feel any difference between a source distro and a binary distro, because you'll probably don't understand what flags to globally set for each time you emerge a program and if you did look it all up, you're probably far too lazy to set the flags for each individual program you emerge.


TL;DR
Not much difference in feel and speed in general between distro, there is a lot of speed difference between WM/DE's however.
I prefer GNOME Shell as my GUI.

emerging things in gentoo is time eating, if you have a full desktop and make an update, it takes time ...

freebsd has openbox & lxde, schould be fast even on laptops.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Openbox
http://www.freshports.org/x11-wm/openbox/
http://www.freshports.org/x11-themes/openbox-themes/

i asked why, because i posted a test before from centos, but i like very much sabayon, it uses gentoo packages and has a package management for not emerging stuff
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article...&num=4
http://openbenchmarking.org/result/1306097-UT-OSCOMPARE58

The things that take more time to build on my system are the browsers and OpenOffice. Even X compiles in less than 5 minutes nowadays. I moved to the *-bin versions of the bigger packages and emerging things is much faster. Just make sure you have the right options in MAKEOPTS.

I saw a graphics cards comparsion between AMD & nVidia on Phoronix & the new Intel Prozessor Intel Core i3 4130 for the 1150 socket
16-Way Graphics Card Comparison On Open-Source Linux
Initial AMD Radeon R9 270X Linux Benchmarks
Intel Core i3 4130 On Linux i have the i3-3250 with 3.5Ghz s1155
FFmpeg v2.0 seems to like Intel's new Haswell S1150 i thought of getting a i5-3570 S1155 but i3-3250 is enought for me !

BSDnowTV
Twitter|BSDnowTV | Twitter|FreeBSD | Twitter|PCBSD | Twitter|KrisMoore
BSDNow playlist on YT from JupiterBroadcasting

there is also bhyve – The BSD Hypervisor
BHyVe wiki page
Michael Dexter: Hands on bhyve, the BSD Hypervisor (P4A, AsiaBSDCon 2013)

I like FreeBSD somehow more than linux by feeling ...
but well all the new technologies are added to linux, all the software is written for it ....

but still FreeBSD stuff makes it into OS X and the PS4 ...

I like FreeBSD, but it's just not usable a desktop ;-(

FreeBSD stuff makes it into OS X and the PS4 because its license allows derivatives to be distributed without forcing the code to be open sourced (BSD license instead of GPL).

And because FreeBSD is an extremely solid operating system, it runs on a state of the art kernel that is actually superior to the linux kernel on several areas like low level security layers and a much improved native networking stack. Its support of hardware is still inferior to linux's, however with its linux emulation capabilities, and the constant introduction of innovative technologies from the people involed in the project, I think this disadvantage will be solved in the coming years by things like virtualization and tighter integration of emulation within its kernel... however the project's main goal is not to support a whole bunch of hardware, but primarily to be a sort of elite creation in the heaven of OS's... a sort of supreme result that sprouted out of the collaboration of thousands of extremely bright individuals involved in using it and developing it further. The way the project is run, and the way the hierarchical philosophy of development is implemented, makes it one of the most appraised solutions to all kinds of server needs. People don't even realize the amount of technology that was originally developed for FreeBSD and then made its way into the core of most linux distributions today... FreeBSD is easily the best operating system out there in terms of reliability and flexibility of large scale/industrial deployment given the freedom of the BSD license.

btw BSD is the best license ever... it is TRUE freedom.

the project's main goal is not to support a whole bunch of hardware, but primarily to be a sort of elite creation in the heaven of OS's... a sort of supreme result that sprouted out of the collaboration of thousands of extremely bright individuals involved in using it

..through emulation and virtualization, nonetheless :p

Btrfs
I Can't Believe This is Butter! A tour of btrfs. - Avi Miller from the LAS s29e08

NVIDIA GeForce GTX TITAN: Windows 8.1 vs. Ubuntu 13.10 Linux

I think I'll check here for my Linux news from now on..

FreeBSD Challenge ! a podcast by Mikey D

The Cluster & The Cloud | BSD Now 24 @ 51m30s

Back to FreeBSD ... 14 years later from BSDNowTV#029#2014

Linux has diff directories each Distro is different, freeBSD & BSD in general has it's guideline where / what has to be ... and installed :)

That's where the LSB comes in and it's the distribution's choice to follow it. The LSB says RPM is the preferred package manager, but a lot of them use their own. There is however a package that converts, but how often do you use it?


"Alien is a program that converts between different Linux package formats. It supports conversion between Linux Standard Base (LSB), LSB-compliant .rpm packages, .deb, Stampede (.slp), Solaris (.pkg) and Slackware (.tgz, .txz, .tbz, .tlz) packages."