LINUX Install

[Zygomorphic]

Hello again, everyone. It seems that we haven't discussed LINUX here in a while. I thought it is about time to change that, since summer is here, and I am nearly done rebuilding my laptop. Considering what I said above, I figured I would go ahead and share my experiences with the system.

I had mentioned previously that I was planning on putting Windows in a VM, and going Penguin all the way. :)Well, my friends, that has happened, and I am running LINUX Mint 14 on my Seagate Hybrid drive (15 sec boot time :)). I have Windows 7 in a VM now, and it seems happy there, and is easier to manage than Windows on a drive with LINUX. I have to say, getting rid of Windows made things easier, since only Windows doesn't respect other people's bootloaders, and is arrogant enough to think that it is the only OS you want. :mad:

I did some research on the best partitioning scheme for LINUX, and which filesystems to use for which partitions, and so this is the partitioning scheme that I chose, given that I am planning on having multiple VMs on this machine, so the maximum storage is ideal.
/dev/sdb2 /boot 255 MB ext2
/dev/sdb3 Extended partition
/dev/sdb6 / 50 GB ext4
/dev/sdb7 /home 418 GB ext4
/dev/sdb5 swap 32 GB swap

I have 16 GB of RAM, and so went with the rule-of-thumb 1.5-2x RAM for swap space. I don't tend to hibernate my system, but if I ever do, I want the option of doing so. I could probably have gone with 16 GB, and if I were more pressed for space, I would have.

I've heard that some suggest splitting /boot and the / partitions, so I decided that it can't hurt, and it can keep some of my other stuff separate. If you guys don't think that this is necessary, I'd like to know that for the future.

I'm a firm believer in separating the /home partition from everything else, especially since I sometimes change LINUX distros, and this allows me to preserve all my files. 🙂 For someone who just wants to try LINUX out, I go with the simple partitioning scheme of (/ and swap), but since I use LINUX for my daily tasks, I wanted a better system.

TODO:
* Install nVidia drivers to obtain better graphics performance and power management.
* Download LINUX kernel sources and learn more about building LINUX kernels.
* Try out other distros and configs in VM - more learning.
* Upgrade to LINUX Mint 15 when it comes out.

Any thoughts and/or suggestions? I'm happy to have feedback, and would like people's thoughts. I'm particularly interested in starting a flame war about distros, as well as filesystems. :cool:

[DaemonCantor]

lol Arne! your close but it's Geek not Greek and a language you should be able to understand quite well...:p Zygo just happy to be of some use somewhere other than the Whipping Boy!

And now on to Billyray's question...Hell yea I have many problems with Ubuntu starting with Unity which is a Total Gnome F-Up! next is Incompatibilities with a lot of things that used to work quite well in Ubuntu including what a Pain in the A** it's become to even use Samba Services. If all your looking for in Linux is Steam Compatibility then by all means get Ubuntu but if you want more then look elsewhere. Don't ask where I get this from considering I'm still on the Developers Mailing list here in Ohio as well as Nevada and used to be a big Ubuntu supporter but somewhere along the time that Karmic Koala came out I started losing interest because they dumped the Standard Gnome Desktop for Unity and then all of the other problems started coming up with software not running correctly so I switched to OpenSuse and never looked back. Now if I could get OpenSuse to run on the CHVF I'd be happy but it won't even load into the Installer Desktop but hangs at Kernel Loadup and yes it's the same with any other Distro I've tried...But my Backup System which is a heavily Modified Dell 531s does just fine...Go Figure!

[Arne_Saknussemm]

DaemonCantor wrote:
it's Geek not Greek and a language you should be able to understand quite well...:p

😮 yeah, your right...only joking....just a dialect problem....something I'll have to investigate one day. Is there a "Rosetta Stone" for Geek?

[Nodens]

Btw if you guys have any trouble loading the installation on cutting edge boards try using these kernel flags on boot: acpi=off nomodeset
After installation install update packages and problem will probably go away. The problem is that cutting edge hardware support takes a while to end up in Linux upstream due to the development and testing needed. Sometimes on cutting edge hardware you may have to pull beta update packages to make things work properly. My personal suggestion is to use Fedora for cutting edge machines as it's the distro that incorporates new hardware support the fastest (Fedora is Redhat's testbed..cutting edge hardware is added to Fedora, tested and debugged there and when they're absolutely stable they get implemented in Redhat Enterprise ;)).

Regarding Gnome: Well I don't like Gnome 3 as well but since development in now fixed in that direction, it's time to find another Window Manager if you don't like it. KDE is quite popular with lots of eyecandy (heavier than gnome though) and you can download a lot of distros that default to it upon installation (eg KUbuntu is just that). Almost every major distro has that option. Also you can switch Window Manager after a Linux installation (any distro) to any WM by installing the packages and changing the system default.
There are many WMs you could check out depending on what you need (usability/lightweight/eyecandy/etc etc):
Check these links out:
http://www.engadget.com/2012/10/30/how-to-picking-a-window-manager-linux/
http://l3net.wordpress.com/2013/03/17/a-memory-comparison-of-light-linux-desktops/
http://xwinman.org/

[billyray520]

And now on to Billyray's question...Hell yea I have many problems with Ubuntu starting with Unity which is a Total Gnome F-Up! next is Incompatibilities with a lot of things that used to work quite well in Ubuntu including what a Pain in the A** it's become to even use Samba Services.

Yeah, that's what I thought. I hate Unity too. In fact I think Windows 8 must be like it, forcing you to "search" for what you want to do. I didn't know about Samba, but I've given up on Samba a while ago, lol. Since I don't depend on Ubuntu for my daily productivity, I just bear with it. 😞 The few things I do in Ubuntu I've made desktop icons for! 🙂 I started using Ubuntu back with Dapper Drake 6.06 LTS. I kinda liked Lucid Lynx 10.04 LTS, but I found Precise Pangolin 12.04 LTS to be heavy handed and irritating. :mad:

When I'm traveling though, and using my netbook, Ubuntu is a much better OS than Windows 7 Starter (the default OS that came with it.) I can still use Firefox, my Ubuntu database application, and get my email (now with Thunderbird.)

I don't do anything as complex as Zygo or you other guys. :cool:

[Zygomorphic]

@billyray520, I liked 10.04, and some of the preceding versions. Unity was horrible, and that's why I started hunting for a different distro. Mint seems good, as does OpenSUSE. I am definitely going to give Gentoo a try, just from the command-line optimization experience that it would give me. (I need it).

[billyray520]

Zygomorphic wrote:
@billyray520, I liked 10.04, and some of the preceding versions. Unity was horrible, and that's why I started hunting for a different distro. Mint seems good, as does OpenSUSE. I am definitely going to give Gentoo a try, just from the command-line optimization experience that it would give me. (I need it).

I'm still using 10.04 on one of my old XP dual boot desktops. 😄

[Zygomorphic]

billyray520 wrote:
I'm still using 10.04 on one of my old XP dual boot desktops. 😄

That is out of support as of last month (April) for desktops. It is supported on the server variant until April 2015. I'd recommend upgrading to a different distro if you can, or potentially retiring the syste and getting a newer one.

[billyray520]

Zygomorphic wrote:
That is out of support as of last month (April) for desktops. It is supported on the server variant until April 2015. I'd recommend upgrading to a different distro if you can, or potentially retiring the syste and getting a newer one.

I like to walk on the wild side! 😛 I'm also running Windows 98 & Windows 95 desktops which are on the home LAN plus a MS-DOS 3.3 desktop. I revel in obsolete, discontinued, OS's. 😉

[Nodens]

billyray520 wrote:
I like to walk on the wild side! 😛 I'm also running Windows 98 & Windows 95 desktops which are on the home LAN plus a MS-DOS 3.3 desktop. I revel in obsolete, discontinued, OS's. 😉

Then you should also install OS/2, NeXTSTEP and BeOS/Haiku cause all 3 are fun 😛

[Nodens]

Hahaha Arne!

Installing Xen is pretty straightforward at this point. It involves installing the packages and running the special Xen kernel. There's no special installation needed. Check this, it's for Debian but Mint is Debian based so it covers everything up: http://wiki.xen.org/wiki/Xen_Beginners_Guide

The difference in VM performance is very big. For the most part because you can actually passthrough hardware..the video card for example to the Windows VM and install native graphics drivers on it..You can run a game for example with almost native Windows performance.

The "noatime" flag is absolutely safe for ext4. All it does is not update the last access timestamps which reduces I/O usage by a lot. So it's a good performance boost with no strings attached (unless you actually need last access timestamps but who does on a desktop?). The rest of the optimizations can be risky indeed but this one is absolutely safe:)

See https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Fstab

noatime - Don't update inode access times on the filesystem. Can help performance (see atime options).

And I almost forgot! Great thread!