[GameplayWhore]

What distro should I try, I have used Ubuntu/Mint would like to try something else do I go 32 or 64bit?

On Distrowatch's list of frequently accessed distributions, Mageia is third most popular, behind the two you listed.

edit: It is also heir to what used to be the incontestably finest distro of pretty much the whole first half of last decade, Mandrake.

[Massa]

Great. I restarted and it doesn't recognize my password. It just boots me again to PW screen. Logged in as guest. What should I do? edit: great, it seems that password is right, it just doesn't boot into the system, sends me back to login screen.

Your problem is probably with the session it's trying to load and failed somehow. Did you switch to Unity 2D or GNOME like I suggested? If so, might want to select Unity again to figure out what the problem is. How did you install GNOME?

What distro should I try, I have used Ubuntu/Mint would like to try something else do I go 32 or 64bit?

I'd recommend Fedora 64-bit.

[D3RANG3D]

On Distrowatch's list of frequently accessed distributions, Mageia is third most popular, behind the two you listed.

I used to be heavily into Linux stopped a few years ago, because I got back into PC gaming I wasn't sure if that site was legit as in a credible source if it ever was?

Is KDE still crappy?

I'd recommend Fedora 64-bit.

Snagged!

[GameplayWhore]

I used to be heavily into Linux stopped a few years ago, because I got back into PC gaming I wasn't sure if that site was legit as in a credible source if it ever was? Is KDE still crappy?

I don't think so. Others might. It depends on what you're looking for in a desktop.

Regardless, your choice of DE has about 0% to do with your choice of distro. Every desktop environment can be installed on every distro, pretty much.

Unless, apparently, you're running Ubuntu. The NIMBY runs high there.

[D3RANG3D]

I don't think so. Others might. It depends on what you're looking for in a desktop. Regardless, your choice of DE has about 0% to do with your choice of distro. Every desktop environment can be installed on every distro, pretty much. Unless, apparently, you're running Ubuntu. The NIMBY runs high there.

I preferred KDE back in the Red Hat 8 days, then every distro seemed to run away from it sans the commercial ones like Xandros, Lindows etc. Ubutu was all about Gnome which I admit I was never a huge fan. Now they use unity that people usually say is crap?

Oh snap tabular file explorer browsing!

Which I already do with cubic explorer in Windows

Posted from Fedora 17

[GameplayWhore]

I preferred KDE back in the Red Hat 8 days, then every distro seemed to run away from it sans the commercial ones like Xandros, Lindows etc. Ubutu was all about Gnome which I admit I was never a huge fan. Now they use unity that people usually say is crap?

It's GNOME with a different hat.

Oh snap tabular file explorer browsing!

Every distro does that.

[D3RANG3D]

It's GNOME with a different hat. Every distro does that.

Since when though, I have been out of the loop.

[GameplayWhore]

Since when though, I have been out of the loop.

I dunno. Konqueror has been installable on just about every Linux distro since before Ubuntu existed.

(NB: I think Android is an exception)

[GameplayWhore]

Since when though, I have been out of the loop.

I dunno. Konqueror has been installable on just about every Linux distro since before Ubuntu existed.

(NB: I think Android is an exception)


edit: but perhaps it is also good to note that Nautilus got the feature in 2008


edit edit: That's an interesting result of the "edit" button.

PCMan did it in 1997

[Brettison]

So Debian is going to use XFCE in their next stable release.

If you would have asked me this 2 years ago I would have thought you were crazy, but I get some of the logic behind it all.

[Andrex]

So Debian is going to use XFCE in their next stable release. If you would have asked me this 2 years ago I would have thought you were crazy, but I get some of the logic behind it all.

Interesting. I guess with Gnome 2 getting creaky and Unity not really being... good enough for something like Debian, they'd go for a traditional, mature DE like XFCE.

[markot]

Gnome 3 sucks is why

[Brettison]

Actually neither of those is one of the main reasons, but tis okay.

It's obvious since Debian Stable is on a 24 month cycle though considering the last version stuck with Gnome 2 that the new version definitely wasn't going to be able to. They were stretching the switch out as much as possible as it is.

[markot]

Its clearly the reason. Gnome 3 is so bad it makes metro look like goodtro.

[Andrex]

Gnome 3 sucks is why

Nah it's awesome and getting awesomer all the time.

Actually neither of those is one of the main reasons, but tis okay. It's obvious since Debian Stable is on a 24 month cycle though considering the last version stuck with Gnome 2 that the new version definitely wasn't going to be able to. They were stretching the switch out as much as possible as it is.

Isn't that basically what I said? :P

[markot]

I hate gnome 3 and unity, to me they are doing the same thing metro is doing, ditching practicality for 'usability'.

Its getting to the point where OSx might be the least offensive os for me >.<;

Honestly, I just want an android os for my desktop and ill be happy.

[Brettison]

Nah it's awesome and getting awesomer all the time. Isn't that basically what I said? :P

Yeah that's not the main reason though. Debian wants to stick with a Single CD release. Gnome 3 puts them over the file size limit. Ubuntu has had this fuck all of a problem lately to which is why they've done a ton of rejiggering of shit over the past like 3 or 4 releases.

I hate gnome 3 and unity, to me they are doing the same thing metro is doing, ditching practicality for 'usability'. Its getting to the point where OSx might be the least offensive os for me >.<; Honestly, I just want an android os for my desktop and ill be happy.

Someone needs to switch to LXDE or XFCE.

[markot]

I tried xfce, I liked it. Buuuuuuuuut, I still have problems with my ati drivers >.<... (I mean srsly, I get screen flicker on vids fullscreen with it but only on linux...)

[Andrex]

Gnome 3 is really cool, and 3.4 is even better than 3.0 (obviously, I guess.) What don't you like about it? I feel its use of workspaces is a power user's dream.

[itxaka]

Gnome 3 is really cool, and 3.4 is even better than 3.0 (obviously, I guess.) What don't you like about it? I feel its use of workspaces is a power user's dream.

If you like gnome 3 you probably like IOS. Is taking away customization from the end user and burying useful options because one guy from gnome said so.

Gnome has nothing more to do. They fulfilled their duty, to provide a windows DE equivalent. Its time for them to die.

[zoku88]

If you like gnome 3 you probably like IOS. Is taking away customization from the end user and burying useful options because one guy from gnome said so. Gnome has nothing more to do. They fulfilled their duty, to provide a windows DE equivalent. Its time for them to die.

Speaking of all of this. I remember that there was some recent rant from a gnome developer about taking away options and gnome dying?

I remember about it being about Nautilus and taking away something really stupid. Maybe the ability to move up a directory XD

EDIT: where was this rant when they took away delete?

EDIT2: Can't find the rant, but remembered this as well...

http://blogs.gnome.org/otte/2012/07/...nto-the-abyss/

[Andrex]

If you like gnome 3 you probably like IOS. Is taking away customization from the end user and burying useful options because one guy from gnome said so. Gnome has nothing more to do. They fulfilled their duty, to provide a windows DE equivalent. Its time for them to die.

Yup, I'm totally an iOS fanboy.

Gnome Shell still can be tweaked and is still fundamentally Linux. It just happens to have a good user experience. They're improving customizability with every release, in the same way they did after Gnome 2 launched.

[Andrex]

Speaking of all of this. I remember that there was some recent rant from a gnome developer about taking away options and gnome dying? I remember about it being about Nautilus and taking away something really stupid. Maybe the ability to move up a directory XD EDIT: where was this rant when they took away delete? EDIT2: Can't find the rant, but remembered this as well... http://blogs.gnome.org/otte/2012/07/...nto-the-abyss/

There was a reply to this by a Gnome dev I'm trying to find, but basically, Gnome's always had competitors, it's always been understaffed, and the releases of Gnome 2 and 3 were analogous in terms of hate posts and comments (in fact, I believe he said Gnome 2 was more reviled than 3 was at launch.)

Wish I could find it...

[subversus]

Is this when you try to log in to gnome? Or does this happen when you try to log in top Unity as well?

Both unfortunately. Only guest login works.

[zoku88]

Both unfortunately. Only guest login works.

So, there should be logs somewhere in /var/log about your login attempts. Most likely, it's crashing while you're logging in to your account, probably due to some .file in your $HOME directory.

EDIT:

If you can't find anything, I would try removing .gnome and .gnome2(if this is still there?) in your $HOME directory.

You can do this by pressing ctrl+alt+F1 to go to TTY1, and then log into your account from there.

When you're done removing those directories, press crtl+alt+F7 to go back to TTY7 (which is where all your graphical stuff is.)

ctrl+alt+F(1-6) are all terminals (TTY1-6). If X isn't running, TTY7 is also just a text terminal...

[zoku88]

Yup, I'm totally an iOS fanboy. Gnome Shell still can be tweaked and is still fundamentally Linux. It just happens to have a good user experience. They're improving customizability with every release, in the same way they did after Gnome 2 launched.

But they make such stupid design decisions. And the customization is so hacky. I mean, having three different places for settings is already not a good user experience (system settings, gnome tweak tool, dconf editor).

Then doing things like, default removing the functionality of delete (why?)

Default menu option of suspend instead shut down (what form factor does this make sense for?)

The gnome developers feel like programmers who think of themselves as designers...

[subversus]

So, there should be logs somewhere in /var/log about your login attempts. Most likely, it's crashing while you're logging in to your account, probably due to some .file in your $HOME directory.

how can I look through it and find this file?

[zoku88]

how can I look through it and find this file?

It's a directory.

When you log in via TTY1 (the ctlr+alt+F1), you'll automatically be in your $HOME directory.

Since dot files are hidden by default, you can see them by doing

ls -a

which will show them to you.

You can pipe it to less

ls -la | less

In order to view it in a more manageable way.

to delete, you'll just use the rm command with the -r option

rm -r .gnome

But before doing all of this, I would recommend looking around in /var/log to see if you see anything strange.

[Polari]

Debian moving to XFCE is a non-story, Debian users are hardly the type to install the default desktop in the first place, let alone stick with it.

[markot]

Except pretty soon Fedora will be the only distro that comes with gnome 3 standard!

[Andrex]

Except pretty soon Fedora will be the only distro that comes with gnome 3 standard!

Except Debian never used Gnome 3.

[Polari]

Except pretty soon Fedora will be the only distro that comes with gnome 3 standard!

The way forward for GNOME is to create GNOME OS. Distros suck when it comes to creating a consumer-grade product anyway.

[itxaka]

Except pretty soon Fedora will be the only distro that comes with gnome 3 standard!

Fedora will make unity available soon..I am sure they will abandon gnome in the short run.

[Polari]

Fedora will make unity available soon..I am sure they will abandon gnome in the short run.

In favour of Unity? No chance. Red Hat are the biggest corporate supporter of GNOME.

[markot]

How do you make neogaf look good anyway? The fonts are funky on default set up.

[Andrex]

How do you make neogaf look good anyway? The fonts are funky on default set up.

ms-core-fonts, I believe.

Pretty lame no one in Linux land has done a Verdana knockoff (like Inconsolata for Consolas.) It's one of my favorite fonts of all time.

[itxaka]

In favour of Unity? No chance. Red Hat are the biggest corporate supporter of GNOME.

For the moment. Red Hat does not need a DE for their server. If they want to push it for business workstations they should step up their game or they are gonna look dated as hell. Red hat on workstations suck so...why shouldn't Fedora pay the way for a future Red Hat with unity (Red Hat 9 or 10 probably)

[Brettison]

Technically speaking we're just talking Gnome Shell as both Fedora and Ubuntu use Gnome 3 just with different shells.

Plus as of now only Ubuntu uses Unity, and you see how divisive that has been for the community. Granted I think they launched it as the stock option to earlier, that it's a lot more polished now, and a lot of conceptions are based on earlier Unity versions (not that Unity is perfect). Still only Ubuntu uses Unity so I fail to see why Fedora would just jump to something they don't have a ton of control over like Unity or something in control from a rival distro.

I do get the feeling that distros suck at creating a great consumer design experience partly because they are dealing with all the other bull shit it takes to create the distro as a whole, and obviously the lone exception is Ubuntu which is basically trying to be something more based on the back of Mark Shuttleworth's fortune. Of course who knows how long that can keep on keeping on while Mark hemorrhage's $$$.

[Massa]

For the moment. Red Hat does not need a DE for their server. If they want to push it for business workstations they should step up their game or they are gonna look dated as hell. Red hat on workstations suck so...why shouldn't Fedora pay the way for a future Red Hat with unity (Red Hat 9 or 10 probably)

I'm sorry but it's hard to follow that. Red Hat has shipped desktop and workstation products for as long as they have existed. They also currently employ more people working on the Linux desktop than any other company.

Not only that but Red Hat employs key GNOME developers, such as several lead designers (Jakub Steiner, William Jon McCann, Allan Day) as well as several key developers (Matthias Clasen, Owen Taylor, Bastien Nocera, Colin Walters, Cosimo Cecchi, Ray Strode, etc).

Red Hat using Unity in version 9 (which is what, at least 6 years away? Not very short term...) is as likely as them switching to the FreeBSD kernel. It'd be like EviLore moving away from NeoGAF because he doesn't like what the mods he picked and put in that position are doing... it makes no sense.

how can I look through it and find this file?

subversus, the description of your problem is in the file .xsession-errors in your home dir. It's a very weird problem and I'm sorry that you're having it.

To get that file uploaded somewhere so we can take a look at it:

- login as guest;
- open the Terminal application;
- type

su - subversus

, where subversus is your linux username.
- enter your password as requested;
- copy the file to a place where the guest user can see it. For example, with the command

cp ~/.xsession-errors /tmp/xsession-errors

(I removed the initial dot so the file isn't hidden by default).

That's it. Now use your web browser on the guest session to upload the file /tmp/xsession-errors somewhere and let us know!

[benjipwns]

I've had Ubuntu on my laptop since 8.04 since it's really just for browsing the web or watching videos* and not really needed to change. But I've been dicking around with a number of the popular distros lately in VM for the first time in a while with a lot of them, and it's quite impressive how far they've come. Even considering a switch though I don't mind Unity too much after a bit of tweaking. Fedora has come a long way, Mint is nice.

Probably should do a new install anyway since it's just been upgrades over 8.04?

Is there something better than Universal USB Installer? That used to work well for me, but lately things just aren't working right, Fedora 17, Lubuntu, etc. all crash and don't save.

Does anyone know of any good sites showing battery savings from Lubuntu, etc.? I know Xubuntu has trended away from that.

Might just re-install Ubuntu though since I have the HIB games. Or do those apply to Lubuntu, etc.?

*That said, the last few months I've run into a situation where flash video starts to stutter video wise but keeps the sound fine after say 15 minutes. I've turned off hardware acceleration and nothing. And if I use a YouTube size over the smaller one when full screened it shows a kind of gold static over the video...

I should just re-install Ubuntu shouldn't I...

[itxaka]

I'm sorry but it's hard to follow that. Red Hat has shipped desktop and workstation products for as long as they have existed. They also currently employ more people working on the Linux desktop than any other company. Not only that but Red Hat employs key GNOME developers, such as several lead designers (Jakub Steiner, William Jon McCann, Allan Day) as well as several key developers (Matthias Clasen, Owen Taylor, Bastien Nocera, Colin Walters, Cosimo Cecchi, Ray Strode, etc). Red Hat using Unity in version 9 (which is what, at least 6 years away? Not very short term...) is as likely as them switching to the FreeBSD kernel. It'd be like EviLore moving away from NeoGAF because he doesn't like what the mods he picked and put in that position are doing... it makes no sense.

Well I know they have shipped desktop for a long time, my point is that Red Hat desktops sucks. They sucked time ago and they will keep sucking unless they move away from the same concept as their server version.

We all know Red Hat is awesome for servers. It's secure, it's stable and it's supported. But desktops is another game. They should focus more on providing a great desktop working with the usual awesome server and virtualization products they have. They have to sell the whole package.

Plus they are probably seeing their maket starting to reduce due to ubuntu giving a nice server with an awesome workstation. Do you know how much business would love to have linux workstations everywhere? Their security will improve tenfold doing nothing, plus with some perks like employees not installing shitty games to pass the time :P

I still believe that they will not jump on gnome 3 ever. They will introduce unity in Fedora and test the waters with it. They will probably jump on wayland too. The X server is way too old to keep maintaining and it's a security risk.

Also, short term talking in Red Hat timeframes of course ;) Long term for them is like 30 years, short term is under 10. I mean, they only took like 3 years to bring wireless into Red Hat.

And yes, they have the most developers in the linux world...because they are the biggest company of the linux world. They probably have key developers in every big product out there, it's good for business to do so.

[Brettison]

Linux Live USB installer is a decent alternative for a USB distro creation tool. Try that out and tell me what you think!

[Massa]

Well I know they have shipped desktop for a long time, my point is that Red Hat desktops sucks. They sucked time ago and they will keep sucking unless they move away from the same concept as their server version. We all know Red Hat is awesome for servers. It's secure, it's stable and it's supported. But desktops is another game. They should focus more on providing a great desktop working with the usual awesome server and virtualization products they have. They have to sell the whole package. Plus they are probably seeing their maket starting to reduce due to ubuntu giving a nice server with an awesome workstation. Do you know how much business would love to have linux workstations everywhere? Their security will improve tenfold doing nothing, plus with some perks like employees not installing shitty games to pass the time :P I still believe that they will not jump on gnome 3 ever. They will introduce unity in Fedora and test the waters with it. They will probably jump on wayland too. The X server is way too old to keep maintaining and it's a security risk. Also, short term talking in Red Hat timeframes of course ;) Long term for them is like 30 years, short term is under 10. I mean, they only took like 3 years to bring wireless into Red Hat. And yes, they have the most developers in the linux world...because they are the biggest company of the linux world. They probably have key developers in every big product out there, it's good for business to do so.

They don't have key developers in KDE, or XFCE or Unity. They have several key developers in GNOME. And they're expanding, since they just hired a few more very recently. Unless you believe they might fire their entire desktop team to move into a new direction they're not moving away from GNOME; in fact, they're actually hiring more GNOME developers and more people to work on GNOME.

They also have key developers in Xorg, kernel DRI, Mesa, and Wayland, and those developers talk with the GNOME developers over their desks. That being one of the reasons gnome-shell already runs on Wayland while Ubuntu built their desktop on a broken piece of unmaintained mess that is compiz.

The problem with Red Hat's desktop isn't its quality, it's that they don't make any interest in gaining any mindshare with the enthusiast crowd over it. For instance, they don't even distribute it for free. Regardless of that it works absolutely wonderfully and looks very professional.

It's fine if you don't like GNOME 3 but the suggestion that Red Hat would move away to Unity is just completely unrealistic and has no basis in reality.

[GameplayWhore]

Yup, I'm totally an iOS fanboy. Gnome Shell still can be tweaked and is still fundamentally Linux. It just happens to have a good user experience. They're improving customizability with every release, in the same way they did after Gnome 2 launched.

I don't get that bolded part (which was in reply to a comment that Gnome is taking away customization options). From what I've seen, Gnome Shell is markedly uncustomizable.

On all the DEs I've used, I like to have all my control widgets on the left side of the screen instead of the top or bottom. Can you tweak Gnome Shell to do this? I also like having six virtual desktops and preferably mapping them to Win+{Ins/Del/Home/End/PgUp/PgDn}. And setting titlebar double click to window shading instead of maximizing, as well as shifting the close button to the far left, away from all other titlbar buttons (partly because I got used to this in the more classical windowing systems but also because buttons that destroy should not be next to buttons that manage for such a lazy clicker as I). Bonus points if I can custom define the screen corners to virtual desktop zoomout or Exposé functionality.

Can you tweak these factors in Gnome Shell? I consider them minor configuration options, and in most DEs I use (KDE, LXDE, XFCE) I can set most of these to my personal liking. The impression I get is that (A) Doing the above has always been a heavy undertaking in Gnome in general, and (B) Gnome Shell is less configurable than original Gnome.



Mind, this is not to say that Gnome Shell is a bad thing. Unchangeable doesn't mean bad.

[Massa]

I don't get that bolded part (which was in reply to a comment that Gnome is taking away customization options). From what I've seen, Gnome Shell is markedly uncustomizable. On all the DEs I've used, I like to have all my control widgets on the left side of the screen instead of the top or bottom. Can you tweak Gnome Shell to do this? I also like having six virtual desktops and preferably mapping them to Win+{Ins/Del/Home/End/PgUp/PgDn}. And setting titlebar double click to window shading instead of maximizing, as well as shifting the close button to the far left, away from all other titlbar buttons (partly because I got used to this in the more classical windowing systems but also because buttons that destroy should not be next to buttons that manage for such a lazy clicker as I). Bonus points if I can custom define the screen corners to virtual desktop zoomout or Exposé functionality. Can you tweak these factors in Gnome Shell? I consider them minor configuration options, and in most DEs I use (KDE, LXDE, XFCE) I can set most of these to my personal liking. The impression I get is that (A) Doing the above has always been a heavy undertaking in Gnome in general, and (B) Gnome Shell is less configurable than original Gnome. Mind, this is not to say that Gnome Shell is a bad thing. Unchangeable doesn't mean bad.

If you're willing to visit http://extensions.gnome.org then you can significantly customize gnome-shell, more so than any previous version of GNOME. The difference is that instead of being limited by custom options implemented in C (or worst yet, with Bonobo) at the heart of the desktop the entire thing is highly customizable and you can change any part of it to do anything you want.

So for instance you can use the gTile extension that changes how window management works, you can set a predefined number of virtual desktops, you can create a Windows 95-like taskbar if you're so inclined, you can completely change how the Expose-like functionality works, you can have the panel on the left, right, autohiding or completely remove it... if someone's thought of it and knows basic JavaScript, then anyone else that comes later can do it with a click of a button on the aforementioned website.

Some people don't like that trade-off; they want a highly customizable environment that presents all the choices right in front of them. That is not GNOME 3 sets off to do, and never has been the goal of the project.

[Pctx]

You guys talking about RHEL for the desktop portion, it's clear that GNOME isn't going anywhere anytime soon and Fedora opening up Unity to Fedora 17 is just another case of Linux being Linux. Are there #'s on what portion of RHEL is desktop vs. server? I would imagine it's less than 10% but I could be wrong.

[pmj]

I'm glad there's so much hating on Gnome Shell. I'll refrain from typing a wall of text on why I dislike every facet of how it works, but after months of use the only thing I truly like is how pretty it is. And that's enough for me to stay on it.

I will say that the extension system is an great idea that so far has been a disappointment for me. None of the extensions fully solve any of the issues I have with Shell, and a few that try don't even work properly. But I have hope that given enough time the users will step up and do what the Gnome devs won't, so that I can have a desktop I don't just love looking at, but love using as well.

Well. A desktop I love using might be a tad too optimistic.

[subversus]

So, there should be logs somewhere in /var/log about your login attempts. Most likely, it's crashing while you're logging in to your account, probably due to some .file in your $HOME directory. EDIT: If you can't find anything, I would try removing .gnome and .gnome2(if this is still there?) in your $HOME directory. You can do this by pressing ctrl+alt+F1 to go to TTY1, and then log into your account from there. When you're done removing those directories, press crtl+alt+F7 to go back to TTY7 (which is where all your graphical stuff is.) ctrl+alt+F(1-6) are all terminals (TTY1-6). If X isn't running, TTY7 is also just a text terminal...

How can I enter TTY1 if ctrl-alt-f1 brings me into tty2? And how do I enter my account from there?

[pmj]

How can I enter TTY1 if ctrl-alt-f1 brings me into tty2? And how do I enter my account from there?

It doesn't matter which tty you're in. At the login prompt, type your user name and then the password when asked for it.

[subversus]

It doesn't matter which tty you're in. At the login prompt, type your user name and then the password when asked for it.

and then what? I did it, ctrl alt f7 - and I got back to login screen again.