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Hello TeamLiquid,
this is my first blog – I wanted to do something for my 1000th post. Since I don't have that much interesting stuff going on, I thought I would talk about my recent experiences with Linux. I know that some people out there are curious and might want to try it out but are put off because of Linux' perceived “difficulty”, so I wanted to give the perspective of somebody who just fully switched. This is very much targeted at people new to Linux and I will not go into the technical specifics of different distributions.
Debian
My first experience with Linux was about 3 Years ago when I installed Debian alongside Windows on my PC – just for the fun of it and to see what it's like. The installation was easy enough, everything seemed to work until I discovered I actually couldn't play sound and I would have to get into the console to fix that – I was annoyed, deinstalled Debian and that was that.
Ubuntu
Two years ago I got myself a Netbook to use during lectures and I decided that I was gonna put Linux on it. I heard that it generally has better performance than Windows and since I was only really going to use it for browsing and writing stuff down, I figured to give it another try. This time I read up on a few distributions and then decided on Ubuntu (10.04 at the time). It is one of the most popular distributions and reputed to be very noob-friendly.
I was very positively surprised that I didn't actually have to do anything, I just downloaded the .iso and installed it. Everything worked out of the box, I didn't have to touch a terminal even once. So I decided to keep it. And to this day I would definitely recommend Ubuntu to Linux beginners.
On the surface it is actually a lot like Windows or OS X – the default task-bar is on top and the window controls (minimize, close etc.) are on the left, but that's' about it.
After a short while I actually began to appreciate the beauty of Linux – it is so easy to customize and configure. A few clicks or a quick change in a text file would yield the same result as wading through the Windows registry for hours. Installing programs in Ubuntu (and Debian, the base that Ubuntu is built on) is extremely easy and quick. Due to its' large user base almost anything you would ever need is available in so-called repositories. So instead of opening your browser, searching for the web page of the software in question, looking for the download button and downloading, executing the downloaded file and then click through an installer, you just open up the “Ubuntu Software Center”, type the name of your program and then click install – that's it. Even if something unexpected happens, the Ubuntu community can usually give answers – there are IRC Channels, Forums, Wikis and what-not. On a side note, workspaces are awesome 
Over time I familiarized myself with the console and then something strange happened – I would notice that I actually preferred opening up a terminal and quickly navigate to where I wanted to be rather than go through the file manager (nautilus, the equivalent of Windows Explorer). In fact, I did pretty much everything through consoles.
So I found myself not needing a GUI for everything and I looked around for something that was more light-weight than Ubuntu, confident that I would be able to manage a more hands-on system. After hearing about it a lot from friends and on the Internet, I decided to go for Arch Linux. I installed it two weeks ago.
Arch Linux
From the get-go, it was different. The installer was a simple, terminal based process that requires a lot of configuration from the user. I had to actually install it three times because I messed up (the first time I used the core-local-install that still had a now deprecated version of GRUB, the boot-loader; the second time I didn't select the wireless-tools so I was stuck on my netbook). Luckily, the Arch wiki has a really excellent Beginners' Guide, without it I probably wouldn't have managed.
Now, when you installed successfully and reboot, this is the screen that greets you:
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/cPe2Nl.png) fun times!
It took me another 45 – 60 minutes to get my desktop-environment started. I decided to install XFCE because I had heard good things about it. Configuring it took me considerably longer. This is the Desktop that I ended up with:
![[image loading]](http://imgur.com/jljZsl.png) task-bars etc. show on mouseover, the background image is Horo from Spice and Wolf
This might sound like it was an ordeal, but I actually found it to be quite fun. During the installation and configuration you get a look at the inner workings of the operating system. I had to do everything myself that Windows and even Ubuntu did for me. I can now proudly say that I learned more about Linux during the 2+ hours installation than during my two years of using Ubuntu. The freedom was overwhelming – I could literally set up everything just how I like it. I am very happy with Arch. So happy in fact, that I went ahead and installed it on my Desktop-PC as well. The installation process was considerably faster since I did it for the fourth time. I left Windows installed for games but I haven't actually logged back into it since I installed Arch. The community is also very friendly, I got immediate answers on the IRC channel whenever the extensive wiki didn't provide it (which was rare).
I now have a fully customized Desktop Environment and a working LAMP (Linux Apache MySQL PHP) and FTP server. It is quite the satisfying feeling.
I don't think I will ever go back to Windows.
I would definitely recommend trying Ubuntu (it can be comfortably installed from within Windows by using wubi) if you have even the slightest interest in Linux.
If you want to spend some more time on it but want to learn the inner workings of Linux and if you value high degrees of customization and freedom, then Arch should work for you – even if you have never touched Linux before. It would just take a bit more time to get used to things, but the provided documentation will help immensely.
 
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United States10328 Posts
Nice blog!
The only problem I've had with Ubuntu is the lack of certain proprietary drivers (my audio drivers don't work  ), but I haven't had any need to boot Windows except to play games.
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Definitely make me interested to try it out one day.
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Great read Lorizean,
it reminds me of my experiences some years ago. At first i read some articles about Linux in general in the ct magazine in Germany. It happened when Windows 2k was around. All at once i thought i would give linux a try and downloaded an iso of Mandrake Linux and installed it. Everything worked out of the box except sound. After some tinkering around and visiting the forum i managed to get it working. However the KDE Environment was all in all a bit slow and sluggish and i went on to search another linux distribution.
I stumbled upon Kanotix - another KDE distribution, but based on Debian unstable and so the whole system was using more recent versions of packages. The system was smooth and everything worked out of the box. Additionally i have to say that the people at irc and the forums were very polite and helped me a lot. Even Kano the founder had a helping hand. However a distribution based on Debian unstable is constantly undergoing heavy changes and so, after a big system update, i could not boot into my Desktop any more.
After all I was tired of trial and error practicing and there happened another switch. This time it was pure Debian. It was a short stint. Did i say Debian? I meant Debian stable and in fact, the system was stable and even after numerous updates there was no error. Anyhow the software versions tended to be so old and even the kernel was so old that once again my soundcard was not working.
Then i tried the distribution which changed everything. I tried Gentoo. Previously i mentioned i was tired of tinkering around, but something was telling me to dare trying with Gentoo. I visited the forum, read the wiki and i thought: Omg, everything is so well documented. In addition i read the gentoo handbook and even the smallest step was written down.
I thought, hey man give it a try...
For the sake of completeness: Gentoo is a source based distribution and you are not downloading binaries as you do it when installing software on Windows, Ubuntu and 98% of the other distributions. Every package you would like to install has to be compiled from source. The benefit of this is: you can tailor the system exactly for your needs. As example you can compile a package with support for pdf oder without. You can even optimize the packages for your very system setting the compile options precisely for your processor. You will never meet a system which is more responsive cause of that possibility. To come clear, you can do that with every linux distribution but Gentoo is the way to go because the whole system is geared towards that.
However my first two tryouts failed miserably. In Gentoo you can compile your kernel at the installation phase. You can do this completely on your own, which is what i tried and using Genkernel which compiles a kernel which supports nearly all hardware out of the box. Because of the philosophy of a tailor-made system i tried the first option.
I forgot to compile some elementary system drivers for my IDE Controller and therefore my system did not even boot. In the process of troubleshooting (looking through syslogs) i learned more as in the whole time of trying other distributions. You have to use the console and you must read! If you take this you will learn a lot.
The downside of Gentoo were the long compile times. When i did compile KDE in 2004 it took nearly two days. This was the reason i made a quick trip to Archlinux like you Lorizean. I liked it a lot. You can adapt the system exactly for your needs minus the compile times.
Nevertheless i fell in love with Gentoo (With recent hardware however i think compile times are negligible ), because i learned so much about linux in general that i finally had to made the switch back to it.
Want to learn something about the inside of your linux system, then go and give Gentoo and Archlinux a try ;-)
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Arch's install procedure has changed very significantly in the last WEEK, so that should spice things up even more. I must admit that I am addicted to being a wiki robot.
I am slightly miffed that you refer to GNU/Linux as "Linux". 
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4 weekks ago before i went on vacation for 4 weeks i installed linux mint, and really was not dissapoint. If you don't mind me asking, how did you get used to the terminal?
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On July 29 2012 07:03 Bippzy wrote:
If you don't mind me asking, how did you get used to the terminal?
I'm so fucking glad I tinkered with Debian when I was in Highschool. Got so much free time back then that I set up a headless router from an old PC with an extra NIC.
edit: Also I tinkered with wireless snooping in College. Had unstable Internet and borrowed the WEP encrypted line from my neighbor (by cracking it, not asking that is). Also had a neighbor with an unencrypted WLAN with MAC Filtering picked up some unencrypted Mails (even though there was an SSL login, riddle me that) but I didn't like snooping on people and when I saw a rejected Application I thought I was going a little too far.
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I installed linux for the first (well second, I tried ubuntu briefly 10 years ago) time a few weeks ago. It was arch linux. Pretty amazing OS, I actually got rid of both Windows 7 and 8.
It can be more timeconsuming as a newbie, sure, but it's fun and intuitive. Like you said, easier to configure (especially once you learn bash), what I like a lot about arch though is the wiki and the package manager. So much community response. Want to run a particular game native in linux? AUR is usually the first when you google, precompiled and everything, and if you run into any issues, the wiki almost always pinpoint those. Arch easily has the best online support, even better than ubuntu.
Ran XFCE4 first, but had some issues and didn't like the various GUI tools for everything, so i switched to i3wm. Maybe not the best window manager, but it's fairly simple to configure and pretty minimalistic. I never really understood those dynamic window managers.
It isn't all perfect however. Almost all my troubleshooting so far has been because of shitty X11. It breaks easily, difficult to configure properly, a lot of small bugs and most importantly doesn't work well with multi-monitor solutions... I don't know if it's due to compatibility issue with nvidia proprietary drivers, but they try to sync them as one big screen (even with metamode) so tearing occurs in videos and games, even pictures. My workaround is that instead of using 'workspaces' I use X sessions (and turn off monitors in some of the sessions I want to play video / games in).
xorg is very old and has been piled on so many years of different code, it seems like major distros like ubuntu wants to kill it as fast as possible. There's an alternative called wayward or something but apparently it's far from the same potential as of now. I think something has to be done about this (and graphics card drivers) in order for linux to become a better gaming platform than windows is. Valve is trying with steam, it'll be interesting to see how it pans out.
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On July 29 2012 04:16 ]343[ wrote:Nice blog! The only problem I've had with Ubuntu is the lack of certain proprietary drivers (my audio drivers don't work ), but I haven't had any need to boot Windows except to play games.
Indeed, at least Ati(AMD) is actully bothering making drivers now since they got bought out(And funny enough nvidia having less support these days). Generally the only thing that keeps me back from completly removing windows is just gaming and certain tools which just is easier to deal with in windows.
On July 29 2012 07:03 Bippzy wrote:
4 weekks ago before i went on vacation for 4 weeks i installed linux mint, and really was not dissapoint. If you don't mind me asking, how did you get used to the terminal?
If you are asking how to get use to and learn the terminal, force your self to only work with it. In the start it might seem inefficient, but after a little while you will get see an increase in how fast you can do your tasks
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The thing about linux is that the users enjoy the wading through new computer language, the tedious moments that are so rewarding in the end and the general fun of customizing such a heavily marketed device, the computer OS. I am not one of those people, but it would be very cool to be, and I know some people like that.
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@Futura: Yeah, I thought about going Gentoo, but I don't like compile wait times
On July 29 2012 06:43 Loser777 wrote:I am slightly miffed that you refer to GNU/Linux as "Linux".
Hehe, you're right, technically I should call it GNU/Linux, but thats' just so tedious to write
On July 29 2012 07:03 Bippzy wrote:
4 weekks ago before i went on vacation for 4 weeks i installed linux mint, and really was not dissapoint. If you don't mind me asking, how did you get used to the terminal?
Well, because I started off on a netbook and I hate touchpads I tried to do as much as I can with the keyboard. So I naturally started using the terminal - I didn't even know about tab completion at the beginning :D
@Shauni: Hm, I haven't had any xorg problems so far. I also heard that xfce was quite good for multi-monitor support but I haven't used it for that myself yet. I did use multiple monitors with Ubuntu/GNOME though and it worked fine.
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Thanks for the blog. I'm in the process of familiarizing myself with Linux as well. I assume during the lengthy installing process of ARCH you had two computers at hand? Because I'm having a bit of trouble with only one PC, on which I want to install the OS of course. I'll probably wait a bit until I get my notebook in August, so I can easily read up on the process while trying to execute it on my desktop machine.
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Yes, I had the beginners guide open on my other PC. I definitely recommend doing that
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I've never tried Arch Linux >_< I like ubuntu, but I think mint is more my style since I don't really like their new changes.
Crunchbang is the linux distro I prefer the most right now. It's sorta like a custom debian build where you have stuff like VLC player, but it uses openbox, and it's really wonderful to control your OS with openbox since you can use hotkeys for everything really easily. My only qualms with it is that I'm using the buggy beta Waldorf version as opposed to the more stable version, so I do get weird bugs sometimes >_<
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I know that I'm not the only user on TL that uses linux, so it's nothing shocking. But it is a surprise seeing signs of life on the same side
It sounds like you picked up linux really quickly and really well, hopefully you're already programming and if you're not, start now haha
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i've been using arch since summer started and honestly its my favorite OS right now
i opted to go the openbox route and had hella fun customizing it~
i'm assuming that you're using conky for the widget stuff but how'd you make it look that good? o.O
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On July 31 2012 03:22 Gogleion wrote:
It sounds like you picked up linux really quickly and really well, hopefully you're already programming and if you're not, start now haha
I'm trying my best
On July 31 2012 06:11 Frolossus wrote:
i've been using arch since summer started and honestly its my favorite OS right now
i opted to go the openbox route and had hella fun customizing it~
i'm assuming that you're using conky for the widget stuff but how'd you make it look that good? o.O
Yep, it's conky
I actually use 3 conkys simultaneosly by putting this script in autostart:
+ Show Spoiler [~/.conkyc/launch_conky.sh] +
#!/bin/bash
conky -c /home/lorizean/.conkyc/clock
conky -c /home/lorizean/.conkyc/network
conky -c /home/lorizean/.conkyc/resources
And then these are my config files and scripts:
+ Show Spoiler [~/.conkyc/clock] +
alignment tl
background yes
border_width 1
cpu_avg_samples 2
default_bar_size 10 50
default_color white
default_outline_color white
default_shade_color red
double_buffer yes
draw_borders no
draw_graph_borders no
draw_outline no
draw_shades no
use_xft yes
xftfont Comic Relief:size=12
xftalpha 0.1
gap_x 1100
gap_y 10
minimum_size 400 0
net_avg_samples 1
no_buffers no
override_utf8_locale yes
out_to_console no
out_to_stderr no
extra_newline no
own_window yes
own_window_argb_visual yes
own_window_type normal
own_window_hints undecorated,below,sticky,skip_taskbar,skip_pager
own_window_transparent yes
pad_percents 0
text_buffer_size 256
total_run_times 0
stippled_borders 0
update_interval 0.5
uppercase no
use_spacer yes
TEXT
${font GeoSansLight:size=20}${color #ae5d63}${exec date +'%A'}
${voffset -10}${goto 20}${font GeoSansLight:size=50}${exec date +'%d'}\
${font GeoSansLight:size=20}${exec date +'%B %y'}
${font GeoSansLight:size=30}${goto 50}${exec date +'%R:%S'}
${font GeoSansLight:size=20}${voffset -15}${goto 70}${execi 30 /home/lorizean/.conkyc/up2date.sh}
+ Show Spoiler [~/.conkyc/network] +
alignment bl
background yes
border_width 1
cpu_avg_samples 2
default_bar_size 10 50
default_color white
default_outline_color white
default_shade_color red
double_buffer yes
draw_borders no
draw_graph_borders no
draw_outline no
draw_shades no
use_xft yes
xftfont DejaVu Sans Mono:size=12
xftalpha 0.1
gap_x 0
gap_y 10
net_avg_samples 1
no_buffers no
override_utf8_locale yes
out_to_console no
out_to_stderr no
extra_newline no
own_window yes
own_window_argb_visual yes
own_window_type normal
own_window_hints undecorated,below,sticky,skip_taskbar,skip_pager
own_window_transparent yes
pad_percents 0
text_buffer_size 256
total_run_times 0
stippled_borders 0
update_interval 0.5
uppercase no
use_spacer yes
minimum_size 500 0
TEXT
${color #ae5d63}${font GeoSansLight:size=15}\
${goto 50}${execi 300 /home/lorizean/.conkyc/netusage.sh}\
this month
+ Show Spoiler [~/.conkyc/resources] +
alignment br
background yes
border_width 1
cpu_avg_samples 2
default_bar_size 10 50
default_color white
default_outline_color white
default_shade_color red
double_buffer yes
draw_borders no
draw_graph_borders no
draw_outline no
draw_shades no
use_xft yes
xftfont DejaVu Sans Mono:size=12
xftalpha 0.1
gap_x 0
gap_y 10
net_avg_samples 1
no_buffers no
override_utf8_locale yes
out_to_console no
out_to_stderr no
extra_newline no
own_window yes
own_window_argb_visual yes
own_window_type normal
own_window_hints undecorated,below,sticky,skip_taskbar,skip_pager
own_window_transparent yes
pad_percents 0
text_buffer_size 256
total_run_times 0
stippled_borders 0
update_interval 0.5
uppercase no
minimum_size 700 0
TEXT
${font GeoSansLight:size=15}${color #ae5d63} MEM ${mem}\
${goto 150}CPU ${cpu cpu0}% \
${goto 250}UP ${uptime}\
${goto 400}Home ${fs_free /home/} free
+ Show Spoiler [~/.conkyc/netusage.sh] +
#!/bin/bash
#could actually use this directly in the conky configuration
echo `vnstat -i eth0 -m | grep "$(date '+%b %y')" | awk '{print $9 } {print $10}'`
+ Show Spoiler [~/.conkyc/up2date.sh] +
#!/bin/bash
#I also got a `pacman -Sy` cronjob running every 30 mins
pacout=`pacman -Qu | wc -l`
if [ "$pacout" == "0" ]; then
echo no updates
elif [ "$pacout" == "1" ]; then
echo 1 update
else
echo "$pacout updates"
fi
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EPT![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/cPe2N.png)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/jljZs.png)
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