Subj : Re: For you SBBS Sysops o To : Accession From : Gamgee Date : Sun Jun 30 2024 08:40 am -=> Accession wrote to Gamgee <=- G> Yes, I would agree with all of that. Graphics drivers almost certainly G> the cause of such problems, and many others. Ac> Proprietary graphics drivers, to be specific. This was before there Ac> were any open source drivers out there. When open source drivers were Ac> introduced, there were problems at first, but then most of the graphic Ac> related problems went away. No doubt. I am a combat-wounded veteran of the Nvidia Wars. ;-) G> I guess it's mostly the (assumed) philosophy that "let us manage all G> your startup processes the way we think is best, and you don't worry G> about the details". I know that isn't quite accurate, because you can G> of course tweak systemd like most anything else, but that's as close as G> I can come to a reason. I like to know exactly what's happening and G> have as much control over that as I can. Another claim is that systemd G> does things "in parallel all at once" and thereby reduces boot time. I G> don't care one little bit about that, as I don't reboot often and don't G> care if it takes 12 seconds, or 14 seconds. Ac> Yeah, I don't care about losing a couple seconds on boot time, Ac> whatsoever. I make just about every one of my systemd startup scripts Ac> myself, so in a sense, I'm pushing the 'what to do', and systemd takes Ac> care of the "how to do it". That's cool, and I could live with that. Perhaps some of my resistance is the lack of time/motivation to learn enough about it to be able to do that. I'm only a few years from retiring, so maybe I'll get there then. Ac> I guess I'm all for moving forward as long as it doesn't take away from Ac> the original goals. Hard to argue with that - although I've always believed the Unix philosophy was (paraphrasing) "Each tool should do ONE job, and do it well." I feel like systemd wants to "Do all jobs, and sort of do them well enough". Haha! Not completely accurate but you get the idea. G> Yes, I've toyed with Manjaro a few times and liked it OK. I suppose G> those are the two most popular desktops, with Gnome only being there G> because of Ubuntu, IMHO. I used to love Gnome but it became so G> dumbed-down looking (I think it looks like a Fisher-Price toy) that I G> moved (years ago) to XFCE and love it. Kind of Gnome-ish but light and G> fast, and very configurable. Ac> Gnome is definitely different from how it used to be. Once they began Ac> catering to tablets and touchscreens, I lost interest. However, Ac> nowadays, they definitely still do that, but have relaxed the focus Ac> they used to have on that a bit to continue to do actual desktop Ac> environment kind of stuff. Ac> I didn't mind it, and to be honest, I may have liked it a little bit Ac> better (aesthetically) than whatever direction they went with KDE. The Ac> bouncing icon next to the mouse pointer was cool 10 years ago, not now. Ac> The default window borders aren't all that exciting. However, programs Ac> like Konsole I like better than Gnome Terminal, Konversation for IRC, Ac> KTorrent, K3b, Kate, and a couple others are better than the Gnome Ac> variants, if Gnome even has a variant of some of those. I've never been able to stand using KDE. Not sure exactly why but I just don't like it. Maybe it reminds me of Windows a little. I have always used and loved K3b for burning discs though, but that's the only app I like. G> Next time you're bored, spin up a VM with MX Linux (xfce desktop) and G> see what you think. It's about the only one I like any more. Ac> Thanks for the heads up, I've downloaded the XFCE as well as the Ac> Fluxbox (brings back memories) variants, and will give them a shot in Ac> the morning and get back to you. Ac> The only issue I see is that it's Debian based. The first thing from Ac> Debian that turns me off is that it's usually so far behind the times Ac> (I get it, their main focus is stability, but damn). For example, MX Ac> XFCE 64bit uses a 6.6 kernel, and here on Archlinux I'm using 6.9.7 Ac> currently, and it's rock solid stable. *shrug* Ahhhh, yes it is Debian-based, but is NOT the same as Debian-stable. Forgot to mention - there is a version of MX called "AHS" (for advanced hardware) and that's what I'm using. After installation and a routine update, 'uname -a' reports this: Linux rivendell 6.9.6-1-liquorix-amd64 #1 ZEN SMP PREEMPT liquorix 6.9-5~mx23ahs (2024-06-25) x86_64 GNU/Linux So... not bad. That's probably the version you want, assuming fairly recent hardware (and I've run that version just fine on 7-8 year old hardware). G> I use Linux as my daily driver, on mulitiple desktop/laptops, so it's G> important to me. Servers/BBS run on Slackware, and even my daily laptop G> has been Slackware for many years. Transitioning to a new laptop and G> decided to go with MX Linux, as it's just less work. The only two G> Windows computers in the house are my work laptop and my wife's desktop. G> :-) Ac> Understood completely. My main PC here is Windows, just because I have Ac> a Steam library that would cripple most people here. I still like to Ac> play AAA games, and Linux just hasn't convinced them to port their Ac> stuff just yet. Nice, and no argument here about Linux gaming. It's come a long way but not yet (and likely never) will it catch all the way up. Ac> Anything BBS/FTN/server related though, goes straight to my server Ac> machine, running nothing but Linux. I may have a 'tinkering' FreeBSD VM Ac> just to mess around, but it will most likely never go further than Ac> that. Same... I've always felt like I "should" learn/use a 'BSD, and have gotten various flavors running, but eventually said "OK, now what?". "What does this do that I can't already do on Linux?". "Why put any more effort into this?". And that's the end of it. R/ Dan .... Users come in two types: Those who have lost data, and those who will. --- MultiMail/Linux v0.52 þ Synchronet þ Palantir BBS * palantirbbs.ddns.net * Pensacola, FL .