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Ten Tips for Windows users making the switch to Linux
40hz:
If I was to do an appliance, and especially something that'd run on a system with limited performance and storage, I'd probably go linux-from-scratch instead of using a distro - even something that can be as minimal as gentoo.-f0dder (October 20, 2008, 02:44 PM)
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You could. But there are plenty of micro-distros that would serve equally well. Still, I wouldn't automatically limit my definition of an appliance to some minimal hardware configuration. I think of appliances as any purpose-built system that basically runs right out of the box and gets administrated via a web-type interface. I'd lump full bore security gateways, mail servers, CMS servers, etc. into the 'appliance' designation. At least those are the 'appliances' I've built.
It's nice that Linux has made provisions for you to compile an application from source. But unless you have a very specific reason for doing so (or you just plain want-to-do-it*), why bother?-40hz (October 20, 2008, 12:05 PM)
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For me, it's about getting the features I want, but also not getting the features I don't want. For instance, my server doesn't run X11 and I don't print from it. I want to have as few services running as possible, since there's then less things to worry about wrt. updates, following security issues, et cetera. There's also less dependencies that can break when a stoned developer checks in a patch that messes up other things.
And the nice thing about gentoo is that you get most of the benefits from source installs, but still with the benefits of package management (uninstalls, dependency resolution, etc).
-f0dder (October 20, 2008, 02:44 PM)
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To which I'd have to repeat an earlier statement I made:
From the level of knowledge you've displayed in many of your forum posts, I suspect you (i.e f0dder) are part of that small cadre of people that has specific goals combined with the necessary technical background to pull them off. For folks like you, Gentoo makes sense.
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And it's good that there are people like you around to knowledgeably challenge the occasional fits of groupthink and rampant boosterism that sometimes gets the Linux community into so much trouble. :Thmbsup:
Paul Keith:
Keep educating us idiots, f0dder and 40hz. :up:
40hz:
Keep educating us idiots, f0dder and 40hz. :up:
-Paul Keith (October 21, 2008, 07:24 AM)
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If I ever get the time to set up that bloody Linux info website I've been plotting and designing for the last two years, I'm going to sure to invite f0dder to be it's Official Contra-Pundit. ;D
zridling:
Once again, thanks 40hz for the feedback, which is far more than I know. However, for those with the patience, here's a longer, very simplistic explanation of dependency management
[40hz]: I didn't forget the dependency issue. From my experience, the whole "hunting-down-the-dependency-hell" thing is vastly exaggerated and somewhat outdated.
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Dependency management can get fiendishly complicated at times. But no worries. Like a good butler, the Linux software subsystem hides all that from you. This is one argument people use if they object to package management systems, such as that used by Ubuntu (or any other Distro). However, the counterargument is a good one: it never breaks -- unless the user does something stupid, that is.
Ten Tips for Windows users making the switch to Linux
How software installation and removal is handled under Linux is radically different compared to Windows or OS X, but it isn’t hard to understand. As we all know, to install a program, a Windows user will double-click an installation .exe. Linux is different because software installation is automated -- even including the download. You literally just choose what you want to install and sit back while Linux (actually, your distro) takes care of it.
Virtually all Linux software is open source and therefore available for anybody to create their own versions of. So, the Linux developers take the source code for thousands of software projects and compile it themselves, tweaking it to ensure it works correctly on Fedora (or Ubuntu or Gentoo or Mandriva, etc.), and put it into large publicly accessible repositories (known as repos for short). In nearly all cases when you install software, it’ll come from these repositories. Manually downloading and installing software is rare, although not unheard of -- I do it to test software and when I'm at the dev's website.
The second key difference between Linux and other operating systems like Windows and Mac OS X is that Linux lets you install and remove just about everything, including system components that are otherwise invisible but make everything work. The bits of software that are installed and removed are referred to as packages. Packages are nothing more than program and/or system files bundled together in one file, complete with scripts (chains of commands) that configure things so that the software works with everything else on the system.
Typically, to install a particular piece of software, it’s necessary to install not only the program itself, which is usually provided as a single package, but several other packages containing the background system software it needs to work. You might say that such software installation is modular. The software you want to install is said to depend on these other packages that provide the system files. As you might be coming to expect, your distro's software install/removal tools automatically take care of installing these dependencies, and because of this, you will often hear people talk of dependency management when discussing Linux’s software management system as if it's a scary thing.
It isn’t just about managing dependencies when software is installed, of course. If you remove some software, you’ll be told whether that software is depended upon by any other software. If it is, you might see a suggestion that you remove the other software too. The other software might have its own set of dependencies. But again, the counterargument is a good one: it never breaks -- unless the user does something stupid.
40hz:
[/b] for the feedback, which is far more than I know. However, for those with the patience, here's a longer, very simplistic explanation of dependency management
-zridling (October 21, 2008, 01:57 PM)
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Go zridling! :Thmbsup:
Very nice summation.
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