Bitcoin Forum

I am going to switch from Windows to Linux on my home PC. At the workplace I administer a server where I put SUSE about 4 years ago and never changed to anything else (apart from upgrading and installing patches of course). Not that I am not happy with SUSE, but can you guys recommend any other distributions that would be ideal for home use (easy installation of audio/video codecs and stuff and of course, easy installation of Bitcoin and GPU miners).

Thanks in advance.

The only one I have used is Ubuntu. Its really improved a lot.

+1 for Ubuntu.

Ubuntu or Kubuntu (try both livecds, see which desktop you prefer and then install from livecd).

Thank you guys, I will check them out.

Ubuntu or Debian
If your looking for something a bit stronger Slackware

Arch Linux Rolling release.

If you had never used any linux distro before go Ubuntu then. :)

I am pretty experienced with "work stuff" like using the console to build/configure/run iptables, samba, apache, nagios and whatever else I need on my servers.

I have never used the GUI though (well, hardly ever), thus what I am looking for is something that would be very suitable for using at home without too much hassle for getting to play movies, music etc. I have downloaded Ubuntu and give it a try shortly.

Thanks again for your feedback.

Another vote for Ubuntu here.

I've only ever used Ubuntu. Back on Windows because my computer is actually owned by my employer.

+1 for Arch Linux. Initial installation and config might be a hassle but after that you'll love it.

If you have never used Linux before, and are otherwise used to how MS windoze does things, then Ubuntu is the best choice that I am personally aware of.   I have never tried Arch Linux, but I have tried Red Hat, Gentoo, Peanut, Slackware, Suse, DamnSmall, and a number others that I can't recall at this time.  Ubuntu is, by far, the most like Windoze with the least need for command line administration.  I, however, prefer Gentoo.  Runs like a scolded dog.  I was playing Stargate SG-1 videos on a 486-66 with 64 megs of ram, way back.  Everyone I ever talked to thought it was impossible, till I showed them it could be done on a tweeked Gentoo install with only BlackboxWM running on a video card framebuffer.

OK, I keep hearing about Arch Linux and I'm **this** close to wiping my hard-drive and installing it. The terminal is my mandala, and I'm wabi-sabi with it. BUT (and this may sound churlish) everytime I open the Arch Linux website and see the install page, I'm reminded of my gentoo days. Then I click close after muttering "ugh".

Rolling updates is a big plus. However I want my system to work. Work out the box and stay out of my way. I don't like pissing away my precious days configuring my box and kernel flags (like I did years and years ago)... Honestly: how unstable/non-automated is the system? I don't like spending hours configuring upgrades. I've got my delicate balance of vim/irssi/mutt/bash/desktop/whatever configs that I get thrown off if they need fixing (like Ubuntu when we have major breaking releases rather than small incremental rolling updates ;) ).

Please advise.

basically as far as I am aware you don't need to configure it after upgrades. It is as if you were upgrading any other piece of software. Don't you have a 4GB+ USB Memory? Maybe you can give it a try without needing to format your hard drive. xD

+1 on what craighto says about Ubuntu and Gentoo.

So far I've been using and admining Slackware, some local Red Hat flavour, Debian, OpenSuse, Gentoo and Arch Hurd (not Linux) and a few more.

For home use personally I much prefer Gentoo, because it's a rolling release and you can tweak the living crap out of it. Also it's a dream to admin, once you get used to it.

But at the end it boils down to what you want and what you need.

Maybe playing about with a distro chooser could help you decide:
http://www.zegeniestudios.net/ldc/
http://polishlinux.org/choose/quiz/

You can also go to distrowatch.com and get a feel for which are the most popular at any given point in time.  There is a series of links on the right side where you can click on the distro and get a short description of what it is targeted to.  I have tried all of the major distros and BSD as well but keep coming back to OpenSUSE.  I think it is one of the best for a development platform.  Ubuntu is probably the best for a first-time user though.  CentOS is the gold-standard server distro, but Ubuntu Server is looking mighty fine these days too.

I stalled for a long while too, then out of nowhere I just manned up and went for it. It took me 2 long days but it was mostly because of my own incompetence. I didn't even know what the hell ext4 was until I was installing and never had manually partitioned my disk. I think if I reinstalled again right now it wouldn't take me more than 3 hours ready with xorg, sudo, audio, codecs, window manager, fonts, etc, and if I reinstalled again right after that maybe it would take me 1.5-2 hours, so it shouldn't take you too long at all if you are already linux savvy.


Your stability will depend on the programs you install. If you only install from 'core', 'extras' and 'community' repositories then you probably won't have much problems at all, if you install from 'testing' and the AUR then things are more likely to get broken. The only problem I've ever had in ~6 months of use is that my window manager (gotten from AUR) stopped working after I updated some dependency. Fixed it in little time since someone had already asked about it in the forums and it was already resolved. Never had a problem with vim. Can't say about irssi and mutt, never used those.

Just to be safe though, you should only update when you have spare time in case something breaks.

ok, that sounds great ;D

How are kernel updates/drivers managed? Are they automatic like on Ubuntu?

Yeah they get updated automatically.

For non-technical home use, go with Ubuntu. Although, there's no reason you can't get technical with it. It has a nice polish and is just a pleasure to use, more so than Windows and OS X. I've been with Ubuntu on and off since 2004, and constantly for the last year.

I've used most of the major and some of the minor distros out there (everything from Yellow Dog and Mandrake to RHEL Server 5), and these days, unless I want a major project, I just install Ubuntu and I'm more or less done.

I recommend the LTS releases. They're not as cutting-edge, but you don't have to screw with an upgrade for years if you don't want to.

I used to really love Gentoo. One day, maybe again. But Ubuntu has all the glory and power of apt without the imposing technical and philosophical encrustations of Debian.

ok so I installed arch linux in virtualbox.

first i made 4 partitions then decided i didn't need a /boot one so i went back and deleted it. arch linux didnt recognise i had 3 and kept giving errors so i had to reboot and start over.. everything went fine and effortless.

however come first boot up and i try to install awesome window manager. find out i need to MANUALLY download tarballs, unpack them and run:
makepkg -s --asroot
pacman -U /path/to/package.tar.gz

did that for awesome then it wanted dependency X. downloaded dependency X. it wants dependency Y .etc... I gave up on the 5th dependency... what is the point of a centralised package manager if I'm forced to do this?? why not just have a user repo if you don't want to add some packages to core.

and why is it so hard to provide a package for awesome- there's 10 user contributed packages. pacman is also weird as hell to use. why not have:
pacman -Qi X  =>   pacman showinfo X
pacman -Sy   =>   pacman update
pacman -Ss X  => pacman search X

why these people always have to contrive things?

Whenever I'm missing dependencies they get installed automatically along with the package so you are probably doing something wrong. You should ask for help in the official forums, you'll probably get a quick answer. The only thing I can think of is that your pacman is outdated, you don't have cairo-xcb installed (which you also have to get from AUR) or maybe you tried installing the tarball instead of the resulting pkg.tar.xz as your post implies.

Or if using makepkg is too much trouble entirely you could download an AUR helper (https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/AUR_Helpers#yaourt). They are basically like pacman for the AUR. To my knowledge, the most popular one is yaourt.


Not sure why you can't get binaries from the AUR but my guess is because of security. If all those thousands of packages were readily accessible by pacman it would be a huge mess. There would be lots of bs packages with malicious code like friefox or python3 just waiting to get installed by mistake.

About awesome specifically, it doesn't have a package in the supported repos because, even though it's very popular, one of its dependencies is also in the AUR (cairo-xcb). The cairo package would have to be voted in before awesome can be promoted.


Huh? Abbreviating arguments is common practice as far as I know. And as chmod explained, you can easily create aliases for whatever command you don't care to type or remember.

Different lines in the sand. Sure I can alias those commands, but why aren't they default?

It's like installing a program with no default config. Sure I can RTFM then write a config, but I shouldn't have to.

That was the dependency- cairo-xcb, and then it needs oopango-something and oosomething-else iirc, and they both needed additional packages. Too lazy. Ubuntu you just type aptitude install awesome, logout, login and you're done.

Rolling releases would be a nice feature but Arch Linux is too ghetto for my liking.

I'm considering trying to install Linux on my laptop tonight. It's pretty important to me hat I not screw up what I have. I should be able to get to exactly what I have now right, is it likely I can screw that up? I want the choice of which operating system to use on an ongoing basis, this is reasonable right? It sounds like the way to go is a "live CD" will a 4G memory card work since I don't have a blank CD around? Thanks for any help.

When you insert Ubuntu then you get a live cd desktop (linux running off a the CD- it's a little slow but shows you how it looks).

I'd try Kubuntu and Ubuntu livecds and decide which desktop I prefer.

When you're ready you hit install. It should guide you through easily (even giving you the automatic option to resize windows and install alongside if you have a windows install, otherwise you can resize it manually if you know how to partition).

If you'd like to just run through quickly as a test then you can install VirtualBox and install Ubuntu in a safe environment under Windows.

Personally I'd recommend you wipe Windows completely. Install Ubuntu and then install Windows under VirtualBox in Ubuntu for poker or whatever else only. If you're using Windows only for poker then it's going to be very secure. You can even make another windows install under VirtualBox for other apps if you wish to.

Also ubuntuforums.org and #ubuntu IRC are good help places.

Ubuntu is the time-conscious choice. It will even let you easily install the proprietary drivers for your video card so that it a) is actually useful, and b) can be used for GPU mining. :)

I second this.  I'm using Ubuntu right now, getting 56,000 khash/sec on my Nvidia GeForce 9800GX2.  Was easy to setup and install, but keep in mind that Ubuntu won't install any proprietary drivers by default.  You have to go directly to the manufacturer's website to install their linux drivers.

Here's the setup code to get the OpenCL miner running: http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2636 (http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2636)
And here's a little script I wrote to automatically start the GPU miner when screensaver starts: http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2636.msg37461#msg37461 (http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2636.msg37461#msg37461)

I'm pretty sure that Ubuntu askes me if I want to install the proprietary Nvidia driver right after my first boot. I didn't have to download anything manually from Nvidia. Now I'm getting about 50 Ghash/sec from my GeForce GTX460.

In the notification bar the update manager alerts you of propretary drivers and you just have to accept the driver's license to install it. xD

linux mint is ubuntu with all the proprietary stuff already installed.

My apologies.  I guess I was thinking of the Cuda stuff.

And probably you also meant 50Mhash/s not Ghash/s. :)

Oops.

agreed. I just partitioned a windows laptop and installed that today. I have had no issues whatsoever. In fact it boots faster than winblows and it hasnt missed a beat.

congratulations!  I switched to Ubuntu from Windows about six months ago and have never gone back.  If you run into any problems, just post to the Ubuntu forums, and someone will help.

I can recommend you Ubuntu if you need something that 'just works'.
I can recommend you Arch linux if you love linux and you know what KISS means.