Technology – My Continuing Linux Journey

There’s a term in the Linux/BSD community for people who do what I’ve been doing since late November: “Distro-Hopper”.  I have downloaded and tried so many variants of Linux and BSD that I have lost count.  The habit could really be addictive for some people, but I have too short of an attention span to fiddle with new operating systems constantly, so at some point I just want to settle on one (or two, or three, or…) and move on with life.

To frame the discussion of Linux distributions, it’s useful to understand the core systems on which most of the popular distributions are based.  There are several major Linux base distributions, each of which has spawned a family of variants:

·      Slackware – This is the oldest major Linux system still active.  The most popular variant is openSUSE, sponsored by Attachmate/Novell, which offers an enterprise version for corporate servers.

·      Debian - The core system is a true non-commercial project run by volunteers.  The most famous variant, Ubuntu, is the product of Canonical Ltd.  Ubuntu has one of the largest user bases of any Linux variant because it is designed for non-technical users and has excellent support mechanisms.  Ubuntu serves as the base for many other distributions, including several *buntu’s with different desktop environments and the superb Linux Mint family.  Debian itself is the base for a plethora of systems, and is a very popular OS in its own right.

·      Red Hat – Fedora is the open-source core of this family, which serves as the testing ground for Red Hat Enterprise Linux.  Some other important distributions that trace their origins to Red Hat include Mageia and PCLinuxOS.  There are also a number of open-source RHEL clones such as CentOS, Springdale, and Scientific Linux.

·      Gentoo – Appealing to developers and other systems professionals, Gentoo is both fast and elegant, but less appropriate for non-technical users.  Sabayon and Calculate Linux are two distributions that attempt to make Gentoo more accessible, while Funtoo is something of an “improved” Gentoo (by the originator of Gentoo).

·      Arch – Arch is a system that has great appeal to advanced users.  There are a few attempts at bringing Arch to the masses, such as Manjaro, but in general Arch is largely Linux for experts.

In addition to Linux, there are several systems available based on BSD Unix, which are a subject for another day, and quite a number of other smaller Linux versions that are not based on any of the major core systems above.

Over the course of two months, I installed and played with at least 15 different operating systems and explored nine desktop environments.  Suffering from a bit of install fatigue, I took a break to think through what I’ve learned and step away from the prejudices I picked up through the process.  Every system I installed can be made to function as well or better than Microsoft Windows, so selecting the appropriate operating system for a given PC should include such factors as hardware support; performance; ease of networking with Macs, Windows PC’s, and printers/scanners; ease of maintenance and system upgrades; stability, and availability of your preferred desktop environment.

My test computer offers some challenges to an open-source operating system.  An HP Mini 311 netbook, it runs a slow Intel Atom 270 processor (32-bit, but multi-threaded) with 3 GB of RAM, nVidia Ion graphics, Gigabit Ethernet, and a Broadcom dual-band 802.11n wireless card plus Bluetooth.  The two primary hardware issues are the low speed & power of the CPU and the Broadcom wireless card.  Support for the nVidia graphics, the touchpad, and Bluetooth has not been a problem.  The Broadcom wireless card is a major problem, because Broadcom’s relationship with the open-source community has been poor.  As a result, some the “best” systems I have tested require a special set-up sequence to make the wireless card functional, and many support only the much slower 802.11g protocol initially.  Since the Mini is only rarely connected to Ethernet, the ability to have fully functional 802.11n wireless networking operating is extremely important to me.

When I wrote my last article, I was using Linux Mint Debian Edition with Mint’s own Cinnamon desktop environment.  The Mint project provides an extremely popular operating system based on the similarly popular Ubuntu version of Debian.  The standard Ubuntu-based versions of Mint are among the best systems available for non-technical users, with easy set-up, great support of hardware, and a superb user community.  Mint also offers a couple of versions based directly on Debian itself rather than on Ubuntu.  The benefits of the Debian Edition Mint distributions (“LMDE”) include greater speed and efficiency and a semi-rolling release model, at the expense of losing compatibility with the Ubuntu software repositories, having a bit less polish, and having a slightly increased risk of instability.   Based on my own experience, I think Linux Mint is one of the best systems for those new to Linux, while LMDE requires either a decent amount of experience or a willingness to learn much more about the system.

I do like the “rolling release” concept that LMDE offers.  Most systems, such as Ubuntu or Fedora, have a relatively fixed schedule on which they offer new releases.  Ubuntu, for instance, publishes a new version every six months and offers security and bug-fixes in between as necessary.  The primary issue with that model is that updating to a new version can be difficult and may require the equivalent of a complete re-install, with a significant amount of effort to re-implement any changes you made to your system.  With a rolling release, you install the system once, and updates occur whenever a packages’ latest update passes the scrutiny of the operating system’s QA team.  (LMDE actually follows a slightly different model they call semi-rolling release in which they issue “update packs” occasionally that have been carefully tested prior to release.)  The resulting system is slightly less likely to be bug-free but saves the effort required by a complete reinstallation every time a new release is issued.  I’ve been very pleased with the semi-rolling- and rolling-release systems I’ve tried, and intend to stay with that model.

Eventually I left LMDE for a couple of reasons: first, even with the layer of Ubuntu code removed, the system ran a bit slowly on my netbook, and second, the Cinnamon desktop environment seemed to have some bugs that forced occasional reboots.  Having begun this journey to escape Windows reboots, I did not see the benefit of moving to another unstable environment.  I think the Cinnamon DE is very appealing and as it matures I believe it will remain extremely popular, but for my HP Mini it is just not the right choice at this point in its development.

I have tried many of the major desktop environments, including Gnome 2 and 3, Unity, Xfce, LXDE, Enlightenment, MATE, and KDE 4 in addition to Cinnamon.  Of these, KDE stood out as the most natural interface for me.  I found that KDE combined with an efficient operating system works extremely well on my netbook, and I will use KDE as my standard interface going forward.

My favorite operating systems are openSUSE 12.3, Sabayon, and SolydK, all running KDE 4.10 and each based on a different branch of Linux.  In addition to KDE, all three of these distributions share a visual elegance that many others lack.  The effort that went in to making openSUSE, Sabayon, and SolydK visually appealing is immediately obvious when you compare them to other distributions.

Sabayon attempts to provide a stable but leading edge system based on Gentoo Linux that is simple enough non-technical users can run it.  In a normal Sabayon installation, the system can be updated once a week to pick up new updates that have been tested and approved by the Sabayon team.  Users not comfortable with the command line have access to updates and additional applications through an excellent GUI tool called Rigo, but updated kernels are installed through the command line.  In my opinion, if Sabayon is installed and set up by a reasonably astute person it could be run by most people with little assistance. 

openSUSE is the open source “lab” for Attachmate/Novell’s SUSE enterprise product that competes with Red Hat Enterprise Linux.  While Red Hat seems to be well integrated with the Gnome community and its GTK underpinnings, SUSE and openSUSE seem to have a similar close relationship with KDE and QT.  Red Hat and Fedora support and offer KDE as an option, and openSUSE and Novell support and offer Gnome, but I have the sense that Red Hat views Gnome as their primary environment while openSUSE focuses more on KDE.  As a result, it is not surprising that openSUSE’s KDE implementation is one of the best available.  The installation and set-up process would likely prove daunting to a total newcomer to Linux, but once installed openSUSE is a rock-solid system that would be ideal for the non-technical user.  Because of the relationship with Novell and SUSE, openSUSE is likely to be around for quite awhile, the support community is huge, and the documentation is excellent.  The Tumbleweed variant of openSUSE offers a rolling release model that keeps up with more recent application and KDE updates, so users have a choice between running the latest and greatest or staying with the stability of the point releases.

Finally, SolydK is a brand-new distribution based on Debian’s testing branch.  The leader, Schoelje, maintained an unofficial KDE version of Mint Debian, and used the LMDE base to create SolydK.  He added an Xfce version, SolydX, when LMDE dropped support for that desktop environment.  Schoelje has an art/design background so the Solyd products look great and will likely continue to improve in visual design.  Debian places a very high priority on stability, so systems built on Debian (other than those, like siduction, that are based on the experimental branch of Debian) tend to have older versions of software and an older kernel.  Therefore a standard implementation of SolydK is likely to have older versions of the Linux kernel and significant application software than Sabayon or openSUSE.

SolydK supports my Broadcom card from the initial boot – one of the benefits of being derived from Linux Mint Debian Edition.  openSUSE and Sabayon initially default to a driver that supports older Broadcom wireless cards, and shifting them to a different driver with the appropriate firmware took some effort and some research.  openSUSE cannot “ship” with proprietary codecs to play MP3’s and DVD’s, but instructions to add these with a simple command are well-documented on openSUSE’s site. 

For people new to Linux, one other distribution deserves mention: PCLinuxOS.  A rolling-release, this operating system’s core team focuses on providing an extremely stable system that is immediately useable.   Like Linux Mint’s support community, the PCLinuxOS community is very friendly and supportive and the system works well from the initial installation.   Among the beginner-friendly systems that I tried these two stood out.

I have a few other systems I’d like to try, including Mageia 3 and Korora, which is an easy to use version of Fedora.  When I have more time I hope to play around with Gentoo and/or Funtoo – a user builds these systems for a specific computer by compiling the operating system from source code.  As a result a Gentoo or Funtoo system can be extremely efficient.  I also want to work more on “siduction”, a fast rolling release based on the “unstable” (or leading-edge) branch of Debian, named “Sid”.  I installed it earlier, but struggled to get my Broadcom wireless card operational.  The siduction team has some good documentation and the people are great; the process forced me to learn a lot about config files and get more comfortable with the command line but after a while I realized this system demanded a higher level of knowledge and more spare time than I possess.  Working with siduction would improve my understanding of Debian-based distributions if and when I have more time.

I have chosen openSUSE as my main operating system.  My installation of version 12.3 worked flawlessly, and after a week or two I converted it to the Tumbleweed rolling-release variant with minimal effort.  I worked through the process of enabling the Broadcom driver for my wireless system largely by reading multiple sources, but I believe the openSUSE community would have solved it for me more rapidly had I asked.  The sheer volume of documentation available can be a little overwhelming, but the people on the forums are awesome.

After reading reviews and other comments, I believe I came to openSUSE at a propitious time.  In version 12.3 the elements come together to form a polished and stable operating system that strikes a good balance between offering up-to-date applications and OS technology on the one hand and providing a solid and dependable system on the other.  And it is efficient enough to run a full-featured KDE implementation on the relatively limited resources of my netbook with excellent responsiveness.  I would recommend openSUSE to any Windows user with a decent level of technical knowledge as the perfect antidote to Windows 8.