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twoflowers wrote:I'm interested in your findings with ZFS, as I'm just evaluating it because of its ability to detect silent bit corruption.

I spent a good part of yesterday at persuading the installer to use MBR partitiond scheme with ZFS 'cause I'd like to have wheezy on that system, too. Well, I failed, it's FreeBSD only now on that system. Anyway, not having a comfortable fallback is most likly the better way to go,

From what I've read, ZFS is supposed to be really great (fast, self healing, etc), just not good with fakeraid. But I am finding FreeBSD actually 'listens' when you 'tell' it a target drive for installation, PC-BSD, not so much, gotta be careful with that one.

Kicking the tires of Salix, PCLinuxOS and PC-BSD update:

PC-BSD (Xfce) has good intentions but has some rough edges (like the default icon set is incomplete, fixed by installing other icon sets and picking one that is complete, MATE Faenza for example), there are constant reminders BSD lurks under the hood, ZFS, although fast and good, seems complicated, not much much support for that file system outside of PC-BSD, if let's say, you want to boot with a live Linux disk to make repairs to config files, etc. Mounting other drives is tedious and weird (compared to automatic mounting by just clicking on an icon in a Linux file manager for example). Some 'PBI' packages install but just don't work, like DeVeDe for example, "directory does not exist", huh? What? After updating the Nvidia driver got disabled, it was fixed by just re-installing it and running nvidia-xconfig as root. PC-BSD install note: although sde (ada4 in BSD land) is on a different controller and listed fifth in the BIOS boot order, the PC-BSD insisted it was ada0, the actual target drive, in reality was ada2, the installer had it listed as ada3, so be careful.

So that leaves pretty but hand-holding PCLinuxOS MATE (KDE just makes me grind my teeth now) or Salix Xfce 14.1, which is lean and mean, very similar to the Debian experience but not for n00bs, expect a little troubleshooting here and there. What it will most likely come down to is which distro my old faithful Brother HL-1435 laser printer works in the best, or if I can even get it to work properly at all like I did in Wheezy with the Brother driver. I found an rpm version of the Brother driver, which *should* work in PCLinuxOS.

PCLinuxOS install note: be sure you know exactly which drive it's being installed to, it still uses the ancient Drake installer from its Mandrake days, you only get to see the drive models as reported to the BIOS by the drives themselves, not their Linux labels (sda, sdb for example) until after the drive is chosen. Fortunately PCLinuxOS uses Synaptic still so people migrating from Debian should be comfortable with it.

Salix install note: Its default file system is XFS, not always compatible with other OSes, I may try an ext4 install (if it's an available option) just to keep headaches to a bare minimum, I'm more at home with ext4 (no pun intended).

Lots of learning ... but that's part of the fun

Let me add my impression:
OpenBSD: works good on my thinkpads. The reason I didn't choose it for debian replacement is the absence of binary packages and easy system upgrades.
DesktopBSD: would have been my favorite, 'cause it has KDE3.5 on board and it works really nice, but it's hoplessly outdated
PC-BSD: Well, nice, but too much GUI. And I do not like KDE4 nor XFCE.
FreeBSD: Comes with all I need, works for me and has a nice learning curve. I'll definitly stick with that.

After spending the last days with the installer (get to know your tools first) I have to say that the part I love most is the documentation. It's up to date and examples work - what a new feeling. As always, it helps to have at least a second working computer around. Today I managed to lock me out of my T60 FreeBSD installation with root on ZFS. ZFS is in deed a different beast, but hey, there's a handbook and a howto on zfs. Got it running again in notime.

After all ... well, I entered Unix world on the wings of Apollo before they were aquired by HP ...

twoflowers wrote:PC-BSD: Well, nice, but too much GUI. And I do not like KDE4 nor XFCE.

I'm not plugging PC-BSD, actually the opposite, it's still a little shy of being ready for primetime, anyway, the installer offers a wide variety of DEs, even Lumina and MATE, etc. Just sayin. As a matter of fact, just for schizz n giggles, I'm going to install all of the available DEs (meta PBIs) in the already existing HDD install, check them out before I wipe the drive, or maybe I won't, I'll leave it for rainy day learning.

I think I've figured out why I can get my old Brother HL-1435 working in 64-bit Wheezy, I have i386 multi-arch support enabled, just a stab in the dark but that printer was built back in the 32-bit days, hence the need for the 32-bit CUPS wrapper from Brother.

So with any luck, PCLinuxOS 32-bit MATE with the PAE kernel (PAE kernel requires a manual install after PCLOS is on the HDD) is my answer, polished, lots of apps and no virusd, and maybe even a working printer OOTB, possibly no proprietary driver needed.

On another bizarre note, 64-bit Wheezy struggles with AMD's IOMMU and the Via chip USB 3.0 controller (see this post for the fix), I live booted the PCLinuxOS 32-bit and everything is fine OOTB (USB mouse working, USB 3.0 working), go figure. Just one less headache to deal with and another bonus. Kind of sucks having to take a step backwards to 32-bit but at least I won't be one of Poett-hat's bitches.

Before anybody asks, I love that printer and building the new computer cleaned out my wallet temporarily, I'm not in a position to run out and buy another printer right now.

Edit: And the 'winner' is...drum roll please...PCLinuxOS MATE amd64. I did a default install on my old machine (actually a re-install, I kind of borked the first attempt doing stupid $#1+), then did a default install of the printing system (CUPS, etc), added my printer, now here's the strange part, all along I've been trying the 'recommended' driver (something-gutenprint-blah-blah), anyway, it turns out the Brother HL-1430 Foomatic/hl1250 works perfectly (hidden half way down the list no less) for my HL-1435. On another note concerning AMD users with a Via USB 3.0 chip like my mobo (see sig), I confirmed in 3 live disks (Salix, Gentoo and PCLinuxOS) that simply adding......to the boot line makes everything work the way it's supposed to, no dead USB 2.0 mouse or KB, the USB 3.0 ports work and you can leave IOMMU disabled in the BIOS (default). So when I finally get around to installing PCLinuxOS on my new machine, I just add that to the kernel boot line which is really easy in PCLinuxOS Control Center->Boot->Set up boot system or during the install. Note: I have my BIOS in legacy mode, I'm not a big fan of UEFI, so I'm not sure if this works in UEFI mode. At least I found a substitute for Debhat, I can breath easy for a while again. The only negative was no fakeraid Raid 0 support, no biggy, a single SSD reads/writes at just over 500MB/s anyway, now I have a spare SSD for experimenting on my new machine.

Don't get me wrong, Salix Xfce is great, it only 'lost' because it wouldn't set up my printer properly. I love Xfce but I'll settle for MATE, I could probably install Xfce in PCLOS but I can't be bothered, besides, MATE has sounds and it's quickly made pretty by installing the elementary-icon-theme package, Clearlooks + BlackMATE window border, oh, and you may want to change the mouse cursor too, the default is 'win8' or some $#1+ like that, if you do, the cursor will be huge, simply close the theme window, go the actual mouse settings, adjust the speed a little, close that, then go back to mouse in themes, the size slider will no longer be greyed out (obviously this a minor bug but my discovered fix works).

I might put Stella (CentOS 6.6 based) on my old machine's 4 HDD fakeraid Raid 0, just so those drives aren't sitting around 'rusting', it's just a workstation backup machine now, any heavy multimedia will be done on my new machine.

Good luck with your non-virusd distro hopping folks, I found mine.

baremetal os
http://www.returninfinity.com/baremetal.html

i am pretty sure baremetal will not use systemd

Accept nothing but the best. BareMetal OS.

if linux becoming political in future, will try bootstrap linux with baremetal os or 9front.
(linus also human, he will be replaced by someone else like debian TC)

A little word of caution about PCLinuxOS. It was my main OS for more than a year, and I liked it a lot. But always update and install the latest upgrades before installing anything. It has a rolling release model, so installing things from the repositories before upgrading the system may completely break your install. (It happened to a friend of mine who broke the system within minutes of installing it.)

Having said that, it was very easy to understand and I had very few problems with it, despite it having all the latest packages. The developers were also very active in the forum, easy to reach, helpful and friendly.

All in all, it is a good choice.

mmix wrote:baremetal os
http://www.returninfinity.com/baremetal.html

i am pretty sure baremetal will not use systemd

Accept nothing but the best. BareMetal OS.

if linux becoming political in future, will try bootstrap linux with baremetal os or 9front.
(linus also human, he will be replaced by someone else like debian TC)

BareMetal at Softpedia and Github.

Hallvor wrote:A little word of caution about PCLinuxOS. It was my main OS for more than a year, and I liked it a lot. But always update and install the latest upgrades before installing anything. It has a rolling release model, so installing things from the repositories before upgrading the system may completely break your install. (It happened to a friend of mine who broke the system within minutes of installing it.)

Having said that, it was very easy to understand and I had very few problems with it, despite it having all the latest packages. The developers were also very active in the forum, easy to reach, helpful and friendly.

All in all, it is a good choice.

Oh for sure, I do that with anything I install, update first, then configure, add programs, etc.

I want to give some version of BSD a spin using a live disk with a DE. IIUC, FreeBSD's live disk boots to console - no DE. I haven't been able to get the PS2 mouse working on the Ghost live disk - tried several times. So if any of you have found a BSD distro with a live disk that actually, works please post you suggestions here. Thanks!

PC-BSD works as you'd like it with DE preinstalled. Don't know if it comes with a live cd.

PC-BSD doesn't have live CDs, but they do offer some ready-to-go VirtualBox images.

http://www.pcbsd.org/en/download.html

The only significant problem I've found so far with PC-BSD is the limited printer support - support for 'GDI' printers is very patchy.

There are still GDI printers around? I haven't managed to get any of these going in debian, either.

I used 'GDI' in quotes as shorthand for printers requiring special binary drivers. Sloppy terminology on my part.

Most printer manufacturers provide Linux drivers for their products these days, but not BSD drivers, so the only BSD drivers are ones written by BSD developers themselves.

1) I don't think there are many liveCD's to be found when it comes to BSD.
2) GhostBSD worked for me, out of box (fyi). Perhaps they got a forum, i'd ask there. Wouldn't assume getting a mouse working is a problem.
3) I recall that installing FreeBSD in Virtualbox worked fine. If you ain't got a free PC and got the time to get the head into Virtualbox (not that much time needed), the i would simply do that.
4) I don't think it is worth it. I omit the long explanation. Either switch or don't, but in a short check, in a liveCD, the differences are simply too small.

schnuller wrote:1) I don't think there are many liveCD's to be found when it comes to BSD.

That is the conclusion I came to.

schnuller wrote:2) GhostBSD worked for me, out of box (fyi). Perhaps they got a forum, i'd ask there. Wouldn't assume getting a mouse working is a problem.

I have been getting help on their forum but still not working. Might be something with the new motherboard.

schnuller wrote:3) I recall that installing FreeBSD in Virtualbox worked fine. If you ain't got a free PC and got the time to get the head into Virtualbox (not that much time needed), the i would simply do that.

Yeah, I've been thinking about that. Haven't used VB in maybe 5 years. Virtualization is kinda of a pain.

schnuller wrote:4) I don't think it is worth it. I omit the long explanation. Either switch or don't, but in a short check, in a liveCD, the differences are simply too small.

That may be but I'd still like to give it a try. Wonder why the BSD folks don't make live disks available . . .

with dkms (iirc, the name does not matter, it gets installed as a dependency, i think) VirtualBox is pretty straight forward. If speed was a problem ... well: that can be a pain.
I got enough computers, but ran out of CD's (i probably could use a USB-stick ... now that is an idea i didn't think of before just now ...).
Sorry to hear the problems don't get sorted.
Well: i see your problem, i get your reasoning.
I ain't got better ideas.

I had running BSD on really crap computers, and it sure is easy on resources. So if you can get such a PC for free ... (no sane person would keep it. They are useless besides some fun stuff)

To make a long story short: Good luck.

BTW, "startx" with old console will most likely result in an X session without keyboard and mouse on FreeBSD.

roseway wrote:PC-BSD doesn't have live CDs, but they do offer some ready-to-go VirtualBox images.

http://www.pcbsd.org/en/download.html

Thanks, roseway. I remember seeing VB images but couldn’t remember where. I'll give that a try when I'm in the mood . . .

A few items for the list:

FuguIta is a live CD for OpenBSD ... I found it relatively painless to get running.
http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=fuguita

AV Linux is a pretty nice respin of Debian 6 (no guarantee they won't downgrade I guess).
http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=avlinux

The "Business Edition" of SolydX (and SoldyK?) is free of the virus. There was some sad news this week of the lead dev stepping back.
http://solydxk.com/business/solydxbe/

Right now I'm leaning most heavily on Salix and Pisi. However, I did read somewhere that Liberte may have an update in the works ... that would be ideal, as it's privacy-focused and based on Gentoo.

God bless us every one.

Edit: BTW, thanks to whoever it was that posted this thread's link in the Distrowatch comments. I posted a TY there, but it didn't stick.

golinux wrote:I want to give some version of BSD a spin using a live disk with a DE. IIUC, FreeBSD's live disk boots to console - no DE. I haven't been able to get the PS2 mouse working on the Ghost live disk - tried several times. So if any of you have found a BSD distro with a live disk that actually, works please post you suggestions here. Thanks!

What kinda mobo we talking about here? Cuz I just recently built an AMD machine and I've had issues but worked them out. My BIOS is set to 'legacy mode', not ready, willing or want to 'fight' with UEFI just yet, IOMMU was the main culprit.

In regards to printer support, Mac is based on BSD so if the printer box says OS(u)X supported, most likely the printer will work, I can get my old Brother printer (which boasted Windhose and Mac support back in the day) to work in Linux and the BSDs. Tip: try all the drivers in the list for your printer, sometimes the 'recommended' driver sucks.

Corrected for spelling and grammar.