Many LINUX on board

It is time to resume and then return to more productive work.
Looking at the work of others is not very productive. But sometimes you need that, to get a more realistic view of your own work. Which is what I did during the last weeks, with my eye on the LINUX operating system and its many variants (look at the impressive distribution graphic on Wikipedia).

I am writing this Blog article on an Arch LINUX called Manjaro. This Kilimanjaro gives me a Firefox 33.1.1 browser to edit the internet. This is the now the sixth operating system I have on my laptop. I'll end up with a different LINUX for every day of the week :-)

(I'm gonna stop installing further LINUX now, it's getting an addiction when you have a modern GPT hard-disk with a tera-byte space. One LINUX can live with 12 GB, and a GPT disk provides up to 128 primary partitions. So I could have nearly 100 LINUX on it :-)

To look at LINUX is to look at informatics history. UNIX existed before WINDOWS, and had a graphical user interface before WINDOWS (and MAC). But UNIX always was restricted to university- and industry-environments, until LINUX appeared in mid of the nineties. This was the UNIX for the personal computers, supported by an internet-oriented developer community around the world that competed with giants like Microsoft for controlling PC hardware. All efforts to get rid of them failed (and there were many, and some still try, see MFT at end of partition). Their basic idea was

"It is my hardware, not Microsoft's"

Which is right, isn't it?

The look at LINUX is also a look at the success of human collaboration. The community is programming LINUX mostly in C, shell and Python. Hardly a modern object-oriented language found its way to them (except C# as I recently found out on OpenHub). Listen to Linus Torwald's "Java, what a horrible language" statement on YouTube.

But do not try this (watching a video in web browser) on an Arch LINUX or Debian, because Adobe Flashplayer is not available there. These LINUX contain free software only. You can install Flashplayer by yourself. If you can. And this is where the LINUX problems start. Because human collaboration depends on the ability to communicate even with non-expert users. Internet forums are full of good and bad instructions how to solve this or that. It takes a lot of time to find the good ones, and then to understand them.

Being convinced by the Java idea of no more having to write platform-specific software any more, I really missed what is going on upon these platforms. LINUX has become incredibly strong also on desktop computers. It is a trend maker concerning UI controls. There are concepts to impress users by 3-dimensional effects like the compiz desktop manager provides e.g. in its "rotating desktop cube". Innovation nowadays happens not just at big companies like Microsoft, Apple and Google.

LINUX Tribes

• Debian
  • Ubuntu
    • Mint
    • Zorin
    • Elementary
    • Linux Light
    • ....
• Arch
  • Manjaro
  • ....
• Gentoo
  • Sabayon
• Red Hat
  • Fedora
  • Mandriva
  • CentOS
• Slackware
  • OpenSuse
• Puppy
• ....

I have arranged them here by importance from my personal point of view. Of course this list is much longer, see Wikipedia for more details.

The most user-friendly and thus popular system is Ubuntu and its children. Their mother Debian is not nice. Even Linus Torvalds says that Debian is hard to install. The more amazing is that Ubuntu is based on Debian. But even if the Debian installer has become better, you won't be satisfied with that system, because multimedia sucks: videos crash, sound does not work.

Ubuntu

All Ubuntu variants have the same nice install procedure which is quite easy to use. As it is mostly run from a Live-CD, you have a fully featured operating system with internet connection and web browser under your fingers. Any occurring install problem can be solved by searching the internet.

But be aware that it will encourage you to erase any other operating system on your machine when it comes to partitioning. Always go to "Manual Partitioning" when installing a LINUX! This is not an Ubuntu characteristic, all other LINUX do the same.

Arch

Arch is a very basic LINUX. Pure Arch is for people who like to do it by themselves, or would like to develop their own LINUX. Meanwhile it tends to become what Debian is for Ubuntu, it is available also with desktop managers, see Antergos or Manjaro.

Gentoo

Gentoo is like Arch, except that it compiles a kernel customized for local hardware when installing it. Some already have tamed this and let us use their desktop environment. Like Arch, Gentoo is not a Debian.

Others

Some might stay on the way. Fedora tries its best to prevail, but will not with that installer. Slackware always was infamous, even among LINUX experts. These old LINUX are for the users that already know them.

Several LINUX on a GPT disk

My boot menu

How did I prepare my laptop for so many operating systems? Not at all, except that I convinced the always-preinstalled Windows 8.1 via its own partition editor to give me back 500 GB. But in review there is something to say.

It would have been nice to have a dedicated grub boot loader partition that exists independently of all installed LINUX. But I did not find a good manual on the internet about how to do this for grub 2 (1.97 and newer).

So I have the boot loader and its configuration for all installed LINUX on my Ubuntu. That means I

• install a new LINUX without installing its boot loader (if this is not possible, I do not install it)
• on reboot, after installation, I start the Ubuntu
• in a super-user shell I launch update-grub, this detects the newly installed LINUX and puts it into the boot loader menu
• I reboot again and now choose the newly installed LINUX
• when it is not able to boot, I remove its bootloader menu entry and its partition using Ubuntu

The GNU partition editor is available on nearly every LINUX meanwhile.
Following screenshot shows how gparted renders the partitions of my hard-disk. Each LINUX installation take just 4-6 GiB space. I gave them 18-25 GB each to grow old. The completely new installed WINDOWS on /dev/sda5 takes 53 GiB without having been used at all, and 4 more partitions.

I use WINDOWS only to test Java applications. But the 462 GiB free space will not be lost. Every modern LINUX can read and write NTFS file-systems (although it took many years to achieve that). So I

• have a /etc/fstab entry (see below) for the WINDOWS partition on each LINUX, mounting that file-system on boot
• hold all my /home data on that partition (pictures, music, documents, ...)
• and thus can see the data from all my LINUX installations in the same way

/etc/fstab

# <file system>   <mount point>   <type>   <options>   <dump>   <pass>
#
# / was on /dev/sda10 during installation
UUID=e6606afe-96d5-4a4b-8f40-bdb5c2e98e51  /  ext4  errors=remount-ro  0  1
#
# /boot/efi was on /dev/sda1 during installation
UUID=50FD-01D8  /boot/efi  vfat  defaults  0  1
#
# swap was on /dev/sda7 during installation
UUID=e3828083-e6a6-480a-abf6-46740a78c19f  none  swap  sw  0  0
#
# manually added WINDOWS disk
UUID=72025F23025EEC1B /media/windisk  ntfs-3g  defaults,windows_names,locale=en_US.utf8  0  0

None of the LINUX that I installed can live with UEFI secure boot mode except the Ubuntu editions. Debian and Manjaro (Arch) do not boot when I switch to that mode.

What LINUX installers need to learn

• an installer is a Wizard and thus needs to show all pending and done steps in a left-side list
• EFI partitions should be recognized automatically and re-used by default
• any click of a user must be answered by a progress indicator that stops as soon as the action was done (partitioning, formatting, copying, ...) - this is for the user to early recognize frozen systems
• already existing user data in /home or /usr/shared should be preserved, e.g. by offering to keep the existing file system type (or upgrade it?)

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Personal experiences with LINUX systems

I never used WINDOWS a lot. Always had a dual boot computer with LINUX as default. I did a lot of shell script programming back in the nineties, trying to automate my work continually. And then Java appeared.

Nonetheless this is about LINUX. Here come my short stories.

Suse

Suse means "Software und System Entwicklung", which was the name of the German company that developed the so-called system in Nürnberg. This was my first LINUX in 1997. I had been working on UNIX systems before since 1990.

I remember meditating over so called "mode lines" to get my screen resolution working. And a thick manual because I didn't yet have an internet connection. And a recursively looping install routine that always prompted me again to choose the software to install. And that the Suse directory structure was somewhat different from that of other LINUX.

I stopped using Suse when Ubuntu appeared. Life became significantly easier since then. It is still available as OpenSuse. I did not find an ISO image, but when you are able to find out how to configure their FTP server you might succeed in installing OpenSuse. KDE goes back to Suse, and compiz desktop manager was developed by Novell that bought Suse.

Ubuntu

I use Ubuntu since 2007 (Dapper Drake, 6.06). Some versions of it have died because I never upgraded it and started to use other computers meanwhile. But I never had reason to complain. I also have it on my netbook, currently wondering whether I could upgrade that to 14.04.

There is still one major design flaw in LINUX. I never lost my data when repairing a WINDOWS installation, or installing a new one. But installing a new LINUX always means also losing your data and configurations.

The following screenshot shows the Ubuntu/Unity dialog where you can switch off the touchpad while typing, and switch off tapping as click (System/Settings):

Mint

This is my favorite. Being an Ubuntu, it is the most popular LINUX on this planet. Everything is where I expect it. I immediately find every tool I need. I can resize the main menu when lists get big. It has beautiful graphics. Windows behave nicely. No slowing down animations. Really a well usable operating system. Java preinstalled. Thank you!

The following screenshot shows the Mint/Xfce dialog where you can switch off the touchpad while typing, and switch off tapping as click:

Zorin

An Ubuntu that uses compiz and a lot of its effects. Windows are hopping and flying away. Music and video worked, like in every Ubuntu, without extra hours. Zorin comes with Google-Chrome as default browser, without Firefox. This is somehow unusual, because Firefox is the standard LINUX browser.

Debian

Installed this just because I wanted to see the difference to Ubuntu. Graphically not so bad (Gnome). A browser named "Ice Weasel", video did not work. Spent an hour searching for solution, but did not succeed in installing Flashplayer. Or maybe succeeded, but there was no sound. Spent another hour just for getting sound, did not succeed.

The worst LINUX installer I have ever seen was the Debian installer back in the nineties. I think it was called dinst. If it is still the same today I wonder how I got around it.

Fedora

This already was my second attempt with Fedora. Started the Live-CD and pressed "Install to hard disk". Confused me again with its strange way to plan partitions, calling them LVM (logical volumes). This is a GPT disk, Sir. It showed me existing partitions, but not the free space I could use, and where it is. After I had created a partition for it, it did not show me where that partition will be. The system always gave me the impression that I need not to know about anything, like "Let me do it and you will be happy", which is a no-go with LINUX.

Finally I started to read the help, because I did not trust that system. I rebooted to check whether it already had wasted my disk. Started again, but there simply was not enough information on that installer screen to make me sure that it won't destroy anything. And always that "Done" button without knowing what would be done then. Clicking something and getting no response for many seconds. I aborted the installation. Let experts eat experts. This LINUX will have to implement an installation program to survive. I never had a problem working with the fdisk commandline partitioner, but this installer is nearly as bad as dinst.

Arch

The downloaded ISO image has just 587 MiB. Starting the installer shows a console root prompt, nothing else, no graphic user interface, no curses application, nothing. I started to read the help file in current directory and decided to not reinvent the wheel, because that information was not detailed enough for a successful installation. I would have needed a lot of additional instructions.

Manjaro

First installation I canceled because I thought it would not let me partition the disk for it. Then I saw in a video that the partition editor comes up only after time-zone choice. Started again and was stuck when it refused to go on due to a missing EFI partition. I created one for it, but then found out that I could have reused the WINDOWS EFI partition (which it did not show me as EFI partition). I deleted the created EFI partition in Ubuntu, which then led to a hanging Manjaro boot. I installed it once more, now referencing the already existing EFI partition. Worked nice then, no complications, very similar to the Ubuntu installer. Why do they all need to know the EFI partition?

The user interface has everything a modern LINUX desktop needs (I chose the Xfce variant). The only problem occurring was the dimming of the screen during boot. This seems to be a quite popular bug on laptops. Something dims the screen while LINUX boots, and brightness is never restored again, so that you find yourself sitting before a quite dark UI. There is a tool called xbacklight on Arch that you can use when there is nothing on your keyboard that brings back the screen brightness. On my laptop it was the F12 key that again enlightened Manjaro. There also was a fix instruction on some Arch forum, but that did not work.

---

When you work with low-level LINUX systems like Arch you are automatically drawn into operating system problems. For example a boot message appears saying "root device is not configured for boot" or similar, and immediately disappears again, and you want to know what it was about. You end up following several instructions how to avoid disappearing boot messages that all do not work.

For example I dared to change to a "virtual terminal" via Alt-Ctl-F4. Normally there should be 6 terminal screens available via Alt-Ctl-F1 up to Alt-Ctl-F6, but on Arch there is only one on Alt-Ctl-F4. So there was my terminal screen, but the boot messages were not there, just a login prompt. Now I was not able to get back to the graphical user interface any more by pressing Alt-Ctl-F7, which is the standard key for such. I had to log-in and make a shutdown -r now. Up again I googled for a solution and found the command chvt N ("Change to Virtual Terminal N" I guess). But this works only when you are logged in. And applying it with numbers like 6 took me to an empty screen where I could not input any new command. Etc etc ....