"Check for updates"

[Schol-R-LEA]

Between Intel, NVidia, Blizzard, Walmart, and now Microsoft, this has been an amazing year for major corpse-rations being their own worst enemies. The latest thing is that the Windows 10 Fall Update apparently introduced a change (or bug, it isn't clear) by which clicking on "Check for Updates" puts you on the list for beta updates, which is why so many new problems (such as the config file deletions) seem to have come up since that update pack came out. Way to shoot yourselves in the foot!

Mind you, I still think Nadella is a better CEO than Dancing Monkey Boy was. Ballmer was always a bit of a clown, and not in a good way.

[max]

Dancing Monkey Boy

[deleted8917]

March 2019 and I am still not receiving the October 2018 update. I like Windows, yes I do.
(sarcasm, I'm one step away from switching to GNU/Linux)
Any distro that you recommend to me?

[Schol-R-LEA]

March 2019 and I am still not receiving the October 2018 update. I like Windows, yes I do.
(sarcasm, I'm one step away from switching to GNU/Linux)
Any distro that you recommend to me?

Personally, I find Manjaro (based on Arch) to be quite good, though if you aren't already familiar with Linux, Ubuntu (based on Debian, and pretty much the 'default' currently) or Mint (based on Debian by way of Ubuntu) are a good deal more novice-friendly. If you are serious about this, well, this video discusses how Linux differs from Windows and how to install the Mint distro. Just sayin'.

You might try going through Libre Hunt and/or Distro Chooser to get some recommendations based on you specific needs (or at leats, that's what is suppose to happen...).

If you are curious, it is pretty easy to set up a local mini-installation under Virtualbox, VMWare, or QEMU for Windows (or Hyper-X if you have a Pro version of Windows, I suppose), assuming you have 20 GB or so to spare for each of the virtual installations. If you do this, you'll want to make sure you have virtualization enabled in you BIOS - I've made that mistake before, quite recently in fact, and it is annoying because unless you know about it (or assume that it was enabled by default, as I did), you aren't likely to check the BIOS/UEFI settings and you'll go crazy trying to figure out the problem.

Even when doing this, make sure you Windows system is well backed up first - mistakes are always a possibility.

Alternately, most major distros have LiveDVD and/or LiveUSB support as part of their installers, so you can also get a box of blank DVDs or Flash drives, load the installers onto those, and boot from those drives temporarily as a 'test drive'. And I suppose you could also get a Raspberry Pi (or similar ARM SBC) and run Raspbian/Armbian a bit...

You might want to play around with a few different desktop environments or window managers before deciding which you like best; the biggest problem here is that there is an embarrassment of riches, with more available options than you are likely to want to try out. I generally stick to mid-weight options, mostly XFCE and MATE (pronounced ma-tay, like the herbal tea, BTW), but they range from lightweight tiling WMs such as Notion, Ratpoison, StumpWM, or Awesome, to massive DEs such as KDE, Gnome, or Cinnamon, with a whole spectrum of options, layouts, and configurations to try. Most DEs have a suite of associated applications, as well, though most will mix-and-match to some degree. You should be able to test several different ones out within a single installation, as most login managers will let you choose a DE or WM when logging in, though some DEs such as Cinnamon or Pantheon are closely associated with a specific distro.

The package managers different distros use could be a matter to look into, as well. While I like the idea of a source-based approach, the way it is done by Gentoo's Portage system, for example, tends to be a problem for me.

If you have any Windows apps or games you can't live without, I would recommend going to the extra trouble of dual-booting, just so there is a backup in case the Linux equivalent isn't suitable. Virtualization and/or WINE are more than adequate to let you run a lot of Windows programs, fortunately, but even with the recent Steam Proton fork or WINE, current-gen Windows games are likely to be a problem.

Also fortunately, there has been substantially improved support for Linux by game devs in general over the past 3-5 years, which has been largely thanks to Valve pushing the Linux-based SteamOS as an alternative, though the rapid rise of cross-platform tools such as Xamarin (for portability to mobile devices and consoles, mainly, but also to Linux) has also been a major factor. Even so, a dual-boot setup would at least give you another option.

[deleted8917]

Thanks! I already used Ubuntu and Linux Mint for a while, and I doesn't haved major problems. (I like that you doesn't even need to reboot the system for an update, you only need to reboot in a kernel update!). I've been hearing a lot about Manjaro, seems to be a good Linux distro. I'm gonna to take a look.

[bzt]

you only need to reboot in a kernel update!

That's not necessary either

There are so many distros, pick one which fits your taste. A few common considerations though:
- binary distro with LTS - good for most users, but not really for programmers (Mint, Ubuntu, debian etc.)
- binary distro on the latest testing branch - usually works perfectly, and you have the latest compilers, linkers, libs (Ubuntu, debian, etc.)
- binary rolling release - this means there are no releases, packages are released individually as soon as possible, perfect for programmers but could be a bumpy ride in everyday use because applications are not tested together like in an LTS (Arch, Monjaro)
- source rolling release - same as above, but you compile each package directly from the latest source (Gentoo for example). I only recommend this for professionals, because it's hard, but you'll have cutting edge versions optimized directly for your machine.

Cheers,
bzt

[Octocontrabass]

March 2019 and I am still not receiving the October 2018 update.

This may be off-topic, but Windows includes some self-repair utilities that might fix the problem.

Code: Select all

dism /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth
sfc /scannow

Once you're getting updates again, you'll have more time to decide which Linux distro to use.

[deleted8917]

I tried Debian and Manjaro. Debian looks, I don't know, (¿empty?).
I tried Manjaro and looks very stable and well maded. The problem with GNU/Linux, is, the drivers.
Is very difficult to set up an printer in GNU/Linux. The drivers that the same system offers, never work (at least for me).
For example, Epson provides a good support for Linux distros, but not for Manjaro or Arch Linux. (I don't want to use an specific distro only because the drivers support)

[bzt]

I tried Debian and Manjaro. Debian looks, I don't know, (¿empty?).

What do you mean? There are literally tens of thousands packages to install. Check your repo config in /etc/apt/sources.list and issue "sudo apt-get update" to download the freshest list of available packages.

I tried Manjaro and looks very stable and well maded. The problem with GNU/Linux, is, the drivers.
Is very difficult to set up an printer in GNU/Linux. The drivers that the same system offers, never work (at least for me).
For example, Epson provides a good support for Linux distros, but not for Manjaro or Arch Linux. (I don't want to use an specific distro only because the drivers support)

I never had problems with printing under Linux (that includes Canon, HP, Epson, Kyocera, paralell port/serial port/USB/IP netprinters and Windows samba/cifs shared printers too).

Just install cups with the distro's package manager (for debian "sudo apt-get install cups"). That's actually the very same daemon MacOSX uses, and I have never heard anybody complaining about printer support under OSX. Once running, go to "http://localhost:631/admin" and just use the WebGUI.

There are plenty of pre-installed drivers to choose from, but if you happen to have an unsupported printer, just install the driver package (for example epson-escpr). If you can't find any matching driver package in your distro's repository, then download the PPD file from the printer manufacturer's website (or copy out from the MacOSX driver if they don't provide a direct PPD download link), save that PPD file into /usr/share/cups/model/ and your printer model will magically appear on the web interface. Read more about adding printer models to cups (again, this is usually not necessary, as probably cups already has the PPD file, or the printer driver package installs it).

Cheers,
bzt

[Love4Boobies]

I'm not sure what is meant by "empty" above. I'm not sure the person meant that there aren't many packages. Perhaps they should clarify?

I've been using Debian for a few years now and am quite happy with it for several reasons:

• It's somewhat stable in non-server environments, probably as stable as you can get if you need to use Linux. You'll still encounter problems and have to fix things but that's just the reality of the situation today.
• It has a ton of packages. Chances are that if I need something, it's been packaged in the official repository and, if not, it's been made available as a .deb package by the developers.
• It offers a good trade-off between configurability and usability for me. Since my system is not specialized for some quirky task, I don't need to waste hours on end configuring and building stuff, like Arch or Gentoo people have to (and while I think there exist valid scenarios where such setups make sense, I suspect the great majority of people using them are actually wasting more time and energy than they are saving without realizing it).

Other people might also be interested in the "free" aspect of Debian but I'm not big on the whole philosophy behind that so it's not an important factor for me.