Topic: Linux without windows (Read 892 times)

You don't technically need a distribution at all-- you can go fetch all the components, and build all the parts--- and run your entire system yourself.

But, presumably, you'd like to do something more with your life than just maintain your computer.

The reason distributions exist is so that we can outsource the effort of assembling and maintaining our systems.  Unfortunately, as with all outsourcing, the tremendous amount of time saved comes with some costs.

I started using Linux full time with SLS. That original system I manually upgraded myself from across several libc versions and eventually to glibc and from aout to elf.  I learned a lot, but mostly what I learned is that maintaining a whole OS yourself is a lot of work.    I've run many other distribution but after RH5 or so I ran RH (and later fedora) mostly.

When Fedora started doing more things I disagreed with (gnomeifying everything backing MSFT-signed 'secure boot', etc.) I switched to gentoo.  Unfortunately, gentoo maintenance has significantly died (esp after google hired off most of the most active developers).  And without vigorous maintenance a distribution is pointless. I'm back to running fedora on most systems again.

If a distribution does something you don't like, you can work around it.  If it's too much trouble to work around--- did you really dislike it that much?  Life is too short to waste too much time time on OS maintenance/customization.

My recommendation is to pick a distribution *widely used* with an active and not-shrinking user community. Change the things you must, don't waste your time on the minor issues that you can just ignore.  Understand that outsourcing your system maintenance is a phenomenal benefit but it comes with a cost that not everything will be exactly how you want it all the time.  It's well worth that cost.

I'm no complete n00b when it comes to software etc., but I had never heard about this before you mentioned it. This is friggin' impressive, one of the best discoveries of the year, man! I installed this on a CD-ROM (yes I still have some) and it works perfectly (sadly not from a USB stick at the moment) on my old laptop. This helps a lot for those small lightweight programs which I didn't get to run on Linux Wine.

Have you tried this yourself, JC? I haven't had the time to test the printer yet. Anyone else any experiences?

you can compile it anywhere you like, but my advice would be to put it somewhere in your user directory to keep things separate. then copy the bitcoind (and probably bitcoin-cli too) executables to /usr/bin (some people say it should be /usr/sbin, but it doesn't seem so important to me). then, the bitcoind.openrc script file goes in /etc/init.d, chmod it so it can execute, then rc-service bitcoind start (change the name from bitcoind.openrc to bitcoind first). you can add bitcoind to start-up with rc-update add bitcoind default (or to a different startup group to default, if you want)

dependencies huh? looking at the libraries I installed on my Bitcoin build VM, I have:

g++
autoconf
libtool
pkgconfig
libzmq5
libboostprogram-options-dev
libboost-chrono-dev
libbboost-date-time-dev
libboost-atomic-dev
libboost-thread-dev
libssl-dev
libevent-dev
protobuf-compiler

those ^^^ libraries are the Debian package names, so you'll need to find the equivalent name according to how Alpine has that particular code packaged. the protobuf one may prove annoying.

the -dev suffix is important for the boost libraries. and the version is important, there is a minimum version for boost (something like 1.60, typically more than one version of boost libs is available), but a maximum version for others. But for those with maximum versions, all the dependencies are bundled with the .git repo, as alot of them are part of the consensus rules and that's sensitive to change. that includes the annoying BDB 4.8 dep, which took me ages to figure out was part of the bundled deps.



and if you aren't using the GUI (I'd assume not), do ./configure --help to find the option that disables building the GUI, then you can avoid getting all the qt dependencies as well, which are entirely for the GUI and nothing else.

Yeah I think it got stuck trying to install the dependencies and I got stuck because there weren't any tutorials 🤣.

Is it all in the init folder that I need to compile it (or at least directions for compiling it)?

hmm. well it should be the same on everything really. you need that old version of BDB for the wallet, or you could just do ./configure --disablewallet and then that's not a dependency at all.

also, service files are different on Alpine, more configurable. https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/tree/master/contrib/init has what you need, look at the the .openrc files

remember the error where it got stuck compiling?

Have you ever installed bitcoin core on alpine? That was what I'd struggled with but I struggled with it on all Linux (until I realised compiled files were in the directory I ran make in normally)... That was the thing I needed the docker for.
And yeah, tbh I have 2 drives that fit that laptop so it might just be easier to switch between them instead.

I'll probably take a look at trying to dual boot over the Christmas break. I don't think I have anything that can't be deleted so it should let me run them both but failing that I'll use 2 hard drives.

Are you dual booted with something (I assume you'd have arch or alpine and then post here with something else)?

something in your grub.cfg file that sounds like. It's hard, the recommendation is to let automated grub-mkconfig handle it by reading from /etc/default/grub, but if you look at /boot/grub/grub.cfg, it might seem more obvious what the problem is, might help with figuring out what parameters to put into /etc/default/grub. I know though, it's more trouble than it's potentially worth as it risks breaking the part that does work. I bet you could get it working when you get a good opportunity to try it out again



right, I've never bothered with docker. lxc might be more intuitive, although I've never tried that either!

glad to hear you stuck with Alpine though. it's kinda challenging to have to deal with an all cli interface, so choosing something tough and keeping going is good for the keyboard skills

Ahh hi.

I dual booted an old laptop with alpine and Ubuntu but couldnt seem to access the alpine bit (I definitely did it wrong).

The docker stuff still seems really confusing I might have to turn to the 700mb debian os (without the desktop) to try to bypass that (I'm thinking dockers might slow everything down when trying to run core - other than that I've been happily live booting alpine when I have programming to do and then saving it to a drive once it's done which is great because its really fast!)

how did this end up jack? did you get on with Alpine? It has a great reputation as a minimal distro, be interesting to hear more.

I think I found the cause of the issue. I haven't yet done this https://wiki.alpinelinux.org/wiki/Local_APK_cache#Enabling_Local_Cache

I recommend the opposite:


Red Hat (who make Fedora and Centos) are abusing their position in the Linux world. They're recreating important parts of Linux (init, desktop, device interface etc) in a way that forces you to use all their stuff.

The sensible way is to make components that are small, and compatible with alternatives. Red Hat are doing the opposite, making huge system components that force everyone else to become compatible with them (and lots of Linux software and distros are going along with this).

This approach makes it much harder to change bad software for good software, because the bad software is such a fundamental part of Linux underlying everything else


Don't use Red Hat's stuff, or anything else that uses Red Hat's stuff, there are better designed alternatives with smaller, better code (and hence fewer bugs) that don't lock you into their way of doing things.

Linux is like cryptos my friend, The code will work as the coder decide, so, the thing here is Who is behind the OS, if you want to invest in some tokens created with a smart contract then go for distros like Alpine, Puppy, or others... If you want coins with big features like BTC, ETH or Monero, then go for distros like Ubuntu, Fedora or Slack.

I would recommend you to give a try to fedora, it could be an empty and clean OS, or an OS who compete with Windows and MacOS.

Let me show you some screenshots about how had i configured my Fedora, for me, this is the best OS in 2019, i can do everything with it.


Full gallery: https://imgur.com/a/gbJzIS0

So, here is a great tutorial about the steps to follow after install fedora to configure your server (It's in Spanish but the commands works for any language):
https://www.yocupicio.com/que-hacer-despues-de-instalar-fedora-29/

And the SPIN i recommend is the MATE one because it use GNOME 2.*

https://spins.fedoraproject.org/mate-compiz/

I really hate Ubuntu. Debian is equally as bad.. My debian I installed a few years ago came with jdk1! I'm pretty sure it is a package older than me .

Open source apps are great but they come with a lot of vulnerabilities and not updating something in 30 years or however long it was just sounds like they're asking for trouble and I need something secur and something lightweight. Arch has some good support too though.

You should try a friendly version of linux... I have used Fedora and Centos for the past years but as almost each linux user I started with Ubuntu. Ubuntu has a great community and great support to fix any issue you have is a great option to start, but if you want to manage your OS as the same way as you work with your servers, then fedora is the way, and that's because a big % of the servers runs with Centos... Centos and Fedora come from Red Hat, and that means they can be used as the same way with Command line.

I'm stuck with my install of alpine Linux. Anyone who suggested it or knows something about it please help. I'm getting an error like this https://github.com/gliderlabs/docker-alpine/issues/207.

My /etc/apk/repositories file has just https://nl.alpinelinux.org/alpine/ in it

I'm revisiting this idea but can't find any guides to install alpinelinux onto my computer.

I've spent the day emptying a 1tb hard drive (as i bought the wrong sized one from amazon - no I got the inches right but didn't realise there was a slimtype and full type). I now have it in my old laptop and am copything a disk of alpine linux onto my pendrive in order to boot to it, anyone know how I can permenantly install it on that hard drive?

EDIT: I think I've found it but it has this warning (the drive is empty though):




If anyone wants it it is here: https://wiki.alpinelinux.org/wiki/Install_to_disk

This may be interesting to you.




https://hookrace.net/blog/linux-desktop-setup/

I have been a Linux user from the past 17 years, and i have thought about this topic a lot. So lets focus on two points here. What distro and what you can do with it.

For distro i have 2 options for you. First one is Ubuntu Server and the Second One would be Centos. Both of them comes without gui. So both are perfect for this.

And now, what can you do with it? Well, here you have some useful tools:


So, you can do tons of things without Gui.

So if you decide to try it, i would recommend you to take a look to this site, here you will find the best command lines for your OS https://www.commandlinefu.com/

It's actually pretty to easy to end up with a non-graphical system.  In the debian installer, just don't select the desktop environment task.

(https://www.debian.org/releases/stable/i386/ch06s03.html.en see 6.3.5.2. Selecting and Installing Software)

That said, if you want to boot into an xserver and still be very keyboard driven, tiling window managers like i3 (as pointed out by Anduck) can be quite wonderful.

Also, Carlton Banks nailed it when it comes to the popular linuxes.  If you really want to get into rolling your own, you could try the linux-from-scratch method (warning: not for the faint of heart).

Arch Linux.

I'd guess something like i3 would interest you. https://i3wm.org/