So I got a free laptop and am looking to setup a linux os for a node .

af_newbie

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Quote from: DaveF on September 30, 2023, 07:19:05 AM

Ahhh, the linux distro wars bitciontalk style.

IMO debian and unbutu and the projects based on them such as mint are the most supported though the community with a lot of places to look for help.
CentOS and it's forks tend to be more stable (not always but tend to be)
And FreeBSD is a royal pain in the ass, but once you get it up it's rock solid and secure.

But, for something like this. If you install one and it does not work for you, just move to the next. You don't have to live with any particular distro if it's not working the way you want it to.

-Dave

+1

But it is not as bad as it was 15-20 years ago. I recently installed it on my laptop, without too many issues.

Can run as a workstation (Xfce/Plasma, native Firefox/Chromium, Office, and 40k+ native apps or
WINE, Linux compatibility. etc). Or run it as a firewall, router, mail server etc.

PF on it just blows IPTables out of water. pkg installer is awesome.

If you want, you can slim it down, compile for your particular hardware.

I am really impressed by how much it has improved. I am switching all my machines to freeBSD.

PS. I am done playing with blocking/patching Windows, or deciding which Linux distro is the 'best'.

FreeBSD is the best, end of story.

philipma1957

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Quote from: NotATether on October 12, 2023, 06:47:23 AM

Quote from: LoyceV on October 12, 2023, 05:36:30 AM

Quote from: philipma1957 on October 11, 2023, 07:36:42 PM

What would be your preferred sata ssd and your preferred pcie ssd.

I bought a Samsung 870 EVO Sata SSD a couple of months back. 1 TB for just under €60. My old laptop doesn't have a more modern slot, and one of the reasons I haven't replaced the laptop is that I like having 2 drives in there. Most new laptops are too small for that.

90% of laptop users will never make use of their dual drives so there is nothing to really miss here. If for whatever reason you feel an additional hard disk (not just more disk space) is required, feel free to buy any of the external SSDs that have reasonable performance. And have acceptable failure rates as well - i.e. no Sandisk SSDs.

yeah sandisk and western digital fail all the time. (same ssd btw)

Since this laptop was free and old I went cheap got the 85 bucks for 2tb crucial.

I7 3rd gen is snappy.

I guess I should put bitcointalk on it and practice linux mint more that way.

I have so many fucking windows pc's and Macs
I normally use windows pc's to mine gpus'

and Macs to create content.

But with Mac altering my favorite feature (easy clone and boot externally) I do not want to use them.

So back to the least used (for me ) os.

LoyceV

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Quote from: NotATether on October 12, 2023, 06:47:23 AM

90% of laptop users will never make use of their dual drives so there is nothing to really miss here.

My current laptop has a second disk in the bay of it's DVD burner, but most newer laptops are too thin for DVD drives so that doesn't work anymore.

Quote

If for whatever reason you feel an additional hard disk (not just more disk space) is required, feel free to buy any of the external SSDs that have reasonable performance. And have acceptable failure rates as well - i.e. no Sandisk SSDs.

I don't want to rely on a permanent USB connection, it's far too easy to get disconnected.

NotATether

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Quote from: LoyceV on October 12, 2023, 05:36:30 AM

Quote from: philipma1957 on October 11, 2023, 07:36:42 PM

What would be your preferred sata ssd and your preferred pcie ssd.

I bought a Samsung 870 EVO Sata SSD a couple of months back. 1 TB for just under €60. My old laptop doesn't have a more modern slot, and one of the reasons I haven't replaced the laptop is that I like having 2 drives in there. Most new laptops are too small for that.

90% of laptop users will never make use of their dual drives so there is nothing to really miss here. If for whatever reason you feel an additional hard disk (not just more disk space) is required, feel free to buy any of the external SSDs that have reasonable performance. And have acceptable failure rates as well - i.e. no Sandisk SSDs.

LoyceV

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Quote from: philipma1957 on October 11, 2023, 07:36:42 PM

What would be your preferred sata ssd and your preferred pcie ssd.

I bought a Samsung 870 EVO Sata SSD a couple of months back. 1 TB for just under €60. My old laptop doesn't have a more modern slot, and one of the reasons I haven't replaced the laptop is that I like having 2 drives in there. Most new laptops are too small for that.

Quote

Now that prices are decent I buy 2tb and 4tb when I buy.

I went from 64 GB to 256 to 1 TB. Next one will be 4 TB indeed, but it'll take years before I really need it.

I've had the Crucial MX500 too. It performs better than the BX500.

Comparing the 870 EVO vs BX500: the main difference is in "Hugely faster deep queue mixed IO. +786%". But like I said: you probably won't notice it in most applications. My main reason to skip the cheaper drives was the realisation that replacing a drive takes many hours and isn't worth the effort to save a small amount of money.

philipma1957

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Quote from: LoyceV on October 11, 2023, 11:57:54 AM

Quote from: philipma1957 on October 11, 2023, 08:13:02 AM

I grabbed the 2tb ssd for about $85 usd including the tax. Which is really cheap price for a 2tb sata ssd.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07YD5F561?

For what it's worth: there's a huge difference in SSDs. This BX500 for instance:

Quote from: https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/crucial-bx500-ssd,5377.html

Crucial’s BX500 provides up to 540/500 MB/s of sequential read/write throughput, but that can drop to an average of just 100 MB/s during a sustained workload.

I found out the hard way how sneaky drive manufacturers are nowadays, after I bought a 2 TB HDD that drops to kilobytes per second when filling the last 20%. With this SSD it's not that bad, and for your purpose you'll probably never notice it, but it is something to keep in mind. I now only buy disks that can sustain their performance until they're full.

Quote

I will be teaching myself and my wife to run this as I am a bit disgusted with the direct apple os is

I've never liked Apple, and I don't like Windows, so I've been using Linux for a long time. I love it, and can only recommend to get used to using the command line (and vi). I still prefer the console for most file operations, it's faster and much more powerful than the GUI.

What would be your preferred sata ssd and your preferred pcie ssd.

Now that prices are decent I buy 2tb and 4tb when I buy.

This 'free laptop' now cost me 85 bucks due to buying the 2tb micron/crucial ssd.

LoyceV

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Quote from: philipma1957 on October 11, 2023, 08:13:02 AM

I grabbed the 2tb ssd for about $85 usd including the tax. Which is really cheap price for a 2tb sata ssd.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07YD5F561?

For what it's worth: there's a huge difference in SSDs. This BX500 for instance:

Quote from: https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/crucial-bx500-ssd,5377.html

Crucial’s BX500 provides up to 540/500 MB/s of sequential read/write throughput, but that can drop to an average of just 100 MB/s during a sustained workload.

I found out the hard way how sneaky drive manufacturers are nowadays, after I bought a 2 TB HDD that drops to kilobytes per second when filling the last 20%. With this SSD it's not that bad, and for your purpose you'll probably never notice it, but it is something to keep in mind. I now only buy disks that can sustain their performance until they're full.

Quote

I will be teaching myself and my wife to run this as I am a bit disgusted with the direct apple os is

I've never liked Apple, and I don't like Windows, so I've been using Linux for a long time. I love it, and can only recommend to get used to using the command line (and vi). I still prefer the console for most file operations, it's faster and much more powerful than the GUI.

philipma1957

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'The right to privacy matters'

yeah this is an Asus i7 3rd gen with 8gb ram. Cost = zero. I grabbed the 2tb ssd for about $85 usd including the tax. Which is really cheap price for a 2tb sata ssd.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07YD5F561?

I just woke up I will go check and see how much it loaded.

It was at 13% with 400,000 block to go went I went to sleep at 1am it is now 9 am.

Now at 70% with 138,000 blocks left.

I will be teaching myself and my wife to run this as I am a bit disgusted with the direct apple os is

heading to.

WatChe

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Quote from: philipma1957 on October 10, 2023, 09:36:18 PM

okay so I installed mint and I swapped out a crappy 500gb spinner for a responsive micron/crucial 2tb sata ssd..

I know have a snappy feel to the Asus laptop and I just down loaded core release 25.0 to set up the node .

So far so good.

Mint seems okay. been quite awhile since I used linux. Although I do run my gpus with linux and simple mining but that is more custom.

For years I have been glued to Ubuntu because of the support available for it online. But I am thinking to try out some other Debian based distribution. Thanks for sharing your experience. I will try Mint not for running bitcoin core but for personal use.

philipma1957

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'The right to privacy matters'

okay so I installed mint and I swapped out a crappy 500gb spinner for a responsive micron/crucial 2tb sata ssd..

I know have a snappy feel to the Asus laptop and I just down loaded core release 25.0 to set up the node .

So far so good.

Mint seems okay. been quite awhile since I used linux. Although I do run my gpus with linux and simple mining but that is more custom.

apogio

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Quote from: NotATether on October 10, 2023, 04:30:53 AM

Not true. My node runs on Ubuntu (Server) without problems from the Ubuntu side of things. It connects to Livepatch which automatically patches the kernel for any security vulnerabilities without requiring me to constantly reboot the server all the time, which is very good in my case because every 120 days or so, I always seem to do a fuckup that exhausts the server's memory.

Thanks for the info. Yes this is why I said "I suppose". But thanks!

NotATether

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Quote from: apogio on September 30, 2023, 07:44:56 AM

... though I suppose Ubuntu is not designed to be working 24/7 (as a server)

Not true. My node runs on Ubuntu (Server) without problems from the Ubuntu side of things. It connects to Livepatch which automatically patches the kernel for any security vulnerabilities without requiring me to constantly reboot the server all the time, which is very good in my case because every 120 days or so, I always seem to do a fuckup that exhausts the server's memory.

Initscri

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Ubuntu is generally my go-to when it comes to server installs (it's most commonly used on production environments for websites/servers, etc)

If you're comfortable with only using command-line/terminal as well, you could probably find an faster OS.

They also have a custom server build: https://ubuntu.com/download/server

witcher_sense

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Quote from: philipma1957 on October 06, 2023, 08:27:14 PM

I will be doing mint tomorrow. I will see how it goes. Have not done it in a while.

If you prefer Debian-based distributions, then you should definitely try LMDE 6 that came out recently: https://linuxmint.com/download_lmde.php

It is said to have better performance and responsiveness when compared to Ubuntu distributions, but requires deeper understanding of Linux systems and thus less user-friendly for inexperienced in general. It is also more stable that any Ubuntu-based distro.

philipma1957

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'The right to privacy matters'

I will be doing mint tomorrow. I will see how it goes. Have not done it in a while.

LoyceV

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Quote from: DaveF on September 30, 2023, 07:19:05 AM

Ahhh, the linux distro wars bitciontalk style.

So far, I see no "war" here, it's still civil. It's all about choices and personal preferences.

BitcoinBarrel

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I really like Zorin

Winterfrost

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This is a Linux distribution that can perform effectively on the system specifications you provided.

Linux mint...
kali Linux...
ubuntu
kubuntu
xubuntu
pop os

BlackHatCoiner

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Any Debian-based distro would be a safe choice. Mine is Ubuntu, but I've tried Mint and Debian. I just find the OS in total to be more comfortable in Ubuntu. That being said, every single of them will work fine for a node-machine.

I'd go with whatever you're used to. If you've used to Fedora, spin up Fedora. Just use an established one. We all end up using stable, large community supporting OSes. Don't install, for example, NixOS or Slackware.

crwth

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In your point of view, how this would help you? I'm curious because I'm planning to do the same. I'm wondering what your goals and intentions are. I also have some spare laptop lying around.

apogio

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Hi. Personally I have tried the following 2:

1. I had Ubuntu installed on a laptop that I used for programming. I formatted the SSD and reinstalled Ubuntu. Then everything went super smooth, though I suppose Ubuntu is not designed to be working 24/7 (as a server)

2. I bought a raspberry pi 4B and installed the native raspberry Linux distro (raspbian). I used SSH from my laptop to connect to it and installed custom software for running the node. I managed to run Core and CLN but I was unable to install my own mempool instance, which I really wanted to do.

DaveF

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Ahhh, the linux distro wars bitciontalk style.

IMO debian and unbutu and the projects based on them such as mint are the most supported though the community with a lot of places to look for help.
CentOS and it's forks tend to be more stable (not always but tend to be)
And FreeBSD is a royal pain in the ass, but once you get it up it's rock solid and secure.

But, for something like this. If you install one and it does not work for you, just move to the next. You don't have to live with any particular distro if it's not working the way you want it to.

-Dave

LoyceV

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From my own experience: try a few, and see which one you like. I tend to switch once in a while, for instance when Ubuntu went nuts with their Unity interface. Totally designed for Newbies, but I didn't like it.
I've also switched between Gnome and KDE a few times. They all tend to get more demanding and animating. Try Knoppix (boot from DVD without installation) to see how crazy animations can get: the last one I downloaded had "magic lamp minimize" and "wobbly windows" by default.
After this, I'm down to Linux Mint now. With adjusted Appearance: I want my active window to have a clear blue border. The default is dark and barely shows which window is active. Clearlooks is a good start for Appearance, but I've customized it further.
Good luck

It's all about taste

philipma1957

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'The right to privacy matters'

Quote from: blue Snow on September 29, 2023, 07:05:28 PM

Quote from: philipma1957 on September 29, 2023, 05:24:12 PM

I have an i7 3rd gen Asus if you wanted to run a node which linux would you put on it?

If I were you, I would install Linux Mint. That OS I tried in the past and very light to running nodes. Apart from that, Linux Mint looks like Windows to me, that enough familiar for a beginner who just learning Linux.

I am a guy that forgot the debian and the unbutu. i used back in 2014 and 2015.

but if mint is easy. i would do it.

The 2tb ssd arrives tomorrow I will drop it in and download either mint or debian.

I will post back tomorrow once it is down loading.

blue Snow

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Quote from: philipma1957 on September 29, 2023, 05:24:12 PM

I have an i7 3rd gen Asus if you wanted to run a node which linux would you put on it?

If I were you, I would install Linux Mint. That OS I tried in the past and very light to running nodes. Apart from that, Linux Mint looks like Windows to me, that enough familiar for a beginner who just learning Linux.

philipma1957

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'The right to privacy matters'

Quote from: albert0bsd on September 29, 2023, 05:34:52 PM

I should recommend a debian installation, it have a lot of support and a strong comunity. But all depends of you.

I have not done a Debian in years. I will give it a try tomorrow.

Any special things you can think of to keep in mind. I think I will look for the Debian forum and read a bit.

albert0bsd

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I should recommend a debian installation, it have a lot of support and a strong comunity. But all depends of you.

philipma1957

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'The right to privacy matters'

So have not setup a linux in a while I went to linux.org and wanted to download a linux

I have an i7 3rd gen Asus if you wanted to run a node which linux would you put on it?

I would drop in a large 2tb ssd and start from scratch.

Topic: So I got a free laptop and am looking to setup a linux os for a node . (Read 391 times)