Soooooooo any Linux users out there?

[luffy]

I use it for a website server...... does that count?

 

[MrPhox]

I,m using Linux Mint 19.1 Cinnamon 64 bits and I find it cool!

I manage to merge back into a old HD that was in two sections very easily. I try it before under Windows and was not able to do it.

 

[WXYZ]

I was once an avid Linux user. Tried to evangelize some people back then. However, convenience and reality unfortunately prevailed. I'm a Windows 10 user now.

 

[Timothy Vyper]

I am a Linux user myself, I use it as my primary operating system. Built myself a pretty beefy machine so I can play games through Steam Proton and also do development stuffs. My day job is to be a UNIX\Linux System Administrator supporting hundreds of Linux and some UNIX systems, so I am always looking forward to using Linux. I use Fedora for my workstation and tend to use CentOS for my personal project servers, but at work, I mainly support RedHat boxes. I do have a Pi that I use for PiHole at home. It is cool to see there are other Linux users on here too.

 

[MadMansGun]

sometimes Linux mint, but mostly Windows XP due to needing to run 3DS Max.

but soon to be forced into Wincrap 10 due to dying hardware (Linux/Wine can't even install 3DS Max let alone run it, and Win7 is not compatible with new hardware)

 

[StealthMode]

Im about to download crouton on my chromebook. Im about to be a linux user very soon!

 

[Minerva_Minx]

I use it for work servers and routers, depending on system.

 

[Pomorek]

I've been eyeing Kubuntu since quite a while, even set aside an older unused SSD for it, but haven't gotten around to installing yet... It's probably silly, but I'm only poorly familiarized with Linux and I'm concerned that I'll break something in the PC by accident.

sometimes Linux mint, but mostly Windows XP due to needing to run 3DS Max.

but soon to be forced into Wincrap 10 due to dying hardware (Linux/Wine can't even install 3DS Max let alone run it, and Win7 is not compatible with new hardware)

Is it necessary for you to use 3DS Max itself? If not, Blender is said to be 100% Linux-friendly. And the newest version, the 2.80, has vastly improved interface which finally got rid of many strange quirks that were keeping new users away from it. It even has "industry compatible keymap" now to make it easier for Autodesk users.

 

[S.A.F.I]

I've been eyeing Kubuntu since quite a while, even set aside an older unused SSD for it, but haven't gotten around to installing yet... It's probably silly, but I'm only poorly familiarized with Linux and I'm concerned that I'll break something in the PC by accident.

If you have a dedicated ssd for Linux and you make sure you physically change the drive each time you boot Windows or Linux (I'm assuming you're using Windows at the moment) you should be fine.... It is nearly impossible to cause hardware damage with linux or really any half decent OS unless you are actively trying to (or have the worst luck in the world). If you really wanted to you could look into dulebooting however that can be intimidating the first timers (and windows likes to screw up dual boots a lot)

Also if you do decide to install it, I would recommend you try KDE Neon... It's basically Kubuntu but with better support from KDE and more up-to-date packages

 

[Borophagus Monoclinous]

I have been threatening to switch to a Linux OS once Windows 7 support ends. I have a Raspbery Pi that I play with on my livingroom TV, but my desktop and laptop and Win7.

 

[Pomorek]

I have been threatening to switch to a Linux OS once Windows 7 support ends.

Well, that's my main reason for interest in Linux too!

If you have a dedicated ssd for Linux and you make sure you physically change the drive each time you boot Windows or Linux (I'm assuming you're using Windows at the moment) you should be fine.... It is nearly impossible to cause hardware damage with linux or really any half decent OS unless you are actively trying to (or have the worst luck in the world). If you really wanted to you could look into dulebooting however that can be intimidating the first timers (and windows likes to screw up dual boots a lot)

I know, practically there's no bigger risk than installing Windows. I actually read a lot about Linux so far. I'm just paranoid like that... On the good side, almost all utility & art programs I'm using are FOSS so there should be no problem getting them to run.

And this is exactly what I'm thinking: keep both systems on their dedicated drives and select them via boot device menu at startup. This way they'd be neatly separated. I've been actually trying dual-booting, quite long ago, and it was somewhat unstable. I wonder though, how safe or not is having a common NTFS data partition on a HDD, accessible by both systems? I imagine that some time will pass after the installation before I make Linux my "daily driver" altogether. In the meantime, it would be good to be able to use the same art project files from both systems. But I don't know if there isn't for example a risk of data corruption when doing so.

Also if you do decide to install it, I would recommend you try KDE Neon... It's basically Kubuntu but with better support from KDE and more up-to-date packages

Isn't Neon a bit bare-bones? That's what I read the other day, IIRC it requires manual installation of GPU driver for example, while Kubuntu has some sort of "wizard" for it... I can absolutely appreciate bare-bones approach for things I'm more experienced with, but currently I'd prefer something with more stuff automatically pre-installed. Hence Kubuntu (I definitely want the K Desktop Environment).

 

[S.A.F.I]

From what I've seen neon is pretty much has a good bit of software out of the box so idk what you mean by "bare-bones" and if you are talking about what I think you are with the "wizard" than I think neon has it, just not preinstalled. (I'm away from my computer right now but next time I get a chance I'll look and see what it is called so you can install it if you want)

As for a shared partition... In theory both systems should see all petitions on all drives no problem, that being said Windows cannot natively read most petitions outside of NTFS and FAT32 and if you try to read others they will ask you to format them to one of those two (erasing all data in the process) however linux should be able to read and write to most file systems no problem (just keep in mind most file systems don't support permissions very well so I wouldn't put anything on a non-linux partition outside of basic files)

 

[Pomorek]

Okay, I used wrong wording here... But an opinion on another forum I've seen was that Neon practically doesn't install any but the most essential apps, the user needs to install everything else manually. And normally I'd love this approach (I just got a Motorola phone and wow, no bloatware!). But as I'm inexperienced, this can entail extra problems.

I vaguely recall from my past Linux experiments: I chose not to install additional stuff on Mint during setup. And then had trouble getting Wine to work because it was missing some library. I remember only that this library just wouldn't install itself no matter what I've tried, even though in theory it should, and fixing this issue proved to be beyond my ability at that time. And so I'm concerned I'll run into similar situations on Neon.

But about that GPU driver "wizard", I admit I mixed things up completely. I checked once again and that forum meant that's no default graphics application preinstalled (so probably like Gimp or something). Not that the driver doesn't install.

I know Windows doesn't properly support filesystems outside of its own. Good to know that Linux does. And indeed I mean only basic data on this shared partition.

 

[Pomorek]

Alright, I took the plunge! Writing this post from under KDE Neon now.

I found a neat article outlining how to set Neon up after installation:
averagelinuxuser.com: 10 Things to do after installing KDE Neon

Graphics driver got installed automatically for me indeed. After checking with the Kubuntu Driver Manager, no newer versions were suggested. But for full functionality with my 3D art, I'll need to figure out how to get nVidia CUDA working...

 

[S.A.F.I]

I'll be honest I never really went to any further than using The driver manager to gets the Nvidia drivers... And honestly I stopped doing that a long time ago simply because it was an extra step that I didn't care about since I wasn't doing anything that demanding of my graphics card... But I've been debating getting back into neural networking so if you figure out how to access the cuda cores let me know

 

[Pomorek]

...And I got CUDA working! Already on Monday night in fact, just had no time to tell you earlier.

Went with the installation guide here: docs.nvidia.com: Installation Guide Linux :: CUDA Toolkit Documentation
There are pre-installation actions to perform, then I used the "deb (network)" installation instructions from here: developer.nvidia.com: CUDA Toolkit 10.1 Update 2 Download
There are also post-installation actions. I must say I understand them the least of all that material, but it was enough to set the PATH variable, and rendering with CUDA cores started being accessible from my 3D program (Blender) directly. Note that right after installing the toolkit, there was a few error messages from components of the K desktop but a reboot fixed that.

So, many thanks for recommending Neon to me! I like it a lot already, and indeed the claims about it being bare-bones were exaggerated. Haven't used it a whole lot so far, but it seems solid and not at all buggy. No random crashes or whatnot, quite contrary, it even detected all my hardware out-of-the-box. Including installing correct driver from nVidia and setting resolution to match the monitor, all by itself. Pretty neat!

I even have an impression that it likes my trackball better than Windows, as the pointer acceleration (important thing with trackballs) feels somewhat better under Neon. And it seems to have better font anti-aliasing too.

 

[S.A.F.I]

Oh yeah, I'm glad you liked it. I'm planning on getting a new motherboard, case and power supply pretty soon and I think I may swap out the graphics card and reinstall at that point (just forsake of cleanliness) so I'll probably get Cuda up and running then! Thanks

 

[Tenné]

I've been using Linux as a primary OS since 2012 or so. Luckily, being in academia makes it fairly easy. I use Ubuntu on my desktop and Fedora on my laptop ever since flatpak became a thing.

Correct me if I'm wrong (and two weeks late), but shouldn't CUDA be installed from KDE Neon's package repositories, since it's based on Ubuntu?

 

[Mr. Fox]

I'm convinced that Manjaro might be the next big thing. They've gone corporate.

 

[Pomorek]

shouldn't CUDA be installed from KDE Neon's package repositories, since it's based on Ubuntu?

Indeed, now I checked and it is available there. Can't deny that I'm pretty much a beginner in all that Linux stuff... Google returned the nVidia's terminal-based installation method (and mentioned nothing that CUDA should be available just like that from repos), so I just ran with it. At least it worked.

 

[ManicTherapsid]

I should get a new distro. Kind of bored with mint.

 

[Tenné]

Indeed, now I checked and it is available there. Can't deny that I'm pretty much a beginner in all that Linux stuff... Google returned the nVidia's terminal-based installation method (and mentioned nothing that CUDA should be available just like that from repos), so I just ran with it. At least it worked.

If you installed a .deb, you're fine. Updates and stuff should come automatically. The headaches usually come if you use their "runfile installation", ie. sudo sh cuda_<version>_linux.run.

I should get a new distro. Kind of bored with mint.

Arch would keep you occupied.

 

[S.A.F.I]

Arch would keep you occupied.

Ah yes from one of the easiest distros to one of the most complex

(Tbh: they're not wrong if you want something challenging to cure your boredom then Arch is the way to go... Just don't put it on your primary system until you're familiar with it)

 

[Q2DM1]

I mainly use Windows 10 because 90% of my games and programs are only on Windows. When it comes to general messing around, I like Xubuntu. I also have a web development server in my room running Ubuntu. My first Linux experience was puppy on live cd when I severely crippled Windows xp (I was replacing system files with those of Vista just to see what happened with each and replaced one that I shouldn’t have).

 

[Stuff]

Yeah, I began using GNU/Linux a few months ago. First Distro was Ubuntu but shortly after, I switched back to W10. Then, I switched to Linux Mint MATE and I haven't looked back since. I quite like Linux and I don't really miss Windows. The only Windows Program that isn't compatible with Linux that I use is FL Studio. Surprisingly enough, it works well through WINE.