Re: [Tutor] OT: Recommendations for a Linux distribution to dual-boot with Win7-64 bit

[boB Stepp]

On 07/03/2016 02:32 PM, Ries Rommens wrote:

Hello boB,


On the latter I was surprised that Thunderbird did not support
conversation views out of the box.

After opening Thunderbird you will see a listing of your emails.
Clicking on the header of the very first column of the listing will give
you the conversation mode.
(Second column header is a star, third one the attachments. Be aware
that you can alter the columns shown, so things may be different in your
case).


I had found this -- threaded view -- but it lists the entire thread as a 
collection of separate emails.  What I consider _conversation view_ is 
all of the thread's emails presented in a single window once any of the 
emails is opened.


Alas, I cannot recommend the Thunderbird Conversations extension at this 
time as the way it presents the conversation view is difficult to 
distinguish text, at least in how it interacts with my current Mint 
theme.  So I have actually gone back to what you suggest!


Thanks!
boB
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Re: [Tutor] OT: Recommendations for a Linux distribution to dual-boot with Win7-64 bit

[Ries Rommens]

Hello boB,

On the latter I was surprised that Thunderbird did not support 
conversation views out of the box.

After opening Thunderbird you will see a listing of your emails.
Clicking on the header of the very first column of the listing will give 
you the conversation mode.
(Second column header is a star, third one the attachments. Be aware 
that you can alter the columns shown, so things may be different in your 
case).


Kind regards,

Ries


Op 03-07-16 om 07:07 schreef boB Stepp:
This is an update and a test to see if I have figured out 
Thunderbird's settings so that everything comes over as plain text 
instead of something else.  If there are any issues let me know.


Friday the Mint crew announced that they were releasing their new 
version of Mint, version 18, Sarah, so I went _bleeding edge_ and 
tried to install it.  Things did not go well in the sense that I was 
not able to make a dual-boot installation where Windows 7 was on its 
existing hard drive and Mint 18 on its own.  As far as I can tell I 
did everything correctly, but upon rebooting there was no option to go 
to Mint; instead, the boot went directly to Windows 7.  After many 
hours of effort, searching, etc. (It was after 6 AM local time when I 
gave up.) I decided to simply unplug the Windows 7 hard drive and plug 
my new hard drive in its place. I successfully installed Mint 18 and 
it booted up fine with one quirk.  My understanding is that I would be 
prompted to remove my installation USB drive prior to it rebooting, 
but it didn't and this seemed to cause issues.  On my repeat 
installation effort I removed the USB drive myself when it appeared 
that the system had just shut down.  Things have gone well since.


I guess I will save the dual-boot effort for some other day.

Now I am updating things, playing with Firefox and Thunderbird, etc.  
On the latter I was surprised that Thunderbird did not support 
conversation views out of the box.  I am currently testing an 
extension, "Thunderbird Conversations", which is a bit different in 
what I was expecting (Compared to Gmail.), but I suppose I will get 
used to it.


We will see how the Linux experiment will work!  My plan is to work my 
way through the book, "How Linux Works", by Brian Ward. So that will 
probably distract me from Python studies for a while.


Again, thanks for all of the help you've collectively given!

boB
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Re: [Tutor] OT: Recommendations for a Linux distribution to dual-boot with Win7-64 bit

[boB Stepp]

This is an update and a test to see if I have figured out Thunderbird's 
settings so that everything comes over as plain text instead of 
something else.  If there are any issues let me know.


Friday the Mint crew announced that they were releasing their new 
version of Mint, version 18, Sarah, so I went _bleeding edge_ and tried 
to install it.  Things did not go well in the sense that I was not able 
to make a dual-boot installation where Windows 7 was on its existing 
hard drive and Mint 18 on its own.  As far as I can tell I did 
everything correctly, but upon rebooting there was no option to go to 
Mint; instead, the boot went directly to Windows 7.  After many hours of 
effort, searching, etc. (It was after 6 AM local time when I gave up.) I 
decided to simply unplug the Windows 7 hard drive and plug my new hard 
drive in its place.  I successfully installed Mint 18 and it booted up 
fine with one quirk.  My understanding is that I would be prompted to 
remove my installation USB drive prior to it rebooting, but it didn't 
and this seemed to cause issues.  On my repeat installation effort I 
removed the USB drive myself when it appeared that the system had just 
shut down.  Things have gone well since.


I guess I will save the dual-boot effort for some other day.

Now I am updating things, playing with Firefox and Thunderbird, etc.  On 
the latter I was surprised that Thunderbird did not support conversation 
views out of the box.  I am currently testing an extension, "Thunderbird 
Conversations", which is a bit different in what I was expecting 
(Compared to Gmail.), but I suppose I will get used to it.


We will see how the Linux experiment will work!  My plan is to work my 
way through the book, "How Linux Works", by Brian Ward.  So that will 
probably distract me from Python studies for a while.


Again, thanks for all of the help you've collectively given!

boB
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Re: [Tutor] OT: Recommendations for a Linux distribution to dual-boot with Win7-64 bit

[Steven D'Aprano]

On Thu, Jun 30, 2016 at 01:16:11AM +, boB Stepp wrote:

> I just now checked on IDLE, found it was not installed, and typed in
> the terminal:
> 
> sudo apt-get install idle3
> 
> The interesting part is since IDLE needs tkinter, it installed that
> dependency as well.  As far as I can tell after typing "help(tkinter)"
> in the Python interpreter, it looks like *all* of tkinter got
> installed.  Is this in fact true?

Indeed. And if Tk/Tcl weren't installed, it would have installed them as 
well. (But they probably were already installed.)

apt-get and aptitude will generally warn you that there are dependencies 
that need installing, and ask you for permission. I've never quite 
worked out why it sometimes just installs them, no questions asked, and 
other times asks first. Possibly something to do with the size of the 
dependencies? E.g. if the dependencies are less that X bytes in size, 
just go ahead and install?

The really amazing thing is when there is a conflict between an 
installed package and a dependency you need. Then aptitude will offer 
you various choices, such as:

- leave the existing package, don't install the new one;

- leave the existing package, install the new one, but not the dependencies;

- remove the existing package, install the new one and its dependencies.


-- 
Steve
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Re: [Tutor] OT: Recommendations for a Linux distribution to dual-boot with Win7-64 bit

[David Rock]

> On Jun 29, 2016, at 20:16, boB Stepp  wrote:
> 
> 
> The interesting part is since IDLE needs tkinter, it installed that
> dependency as well.  As far as I can tell after typing "help(tkinter)"
> in the Python interpreter, it looks like *all* of tkinter got
> installed.  Is this in fact true?

Most likely, yes.  Welcome to package management. This is what we were talking 
about earlier; the package management tools are really good and do wonderful 
things like find all the needed dependencies for a package that you install.  
In some cases, that can be many-many packages depending on the complexity.  All 
you need to worry about is the thing you want, and let the system do the rest. 
:-)


— 
David Rock
da...@graniteweb.com




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Re: [Tutor] OT: Recommendations for a Linux distribution to dual-boot with Win7-64 bit

[boB Stepp]

On Thu, Jun 30, 2016 at 12:09 AM, Alan Gauld via Tutor  wrote:
> On 29/06/16 23:58, boB Stepp wrote:
>
>> One point I just discovered for those new to this and Linux:  tkinter
>> does *not* come pre-installed with the Python distributions; it will
>> have to be installed separately.
>
> Yes, but it's just another package in the package manager. python-tk
> Select it and hit Install.

I just now checked on IDLE, found it was not installed, and typed in
the terminal:

sudo apt-get install idle3

The interesting part is since IDLE needs tkinter, it installed that
dependency as well.  As far as I can tell after typing "help(tkinter)"
in the Python interpreter, it looks like *all* of tkinter got
installed.  Is this in fact true?

-- 
boB
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Re: [Tutor] OT: Recommendations for a Linux distribution to dual-boot with Win7-64 bit

[boB Stepp]

On Wed, Jun 29, 2016 at 10:37 PM, David Rock  wrote:

>> I typed both "python" and "python3" in the terminal window to see what
>> is here:  Python 2.7.6 and Python 3.4.3 [Does this mean we are *on*
>> topic now?  ~(:>))].  Question:  Is Python 3 used by any of Mint's OS
>> functions?  Or does it only use Python 2?
>
> I don’t know off-hand, but unless you plan on doing work with Mint itself, I 
> doubt it matters much beyond the academia of knowing for knowledge’s sake.  
> Are you concerned about a version conflict with something you plan to do on 
> the system?  We are definitely getting back on topic if you want to talk 
> about different versions of python and whether it’s better to just work with 
> what’s there or install something different.

No, not at this time.  I was just curious.

One point I just discovered for those new to this and Linux:  tkinter
does *not* come pre-installed with the Python distributions; it will
have to be installed separately.  Of course, I'm sure that all of you
long-time Linux users knew that already!

>> Now when the new hard drive arrives tomorrow we'll see if I can get a
>> good dual-boot of Windows 7 and Mint Cinnamon going!
>
> Having the second disk will make this a breeze.  You are avoiding the biggest 
> complication of resizing partitions on the same disk.  The one suggestion I 
> would make about the install:  when it asks if you want to use LVM, say yes.  
> It adds a layer of flexibility with you disk layout that you will be sad you 
> don’t have later.

I was thinking this would be a better way to go.  Thanks for the tip
about LVM.  Logical Volume Management was mentioned in some of
installation guides I read, but not all, so I actually was going to
look into this more deeply.  Thanks for saving me some research!

Alan Gauld said:

> If you really want to see what's on offer open the
>
> Menu->Administration->Software Manager tool
>
> And browse away... :-)

Wow!  "74, 905 packages are available" !!!  And they all come neatly
organized by topic!

-- 
boB
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Re: [Tutor] OT: Recommendations for a Linux distribution to dual-boot with Win7-64 bit

[David Rock]

> On Jun 29, 2016, at 17:16, boB Stepp  wrote:
> OK, I'm into a live Mint Linux session off my USB flash drive.  The

Cool.

> I typed both "python" and "python3" in the terminal window to see what
> is here:  Python 2.7.6 and Python 3.4.3 [Does this mean we are *on*
> topic now?  ~(:>))].  Question:  Is Python 3 used by any of Mint's OS
> functions?  Or does it only use Python 2?

I don’t know off-hand, but unless you plan on doing work with Mint itself, I 
doubt it matters much beyond the academia of knowing for knowledge’s sake.  Are 
you concerned about a version conflict with something you plan to do on the 
system?  We are definitely getting back on topic if you want to talk about 
different versions of python and whether it’s better to just work with what’s 
there or install something different.

> No Git is pre-installed, but it immediately tells me the command to
> type to get it!  Cool!!

If I may suggest… GitKraken is pretty nice.  https://www.gitkraken.com 
I’m not a fan of Git, but it makes it tolerable even for a stodgy SysAdmin like 
myself ;-)

> Now when the new hard drive arrives tomorrow we'll see if I can get a
> good dual-boot of Windows 7 and Mint Cinnamon going!

Having the second disk will make this a breeze.  You are avoiding the biggest 
complication of resizing partitions on the same disk.  The one suggestion I 
would make about the install:  when it asks if you want to use LVM, say yes.  
It adds a layer of flexibility with you disk layout that you will be sad you 
don’t have later.

> Thanks for all of the help even though this has been off-topic for this list!
> 
> Meanwhile, more playing around with Mint!!

have fun!


— 
David Rock
da...@graniteweb.com




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Re: [Tutor] OT: Recommendations for a Linux distribution to dual-boot with Win7-64 bit

[Alan Gauld via Tutor]

On 29/06/16 23:16, boB Stepp wrote:

> No Git is pre-installed, but it immediately tells me the command to
> type to get it!  Cool!!

If you really want to see what's on offer open the

Menu->Administration->Software Manager tool

And browse away... :-)

-- 
Alan G
Author of the Learn to Program web site
http://www.alan-g.me.uk/
http://www.amazon.com/author/alan_gauld
Follow my photo-blog on Flickr at:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/alangauldphotos


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Re: [Tutor] OT: Recommendations for a Linux distribution to dual-boot with Win7-64 bit

[boB Stepp]

On Wed, Jun 29, 2016 at 7:56 PM, boB Stepp  wrote:

> Now I can get into BIOS.  BIOS sees my USB flash drive as "UEFI: Lexar
> USB Flash Drive 1100", but it silently refuses to boot to the iso
> image installed on it.  Something new to puzzle out!

OK, I'm into a live Mint Linux session off my USB flash drive.  The
problem I experienced was in incompatible BIOS settings.  As far as I
can tell, since my W7 installation is *not* UEFI, I needed to likewise
have the flash drive setup.  Once I did that I got into Linux.

The first thing that came up was a warning:

"Running in software rendering mode.

Cinnamon is currently running without video hardware acceleration and,
as a result, you may observe much higher than normal CPU usage.

There could be a problem with your drivers ..."

Mozilla Firefox appears to be the pre-installed browser.  However, I
was not connected to my home's wireless network.  I found the icon for
that and did the needed password and MAC Address stuff and got
connected.

Next I found the Driver Manager application, ran it, and it
recommended applying "nvidia-352, Version 352.63-0ubunto0.14.04.1,
NVIDIA binary driver-version 352.63".  I did so and the initial
warning  I mentioned above went away.

I typed both "python" and "python3" in the terminal window to see what
is here:  Python 2.7.6 and Python 3.4.3 [Does this mean we are *on*
topic now?  ~(:>))].  Question:  Is Python 3 used by any of Mint's OS
functions?  Or does it only use Python 2?

No Git is pre-installed, but it immediately tells me the command to
type to get it!  Cool!!

Typing "vi" in terminal tells me that VIM 7.4.52 is the installed
version.  Kind of behind, but I am sure I can update this if I go with
Mint.  No gVim but it again offers a list of available packages and
the command to type.

My initial impressions are very good!  I have gotten this far with
just some poking around, no Internet searching required.  I like the
clean default appearance of Cinnamon.  Running off the USB stick it
seems quite snappy.  So it will only be significantly better once it
is installed to a hard drive.  Windowing controls are oh so slightly
different from Windows, but so far everything is just *obvious*.

BTW, I am typing this from Mozilla Firefox (I haven't gotten around to
thinking about setting up Thunderbird.) running in Mint while
listening to a Pandora music stream from my Pandora One account.
Everything is just working!  Like it very much!  Since my wife is
planning on trying out Mint on multiple PCs in her classroom this
coming school year, I think I will just go with Mint.  I'm sure I will
encounter some warts along the way, but in my experience with enough
searching and thinking and asking ... almost all warts can be dealt
with.

Only gripe so far is that my fancy Corsair gaming keyboard has become
a normal keyboard.  As I said in an earlier email, some clever people
have put together a package to access most of the keyboard's features.
It is still in a very early version of 0.2 or so.  However, I have not
gotten much use out of my fancy keyboard to date.  I mostly like it
because it is a mechanical keyboard and care little for the other
stuff.  Even though David saved the day by reminding me about the
"BIOS" setting on a keyboard switch, I think I will stick with the new
quite functional but not fancy mechanical keyboard coming soon and
give this gaming keyboard to one of my two children who will probably
appreciate it more than me.

Now when the new hard drive arrives tomorrow we'll see if I can get a
good dual-boot of Windows 7 and Mint Cinnamon going!

Thanks for all of the help even though this has been off-topic for this list!

Meanwhile, more playing around with Mint!!

Cheers!
-- 
boB
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Re: [Tutor] OT: Recommendations for a Linux distribution to dual-boot with Win7-64 bit

[boB Stepp]

On Wed, Jun 29, 2016 at 1:12 PM, David Rock  wrote:
>
>> On Jun 29, 2016, at 12:32, boB Stepp  wrote:
>>
>> On Wed, Jun 29, 2016 at 12:02 PM, David Rock  wrote:
>>>
 On Jun 29, 2016, at 11:20, boB Stepp  wrote:

 My Christmas present of a Corsair mechanical gaming keyboard was not
 _seen_ during the boot up sequence until *after* Windows started up.
 So I could not get into my BIOS area!  I had not noticed this earlier
>>>
>>> Which keyboard do you have?  Most Corsairs have a “BIOS switch” for exactly 
>>> this issue.
>>
>> K95 RGB.  I will have to look around for setting you mention.
>
> It should be a physical switch on the keyboard itself

I had forgotten about that switch since its default worked fine when I
initially connected the keyboard, and it is in a very inconspicuous
location on the keyboard--out of sight, out of mind.

Now I can get into BIOS.  BIOS sees my USB flash drive as "UEFI: Lexar
USB Flash Drive 1100", but it silently refuses to boot to the iso
image installed on it.  Something new to puzzle out!

-- 
boB
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Re: [Tutor] OT: Recommendations for a Linux distribution to dual-boot with Win7-64 bit

[Roel Schroeven]

boB Stepp schreef op 2016-06-29 01:16:

On Mon, Jun 27, 2016 at 10:48 PM, Steven D'Aprano  wrote:

What about running Win7 in a virtual machine?


What type of performance hit will I take when running CPU intensive
processes?


Purely CPU-wise, the performance hit is pretty small (normal 
instructions are executed directly on the CPU at full speed; only 
privileged instructions are trapped for special treatment). But:

- I/O is slower in a virtual machine.
- RAM is divided between your virtual machine(s) and the host, so each 
machine has less available for itself.
- Graphics are slower. Regular desktop use is fine if the proper drivers 
are installed in the virtual machine, but don't expect to run the newest 
games smoothly.


In many use cases, virtual machines are perfectly usable; it all depends 
on your specific use case and your hardware.


--
The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge
faster than society gathers wisdom.
  -- Isaac Asimov

Roel Schroeven

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Re: [Tutor] OT: Recommendations for a Linux distribution to dual-boot with Win7-64 bit

[David Rock]

> On Jun 29, 2016, at 12:32, boB Stepp  wrote:
> 
> On Wed, Jun 29, 2016 at 12:02 PM, David Rock  wrote:
>> 
>>> On Jun 29, 2016, at 11:20, boB Stepp  wrote:
>>> 
>>> My Christmas present of a Corsair mechanical gaming keyboard was not
>>> _seen_ during the boot up sequence until *after* Windows started up.
>>> So I could not get into my BIOS area!  I had not noticed this earlier
>> 
>> Which keyboard do you have?  Most Corsairs have a “BIOS switch” for exactly 
>> this issue.
> 
> K95 RGB.  I will have to look around for setting you mention.

It should be a physical switch on the keyboard itself


— 
David Rock
da...@graniteweb.com




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Re: [Tutor] OT: Recommendations for a Linux distribution to dual-boot with Win7-64 bit

[boB Stepp]

On Wed, Jun 29, 2016 at 12:02 PM, David Rock  wrote:
>
>> On Jun 29, 2016, at 11:20, boB Stepp  wrote:
>>
>> My Christmas present of a Corsair mechanical gaming keyboard was not
>> _seen_ during the boot up sequence until *after* Windows started up.
>> So I could not get into my BIOS area!  I had not noticed this earlier
>
> Which keyboard do you have?  Most Corsairs have a “BIOS switch” for exactly 
> this issue.

K95 RGB.  I will have to look around for setting you mention.


-- 
boB
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Re: [Tutor] OT: Recommendations for a Linux distribution to dual-boot with Win7-64 bit

[Alan Gauld via Tutor]

On 29/06/16 17:20, boB Stepp wrote:

> that Logitech does not support Linux for this product, but others who
> have done a dual-boot setup with Windows installed before Linux seem
> to have found that once the mouse is connected with Windows, it will
> be seen by Linux.  This remains to be seen!  

FWIW I use an old PS/2 Logitech trackball on Linux with no problems
(apart from two of the 5 buttons not doing anything, but I never
used them anyway even on Windows.

For hardware compatibility issues its less important whether the
vendors officially support Linux as whether Linux supports it. The best
bet for that is to search the support forums for your distro (and
related ones, so for Mint I look at Mint, Ubuntu and Debian in that order)

Sometimes there are additional driver packages you can install. For
things like keyboard and mice I always keep a cheapo USB pair around
so I can always get up and running then I can usually persuade the
distro to accept whatever fancier gear I want to use later.

-- 
Alan G
Author of the Learn to Program web site
http://www.alan-g.me.uk/
http://www.amazon.com/author/alan_gauld
Follow my photo-blog on Flickr at:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/alangauldphotos


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Re: [Tutor] OT: Recommendations for a Linux distribution to dual-boot with Win7-64 bit

[David Rock]

> On Jun 29, 2016, at 11:20, boB Stepp  wrote:
> 
> My Christmas present of a Corsair mechanical gaming keyboard was not
> _seen_ during the boot up sequence until *after* Windows started up.
> So I could not get into my BIOS area!  I had not noticed this earlier

Which keyboard do you have?  Most Corsairs have a “BIOS switch” for exactly 
this issue.


— 
David Rock
da...@graniteweb.com




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Re: [Tutor] OT: Recommendations for a Linux distribution to dual-boot with Win7-64 bit

[boB Stepp]

On Tue, Jun 28, 2016 at 6:34 PM, David Rock  wrote:
>
>> On Jun 28, 2016, at 18:16, boB Stepp  wrote:
>>
>> On Mon, Jun 27, 2016 at 10:48 PM, Steven D'Aprano  
>> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>> What about running Win7 in a virtual machine?
>>
>> What type of performance hit will I take when running CPU intensive
>> processes?  I don't yet have any real experiences with running virtual
>> machines.
>
> Ultimately, not likely to be all that much.  The bigger constraint with 
> running VMs is often available ram.

Based on everyone's input (Which all was quite helpful!) I'm going to
stick with the original idea of creating a dual-boot environment.
Windows 7 is already installed and up-to-date along with my other
Windows-based software that isn't directly Linux-compatible.  Plus, I
don't play games often, but it will be nice to have W7 available for
that.  And I will not get *any* unnecessary performance hits on any of
the existing software.


> If you value Alan’s opinion (and arguably, your wife’s is more important), 
> try out Mint. You may or may not like it, but you won’t know until you try.  
> I still say a dry run in a VM to get a feel for it would do wonders for you 
> regardless.

Mint will receive my initial attention.  I prepared a USB flash drive
last night with the Cinnamon Mint 17.3 iso with the intent of trying
out Mint running from the USB thumb drive, but when I got to the
rebooting stage to change my boot priority I got my first surprise:
My Christmas present of a Corsair mechanical gaming keyboard was not
_seen_ during the boot up sequence until *after* Windows started up.
So I could not get into my BIOS area!  I had not noticed this earlier
as I have had no need to tweak my BIOS settings since acquiring this
keyboard.  This inspired some online research where I also found that
this keyboard is not Linux compatible, though some clever people have
created some work-arounds.  So I have ordered today a new mechanical
keyboard that *is* Linux (or anything else) compatible out of the box
with no software installation required plus a new hard drive
(Apparently Hitachi may be making the most reliable hard drives these
days.).  My intent is to keep Windows 7 where it is and install Mint
(If I still like it after playing around with it off the USB drive.)
to the new hard drive.  I now wonder if my Logitech M570 wireless
trackball mouse will work with Linux?  Again, some online work says
that Logitech does not support Linux for this product, but others who
have done a dual-boot setup with Windows installed before Linux seem
to have found that once the mouse is connected with Windows, it will
be seen by Linux.  This remains to be seen!  If it doesn't, I guess I
will have to get a new mouse, too!!

Hopefully I will be playing around with Mint tomorrow some time.

-- 
boB
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Re: [Tutor] OT: Recommendations for a Linux distribution to dual-boot with Win7-64 bit

[Wolfgang Maier]

On 29.06.2016 04:16, Alex Kleider wrote:



On 2016-06-28 11:46, David Rock wrote:

Here’s my take on a lot of this (it’s similar to what’s been said
already, so this is more of a general philosophy of distros).


Very interesting reading for which I thank you.
I'd be interested in knowing if you'd make a distinction between 'the
latest
Ubuntu' and their LTS releases?
My approach has been to use LTS releases only and not bother with the ones
in between.

Comments?
a


David kind of discussed the difference between them in an earlier post 
when he grouped distros into three categories, quoting him:


1. slower-moving, very stable, binary installs
2. fast-moving, stable-ish, binary installs
3. fast-moving, stable-ish, source installs

In a relative sense, linux stability is good regardless.  I only point 
out “very stable” because they are typically bulletproof on purpose, at 
the expense of some flexibility.


#1 examples:
Debian stable (codename jessie)
Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)
CentOS (a free RHEL repackaging)


Just add Ubuntu LTS releases here, while other Ubuntu releases fall in 
category #2. An LTS release never sees major version upgrades over its 
lifetime for its Linux kernel nor for other software package-managed by 
canonical so near the end of it things may be pretty outdated. That's 
not necessarily a big deal though. If your system works for you, why 
change it. I've sometimes upgraded to new releases just out of interest, 
but never because I felt I really had to.


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Re: [Tutor] OT: Recommendations for a Linux distribution to dual-boot with Win7-64 bit

[Alex Kleider]

On 2016-06-28 11:46, David Rock wrote:

Here’s my take on a lot of this (it’s similar to what’s been said
already, so this is more of a general philosophy of distros).


Very interesting reading for which I thank you.
I'd be interested in knowing if you'd make a distinction between 'the 
latest

Ubuntu' and their LTS releases?
My approach has been to use LTS releases only and not bother with the 
ones

in between.

Comments?
a
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Re: [Tutor] OT: Recommendations for a Linux distribution to dual-boot with Win7-64 bit

[Alan Gauld via Tutor]

On 29/06/16 00:34, David Rock wrote:

> If you value Alan’s opinion

Just to be clear, I run mint because it works but I've used many
distros in the past, starting with Slackware then Red Hat then
Mandrake and Ubuntu with equally good results. I don't like
Ubuntu's Unity UI so switched to Mint but it's a subjective
rather than political/idealogical/technical decision.

> I still say a dry run in a VM to get a feel for it would do wonders 

I totally agree. I regularly spin up new distros just to take a
look (Vector, TinyLinux, Gentoo, CentOS, have all been on a VM
near me :-)

As for performance hit of a VM - I only really notice it on graphics
intensive stuff.

Let me put it another way: many commercial data centers now only
run servers under VMs. The extra maintainability, security and
safety outweighs the small performance hit. When you buy a
"server" from a data center these days you are most likely
buying a VM image running on a much bigger box.

-- 
Alan G
Author of the Learn to Program web site
http://www.alan-g.me.uk/
http://www.amazon.com/author/alan_gauld
Follow my photo-blog on Flickr at:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/alangauldphotos


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Re: [Tutor] OT: Recommendations for a Linux distribution to dual-boot with Win7-64 bit

[David Rock]

> On Jun 28, 2016, at 18:16, boB Stepp  wrote:
> 
> On Mon, Jun 27, 2016 at 10:48 PM, Steven D'Aprano  wrote:
>> 
>> 
>> What about running Win7 in a virtual machine?
> 
> What type of performance hit will I take when running CPU intensive
> processes?  I don't yet have any real experiences with running virtual
> machines.  

Ultimately, not likely to be all that much.  The bigger constraint with running 
VMs is often available ram.  

>> 
>> Otherwise, I like:
>> 
>> Linux Mint. Good software repositories, more conservative than Ubuntu,
>> not as stick-in-the-mud as Debian. Based on Debian/Ubuntu so the quality
>> is good, mostly aimed at non-hard core Linux geeks.
> 
> Alan obviously likes this distro.  And my teacher wife at the
> beginning of this summer break switched several of her class PCs to
> Mint.  Be nice to be writing software for the same environment, so
> this might be a positive here.

That’s as good a reason as any. :-)

As I’m sure you have gathered by now, picking a distro is a lot like picking a 
brand of car.  *Linux* underneath is largely similar across all the distros, 
what you are picking is the wrapper around it.  It’s more about the package 
manager used, and the philosophy of the maintainers than anything.  The only 
logical option is throw a dart and just try one.  If you don’t like how they do 
things, throw another dart until you find what you like.  This is the blessing 
and the curse of linux; endless variety. 

Regarding the package management, there are basically two models: RPM-based and 
dpkg-based (yes, there are others, but these are the two big players).  
RPM-based (often referred to as yum) is anything similar to Red Hat (fedora, 
CentOS, etc), dpkg-based (sometimes referred to as apt) is anything based on 
debian (ubuntu, mint, etc).  How they work is fundamentally different, but any 
distro that uses the same package management will largely “feel” like any other.

If you value Alan’s opinion (and arguably, your wife’s is more important), try 
out Mint. You may or may not like it, but you won’t know until you try.  I 
still say a dry run in a VM to get a feel for it would do wonders for you 
regardless.


— 
David Rock
da...@graniteweb.com




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Re: [Tutor] OT: Recommendations for a Linux distribution to dual-boot with Win7-64 bit

[Wolfgang Maier]

On 29.06.2016 01:16, boB Stepp wrote:

On Mon, Jun 27, 2016 at 10:48 PM, Steven D'Aprano  wrote:

What about running Win7 in a virtual machine?


What type of performance hit will I take when running CPU intensive
processes?  I don't yet have any real experiences with running virtual
machines.  If this is acceptable, I am willing to forget the dual-boot
idea and just jump in the deep end with Linux.  The only thing I would
hate is reinstalling Win7 into the virtual environment and the endless
sequence of updating ...




Of course, there is a performance hit when using a virtual machine. 
After all, you have a running Windows or Linux, whichever way round you 
do things, from which you start it.
How much that matters, depends strongly on what you want to do though. 
After all, you could do performance-critical stuff in your real OS 
instead of inside the VW.
I still like dual-boot better for home use. If you have multiple users 
or even just guests they might not all be used to having to start a VM 
to use Windows.





Otherwise, I like:

Linux Mint. Good software repositories, more conservative than Ubuntu,
not as stick-in-the-mud as Debian. Based on Debian/Ubuntu so the quality
is good, mostly aimed at non-hard core Linux geeks.


Alan obviously likes this distro.  And my teacher wife at the
beginning of this summer break switched several of her class PCs to
Mint.  Be nice to be writing software for the same environment, so
this might be a positive here.



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Re: [Tutor] OT: Recommendations for a Linux distribution to dual-boot with Win7-64 bit

[boB Stepp]

On Mon, Jun 27, 2016 at 10:48 PM, Steven D'Aprano  wrote:
> On Mon, Jun 27, 2016 at 09:52:50PM -0500, boB Stepp wrote:
>> My eyes are glazing over from hours and hours of Googling on this.  I
>> cannot come to a rational conclusion.  Perhaps someone can help me to
>> do so.  I currently have a 64-bit desktop PC that I built myself.  It
>> is running Win7 Pro 64-bit.  I need to keep this OS as I need to run
>> various chess software which can be quite CPU and RAM hogging.  So an
>> emulation layer like Wine would not be desirable.  I don't want to run
>> Linux in a virtual environment; I'd rather have a dual-boot setup.
>
> What about running Win7 in a virtual machine?

What type of performance hit will I take when running CPU intensive
processes?  I don't yet have any real experiences with running virtual
machines.  If this is acceptable, I am willing to forget the dual-boot
idea and just jump in the deep end with Linux.  The only thing I would
hate is reinstalling Win7 into the virtual environment and the endless
sequence of updating ...

>
> Otherwise, I like:
>
> Linux Mint. Good software repositories, more conservative than Ubuntu,
> not as stick-in-the-mud as Debian. Based on Debian/Ubuntu so the quality
> is good, mostly aimed at non-hard core Linux geeks.

Alan obviously likes this distro.  And my teacher wife at the
beginning of this summer break switched several of her class PCs to
Mint.  Be nice to be writing software for the same environment, so
this might be a positive here.

-- 
boB
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Re: [Tutor] OT: Recommendations for a Linux distribution to dual-boot with Win7-64 bit

[Wolfgang Maier]

On 28.06.2016 18:58, Steven D'Aprano wrote:

On Tue, Jun 28, 2016 at 07:58:22AM -0700, Alex Kleider wrote:



On 2016-06-27 20:48, Steven D'Aprano wrote:


Also Debian. Not Ubuntu.


Can you elaborate why you specifically exclude Ubuntu?


I've been bitten by an Ubuntu install where half of the GUI apps were
unstable and simply didn't work. They either wouldn't launch at all, or
they'd launch and as soon as you tried to do something they'd crash. And
no, it wasn't using the unstable repo.

And then Ubuntu went to Unity, and a few other annoyances which
individually wouldn't matter much, but the overall feel is just ...
wrong. For instance, Mark Shuttleworth is now suggesting that Ubuntu is
going to lead the way to a brave new world of package management "snap":

http://kmkeen.com/maintainers-matter/

No thank you, I don't want to get my software directly from the vendor,
at least not exclusively.

I just get the feeling that Ubuntu is keen to disrupt working systems
just for the sake of disruption, and that the community is filled with
the Cascade of Attention-Deficit Teenagers that Jamie Zawinski
thinks so highly of .

And then I noticed that they have a *tutorial* to teach people how to
sign their Code Of Conduct, said tutorial starting with "First, create a
Launchpad account":

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Forums/CoCSA_Tutorial

at which point I decided they've lost the plot.



ok, this *very* subjective Ubuntu-bashing by Steven, begs a contrary 
opinion:


I'm running Ubuntu (currently 14.04, going to switch to 16.04 soon) on 
my laptop in a dual-boot configuration since several years now - without 
any problem worth mentioning here. The Windows was Windows 7 first, now 
since half a year is Windows 10 (which by itself has lots of issues 
still, but none related to dual booting).


Not everybody likes Unity, but if you want a more traditional look and 
feel and you're worried about performance, you can always go for Ubuntu 
Mate, which I'm using on another system and have nothing to complain about.


Regarding snap packages, the thing that concerns me about them is that 
canonical, once more, tries to develop something separately from the 
rest of the Linux world. The concept itself, however, is not a diabolic 
invention by them (as Steven likes to put it). Look at FlatPak, which is 
the cross-Linux equivalent of snap packages and sees now better support 
by the latest Fedora release 
(https://fedoramagazine.org/introducing-flatpak/).


Ubuntu has an extremely large (for a Linux distribution) user base and 
as pointed out by others that's a clear advantage when you try to solve 
problems with it.


Regarding file system access, I never bothered to set up a dedicated 
shared partition just for data exchange. Ubuntu reads and writes the 
NTFS-formatted regular Windows partition without any problem (since 
years as I said already). Of course, the other way around does not work 
so you have to remember to copy things over to the Windows partition if 
you want to have them available in Windows.


As you can maybe guess from my rather moderate tone here, I am not very 
much into Linux distro wars. I'm using a Fedora machine at work (on a 
triple(!) boot machine (with Windows 7 and OS X)), which also works very 
well and if you go for *any* major distribution you will probably be 
fine. Just don't be afraid of Ubuntu because certain people have strong 
feelings about it.


Best,
Wolfgang

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Re: [Tutor] OT: Recommendations for a Linux distribution to dual-boot with Win7-64 bit

[David Rock]

> On Jun 28, 2016, at 12:49, boB Stepp  wrote:
> 
> I forgot one concern last night:
> 
> 11)  My current graphics adapter is made by NVIDIA.  Their drivers are
> proprietary.  Is this going to be a deal breaker for Linux?

Typically, no.  At a minimum, you will still have native support for basic GUI 
display.  There are also nvidia-supplied drivers available that can be used, 
but they are typically needed only for advanced 3D acceleration (if at all).  
My 15-year old laptop had an Nvidia Geforce 2 Go card and it was fine.


> 12)  And what about wireless networking?  My ASUS motherboard has
> builtin wireless, but the software used to manage its settings may be
> (I cannot remember for certain.) Windows-only.  Will this be an issue?

Again, not likely a problem.  Most hardware nowadays is reasonably well 
supported, although some advanced features may not be.  The easiest thing to do 
is google for your distro name and the brand of device and see if there are any 
issues.

If you follow my earlier advice on trying a liveCD of your chosen distro first, 
that will give you a really good idea if your hardware will work.


— 
David Rock
da...@graniteweb.com




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Re: [Tutor] OT: Recommendations for a Linux distribution to dual-boot with Win7-64 bit

[David Rock]

Here’s my take on a lot of this (it’s similar to what’s been said already, so 
this is more of a general philosophy of distros).

There are basically three types of distros (you can subdivide 100 ways, but 
these are the primary categories)

1. slower-moving, very stable, binary installs
2. fast-moving, stable-ish, binary installs
3. fast-moving, stable-ish, source installs

In a relative sense, linux stability is good regardless.  I only point out 
“very stable” because they are typically bulletproof on purpose, at the expense 
of some flexibility.  

#1 examples:
Debian stable (codename jessie)
Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)
CentOS (a free RHEL repackaging)

The primary issue with these slow-moving binary distros is they are stable by 
not introducing new things quickly, so the versions of software available in 
their software repositories are sometimes ancient.  That’s not to say you can’t 
install something newer, but it won’t be “standard.”  If you are looking for 
latest and greatest, these might not be for you, but they are good for what 
they do.  I support RHEL servers as my day job, but use debian at home.
Since debian recently changed it’s stable branch, it does contain many 
“reasonably new” versions of most software compared to RHEL, but you won’t see 
fast adoption of new stuff moving forward (besides security updates).

 #2 examples:
debian testing (codename stretch)
Fedora (this is where things get tested before they go into RHEL)
Ubuntu (based on debian)

Pros with #2: "latest and greatest” available in the official repositories
Cons: "latest and greatest” available in the official repositories

It’s a double-edged sword.  The closer you get to the bleeding edge, the higher 
the risk of something being “not quite right” but you are much more likely to 
find newer versions of software.  It’s also worth noting; don’t let the 
“testing” in debian testing scare you, it’s still a very stable distro.

#3 examples:
gentoo
linux from scratch (LFS)

These are interesting in that all code is built from source, rather than 
installed as binary packages.  In the case of gentoo, that’s not really a 
problem, though.  The package management tools take care of the work for you, 
it just means it takes longer to install a given package if your system is 
slower at compiling.  LFS is not one I would recommend unless you really want 
to learn how to build a linux system _literally_ from scratch.  I have also run 
gentoo at home for years, with very few issues, but it’s an example of getting 
closer to the bleeding edge.


Another class of linux distribution you may want to consider is anything with a 
“LiveCD.” These are full distributions designed to run off a bootable 
CD/DVD/UBS stick.  There are LiveCD versions for several of the distributions 
out there and they may give you a better feel for what user experience you want 
before taking the plunge.   They don’t install to your hard drive at all 
(although some have an option to if you wish later) and give you an easy look 
at how they work.  I know you didn’t want to run linux in a VM, but I highly 
suggest that you _do_ for a while first.  Again, that is an easy way to try out 
several distros and decide what you like _before_ committing to a dual-boot.  
It’s a lot easier to handle the dual-boot once you know which one you want to 
try.  Going back later and switching to a different distro gets sticky.  
 

Based on what you’ve listed as requirements, debian is probably a solid choice 
(either stable; or testing if stable doesn’t have what you need).  Since this 
is a Python mailing list, the current pythons available in stable are 2.7.9 and 
3.4.2, which should give you a good indicator if that will suit your needs 
(i.e., if they are “new enough” for you).  testing is 2.7.11 and 3.5.1.  It’s 
also worth noting that debian does allow you to run stable, and cherry-pick 
packages from testing; that’s a little advanced (but something to keep in mind).


— 
David Rock
da...@graniteweb.com




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Re: [Tutor] OT: Recommendations for a Linux distribution to dual-boot with Win7-64 bit

[boB Stepp]

On Mon, Jun 27, 2016 at 9:52 PM, boB Stepp  wrote:

[...]
> 10)  ...

I forgot one concern last night:

11)  My current graphics adapter is made by NVIDIA.  Their drivers are
proprietary.  Is this going to be a deal breaker for Linux?

12)  And what about wireless networking?  My ASUS motherboard has
builtin wireless, but the software used to manage its settings may be
(I cannot remember for certain.) Windows-only.  Will this be an issue?


-- 
boB
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Re: [Tutor] OT: Recommendations for a Linux distribution to dual-boot with Win7-64 bit

[Steven D'Aprano]

On Tue, Jun 28, 2016 at 07:58:22AM -0700, Alex Kleider wrote:
> 
> 
> On 2016-06-27 20:48, Steven D'Aprano wrote:
> 
> >Also Debian. Not Ubuntu.
> 
> Can you elaborate why you specifically exclude Ubuntu?

I've been bitten by an Ubuntu install where half of the GUI apps were 
unstable and simply didn't work. They either wouldn't launch at all, or 
they'd launch and as soon as you tried to do something they'd crash. And 
no, it wasn't using the unstable repo.

And then Ubuntu went to Unity, and a few other annoyances which 
individually wouldn't matter much, but the overall feel is just ... 
wrong. For instance, Mark Shuttleworth is now suggesting that Ubuntu is 
going to lead the way to a brave new world of package management "snap":

http://kmkeen.com/maintainers-matter/

No thank you, I don't want to get my software directly from the vendor, 
at least not exclusively. 

I just get the feeling that Ubuntu is keen to disrupt working systems 
just for the sake of disruption, and that the community is filled with 
the Cascade of Attention-Deficit Teenagers that Jamie Zawinski 
thinks so highly of .

And then I noticed that they have a *tutorial* to teach people how to 
sign their Code Of Conduct, said tutorial starting with "First, create a 
Launchpad account":

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Forums/CoCSA_Tutorial

at which point I decided they've lost the plot.

I think at this point probably the only thing which would get me to go 
back to Ubuntu is if they said "You know what, systemd actually is a 
terrible idea" and didn't replace it with something worse.



-- 
Steve
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Re: [Tutor] OT: Recommendations for a Linux distribution to dual-boot with Win7-64 bit

[Steven D'Aprano]

Following up from my earlier post...

On Mon, Jun 27, 2016 at 09:52:50PM -0500, boB Stepp wrote:

> 4)  It would be nice if the most recent development tools were part of
> the most recent OS version, such as the latest stable Python 3, gVim,
> Git, etc.

Generally, the major distros have something very close to the most 
recent version of the various tools, applications, OS, etc.

For those who like to live on the bleeding edge, you can install 
something like Debian unstable, and what fun that is, but generally it's 
better to use the stable versions instead.


> One of the commonly recurring questions I see on this list
> (and the main one)is that the pre-installed Python from the OS is a
> few iterations behind the current release, how can I get the latest
> and make two (or more) Python versions work together without getting
> confused as to which I'm using, etc.

My usual advice is:

- Don't touch the system Python. Consider it a black box and leave it 
alone. To be more precise, it's okay to *use it* to run software, it's 
even okay to use your system's package management tools to install new 
libraries for it (but they're unlikely to be the latest version), but 
anything that requires you to manually touch it, don't do it!

- Instead, install a second (or as many as you want) seperate Pythons 
and use them. I always install from source, so if I can do it, anyone 
can :-)

The instructions in the README file are pretty good, but if you need 
help, feel free to ask. That will be on-topic :-)

Basically, I download whichever versions I want. Really old versions, 
like Python 1.5 and older, may be hard to compile. Moderately old ones, 
like 2.1 or 2.2, are hard to get support for readline and other goodies. 
But unless you're a geek like me, why are you worried about ancient 
versions of Python? So if you concentrate on Python 3, they should be 
more-or-less easy to compile.

Now you have the system Python, which you run using "python", and the 
one you installed, which you run using "python3". Easy.

If you have multiple versions of Python, say 3.5 and 3.6, you can just 
specify the version: "python3.5". Or you can provide the full path. Or 
you can set up a shell alias, for interactive use. In my .bashrc file I 
have a bunch of aliases and commands for making Python easier to use:

# my system Python is Python 2.4
alias python='python2.7'
# set some extra directories to look for Python modules
export PYTHONPATH="..."
# run the Python startup file on interactive startup
export PYTHONSTARTUP=/home/steve/python/utilities/startup.py
# but not in Python 1.5, because that's too old
alias python1.5='env -u PYTHONSTARTUP python1.5'

Because these commands only apply to me, when I type "python" at the 
shell prompt, I get Python 2.7, but when a vendor script runs "python", 
it gets the version it expects, namely 2.4.


[...]
> 7)  It should be easy to install existing software packages without
> having to compile everything from source.  It would be nice if (to me)
> hidden dependencies are made clear, though I realize that part of the
> *nix learning curve is figuring out how to handle these sorts of
> issues.

As I mentioned before, that's the whole point of the package management 
system. Coming from Windows, you really don't know what you're missing.

> 8)  How troublesome is malware for Linux?  I realize that it is not
> the normal target of crackers, but is it common enough that I need to
> install whatever the Linux equivalent is of anti-malware/virus
> software?

Technically, there is malware for Linux. The company I work for was once 
even hired to remove a Linux virus from a system. Back in 1998 or 
thereabouts.

"Drive by downloads", viruses, spyware etc. that you're familiar with 
from Windows is practically non-existent in the Linux world. There's 
probably some malware that might attack your browser, but I've never 
heard of it, and if you run NoScript in Firefox, and block untrusted 
sites, you should be fine.

However, if your Linux machine is visible from the Internet, you 
should expect to be constantly under attack from remote bots trying to 
log in. I have two firewalls between me and the Internet:

- my router runs a firewall;
- my Linux server runs a firewall.

Make sure your Linux system is running a firewall. iptables or ipchains 
are the standard firewalls for Linux, although I daresay by now Ubuntu 
has invented its own...

If you allow remote access to your Linux machine via ssh, make sure you 
disable root logins over ssh. I also prefer to run Fail2Ban, which bans 
(temporarily, or permanently) logins from IP addresses if they have too 
many failed attempts.


> 9)  Despite having an i7 quad-core 3.6 GHz CPU with 32 GB RAM, it
> seems that Windows with all of the constant security updating, etc.,
> tends to make my PC sluggish and I am tired of sifting through
> everything periodically to clear out the cruft and startup junk that
> loads.  I *really* would like to have a snappy OS 

Re: [Tutor] OT: Recommendations for a Linux distribution to dual-boot with Win7-64 bit

[Alex Kleider]

On 2016-06-27 20:48, Steven D'Aprano wrote:


Also Debian. Not Ubuntu.


Can you elaborate why you specifically exclude Ubuntu?

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Re: [Tutor] OT: Recommendations for a Linux distribution to dual-boot with Win7-64 bit

[Alan Gauld via Tutor]

On 28/06/16 03:52, boB Stepp wrote:

Steven has already repolied and my immediate responbse was almost word
for word what he said, sop I'll start again and you can consider this an
addendum to Steve's message :-)

> 1)  I am not ready at this time to take on the challenge of *really*
> getting into understanding *nix by installing something like Arch
> Linux and having to configure almost *everything* myself from scratch.

Debian and Slackware are the nearest I've gotten to that.
Now I use Mint because I don't want to do that...

> However, I do like Arch's install once and enjoy very frequent OS and
> package updates, huge package repository, etc.

Other distros do that too. For example Mint has a variant that
continuously updates. Personally I prefer to keep some control
and only update when I want to. It improves stability too.

> quite functional.  Currently XFCE looks attractive.  I first ran into
> this while looking at (2), but it is popping up quite frequently in
> other Linux distros.

I use Mint on both my desktop and netbook. The desktop uses Cinnamon
while the netbook uses XFCE. I hardly notice the difference.

> 4)  It would be nice if the most recent development tools were part of
> the most recent OS version, such as the latest stable Python 3, gVim,
> Git, etc.  

You usually get the latest but one version when a distro release
first comes out. Distros tend to favour reliability over novelty. That's
where the rolling updates tend to be better, if you want
to be on the bleeding edge. I've just checked my Mint 17 package manager
and 3.4 is still the latest available.

> and make two (or more) Python versions work together without getting
> confused as to which I'm using, etc.  

I'll let Steve answer this in more detail, my approach is very
conservative and I have no plans to upgrade to 3.5 until it appears
courtesy of Mint. If I did have such a need I'd wait till a deb package
appeared somewhere and download that rather than build from scratch.
But these days I'm lazy like that...

> upgrade to the current release without wreaking havoc with OS uses of
> Python.

That should not be a problem.

> 6)  Good documentation available would be a solid plus as well as a
> dedicated, helpful (to newbies like myself) community (Like Tutor!)

The bigger (better known) the distro the better the support.
This is especially true when dealing with commercial software(yes it
doees exist for Linux!). For example I use Corel Openshot for photo
processing and their support is limited to a couple of distros - and
in my experience not great even there! But the forums will
generally make up for any "official" ignorance!

> 7)  It should be easy to install existing software packages without
> having to compile everything from source.  

Compiling is not necessarily a problem When I used Slackware it tended
to download source and build it but the package manager did all of that
for me, I very rarely had to type 'make' myself.

> 8)  How troublesome is malware for Linux?  

I've been running Linux since 1994 and using it as my main OS since
2008 and I've never experienced any malware. (The same is true on my Mac
which I bought in 2000) On Windows I've had 3 instances to deal
with (since 1991). If you take sensible precautions Malware should
not be an issue. (I do have Clam anti-virus and run a scan once
a week or so, but it has never found anything)

> loads.  I *really* would like to have a snappy OS where everything
> *stays* snappy with minimal effort on my part.

I'm running Mint 17 on my main desktop (4 cores, 3GHz, 8GB RAM,
1.5TB disk space) and on my ancient(2008) eeePC Netbook (1 Atom CPU @
1GHz, !GB RAM, 20GB "disk" - actually flash memory). That's the exact
same OS, apart from desktop, and performance is fine on both.

> 10)  I have a hard drive that has mostly text-based stuff, like Python
> programs, which is formatted NTFS.  Can I share this with both Win7
> and Linux?  

Yes, I do that with several disks and I had to check the disk tool
to see which was which.

> What about the differences in line endings?  Am I going to
> have to be constantly converting back and forth?

Not unless you work on files across OS. If you work on Windows files
on Windows and Linux on Linux it's not an issue. But if you work
across OS it's worth finding tools (like VIM) that can handle
it transparently. But there is no doubt it does occasionally bite
you with less intelligent tools - especially command-line filters
and the like, and even more so if they use regex. (But it's not
an NTFS issue since FAT disks will be the same)

I run Virtual Box for XP which I only use when testing new
software that needs to run on it.

I do have two dedicated PCs for running Windows, one runs
Windows 10 which I use mainly to keep abreast of what's
what in Windows land and the other runs Windows 7 for when
I really need Photoshop/Lightroom/DxPro (increasingly rare).
They both use the Linux box (over hardwired Gigabit LAN) for
the bulk of 

Re: [Tutor] OT: Recommendations for a Linux distribution to dual-boot with Win7-64 bit

[Steven D'Aprano]

On Mon, Jun 27, 2016 at 09:52:50PM -0500, boB Stepp wrote:
> My eyes are glazing over from hours and hours of Googling on this.  I
> cannot come to a rational conclusion.  Perhaps someone can help me to
> do so.  I currently have a 64-bit desktop PC that I built myself.  It
> is running Win7 Pro 64-bit.  I need to keep this OS as I need to run
> various chess software which can be quite CPU and RAM hogging.  So an
> emulation layer like Wine would not be desirable.  I don't want to run
> Linux in a virtual environment; I'd rather have a dual-boot setup.

What about running Win7 in a virtual machine?


Otherwise, I like:

Linux Mint. Good software repositories, more conservative than Ubuntu, 
not as stick-in-the-mud as Debian. Based on Debian/Ubuntu so the quality 
is good, mostly aimed at non-hard core Linux geeks.

Also Debian. Not Ubuntu.

I used to be a Fedora guy, but then they started changing too quickly 
for my tastes. If you didn't upgrade to the latest and greatest every 
fifteen minutes, you couldn't get help. So I moved to Centos, but that's 
a very conservative distribution, and its hard to packages for it unless 
you're prepared to build them yourself.


> 1)  I am not ready at this time to take on the challenge of *really*
> getting into understanding *nix by installing something like Arch
> Linux and having to configure almost *everything* myself from scratch.
> However, I do like Arch's install once and enjoy very frequent OS and
> package updates, huge package repository, etc.

Most distros are like that. The difference with Arch is that package 
management means downloading and compiling source code, rather than 
having others compile it for you.


> 2)  (1) led me into looking at Manjaro Linux.

I don't know that one.

> 3)  I do not care about eye candy.  If you could see my current
> Windows desktop, it is just a solid plain blue.  In fact, a
> light-weight desktop environment would be preferable as long as it was
> quite functional.  Currently XFCE looks attractive.

XFCE works very well. You might like TDE (Trinity), which is a fork of 
KDE 3 after the KDE developers turned it into the abomination of KDE 4.


> 4)  It would be nice if the most recent development tools were part of
> the most recent OS version, such as the latest stable Python 3, gVim,
> Git, etc.  One of the commonly recurring questions I see on this list
> (and the main one)is that the pre-installed Python from the OS is a
> few iterations behind the current release, how can I get the latest
> and make two (or more) Python versions work together without getting
> confused as to which I'm using, etc.

That's actually not that hard. I'll reply to that in more detail later.


> 5)  I would like a stable Linux installation.  I'd rather not have to
> frequently work hard to solve quirky issues.

Linux is *extremely* stable. The problem is, when things don't work, 
it's usually only the quirky issues that don't work.

There's a couple of exceptions to this rule. Bluetooth is quirky on 
Linux, and support for hardware suspend is awful.

> 6)  Good documentation available would be a solid plus as well as a
> dedicated, helpful (to newbies like myself) community (Like Tutor!)
> that can easily tolerate sometimes very stupid questions without
> flaming me for my ignorance.  ~(:>))

Heh, good luck :-)

Reading Stackoverflow is good for that. Contributing to SO, not so much.

Stay away from the IRC channels, they tend to eat newbies alive.


> 7)  It should be easy to install existing software packages without
> having to compile everything from source.  It would be nice if (to me)
> hidden dependencies are made clear, though I realize that part of the
> *nix learning curve is figuring out how to handle these sorts of
> issues.

Dependency issues? What are those?

That's what package management is for. Whether you use yum on Red Hat 
based systems (Centos, Fedora) or apt-get and aptitude on Debian based 
systems (Ubuntu, Linux Mint), you'll rarely care about dependencies.


> 8)  How troublesome is malware for Linux?  I realize that it is not
> the normal target of crackers, but is it common enough that I need to
> install whatever the Linux equivalent is of anti-malware/virus
> software?

Malware? What's that?

*wink*

I'll follow up with a longer response later.


> 9)  Despite having an i7 quad-core 3.6 GHz CPU with 32 GB RAM, it
> seems that Windows with all of the constant security updating, etc.,
> tends to make my PC sluggish and I am tired of sifting through
> everything periodically to clear out the cruft and startup junk that
> loads.  I *really* would like to have a snappy OS where everything
> *stays* snappy with minimal effort on my part.

That will be called Linux :-)



-- 
Steve
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