Recommended Linux Distribution

Software
41

That’s the way it worked and works in the oldest active distro, Slackware, but believe me, you want packages from a repository. Among the benefits are:

  • Automated updates from the repository when updated (more secure, bug fixed, etc) versions are available
  • Automatic dependent package resolution and installation
  • Checks that you are using the correct packages for your architecture
  • Checks for clashes with other packages
  • Pre and post package installation scripts for adaptation, migration or other actions
  • Checksums to ensure that the contents have not been damaged
  • Signatures to establish authorship of the package

and others I just take for granted and don’t recall right now.

Also Unix/Linux never needed drive letters, all files are in a single tree by the use of mount points for tying together separate file systems. Even Windows is headed in that direction. Packages install in system directories so the files from the packages cannot be inadvertently modified. Of course you can still have your own libraries and scripts too.

Try it, it really is less work.

PS: Forgot to mention that with repositories you don’t download the packages directly. Instead you register the repository with the software manager on your machine, and then all the packages contained in that repository will show up in searches, and can be installed.

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42

You did not actually state you want to try a Linux distribution, but it seems reasonably safe to assume you’re interested…

A lot of thins are quite different when you compare windows with Linux, and switching is a quite radical step. I got fed up with windows when it showed me the “blue tiles of death” upon startup and I could not find a normal start menu. Them *&^%$#@! trying to force me to adapt to their *&^%$#@! ideas was just too much, so that was an immediate shutdown and was the final drop that made me finally commit completely to Linux.

The differences between Linux and windows are quite big. And as others have said, package management is one of the big differences.
There also are no automatic updates, or if there are (by default in some distributions) you can easily turn them off completely with a few mouse clicks.

The simplest way to try Linux is to go to the websites of one of the Linux distributions, download an image, burn it to an USB stick and boot from it. (Check your bios on how to do that). All (Most?) mayor distributions support live-boot this way these days.

A step further is usually to start an installation program from that live-boot, and then install Linux. It should be able to detect windows, shrink that partition to make room for itself, create a new partition on the empty space and then install itself there as a multi-boot system.

But those are a few if’s, and the combination of an inexperienced linux user together with pretty big consequences if it goes wrong (Everything on the HDD or SSD lost) is not a good combination.

I do not know if you’re short on cash or what sort of hardware you have:

  • “Normal” big box.
  • One of them mini things.
  • Just a laptop.

If you have a “normal big box” and a bit of experience with hardware, then it is pretty easy to open the PC, remove plugs from the disk with windows, add some other SSD or HDD, then boot from the USB stick and install Linux on that other disk. Computer hardware has become so cheap that a USD40 SSD is sufficient to run Linux comfortably. My linux OS resides on a 40GB partition of an SSD, and I have another 3TB HDD for data.

With a “normal big box” this is easy. Most of the PC’s have plenty of SATA ports for some extra SSD’s and HDD’s, and you can just leave the storage device with windows unused in the box (during the experiments).

With “one of them mini things” or a laptop it’s a bit more complicated. There usually is not enough room to add more SSD’s or HDD’s, and if you want to put Linux + Data on the same disk, then some more room is required, depending on how data hungry you are.

Another option is to just buy another PC for Linux. Linux and it’s applications runs perfectly fine on a 5 year old second hand PC, and those start around EUR 200. (Although demand rose and supply may have fallen during corona, so prices may have gone up and availability down) Monitors almost always have multiple video inputs, and then you can switch between your windows pc and linux pc with the buttons on your monitor.

But if you’re just curious. Starting with downloading a linux distribution, putting it on an USB stick and booting from it is quite safe and a quick way to try it out and see if it works with your hardware.

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43

I’ve just successfully compiled latest Kicad 5.99 and the Ngspice-34 on my Slackware-64-current machine.
Frankly, I had some problems with wxGtk and wxPython 3 and 4, but I fixed it all properly.
I do not plan to change my distro for anything mentioned in this thread.

44

Thanks guys for your prominent pieces of information.

I’m afraid, with Windows, I always have the hands in the grease. Do you mean that every time I want to install a new utility I’ll have to recompile the system ? if so, this is a no-go for me.

Excuse me Paul, but I think that there is an error, IMHO it should be: )çà9*&Ѽ^%$#…@!-é ʤ. :slightly_smiling_face:

My first goal is to get rid of this si as soon as possible for two reasons: the lack of security of Seven and then CAD software evolution. And, yes, my intention is to check Linux and definitely abandon µ$. However I need to be cautious because my CNC mill is running under XP and I hope not to have input compatibility issues.

For mobility reasons my computer is portable but as I already said in the monitor thread, It is foreseen to be replaced soon. I’m not too much limited in cash but I wouldn’t like to spend € 5000 on it ! The range begins around € 1200 and there’s room in between for a decent computer.

I 'll first get a fresh version of Mint, burn it on a CD and run it. I barely understand how Linux is organized and working. Experimenting with it will probably be the best way.

By the way, I understood that there are very few updates. How are going Linux developers to keep the OS safe ? I can’t manage to believe that there’s never any security breach !

Regards

45

Yeah, that’s mostly not how Linux works. Many (not all) Linux/UNIX packages have paths baked into them at compile time, so a binary distribution can usually only be installed in one place. (I don’t know if KiCad is like that or not.)

No, all you have to do is type “sudo apt-get install package-name” and in a few minutes (or less, depending on the size of the package) the new package will be ready to use! (“apt-get” is for Debian-based distributions. Fedora uses “yum”, but it’s exactly the same idea.)

Not sure where you heard this. Ubuntu is constantly nagging me to install updates. (And as far as I know, all major distributions are good about updates, up until the end-of-life date.)

Personally I use Ubuntu LTS (currently 20.04 LTS) and my preferred desktop environment is xfce. (Probably the correct way to do this would be to use Xubuntu, although I just installed xfce on regular Ubuntu.) It doesn’t need a very powerful computer. I’m currently using a dual-core AMD machine from over 10 years ago, with three gigs of RAM. (Although I did install an SSD a few years ago, which speeds it up a lot.) I find KiCad to be quite responsive, although I’m only doing simple hobbyist boards with it.

46

There is no error. After long and deliberate thought I have decided to keep it both relatively polite and make it easy for myself. Therefore I’ve standardized on [Shift + 8…1] so it ends with an exclamation mark.

Most PC’s come with software you do not want,but pay for non the less. You can get a partial refund (there have been law suits about this) but it’s a bore to get your right. The only PC’s I bought complete were second hand. I usually pay just the stuff I need.
About a year ago I almost bought parts for a PC myself. Ryzen3600 (Then EUR160, now EUR210) Is already more processor then I’ll need. 8GB ram is also enough but if you buy 16GB (RAM is cheap) then you’ll likely be free from RAM updates for the next 10 years. Total shopping list (Excluding box (I have plenty) and Monitor (that’s a different story) was around EUR850. For me it just won’t make any sense to put more money into a PC.

It’s not the greatest time to buy a PC now. With that virus goin’ round everybody is buying electronic gadgets and chip factories are stressed out. Especially loose video cards are mostly sold out.

For a nice small (but not too quick) PC (if that is your thing) have a look at the Asrock V1000m It’s just over EUR300, does not have software (yet) and it’s embedded Ryzen processor has a passmark rating of 6868 Unfortunately the box is too small for me. Not enough SATA and no room for a 3.5" HDD. It’s a barebone, so you still have to add memory and storage.

What sort of CNC do you run? Some kind of small Chinese Router or a Matsuura? You can always consider of using your W7 box for a few more years if you cut the internet cable.

I’ve built mine around a self flashed uC with GRBL (These days GRBLhal) and I use bCNC on my linux box to control it. I have not even considered mach3 myself. A similar option is “smoothstepper”. Forked long ago from GRBL. It is however more geared towards printers then to CNC milling. Both controllers can be bought for <EUR100 with a uC, and (smallish)stepper drivers already soldered on a PCB. Another option is LinuxCNC. It is more geared towards bigger machines. If you’re interested into LinuxCNC then also seriously consider an FPGA card from Mesa.

Linux has never been very popular for desktop machines. About 2% of desktops run Linux. 99+ % of super compurters run linux, and for the big internet backbones it used to be around 80% but I have not kept track of that for years.

A part of the security in Linux is that there are not many people who write malware for it.
A part of the security in Linux is because Linux users probably have a more technical background.
Partly because most software comes through the chain of trust of the package management.

Partly because there is much less software for Linux to begin with. If I wanted to try for example an audio editor, then for windoze the usual method is to browse the internet, try out some 20 different programs before you find something that works reasonably well. For Linux you just install audacity though your package manager and learn to work with it.

Linux and what it originally mimicked (Unix, (Minix grossly simplified history)) have always been designed from the ground up as a multi user system. Unix machines in universities as far back as the 70ies got hacked, not out of malice,but just for fun and to get some extra CPU time for students, and that is probably were computer security started to get serious. u$ has never taken security seriously. They just do the minimum to keep their helpdesk from getting too man complaints. I think it took them 20+ years before they even implemented something resembling a “root” account (and called it “administrator”). Back then there simply was no security whatsoever on u$ hardware. These day’s, I don’t know. It’s probably similar.

47

That’s right. I meant that if you want something else (installed as one bunch in one location without dispersing the files throughout the file system) you have to compile the application yourself.

The philosophy of Linux distributions is that there are standard locations for each type of files in the file system. The package manager installs the files from the application package. The file system starts from the root directory ‘/’, so files from one application are installed into several directories, for example

  • /usr/bin/
  • /usr/share/
  • /usr/lib/

and each of these directories have files from several applications.

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48

Not really. Linux supports most of the same security features as other modern operating systems, such as ASLR.

If you’re really security conscious, you might feel more comfortable with OpenBSD, but Linux ought to provide at least as much security as Windows.

(Or if you’re security conscious and want to stick with Linux, there’s always QubesOS.)

49

Does not compute. Why do you write:

after I wrote:

That “back then” was referring to an era when windows just started without any login procedure and there were no administrator accounts.

I’ll stick with some reasonably popular Linux distribution, as I can’t manage to put much concious effort into configuring and maintaining an OS.

About PC hardware…
In these weird times where video cards are competing with unobtaneoum. the 4000G series from AMD is particularly interesting. These have pretty good integrated graphics (with the “G” at the end). Probematic is that AMD decided to only sell these chips to OEM’s, and they do not ship a PC without software you don’t want.

50

Not sure where you get that impression. Distros are constantly sending out updates because developers are finding bugs all the time. Maybe because you see new releases of the distro appear only every 6 to 18 months. Those are major releases. In between packages are updated. It was the same in Windows, they sent out incremental updates to the OS. Now it seems that the number will never advance beyond 10 so even if it’s a huge change, they’ll still call it 10.

If by system you mean the kernel of the OS, the kernel is installed and maintained just like any other package. Adding another utility to the system will not require the kernel to be changed.

The system is quite modular. In this respect Linux is no different from other OSes. For example, you do not have to reinstall your web browser just because of the monthly update to the OS in Windows.

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51

Just to mention that there are ways of dealing with this. I think you mean that you have a dedicated computer running XP and that you want to ensure that any data generated for it will still work. Samba is software for Linux (and other OSes) that shares files using Windows protocols so you can just mount the network share from XP. When you get to this point ask again because XP requires enabling now obsoleted insecure file share protocol versions.

If the software used to run under W7 in compatibility mode, then you can run a XP OS using virtualisation on Linux. But I’m guessing that the CNC mill has its dedicated machine.

52

I run Mint Cinnamon. About a month ago I downloaded updates…I hadn’t bothered for about three months. There were 128 of them. Now, 4 weeks later there are 25 waiting for me to download.

With Mint, you have to click an icon to download updates instead of automatic with windows.
That was one of the really annoying features of windows: I always switch the power off at the wall when I have finished for the day/evening with my computer but, far too often, I’d try to close down the computer and up would pop a message…“don’t turn off yet downloading updates”. Ten minutes later …

53

I should also mention here that Linux package updates are far far less obtrusive than Windows updates. You can click Accept and let it go do its thing and it just happens in the background. None of this No No Don’t Turn Off Your Computer, or Wait, I’m Not Finished Updating. Volume of data is also much lower. Every couple of months I fire up the W10 vitual machine I keep handy in case I need it some day and let it update overnight (!) and I find that it’s chewed up gigabytes of download quota.

54

I probably misunderstood something at some point in the conversation. I was assuming “u$” was some sort of abbreviation for UNIX, but maybe I parsed that incorrectly?

In any case, it’s not important.

55

And less likely to need reboots.

56

@ppelleti

I believe “u$” could be translated to “micro-dollars” which could be interpreted as “micro-soft”.

57

Thanks! That changes the meaning completely. For some reason I was just going with “u” for “UNIX.”

58

Yes, I built it from the scratch mostly with materials I had on stock (steel and AU4G plates) + motors, drivers, … bought on eBay. It runs from a custom PC as well (19" Rack with an embedded graphic adapter Mobo) under Mach3 and XP. It is entirely independent and data are exchanged either via my internal LAN or USB sticks. I just anticipated possible issues with the LAN. For the data, as far as I can understand, it shouldn’t cause issues, usually they are text files.

60

Linux is quite good at handling microsoft network stuff. The only thing I expect possible trouble is with configuring the network.
There was a time that Samba had 10% more throughput then windoze own network stack, which they probably fixed after some time.

Almost all the small NAS boxes for windoze networks such as Synology, Netgear, Qnap all run Linux inside as far as I know. (There may be some exceptions, but it would really be an excepton).

Long time ago I bought Edimax BR-6104KP router, just because it runs Linux, and images were available and you could add / modify software and flash new images.

61

Mach3 can run under Win7, 32bit !!! (if you use parallel port). If you have external motion controller, Mach3 will happily purrrrr in Win10.
No virtualization will allow you to run Mach3 as it needs exclusive access to the parallel port (Art Fenerty wrote fantastic driver that resides just above ring 0 of windows kernel).