[OT] Granny-friendly Linux Distros?

[H. S. Teoh]

On Wed, May 08, 2019 at 02:20:23PM -0400, Nick Sabalausky (Abscissa) via Digitalmars-d wrote:
[...]
> It's a shame, really. I actually used to be really huge on Windows. XP
> was really quite good in its day for the most part (once you disabled
> big blue playskool mode).

I was never a fan of Windows, ever since the 3.1 days. Stuck with DOS
until it was obvious it's a dead-end, then at the prompting of a friend
jumped ship to Linux.  Never looked back since.  But, to each his own.


> The Linux of the same period was quite a pain, as this was before
> things like apt and automatic package dependency management.

Man, that brings back the memories.  I remember my first Linux install.
Too big to download all at once over dialup, so I had to use good ole
SneakerNet to transfer package files from my uni's fat WAN pipe on
3.5-inch floppies to my home PC.  And woe betide when I was missing a
dependency -- there was no apt, I had to visit each package's page on
debian.org, and manually write down each recursive dependency, then
solve the knapsack problem to decide which package to put on which
floppy in order to minimize roundtrips on SneakerNet. :-D

Not to mention, installation of the OS was *completely* manual.  You had
to partition your drive manually to the right sizes and types using a
manual partition tool, then run the bare-bones installer that basically
installed just enough for the kernel to boot into bash.  You had to
download all other packages manually, and everything had to be
configured by editing files in /etc.  Which meant you had to read docs,
lots and lots of docs and manpages, 'cos screwing it up as root often
meant you had to restart the process ALL OVER AGAIN. :-D  And that's
assuming docs were even available.  If not, you had to read scripts in
/etc and deduce the right incantations to invoke.


> And, maybe it was just me, but X would constantly just suddenly decide
> on a whim it didn't want to boot anymore until being reinstalled.

It's not just you.  In the early days X had to be manually installed and
configured, which meant hours reading monitor manuals, video card specs,
dual-booting into Windows to "cheat" by looking at the settings, then
translate all of that into X Klingon-speak aka X11.conf and hope you
didn't screw up an important parameter, 'cos hardware in those days did
not have many safety mechanisms built in, and X can fry your monitor if
you gave it the wrong frequency settings.  Or more commonly, it would
"sorta" work but then worked unreliably, or randomly decides to fail, or
just barf for no discernible reason whatsoever.

Even to this day, I dread upgrading the X server, because the last time
I did that (sometime earlier this year) it started causing GPU lockups.
The worst part of this is that I usually don't restart X (since I'm *on*
it) while upgrading, and I'd also often upgrade from a remote session,
so the currently-running X server is an older version that still works,
but the version on disk no longer does, but there's no indication of any
problem. Months later I reboot... and discover that X has crashed my
GPU, again. Then it's a painstaking task of digging into the Debian
archive for earlier versions of X (along with their complex
dependencies) and downgrading by hand.

That's why nowadays the first thing I do after installing X is to
disable starting X during bootup.  I just can't trust it anymore not to
randomly break upon upgrading.  It's almost as unreliable as Windows
sometimes, and it's an embarrassment.

Of course, recent versions of X have alleviated a lot of the earlier
pains -- nowadays you don't have to deal with X config files anymore
except in special circumstances: most hardware is auto-detected and
auto-configured, and for the most part the default settings Just
Work(tm). Still, on my older hardware it can still be temperamental
sometimes.  Once it works, it works very well, for the most part -- and
can last for months, even years, without rebooting.  Can't say the same
for Windows, not by a long stretch.  But upgrades can sometimes
introduce random breakage.


> I'm SO glad Linux has improved as much as it has since then.

It's been good and bad.  The installation process is much saner now, for
one thing.  And (mostly-)configurationless X is a *huge* improvement
over the early days.  But there are still bogonities in some places.
Pretty minor ones, though, compared to what I experienced of Windows.
And all fixable with a bit of delving under the hood and bashing(!) out
some scripts. :-D  So I continue to be a happy camper here, and have
little inclination to touch Windows (except when the wife calls "tech
support" :-P).

The best part about Linux is that I can configure the heck out of it
until it resembles nothing like what a default installation would give
you, and things will still Just Work(tm).  Tried that with Windows once,
and man... you wouldn't believe how many things stop working as soon as
you change a minor option, like lazy mouse focus.  The option is *there*
but nobody uses it, nobody supports it, and random programs randomly
fail to work or start exhibiting pathological behaviour. You end up in
the middle of Unsupported Territory, and there be dragons there. Good
luck should you dare to venture in.  I backed off and sailed back to
Linux-land the very next day.  Never again, I say!


T

-- 
Too many people have open minds but closed eyes.