help me choose a configuration

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OSXrefugee
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Joined: 07/18/2015

I'd like some input and overview from those who know the state of GNU/Linux better than me.

This is a long explanation, but I think it is probably needed if I am to get genuinely useful advice.

As my username suggests, I am a long time Mac user (since 1988). Whilst I've always supported free software principles in principle, I have never found a free or even mostly free system that works for what I do. This may be partly because I am a musician and need good specialised software for that. (and no the free software definitely isn't there yet, although it has reached an exciting stage of being usable for some tasks or some users)

Realistically I won't be entirely stopping using my Macs in the next couple of years, but as Apple's attitude towards their users has become steadily more unacceptable over the last decade my motivation to find alternatives has increased. Previous attempts have always been thwarted by brokenness and unusabilty. It really doesn't matter how "free" it is, if it doesn't work with an acceptable level of maintenance.

My current strategy is to turn my OSX machines into offline music / graphics workstations, (and turn off many of apple's spyware processes) and move all my normal computer things that everyone does like email and browsing onto a free (or at least free-er) system.

Once I have my daily communications on a GNU/linux system I like, I will look more into how far it can replace osx for music too.

I am not absolutely limiting myself to entirely free systems as Trisquel does. Just getting off osx at all will be a huge improvement, and I won't risk that for absolute purity - nevertheless I'd prefer to avoid any system that is even hinting at the sort of user manipulation practised by apple, and that's why I'm looking here first.

Here's my wish list:

- Stable and responsive. Freezes, and any sort of gui unresponsiveness drives me nuts really fast.

- simple but powerful traditional desktop with good system monitors and control over the machine. I'm considering MATE and Gnome fallback, and maybe XFCE. lxde is too limited, and unity and all the other shiny design disasters are just stupid, if I wanted that i'd stay with apple.

- Decent repos with a known set of tools that work together.

- GUI tools that work. I'm not averse to the terminal, but I'm not maintaining computers all day every day and I will forget the commands and have to look them up and a GUI is faster, but only if it works, if it fails and I have to look it up anyway and then fix the GUI as well then i'll be forced back to osx.

- good file manager that allows me to find and copy system files from the GUI.

- control over network traffic and application /processes, from a GUI, with visual feedback. A per app firewall.

On OSX we have little snitch, TCP block, handsoff, launchcontrol- GUI apps that are far from perfect and mostly not free but give me quite a bit of control over the security of the machine. I'm looking for software that does this stuff in a way I can control without spending weeks learning the details of configuration file syntax for commandline programs that turn out not to do what I thought anyway. I know that apparmour and other processes do some of this stuff, but haven't yet found a fast way of configuring it with feedback as I go.

So far I have tried Mint/MATE, Trisquel mini, Trisquel standard (briefly), lubuntu, xubuntu (and others in the past). I've also tried adding MATE and XFCE to my Trisquel mini install but haven't got them working very well yet.

So specific questions:

* MATE or Gnome Fallback/Flashback? Why? Can XFCE compete? where does it fall short?

* Are there any issues with MATE on Trisquel? is it hard to optimise? so far there seems to be a problem with the applet that shows network connections, which is rather important!

* How different is Mint/MATE to Trisquel with MATE instead of Gnome? (unfree kernel, impure approach to repos, sure, what else?)

* I really feel that a user should be able to administer the system mostly from GUI based tools, starting with the file manager. I would however rather use the terminal than some tacked on GUI that has few options, no feedback, and fails silently the moment anything is a tiny bit unexpected, and that has been most of my experience with GNU guis so far...so I'd appreciate any guidance on where the gui tools work well, and where I should just bite the bullet and make up a file of relevant terminal commands for future reference.

I think that's more than enough for now... my further ideas and questions are separate enough to be in a different topic .

thanks for reading this far!

Magic Banana

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Joined: 07/24/2010

Just install Trisquel in its GNOME (Flashback) edition. It has many graphical utilities. You can then install MATE as an alternative desktop: https://trisquel.info/en/wiki/installing-mate

Compared to Mint, Trisquel gives you freedom. As long as you stick to Trisquel's repository (and add-on site for the Web browser), you need not to worry about installing non-free software. Everything is free (otherwise it is considered a critical bug). Notice in particular that Trisquel uses Linux-libre, a blob-free kernel. Mint does not.

OSXrefugee
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Joined: 07/18/2015

I'd already tried installing MATE with my trisquel mini install and although it basically worked I suspect there may be a few conflicts.

Theres also the issue of clutter with multiple desktop environments as each installs its own version of essential uitilities. Is there a way to manage/avoid/hide/compartmentalise that?

I do very much appreciate the freedom issues. However free software is only one axis in all the possible sorts of freedom it is possible fo a person to have. The freedom to get on with ones work (which is not maintaining a computer) is also a very important one. If ones work is in computing then those things are likely in alignment, if not then they can become misaligned by software that is not free providing the user with types of freedom that the free software does not (yet).

Although other freedoms should not in principle be at odds with free software, in some practical situations they can be. There are yet other axes of freedom to consider, and I had thought about writing something up about it but it seems a bit out of scope for this enquiry.

OSXrefugee
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Joined: 07/18/2015

what are you referring to here?

"add-on site for the Web browser"

cooloutac
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Joined: 06/27/2015

XFCE is a lightweight desktop, that is not really lightweight. But you can install it if you want. LXDE is truly lightweight and meant for older hardware and tablets.

I would recommend you install the standard ISO with Gnome-fallback for your system. If you really want mate you can install it, many trisquel users use mate. Trisquel doesn't stop you from installing another desktop.

Trisquel has its own browser called abrowser based on firefox, and it also has the firefox add ons it deems free in its own "add-on site" when you search for addons within the browser.(which most add ons are) But you can install w/e addon you want from their website. Again trisquel is not stopping you from installing any firefox addon.

Trisquel is about using free software. It doesn't stop you from installing non free software, but they won't be in their own official repositories, because it defeats the purpose of using Trisquel in the first place.

pizzaiolo
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Joined: 03/12/2015

Welcome to the free world! If you have older macbooks (2006-2007), please note that you can free your BIOS as well: http://libreboot.org/

OSXrefugee
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Joined: 07/18/2015

good point pizziolo, yes we do have one of those in the house and I am aware of the possibility.

trisquel standard install is very non functional once installed on my acer 5750. overheats and intermittently slow response.

i actually had this with mini as well and it was fixed after the updates I think.. this time the updates don't seem to be fixing it though

cooloutac
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Joined: 06/27/2015

bizarre.....have you tried to update the kernel?

https://trisquel.info/en/wiki/update-linux-libre-kernel

OSXrefugee
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Joined: 07/18/2015

i don't understand what do to with the "little bash function" bit

i am running the first apt-get bit

when it overheats it looks like one processor is pegged at 100% and it alternates which one at about 1 sec intervals, but maybe this is an artifact of the sampling frequency

typing this in abrowser as icecat seems to cause the cpu craziness

OSXrefugee
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Joined: 07/18/2015

OK, i think i updated the kernel OK. It fixed my back light but i still have crazy cpu use.

cooloutac
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Joined: 06/27/2015

what is using cpu?

OSXrefugee
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Joined: 07/18/2015

* can't find the app that tracks processes so can't tell what is using cpu. i installed but can't rememeber what it is called and can't find it in the menus

* after kernel upgrade and sudo apt-get upgrade-distro (or whatever the correct syntax is (edit it is dist-upgrade)) it now only does crazy cpu in response to some things, weirdly icecat triggers it but abrowser does not.

* can someone please explain the "little bash function" on the kernel upgrade page?

* there seems to be a grub problem, I have a grub menu on every reboot

EDIT weirdly accessing the trisquel website including this forum is the worst culprit, but only in icecat. icecat is fine on other websites. this website is fine in Abrowser.

overall cpu use seems high ie 10% when i'm only doing very light tasks, but there's a specific overload situation that pegs one processor to 100% that seems triggered by certain processes, now i have to find that activity monitor/process manager app...

Mzee
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Joined: 07/10/2013

If you type "top" in a terminal you'll see what causes this high CPU load. For me this reads a lot like this bug: https://trisquel.info/en/issues/8183

Magic Banana

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I am a translator!

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Joined: 07/24/2010

* can't find the app that tracks processes so can't tell what is using cpu.

I do not know if Trisquel Mini has such a graphical application by default. But you can install that of the regular edition: "GNOME System Monitor". You can install it from "Add/remove applications" (for instance).

cooloutac
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Joined: 06/27/2015

use one of the other options. the stacks option, or the jxself repo option. I thought you said you updated the kernel already??

OSXrefugee
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Joined: 07/18/2015

i fixed grub - boot-pc was not installed only boot-pc bin

??

anyway icecat is still a problem but so far other things are working ok.

it shouldn't be this difficult

cooloutac
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Joined: 06/27/2015

huh? you sound pretty advanced...lol

BugRep
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Joined: 04/05/2012

IceCat has LibreJS add-on installed. It can sometimes be a resource hog, especially on slower systems.

Now that I checked it with trisquel.info, it seems to require 40+ seconds on modern hardware. But with LibreJS disabled the website loads quite fast.

OSXrefugee
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Joined: 07/18/2015

Icecat was working fine on my system in Trisquel mini, and I think in Mint too. this is not being a resource hog this is pegging one cpu to max in a broken sort of way.

OSXrefugee
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Joined: 07/18/2015

both top and system monitor show the icecat process using 100% when i try to visit this website.

abrowser is fine.

incidentally when i remove and reinstall icecat it has all my old bookmarks and prefs, presumably it is getting them from abrowser, is it supposed to share users in this way? It would be more useful if they were separate.

cooloutac
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Joined: 06/27/2015

when you remove icecat, it might not remove the profile folder in your home user directory.

OSXrefugee
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Joined: 07/18/2015

when removing icecat i selected complete removal and assumed that removed the profile too, but I should check. I removed it manually but it doesn't seem to be involved in the cpu use issue.

cooloutac
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Joined: 06/27/2015

I would recommend abrowser.

moxalt
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Joined: 06/19/2015

Seconded. Just use Abrowser if you want less hassle.

PS. To completely remove a package (binaries and config files) type apt-get
purge .

OSXrefugee
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Joined: 07/18/2015

thanks! i was wondering what the command for that was.