For a start, I'll need to get months of treatment if I'm to recover from my exposure to the Trisquel folks. It's no exaggeration to say that they might well consider Richard M. Stallman insufficiently pure ideologically.
Perhaps it comes from guilt; they acknowledge that without Canonical a/k/a Ubuntu they could not exist. It's a little like Judge Roy Bean's comment on reformed prostitutes, indeed, reformed anything. One referred to Debian as a "fallen gold standard," and I pointed out that gold is actually up $52 today, but I doubt that changed any minds. It's too bad. A simply de-Canonicaled Ubuntu would be a good thing.
Which leaves Debian. If I weren't bone lazy I would have adopted it instead of Ubuntu many years ago. Thanks to everyone here for the many useful tips in that regard, and other regards, though I think it's pretty clear that Debian is the answer. It's rye whisky, while most other distros are umbrella drinks.
I have one question (well, many, but this one just surprised me): of the many ISOs in the TDE repository, there isn't a Debian one. Is there some reason for this or simply nobody to make one?
Like any good former OS/2 user, as a matter of reflex I have /home on its own partition, pictures on their own partition and drive, and so on. I'll probably further back up /home on an empty partition of another drive as well. (Having mentioned OS/2, let me once again whine about it having been wise from the get-go to segregate applications in their own directories, as opposed to intermingling them with everything else.)
Anyway, having asked and been advised, I thought it right to let everybody know where I am ending up. -- dep
Pictures: http://www.ipernity.com/doc/depscribe/album Column: https://ofb.biz/author/dep/
On Monday 13 March 2023 14:00:41 dep via tde-users wrote:
For a start, I'll need to get months of treatment if I'm to recover from my exposure to the Trisquel folks. It's no exaggeration to say that they might well consider Richard M. Stallman insufficiently pure ideologically.
It has been years since I tried out Trisquel, so I didn't realize that they had become such ideologues.
You might consider giving antiX (especially) a try. There is another person on this list who is a big fan of MX Linux and its relative antiX. I tried them both, a little, and prefer antiX of the two, mainly because there is (or was) a TDE version out there. (Don't know if it's current, but there used to be one somewhere.) Anyway, that might solve your immediate problem quicker than trying to learn Debian/Devuan from scratch. Everything is already packaged together.
My reasons for not going that way are two:
First, that I had already got into Debian (and was soon to be moving on to Devuan), so I didn't see any reason to change to antiX when I already was liking Debian/Devuan, once I had cracked the nut and figured out how to get it installed.
Second (my only real complaint), antiX changed permissions in my home folder, as a sort of default behavior during installation. (Permissions were changed to something like myself [owner] and some other name [group] throughout my entire home folder.) I don't know what that was about; it could be that antiX is correct, and I've been doing it wrong all these years. But anyway, I didn't care for that.
Also, back then I was running a desktop with four internal hard drives, and I found that antiX could not configure these during the installation process, but they got treated like unrecognized external hard drives. Again, there was probably an easy enough workaround, but it didn't suit my needs at that time.
As for operation, antiX was very fast, didn't seem to be cluttered with unnecessary crap, and had all the basic stuff one would need. Still, for myself, now that I had got into Debian/Devuan, I didn't see the need to give antiX more of a chance when I already had what I wanted.
For myself, though, I consider MX Linux and antiX to be real Debian (or actually, maybe, Devuan, since no systemd there). If I didn't make myself clear earlier (because Michael hadn't commented yet), those are also good distros,
The 'Buntus I don't consider to be real Debian at all. As for being Debian-based, I would say that there is an hereditary relationship there, but it doesn't mean much in practical terms. Likewise, our bodies contain stardust, yet I am not a star.
As for personal preferences, well, don't mistake those for fundamental considerations. There are some other Debian/Devuan forks out there that are real, and true to the original Debian code, but I don't have any current information about new developments; I just hear snips of gossip online.
Debian, Devuan, MX Linux, antiX: I'm pretty sure that one of those will get you up and running without too much suffering.
Bill
said William Morder via tde-users:
| You might consider giving antiX (especially) a try. There is another | person on this list who is a big fan of MX Linux and its relative antiX. | I tried them both, a little, and prefer antiX of the two, mainly because | there is (or was) a TDE version out there. (Don't know if it's current, | but there used to be one somewhere.) Anyway, that might solve your | immediate problem quicker than trying to learn Debian/Devuan from | scratch. Everything is already packaged together.
Thanks but nah, the argument for Debian is and always has been that Debian *is* Linux. I've seen lots of distros come and go, always a flavor of he month. Debian has been around for 30 years. I'll surely have to confound some of its decisions; that's why God in His wisdom deputized Miguel to make mc. (I've spent much of the afternoon confounding Canonical things on this machine, which has been fun; it would have been more fun if there were a way to redeploy their spyware to send them false information, even as I wish there were phone apps to flood Apple and Google and their minions with phony data, such as moving me 500 miles every 30 seconds or so.) I expect it to take, probably, a couple of very miserable weeks, but then it will be done. Making things worse is the alredy very unhappy fact that my Debian guru, who advised me about Linux since before I ever installed Linux, got the bug last spring and lasted three days. You can't imagine how many times I've reached for the phone and then said, "oh, yeah . . ." (He was the test kitchen for the Que book I wrote about KDE-1.x)
Nope. Gotta be Debian. Gotta land a taildragger sometime. -- dep
Pictures: http://www.ipernity.com/doc/depscribe/album Column: https://ofb.biz/author/dep/
On 3/13/23 3:21 PM, dep via tde-users wrote:
said William Morder via tde-users: | You might consider giving antiX (especially) a try. There is another | person on this list who is a big fan of MX Linux and its relative antiX.
Thanks but nah, the argument for Debian is and always has been that Debian *is* Linux.
I still have a list, last updated 2014, of things I had to do to get an Exe or (pure) Debian system configured after install: Video, network, wifi, touchpad, genuine Firefox/Thunderbird, multimedia, etc, etc. It's 91 lines long.
Here's my list for MX, which as I said before is straight Debian as far as how it works, but has some neat tools that make some things a lot easier:
1. Install from the ISO. 2. Install TDE. 3. Tweak a few things here & there. 4. Start using it.
Oversimplified just a tiny bit, but really not very much. Point is, if you want to take a lot of time to get really good at under-the-hood Debian stuff, by all means go for it. But if you just want a solid, working Debian-based system with a minimum of time and hassle, save yourself the time and aggravation and use MX.
Dang it, did it again, sent this to the person instead of the list! :-/
On 3/13/23 3:47 PM, Dan Youngquist wrote:
On 3/13/23 3:21 PM, dep via tde-users wrote:
said William Morder via tde-users: | You might consider giving antiX (especially) a try. There is another | person on this list who is a big fan of MX Linux and its relative antiX.
Thanks but nah, the argument for Debian is and always has been that Debian *is* Linux.
I still have a list, last updated 2014, of things I had to do to get an Exe or (pure) Debian system configured after install: Video, network, wifi, touchpad, genuine Firefox/Thunderbird, multimedia, etc, etc. It's 91 lines long.
Here's my list for MX, which as I said before is straight Debian as far as how it works, but has some neat tools that make some things a lot easier:
- Install from the ISO.
- Install TDE.
- Tweak a few things here & there.
- Start using it.
Oversimplified just a tiny bit, but really not very much. Point is, if you want to take a lot of time to get really good at under-the-hood Debian stuff, by all means go for it. But if you just want a solid, working Debian-based system with a minimum of time and hassle, save yourself the time and aggravation and use MX.
Dan Youngquist composed on 2023-03-13 15:47 (UTC-0700):
MX, which as I said before is straight Debian as far as how it works... But if you just want a solid, working Debian-based system with a minimum of time and hassle, save yourself the time and aggravation and use MX.
AntiX turned me off of MX. Does MX use the same interpretation of /usr/local/ as AntiX? If it does, it's definitely not straight Debian, and why I only installed AntiX once. My /user/local/s are on separate filesystems heavily used by me, not compatible with the AntiX way.
On 3/13/23 6:31 PM, Felix Miata via tde-users wrote:
AntiX turned me off of MX. Does MX use the same interpretation of /usr/local/ as AntiX? If it does, it's definitely not straight Debian, and why I only installed AntiX once. My /user/local/s are on separate filesystems heavily used by me, not compatible with the AntiX way.
I have no idea. It doesn't matter for anything I do, and I've never had a reason to notice. MX is straight Debian in every way relevant to my usage. I expect that's the case for most users who don't have some kind of special requirement.
On Mon, 13 Mar 2023 22:21:01 +0000 dep via tde-users users@trinitydesktop.org wrote:
Thanks but nah, the argument for Debian is and always has been that Debian *is* Linux. I've seen lots of distros come and go, always a flavor of he month. Debian has been around for 30 years.
As a Gentoo user with no horse in this race, I've been watching from the sidelines until now, but this made me wince. Slackware is the oldest continuously extant distro (a couple of months older than Debian) and even the younger distro family roots—RHEL, Arch, and Gentoo—are more than 20 years old now.
If we can say of any distro that it *is* Linux, I'd vote for Linux From Scratch, since it has the fewest distro-specific additions.
Debian is the root distro of what's currently the largest and most popular family of distros (excluding ChromeOS and Android), and while I admit that that's an achievement in its own right, that doesn't mean that it *is* Linux.
E. Liddell
said E. Liddell via tde-users:
| Debian is the root distro of what's currently the largest and most | popular family of distros (excluding ChromeOS and Android), and while I | admit that that's an achievement in its own right, that doesn't mean | that it *is* Linux.
I meant no offense, rather that distros come and go but Debian chugs along, neither the most bleeding edge nor Troglodyte Linux, its package format having withstood the test of time, no trick package systems designed only to gain commercial advantage. Many distributions have come and gone or become highly specialized. Debian is always there, always reliable, and you can get it now secure in the belief that in 10 or 20 years it won't have turned into something else. Look at what has happened to the other big distros of 20 years ago: Red Hat got infected by IBM; Caldera employed the Jim Jones/Jonestown model in an effort to bring about the suicide of all unices, but succeeded only in killing itself (I was not sad last week to see that the reprehensible Darl McBride has filed for personal bankruptcy); SuSE got sold and now basically does a server distro for businesses. Slack still exists, but that's about all you can say about it.
Admittedly, Debian resembles a potato that has been in the bin under the sink for too long, and it has sprouted in every direction. But those things are just sprouts and without the potato itself they'd quickly die.
Now, when I think of Linux I have to think of Debian, because despite the many come-and-go distributions that we hear of once but never again, it is the usable constant. -- dep
Pictures: http://www.ipernity.com/doc/depscribe/album Column: https://ofb.biz/author/dep/
On Monday 13 March 2023 22.56:20 William Morder via tde-users wrote:
You might consider giving antiX (especially) a try. There is another person on this list who is a big fan of MX Linux and its relative antiX.
I run Debian on my desktops and MX Linux on my Laptops.
Some MX tools don't works well with TDE (their update tool for example) but I setup a second user with their original desktop (xfce) for this purpose.
One thing I like on the laptop is that I can install Gnome wireless display from as a flatpak and it actually works (something I did not get to work on pure Debians).
So yes, I'd say it's worth testing (and they have a live ISO too). At work I am actually running MX on a stick, booting from a Mac Mini (that's what we have) and even brought Windows users to use Linux!
For the moment, their more or less "rolling distribution" model seems to work well.
Thierry
On 3/13/23 3:59 PM, Thierry de Coulon via tde-users wrote:
Some MX tools don't works well with TDE (their update tool for example) but I setup a second user with their original desktop (xfce) for this purpose.
The MX update tool works fine on TDE, if you use lightdm instead of tdm. I haven't taken the time to figure out exactly why. I haven't found any other MX tools that have any problem with TDE.
On Monday 13 March 2023 06:06:09 pm Dan Youngquist via tde-users wrote:
On 3/13/23 3:59 PM, Thierry de Coulon via tde-users wrote:
Some MX tools don't works well with TDE (their update tool for example) but I setup a second user with their original desktop (xfce) for this purpose.
The MX update tool works fine on TDE, if you use lightdm instead of tdm. I haven't taken the time to figure out exactly why. I haven't found any other MX tools that have any problem with TDE.
Ah, that's good to know. One of the MX dev's and I had made a workaround for that, but just using lightdm would be vastly easier!
Thanks, Michael
said Thierry de Coulon via tde-users:
| Some MX tools don't works well with TDE (their update tool for example) | but I setup a second user with their original desktop (xfce) for this | purpose.
I'd use Synaptic in any event. Useful utility to track down what's available, dependencies, and so on. Haven't found anything that comes close. Also very good for editing lines for sources.list. -- dep
Pictures: http://www.ipernity.com/doc/depscribe/album Column: https://ofb.biz/author/dep/
On Mon, 13 Mar 2023, dep via tde-users wrote:
I have one question (well, many, but this one just surprised me): of the many ISOs in the TDE repository, there isn't a Debian one. Is there some reason for this or simply nobody to make one?
This!! I've have been dragging along my OLD, highly adapted for me, version of Ubuntu -- now on ESM 'life support' -- for quite some time now.
I seem to always have frustratingly bad experiences in updating my systems -- ergo the ESM state of affairs. I would LOVE to see a Debian+TDE ISO. It would definitely get me moving along.
Over time I've lost my infatuation with Ubuntu for to several reasons. Many of those reasons have been mentioned here (, but no one has yet brought up the apt/snap/flatpack chaos...)
Like any good former OS/2 user, ...
Another former OS/2 user here, too. Jonesy
said Marvin Jones via tde-users:
| Another former OS/2 user here, too.
OS/2 to Linux, to TDE. If we didn't know better, we might think we're contrarians! -- dep
Pictures: http://www.ipernity.com/doc/depscribe/album Column: https://ofb.biz/author/dep/
dep composed on 2023-03-13 22:22 (UTC):
said Marvin Jones:
| Another former OS/2 user here, too.
OS/2 to Linux, to TDE. If we didn't know better, we might think we're contrarians!
I've never quit having Warp 4 up 24/7, though basically only for running DOS since I switched primaries from it to KDE3 on SUSE. OS/2's name has had multiple changes, first to Warp 3, then 4, then MCP, then eComStation, now ArcaOS[1]. The M$ bait never got more than an occasional dabble here, primarily for comparing the Internet Exploder way of doing things to the rest of web world. There's no benefit in leaving behind what gets the jobs done. :) Long live [K,T]DE[3]!
[1] https://www.arcanoae.com/arcaos/
On Mon, 13 Mar 2023, dep via tde-users wrote:
said Marvin Jones via tde-users:
| Another former OS/2 user here, too.
OS/2 to Linux, to TDE. If we didn't know better, we might think we're contrarians! -- dep
Oh, I am a contrarian!! Never went beyond Win 3.1. Went to OS/2 2.0 from there and gave it up with OS/2 Warp 4 when IBM gave it up. A fresh (re)start with Red Hat Linux 6.2 in 2000 launched me into my current state of affairs.
Jonesy
said Marvin Jones via tde-users:
| Oh, I am a contrarian!! Never went beyond Win 3.1. Went to OS/2 2.0 | from there and gave it up with OS/2 Warp 4 when IBM gave it up. | A fresh (re)start with Red Hat Linux 6.2 in 2000 launched me into my | current state of affairs.
Started with OS/2 in the pre-2.0 days via their support forum on (of all things) Prodigy. In due course we got kicked off of Prodigy (which soon collapsed, though maybe there was no connection) and we did GEnie, Delphi, and finally a mailing list that kept going until a year or two ago. Still in touch with some of those folks.
And still cranky that James P. Lennane, the publisher of the DeScribe Word Processor, never turned loose the code for a Linux version. (I've run the Windows version in a virtual machine; WINE, last time I tried it, was about as useful as Windows, running Solitaire perfectly but nothing else.) Lennane was a little nuts -- he actually ran for president in, I think, 1996. I do not believe he won. -- dep
Pictures: http://www.ipernity.com/doc/depscribe/album Column: https://ofb.biz/author/dep/
Anno domini 16:14:53 Mon, 13 Mar 2023 -0600 (MDT) Marvin Jones via tde-users scripsit:
On Mon, 13 Mar 2023, dep via tde-users wrote:
I have one question (well, many, but this one just surprised me): of the many ISOs in the TDE repository, there isn't a Debian one. Is there some reason for this or simply nobody to make one?
This!! I've have been dragging along my OLD, highly adapted for me, version of Ubuntu -- now on ESM 'life support' -- for quite some time now.
I seem to always have frustratingly bad experiences in updating my systems -- ergo the ESM state of affairs. I would LOVE to see a Debian+TDE ISO. It would definitely get me moving along.
you know exegnulinux?
Over time I've lost my infatuation with Ubuntu for to several reasons. Many of those reasons have been mentioned here (, but no one has yet brought up the apt/snap/flatpack chaos...)
Like any good former OS/2 user, ...
Another former OS/2 user here, too. Jonesy
-- Please do not email me anything that you are not comfortable also sharing with the NSA, CIA ...
On Mon, 13 Mar 2023, Dr. Nikolaus Klepp via tde-users wrote:
Marvin Jones via tde-users scripsit:
[I think I got the attributions right...]
I seem to always have frustratingly bad experiences in updating my systems -- ergo the ESM state of affairs. I would LOVE to see a Debian+TDE ISO. It would definitely get me moving along.
you know exegnulinux?
No. And I'm not really interested in chasing yaa-daa-yaa-daa distros all over the Linux prairie. I'll focus on moving (up) to Debian next. I'm sure there's a VAST WORLD of information on Debian out there to be discovered and learned via the search engines. That'll be comforting.
Jonesy
-
Dan Youngquist -
dep -
Dr. Nikolaus Klepp -
E. Liddell -
Felix Miata -
Marvin Jones -
Michael -
Thierry de Coulon -
William Morder