Is it alright to start installing Ubuntu 14.04 already?

[Liam Proven]

On 6 April 2014 21:54, Lucius Rizzo <Lucius.Rizzo at lucius.xxx> wrote:
> Arch running Linux ck 3.13.9-1 with BFQ enabled by default with btrfs on a SSD
> with VirtIO on Disk and Net is truly awesome...then again so is Arch.
>
> Linux-ck is a package available in the AUR and in the unofficial linux-ck repo
> that allows users to run a kernel/headers setup patched with Con Kolivas' ck1
> patchset, including the Brain Fuck Scheduler (BFS). Many Archers elect to use
> this package for the BFS' excellent desktop interactivity and responsiveness
> under any load situation. Additionally, the bfs imparts performance gains
> beyond interactivity. For example, see: CPU_Schedulers_Compared.pdf.
>
> Ref:    https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Linux-ck
>
> YMMV. Please do not think you are a linux god because you can use more than
> nano to do something and have run some linux variant. Lack of experience does
> not a good opinion make, so lets not start a distro flamewar as well.
>
> BTW - vi or nothing :D

Um. Good for you. I am pleased you've found a system you find nicely responsive.

Me, I just want something simple, low-maintenance and reliable, with a
good polished rich UI, that does what I need. The less work I have to
do to achieve this, the better the OS is, for me.

Yours sounds very high-maintenance indeed and I'm not remotely
interested in going to all that work.

I don't consider myself a Linux god. I am reasonably clueful. I've
been using Ubuntu since it came out in 2004, SuSE for a couple of
years before that, Caldera for a couple of years before that. That
followed a good few years on NT 3.51 and NT 4, which followed Windows
95. I switched to Windows 95 from OS/2 - I was a keen OS/2 user from
2.0 to 2.1 to 3.0. It really was the best 32-bit OS for PCs back then.

Before that, at work, I built, ran and supported servers running SCO
Unix and before that SCO Xenix. My Unix experience goes back to about
1988, which is when I switched over from the VAX/VMS I used at
University.

I have also used IBM AIX and SUN SunOS and Solaris, but not much.

Plus Novell Netware - I was a bit of a guru on Netware 2 and 3 but
wasn't so impressed with Netware 4 and have barely used 5. I wrote a
masterclass on building a small-business server with Red Hat 6 for PC
Pro magazine in the late 1990s. I've also reviewed about 20 or 30
Linux distros over the years, so I feel I know the Linux landscape
well.

I'm also very interested in alternative (non-Unix) OSes, especially
for the PC. BeOS is my personal all-time favourite.

Off PC hardware, I'm also pretty good on Mac OS X and classic Mac OS,
before thzat Acorn RISC OS and Psion EPOC and its successor Symbian,
and have some knowledge of AmigaOS, Atari GEM (I was peripherally
involved in the GPL FOSS FreeGEM project to revive PC GEM; my name's
in the credits of FreeDOS, to my startlement.)

I was definitely an MS-DOS guru back in the late 1980s/early 1990s and
supported all the major networking systems - 3Com 3+Share, 3+Open, DEC
Pathworks, AppleShare, Sage MainLAN, Personal Netware, Netware Lite,
NT Server from the very first version, etc.

So I guess you could say that my knowledge is broad but in places
shallow, rather than very deep in any one area, such as Linux. :-)

But I feel really sorry for you if you think that /any/ Linux system
is genuinely fast and responsive. It's not. It's a huge lumbering
sloth of an OS. You really need to try BeOS, or failing that Haiku, if
you want to experience what a fast responsive OS on PC hardware feels
like.

Sadly, there just weren't the apps for it, and no VMs in those days.

And for something vastly more responsive than Haiku, try Acorn's RISC
OS. It's the original OS for the ARM chip that these days struggles to
run bloated leviathans like Apple iOS and Android. RISC OS is the
single most responsive system I've ever used, because the entire core
OS - kernel, GUI, main accessory apps - fits into about 6MB of Flash
ROM.

No, that's not a typo. Six megabytes. Complete Internet-capable
multitasking GUI OS with network clients etc.

It runs on the Raspberry Pi and RISC OS itself is now shared-source
freeware so you can download it from Risc OS Open Ltd. for nothing and
run it on a £25 computer - on which it performs very very well, many
tens of times faster than a lightweight cut-down Linux such as
Raspbian.

So, no, not a Linux god, but, you know, not a n00b either.

Try some of these OSes. Prepare to be surprised. You might enjoy the experience.

Most of them have nice friendly GUI text editors, too, way friendlier
than Vi /or/ Emacs. ;-D

-- 
Liam Proven * Profile: http://lproven.livejournal.com/profile
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