by osiris » Nov 22nd, '18, 21:44
I currently run the latest Mageia 6.1. Its S.u.S.E. geneaology shines through although in simpler form. But it is the same old linux underneath. And using 'Root' is NOT verboten like it is in 'Ubuntu' the gnome disciple of single allowable deskbots with only one wallpaper that THEY pick.l This is really nice when the use of 'su' or 'sudo' runs into problems such as having to run some other application that will not run as 'su' AND which you need some bit of info or whatever to plug back into the first application. The old school ways of running system config programs separate from desktop config programs can still be made use of albeit a bit hidden unless you know where to look. Nice to know that keeping them ALL honest is the use of your own scripts and the use of the text console windows to access the underlying linux keywords, commands,etc. and changing some of the plumbing the bruteforce way by getting into the works as root. Yeah, you might have to re-install, re-work, sometimes, but if I have learned anything all these years is that NO one is going to really help you in many cases. One....because all of us are in the same kettle, and another because much of this industry is 'secretive' and does NOT want to help you. Whether it is because some stand to gain by withholding and then selling you what you need at a high price, or they want to sell other stuff for a high price to others and fear that you will tell them howto on social media. I am thinking of the original MFM hard drive controller cards that had numerous undocumented jumpers.... and there was never any help for finding the right combination except trial and error and personal documentation. It was not a choice 'not' to do it. When you bought your own motherboard, case, power supply, keyboard, drives, etc........... YOU BECAME YOUR OWN ENGINEER. You had to live with whatever kettle of fish you cooked up. In so doing I ran into a LOT of 'also rans' of the computer industry. In so doing, and surviving adding to a PCjr system....you ain't LIVED until you survive and thrive on that one to build a 'pooter for your son, I went thru, DOSs 2,3,4,5,6 and all its bastard kids. Learned DOS commands backwards and forwards in both Apple and IBM and cloneware and all that followed. Debian 2 was my first linux distro. That old prof that said that even a chicken could install it. Just...peck....peck...peck...
I first got into this distro when it was called 'Mandrake Linux' from Mandrakesoft.... back in the 1980's. Still have Mandriva 10...in the box no less. That was also the days when SuSE had KDE and a cute little dragon that symbolized it. Sort of a mascot. That was before the dark days of 'plasma', the blob that ate the usability and totally wiped out the good looks of the old KDE. You CAN still get KDE4, the last edition of it before 'Sauron' Plasma ate it and it went over to the dark side. KDE now does not allow you to have more than one virtual desktop except with difficulty, but none of them can have their own wallpaper, chosen by the user from his own choice of sources from freely available .jpg artwork. And all of KDE's widgets are cartoonish. In fact, ALL of KDE is cartoonish of the 3year old mentality cartoonish. Such is NOT the fault of the distro, any distro. KDE's cute little dragon is also gone.....probably went away and hid his face in shame at what his windowmanager had become.
All is not gone, there is another cute little mascot in the land, the cute little mouse of XFCE! 'Squeeky' allows you to not only choose your own chosen wallpaper from your own chosen sources; but allows you to have as many virtual desktops as you like, each with its own chosen and different wallpaper! I will NEVER use KDE ever again after it sold out to Plasma. Conformity is not my style. Have ALL my old distros..AND their original BIG books so have places to go back to with computers totally isolated from the internet.
I have built every computer that I have ever owned, excepting toys like laptops, after the first Apple][ Plus with 16K or 48K, ..Yess 'K'... of ram... built that up to 256K too with accessory cards including Pascal language card. Kept them all and passed them first to my kids and then to my grandkids. One thing about 'pooters is that they keep working unless you commit some asserveration bad enough to 'cook' one, or be a 'Glaucus the USAF mascot of bumbling fool maintainance wienies....and bend microprocessor pins....or...break...one.... while 'upgrading'.
So I am happy using XFCE, or Enlightenment, or even LXDE with ICEwm as a backup in case of vid driver problems. Still have ALL the old distros of Mandrake, Mandriva, and Mageia. Was a SuSE and Debian follower first back in the midlate 80's.
Current machine is an Intel Core I7 7700 running octacore at 3.6Ghz with 48GiB of RAM and 6 total TiB of hard drive space with a 1TiB SSD under multiboot linux with virtualizations under either VirtualBox or Xen. Virtualizations are convenient cages to imprison those nasty 'Windows distros'. You remember '...them... Such as those are the Johnnies that sold all your personal bits to crooks and nasty right wing crooked politicians and monopolists and terrorist regimes.....while at the same time suing 5 years old girls and 93 year old grannies for playing their bought and paid for media on their personal computers. Virtualization lets me use abandonware such as WinME and Win2K Pro to run old games like 'Redneck Rampage' and Command and Conquer the DOS version.... and use my old AirHandling and Buildings System environment models from old spreadsheets that I had made back in the 80s and 90s and '2000's before I became a trailer park owner.
Love this system 6.1. Reliable as anything. Can leave it on for days and never crashes. 'Tell that to a long sufferin' window's user......you NEVER really even 'administer' windows. ALL your data in any window's machine belongs to the Chinese who bought the privilege from Microsoft along with its past, present and future source code and even now hack the stupid defense industry and services who still are ordered to use that microSPY in all their systems courtesy of crooked bribed politicians. Remember that modern American destroyer that ran aground on the Breton Coast of France many years ago....its combat system software was Win2K!!...AND WHEN IT CRASHED IT WRECKED ITS SHIP THAT FED AND RAN IT!!