GhostBSD and PCLinuxOS

Posted on by Robin

Both systemd-free, both pretty much free of politics (now). While GhostBSD remains my daily driver, PCLinuxOS is now my backup OS on a separate hard drive. I have ditched MX-Linux for a few simple reasons, both technical and “ethical:”

  • Power settings misbehave. I have to manually turn my monitor off in spite of it being set up to do so after the screensaver activates.
  • Betterbird is only available as a Flatpak in MX-Linux, which makes it slower to load and work. In PCLinuxOS it is in the repositories and updates as it should.
  • The cool MX-tool set is also found in PCLinuxOS. All of the cool tools.
  • PCLinuxOS is truly systemd-free, unpolluted with systemd components to satisfy dependencies.
  • Debian (on which MX-Linux is built) has gone “full woke,” expelling “undesirable” contributors for heinous crimes like being white, male, heterosexual, and even – GASP! – Christian!
    This will certainly affect every downstream distro sooner or later.
  • Overzealous “moderators” on MX-forums regularly censure any talk of even technical issues like XLibre that don’t fit the “Debian narrative.”

I’m not sure why they call PCLinuxOS “the boomer distro,” when probably most Linux distributions are used by “boomers” anyway. Later generations are accustomed to taking what they are given and don’t seem to value software freedom like their parents and grandparents do. The same is probably true of all the BSDs as well.

Having a Linux OS as a “backup” makes sense because a lot of little things – even in the fantastic GhostBSD OS – are buggy and awkward. Evolution takes a full minute to load up. Brave browser (which only works in GhostBSD by adding “Linux compatability” which I’m sure slows things down a lot and prevents updates to the browser itself, so to avoid all that I have to settle for ungoogled-chromium and use a /hosts file to kill ads. Updates are easy but when you have a mix of Linux stuff with FreeBSD stuff and GhostBSD’s own stuff, it kind of sets up some troublesome issues with updating. I’m no longer as confident in updates to GhostBSD as I was before. Looking at the forums, I find that I’m hardly alone in that.

Neither OS is as trouble-free as the big, popular one-size-fits-all Linux distros like Mint and the ‘buntus, but they meet my ethical requirements most importantly, and my tech requirements regarding demand on resources, and stupid corporate bloatware like systemd.

The journey continues.

From MX-Linux to Refracta

Posted on by Robin

In search of a non-woke OS (that is, one that doesn’t hate me for being white, male, heterosexual, Christian, and conservative) and that also “just works” without the Big Tech intrusions like systemd and PulseAudio and which might include the cool tool set that spoiled me so much in MX-Linux, my experiment with GhostBSD was the closest I have come until yesterday, when I discovered RefractaOS. Based on Devuan and equipped with the original tools (iso maker, snapshot, etc), RefractaOS is older than Devuan (originally based on Debian before the latter went woke, adopted systemd, rage-quit X/Twitter for political reasons, etc) and originated the nifty neato tools that MX “gets credit for” because it’s more popular.

Going back to 2011 there’s this post in an old thread on antiX forums about RefractaOS, in which the lead developer praises RefractaOS for it’s speed, low resource consumption, and tool set! I wish I had known about this before, since there’s a whole ‘nother thread on MX-Forums expressing gratitude to the MX developers for MX-Snapshot. They re-wrote it, probably improved it for their distro-specific needs, and should be congratulated for doing it so successfully. “Anticapitalista” properly credits RefractaOS for the software. It shows that good ideas can be shared, adapted, and used by other distros. It’s Free and Open-Source Software being used as it was always intended – to the benefit of all. Kudos to “anticapitalista” and the MX team both for the software and for giving credit where it is due.

MEANWHILE, back in the Batcave on Robin’s old hand-me-down computer, a fresh install of GhostBSD (Xfce) was underway to cleanse the system of all the “Linux stuff” that had to be added in order to make Brave browser work. As much as I love that browser, it crashes frequently on GhostBSD. So I am back to using ungoogled-chromium (or Iridium – both are great) and adding a huge ginormous hosts file to handle ad-blocking. It’s pretty effective, but doesn’t come close to Brave’s privacy protection. Another issue has been simple tasks like getting the sound to work and a printer/scanner installed. Both are complex tasks (for me anyway) accomplished through the dreaded terminal and editing config files. GhostBSD ain’t for rookies, and not really for users like me who are easily spooked by unfamiliar technology. I don’t know that Xfce will still be supported in future releases of GhostBSD, and they are moving from the MATE desktop to something called “Gershwin” from the GNUstep project. Screenshots of that desktop look reminiscent of Windows95 or something. Eww. Seems like a step backwards, and news of it – and the switch away from Software Station planned for future releases, sent me back to resuming my search for a simple, friendly, non-woke, modern, systemd-free OS that “just works” and helps me avoid the dreadful and terrifying terminal.

A fellow MX-user who got in trouble with moderators for the same reasons I do (mentioning XLibre and/or Lunduke) told me about “non-woke” Devuan and sent some wicked cool looking screenshots. He bragged about it’s speed, simplicity, and low resource demands in spite of it’s full-fledged Xfce desktop.

Researching Devuan more deeply, I found RefractaOS and the original “MX-tools” I previously thought existed nowhere else but in antiX and MX-Linux! Except for Systemback(2), which is meant for Debian and Ubuntu-based systems.

It looks like literally everything I wanted in an OS. I’m going to install it to a spare HDD and put it through it’s paces today. STAY TUNED!

Balance

Posted on by Robin

That’s what I’m learning these days… balance. On one hand, there’s the over-arching need to make ethical choices when it comes to software, even in the world of Free and Open-Source Software (FOSS), since some of the best and best-known FOSS companies are extreme left wingnuts. Mozilla has branded itself “a global crew of activists” and spent a million dollars on a fancy retreat in Zambia to host a workshop on “Feminist, Decolonial, LGBTQIA+, Climate Justice using Al” event. Woke, far-flung-leftist crap. Also a Mozilla partner, the folks who make the Thunderbird e-mail client fired their very first employee, who ascended to one of the most important contributors of the project – because he refused to participate in “woke” bullshit. He went on to create Betterbird, a really nice fork of Thunderbird! Mozilla’s former CEO met a similar fate – fired for not going along with far-left, anti-family, anti-God, anti-wholesomeness stuff – went on to create the wonderful Brave browser. I want to support these guys!

Even Linux itself has gone woke. In the interest of “ethical purity,” I went to GhostBSD: No Linux, no Mozilla, no Google, no Microsoft. Oh, and no systemd (IBM/RedHat). Yay for ethical purity!

But on the other hand:

Software has to work. And without complex, resource-draining excesses to make it work on my hardware. I wasn’t able to get Betterbird on GhostBSD, so I settled for Evolution. To get Brave browser to work on GhostBSD, you have to install all kindsa “Linux stuff” that “makes” it work on BSD. So I settled for ungoogled-chromium. For as long as I could.

I remember for years being warned about updates breaking things on Linux. It’s true, updates can break things, but in all the years I used Linux, it actually happened only twice. On GhostBSD, an update broke Evolution and I settled for Geary, which in some respects is nicer because it’s so very simple yet full-featured. The very next update kinda sorta “fixed” Evolution, but broke a bunch of other stuff and made the OS sluggish. Very few of the nice “gooey” (GUI – Graphical User Interface) tools I always enjoyed in Linux are available for the BSDs. And the ones that are there are decades behind Linux when it comes to function, versatility, and ease of use.

A balance between “ethical purity” and practicality is what I need.

So far, the best I’ve come up with is MX-Linux (because I insist on having a full desktop environment), with Betterbird and Brave replacing the defaults, Thunderbird and Firefox (Mozilla). While my “ethical purity” side isn’t entirely happy about using Linux instead of GhostBSD, it’s happy that I can support the two guys that Mozilla kicked out for refusing to embrace evil. And my practical side? It’s delighted.

Your First Non-Microsoft, Non-Apple OS

Posted on by Robin

In spite of my moderate-to-severe technophobia (to quote all the TV commercials), I have come a very long way from what we call “beginner’s” operating systems other than Microsoft Windows and iOS (Mac). Lately I have ventured even out of the Linux world into one of the BSDs. But I’m still every bit as paranoid of the terminal as I was the day I started this journey years ago. I want to point and click as much as possible, not type commands. And I want to run applications, not the operating system! I’m really not the computer hobbyist people suppose, even though I blog about this stuff regularly.

I still get asked what operating system I recommend for beginners, and until pretty recently I would recommend either Linux Lite, Linux Mint, or MX-Linux hands down without question. The only reason I hesitate to whole-heartedly recommend them now – and I’m going to catch some flak for this I’m sure – is because these great OSes have strayed so far off from the ideals and ways of doing things that made them great to begin with. Where once upon a time it mattered how they put together a great product, now the means have changed – which inevitably changes the ends. The old adage remains true: The end does not justify the means.

Non-free software and proprietary “blobs” (a tech term) get thrown into a product that is billed as “free and open-source.” Perfectly good and truly free and open-source software is replaced by the quick and easy solutions offered by Big Tech companies whose software becomes a dependency for just about everything else in the whole operating system to work. “This won’t work without systemd,” is what the developers say, but it isn’t true. Consolekit worked as well as elogind (a component of systemd), but it’s “old.” Old doesn’t mean obsolete, however. Old usually, in this context, means it did it’s one job and did it well. But Big Tech’s goal is dependency. One software to do multiple jobs instead of “do one job and do it well.” Big Tech owns Linux now. Billions of dollars flow into the Linux Foundation from Microsoft, IBM, Oracle, and other giants. They sit on the Linux Foundation’s Board of Directors and pay Linux Torvalds a million dollar salary. Put two and two together, y’all.

A handful of Linux distributions actively resist the DEPENDENCY game that Big Tech / Linux Foundation is playing upstream. And among that handful of Linux distributions, the best for beginners, by far, is PCLinuxOS. It still follows the old ways. The UNIX way. The pure and bold and time-honored way.

For some reason they call this”the Boomer Distro.” Maybe it’s because they follow the “old” ways. Boomers are supposedly old, but dangit, these guys work hard and make and maintain a superb “beginner-friendly” operating system that has all kinds of advantages.

It’s “rolling release:” Which means it doesn’t have to be re-installed every 2-5 years like Linux Lite, Linux Mint, the ‘buntus, Debian and it’s derivatives like MX-Linux.
It’s systemd-free: Not even a hint of that evil, intrusive, One-Ring-to-Rule-Them-All DEPENDENCY imposed by the Big Tech / Linux Alliance of Evil.
It’s well supported. The documentation for this OS is second to none, and the folks in the Forums are friendly, knowledgeable, and helpful. Just like most boomers.

While GhostBSD is my daily driver these days, I keep PCLinuxOS (Xfce edition, naturally) on a separate hard drive just for the cool tools that rival anything MX-Linux and the others have to offer. Cool tools that are simply not available in FreeBSD / GhostBSD yet. Also, since even GhostBSD doesn’t play nice on some hardware (compared to Linux, that is), your first non-Windows, non-Apple operating system should be PCLinuxOS! Find it here!

More Politics in a Linux Forum

Posted on by Robin


My mistake: I imagined that was okay, in a forum about Linux, to chat about what’s happening to the Linux kernel.

Apparently, it isn’t. In a thread about someday making an “MX-BSD” operating system, I mentioned that the idea has merit in my opinion because of what is happening with the Linux kernel project lately. Russian maintainers kicked off the project (blame US sanctions or whatever), and then the Contributor’s code of conduct being outrageously weaponized in a new and odd way. Best explained in this video:

https://rumble.com/v5t1hjt-linux-code-of-conduct-board-officially-bans-developer-for-insufficient-grov.html

I consider these two examples as a threat to the freedom and quality of the Linux kernel and consequentially the whole Linux userland.

This was in MX-Linux’s “chat” subforum. Not a support question, not any specific category for tech support, bug reports, feature and package requests, etc. Just chat. Lots of whimsical and fun discussions go on there, from the great music threads to chats about how people use MX-Linux and antiX and even other Linux distributions to keep old computers running like new.

They have rules about political content there. It is strictly prohibited, and rightly so. Nothing would disrupt a great distro-community more quickly than talking about politics. It’s a good rule and it’s enforcement by moderators is important. But I wasn’t talking about politics, I merely referenced the fact that politics is influencing the Linux kernel project far too much, and I fear for the future of the project. So the idea of a “MX-BSD” has some merit in light of that.

Thread locked, PM sent to the offender threatening “further action” if I don’t edit the post. In other words, the moderators said, “

”

I didn’t edit the post. I regret nothing. They edited the post and kept the thread locked anyway. And probably banned me, I don’t know or care.

But if the Linux communities continue to cover their ears and sing “lalalalalala” while the Linux project destroys itself from political bovine excrement, and as long as they forbid people from warning the community of the very real danger Linux is in, the harder it will be to deal with when the bottom drops out.

Finally Upgraded – Thunderbird Issue

Posted on by Robin

As usual I took my sweet time upgrading my OS. It still has two years of support left and it was awesome anyway, so why change anything, right? I kinda needed to change it though, because the old versions of a lot of software I use don’t have much support. Exporting and importing data are one of those minor issues, so meh, time to upgrade, reluctantly.

Now to import all the data and settings saved from the earlier version of Thunderbird to the new one. The new one has an import/export tool which the old one didn’t. Not supposed to be a problem, but it just didn’t work until I umpteenth attempt at it. Maybe I won’t run into that problem again.

I was never a “gotta have the latest, newest, shiniest version” kinda guy, but there’s something to be said for upgrading every couple of years after all.

No Systemd, No Pulseaudio

Posted on by Robin

Last time I wrote about systemd-free Debian, but not Devuan, for reasons which appear in the comments of that post, “Why Not Devuan?” Mostly it has to do with trust of their repositories.

But I messed up my first installation of antiX by installing my beloved Xfce desktop from Synaptic instead of using antiX’s own package installer. I don’t know how that makes any difference, but it matters!

In my zeal to rid my OS of any unneeded and unwanted antiX stuff (for the sake of my need to purge socialist-communist-statist-leftist elements as much as possible), I removed some essential elements that disabled control over sound, printing, scanning, and other features I really need. It was plain stupid to proceed in a hurry like that.

Doing it right this time, I have exactly what I need, with a few extra things I don’t want and will never use but cannot safely purge without breaking my system again. No big deal. I had thought, for about 0.68 seconds (nearly a lifetime for an android, according to Commander Data), to just return to MX-Linux because it’s Xfce anyway. But then, there’s that hideous systemd “there but unused” factor. I think I’d rather have a few antiX things there but unused than to have any systemd or PulseAudio crap contaminating my hard drive. The latter is just a matter of political preference, but the former is a dangerous back door to my OS, in my opinion.

So a word of advice to any other creatures of conscience looking to avoid systemd and pulseaudio and untrustworthy Devuan repositories, but eager to purge socialist-communist-statist-leftist antiX stuff, do it right. Read the manual, proceed carefully and deliberately, and slowly.

A Great Review of SalixOS

Posted on by Robin

Hi everyone! Here is a great review of SalixOS for responsible users. The reason I’m looking into this again is that my beloved MX-Linux, based on Debian Stable, may not be able to avoid systemd once Debian Buster is released (MX is based on Debian Stable). And there are plenty of good reasons to avoid systemd, even for us ordinary non-technical folks who just want a reliable OS that doesn’t spy on us and report back to the Mother Ship and stuff, as systemd does (didjya know it’s linked to Google!?!), journaling and logging everything!

It’s probably totally unrealistic of me to hope for, but just imagine if MX-Linux (which has been at the top of Distrowatch for awhile) got together with SalixOS (which is ranked even below server-only distros, unbelievably). Maybe the Salix devs could teach MX how to get around systemd in spite of Debian’s efforts to make it impossible, and MX could teach SalixOS about the supercool tool set that makes it so awesome. Both distros have the same mission: To make Linux manageable for us ordinary casual users, while avoiding the instability, unpredictability, and bloat of the popular “newbie” distros.

Yup, probably totally unrealistic of me to even wish for such a thing. But I suspect that SalixOS will be inheriting a lot of new users once MX-19 comes around, if they are unable to avoid systemd.

More Awesome MX-Linux

Posted on by Robin

This post is just to show off another of MX-Linux’s cool tools, called MX-Clocky! You can pick from several desktop clocks, including this cool-looking one that also monitors CPU and RAM usage. There have both analog and digital, from plain to fancy.

Today I have my “Salute to Mepis” desktop wallpaper on, and my newly-discovered neofetch display.