I decided to fiddle. Of course i did, I was getting bored of everything working well. I swapped my graphics hardware around in an attempt to make the GTX 760 available to my VMs. I was surprised and disappointed that Xubuntu threw it's dollies out of the pram, it absolutely refused to create an X screen and present a graphical environment. At one point I thought I'd get cocky and simply strip out Xorg and Xfce4, then try to reinstall the proprietary driver for my GTX 750 Ti. It actually proved quicker and less frustrating to simply reinstall Xubuntu, so I'm grateful again, that my documents, music and all other data is safely networked. The Windows VMs were not impressed as I completed expected. I admit it, I gave up trying to reinstall the proprietary Nvidia drivers and rebuilt a VM. At one point I was tired and fed up and seriously wondering if the problem was hardware related. The 368.22 Nvidia drivers would install, request a reboot, load, I would log in and then Device Manager would step in remove the drivers, blank the screen, install Standard VGA drivers and stick two fingers up at me. Every time. With one VM I managed to get 355 drivers installed but foolishly tried to update and you just know rolling back was then not an option. It was the Linux proprietary driver issue that really had me annoyed. It really felt like I'd gone back in time a decade, Debian would not accept Nvidia drivers. I tried those in the APT software channel, the Nvidia installer and even tried hammering them in with usually bulletproof smxi scripts. I knew two graphics cards couldn't have gone south (or it was very unlikely, we've all seen massive and unexpected mass hardware fails). The GTX 760 had worked well as the Host Linux card and the 750 Ti as the Guest Windows workhorse. I'm very disappointed to have had to rebuilt Xubuntu, but even more disappointed that Debian nudged me down that road. I know I could've fixed it but you have to ask yourself "What do I gain compared to the time I am wasting?" and the ratio wasn't positive. Xubuntu rebuilt like a charm and there were no issue installing fresh drivers for the new card. Bizarrely, despite all expectation the Windows rebuild went well too. I guess the old adage remains true, when in doubt rebuild. Grasping the nettle and rebuilding against new hardware offered me an opportunity to do something I've been meaning to do for some time. I deleted my static Windows 7 partition and it's complimentary data drive recovering valuable storage. Then I backed up all my (not very much to be fair) locally stored data files and then began removing Linux partitions until I could delete the extended and Linux swap partitions and clear down the drive. That felt good, a proper PC spring clean. I failed to get Debian to correctly blacklist my guest GPU and while trying to install proprietary drivers for host I borked the install. I was smiling broadly when antiX MX-15 (the Mepis / antiX cross) obliged and both blacklisted and installed Nvidia drivers without complaint or problems. It booted up my Windows 7 to system recovery only. I did a system restore on the VM but it simply wouldn't run properly in MX-15. So I put it to one side and began moving forward. With the VM booting it suggested that most if not all the requisite QEMU/KVM components were installed. So I built a VM, a Windows 10 VM. It's early days, but the VM runs flawlessly in MX-15 where it was built and in Xubuntu. This suggests to me something in Ubuntu-built VMs that's distro specific and an obstacle to portability, so no more 'buntu-builds for me, I'm dumping the distro (again). I'm going to play with Debian a lot more and test drive openSUSE and Fedora virtualisation. I suspect because of Red Hat's input into the whole of virtualisation technology that Fedora with be rock solid, but I've always had a soft spot for openSUSE, even though I really can't love the, very good, KDE environment. Despite all expectation the Windows 10 VM appears to be much more stable than the Windows 7 one(s). I don't love the 10 interface, but neither do I hate it like I do 8 and to a lesser extent 8.1. For stability and gaming ease, it installed it's own Nvidia GTX 760 drivers (hallelujah) I shall be sticking with a virtualised 10 (until big games companies wake up and start coding for my platform of choice).
0 Comments
Blacklist your guest's gaming GPU Now we will need to blacklist the GPU's you wish to pass through to the Windows guest so Linux wont load it at boot. Use lspci to check which PCI bus the cards are currently on and which uuid they are using:
the output will look similar to this 01:00.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: NVIDIA Corporation GK104 [GeForce GTX 760] [10de:1187] (rev a1) 01:00.1 Audio device [0403]: NVIDIA Corporation GK104 HDMI Audio Controller [10de:0e0a] (rev a1) 06:00.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: NVIDIA Corporation GM107 [GeForce GTX 750 Ti] [10de:1380] (rev a2) 06:00.1 Audio device [0403]: NVIDIA Corporation Device [10de:0fbc] (rev a1) We will need to copy the uuids for the card to be blacklisted, the GTX 760 in this example, [10de:1187], and it's Audio device, [10de:0e0a] and add them to modules: Open /etc/initramfs-tools/modules with your favourite text editor, add these two lines to this file:
After saving this file rebuild the initramfs:
and reboot. PLEASE NOTE: You will need the GPU you are using for the host connected to the monitor to continue with the guide as now one of your cards will be blacklisted!! After reboot you can confirm this has worked for you by issuing:
you should see something like:
As you can see the GTX 760 is claimed by stub (PCI bus 01:00.0-1) Create VFIO file
...take note of the PCI bus that the blacklisted passthrough card is currently on: 06:00.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: NVIDIA Corporation GK104 [GeForce GTX 760] [10de:1187] (rev a1) 06:00.1 Audio device [0403]: NVIDIA Corporation GK104 HDMI Audio Controller [10de:0e0a] (rev a1) Create /etc/vfio-pci.cfg and add these lines, the PCI Bus of the card to be blacklisted:
NOTE: For whatever reason I had no success passing through the first GPU, on the lower PCI Bus (01:00.0BB). The only way I could get the GTX 760 to passthrough was to switch it to PCI Bus 06:00.0. This is quite possibly a by design (or at least a bug). It may just be simpler do resort the method I used getting the GTX 760 working: physically move it to another PCI slot. Create bootstrap scriptI won't hide it from you, I copied this script and amended my own from variants on several sites, I have no idea what the 1st part is doing really but it works so why mess with it? user#!/bin/bash Key-m specifies the amount of memory to give to the guest, in my case half my RAM: 8192MB -cpu host,kvm=off,migratable=off,+invtsc,enforce uses the host CPU as the type and kvm=off is needed for the GTX to work with the Windows guest. Nvidia don't want to see any Hypervisor extensions...why I can only guess. If you see (multiple) errors like the one below, migratable=off,+invtsc,enforce will resolve the issue:
-smp sockets=1,cores=4,threads=1 This option will simulate an SMP (Symmetric multiprocessing) system with number of CPU's in my system I have a 8 core CPU without hyperthreading, I've assigned the VM 1 socket 4 cores and 1 threads giving me 4 cores on the guest and leaving 4 cores on the host. -vga noneSelect type of VGA card to emulate. As we're not emulating, we're passing the actual hardware to the VM, we disable this option with none. -soundhw all See below: heiko_s first suggested this script in an Ubnutu Forums post (linked) and his work crops up in numerous other places. Credit where credit is due! Appropriately amend the -drive file line to point to the /{path}/{filename} of your VM and the CD images used in the build (the CD iso's can be removed post install). Remove the # symbols from the beginnings of the two CD iso image lines or remove the lines if unused. When I was finished I followed the advice in one of the guides I read and saved my file into /usr and called it vm1. Once you've saved the script change the permission to make the file executable:
You might also want to go through the entries after qemu-system-x86_64 \ and play the remark it out game. Add a # to the beginning of the line and then try to launch your VM. If everything works you don't need the entry leave the #, if the VM fails remove the #, and move to the next line. For more information on the command line switches go directly to the source. Audio EmulationTo confirm that your audio driver environment variables are correct you will find this command very useful:
To hear the sound from the VM on your host speakers you'll need to add this lines: -soundhw hda You might need to start qemu like this: QEMU_PA_SAMPLES=128 QEMU_AUDIO_DRV=pa qemu-system-x86_64... For alsa: QEMU_ALSA_DAC_BUFFER_SIZE=512 QEMU_ALSA_DAC_PERIOD_SIZE=170 QEMU_AUDIO_DRV=alsa qemu-system-x86_64... Note: these are the settings I had some success with, if you get crackling/skipping audio you might want to try different settings. To see the available drivers and audio options: qemu-system-x86_64 -soundhw -help Valid sound card names (comma separated):
-soundhw all will enable all of the above NetworkingSimple usermode networking does work, but the performance is just horrible. If you don't want to spend six and more hours installing each of your games with Steam I recommend configuring a network bridge and installing the RedHat virtio client on the guest. I've never been a big fan of NetworkManager (Ceni is much better tool) so losing it was no issue for me, if this is a problem for you I am sure guide for setting up a bridge with NM exist. Entering values directly in /etc/network/interfaces will automatically disable NM. Edit /etc/network/interfaces and either comment or replace the existing configuration with the following (NB: change the values for your network):
If you are going to use Synergy to share mouse and keyboard with you guest then DHCP is probably not the best idea. However, if for some reason you must have a bridged DHCP IP address enter this into the interfaces files:
It feels like a heavy handed Microsoft fix, but if you have issues with eth0 not releasing it's IP address and conflicts with br0 then you may have to resort to rebooting...I know. Afterword If the preceding guide appears incomplete or leaves you with question that's because it isn't finished. I want to build a Host OS based on Debian (with Xfce) and some of the KVM installation steps (user groups and file permissions) are missing. The guide isn't finished, so keep coming back. I need to write up USB access (for the period between deploying your guest OS and installing Synergy), networking and creating a raw disk image to install your guest OS to. I aim to try to make it hardware and distro agnostic, so expect some untested Intel\AMD(ATi) configs. There is also going to be a very long reference section as this is clearly not all my own work.
However, ask questions and have a go yourself and by all means point out inadequacies and omissions. There are some excellent resources out there illustrating how to set up KVM virtualisation and 'pass through' resources to the VM including the VGA card. This guide is not intended to replace or supersede them, I'm simply going to unravel my own experience and explain things (to the best of my understanding) in my own words. Hopefully the way I explain some things will make the difference for someone who is struggling to do it themselves. So I absolutely intend this guide to be read alongside all the others, hopefully together we'll set you straight. These instruction lean heavily towards AMD CPU \ Nvidia Graphics hardware. I stress Nvidia Quadro cards are NOT required for VGA Passthrough. I have accomplished running the same VMs, in this configuration, on Xubuntu (15/16), Debian (8.x) and antiX MX-15, I intend to try to make it fully distro agnostic after I have wrestled with Fedora and openSUSE. Raison d'êtreThis is not the simplest process in the world, why would you want to do this is a quite reasonable question. Essentially the main appeal of this has to be gaming. Linux gamers accept that most major game titles will not run natively in Linux. We can run many of these none native titles in Wine, a Linux implementation of the Windows API, this is not emulation or virtualisation, but it does carry a performance overhead. For many titles there is very little option but to run windows. I don't like Windows. I really do not like being forced to put aside disk space to accommodate it's bloat. I wouldn't use it all but I do like to game. Dual booting is a very poor compromise. I have to close all my applications, reboot to Windows, perhaps keep two versions of applications live one for use only the Windows platform when I game. When I stop gaming I can either carry on using my secondary set of apps or reboot to Linux... I do not want to go through all that every time I want to play a game. This is not about saving money though, running a virtual Windows installation still requires a licence. HardwareI've heard a lot of inaccurate claims, mainly that virtualisation is not well enough supported by AMD (at least in Linux) or that if you want to pass through VGA cards better stick to AMD or make sure you buy a Nvidia Quadro card. As you can see below neither of these things are the case. I have successfully virtualised and passed through AMD Phenom and FC CPU and Nvidia Geforce cards. You will need two graphics cards. Well strictly speaking one discrete graphics and at least integrated graphics (for the host OS) or second choice. Personally despite heat issues I'd go for two discrete cards as IGP is not going to offer you much to game with in the Host. Two monitors is absolutely essential or you really might as well dual boot and live with it. I succeeded getting this setup with the hardware on the left. I upgraded to the hardware right and it works a little better (as you'd expect).
Software While not essential I highly recommend Synergy software for seamless sharing of the keyboard and mouse. You indicate which screen edge is adjacent your second monitor and Synergy allows you to run your mouse pointer to that monitor edge and "onto" the second monitor, displaying your guest OS. Its robustness and simplicity to set up belies it's sophistication. It's reportedly quite straightforward to get most flavours of Linux working with KVM. Can I point you to Ubuntu though? Well, any *buntu really, I have experimented, unsuccessfully, with Debian but intend to keep plugging away. This guide is a little *buntu-centric and relies on packages names available to that distro. For the less skilled, like myself, stick to *buntu and transfer your knowledge to you distro of choice when you're happy you have a working idea of what you're doing. Personally, disliking Unity I went to Xubuntu.
This command installs the basic components you're going to need. On non-Ubuntu based distros I simply omit installing ubuntu-vm-builder judge for yourself if you need it... Add Modules As we're using the stock Ubuntu kernel one thing we will need to do is add a few missing components necessary to load VFIO (Virtual Function I/O). VFIO is required to pass full devices through to a virtual machine, so we need to make sure Ubuntu loads everything it needs. In your favourite text editor open /etc/modules and add:
Believe it or not, if you are using an Intel CPU you'll need to change the last line:
Edit GrubEdit /etc/default/grub: add intel_iommu=on vfio_iommu_type1.allow_unsafe_interrupts=1 to the line with GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT=. Mine looks like this now: GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash intel_iommu=on vfio_iommu_type1.allow_unsafe_interrupts=1" The quotation marks (") are essential. Save your file.
BIOS changesWhile you reboot the system verify that IOMMU is enabled in the BIOS (check you motherboard/BIOS manual for how to do this). Verify that the kernel booted with the desired updates to the command line. We can check this by entering this at the command line:
The output will look like this. BOOT_IMAGE=/boot/vmlinuz-4.2.0-36-generic root=UUID=df119ac4-a72f-4f74-af03-26083698a5aa ro quiet splash intel_iommu=on vfio_iommu_type1.allow_unsafe_interrupts=1 Due to amendments I made for the revision 1.0 Sabertooth 990FX mine looks like this (see below): BOOT_IMAGE=/boot/vmlinuz-4.2.0-36-generic root=UUID=df119ac4-a72f-4f74-af03-26083698a5aa ro quiet splash ivrs_ioapic[9]=00:14.0 ivrs_ioapic[10]=00:00.1 Motherboards with broken BIOS ivrs tables |
[ 0.297481] [Firmware Bug]: AMD-Vi: IOAPIC[9] not in IVRS table [ 0.297485] [Firmware Bug]: AMD-Vi: IOAPIC[10] not in IVRS table [ 0.297487] [Firmware Bug]: AMD-Vi: No southbridge IOAPIC found in IVRS table [ 0.297490] AMD-Vi: Disabling interrupt remapping due to BIOS Bug(s) |
dmesg | grep AMD-Vi |
If you have the correct setting setting you should see something like this:
[ 1.750889] AMD-Vi: Found IOMMU at 0000:00:00.2 cap 0x40 [ 1.750890] AMD-Vi: Interrupt remapping enabled [ 1.750992] AMD-Vi: Initialized for Passthrough Mode |
AMD-Vi: Lazy IO/TLB flushing enabled |
amd_iommu=on iommu=pt |
iommu= amd_iommu= amd_iommu_dump= | [x86] off force noforce biomerge panic nopanic merge nomerge forcesac soft pt [x86, IA-64] [HW,X86-64] Pass parameters to the AMD IOMMU driver in the system. Possible values are: fullflush - enable flushing of IO/TLB entries when they are unmapped. Otherwise they are flushed before they will be reused, which is a lot of faster off - do not initialize any AMD IOMMU found in the system force_isolation - Force device isolation for all devices. The IOMMU driver is not allowed anymore to lift isolation requirements as needed. This option does not override iommu=pt [HW,X86-64] Enable AMD IOMMU driver option to dump the ACPI table for AMD IOMMU. With this option enabled, AMD IOMMU driver will print ACPI tables for AMD IOMMU during IOMMU initialization. |
Afterword
Hi,
This is a nice looking, lightweight distro. I look forward to using it more in the future. The issue I'm currently having is that the installer only offers to deploy to the first detected hard disk, in my case sda, I need to install to sdb(12).
Best of Luck!
This is the email response I got:
Hi,
Unfortunately, there is no simple method to do that.
Thanks for the 1st sentence in your mail
zk1234
Semplice fared no better. The live environment booted to a black screen with mouse pointer. Needless to say, right and left clicks and any and all keyboard input yielded nothing. The distro would boot to the installer so I deployed it to a hard disk partition, but when I booted to that I got the same black screen and mouse pointer. I could start a command line session and I could install the proprietary nVidia driver but Vera, Semplice's bespoke desktop environment, still wouldn't work. I could install and use Xfce, however, since I wanted to try Semplice that really meant using Vera.
I tried to register at the Semplice forum so I could report my findings and perhaps get some assistance getting Vera working. However, I completely failed to register an account, the form kept return a Captcha failure...extremely frustrating but these things happen and I won't allow it to colour my opinion of Semplice...if I ever get to use it.
The live environment is pleasant, the default wallpaper is stylish and modern. Everything I'd expect from an Ubuntu egg that prides itself on how it looks. The installer is "Fisher-Price" simple, this is not a criticism, I do select Something Else and select my install partition and decline to format as I did this with Gparted earlier. The installer does not lack power just because it's graphical, it's just well designed and slick as you'd expect from Ubuntu, it hides complexity, but it's there if you need it.
This is modified GNOME3 shell, so it smooth and slick, I didn't really like the Applications drop down, so I switched from View as Grid to View by Category...much more productive (for me).
Window buttons...there's no minimise button. The right hand button in the title bar toggles maximise. You need to right-click title bar and select Minimise from the menu to minimise the app to the launcher at the bottom edge of the screen. The close 'X' is on the right a la Ubuntu.
I opened up Software Centre from the launch bar and searched for Audacious, themes are listed: $3.00 (ignored), Audacious was simple to deploy - just click Install. The Software Centre is well presented, not the fastest however.
I fired up a terminal to install wine, being Ubuntu based elementary naturally accepts the command:
sudo apt-get install wine
and I ended up with version 1.4 which was a shock, I was hoping for the 1.7.32 development release or the stable 1.6.2. version at the very least. 1.4 seriously? I'm so used to installing more recent versions from the Liqourix Ubuntu repo that I forgot I'd forgotten all about the Ubuntu Wine ppa. After some complaints about the missing dependency wine1.7-amd64, which I just installed manually, everything was good and I have 1.7.18 now. Phew, and relax. I may have to look at updating to something newer later on, but at least it's not 1.4! World of Warcraft (not very demanding I know) runs a treat.
The music management / player app is Music 0.2.2 which works reasonably well but with too much functionality for my taste. Hence the install of Audacious, but I'll be testing Music long term to see if it's robust and flexible. VLC is available for video playback which is smart as it's the defacto standard.
Midori is the default web browser. I've used this before and it has a Chrome-alike web search enabled address bar so no Home button. I like a home button, but I also like using Flash on a couple of pages still: my Football team's live commentary stream and a couple of flash games. If the commentary stream was updated to HTML5 say I'd ditch Flash like a hot potato...meanwhile it's unfortunately a necessary evil. Not surprisingly Midori doesn't ship with a Flash plugin or seem to have one at all...web search required.
System Settings | Keyboard | Layout says English (UK) but typing shift + 2, shift + 3, hash returns: @, #, \...define UK? The spellchecker in scratch doesn't want to stay on en_GB either. Found a niggle and finding it irritating. I encounter the same thing using the nVidia-Settings module to set the primary display. Pressing Apply closed the app and made no change to the display. A reboot cured both issues, but why did I have to reboot? This is not Windows! A quick poke around while in System Settings reveals a very fine selection of wallpaper. I was surprised when I could change wallpaper without a reboot.
As you can see (above) Steam is not without it's issues. But I'm sure this is nothing I can't fix...he says confidently. It was a simple matter to resolve the Steam issue (above) I simply renamed the SteamLibrary folder began an installation, closed Steam, deleted the new SteamLibrary and renamed the old one back to it's original name, restarted Steam. It now thinks it installed all my previous installed games itself...dumb app.
The constant need to reboot the thing after every setting change was grating. I was genuinely surprised I could switch wallpaper without a reboot. However, the most frustrating event occurred on Day 2 when the nudging from Steam made me try to update my graphics driver from 304 to 331...a show stopping error. Not only would the GUI not load (trivial) the boot sequence would not complete. This is my fault for using the GUI tool I conclude. I retreated to antiX to do some searching and take some notes before going back and trying to hammer my way back to working in elementary.
After two days elementary is merely irritating me. Part of what irritates me is that some people rave about this pretty little Ubuntu egg and elevate it because of it's simplicity and ease of use above distros like Debian. While Debian is stable and robust elementary only remains so if you don't mess about with and try to customise what is delivered out-of-the-box. One manifestation of dumbing down going on in this distro is the absence of a file management tool on the default launcher (Plank) layout.
The distro seems to be suggesting that you don't need to know where your files are or manipulate them directly. All your interactions with files will take place through a GUI application associated with them. The most obvious example of this paradigm in practice is Music, or indeed any other music or media manager. You point the application at your media files and it "imports them" and then you assess and manage them through the application. Fine I can drag Files out of the Applications menu and drop it on Plank, but every time you subvert the normal functioning of desktop environments like GNOME and stray from the design brief the developers were working to warp the way the distro works and then it becomes clunky and snagging points emerge.
Day three and I've already had to reboot twice after two hours of operation. I'm beginning to remember what it was like to use Windows. In fact one reboot was for a show stopper error. I closed Steam and the entire OS locked up, amazing. Oh and the Firefox dictionary is English (United States) again. Graphics are just plain glitchy even using Firefox, the screen corrupts and I have to scroll up and down or sometimes minimise and restore (which is extra irritating as there is not minimise button) to fix the display.
Linux is flexible and customisable and any critique of any environment will always be countered by the riposte that you can modify it to suit you. However, if I tweak elementary and make it more complex (and more powerful) at what point does it stop being elementary and just become my re-spin of Ubuntu? I don't know. The Lunu Desktop Environment is OK but it's streamline and function light for my taste. My test will continue for several days and I may warm to, now I have it bent to my way of working.
I'm going to use this entry to list all the distros I'm going to try and the criteria I'm going to use to help me evaluate them. This entry will, therefore, be organic..I'll edit, update, change as I progress to refine the process and allow my experiences to feedback into the assessment.
The Criteria
Ease of installation
Usability of Desktop
Ease of package/software installs
Configuration
Installing Samba/CIFS/mounting network drives
Installing updating proprietary (nVidia drivers)
Music and Video playback
Wine (World of Warcraft)
Steam (XCOM)
The Distro\DE List (this list will undoubted change in length as I discover new things):
Ubuntu Unity
Deepin Linux
elementary Pantheon
Semplice Vera
4MLinux JWM
openSUSE KDE
Mageia 2 KDE
Chakra KDE
Kubuntu KDE
Scientific GNOME and KDE
Fedora GNOME
Ubuntu GNOME
Manjaro Xfce and KDE
Linux Lite Xfce
Linux Mint Xfce, MATE and Cinnamon
Siduction KDE SC, Xfce, LXDE, LXQt, GNOME and Cinnamon
LXLE LXDE
Simplicity Linux LXDE
Bodhi Linux Enlightenment
Salix Fluxbox, KDE, MATE, Openbox, Ratpoison, Xfce
WattOS LXDE, MATE, Openbox
So, this documenting of distro hopping has been redundant the last year as antiX has been installed on (nearly) all my devices. The workhorse PC, low powered netbook, and ageing Alienware laptop all run antiX M13 and/or M13 Alpha 3. So what has happened to rock this homogeneous little boat? Debian has voted (again) to adopt systemd. I've no real desire to enter into this debate but I grow weary of systemd proponents who insist on battling only straw men they create for themselves.
1) systemd haters fear change.
Where to start. I remember the same accusation being levelled at Unity sceptics, and what did we do? Well mostly we changed to new distros and DE's. If that doesn't refute that argument I can only say that criticism of innovation doesn't always spring from fear, not all change is good. Neither, of course, is the reverse true, not all change is bad.
2) sysvinit is broken.
Well, perhaps it is flawed. However, conceding that does not make systemd any more acceptable. Equally, it's not simply a choice between systemd and sysvinit. Some systemd alternatives include runit, OpenRC, s6, monit, perp, supervisord, Upstart, nosh, GNU dmd, and uselessd.
3) You have no right demand developers double their workload supporting multiple init systems.
This simply annoys me. If systemd didn't demand to run as PID1 and subsume so many other systems into it's remit then this wouldn't even be an issue. If it were possible for components that should be external to the the init system to be init agnostic then this duplication of work wouldn't be necessary. Gnome and udev are already dependent on systemd, why on earth is the login system integrated too?
Keep it simple stupid (KISS) is key. If we abandon this to on giant binary blob, with binary log files (even Linus Torvalds is sceptical of) why don't we all just throw in the towel and go back to Windows. Those who don't understand UNIX' history are doomed to reinvent UNIX again, badly. The developers of uselessd intend to take the systemd model and break it down into small parts that work well and are not interdependent in a manner that makes simple alternatives impossible.
5) Don't like it, fork it.
The arrogance of this attitude is damaging. Just because I'm not a developer does not mean I cannot have or express an opinion. Ultimately my opinion may be unimportant if no developers step up to work on systemd alternatives, but why would any developer step up if there appeared to be no demand for their work? Worse still do we really want Debian to fork? The failure of Ian Jackson's General Resolution: init system coupling could result in just that. Really, no one wants that.
So? What do I as a non-developing user intend to do about systemd? Well I could just roll over and continue using antiX. One of the variants of M14 Alpha 3 is V=sysVinit version, so it is possible that antiX might be trying to stem the flow of systemd from upstream Debian. If that is the objective I do hope that works out.
I shall also be experimenting with the other distro that eschew systemd: Funtoo; CRUX, the venerable Slackware; and Gentoo. The only thing I can do as a Linux end user is switch to a non-systemd distro and provide feedback, bug reporting and community support, as appropriate, for another distro. Doing anything else would be hypocritical.
Let the fun begin!
I've always tried to navigate a narrow line between performance and good looks. I continue to sacrifice performance to Desktop Environments, applications and graphical utilities that are easy on the eye and out performed by uglier examples. If I have to look at it all day it shouldn't make me wince. Stripping everything out of a distro and leaving end users with an excellent network manager (Ceni) and Apt package management, and not a lot else, is a stroke of genius. My first step after deploying a distro is ripping out what I don't want, use or like. The second step is then to install and build things I do use all the time and prefer the looks and operation of. AntiX Core lets me skip step one and go directly to installing only those things I really want, I just don't install anything until I miss it. Xfce is a concession to pretty but it is a lot lighter than KDE, Gnome3 or MATE.
The revelation is that instead of rebooting periodically switching to Linux Mint, to do things I couldn't do in antiX, I gradually learned how to build the missing functionality into my antiX environment. I reached the tipping point and began to actively pursue solutions to the functionality gaps in my installation, there is now nothing I need to do with my PC that I cannot achieve with antiX. I was pleased to get to that point with Linux...but to achieving it with a minimalistic distro that I have had to build up myself, which didn't arrive fully formed 'out of the box' really feels like progress. However, this all sounds very complicated doesn't it? Perhaps it does, but it isn't. Let me show you.
If you want to get clever, I strongly recommend using Gparted to pre-partition your drive before you start. Split the disk into three. Use a calculator and work backwards, make the last partition on the the disk, sda3/hda3, about 1 gigabyte in size (1024 Megabytes) or three times your amount of physical RAM. The middle partition on the disk, sda2/hda2 should be as large as possible because you're going to use it for data. The first partition sda1/hda1 is for your antiX install my desktop has balloon to 12Gb but the fresh install on my netbook is almost 2.3 Gb, a lot of which is LibreOffice (hey, I like it!) When asked if you want use a separate location for you /home drive select option y and assign it to sda2/hda2 at this point this is a fresh /home. Now if you're unlucky or reckless enough (raise hand) to trash your operating system you can reinstall, choose option y again for separate /home drive but in this circumstance this is not a fresh /home (so don't format it).
If it's simply a question of installing antiX on a new hard drive or a drive you are re-purposing, and don't care about the data on it, then when the installer asks you where you want install to enter hda1 for a SATA (or PATA IDE) drive or sda1 for an SSD drive. For filesystem ext4 is a reasonable choice. After entering a username and a matching pair of passwords for your user and for root the system will install very, very quickly. That last question to answer is whether or not to install the Grub boot loader to the MBR, answer y if unsure. Now you can type reboot and when the PC restarts remove your installation media.
Now the work begins. Log in with your new user account and lets start working the command line. My first job is usually to enable the Debian Testing repositories, this will give you more flexibility and up to date package choices. Enter sudo nano /etc/apt/sources.d/debian.list and simply remove the hashes (#) from the all three lines in the Debian Testing section. I also enable the Liquorix repo listed in /etc/apt/sources.d/various.list. If you're not using a wired connection or it isn't set up correctly run the excellent Ceni network managment tool and set up your network connection. When you've made a connection and got an IP address let's do a sudo apt-get update.
If (like on my desktop PC) you need to install Nvidia proprietary network drivers I recommend the SMXI script. Simply enter smxi at the command line and navigate through the menus, there are plenty of automation options for installing alternative kernels, Xorg: the graphical display server, as well as a range of desktop managers and desktop environments. If smxi isn't for you your first step is probably installing Xorg: sudo apt-get install xorg. It's not rocket science. Next should probably install a desktop manager which will provide a graphical login prompt. I opted for Slim but it does require some dirty configuration file editing. If simplicity is what you're looking for GDM3 will work out of the box, but it's bloated and pretty slow. Other desktop managers are available. the command to install Slim is sudo apt-get install slim.
Not only is Linux not a politically sound hair shirt, antiX Linux is not a lightweight compromise. It is stripped to the bone, but ready for you to build into something tailor made to your own personal needs. After applying myself to learn more about Linux and Debian antiX Linux has become everything I used to rely on Ubuntu for. So there is no competition this year, antiX is light and flexible and antiX Linux M13.1 Core can build from a network connection and a package manager to be whatever you want, just what you want and no more than that.
Now when it comes to package management I'm neutral, I have no technical preference. The Linux Standard Base lists RedHat's Package Management (RPM) system as the standard. RPM is great, but then Arch use Pacman is also excellent, I have no problem with either. Personally, I like Debian's Apt system, but only because I know it. So the fact that antiX is based on Debian Testing is perfect for me as it inherits Debian's package management system. I was also impressed to discover that Core ships with an installer-stub of the excellent smxi script (see smxi.org for a lot more information).
So when playing World of Warcraft in 25 man events, with all the graphical effects in full flow, what is my frame rate? Well, it varies but it rarely dips below 9 fps (frames per second). Windows users with mid range Nvidia cards (like mine) will be laughing their asses off with frame rates in the tens (45 – 90 fps in Windows 7, if not more). However, after having the game grind to a complete halt for seconds on end and report 0 fps, 9 fps is not only a substantial improvement but eminently playable. OK, there is some (minor) visible clipping with only 9 frames every second, but in 10 man, 5 man and solo content the game doesn't need so much processing power and 45fps is not unreasonable. If anyone tells you frame rates above 25fps is absolutely necessary, they need to get out more. 20 fps - is completely playable and we approach the number of frame that the human eye is able discern as being separate at all - is smooth as silk. Linux Mint 14 with Xfce cannot sustain multiple frame rates in 25 man content, 10 man content is delivered adequately with 20+ fps.
Clearly antiX Linux M12 Core with Xfce delivers in terms of my gaming requirements. With your hardware your mileage may vary. World of Warcraft is an eight year old game so any modern title released in the last couple of years, without a native Linux version, will struggle to run on any build of Linux. Wine is a workaround to the problem of major games manufacturers, thus far, refusing to release Linux ports of their titles. The only solution is native Linux titles. If Steam truly delivers it could be a game changer.
We've long argued, quite correctly, that Linux can free you from the bloat of millions of lines of redundant code, services, processes and applications running constantly when not needed. Getting some graphically bleeding edge games titles, written for the Linux platform, will give us the opportunity to demonstrate how Linux can allow games to deliver significantly better frame rates and performance on the same hardware. If Steam makes Linux a viable platform gamers will see the possible performance gains of jumping off the Microsoft ship. If there is ever going to be a Year of the Linux Desktop gaming will be in the vanguard, no other enthusiast computer users consume performance computer equipment consumption that drives games and graphical hardware development. We have reached an interesting juncture.
I decided to give Linux Mint 13 'Maya' with the MATE Desktop Environment a quick spin, before Nadia arrived...then I could look for another more mature DE, perhaps Xfce, perhaps the Linux Mint variant. So I took out the magazine cover mounted DVD I had and launched the Maya MATE live session and began carving up my drive to make some space. I love that the Mint live session includes GParted, if you're installing a new distro this is the tool, unless you have the good fortune to have access to the KDE Partition Tool. Once your distro is deployed it's value shrinks to almost nothing so saving some precious drive storage is sound idea as most users simply won't need it again, those that do probably won't have any issue installing it.
All my plans to merrily go about thrashing and over-revving several others from the current crop of popular distros promptly fell at the wayside. I really shouldn't have been surprised, MATE is Gnome 2 after all, however it's difficult to convey my feelings about Maya. I loved the simplicity of Ubuntu, it seemed to make everything possible. Some people dislike the on-a-plate delivery of Ubuntu and prefer the power and flexibility of an Arch, Gentoo or Sabayon. Fine, no issue with that, but when you want a distro that's simple to install, simple to set up and gets out of your face so you can work Ubuntu 10:04 was perfection and I hit none of the snags that some experienced from 10:10. When I felt I needed to move and tried Linux Mint 11 Katya for the first time it was simply like coming home, it was all Ubuntu had been and more.
It felt exactly like I'd wanted Ubuntu 12:04 to be, Ubuntu 10:04 only better and more polished. Using Maya for the first time I seriously questioned the rationale of not wanting to backslide into Gnome 2 and a 'legacy' Desktop. MATE is, naturally, as good as Gnome 2.32 but with plans afoot to make use of the Gtk3 tool-set MATE is looking forward as well as back.
2012 has been disappointing and pleasant for the same reasons. The Linux Mint team have delivered a distro experience that has simply been exactly what I was looking for. Cinnamon has pushed the boundaries and made the Gnome 3 tech usable by replacing the Gnome Shell and throwing away the Gnome team's design brief. The Gnome team had announced that they were removing Fallback mode from Gnome Shell, a Gnome 2 panel-like interface for 2D desktop users, then in a belated turnaround they've recently announced a Classic mode return with project maintained extensions delivered in tarball for those who wish to opt for the Classic (read old-fashioned, Gnome 2) experience.
Perhaps we'll now see a gentle repositioning by the community. Old fashioned and traditional might surreptitiously be replaced with standard or user friendly. Modern, fresh and cutting edge may be edged out in favour of bleeding edge. I was (unsurprisingly) insulted by the suggestion (made on the Ubuntu Forum) that 'I simply didn't like change' and found it difficult to 'transition to a modern interface design'. My scorn of Unity (and Gnome Shell) would've been tempered if it was a developmental alternative, the first steps to a new Desktop model and associated way of working. Having someone accuse me of being unable to cope with a bleeding edge interface design would have me responding more moderately that 'for everyday, productive computing that was probably so'. My approach and review of Gnome Shell and Unity would've dwelt on the positives and innovation and not those parts that made everyday use onerous (Global Menus, Overviews or Dashes, appalling task switching, no window controls).
It may well be (two years) too late for the Gnome team to respond to it's user base and survive, but frankly who cares, we have MATE and I frankly can't wait for the next iteration of Cinnamon. As for Ubuntu if the upstream distro continues to ship with as many regressions I wouldn't be at all surprised to see Clement Leferbvre announce the use of Debian across the entire Mint stable and not just for the rolling LMDE.
So for my needs, the undisputed champion and distro of 2012 is the MATE 1.4 sporting Linux Mint 14 'Nadia'.
themainliner
...works in the IT industry.
...just can't leave anything alone, it's more fun fixing it than using it.
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