• For you SBBS Sysops operating on *NIX, what's your flavor?
• 1) Ubuntu
  11
• 2) Debian
  6
• 3) A Debian variant (Mint/MX/other)
  2
• 4) Redhat/CentOS/Fedora
  4
• 5) Suse and variants
  0
• 6) Slackware
  1
• 7) Arch and variants
  3
• 8) One of the BSDs
  2
• 9) AIX/Solaris/HP-UX ;-)
  1
• 10) Something else
  0
•  
  You cannot vote on this poll.

Re: For you SBBS Sysops operating on *NIX, what's your flavor?
By: Gamgee to on Wed Jun 05 2024 07:25 pm

1: Ubuntu [1 16.67%] û
2: Debian [1 16.67%] û
3: A Debian variant (Mint/MX/other) [1 16.67%] û

These probably could have been combined into one like the RHEL/CentOS/Fedora one is (I assume Rocky/Alma/Oracle/Scientific/etc fall under this)

I run CentOS on my main BBS Box, and it's in desparate need of an upgrade. (CentOS 7 reaches EOL at the end of the month). I'm considering moving it to Gentoo, which is what I've run for over a decade on my home devbox (and also what hosts my SEXPOTS dialup application).

In the end though, I'll probably just wind up moving it to CentOS 9 Stream or Possibly Rocky or Alma 9. Maintaining one Gentoo box is plenty. :)

DaiTengu

...Sometimes I sits and thinks, and sometimes I just sits.

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DaiTengu wrote to Gamgee <=-

Re: For you SBBS Sysops operating on *NIX, what's your flavor?
By: Gamgee to on Wed Jun 05 2024 07:25 pm

1: Ubuntu [1 16.67%] û
2: Debian [1 16.67%] û
3: A Debian variant (Mint/MX/other) [1 16.67%] û

These probably could have been combined into one like the RHEL/CentOS/Fedora one is (I assume
Rocky/Alma/Oracle/Scientific/etc fall under this)

Yes, I thought about that, but I knew there would be more folks using
the above distros and wanted to be a little more granular on the choices
for those. I know they are all Debian offspring, but they are different enough to get an individual listing. :-)

I run CentOS on my main BBS Box, and it's in desparate need of an
upgrade. (CentOS 7 reaches EOL at the end of the month). I'm
considering moving it to Gentoo, which is what I've run for over
a decade on my home devbox (and also what hosts my SEXPOTS dialup application).

Cool, and an interesting mix there. Quite different. I was once a fan
of the Redhat heritage, even ran Redhat for a short while before it went commercial, and then Mandrake after that (still RPM package management).
I guess I've never tried CentOS, but have installed Fedora a few times,
but found it too Gnome-focused. I actually liked Gnome back in the
early days with RH and Mandrake, but it's evolved into.... something I
don't like any more. Finally settled on Slackware (w/ XFCE desktop) and
been there ever since.

In the end though, I'll probably just wind up moving it to CentOS
9 Stream or Possibly Rocky or Alma 9. Maintaining one Gentoo box
is plenty. :)

Haha, yes I have tried Gentoo also, LONG ago, and while fun for a while,
was too much work. Good way to learn about Linux, though.

Thanks for the feedback.



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Re: Re: For you SBBS Sysops operating on *NIX, what's your flavor?
By: Gamgee to DaiTengu on Thu Jun 06 2024 11:14 am

Cool, and an interesting mix there. Quite different. I was once a fan of the Redhat heritage, even ran Redhat for a short while before it went commercial, and then Mandrake after that (still RPM package management). I

I tried Mandrake years ago (maybe around 2001 or 2002), and one thing I ran into was that it worked well on my PC in one version, but when I tried to install the next version, some things (such as its graphics hardware detection for X) wasn't working well anymore, etc.. I had seen that with some Linux distros back then, where one version would work well but the next version wouldn't. It was odd, as it was like things would sometimes regress with newer versions.

guess I've never tried CentOS, but have installed Fedora a few times, but found it too Gnome-focused. I actually liked Gnome back in the early days with RH and Mandrake, but it's evolved into.... something I don't like any more. Finally settled on Slackware (w/ XFCE desktop) and been there ever since.

I also liked earlier versions of Gnome, and I don't like the newer versions (which is one reason I'm not a big fan of Ubuntu, as I recall it using a recent version of Gnome by default).

Haha, yes I have tried Gentoo also, LONG ago, and while fun for a while, was too much work. Good way to learn about Linux, though.

Yep, I used Gentoo for a while on a laptop, around 2004. I had it configured to build all packages, and things like XFree86 and OpenOffice would take hours to build (I'd leave it overnight to install those).

Nightfox

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Re: Re: For you SBBS Sysops operating on *NIX, what's your flavor?
By: Gamgee to DaiTengu on Thu Jun 06 2024 11:14 am

I run CentOS on my main BBS Box, and it's in desparate need of an
upgrade. (CentOS 7 reaches EOL at the end of the month). I'm considering
moving it to Gentoo, which is what I've run for over a decade on my home
devbox (and also what hosts my SEXPOTS dialup application).

Cool, and an interesting mix there. Quite different. I was once a fan of the Redhat heritage, even ran Redhat for a short while before it went commercial, and then Mandrake after that (still RPM package management). I guess I've never tried CentOS, but have installed Fedora a few times, but found it too Gnome-focused. I actually liked Gnome back in the early days with RH and Mandrake, but it's evolved into.... something I don't like any more. Finally settled on Slackware (w/ XFCE desktop) and been there ever since.

Very rarely do I use a GUI on Linux. All of my linux boxes are headless. I run Windows on my main PC, which hosts an X-server, where I can run graphical applications remotely if I need to.

DaiTengu

...Life is a hereditary disease.

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Re: Re: For you SBBS Sysops operating on *NIX, what's your flavor?
By: DaiTengu to Gamgee on Thu Jun 06 2024 12:34 pm

Very rarely do I use a GUI on Linux. All of my linux boxes are headless.
I run Windows on my main PC, which hosts an X-server, where I can run graphical applications remotely if I need to.

Same here.
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Nightfox wrote to Gamgee <=-

Re: Re: For you SBBS Sysops operating on *NIX, what's your
flavor?
By: Gamgee to DaiTengu on Thu Jun 06 2024 11:14 am

Cool, and an interesting mix there. Quite different. I was once a fan of the Redhat heritage, even ran Redhat for a short while before it went commercial, and then Mandrake after that (still RPM package management). I

I tried Mandrake years ago (maybe around 2001 or 2002), and one
thing I ran into was that it worked well on my PC in one version,
but when I tried to install the next version, some things (such
as its graphics hardware detection for X) wasn't working well
anymore, etc.. I had seen that with some Linux distros back
then, where one version would work well but the next version
wouldn't. It was odd, as it was like things would sometimes
regress with newer versions.

Yes, I also recall fairly frequent problems with Xwindows and graphics
cards back in those days. I liked Mandrake quite a bit and then
something happened to them and it morphed into something else.
"Mandriva" maybe? That's when I moved full time to Slackware, probably
around 2003.

guess I've never tried CentOS, but have installed Fedora a few times, but found it too Gnome-focused. I actually liked Gnome back in the early days with RH and Mandrake, but it's evolved into.... something I don't like any more. Finally settled on Slackware (w/ XFCE desktop) and been there ever since.

I also liked earlier versions of Gnome, and I don't like the
newer versions (which is one reason I'm not a big fan of Ubuntu,
as I recall it using a recent version of Gnome by default).

Yes, it does use the newest Gnome and I also dislike it. Feels very
"dumbed down" to me.

Haha, yes I have tried Gentoo also, LONG ago, and while fun for a while, was too much work. Good way to learn about Linux, though.

Yep, I used Gentoo for a while on a laptop, around 2004. I had
it configured to build all packages, and things like XFree86 and OpenOffice would take hours to build (I'd leave it overnight to
install those).

Been there, too. Haha, yeah that stuff was painful. I used to even
configure and compile custom kernels (on Slackware), thinking I could
squeeze out more "performance"... Maybe it did, and in those days I was
on fairly weak hardware so it helped, and was a lot of fun actually.
But also a lot of work, and I don't bother with that any more.



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DaiTengu wrote to Gamgee <=-

Re: Re: For you SBBS Sysops operating on *NIX, what's your
flavor?
By: Gamgee to DaiTengu on Thu Jun 06 2024 11:14 am

I run CentOS on my main BBS Box, and it's in desparate need of an
upgrade. (CentOS 7 reaches EOL at the end of the month). I'm considering
moving it to Gentoo, which is what I've run for over a decade on my home
devbox (and also what hosts my SEXPOTS dialup application).

Cool, and an interesting mix there. Quite different. I was once a fan of the Redhat heritage, even ran Redhat for a short while before it went commercial, and then Mandrake after that (still RPM package management). I guess I've never tried CentOS, but have installed Fedora a few times, but found it too Gnome-focused. I actually liked Gnome back in the early days with RH and Mandrake, but it's evolved into.... something I don't like any more. Finally settled on Slackware (w/ XFCE desktop) and been there ever since.

Very rarely do I use a GUI on Linux. All of my linux boxes are
headless. I run Windows on my main PC, which hosts an X-server,
where I can run graphical applications remotely if I need to.

That's cool. I have several headless things running here too, but my
daily driver (this ThinkPad laptop) uses the XFCE desktop. There are
only two windows computers in the house - my work laptop, and my wife's desktop. :-)



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On Thu, 6 Jun 2024 15:01:58 -0500, you wrote:

In the end though, I'll probably just wind up moving it to CentOS 9
Stream or Possibly Rocky or Alma 9. Maintaining one Gentoo box is
plenty. :)

Shit, plenty? Maintaining one Gentoo box is an exercise in futility. :)

I may give CentOS a try one of these days as I've always heard great things about it, but my servers will most likely always run Arch.

Whatever you're comfortable with, I say go for it!

Regards,
Nick

... Take my advice, I don't use it anyway.
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Re: For you SBBS Sysops operating on *NIX, what's your flavor?
By: Accession to DaiTengu on Thu Jun 06 2024 07:25 pm

I may give CentOS a try one of these days as I've always heard great things about it, but my servers will most likely always run Arch.

Considering CentOS is being end-of-lifed soon (as of June 30), there probably isn't much point in trying it now.

Nightfox

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1: Ubuntu [1 16.67%] û
2: Debian [1 16.67%] û
3: A Debian variant (Mint/MX/other) [1 16.67%] û

These probably could have been combined into one like the RHEL/CentOS/Fedora one is (I assume Rocky/Alma/Oracle/Scientific/etc fall under this)

They probably could have been, but I would have been reluctant to vote on
an option that included Ubuntu. It may be based on Debian, but IMHO Debian
is much more stable, especially when it comes time for a release upgrade.

I run Debian, Devuan (a Debian variant), and Raspbian here. Used to run
Ubuntu on one sbc because I thought I had to. Just like the other time I
tried out ubuntu on another machine, when it came time for the next release upgrade, I followed the directions and wound up with an sbc that didn't
work any more.

Installed the relative Debian version instead and viola, it just worked.


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Re: For you SBBS Sysops opera
By: Dumas Walker to DAITENGU on Thu Jun 06 2024 04:33 pm

I run Debian, Devuan (a Debian variant), and Raspbian here. Used to run Ubuntu on one sbc because I thought I had to. Just like the other time I tried out ubuntu on another machine, when it came time for the next release upgrade, I followed the directions and wound up with an sbc that didn't
work any more.

I run a mystic BBS on raspian, and several game servers on Ubuntu.

I really like Ubuntu.

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Re: For you SBBS Sysops operating on *NIX, what's your flavor?
By: Accession to DaiTengu on Thu Jun 06 2024 07:25 pm

Shit, plenty? Maintaining one Gentoo box is an exercise in futility. :)

Meh, I've been using Gentoo for probably 20 years at this point. It has its quirks, but no distro has taught me more than Gentoo has.

I may give CentOS a try one of these days as I've always heard great things about it, but my servers will most likely always run Arch.

modern CentOS (The ones labeled "Stream" ) are a far cry from what it used to be. It was designed to be a rock-solid super-stable enterprise-grade OS. Rocky Linux has taken its place, literally. Rocky Linux is now built the exact same way that CentOS was, downstream from RHEL. Redhat moved CentOS to be the "upstream" distro, and now RHEL is built from it. It's sacrificing a bit of stability and a lot of support. Rocky is the same as RHEL line-for-line. It's just missing the proprietary Red Hat things. Alma on the other hand, does take some liberties and will go ahead and fix bugs or upgrade things here and there that aren't part of the RHEL releases their release is based on.

Whatever you're comfortable with, I say go for it!

Pretty much. I'll still make fun of people who use Macs, though, any chance I get.

DaiTengu

...Advertising is legalized lying.

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Re: For you SBBS Sysops operating on *NIX, what's your flavor?
By: Nightfox to Accession on Thu Jun 06 2024 06:52 pm

Considering CentOS is being end-of-lifed soon (as of June 30), there probably isn't much point in trying it now.

CentOS 7 is. CentOS 8 Stream and CentOS 9 Stream are not. You've got a few years on 9, and a year or so on 8.

The "Stream" distros though have swapped places with RHEL proper. CentOS used to be built from the RHEL distros. Now RHEL is built from CentOS.

DaiTengu

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Yes, I also recall fairly frequent problems with Xwindows and graphics
cards back in those days. I liked Mandrake quite a bit and then

That was how I landed on debian. It took a little more knowledge to set up than the ones with the more automated installers, but it was the only one
that got my graphics card right.

Now, it did also come with cfdisk set as the default partitioning program
back then. Removing it and replacing with fdisk fixed any issues. ;)


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I run a mystic BBS on raspian, and several game servers on Ubuntu.

I really like Ubuntu.

I liked it and thought it worked fine so long as I didn't ever try to upgrade to the next release. ;)


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On 06 Jun 2024, Gamgee said the following...

Yes, I also recall fairly frequent problems with Xwindows and graphics cards back in those days. I liked Mandrake quite a bit and then

i remember configuring XFree86 came with a giant warning about how it could damage your monitor.. spent an awful lot of time one year tracking down the exact specs for some chinese 19" monitor to attempt both 1600x1200 and 75hz (iirc) paranoid i might damage something.. that and.. the video card driver was compiled into the X server itself? something like that. weird times :)

on the OS/2 side we just bought from a list. not on the list? too bad :)

Been there, too. Haha, yeah that stuff was painful. I used to even configure and compile custom kernels (on Slackware), thinking I could squeeze out more "performance"... Maybe it did, and in those days I was on fairly weak hardware so it helped, and was a lot of fun actually.
But also a lot of work, and I don't bother with that any more.

i used to have to do that for an IBM server i had.. for the SCSI raid controller.. that whole machine was a giant waste of electricity. did feel cool the one and only time one of the power supplies failed and i hot swapped it out. but yeah, i think i studied the kernel config options for a while before deciding to just use the slackware one as a template and then add the extra stuff.

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Re: For you SBBS Sysops operating on *NIX, what's your flavor?
By: DaiTengu to Nightfox on Fri Jun 07 2024 12:40 am

Considering CentOS is being end-of-lifed soon (as of June 30), there
probably isn't much point in trying it now.

CentOS 7 is. CentOS 8 Stream and CentOS 9 Stream are not. You've got a few years on 9, and a year or so on 8.

The "Stream" distros though have swapped places with RHEL proper. CentOS used to be built from the RHEL distros. Now RHEL is built from CentOS.

Ah, I've heard something about that. I had the impression that CentOS as we know it will be discontinued. Wikipedia even says CentOS is a "discontinued Linux distribution". It sounds like CentOS Stream won't be much different than the current CentOS?

Nightfox

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fusion wrote to Gamgee <=-

On 06 Jun 2024, Gamgee said the following...

Yes, I also recall fairly frequent problems with Xwindows and graphics cards back in those days. I liked Mandrake quite a bit and then

i remember configuring XFree86 came with a giant warning about
how it could damage your monitor.. spent an awful lot of time one
year tracking down the exact specs for some chinese 19" monitor
to attempt both 1600x1200 and 75hz (iirc) paranoid i might damage something.. that and.. the video card driver was compiled into
the X server itself? something like that. weird times :)

Ahhh yes, now that you say it I remember that too. Defining "modelines"
and refresh rates for certain resolutions. Fun and annoying all at the
same time. :)

on the OS/2 side we just bought from a list. not on the list? too
bad :)

I never got aboard the OS/2 train. Straight from DOS to Win, and
eventually Linux.

Been there, too. Haha, yeah that stuff was painful. I used to even configure and compile custom kernels (on Slackware), thinking I could squeeze out more "performance"... Maybe it did, and in those days I was on fairly weak hardware so it helped, and was a lot of fun actually.
But also a lot of work, and I don't bother with that any more.

i used to have to do that for an IBM server i had.. for the SCSI
raid controller.. that whole machine was a giant waste of
electricity. did feel cool the one and only time one of the power
supplies failed and i hot swapped it out. but yeah, i think i
studied the kernel config options for a while before deciding to
just use the slackware one as a template and then add the extra
stuff.

SCSI.... yes there's another big can of worms. Don't remember having to
do anything with that in Linux, but surely did on a CDROM disk changer (Panasonic, maybe?) under MSDOS that I used on my BBS in the 90's - had
to play with a lot of command-line switches and memory stuff. Loading order
of drivers in autoexec and config.sys, and the like. Pretty satisfying
to get all that working after a lot of effort. I miss those days. ;)



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Dumas Walker wrote to GAMGEE <=-

Yes, I also recall fairly frequent problems with Xwindows and graphics
cards back in those days. I liked Mandrake quite a bit and then

That was how I landed on debian. It took a little more knowledge
to set up than the ones with the more automated installers, but
it was the only one that got my graphics card right.

Now, it did also come with cfdisk set as the default partitioning
program back then. Removing it and replacing with fdisk fixed
any issues. ;)

That's funny, as I actually still use (and prefer) cfdisk... Hahaha



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Re: Re: For you SBBS Sysops operating on *NIX, what's your flavor?
By: Gamgee to fusion on Fri Jun 07 2024 01:34 pm

I never got aboard the OS/2 train. Straight from DOS to Win, and eventually Linux.

I went from DOS to Windows too, but in 1996 I experimented a bit with OS/2 because I was curious about it. I could definitely see how it would have been nice to run a BBS in OS/2 (even a DOS BBS). I had also played a bit with Ray Gwinn's SIO drivers, which allowed telnet access to a virtual serial port.. I tried setting up a copy of RemoteAccess (BBS software for DOS) with those SIO drivers and was impressed that I could successfully telnet into it. I also looked into an OS/2-native BBS package that I thought looked interesting (AdeptXBBS) but never actually used it to run a BBS.

By that time though, Windows was the main OS I was using, and OS/2 was on its way out, with not much software being made for it.

Nightfox

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On Thu, 6 Jun 2024 23:52:10 -0700, you wrote:

I may give CentOS a try one of these days as I've always heard great
things about it, but my servers will most likely always run Arch.

Considering CentOS is being end-of-lifed soon (as of June 30), there probably isn't much point in trying it now.

CentOS 8's EOL is soon. CentOS 9 has just begun. :)

Regards,
Nick

... Take my advice, I don't use it anyway.
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On Fri, 7 Jun 2024 05:38:42 -0500, you wrote:

Shit, plenty? Maintaining one Gentoo box is an exercise in

futility. :)

Meh, I've been using Gentoo for probably 20 years at this point. It
has its quirks, but no distro has taught me more than Gentoo has.

I used it for about 5 years when I first started. I actually _chose_ to use it when I wanted to learn and transition to Linux. Boy was I a glutton for punishment, back then.

However, I agree with you there, as far as no distro has taught me more than Gentoo, also. All the sleepless nights fixing what 'emerge -avuDN world" did to me after compiling all night (and sometimes half of the next day, too) to install and/or upgrade packages. :)

I think once the main Gentoo guy left and Funtoo started, I started messing with Sabayon a little bit (Gentoo with a binary package manager? It was like a dream come true). Eventually, moved to Archlinux.

modern CentOS (The ones labeled "Stream" ) are a far cry from what it
used to be. It was designed to be a rock-solid super-stable enterprise-grade OS. Rocky Linux has taken its place, literally. Rocky

Rolling releases have been super popular. I'm surprised they haven't done anything like this sooner, to be honest. I get it, keep your flagship "rock-solid super-stable enterprise-grade OS", but it almost seems now like it's a little too late.

Whatever you're comfortable with, I say go for it!

Pretty much. I'll still make fun of people who use Macs, though, any chance I get.

I mean, why not? They only did it to themselves. :)

Regards,
Nick

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Re: For you SBBS Sysops operating on *NIX, what's your flavor?
By: Nightfox to DaiTengu on Fri Jun 07 2024 10:02 am

CentOS 7 is. CentOS 8 Stream and CentOS 9 Stream are not. You've got a
few years on 9, and a year or so on 8.

The "Stream" distros though have swapped places with RHEL proper. CentOS
used to be built from the RHEL distros. Now RHEL is built from CentOS.

Ah, I've heard something about that. I had the impression that CentOS as we know it will be discontinued. Wikipedia even says CentOS is a "discontinued Linux distribution". It sounds like CentOS Stream won't be much different than the current CentOS?

Yeah, basically. The rage over it is from enterprise customers. CentOS stood for "Community Enterprise Operating System". It's entire focus was around stability, and moving upstream of RHEL potentially reduces some of that stability.

One of the early CentOS founders went off and founded Rocky Linux, named for the original CentOS founder that died in 2004 at the age of 30.

The idea is to take the place of what CentOS was, it's a 1:1 line-for-line clone of RHEL, with the proprietary bits stripped out. Rocky 9's EOL isn't until 2032.

If super-stability isn't that important. Fedora might be a good option. New Fedora versions come out about every 6 months or so. Every once in awhile they fork Fedora to create the next version of CentOS. CentOS 9 Stream (and RHEL 9) is based on Fedora 34 The current version of Fedora is 40, which was released in April.

Fedora 34 was released 3 years ago.

That doesn't mean CentOS 9 is an exact snapshot from Fedora 34 that will never be upgraded, but they try to keep libraries and things consistent/stable. The kernel stays around that version (5.11 I believe), and glibc really only gets bugfixes / security patches if required. Basically major "new features" aren't generally introduced. Most major updates/changes are bug fixes, security patches and support for hardware.

That doesn't mean things can't be upgraded. There are many official, and even more unofficial repositories that install newer versions of programs, but users potentially sacrifice stability when that's done.

DaiTengu

...All turtle thoughts are of turtle.

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Re: For you SBBS Sysops operating on *NIX, what's your flavor?
By: Accession to DaiTengu on Fri Jun 07 2024 07:11 pm

Meh, I've been using Gentoo for probably 20 years at this point. It has
its quirks, but no distro has taught me more than Gentoo has.

I used it for about 5 years when I first started. I actually _chose_ to use it when I wanted to learn and transition to Linux. Boy was I a glutton for punishment, back then.

However, I agree with you there, as far as no distro has taught me more than Gentoo, also. All the sleepless nights fixing what 'emerge -avuDN world" did to me after compiling all night (and sometimes half of the next day, too) to install and/or upgrade packages. :)

Fun fact, Gentoo now offers binary packages. This is a thing they did recently.

one of my co-workers also runs Gentoo, but he's a bit more insane than I am. he just did an update with the latest profile and it completely hosed his system.

I'm still running a Gentoo profile from 2017 I think. I got a notification the other day that I need to update my profile to something newer, but you better believe I'll be using some kind of clonedisk or something first just in case :D

DaiTengu

...Death is hereditary

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On Sat, 8 Jun 2024 01:14:34 -0500, you wrote:

Yeah, basically. The rage over it is from enterprise customers.
CentOS stood for "Community Enterprise Operating System". It's entire focus was around stability, and moving upstream of RHEL potentially
reduces some of that stability.

All of this is has been a worry for XCP-ng users as well, apparantly. I had installed it on Virtualbox to test it out recently, and had read a lot of articles where the developers were swearing up and down that while they were using some upstream CentOS stuff, they were still basically running their own OS, and could pick and choose what went into their updates to keep it stable. However, I'm sure it still kept (and is keeping) current and possible future users of it on their toes.

That doesn't mean things can't be upgraded. There are many official,
and even more unofficial repositories that install newer versions of programs, but users potentially sacrifice stability when that's done.

"Stability" has come a LONG way in the last, say 10 years, though. Even rolling distributions are doing more behind the scenes testing before pushing things through. At least that seems to be my experience with Arch. As I said before, I've been live updating my server, rebooting into a new kernel, etc. whenever I feel like it since I re-installed it in 2017. Speaking of which, looks like linux-6.9.3.arch1-1 is out, so time for another. :)

There may have been a couple times over those years, where after updates there would be a note saying something didn't work with some version of something else, so I had to head to the forums and figure out what to do to undo it (which wasn't a big deal at all). Then keep an eye out and/or wait like a week for the fix to be pushed, and re-update. Never had any breakage or downtime, though.

Definitely had *way* more breakage and downtime with Gentoo, but that was probably 10-15 years ago. It has probably gotten a lot better since then. However, my Gentoo days are over. I'd rather spend my free time working on the BBS stuff, or testing new packages, etc.. than battle my OS for some time to do all that.

Regards,
Nick

... Take my advice, I don't use it anyway.
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On Sat, 8 Jun 2024 01:25:02 -0500, you wrote:

Fun fact, Gentoo now offers binary packages. This is a thing they did recently.

I take it you mean, "officially", or something? I remember there being side projects that tried to introduce it, especially when Sabayon Linux was popular. But to be honest, Gentoo is Gentoo. Binary packages kind of defeats the entire purpose and meaning of Gentoo. :)

one of my co-workers also runs Gentoo, but he's a bit more insane than
I am. he just did an update with the latest profile and it completely
hosed his system.

For some reason, I'm starting to have a case of deja vu. lol

I'm still running a Gentoo profile from 2017 I think. I got a
notification the other day that I need to update my profile to something newer, but you better believe I'll be using some kind of clonedisk or something first just in case :D

Even back when I used Gentoo, *most* of the normal stuff was usually fine, and wouldn't break your system. It usually wasn't until you had X and whatever desktop environment of your choice installed where your graphics drivers needed to be re-installed a certain specific way or everything was trashed. Then you would have to go through and make sure every trace of the old driver was gone, in order to maybe successfully install the new one.

It was a pain in the ass, but that was across all distros at that time. However, definitely worse off for the Ubuntu kids that couldn't log into their systems because of their login managers (mostly just because of lack of know-how). Ah, those were the days. :)

Regards,
Nick

... Take my advice, I don't use it anyway.
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Now, it did also come with cfdisk set as the default partitioning program back then. Removing it and replacing with fdisk fixed
any issues. ;)

That's funny, as I actually still use (and prefer) cfdisk... Hahaha

I fat fingered something once and somehow wound up with two partitions that overlaped and eventually caused a lot of system errors, forcing a complete reinstallation of the whole system.

When I reported it as a bug in cfdisk, I was informed that is should allow
you to make such mistakes and not even warn you because that was "freedom."
When I told them I was pretty sure that fdisk wouldn't let me, and I knew
that M$'s FDISK wouldn't, they got real mad.

That was when cfdisk went bye-bye. ;)


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Dumas Walker wrote to GAMGEE <=-

Now, it did also come with cfdisk set as the default partitioning program back then. Removing it and replacing with fdisk fixed
any issues. ;)

That's funny, as I actually still use (and prefer) cfdisk... Hahaha

I fat fingered something once and somehow wound up with two
partitions that overlaped and eventually caused a lot of system
errors, forcing a complete reinstallation of the whole system.

Oooof. That doesn't sound fun.

When I reported it as a bug in cfdisk, I was informed that is
should allow you to make such mistakes and not even warn you
because that was "freedom."
When I told them I was pretty sure that fdisk wouldn't let me,
and I knew that M$'s FDISK wouldn't, they got real mad.

Yeah, that seems a little silly on their part.

That was when cfdisk went bye-bye. ;)

To be fair... it wasn't so much cfdisk's fault... as it was the jerkoffs giving you a hard time about it. But I hear ya. ;-)



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That was when cfdisk went bye-bye. ;)

To be fair... it wasn't so much cfdisk's fault... as it was the jerkoffs giving you a hard time about it. But I hear ya. ;-)

Pretty much that and the fact that cfdisk would have allowed me to make
such an error in the future and never stop to warn me about it. Sometimes
my fingers work faster than my brain so I could not risk it. :D


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Re: For you SBBS Sysops operating on *NIX, what's your flavor?
By: Nightfox to DaiTengu on Fri Jun 07 2024 10:02 am

Ah, I've heard something about that. I had the impression that CentOS as we know it will be discontinued. Wikipedia even says CentOS is a "discontinued Linux distribution". It sounds like CentOS Stream won't be much different than the current CentOS?

It seems to me that IBM/Red Hat wanted to offer a free-tier RHEL that wasn't a real clone (such as CentOS used to be). The existence of a free RHEL is something that generates lots of indirect business and free marketing, but I bet they could not allow the free alternative to be a 1:1 clone.

CentOS Stream is a bit like a RHEL "Debian" Testing offered free of charge. If you just want to try the distribution or are a non-enterprise customer you can get the non-production ready code and roll with it for free. If you want to run the production-ready version you buy RHEL. It is the same business model Proxmox is based on, actually. The only problem is IBM/Red Hat is quite ineffective at preventing the creation of additional 1:1 clones of their flagship distro.


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Re: For you SBBS Sysops operating on *NIX, what's your flavor?
By: Accession to DaiTengu on Sat Jun 08 2024 08:04 am

Fun fact, Gentoo now offers binary packages. This is a thing they did recently.

I take it you mean, "officially", or something? I remember there being side projects that tried to introduce it, especially when Sabayon Linux was popular. But to be honest, Gentoo is Gentoo. Binary packages kind of defeats the entire purpose and meaning of Gentoo. :)

Distributions and Operating Systems that have an integrated way of dealing with both binary packages and source ports are the best man-made thing ever, I swear .

One of the reasons why I think the BSDs rock is precisely because you can install binary packages if you are in a hurry, but if you want to install something after adding a custom patch yourself or do some nifty tricks, you can use the ports trees and build a package (with its dependencies) tailored to your system.

In fact, one of the big pluses of Slackware is that it has ports-like tools that allow you to build your stuff as you see fit without needing to go the wacko-crazy way of building absolutely everything from the ground up :-p


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Hello Arelor,

On Sun, Jun 09 2024 21:14:16 -0500, you wrote:

One of the reasons why I think the BSDs rock is precisely because you
can install binary packages if you are in a hurry, but if you want to install something after adding a custom patch yourself or do some nifty tricks, you can use the ports trees and build a package (with its dependencies) tailored to your system.

I usually do non-distro related compiles and custom patching on stuff I install to a src directory straight from github. If I'm using 'pkg install' on BSD, or 'pacman -S' on Arch, I usually tend to stick with that route. Not sure how it is these days, but I would assume mixing the two could lead to dependency issues or whatever else.

In fact, one of the big pluses of Slackware is that it has ports-like
tools that allow you to build your stuff as you see fit without needing
to go the wacko-crazy way of building absolutely everything from the
ground up :-p

If you have the time to spend on your distro, by all means go ahead and compile everything. However, I don't. :)

Regards,
Nick

... Take my advice, I don't use it anyway.
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Re: For you SBBS Sysops operating on *NIX, what's your flavor?
By: Accession to Arelor on Sun Jun 09 2024 06:59 pm

I usually do non-distro related compiles and custom patching on stuff I install to a src directory straight from github. If I'm using 'pkg install' on BSD, or 'pacman -S' on Arch, I usually tend to stick with that route. Not sure how it is these days, but I would assume mixing the two could lead to dependency issues or whatever else.

On OpenBSD -stable you are very unlikely to break dependencies by mixing packages and ports as long as you don't mess with core libraries. If you mess with core libraries you can actually survive anyway because it will only break stuff if you make api/abi breaking changes.

On -current it is a different matter entirely, because stuff changes all the time.
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Re: Re: For you SBBS Sysops operating on *NIX, what's your flavor?
By: Nightfox to Gamgee on Fri Jun 07 2024 03:27 pm

Re: Re: For you SBBS Sysops operating on *NIX, what's your flavor?
By: Gamgee to fusion on Fri Jun 07 2024 01:34 pm

I never got aboard the OS/2 train. Straight from DOS to Win, and eventually Linux.

I went from DOS to Windows too, but in 1996 I experimented a bit with OS/2 because I was curious about it. I could definitely see how it would have been nice to run a BBS in OS/2 (even a DOS BBS). I had also played a bit with Ray Gwinn's SIO drivers, which allowed telnet access to a virtual serial port.. I tried setting up a copy of RemoteAccess (BBS software for DOS) with those SIO drivers and was impressed that I could successfully telnet into it. I also looked into an OS/2-native BBS package that I thought looked interesting (AdeptXBBS) but never actually used it to run a BBS.

By that time though, Windows was the main OS I was using, and OS/2 was on its way out, with not much software being made for it.

Nightfox

Your post really resonated with me. I really had big hopes for OS/2. While serving in the Navy we used Windows NT Server and Workstation primarily but OS/2 Warp made it's way into our internal network for managing building security (badging, door sensors, alarms). I wanted to run BBS's on OS/2 but ended up using Windows instead. It's so nice now to have so many options all the way from CP/M and DOS all the way to Raspian, Debian, and some really cool distros. I've even got Mint installed on a spare laptop which is pretty decent and gives Ubuntu a run for it's money from a desktop perspective.

Prowler (Tom)

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Re: For you SBBS Sysops operating on *NIX, what's your flavor?
By: Accession to Nightfox on Fri Jun 07 2024 06:54 pm

On Thu, 6 Jun 2024 23:52:10 -0700, you wrote:

I may give CentOS a try one of these days as I've always heard great
things about it, but my servers will most likely always run Arch.

Considering CentOS is being end-of-lifed soon (as of June 30), there probably isn't much point in trying it now.

CentOS 8's EOL is soon. CentOS 9 has just begun. :)

Regards,
Nick

... Take my advice, I don't use it anyway.

I ran CentOS for a long time in a datacenter environment for headless servers. It was really just an alternative to RHEL at the time and I never regretted it from a security and ease-of-use standpoint. It's been a few years now since I've used it, but I'll have to check out 9.

Prowler (Tom)

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Re: Re: For you SBBS Sysops operating on *NIX, what's your flavor?
By: Prowler to Nightfox on Mon Jul 29 2024 09:03 am

Your post really resonated with me. I really had big hopes for OS/2. While serving in the Navy we used Windows NT Server and Workstation primarily but OS/2 Warp made it's way into our internal network for managing building security (badging, door sensors, alarms). I wanted to

That's cool that there was some use of OS/2 there.

run BBS's on OS/2 but ended up using Windows instead. It's so nice now to have so many options all the way from CP/M and DOS all the way to Raspian, Debian, and some really cool distros. I've even got Mint installed on a spare laptop which is pretty decent and gives Ubuntu a run for it's money from a desktop perspective.

Yeah, I like the options we have today. And although I think it would have been nice to see things like OS/2 and Amiga continue on, we can at least run those through emulation and virtual machines.

Nightfox

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Re: Re: For you SBBS Sysops operating on *NIX, what's your flavor?
By: Prowler to Nightfox on Mon Jul 29 2024 09:03 am

I never got aboard the OS/2 train. Straight from DOS to Win, and
eventually Linux.

I was all-in for quite some time. Worked with OS/2 1.2 and 1.3 in a IBM AS/400 and Lan Manager environment, then 2.0, then Warp 3 working with Netware - and then Windows NT 3.51 came out and it just *worked*.

Ran the BBS under OS/2 Warp 3 for a couple of years, loved that I could have a mailer, busy BBS and all the utilities running in an OS/2 console in the background of my desktop and not even notice it was there.



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Re: Re: For you SBBS Sysops operating on *NIX, what's your flavor?
By: poindexter FORTRAN to Prowler on Mon Jul 29 2024 09:48 am

I was all-in for quite some time. Worked with OS/2 1.2 and 1.3 in a IBM AS/400 and Lan Manager environment, then 2.0, then Warp 3 working with Netware - and then Windows NT 3.51 came out and it just *worked*.

Ran the BBS under OS/2 Warp 3 for a couple of years, loved that I could have a mailer, busy BBS and all the utilities running in an OS/2 console in the background of my desktop and not even notice it was there.

I feel like I may have missed the heyday of OS/2, which seems to have been the early 90s. My first computer, in 1992, was a hand-me-down 286 and I wasn't old enough to get a job yet - and I didn't get my first job until 1996, so in the meantime I don't think I had a PC that was really up to running OS/2. Before I got my first job and bought my own parts for a new PC, the fastest PC I had was a 386DX-40, which I think could have ran OS/2, but I don't think I had enough RAM (I think I had 4MB max at the time) and maybe not enough hard drive space either.

Around 1994 or 1995, I bought a used copy of OS/2 Warp 3 at a used software store in my area (before they closed, I think due to legal reasons), and it was on floppies, and many of the floppies were bad.. Later (1996 or 1997), I bought a new sealed copy of OS/2 Warp 4 from my local Egghead Software (and I wondered if spending the $120 on it would be worth it), and I had my PC in a dual-boot setup with that and Windows for a little while. I think one of the things I tried that I thought was really cool was using Ray Gwinn's SIO driver for OS/2 to make my DOS-based RemoteAccess telnettable. But I only did that as an experiment; I continued running my DOS BBS in DOS/Desqview (and later Windows).

Nightfox

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Re: For you SBBS Sysops operating on *NIX, what's your flavor?
By: Prowler to Accession on Mon Jul 29 2024 09:06 am

CentOS 8's EOL is soon. CentOS 9
just begun. :)

years now since I've used it, but I'
have to check out 9.

Previous CentOS were all just copies
of RHEL with all the "RedHat" images
taken out. If I remember correctly, the
new CentOS releases will be based on
Fedora instead. Does that jive, or am I
misremembering?

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Re: For you SBBS Sysops operating
By: phigan to Prowler on Tue Jul 30 2024 06:34 am

Previous CentOS were all just copies
of RHEL with all the "RedHat" images
taken out. If I remember correctly, the
new CentOS releases will be based on
Fedora instead. Does that jive, or am I
misremembering?

Long story short: CentOS Stream (the new CentOS) is only CentOS in name. The new plan is for CentOS Stream to be for Red Hat Enterprise Linux what Debian Testing is to Debian Stable.


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