I admit it — I tried Suse out. Back then, and just last night. And both times, the same thought ran though my heart and soul: this is wrong! Totally, completely wrong! It haunts me still. I feel unclean. Sullied. It’s one of those perverse experiences that hit you at some core level, and you’re never quite the same. Suse is sick, twisted, as purely revolting as the shade of green she wore. The lizard brain, with its base instincts still buried in the cold stream. A different species – no, rather a mockery of our own species in its alien brain.

I hesitate to even describe my experience with Suse. But I must. And you, dear reader, would do well to leave right now and let Suse fade away into mythology, along with the cyclopses and Medusa’s hissing hair. But if you are bold enough, or perverse enough to remain curious, I worry for you.

Suse began innocently enough, with its sickly pea-colored graphical installer, which was actually not that bad. One of the first things it wanted to do was wipe out all my hard drives and build a new partitioning scheme. Honestly, I like assertiveness. But pushiness and gross assumptions turn me right off.

It wasn’t too bad figuring out how to use its “pretty/easy” partitioning, formatting and mountpoint tool. But Suse was clunky. Response times were drunken. I was happy it could handle RAID and LVM, and she even teased me into believing she could handle an LVM mounted root. Unfortunately, at the last moment, she backed out, telling me it “can’t be done”. Lies. From the very beginning. Lies. I can’t be done, dear Suse, it’s just that you’re too stupid.

So I handed a plain vanilla partition to Suse for her /boot so she wouldn’t be confused. I saw nothing about supporting iSCSI either, that I can remember. I do admit it was nice being asked if I wanted a Gnome or KDE environment to live in. Very thoughtful to ask, Suse. And then she started moving in her hundreds of packages from her 4+ gigabyte install image.

I couldn’t watch. So I took the opportunity to use the bathroom while she worked away, and eat some dinner. But when I came back, the fancy graphical install screen had turned to flashing, scrambled block patterns, like a video driver explosion, and nothing could be done. Stupid thing. But she was at least trying to be attractive.

So I physically hit the switch and rebooted. Up come that vomitable green again with a boot menu obviously written in her earlier, extreme drunkeness. Or maybe she’s schizophrenic. The point being, my only boot choices were her, or I could boot 3 Windows partitions that weren’t even bootable by Windows, or “Other Linux Distribution”. I chose her, wanting to give her a further chance. And to my surprise, she recognized that she had failed, and continued with the install. Now that was unexpected and impressive. Some Suse programmer deserves a serious food and treats reward. Thanks to him, she momentarily regained her sanity and I was soon up in desktop.Well, a giant, low-res desktop. But a desktop, nonetheless.

I tried getting the nvidia proprietary drivers installed by adding their community repository to Yast – the repository that’s listed in the software center, labled Nvidia drivers. That’s neat. But when I told her yes, I’ll have some of that, she told me the repository wasn’t there. Suse is some serious crazy. And not in a good way. Even my primitive druid man Gentoo made getting the nvidia drivers easy. Suse just teases.

Firefox did work fine, and it was even easy getting the Adobe’s flash horror installed. However, when I installed Google’s Chrome browser, it came up with an error dialog telling me I had to tell it some root for extensions. I’ve never seen that before. Then again, when you spend some time talking to an insane person, you’ll hear many things you’ve never heard before.

I just felt wrong there with Suse, in her little alien madhouse. And when I rebooted, and chose to boot “Other Linux Distribution”, one of the 3 others currently on the system, I was just sent back into Suse’s delusion. She was taking over for good. And lying about it. Making it look like I was totally free to choose on my own, but making all roads lead right back to that creeping lizard.

So let this be a lesson to you: always install your boot loader on more than one hard drive. That’s how I finally escaped Suse’s clutches, because I always can boot from any drive in the system, and Suse only thought to take over the primary one as identified by the bios. And here’s where her stupidity actually came in handy.

So I told the bios to boot off one one of the alternate drives, and I went straight home to Fedora 16. Actually, my first instinct after such a trauma was to run back to Debian from the future. But I wanted to restore my primary drive’s boot loader. And Fedora is a real up-tight stickler for having all her proper drugs necessary for her to wake up. And sweet, earthy Debian has never had any need for such things, even though it does just as much. So I let Fedora rule the boot loader, since she’s so damn picky.

And this is where I’m back to now, just me and Fedora 16. But I know Suse is lurking deep in the machine, back in those quantum-spun positions, waiting. My next order of business now is to zero out her volume and deallocate her space, in the hopes she will be gone for good. But that’s the thing about monsters, isn’t it? They hit hard, when you least expect.

PS. I’m sure Suse is great and wonderful, and it’s just my own isolated experience, blah, blah, blah. Yes, if you’re insane.

Yesterday, though, perhaps as a subconscious reaction to the fascist shackles and narrow hallways inflicted upon us by proprietary operating systems like Windows 7 and OSX, I went a little nuts. Back to the search for my new workstation OS, I left the stench of caustic proprietary industrial chemicals and instead entered the stench of man sweat, heavy gears, lifting, and grease.

Gentoo users are what Arch Linux users imagine themselves to be: real men. You don’t even get in their club unless you pass through the Klingon pain stick ritual, where where if you come out alive at all, you’ve at least bludgeoned, bruised and bloody. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. And those who survive, are brothers.

Ok, yes, slightly neanderthal brothers, I admit. You see, Gentoo has left the citadel, gone out into the wild plains, where these brothers live the natural life under the stars, pounding naked on drums while dancing around a bonfire, building and strengthening bodies and minds, and, well, do their druidic rites for whatever purposes, while the rest of the world rides in their silver spaceship to the sun.

Gentoo confuses me. He’s primal, wild and passionate. Painfully intelligent in such an exotic way. He’s a beast. And a spirit. And I can’t help but love him. He’s how I used to be. Before I was civilized by the unified space people. Before I compromised my dreams and aspirations in the name of convenience and responsibility.

Gentoo is a warrior, a kung fu master who can juggle the primal elements, and teaches you by forcing you to confront yourself. It doesn’t matter if you’re male or female. It’s the essence that counts. And if that essence isn’t strong, persistent and true, you will break. That is the beauty. That is what binds us together.

Gentoo takes a lot of crap from people who say the only reason he’s there is because he’s obsessed with optimization. Gentoo is obsessed with optimization. He’s a kung fu master. But one does not know true meditation until the body and mind are one in optimized harmony. One does not know true meditation without a deep knowledge of self. And honor is what’s inside, not what is perceived by others.

That being said, Gentoo does make building a Linux box much simpler than using tape and paperclips. Their install image can be booted, or mounted locally for an install without having to reboot. Gentoo makes it easy to chroot into an environment where you can build the system, then just reboot in to carry on creating your own little world. Created however you, as the strong individual, might want it.

Over time, Gentoo has become more accommodating of people wanting to take the fast track, providing some selectable profiles that will make sure you get some of your dependencies handled for your bigger, future dreams. Like a desktop environment. You can’t help but imagine him sneering at you for taking a pre-packaged route. But he tolerates your weakness, knowing you’ll eventually find your own strength together.

Normally you wouldn’t find Gentoo “fraternizing” with someone like me, a one-night stand. But I’m not your average Joe, easily intimidated, quick to anger and burying any secret lack of self-confidence. I got in Gentoo’s face, meaning to take him on, no malice, no baggage, nothing to prove – only to see. You can’t describe such things. They can only be experienced.

And it was good. Gentoo has done an excellent job bringing all the various source packages that make up a traditional Linux OS and supporting stuff together. The dependency matrix through their packaging system, portage, is quite good. The difference is, you have to decide what you want. Do you want your IMAP client to support TLS encryption? You better make sure you compile with the dependencies in place.

If you stick to the pre-packaged sources in portage, and set your USE flags properly (which tell what you generally like compiling in support for), Gentoo is mostly hassle-free. I suppose some people may not know, but yes, Gentoo cooks every program on your system from scratch, downloading the source code for you, and doing its best to make sure you have already compiled the other things you’ll need to successfully compile what you currently want.

Users of other Linux distributions often accuse Gentoo users of obsessing about performance tweaks that Linux lets you do, such as taking advantage of very specific hardware capabilities your system might have, and experimenting with different approaches at compile-time optimizations you can sometimes exploit to boost the zippy-ness of a given program. Such things are obsessive. They can also be fun. And sometimes even useful in a practical sense.

But where I have found Gentoo most convenient is the fact that everything on my system, regardless of optimizations, I have compiled locally, myself. This means that when I want to experiment with a new software release that no distribution has yet conveniently packaged up for me, I can very easily compile it, just by downloading the source. I already have the header files or object files on my system for any dependencies this new package may require. And this can be very nice, because I don’t have to go searching for the correct “development” libraries that most binary Linux distributions would require you to install, in order to compile other programs against those libraries.

I could very happily build a life with Gentoo as my main workstation. If I weren’t a superficial bitch underneath it all. I want shiny, pretty, and I want everything done for me right now, and in the future, and I want it to not look home made. I want him to do everything for me, and I don’t want to have to do anything for him. That’s how it should be. And I’ll settle for a bit of a body fat, if he’ll take care of me. I’ll even smile.

That’s why I’m back in Fedora right now. Gentoo handled an install of root on LVM and RAID just fine, too, btw. Well, as long as you passed the right kernel parameters and built the initrd properly. You have to tell those burly men what to do. Just like Fedora requires it, but for no good reason. Debian from the future is on the flipside still, while I’m trying to make things work with Fedora. Good, faithful Debian Sid.  I wonder what you’ve been thinking, what updates have come since I’ve last been there. Maybe tonight I’ll see.

You know, Gentoo is real shit. Anything more bare to the metal that this and you’ll be crossing the boundaries over into science. Right now, no matter which desktop Linux distribution I eventually end up with, I’ve got in the back of my mind that I’ll be slipping out of the shiny citadel every once in a while, on those clear nights, with the curiosity and pull of the deep woods, to join Gentoo again – under the moon and stars, the bonfire only a small pinpoint from above, yet the raw source of all we have become.

The saga contiues: Psychotic SUSE 12.1 Linux – A Mythological Nightmare

I had no illusions that Fedora 16 and unstable Debian from the future would get along with each other completely, living on the same hard drives. And you know, they do, for the most part.

The biggest problem was, when I brought Fedora 16 home and installed, it played that cocky/arrogant, better than you card with poor unstable Debian, completely pretending like Sid wasn’t even there. F16 completely stripped Debian from the grub2 boot menu, along with Ubuntu. But Fedora 16 was happy to coexist with that fat, filthy Windows 7 partition. Go figure.

Fedora 16 denies it, saying it’s grub’s fault, not his. That’s a little like buying a house from a builder, and when the structural beams collapse, the builder says it’s not his fault, it’s his wood supplier’s fault. Sure. The thing is, many people with multiple OS’s didn’t experience this same problem, so it leads me to believe Fedora 16 has a problem detecting other OS’s installed on other LVM volumes, or some combination of RAID/LVM. I’m sorry, the version of grub Fedora chose to use – not Fedora’s fault. Yeah.

Anyway, it’s a quick enough fix. After you boot into Fedora 16 and run a software update, it seems you get a grub that’s been fixed, and will now detect your other OS’s just fine. You just have to be sure to rebuild your grub.cfg file, which I’ve documented if you happen to have this problem, too.

Once Fedora 16 is put in its place, it’s no big deal switching between Fedora and Debian Sid. But you know what, as lovey as even unstable Debian from the future seems to be, she’s not past a little backstabbing dagger herself, when no one’s looking.

If Debian Sid does an “update-grub”, all the OS’s on the system are detected just fine. Everything looks great. But when you find yourself wanting to be with Fedora 16, you’ll find Fedora 16′s been seriously drugged. Pretty well unusable, in my situation at least, though an “emergency” kernel parameter can get you to some sanity there.

What happens is unstable Debian is being very tricky. Sneaky even. When unstable Debian sees Fedora is there, it’s grub-mkconfig will very graciously put in a grub menu entry for Fedora 16, but the root device kernel parameter it will set to a dm device, which may or may not be the correct one, and doesn’t load all the grub menu image definitions that Fedora 16 needs, either.

Now, to be fair, unstable Debian is not psychic, even in the future… yet. How is it supposed to know which special modules Fedora 16 will need to wake up properly? But it should know better than to rely on a sequentially-numbered dm device for the root volume; the world is an unpredictable place.

And you know what? Fedora 16 shouldn’t be so picky and complicated about what it needs. I can say it’s Debian’s fault for drugging her, but I can also say it’s Fedora’s fault for requiring so much medication in the first place to get going. Must be a downside in the life of an elite corporate military secret assassin spy.

My feelings so far in co-habitation? I feel comfortable and safe with unstable Debian from the future. She’s always treated me right, she’s smart, and is far more intuitive and accommodating of my quirks than Fedora 16. Yet Fedora 16 is a badass. He’s lean, mean, no-nonsense, and literal as all hell. He’s got your back, unless you do something he doesn’t like, and then he’s just as likely to shoot you himself, then blame it on the stars.

These are my two right now. I’m making no commitments. Mint’s LMDE RC just came out today. I think it needs some attention. But in the meantime, I regret to say it, because it disgusts me, and this is where I am right now — in fat, filthy Windows 7. Writing this. Waiting for the last 13% of Skyrim to finish downloading.

So, Fedora 16 seems to have a problem detecting other Linux distributions on your system if you are using LVM for those other volumes. Actually, it may be a combination of RAID and LVM causing Fedora to not see the other distributions. I’m not really sure, and I don’t care to dig.

The symptom was, after installing Fedora 16, the grub2 boot menu no longer had entries for any other of my installed operating systems, except for Windows. I thought it might be wicked Fedora games, but it turns out other people hadn’t experienced this problem – they weren’t running a RAID/LVM combination either.

It turns out that Fedora can actually see the other operating systems, but only after you finish your install and run a software upgrade. This seems to indicate the problem is contained in the Fedora install boot image, but that it’s been corrected in the system after you run a software upgrade.

The fix for grub2, so that your other operating systems will be listed in the boot menu, is an easy one:

grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/grub2/grub.cfg

Of course, run this as root and make a backup copy of the file first.

And, you probably don’t need to do this, if you haven’t done something strange to try to get your other operating systems to show up, but if you need to re-write grub2 back into your disk’s MBR, it’s:

grub2-install /dev/<device-name>

Where <device-name> is your boot drive, in my case, /dev/sda — and also another run for /dev/sdb just in case, since it’s software mirrored there. That’s IN MY CASE, and not your case. So don’t just use those. I know, but some people are reckless that way.

But you know what? You get them alone, and they’re just human. Just like you and me. I guess it’s not easy having to live up to perfection all the time. To never make a mistake. And when I saw Fedora 16 was human, that it farted and belched like the rest of us, it just turned me off. But that’s my fault. And F16 was sure willing to point that out. Because it’s perfect, right? Even when it’s not. And that can be infuriating.

I’m with Fedora 16 right now, as a matter of fact. And we’re getting along great. There’s really some stuff to love about Fedora, if you can look past the attitude. In fact, Fedora 16 has the features of Gnome 3.2, which is mostly ahead of the features that even Debian from the future has. I have a feeling Debian unstable will have them soon enough, though. But right now, with all their corporate intelligence connections, Fedora 16 is bringing out all the latest surveillance equipment, laser blasters, and Doctor Q saying “oops, sorry that shouldn’t have exploded, you shouldn’t have done that” when you yell about his super power ultra device nearly killing you.

And that’s the thing. Fedora 16′s Doctor Q seems to live deep under a volcano that hides a vast giga-warp mothership that also exists trans-dimensionally in orbit around the planet, laying down black rectangular obelisks for we monkeys. That’s why I’m a lucky guy Fedora 16 is even tolerating my fingers right now. What could they possibly want with me? I don’t know. But what I do know is that Fedora 16 is smokin’ hot, tight, and cold as ice. Fedora 16 will make me into a better man.

That’s why you can’t mount filesystems with a type “smbfs” any more. You have to specify “cifs”. F16 will just stare at you, saying “I don’t know what you’re talking about” unless you say it the “proper” way. And again, Fedora 16 is irritatingly right – it’s cifs now, not smbfs. And it doesn’t care what damage it may cause to people who don’t keep up on everything. It’s those damn perfect rectangular monoliths interconnected with the mothership, electrocuting us into being perfect. That cat-o-nine-tails and leather again, perhaps, but with a purpose.

That being said, though, browsing a Windows network through Nautilus didn’t work. Not like I personally care much, because I mount anything like that through the fstab. And Fedora 16 yet again wiped out my other operating systems from the boot grub menu — all except for Windows. Now, I’ve heard from other people that this never happened for them, so I asked if they were using LVM, but I haven’t heard back from any of them, so I suspect it’s a detection issue that only effects OS’s installed on LVM volumes.

Also, I managed to get the Nvidia proprietary drivers built, installed and loaded properly, which I have documented in case it might help someone else save some time/effort. Of course, you can always download the drivers from Nvidia yourself and build the kernel, but following those directions uses Doctor Q’s special Fedora sauce, which makes Doctor Q happy, which in turn is good for keeping Fedora 16 happy with you.

You know what I love most about Fedora 16, though? No, not the Jules Verne submarine. No, certainly not yum. No, not even the tight and sensible international cyber warfare landmines and electric fences of selinux integration (which is gratefully out of sight and mind most of the time). It’s that all my Google email addresses and contacts and calendar just appear as if they’d always been there, after filling out an “Online Accounts” control panel doohickey. OK, I admit it’s a little disconcerting as well. But CIA agents and military assassins exist to protect me. I have to remind myself of this. Again and again. F16 is very exciting – a physique that doesn’t quit, from the ground on up to the tip top of the head.

Bitches don’t have Miro, though. But that’s ok. Miro’s a slug dog with all that hybrid python crap going on. Unstable Debian has Miro, though, and it works pretty well now. Screw it. Fedora must have something better – I mean, just look at it!. And you know what else, screw Debian with all that lazy peace-loving hippy crap, too. Ima climb on board this F16 and jet right on up, and out. Watch your heads down there, suckas.

But gosh, it is a little cold being up so high.

In all seriousness, though, Fedora 16 is prime lean beef. It’s incredibly well thought out. It’s perfectly stable so far. I only found a couple, very minor things, that weren’t right, like Gnome having no idea what a terminal program was (which can be fixed by yumming in libgnome). It’s a great release. I’m going to be using it for a while instead of Debian unstable. My killer CIA military covert intelligence gatherer deserves a second chance – cuz he’s human after all, even if he can’t admit it.

Can’t decide — saga continues: The Trials of Cohabitation: Juggling Debian Sid and Fedora 16

I got it working by following these instructions, but I ignored their instructions on modifying the selinux configuration. I ignored it because, after researching the tickets related to the nvidia drivers in Fedora 16, selinux rpms have been recently patched, so you don’t need to do the modifications that site mentions.

So in the interest of convenience for whomever might wander by here, here is what I did to get the nvidia drivers working in Fedora 16 (be sure to run a software update first, to be sure you’re all current). Of course, be root for this. And rpmfusion is apparently an archive where Fedora places all its unsavory proprietary stuff, like nvidia. They don’t support it though. But they do. No, they don’t. (wink, wink)

Hook up with the rpmfusion repositories:

rpm -Uvh http://download1.rpmfusion.org/free/fedora/rpmfusion-free-release-stable.noarch.rpm
rpm -Uvh http://download1.rpmfusion.org/nonfree/fedora/rpmfusion-nonfree-release-stable.noarch.rpm

Install auto-rebuilding nvidia kernel modules:

yum install akmod-nvidia xorg-x11-drv-nvidia-libs

Move your old booty initramfs out of the way and make a new one without the pesky nouveau modules:

mv /boot/initramfs-$(uname -r).img /boot/initramfs-$(uname -r)-nouveau.img
dracut /boot/initramfs-$(uname -r).img $(uname -r)

I was very clear though, this isn’t a permanent situation. This Debian from the future is “unstable”, and that’s just no good for a long term relationship. Everything may be going perfectly right now, but tomorrow, after I let my guard down, BLAMMO!, and I’m screwed.

But I can’t help wondering, maybe I’m getting caught up in the semantics alone — just because Debian from the future might be “unstable”, doesn’t necessarily mean that I can’t trust it, and live with it. I mean, after all, so many other distributions running wild out in the world get all their real mojo from Debian unstable, or Debian testing. So how is it any different, being with them instead of Debian from the future?

I honestly don’t know. Perhaps these dressed-up reflections of Debian from the future out there, who call themselves stable, really aren’t so stable, but just know how to put on a business suit, or some sexy, form-fitting clothes for whatever club they’re going to haunt.

I like to think that these other players look hard at Debian from the future, taking the best and fixing up anything that might be broken, before heading out to strut their stuff, as their own. But maybe they’re just popping some pain pills and antidepressants, smearing on some makeup, or inflicting some home-brewed plastic surgery on themselves first, to make them at least appear more appealing.

I don’t know. But what I do know is that unstable Debian from the future and I had a really nice time last night hanging out at home, baking a few cookies, and doing a few puzzles together. But in the back of my mind, as Debian’s being so sweet, I’m thinking, ok, when and how are you going to screw me over? But it just looks so innocent, so perfect. And then I start to feel bad about myself – what kind of jaded bastard have I become having left Debian so long ago. And now here I am, coming back, projecting all my bullshit onto the poor thing.

But this is Debian from the future. It is unstable. Debian admits it outright. This isn’t the stable version of Debian from today I’m with, this is the future, beautiful and exciting Debian. I don’t even have to coax it into being better. And he admits he may just fall apart.

And I think, my time with Fedora 16 the other night was great. F16 is plugged into all the right places in the working world. F16 has the connections. It’s upwardly mobile. F16 schmoozes with the venture capitalists and goes on secret missions for the CIA. But when something goes wrong, it never seems takes the blame. It points fingers. It’s a politician. It’s a military covert op. It repeats it over and over again until it’s true. It’s got the power, it’s got the juice. It’s sexy as hell.

Then there’s Debian from the future, sitting right here as I type this. Just as smart, and sexy in the way that just happens accidentally, just naturally. A sexy you can take home to mom without it being all aloof and condescending. And a power that needs nothing at all to remain powerful. No big connections, no political maneuverings. Raw fucking chi. And still likes sci-fi!

Those ones like Gentoo, and the hairy, sweaty, greasy Arch Linux aren’t right for me. Not at home, that is – not for my workstation. Out in the garage, yes! Absolutely. Tinkering with the stock car racer kits. Tuning up the engines and valves to maximum efficiency. Making the most perfect, beautiful body and paint job, exactly how I’ve always wanted a crotch rocket to be. But I won’t be driving that to the grocery store. And I won’t be able to build another one quickly if the garage burns down, or a friend wants one just like it. But yeah, I appreciate the garage just as much as the next guy.

I’m a confused man right now, mostly homeless, in between distributions. Sleeping on Debian from the future’s couch. I could maybe use me some F16 for a while. After I fix its nvidia jets from their blow-out. Or maybe I could stay – move in with the unstable Debian and make myself useful. I think I’m going to head out again tonight, though. I have to admit I’m a little curious about what that lizard Suse has become. I want Mint to hurry it’s ass up and get into town with its new clothes. I’ve got some expectations on their LMDE track.

I’m also starting to get a curiosity for the more exotic and obscure. Is that what a mid-life crisis is? I’ll dive in. Debian won’t mind. Yet somehow, I know Debian will be back there, watching and smiling, as I go flailing around in search of… something…

The confusing saga continues: Fedora 16 Isn’t Ruthless Underneath It All – It Just Needs Some Love and Understanding

By the way, I’ve been helpfully “educated” a few times by people telling me I should use virtualization to try out other distributions, rather than installing them outright on the workstation. Yes, I am already aware that several virtualization technologies exist and I am completely comfortable using three of them. But the virtualization experience is never the experience you have on your bare metal workstation. Your workstation can run virtualizations. I’m looking to replace my workstation. I want to know how it looks, how it feels to drive it, its subtleties and idiosyncrasies on the bare metal. Virtualization cannot fully provide this.

So during this experimental phase, I’m using various LVM volumes on the workstation to install the OS’s. Last night I was planning on wiping out the Fedora one and trying Pinguy OS, at the suggestion of someone named “Anon”. I like the story of it: someone wanting to take Ubuntu and dress it up with all the things to it that a normal person would want, like a stock DLNA server, for example, and rich media capabilities already installed and made lovely. And, apparently, a bazillion mozilla browser plugins pre-installed for you. That’s where I started thinking, this Pinguy OS might be just a little too eager to please. I’m not really wanting to be drown in gifts and attention. I’ll feel awkward. It ended up making me want to run. Perhaps I just don’t deserve Pinguy OS’s lavish generosity. But my primary reason for deciding against it is that it’s built upon Ubuntu, and Ubuntu is why I’m in this homeless mess right now. Well, not really. It’s all my fault.

So I decided not to blow away my Fedora volume, and instead thought to give it another go. Off I went, booting into Fedora 15. It was right in the grub menu, where Debian put it, having detected it from the last couple installs. Debian put all my possible boot OS’s into grub menus for me. What a sweetheart.

Up comes Fedora. It’s a striking Gnome 3 environment, just like unstable Debian, and unlike the phony Ubuntu unity. I ran the software updates and it found quite a few, which took quite some time to install. For a very well-performing OS, Fedora seems to have a very slow software package management system. Perhaps it’s just very careful, and that takes time. Or maybe it’s written in Python (oh no he didn’t!).

Of course, I need Flash in the browser so I can watch… videos. So I went out searching for the “special” Fedora way to install Flash — I don’t want to gum up their works and get punished later. That’s not a dig on Fedora really — lots of distributions have their own special ways for Flash. By the way, why won’t Flash die? I think Silverlight did today at least.

Then I remembered a guy potentially named Mike mentioning rpmfusion; a Fedora repository that contains all the seedy, unclean software like Flash, supported by Fedora and absolutely not supported by Fedora. You know how it goes. But I discovered while reading the instructions that Fedora 16 had arrived already. That was fast. So I thought, yes! Let’s experience a Fedora revision update!

Well, the little 100M standalone partition I had made to install the /boot in Fedora 15 (to get around lack of LVM) wasn’t large enough to handle an upgrade (which is fairly ridiculous) so I decided to do a fresh install of Fedora 16 instead. So I did end up wiping the Fedora volume, to be replaced with a new Fedora – which understood both RAID and LVM during the install process! Many cheers for Fedora, and Red Hat. It’s incredibly gratifying to find this level of quality in a Linux install.

And I have to say, the install process was both simple and even a little beautiful to watch. They did a very slick job. And it was fast. I very much liked the thoroughness of their user creation step, too, allowing you to specify custom uid & gid (without having to pre-create a gid). They also have seemingly excellent support for installation onto SANs, and even iSCSI doohickies across the network. Most impressive. I was really starting to feel this Fedora, and I was liking the feeling.

Fedora felt fresh, clean and surgically well-organized. A kind of tight business suit, styled up, with hair pulled back in a bun so tight the face contorts into an implied grin (or maybe grimace). I couldn’t help getting a little thrill of memories of my days spent working in an IBM shop, where everything is documented and thoroughly planned, even the errors. They supported all the right stuff there on install, and even offered support for encrypting your swap area. I’m at the FBI here. And it felt nice.

Because they thought it all out, right? They got it all planned. They’ve got a pride in perfection. And I’m lucky to be using it. Really, they’ve done a lot. And Red Hat contributes so much back to Linux. Fedora absolutely reeks of class. And up-tightness. And strategy. I swear to God I’m back in an IBM shop, at the FBI.

So onto the Gnome 3 desktop I go. Beautiful work. And my first order of business, assigning a keyboard shortcut to open a terminal. Easy enough. But when I go to use the shortcut I just defined, I’m told that no terminal program has been defined. What? The gnome-terminal, you git. Okay, I can live with that. So then I fire up a software update, and get a load of new things, which seemed to install noticeably faster than Fedora 15, which was a relief. Happy. Firefox starting up, version 7. Then adding the repositories for that filthy Flash. Also, the nvidia proprietary drivers instead of the nouveau ones that don’t offer full 3d acceleration…

And the nvidia kernel drivers are built. It’s time to reboot. What a joy. I could stay with Fedora easy – the model of beauty and efficiency. Then the grub boot menu comes up. What! You psycho! All my other operating systems have disappeared from the menu, except for Windows. Now this kind of thuggish behavior I would expect from Arch Linux, but from you!? Fedora? Arch Linux just doesn’t know any better. But you, what the hell is your excuse!? Are you going to play dumb? Tell me you didn’t plan this? Well, fine. No big deal. I can set you straight in a minute here, and we can just move on from this. But seriously, even the brute gave me fair warning, and an out, before taking a club to me!

Then the screen flashes. Just like a X video driver problem. I ran the damn script to update the Xorg.conf file to use the nvidia module. I even double-checked it. Oh, I see, but for some reason you stubbornly loaded the nouveau kernel module instead. So somebody didn’t bother updating the initramfs for boot, or they left out an autoload definition. OK. I’ll go figure out the “special” Fedora way for keeping that driver out, and bringing the nvidia one in. Done. Rebuilding the init image. Reboot. Hey, it’s starting up! The video screen displays a crisp, sharp gdm background image. Then a flash! And are you serious? You’re giving me a sad mac picture in the middle of my screen, telling me to contact my system administrator? You know what? Who needs you, you up-tight psycho – playing at being all sane, together and professional. What an act. Oh, I’m sure you’re just great when everything is going your way. But one little thing, and you just explode!? Cya!

So, to the reset button, and up comes my vandalized grub menu, the last claw-slash that Fedora will get into me this time. I manually set grub to boot back to the unstable Debian installation, which is proving to be anything but unstable. Back to the beautiful desktop, with the nvidia drivers working just fine – never a hassle. Ah, Debian, I really don’t deserve you. Even when you’re supposedly “unstable”, you’re a saint.

Now, to be fair, the Fedora issue is a little overly dramatic. Could you tell? It probably wouldn’t have been a big deal to get the nvidia drivers working with it. I did see a mention at one point about their being a “conflict” with that version of the gnuc libraries in a Fedora 16 beta, and the nvidia drivers, with Fedora claiming it was nvidia’s fault. Get out the cannons, boys. Point the fingers and guns. I’m happy in a just as functional and more solid unstable Debian.

And here it is. I really liked Fedora. Truly. I may head back later and tinker with the video driver. Fedora feels like science. It feels like Engineering. With all the coldness in between. I like that. But I also like the more ruffled homey-ness of Debian. Debian somehow manages to be just as science-like and engineered, but somehow with a sweet little breath of magic. It’s the difference between a ultra-sleek corporate-styled modern living room that looks amazing and you want it – and you get it – but after a little while it’s more like you’re intruding in IT, than it’s being a living room for you. I don’t know what it is that Debian does differently here. Maybe it’s just the cartoon stars and rocket ships! Or the genie swirl.

But the thing for me is, Fedora felt like the old IBM shop I worked in. So perfect and engineered. Always an answer. When something’s broke, it’s broke for a specific reason. This page intentionally left blank. It’s a little exciting, in that leathery-bondage kinda way. Or should I say cellophane wrap. A cat-o-nine-tails to tell me how it is. How I’m going to like it. Whereas back here with unstable Debian from the future, we’re just chillin, and everything is right as rain.

I decided that Ubuntu and I were no longer going to work out. We had a good thing for a while. A pretty face, took care of the domestic chores for me, while I brought home the bacon. I left Debian for Ubuntu, knowing that Ubuntu was little more than an imitation of Debian. I was seduced by its beauty and how little it demanded of me. And all the while I knew Ubuntu wasn’t just doing it for me – Ubuntu wanted something back. I can’t blame it. I gave it money instead of attention. And I was rewarded. But lipstick and sculpted abs only go far. The superficiality was becoming an issue, and I didn’t like where Ubuntu was leading me. So we called it off.

I can’t go long without a workstation, though. Ubuntu and I were through. I found myself looking around for anything, anywhere. Any glimmer of intelligence, beauty and strength, and most importantly, a good heart. My first night I went to the city, to the warehouse districts where things were new and exciting. So many of the fresh, beautiful people talking about Arch Linux. I’d been there before. Once. It was raw. Passionate. Like how it used to be when I was a kid, just starting to explore. And now, here I was again. The dark warehouse allies of the city, in the arms of hairy Arch Linux again.

But all the while, my thoughts always wandered back to Debian. So steadfast. So true. So set in its ways, but always still evolving. Taking the punches dealt out from young upstarts who want a piece of their own. Always remaining an example. An inspiration. Being something that others can always look to and count on to offer advice and help. Someone that lets others even blatantly steal from them, and remains nonplussed – for imitation is the most sincere form of flattery.

But I couldn’t go back. Not after being away so long. I remember what it’s like being stuck there, day after day, for 2 or more years at a time. I’m not some 9 to 5 desk jockey who always needs the same things, unchanging. I want new, spice and variety! Yet not in the savage streets. I couldn’t go back yet.

So I decided instead to travel to the future, to a future Debian, who I know will always have the good heart. Last night I installed Debian Sid, or unstable. It’s where I will live, while still exploring. We have an understanding this time. Debian unstable can be just that, unpredictable and every so slightly dangerous, yet free to let its hair down in all its glory. I’ll be gone at night, checking what else is out there, but will be coming home to Debian Sid until I find something better. I know, I’m a real fucker. But Debian takes it, from everyone and everything else. It’s an amazing organization that has evolved over the years. And always, the servers I deal with will run Debian stable. Unless we need something wild… then we’ll see…

So I’ve moved in to Debian Sid now on a temporary basis. I’m not going to make myself too comfortable just yet. But I tell you, the future Debian is quite a sight to behold. What a fool I was to ever leave for Ubuntu. No, I can’t say that. Things wouldn’t be how they are now, otherwise, and things now are good.

The install of Debian Sid (unstable) was pretty painless. I started with a “business card” image of the stock Debian installer, cat’ed it to a USB thumb drive, and booted the install. I selected the advanced install, which allows you to select other Debian distributions, like testing or unstable.

The install was mostly flawless, after realizing its failure was my fault for having created a 100Mb LVM partition for it instead of a 100Gb one. It did fail at installing grub on the boot sector, saying it couldn’t find the drive. Not bad, though. Who needs to worry about a grub install failing when grub’s already on the drives?

So here I am in the future Debian, the unstable branch. It’s using Gnome 3, which I got my first taste of in Fedora. But somehow, it feels like a better experience here. It is certainly much better than Unity. And I’m not exactly happy with Gnome 3′s disconnect from Compiz, either. I shouldn’t eat so many sweets, anyway, though.

Now, Linux Mint has a version that is based upon Debian instead of Ubuntu (which is, of course, also based on Debian). Perhaps the Mint people have been getting some of the same feelings I’ve been getting about Ubuntu, and have decided to start migrating to the source, rather than going through any middle-men.

That is why I decided to try Linux Mint’s Debian-based distribution, which takes from Debian Testing, I believe, so it will have newer software packages than the stable branch. My thinking was, maybe the Mint people will work out any bugs that might come through from using one of Debian’s non-stable branches, so I don’t have to worry about anything breaking.

Unfortunately, Linux Mint’s installer doesn’t recognize LVM/raid drives. For me, that’s pretty much a deal-breaker, unless there is some very compelling desire I have to try out a specific distribution that does not support it LVM/raid on the install. It isn’t rocket science, which means they should be supporting it, but it is very inconvenient to have to reassemble all that by hand. Do people still use just one partition of one hard drive on their workstations? I suppose if impermanence isn’t an issue…

So tonight I’ll be trashing Fedora off the workstation here and trying something else. I’ve had a few good suggestions from people and I really appreciate it. And for now, my venerable, steadfast companion Debian, from the future, is where I’m at. Smart, stable, strong and hot? It will take a lot to get me away from here this time.

The saga continues here: Heading Uptown to See Fedora Linux – A Tale of Science, Secret Agents and Corporate War

For a good long time, Debian’s install process has supported installing to and booting from LVM “drives”. So to, by degrees, has Ubuntu, at least through their “alternate” install method, which I’ve had to use on my workstation.

Now, considering my disillusionment with Ubuntu ( Ubuntu and I – Beauty Isn’t Enough ), I’ve decided to leave it behind for a brief life of experimentation with other fish in the sea.

My first thought was to give Arch Linux a whirl. The amount of noise and adulation people generate about it borders on the cultish. They consider themselves “advanced”, which is nice. They seem to consider themselves advanced because it takes a certain amount of tinkering to successfully run and maintain Arch. Interestingly, many Arch users also claim Arch is easy. C’est la vie, and I’ve learned it almost always takes getting naked and swimming for yourself before you make any judgments.

Several weeks ago I tried Arch for the first time. I thought, let’s see what so many of these tech heads are raving about. But after the install process couldn’t see my LVM volumes, and wanted to install on a single drive partition, I immediately tossed it aside. Of course, I could have gone and made sure lvm2 was there, and the raid modules, assembled my RAID and LVM volumes from memory or printouts, and then started the install process again. But I know that route. And the first boot afterward will fail – then I’ll need to go rebuild the initrd images with the proper drivers, and re-copy all my definitions in the new installation for RAID assembly because the install process won’t be smart enough to remember to copy down what’s there during the install. And that’s fine. It’s a good way for people to learn. But I’ve already done that enough times. For me, it’s simply a tedious chore.

Last night after deciding to give everything a new try, I downloaded the latest Arch install and gave it another go. None of my LVM or RAID drives showed as targets for the install, but upon looking from a terminal, I found Arch had detected my RAID drives and started them, and had also assembled my LVM volumes on those drives. None of them were showing up as a target in the install scripts, however.

So I used the terminal to delete a logical volume and create a new one, then checked again. For some reason, the LVM volume now showed up as a target for install. This is excellent - I was thrilled to see this. Obviously, the Arch people are considering that some people might want to easily install on more than 1 partition of 1 drive. They are so wise. Almost as wise as Debian was gods know how many years ago. Yes, I remember going through these same hassles with Debian long ago. But not any more. If it’s bootable, Debian will offer it up as a candidate for install.

And more importantly, if you offer it up as a candidate for install, and you install to that medium, it’s just as important than when you reboot the computer, your boot will work off that same medium. It appears Arch is still working out their thinking on this. Or trying to find someone to exert the time and effort required to make it work.

I got that impression a lot from my couple go’s with Arch. Their finger in the Linux pie are minimal. They let people build their own systems how that person wants to. It’s almost a mantra. But you have to really watch yourself if you justify your own laziness or incompleteness by saying, we leave this incomplete to help others be free to do what they want. Lines have to be drawn somewhere if you offer an install method at all. They are doing great with Arch. But the install process doesn’t offer freedom and flexibility, it offers an install into one partition of one drive, out of the box.

You always have to ask, does something done for you make you more free, or less free? It depends on what it is. There are a very finite number of ways to assemble mount points. And yes, you are free to go do it yourself, to assemble yourself, and make it work after the install. And that’s great. But it does take time and effort, time and effort that has been, and can be, pretty easily automated.

As another example, the install process during grub install offered up the grub menu file for you to edit – to customize however you like. Out of all the operating systems I have installed on this workstation, the only one listed for booting was Arch Linux. I could have gone to a terminal and reassembled all I needed to, to find the devices and images necessary in all the others, then copied them all into the Arch grub menu file. But I’m not going to. There are simple tools out there that will do that for you. It’s quick and dirty to offer up a generic grub menu file with only your own thing in it. And I’m not complaining that they do that. It’s just not right for me. And it’s not giving me any more flexibility or freedom. It only lays the burden of work on me – a burden that didn’t need to be there.

But again, it’s super great for learning. God help you all who try figuring out device names or UUID’s with RAID and/or LVM in different ways that different kernels and grub builds might best expect them during boot. And dealing with the creation of proper initrd images, based on what you have, rather than what you hope you remember you have, or might assume was built in. Arch truly is great for learning.

Maybe it’s great to use on a day-to-day basis, too. I love having the newest releases of software. I have very little confidence in rolling release distributions, though. In my experience, invariably, things break. Often badly. But never so bad you can’t fix it. If you have the time and inclination to devote to such things. But I can’t say anything about Arch regarding this, from my own experience. Many claim the Arch rolling releases have been flawless for them. Yet others claim it’s been pretty good, but sometimes things break. From my experience, to me, this means, yes, it breaks. And this makes sense considering their approach to scripting the install.

They’re bringing it together, though. Obviously there are some very good and smart people working on it. From just the last two releases, they’ve progressed leaps and bounds. I really like what I’ve seen of it. And I trust the gooey lovey gushings of people and friends who tirelessly go on about it. I might be the same one day soon. But not today.

I have to mention, you Windows and Mac people, if you’re reading this – it may sound like bad talking Linux here, or Arch, or any other things. But it’s not. You guys don’t even have the capacity to have arguments or discussions about such things as these. One day you may. But it doesn’t seem likely at all. There is no freedom of choice on nearly any level, after your one choice of proprietary OS.

Next in this series: Tempted By a Sexy Debian from the Future