Welcome willjp!

[Jason]

Everyone, please welcome to our Forum our newest member, willjp! If you're not too shy, willjp, please introduce yourself!

We hope you'll find the forum interesting and useful. And we hope you'll be a contributor; however, lurkers are welcome, too!

Welcome!

[willjp]

Hey Everyone!

I'm new to town and I was really excited to find a LUG here! I'm not totally sure how this works, but I thought it would be fun to find some people with similar interests. I'm a hobbyist admin, and a junior dev (late life career change). At home I'm running a handful of FreeBSD jails, and I've been fairly settled on Archlinux for my workstations the past few years (but I've been poking at the nix package manager and I'm darn curious about nixos).

What are you guys running now? What kinds of things do you use linux for? Anyone else poke around with any of the BSDs as well?

Thanks for having me, and I'm excited to meet you folks!

[fox]

Hi willjp and welcome to the PLUG forum. Until Covid we had monthly meetings, but we haven't had one for about two years. I'm not sure if we'll go back to that soon, or not. We have also had Zoom meetings, and last summer we had a few in-person outdoor meetings.

I have used Linux for home and work for about 10 years. Prior to that I was a Mac user, and I continue to use Mac hardware for desktop machines; set up to multi-boot. My distro of choice is Ubuntu, but I have used Mint, Arch and Manjaro in the past, and I played around with others. I also have a Raspberry pi 4B, which I used to play around with server software and other things. I use Linux for pretty much anything a typical desktop user does, plus a few other things related to research (like statistical analysis and reference organization). I did try a BSD once (PC BSD, which no longer exists), but just to play with. If we ever go back to in-person meetings I would love to have you demonstrate your setup.

[buster]

Welcome. New to town from where, if you don't mind my asking.

I'm the ancient one in the club, and I run Mint and two Kubuntu OS's on three machines. This wont change unless they explode.

Good to have you aboard.

[Jason]

I run MX Linux on my main machine which is a laptop I use like a desktop (external monitor, keyboard, mouse). I no longer use Linux on any other computers but I don't have any other right now. My old PC desktop broke down and I just haven't gotten around to fixing it yet.

I do everything on Linux except for gaming which I have done under Windows (used to say 'Wintendo' back in the olden days). But i haven't done that in almost 2 years so it's just Linux on this laptop.

I also have a Chromebook, Android phone and tablet, all of which use a specialized Linux kernel. I've used Linux for about 27 years now, almost 25 as my main OS. I started PLUG around 1998 if I remember correctly! It was a long time ago. First one I tried was Debian. First one I used regularly was Red Hat 5.0. Bill (ssfc72) is the only member we still have from that time, I think.

[willjp]

Thanks Guys!

Fox: That’s alright, I feel like this is probably the safest route these days. I’m a bit of a shut-in anyways. On a brighter note — Hey that’s neat! I’ve heard of PC-BSD, I think one of the podcast hosts of “BSD now” worked on that - that was my introduction to all of this. I doubt I’m doing anything you haven’t seen, but I’m happy to share!

Buster: I don’t mind at all! I’m from Ottawa. My girlfriend is from out this way and she gets to be closer to her family this way. I haven’t tried kubuntu yet, but there’s something magical about the perfect setup!

Jason: Neat! I haven’t come across MX Linux, I’m going to check it out! I empathize on the gaming side. I’ve been excitedly trying some wine/proton but it’s fussy and I still don’t feel like I have a great grasp of various settings and tweaks. What kinds of games do you like?

[William]

It's odd that you're running BSD.  Why did you choose BSD?  I installed FreeBSD few times, but never got used to it, especially their hard disk naming.

Welcome to PLUG, by the way.

[willjp]

Honestly, it was a total chance. I used to be a 3D artist. I got hired onto the night shift at one of my first jobs and I listened to podcasts to try to learn while I was working. One of my favourites at the time was “BSD now”. At that time I had poked around in ubuntu a bit, but every time there was an issue I needed to use the commandline and it was still pretty foreign. In an effort to learn more, I set up my first “server” as a mediawiki instance on a 15yr old laptop I was given for free. Later I poked around a bit with zfs, and now I have enough automation built around it that it’s probably easier for me to keep using it than to switch it over.

If I were to do it today, docker would probably be the obvious choice. I still miss out on some neat software though. I haven’t been able to run cassandradb, and I’m not sure the post-opensource emby fork “jellyfin” runs on it. I’m sure there is lots more.

There are some niceties to it though. I like that packages for interpreted languages are versioned with a major version prefix. It could be incompetence on my part, but I’ve had an easier time with major OS updates than on my attempts with debian or centos. I also find that it usually has a newer package set than debian, but I’ve never tried unstable out of fear. Pf is pretty neat too, but I like nftables a lot too! I like having the rules in files.

[Jason]

Jason: Neat! I haven’t come across MX Linux, I’m going to check it out! I empathize on the gaming side. I’ve been excitedly trying some wine/proton but it’s fussy and I still don’t feel like I have a great grasp of various settings and tweaks. What kinds of games do you like?

I really like it. With a slower computer, the processor on it is about 11 years old, I need a light desktop and it's default setup is with Xfce. I miss some of the niceties in Plasma (I used to use Kubuntu, too) but it mostly does what I need. MX has lots of little add-ons of their own for various functions. I was using Linux Lite previous to that which also had similar add-ons but fewer in number. Linux Lite also uses Xfce. I did a quick write-up comparing the two here. Fox had some issues which we talked about in the same thread. Lots of screenshots, too.

We have a board dedicated to discussing various distributions here.

Regarding gaming, I like to play FPS games and RPGs mainly. I'm not normally big on MMOs but I've really enjoyed DDO (Dungeons & Dragons Online). What kind of games are you into?

[willjp]

Thanks very much for the link! That looks very nice!

I’m in a similar camp as you for games, I love RPGs and exploration games. Space games are fun too, but I’m really bad at them. Most recently, Outward was really neat - you have a map, but no idea where you are on it. It has seasons, and camp/eat to survive mechanics, which added to the fun.

[Jason]

I'll have to check out Outward. I like that kind of exploration game. I have enjoyed a few of the Fallout series and Skyrim. That kind of open-ended exploration is fun!

[buster]

Jason, this discussion might be moved to entertainment. I suggest this because only members who are signed in can see this thread because of where it is. I found out because I didn't see it until I went on a computer which signs me in automatically.

Games are interesting to many casual browsers of the site I would suspect.

[willjp]

jason: oh! I like those both very much as well! This doesn't have the same level of polish, but I think if you like bethesda games this might also be something you enjoy.
buster: fair point! I certainly feel welcome, it might also be time I start interacting with the rest of the forum.

[Jason]

Thanks, Buster. I switched it so that guests can view it, too. Perhaps I should create a new member welcome board.

[Jason]

Will,

I forgot to mention that it's cool that you're a developer. You might be the only active member we have that is one. What kind of developer are you? I know you told me over email but I thought others might find it interesting, too.

You're playing with software programs that I haven't heard mentioned in awhile, a couple only because of a recent Linux admin course I took. But you lost me with this:

"I haven’t been able to run cassandradb, and I’m not sure the post-opensource emby fork “jellyfin” runs on it."

I've heard of it cassandradb but never used it. But what is "emby"? It is a fork of cassandradb or something else?

Btw, we have another huge Arch fan in the group but he posts in the dead of the night and is gone like the snow! His username is cod3poet. He's way too smart for his own good!