Well, Hell just froze over... ;)

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No rage... just didn't get that you thought you where making a joke. I was watching Linux install on a laptop and had a few min so I thought I would post a bit about Linux security for someone I imagined believed obscurity was what made Linux more secure. ;) BSD... sure more secure through obscurity, but not just obscurity. lol
 
No rage... just didn't get that you thought you where making a joke. I was watching Linux install on a laptop and had a few min so I thought I would post a bit about Linux security for someone I imagined believed obscurity was what made Linux more secure. ;) BSD... sure more secure through obscurity, but not just obscurity. lol
Haha no problem man. I like goofing with BSD call me crazy. (And my name is Chad)
 
Or you're just delusional. Are you a social media user by any chance?
Lol, I type to some friends on Facebook messenger from time to time and post a odd fact like Billy the Kids faked death this day in history, but I leave the need to check the latest tweet to kids 1 quarter my age.
 
Haha no problem man. I like goofing with BSD call me crazy. (And my name is Chad)

Its been awhile since I have installed BSD on anything... may have to soon to see what has changed in the last few years. I have heard some good things about trueos... I may have to install it or the new freebsd to see whats new with BSD. lol
 
Its been awhile since I have installed BSD on anything... may have to soon to see what has changed in the last few years. I have heard some good things about trueos... I may have to install it or the new freebsd to see whats new with BSD. lol

*Nothing* is new in BSD, isn't that the point?

OK, I slightly kid (but not by much). I'm actually using Gentoo for some projects right now, and it's distinctly BSD-ish in terms of system/software installation and general approach to system interaction (ie, compile some shit and figure it out yourself).
 
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*Nothing* is new in BSD, isn't that the point?

OK, I slightly kid (but not by much). I'm actually using Gentoo for some projects right now, and it's distinctly BSD-ish in terms of system/software installation and general approach to system interaction (ie, compile some shit and figure it out yourself).

Gentoo is another one I have never played with but keep meaning to. I have played around with arch plenty and at the end of the day always ended up back on manjaro... having the AUR to build obscure stuff from source is always nice.
 
Gentoo:

emerge world
* go grab coffee *
* go on vacation *
come back and enjoy your shiny os
2 days later
repeat step 1
 
Its been awhile since I have installed BSD on anything... may have to soon to see what has changed in the last few years. I have heard some good things about trueos... I may have to install it or the new freebsd to see whats new with BSD. lol
My favorite quote for BSD is: If you've heard of VI or C Shell you've heard of BSD.
 
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The Beastie lives!
 
Did you read my post? I specifically said kernel, filesystem, and not usermode. Althought just like Linux a lot of the core components also run in usermode.

And lets not talk abotu desktop Linux experience ok. Its not comparable. e.g. just today I was using a laptop with Ubuntu LTS XFCE installed. The USB3 ports ran at USB2 speeds. When we tried to eject the drive Thunar gave an 'not authorized' error. Wtf ??!! Do you expect users to then debug all this? And yes I know its just one distro and one data point, but its a pretty popular LTS version of a desktop distro, not bare bones install, and the error is indicative of things that happen all the time.
Yeah, like you don't get eject errors in windows all the time.
 
Not being able to eject because a file is open and the OS is trying to make you aware of it is a vastly different thing from "You're not authorized to eject <whatever device...>" :)
 
Not being able to eject because a file is open and the OS is trying to make you aware of it is a vastly different thing from "You're not authorized to eject <whatever device...>" :)

Which begs the question: Why would you get such an error? Not authorised? WTF?!

I've never seen this error and my USB transfer speeds are fine, what file system was the USB device formatted in? I use Linux to transfer user profiles off failed Windows installs all the time and never have a problem.
 
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Not being able to eject because a file is open and the OS is trying to make you aware of it is a vastly different thing from "You're not authorized to eject <whatever device...>" :)

Not authorized is pretty easy to understand really. Put simply your usb drive is being mounted with root ownership, and your user doesn't have permission to mount/unmount. In most distros this shouldn't be a default setup (although if your user doesn't have admin I can see how it would happen... but perhaps something go mixed up somewhere... and I have also seen this in some of the chromebook linux VM type setups where ownership belongs to a running chromeos.

I would suggest searching something like "changing mounted drive ownership" or something along that lines for which ever distro you are using.

For Ubuntu derived distros its as simple as typing in;
sudo usermod -a -G plugdev <your username>
plugdev is a default ubuntu user group that can send commands to HAL, so adding your user to that group should allow you to mount/unmount change hardware clocks ect.

Its not that things are a lot different from distro to distro but their are small differences. The issue is fixed in general by simply creating a rule file in the proper place.
The difference from distro to distro being mostly minor like "/etc/polkit-1/localauthority50-local.d" being a location to use in an Ubuntu distro and say "/etc/polkit-1/rules.d" being the proper place in suse.

I'm not sure which distro you where running and how it was installed or whatever... but the not authorized to unmount isn't something most regular users should see unless something got messed up. Regardless its not very hard to fix... it shouldn't be to hard to find specific info on editing or creating the proper rule polkit rule files for any distro. (this is hardly a Linux only idea... windows can also be setup to disallow users the ability to mount or unmount storage media)
 
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^^ This is exactly the sort of thing that drives people away because its complex, unfriendly and shouldn't be needed. The distro was Manjaro, a brand new install with XFCE. This wasn't my laptop, it was a colleague who is by no means a newbie. It was a drive he's used many times before, I don't know what the fs is but I'd guess ext3 (whatever linux does by default these days) ?

Yes in Windows you sometimes get 'file is in use' on trying to eject a usb drive, but its often safe because by default Windows doesn't enable write caching on external drives so there are no files to flush. I don't know if Linux does this. In any case 'not authorized' is a far scarier and more serious message with less information. It was a fresh install, we were just copying his data back from the external backup drive - the slow speeds were also something not expected.

I never said this is a common error. I'm just saying things like this can happen and require a lot more technical knowledge to even diagnose let alone resolve, as you can see from Chad's reply above. Plus if you google anything you'll get 20 different answers. Most of them are distro/de specific and people need to know tons of details. With Windows' issues its usually the same answer and everyone knows if they are on 7/8/10. That's why new users are recommended to pick Ubuntu since it has by far the largest community.
 
^^ This is exactly the sort of thing that drives people away because its complex, unfriendly and shouldn't be needed. The distro was Manjaro, a brand new install with XFCE. This wasn't my laptop, it was a colleague who is by no means a newbie. It was a drive he's used many times before, I don't know what the fs is but I'd guess ext3 (whatever linux does by default these days) ?

Yes in Windows you sometimes get 'file is in use' on trying to eject a usb drive, but its often safe because by default Windows doesn't enable write caching on external drives so there are no files to flush. I don't know if Linux does this. In any case 'not authorized' is a far scarier and more serious message with less information. It was a fresh install, we were just copying his data back from the external backup drive - the slow speeds were also something not expected.

I never said this is a common error. I'm just saying things like this can happen and require a lot more technical knowledge to even diagnose let alone resolve, as you can see from Chad's reply above. Plus if you google anything you'll get 20 different answers. Most of them are distro/de specific and people need to know tons of details. With Windows' issues its usually the same answer and everyone knows if they are on 7/8/10. That's why new users are recommended to pick Ubuntu since it has by far the largest community.

As you've stated, the issue is not common and it's most likely an oversight on behalf of who ever initially set up the user - It's such an uncommon issue that it's really not worth mentioning. If I had a similar issue under Windows I'd chalk it up to a stupid one off problem that's most likely not a direct fault of the OS in any way whatsoever and wouldn't even make mention of it.

The issue can most likely also be resolved via Control Centre > Users and Groups using the GUI.

Specifically what data were you trying to copy back to a fresh install? Were you trying to copy to the root file system?
 
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I bet you had another application open that was previously making use of the USB drive, holding the mount point and locking it, hence the reason why you weren't able to mount the USB drive to the same location as the drive quite possibly wasn't unmounted correctly in regards to a previous operation..
 
^^ This is exactly the sort of thing that drives people away because its complex, unfriendly and shouldn't be needed. The distro was Manjaro, a brand new install with XFCE. This wasn't my laptop, it was a colleague who is by no means a newbie. It was a drive he's used many times before, I don't know what the fs is but I'd guess ext3 (whatever linux does by default these days) ?

Yes in Windows you sometimes get 'file is in use' on trying to eject a usb drive, but its often safe because by default Windows doesn't enable write caching on external drives so there are no files to flush. I don't know if Linux does this. In any case 'not authorized' is a far scarier and more serious message with less information. It was a fresh install, we were just copying his data back from the external backup drive - the slow speeds were also something not expected.

I never said this is a common error. I'm just saying things like this can happen and require a lot more technical knowledge to even diagnose let alone resolve, as you can see from Chad's reply above. Plus if you google anything you'll get 20 different answers. Most of them are distro/de specific and people need to know tons of details. With Windows' issues its usually the same answer and everyone knows if they are on 7/8/10. That's why new users are recommended to pick Ubuntu since it has by far the largest community.

I don't personally think seeing "not authorized" is all that scary. More people need to do a better job understanding how their OSs work. MS added user accounts ages ago and still no one seems to understand the point. Give yourself admin and go. lol :)

I can go into a windows system and deny you access to; %SystemRoot%\Inf\Usbstor.pnf and %SystemRoot%\Inf\Usbstor.inf. Guess what you wouldn't have the rights to mount or unmount shit either. Windows doesn't default to that of course... and neither do any Linux distros I know of. (so either your friend selected something really strange on install which I agree doesn't seem likely or you guys did find some type of bug in the installer)

I really don't know of course exactly why your friends account wouldn't have been setup properly. Manjaro does have a GUI group/user settings program I'm sure if you guys knew to look their you likely would have solved it fairly quickly no complicated command line stuffs needed. (I pointed that out earlier as I think for power user types its nice to know where the config stuff is located to give or deny users/groups rights to hardware)

IMO one of the biggest issues with regular and power users alike with PCs in general is a failure to understand how user accounts work in Linux or Windows. Some Linux distros force you to understand them a bit better such as a clean arch build where you have to go through the steps of properly assigning group access... Manjaro ime when installed properly sets up a user account that has access to mounting usb, perhaps it was some odd installer bug your friend ran into. It is possible I am not a fan of Manjaro creating coding their own installer... I am pretty sure they still ship 2 installers Thus and Calamers. Perhaps they had some type of bug in their own installer code ? Odd no doubt... I agree its not something you should have to fix on a clean install. Still as I have said before I think its crazy to expect Linux or Windows to work 100% out of the box 100% of the time with the millions of possible hardware setups in the world, neither do and neither ever will.
 
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Well I don't have access to the laptop anymore so I can't really try anything out. But it was a fresh install of Manjaro like I said, the installer sets up users and no other program had any issues so I very much doubt the user account is to blame. We were able to do sudo pacman -Syu etc, use other programs no problem. The files were being copied back into the home folder, nothing that needed root privileges. Also why would the drive be mounted with root? Google says people recommend using polkit to setup rules, seems complex.

I never had any issue like this and I installed Manjaor KDE. Who knows what went wrong. Still its a learning experience for me and sometimes its fun :) I also am running Ubuntu server on AWS for some development work and I can tell you Linux for server usage is a LOT nicer and more predictable than desktop :)
 
Well I don't have access to the laptop anymore so I can't really try anything out. But it was a fresh install of Manjaro like I said, the installer sets up users and no other program had any issues so I very much doubt the user account is to blame. We were able to do sudo pacman -Syu etc, use other programs no problem. The files were being copied back into the home folder, nothing that needed root privileges. Also why would the drive be mounted with root? Google says people recommend using polkit to setup rules, seems complex.

I never had any issue like this and I installed Manjaor KDE. Who knows what went wrong. Still its a learning experience for me and sometimes its fun :) I also am running Ubuntu server on AWS for some development work and I can tell you Linux for server usage is a LOT nicer and more predictable than desktop :)

You need the right to access the HAL (Hardware Abstraction Layer)... that is what was not setup for some reason. (its a guess but I believe a pretty good one :))Using Sudo by the way is giving yourself root privileges. You can't update on a regular user account without giving yourself temporary admin.. that is what sudo does. If you run the GUI updater when it asks for the root password that is why.

Not saying your wrong or trying to back and forth or anything... I have no idea what happened with your friends install, it sounds like a manjaro installer bug... they use a multi distro installer which tends to work well and they code their own which is imo buggier in general. The installer should have gave his account the proper permissions. It sounds like without seeing it that it didn't set the user up right... I'm not sure if it didn't install the polkit stuff or what happened but ya its odd. Your not wrong in general Linux is darn close to the perfect server os... and all the desktop distros start with that base and use their installers ect to do things like properly setup user groups ect. It ends up being the opposite way around from windows in that regard. Windows feels to me like a toy with server security and features tacked on and watered down.... going the other way imo is still better of course still can't deny it can make fixing issues more technical. *can of course... plenty of windows issues involve digging into regedit and messing with services, as I see it just because you are forced to use a GUI interface its not really any more user friendly when the shit hits the fan. lol

It is to bad your friend had a poor experience. I'm guessing it was about rights as the error seemed to point that way. Hopefully he wasn't soured completely by one odd install bug... I really do wish more OEMS would ship Linux to reduce the install pain for regular (and sometimes advanced) users. At the very least it would help ensure machines where shipping with half decent hardware that would just work. (I'm talking about your reported usb speed issues... 10/1 odds his usb controller(s) where not fully supported somehow. So many odd usb/wifi winmodem style junk tacked onto boards these days... if they shipped a higher % with Linux the manufacturers would either install proper hardware or at least upline the proper code to the kernel guys)
 
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Well I don't have access to the laptop anymore so I can't really try anything out. But it was a fresh install of Manjaro like I said, the installer sets up users and no other program had any issues so I very much doubt the user account is to blame. We were able to do sudo pacman -Syu etc, use other programs no problem. The files were being copied back into the home folder, nothing that needed root privileges. Also why would the drive be mounted with root? Google says people recommend using polkit to setup rules, seems complex.

I never had any issue like this and I installed Manjaor KDE. Who knows what went wrong. Still its a learning experience for me and sometimes its fun :) I also am running Ubuntu server on AWS for some development work and I can tell you Linux for server usage is a LOT nicer and more predictable than desktop :)

There's so much more to PC's and computing than simply gaming and I'm so pleased to see you learning new things and taking up new challenges regarding Linux, it's obvious based around your postings that you've learnt a lot since you first started dabbling with the OS - Good job!

In relation to your issue, it's difficult to comment as I don't believe anyone here has ever experienced it, but is there a possibility that another software application had authoritative control over the USB drive prior to your transfering files to /home? Because that's what it sounds like to me.

In relation to desktop Linux, I simply love it and find that there's functionality in Linux that I prefer over other operating systems that improves my workflow; I don't feel in any way limited in comparison to the numerous other machines I have here and desktop Linux simply doesn't give me any grief whatsoever. Running Linux my PC feels like it's mine again, something I haven't really felt since my Amiga days and an issue that became noticeably worse with the advent of Windows 10.

I also maintain and run Linux servers, I wouldn't necessarily claim my servers have anything over my desktop Linux install. But each to their own.
 
I have recommended to my colleague that he do a fresh install (nothing to lose since its a blank laptop now) of Manjaro KDE which is what I am using, I think he picked XFCE because of all the 'XFCE is lighter and faster' stuff all over the web, which personally I don't find to be true and KDE is more functional. Since Manjaro says XFCE is their main DE I wonder what happened.

On my laptop the only real concern I have is battery life - its not as good as Windows, but after a lot of tweaks its now closer. There are many things I need to setup properly since its all new - e.g. I am working on a tmux setup for my server. I installed zsh and am learning bash scripting. When I have some more confidence I might even put Linux on my main pc (which has been running Win 10 with zero issues for years) but it will be dual boot. Right now I have ~4 Linux vm's under HyperV to play around.

What are some apps/things you find useful in desktop Linux?
 
KDE is great, I installed it on my laptop and I'm loving it.

My preference for desktop Linux isn't necessarily related to software applications as such, it's a preference based more around the way the operating system operates. The endless customisation definitely helps as I can tweak my OS to look/behave exactly as I need it to look/behave, I can customise keyboard shortcuts how I want them to be assigned as opposed to how the manufacturer wants them to be assigned. I find virtual workspaces to work far better under Linux than any other OS, due to the fact that I rely so much on virtual workspaces this suits me perfectly. I love tabbed file manager windows, once again, small things that improve my workflow considerably. Being able to change the colour of individual folders making them visible at a glance, another small thing that improves workflow considerably.

There's a number of other things, but I have to get my daughter ready for school! It's an accumulation of numerous small tweaks that make desktop Linux far more suitable than the alternatives for me as a daily driver OS.
 
If you could share your tweaks that'd be very helpful, thanks. From what I've seen most Linux apps put their settings inside a dotfile like .gitconfig or .config/xxx. So maybe you could just share those?
 
I have recommended to my colleague that he do a fresh install (nothing to lose since its a blank laptop now) of Manjaro KDE which is what I am using, I think he picked XFCE because of all the 'XFCE is lighter and faster' stuff all over the web, which personally I don't find to be true and KDE is more functional. Since Manjaro says XFCE is their main DE I wonder what happened.

On my laptop the only real concern I have is battery life - its not as good as Windows, but after a lot of tweaks its now closer. There are many things I need to setup properly since its all new - e.g. I am working on a tmux setup for my server. I installed zsh and am learning bash scripting. When I have some more confidence I might even put Linux on my main pc (which has been running Win 10 with zero issues for years) but it will be dual boot. Right now I have ~4 Linux vm's under HyperV to play around.

What are some apps/things you find useful in desktop Linux?

XFCE is pretty light... but KDE has come a long way. The last time I installed KDE I notice it has went on a diet. lol I prefer gnome myself for the most part lately... I have never been a big "start" bar type guy, I like that Gnome just stays out of my way. Gnome activities screen is the best GUI advance ever imo. Super key... and boom I see everything running in real time, have my favorites on the side, hit the bottom of my fav for all programs if needed, type to search without clicking anything, workspace view in real time on the right. Its perfection, I was always surprised more people didn't fall in love with gnome the second they saw it.

Bat life is often disappointing out of the box now doubt... at least its one area where development seems to be moving pretty fast.

Software for me isn't all the different then windows. I think that is one point a lot of linux people have been making for a few years now. So much of the software everyone is using in Windows or Linux is open source and cross platform. Krita is fantastic if your into digital art... been toying with it for more general web type gfx editing but gimp is still better for most of that. There are fantastic linux code editors and all sorts of other goodies... but at the end of the day my favorite launcher doesn't look much different then it would in windows. Chrome, Thunderbird, Transmission, Libre office, Steam, Thunar, my Calculator and Terminal. Really if I installed a windows look alike GTK theme, and put my task bar on the bottom ect I'm not sure many people using my system would realize it wasn't window for a long awhile. (scratch that they would notice the crisper fonts pretty fast I guess)
 
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If you could share your tweaks that'd be very helpful, thanks. From what I've seen most Linux apps put their settings inside a dotfile like .gitconfig or .config/xxx. So maybe you could just share those?

The file convention for software config files is /home/USER/.config/AppNameFolder
Although far to many projects have started just putting a .AppNameFolder under home which is a bit annoying. lol
Most of the config files you find in these directories are pretty easy to open and figure out depending on the app. So if you opened say dosbox-SVN.conf in .dosbox... you will see pretty much the same dosbox config file you would see in the windows version. Its just easier to find.
You can also copy / backup these settings directories. (its also why installing multiple distros and sharing the same /home folder tends to work)

Its nice for programs like for instance Thunderbird... where you could use the same .thunderbird conf folder in more then one distro by either using the same /home or setting up symbolic links. Thus having all your email on which ever distro your on. Download your email in one and you don't have to download it again if you switch distros. I know most people aren't going to run more then one distro... still its one thing that can be done. Its also nice to know that if you decide to switch distros you can copy over app settings / email / steam games ect without having to do anything all that complicated.

I'm not sure I have any fantastic tweaks to share really... unless there is something you want to do with a specific program anyway. For the most part I don't edit my conf files all that often... I have tweaked UMS and Dosbox by hand but really those would be pretty case specific tweaks like screen resolutions ect.
 
If you could share your tweaks that'd be very helpful, thanks. From what I've seen most Linux apps put their settings inside a dotfile like .gitconfig or .config/xxx. So maybe you could just share those?

No .config manipulation necessary, all the tweaks I'm describing are easily changed via the GUI. Another very, very handy feature is middle click to paste - Highlight the text you want to copy (just highlight it, nothing else), place the cursor or pointer where you want to paste the selected text and click the center mouse button to paste. So quick and easy, one of the best features ever.
 
I want to share my config across multiple machines. I also thought of having multiple distros on same pc, some guides say its ok to share the home dir, some say its not. I'm planning to try it but to do so you need to configure partitions manually in most installers


I will share a few things I found that I like -

https://github.com/graysky2/profile-sync-daemon
https://dotfiles.github.io/
Conky - still learning

file manager - no one knows about it, but in Windows I use Xplorer2, which IMO is the best I've ever seen on any OS. It is dual pane with a ton of shortcuts and features. I like dual pane managers since they are so much more productive. In Linux I like Krusader. Heard many good things about Amorak for music playback. I have yet to find a program as good as PotPlayer for media playback in Linux, I tried vlc, mplayer. smplayer - in general in Windows it was very easy to manage codecs/filters, in Linux I don't know where these are stored and how to enable hw acceleration for everything - its just so much going on with the DE, window manager, compositor, X.org etc etc, I have no idea who is managing what. And why is Wayland still not working after decades, instead all Linux distros use X which was meant for pc's decades ago.
 
Xplorer2? Interesting, I've never seen that before. So does Xplorer2 totally take place of Windows Explorer or do you sort of have both present on the machine? When software needs to open a file manager window does it open Xplorer2 by default?

Same with Potplayer, I've never heard of it before. Having said that VLC has always done a good job at covering my multimedia needs on any platform so I've never had to use anything else. Hardware acceleration works identically across all platforms and I've never installed a codec pack under Linux, I've never had to? Running Windows 7 on my HTPC I definitely needed to install codec packs, a process I always found a little dodgy, since switching my HTPC to Linux it's something I've had no need to do as everything plays perfectly out the box - In fact when it comes to HTPC's I recommend Linux 100%, my experience has been so much better than the same machine running Windows.

In relation to HW acceleration, it's always been a setting that's configured per software application under every platform I use? Do you configure it differently?

Wayland vs X Server? I'm not in any rush to switch to Wayland full time TBH, the few times I've used it it's been buggy and switching full time to Wayland is going to be fraught with compromises (pulse audio in the early days?). I've had very few issues with X Server and I'm quite happy to keep using it for the foreseeable future.
 
n fact when it comes to HTPC's I recommend Linux 100%, my experience has been so much better than the same machine running Windows.

How so? I consume media on Windows PCs that would at all be straightforward out of the box under Linux, like BDs. That doesn't work out of the box either under Windows and while it costs money PowerDVD takes care of it with ease. And pretty much all of the free options are available for Windows.
 
Codec management on Windows is actually far more advanced from what I know, granted I'm no Linux expert. Now a lot of the code is actually open source like ffmpeg, but the funny thing is the big open source projects all work great under Windows. The problem in Windows is due to popularity people try to sell you stuff (like media players). But that's due to popularity, same thing is happening with OSX now where there is a culture of paying for stuff which is free on other platforms just because its 'cooler'. Windows 8/10 made improvements and included a lot of codecs with the OS by default as well.

w.r.t xplorer2 - yes it can take over and replace Explorer if you want it to. In general I find that in Linux the UI is not as full featured in many apps, because the users are more technical and a lot of the, prefer the cmd line. e.g you have apps that open youtube, videos music etc from the terminal and people prefer to use them - would be unheard of in any other OS.

I have no loyalty to any particular OS, I've been very critical of Win 8 in the past (10 was a huge improvement) and there are things I admire/hate in both Windows and Linux.

I do think Linux tends to have a 'lets reinvent the wheel' vs a concerted effort to share and improve which is not surprising given the nature. e.g. look at the filesystem - ext is still the default and there is still no modern fs. btrfs is the only real alternative and after a decade its still not production ready. Meanwhile Apple was able to get APFS done and MS did ReFS, both with lots of modern features. Major changes like this need someone to be a 'dictator'. Linus does that for the kernel. That's how systemd got done, even though there's a lot of hate for it, its now the default in most distros.
 
How so? I consume media on Windows PCs that would at all be straightforward out of the box under Linux, like BDs. That doesn't work out of the box either under Windows and while it costs money PowerDVD takes care of it with ease. And pretty much all of the free options are available for Windows.

Back when I actually used optical media PowerDVD was not a great solution.

Considering HTPC's and WAF everything needs to integrate perfectly with full remote control support (programmable, dedicated home theater remote, no keyboard/mouse combos), stability is absolutely paramount with the machine never fully shutting off but going into S3 so that it can be awoken via IR remote. Under Windows all of the above was always a compromise. Bluray/HDDVD compatibility was always an ongoing problem, eventually a new version of the software would be released resulting in support for the older version being dropped necessitating in the repurchase of software, and it wasn't cheap. The implementation of both Arcsoft TMT and PowerDVD in W7MC was always a hack solution and crashed frequently, integration in W7MC was a must due to IR remote control limitations. Furthermore, Windows 7 as a platform was just not stable, there were always issues ranging from no audio through to applications crashing frequently and network shares being dropped - Quite possibly as a result of the machine always resuming from S3, but something that is definitely not a problem under Linux. Where the machine had to boot from a cold boot, the process took twice as long as it does using the same machine/SSD as a cold boot under Linux. The Windows 7 install was very lean with the basics necessary for HTPC usage, the machine is strictly a hometheater appliance.

Just disabling subtitles under W7MC playing back .mkv's is a PITA that cannot be easily achieved via IR remote control, under Linux it's no problem. As stated, I also had to install dodgy codec packs under Windows 7, something I've never done under Linux.

These days many popular HT frontends are available cross platform, so many of the issues I encountered may be non issues these days and I've given optical media the flick altogether, however considering long term uptimes and S3, I find Linux to be far more stable than Windows on my machine with a noticeable increase in the WAF. When it comes to optical playback I find dedicated players to be far more reliable and cost effective.
 
w.r.t xplorer2 - yes it can take over and replace Explorer if you want it to. In general I find that in Linux the UI is not as full featured in many apps, because the users are more technical and a lot of the, prefer the cmd line. e.g you have apps that open youtube, videos music etc from the terminal and people prefer to use them - would be unheard of in any other OS.

The only time I use the terminal is to add a PPA or ssh into my server, apart from that I have no use for it and everything can be done from the GUI. Even changing permissions and running shell scripts can be done quickly and easily from the GUI.
 
I do think Linux tends to have a 'lets reinvent the wheel' vs a concerted effort to share and improve which is not surprising given the nature. e.g. look at the filesystem - ext is still the default and there is still no modern fs. btrfs is the only real alternative and after a decade its still not production ready. Meanwhile Apple was able to get APFS done and MS did ReFS, both with lots of modern features. Major changes like this need someone to be a 'dictator'. Linus does that for the kernel. That's how systemd got done, even though there's a lot of hate for it, its now the default in most distros.

Ext is still the default because it works so well, in comparison to NTFS/HFS/HFS+ it's vastly better. I'm not too sure btrfs is really designed to replace Ext as such, having said that I've used btrfs with no real issue on NAS solutions.
 
Back when I actually used optical media PowerDVD was not a great solution.

I've been using it for years and it's great for me, even with BD.

Considering HTPC's and WAF everything needs to integrate perfectly with full remote control support (programmable, dedicated home theater remote, no keyboard/mouse combos), stability is absolutely paramount with the machine never fully shutting off but going into S3 so that it can be awoken via IR remote. Under Windows all of the above was always a compromise. Bluray/HDDVD compatibility was always an ongoing problem, eventually a new version of the software would be released resulting in support for the older version being dropped necessitating in the repurchase of software, and it wasn't cheap. The implementation of both Arcsoft TMT and PowerDVD in W7MC was always a hack solution and crashed frequently, integration in W7MC was a must due to IR remote control limitations. Furthermore, Windows 7 as a platform was just not stable, there were always issues ranging from no audio through to applications crashing frequently and network shares being dropped - Quite possibly as a result of the machine always resuming from S3, but something that is definitely not a problem under Linux. Where the machine had to boot from a cold boot, the process took twice as long as it does using the same machine/SSD as a cold boot under Linux. The Windows 7 install was very lean with the basics necessary for HTPC usage, the machine is strictly a hometheater appliance.

Just disabling subtitles under W7MC playing back .mkv's is a PITA that cannot be easily achieved via IR remote control, under Linux it's no problem. As stated, I also had to install dodgy codec packs under Windows 7, something I've never done under Linux.

These days many popular HT frontends are available cross platform, so many of the issues I encountered may be non issues these days and I've given optical media the flick altogether, however considering long term uptimes and S3, I find Linux to be far more stable than Windows on my machine with a noticeable increase in the WAF. When it comes to optical playback I find dedicated players to be far more reliable and cost effective.

The best remote for a PC is mini-BT keyboard. Beats a remote hands down for using the web which I think is a critical part of a HTPC today. As for recording, it's not something I do these days with Netflix, Hulu, Amazon and live on demand TV via the web.
 
Ext is still the default because it works so well, in comparison to NTFS/HFS/HFS+ it's vastly better. I'm not too sure btrfs is really designed to replace Ext as such, having said that I've used btrfs with no real issue on NAS solutions.

Works well but lacks so many things. Imagine if you could make copies of files without taking up any disk space. Take snapshots of the entire drive before any change, again with no space used, and restore them at any time. No need to run fsck.

ext can't do any of this. I think all these are things users would benefit a great deal from.
 
I've been using it for years and it's great for me, even with BD.



The best remote for a PC is mini-BT keyboard. Beats a remote hands down for using the web which I think is a critical part of a HTPC today. As for recording, it's not something I do these days with Netflix, Hulu, Amazon and live on demand TV via the web.

Not from a purely hometheater perspective and not where a wife is concerned. I've tried BT keyboards/trackpads, all were a complete fail. A well set up HTPC integrates perfectly into the rest of the hometheater as a perfectly reliable HT device and from that perspective Windows was always a compromise in my experience.

In all honesty, I'd use Android on a capable but low powered ARM based solution as a hometheater OS before I'd use WIndows, based solely on my years of experience with HTPC's and Windows. I'm not bagging out Windows, but some things are better suited to a particular application.
 
Works well but lacks so many things. Imagine if you could make copies of files without taking up any disk space. Take snapshots of the entire drive before any change, again with no space used, and restore them at any time. No need to run fsck.

ext can't do any of this. I think all these are things users would benefit a great deal from.

Btrfs will continue to grow and develop. In the meantime I have used it under NAS backup solutions with no issue, in fact it works great!

I think it's more realistic to compare Ext4 to NTFS and HFS+, and compared to both file systems Ext4 is the better filesystem.
 
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