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Old 07-08-2012, 02:53 AM   #1
Greenhorn21
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Question How To Keep My Distro Version Running Reliably & Efficiently?


Hi, I originally became a linux user not because it was free (although that's nice,) but because of its legendary supposed reliability.It always sounds better when you hear people talking about it.I used to have the impression it could go on with constant use for centuries without any necessary changes. Unfortunately, since I have started using the different types within the huge genre, I have found that after every few months I am forced to do a complete reinstall with the OS disc. I have had some modest success in slowing down the break-down process using bleachbit, but inevitably the day always seems to come eventually.

I'm not saying this because I'm a Mac boy, I'm being serious; right now, my system is running like it's water logged and cluttered with junk, like in the Windows days. When I'm doing large data transfers, I sometimes get the alert that Gnome Shell has crashed. Currently, I am command prompt illiterate. The only times I have ever used it successfully is when I copied and pasted from Libre Writer. I hope to change that someday.

If you guys could give me a detailed tutorial on how to clean the hard disk (or C-Drive) and/or upgrade to a new release through the updater (like on Ubuntu) with no incident, that would be great. Thanks in advance. And please, try to go easy on me...
 
Old 07-08-2012, 03:58 AM   #2
0men
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hey! welcome to linux questions.

That sucks mate, i've never had to do a full re-install because the system was 'water logged'. Which distro are you using ? Just a point that i've never found gnome to be that stable, especially ! the gnome shell. Have you been on the pirate bay trying to download movies etc etc ? That place loves to hide Linux rootkits in so called 'pdf files or movies' (stenography).

Keeping your system up to date is essential by running apt-get or yum. But it depends what distro your using and what your using it for..... Check this for a little information about locking your system down, http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...-to-do-685881/

Take it easy on you :P , everybody had to start somewhere, and everyone is still learning, and.... will never stop learning.

Peace man.

Edit: What distro are you using, and what are you using it for ? Then we can point you in the direction of some tutorials on disabling services and firewalls as well as basic sys admin

Last edited by 0men; 07-08-2012 at 04:00 AM.
 
Old 07-08-2012, 04:15 AM   #3
sycamorex
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Greenhorn21 View Post
Hi, I originally became a linux user not because it was free (although that's nice,) but because of its legendary supposed reliability.It always sounds better when you hear people talking about it.I used to have the impression it could go on with constant use for centuries without any necessary changes. Unfortunately, since I have started using the different types within the huge genre, I have found that after every few months I am forced to do a complete reinstall with the OS disc. I have had some modest success in slowing down the break-down process using bleachbit, but inevitably the day always seems to come eventually.

I'm not saying this because I'm a Mac boy, I'm being serious; right now, my system is running like it's water logged and cluttered with junk, like in the Windows days. When I'm doing large data transfers, I sometimes get the alert that Gnome Shell has crashed. Currently, I am command prompt illiterate. The only times I have ever used it successfully is when I copied and pasted from Libre Writer. I hope to change that someday.

If you guys could give me a detailed tutorial on how to clean the hard disk (or C-Drive) and/or upgrade to a new release through the updater (like on Ubuntu) with no incident, that would be great. Thanks in advance. And please, try to go easy on me...
First of all, Gnome Shell or Unity are relatively new and far from stable. If you want something stable that will run for ages I would stay away from distros like Ubuntu or Fedora - They have very frequent releases of new versions and might break things. If stability is what you're after, go for Slackware or Debian (they will require some setting up but it's really no rocket science as there are so many tutorials on those topics).

Why do you need to clean your drive? If it's messy because of your habits, no program will help you. You just need to be more organised.
If you have installed too many programs through your official package manager, they will be where they are supposed to be and you can easily uninstall them without leaving any rubbish on your computer.

Not sure what else to say, I've never experienced any slowdown of my system over time. I might have broken it by tempering with it too much but that's different from what you describe.


Could you provide more details / be more specific?

Last edited by sycamorex; 07-08-2012 at 04:16 AM.
 
Old 07-08-2012, 08:38 AM   #4
Greenhorn21
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I'll have to be perfectly honest with you guys, if you're talking about going to places like the late Megaupload and Rapidshare, then yes. I visit places like that quite a bit. What can I say though, I love the fine arts. Frankly, it just isn't fair how we're all being wage slaved to death in a system where debt itself is issued as currency. For the crap we all have to go through in this world, we deserve little perks like getting lossless album downloads of a favorite artist and the like. Of course, these people who're stepping on our heads are trying to take this right away from us also.

Sorry for getting preachy there. I am currently using Kororaa OS w/ Gnome3. I actually like the distro quite a bit in terms of user friendliness. In my honest opinion, I like the G3 interface better than Unity, inspite of G3's very unfavorable reception; although both were blasted. Classic Gnome was arguably the easiest desktop interface to use. It is so much like Windows that ANYONE can start using it with hardly any trouble.

I also run my updates pretty regularly. Unfortunately it doesn't have that neat feature of color coding updates like Linux Mint did (another OS I like.)

What I'm basically aiming for as a long term goal, is to assemble a library of culture and literature and bury a time capsule of optical discs etc.
 
Old 07-08-2012, 10:52 AM   #5
DavidMcCann
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Kororaa does a great job of adding useful things to Fedora and incorporating the first rush of bug fixes, but after that it's just Fedora. The number of times (here and at the Fedora forum) I've seen a tale of woe that starts "I ran an update and then ..."! I used to use Fedora and I never accepted the upgrades as a matter of course. After all, it's only 6 months to the next version. There's a yum plugin that lets you get security fixes only, or you can use the GUI tool and see what the upgrades are for. If you ignore the supposed enhancements, the fixes for bugs you've never experienced, and the security fixes that only apply to servers, that leaves very little to add.

As you can see, I'm now using CentOS and Salix (Slackware with user-friendliness); both are in the "install it and live happily ever after" category. Updates are security fixes and don't cause problems.
 
Old 07-08-2012, 06:18 PM   #6
chrism01
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I agree with post#5.
You need to know (if you don't already) that Fedora is RH's R&D bleeding edge distro and is replaced about every 13 mths iirc.
Basically, its supposed to be more-or-less unstable.

If you want stability, go with Centos (free rebuild of RHEL) lasts up to 10 years (13 for RHEL, if you pay extra for extended support.)
I don't know if Centos will go the full 13, as that's a new idea, but should go the 10.
https://access.redhat.com/support/po...pdates/errata/

NB: its a fairly conservative distro, so you may have to go to EPEL https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/EPEL as well and add the relevant repos to your list.

Updates are offered automatically, you can keep your disks under ctrl via logrotate http://linux.die.net/man/8/logrotate and run logwatch http://linux.die.net/man/8/logwatch to warn you when/if they fill up, but ultimately (as above) you have to be organised; you only a have a limited disk space.

Last edited by chrism01; 07-08-2012 at 06:28 PM.
 
Old 07-08-2012, 07:33 PM   #7
guyonearth
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You question doesn't make any sense without knowing more about what's going on, including what distro you're using and what you're running it on. A properly installed and configured system should not "bog down" over time. Unless you're running programs as services or processes in the background, installing more programs should have no effect on system speed, on either Linux or Windows. My Windows installation is over 2 years old and runs as good as new. I've had Linux up for months on my other computer and it's not "slowing down", so I have to wonder exactly what you're up to.

As far as Linux being more "reliable", that's merely the opinion of some. A cutting-edge Linux distribution, or one where stuff is being added and recompiled on a regular basis may well NOT be all that reliable or stable. I haven't seen a Windows bluescreen or crash in the last 5 years, if not longer...so I'm not sure what the standard would be for "reliability".
 
Old 07-09-2012, 07:22 AM   #8
Greenhorn21
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If I may ask, which distros are known to be extremely easy to use, but also very reliable? Preferably giving users the full experience in gaming and audio-visual media? The Works?
 
Old 07-09-2012, 10:37 AM   #9
DavidMcCann
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Those which I've found easy and reliable, and which have a full supply of working media codecs, are Mepis (KDE), Mint (Mate), Parsix (Gnome), and Saline (Xfce). They all have ample repositories as well. See my reviews on this site.
 
Old 07-09-2012, 02:20 PM   #10
sycamorex
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You might need to define full experience in gaming? As much as I like Linux, it's not a gaming platform. Not yet, anyway
 
Old 07-13-2012, 02:54 AM   #11
Greenhorn21
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Question

Quote:
Originally Posted by DavidMcCann View Post
Kororaa does a great job of adding useful things to Fedora and incorporating the first rush of bug fixes, but after that it's just Fedora. The number of times (here and at the Fedora forum) I've seen a tale of woe that starts "I ran an update and then ..."! I used to use Fedora and I never accepted the upgrades as a matter of course. After all, it's only 6 months to the next version. There's a yum plugin that lets you get security fixes only, or you can use the GUI tool and see what the upgrades are for. If you ignore the supposed enhancements, the fixes for bugs you've never experienced, and the security fixes that only apply to servers, that leaves very little to add.

As you can see, I'm now using CentOS and Salix (Slackware with user-friendliness); both are in the "install it and live happily ever after" category. Updates are security fixes and don't cause problems.
Honestly, when I first started using the Kororaa, I thought it was the best there is, the best there was, and the best there ever will be. There are certain neat tricks it does that I wish ALL Linux systems could do. As you can tell, I'm a little bit reluctant to switch.

If you would, could you tell me more about this particular YUM plugin you're referring to? I might eventually have to find another OS that is more stable, sadly; but in the meantime, I think I'll stick with what I have for now until I can find something else that will please me. I'll be looking around though.

I also wouldn't mind hearing more from you about the Salix. I've heard from distrowatch that it's supposed to be more user friendly. I also heard that it only runs one application at a time. Does this mean you can't open up multiple tabs? Like maybe having Firefox in one tab, and Clementine in another?

PS- I liked Mint, but there were one or two things about most any Ubuntu based system I have used that I didn't like. Chief was how that nothing can be installed seemingly from outside the repository with an automatic wizard installer. Fedoras seem to have this feature. Also, it has FREE DOOM in the games section.
 
Old 07-13-2012, 02:57 AM   #12
Greenhorn21
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PC BSD sounded great, but it seemed to be buggy when I tried it before.
 
Old 07-13-2012, 03:03 AM   #13
gapan
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Greenhorn21 View Post
I also wouldn't mind hearing more from you about the Salix. I've heard from distrowatch that it's supposed to be more user friendly. I also heard that it only runs one application at a time. Does this mean you can't open up multiple tabs? Like maybe having Firefox in one tab, and Clementine in another?
Where exactly did you read that "it runs one application at a time"? You completely misunderstood.
 
Old 07-13-2012, 11:12 AM   #14
Greenhorn21
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Originally Posted by gapan View Post
Where exactly did you read that "it runs one application at a time"? You completely misunderstood.
Sorry, I looked again and it said "one application per task." Translation?
 
Old 07-17-2012, 04:16 AM   #15
gapan
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It actually says "one application per task on the installation ISO". Take it one word at a time. What do you understand? I'm really interested at what people understand by reading that. If people fail to understand that sentence, it should be either fixed or removed.

Last edited by gapan; 07-17-2012 at 04:18 AM.
 
  


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