Best Distro for FB

Linux specific questions.
Munair
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Re: Best Distro for FB

Post by Munair »

Dinosaur wrote:Using Mint 18.3 I have never had to do a Re-Install.
As long as you can use the version, yes. But a point release upgrade is never without risk. Often it is safer and cleaner to do a fresh install e.g from Mint 18 to 19. Mint 18 is based on Ubuntu 16 which uses kernel 4.4. In the Linux world where development goes fast, that is an old kernel (but still ok if you don't need a recent version). The problem with point releases, even if you have an LTS, is that you're stuck with specific libraries. You cannot install newer software without breaking the system/dependencies, which can be a handicap if you want an update that holds a fix to a nasty bug. This is especially true for the desktop. Both KDE/Qt and Gnome/GTK come out frequently with fixes. XFCE to a lesser degree. Backports are a temporary solution but not without risk of breaking the system.

After installing Debian 9, which ships with kernel 4.9 I saw new developments and fixes passing by me and I could not install them. With Manjaro I have the luxury of the latest updates and it allows the selection of a preferred kernel too from version 3.16 to 4.19 (currently). Coming from the Debian world, Manjaro as a stable rolling release is a big relief. Debian based distros are certainly not bad, and do well if you don't need/want the latest developments.
srvaldez
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Re: Best Distro for FB

Post by srvaldez »

I just installed manjaro 18 x64 on a VM and after updating, installed geany: pacman -S geany and FB: pacman -S freebasic
after changing the terminal to xfce4-terminal in the geany preferences/tools, geany compiles and runs FB programs ok https://freebasic.net/forum/viewtopic.p ... 14#p251514
Munair
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Re: Best Distro for FB

Post by Munair »

srvaldez wrote:I just installed manjaro 18 x64 on a VM and after updating, installed geany: pacman -S geany and FB: pacman -S freebasic
after changing the terminal to xfce4-terminal in the geany preferences/tools, geany compiles and runs FB programs ok https://freebasic.net/forum/viewtopic.p ... 14#p251514
That will give you FreeBasic 1.05.

viewtopic.php?f=8&t=26076&start=105#p253723
srvaldez
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Re: Best Distro for FB

Post by srvaldez »

@Munair
thank for the tip :-)
lizard
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Re: Best Distro for FB

Post by lizard »

Munair wrote:While trying and seeking around, I noticed that in recent years Manjaro climbed the distrowatch list real quick and is now at the top by leaps and bounds. Last time I checked it showed around 4000 HPD. This is interesting because Mint used to top the ranking for years.
Remember, the distrowatch ranking depends only on the number of readers of articles on distrowatch itself. It does not give a clear statement of the quality of this distro. Imho, Mint is better than Manjaro. In Manjaro there is much confusion with the old Arch, Manjaro and the new Deepin. Deepin looks interesting and has its fans.

In Mint Xfce everything matches perfectly together and works here to today, many hours each day. So we can say, new distros tend to come to a higher rank at distrowatch through the interest of readers, who already know the long time established distros.
Munair
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Re: Best Distro for FB

Post by Munair »

lizard wrote:In Manjaro there is much confusion with the old Arch, Manjaro and the new Deepin.
In my experience there is no confusion at all, no more than between Debian, Ubuntu and Mint. Manjaro is a very polished distro with Arch under the hood. But even with software installation, there is a clear difference between the default Manjaro repo and the AUR (Arch User Repo), which must be selected explicitly to search for packages. There is even a clear warning that Arch packages compiled on Manjaro may not work without problems. However I used the AUR a few times and did not run into any issues.

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lizard wrote:So we can say, new distros tend to come to a higher rank at distrowatch through the interest of readers, who already know the long time established distros.
Not true. Only distros with some potential (quality/stability) usually backed by a community make it high on the Distrowatch HPD list. True, it doesn't say anything about how many people actually use the distro, but for years Mint was ranked highest and that was no coincidence as it was (and still is) among the most popular. I remember when it topped Ubuntu. Now it is topped by Manjaro and that is at least SOME indication that the distro is getting a lot of attention.
lizard
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Re: Best Distro for FB

Post by lizard »

Here you can read the explanation of distrowatchs ranking:

https://distrowatch.com/dwres.php?resource=popularity
The DistroWatch Page Hit Ranking statistics are a light-hearted way of measuring the popularity of Linux distributions and other free operating systems among the visitors of this website. They correlate neither to usage nor to quality and should not be used to measure the market share of distributions. They simply show the number of times a distribution page on DistroWatch.com was accessed each day, nothing more.
Munair
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Re: Best Distro for FB

Post by Munair »

What made me switch to Manjaro last July, is that on Debian 9 I could not install the latest version of Lazarus (1.8.4) due to dependency problems, even though Debian 9 is a very recent distro. It is just one example of the limitations that users encounter frequently on Debian based distros, not just Debian itself. Here's the comment I made on the Manjaro forum:

https://forum.manjaro.org/t/the-one-thi ... 9?u=munair
St_W
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Re: Best Distro for FB

Post by St_W »

Debian is focused on stability and security and thus often the latest version of an application is not available in its package repositories. If you want that use another distro, like Ubuntu, which is based on Debian but also provides recent application versions in its repositories (at the cost of stability and maintainability). Of there are also many other distros you can choose (like Manjaro, which you mentioned), but Ubuntu is probably the most common one.
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