@ukbeast89 Good day to you follow tuxer. I am a primary linux user myself. I am not sure if he was serious(I did edge him in that direction, and am not following his genre), but our scanlator in the News from the most recent interview seems to be one as well.
Since I broke into a rant that I cant follow, here is some basic info about me
[ul][*]Distros I use (in order of preference): Gentoo (fastest and most stable if you can figure out how to properly use it. First install is hell though. If you don't know the CLI, installing this is a effective way to force yourself to learn it), Arch (like gentoo, but faster installs with less stable programs), CentOS (RedHat experience), Kali (Offensive security FTW), Debian/Ubuntu (what I started with. Almost never use it now)
[*]Primary programs I use that are at least a little bit related to manga/anime: keepassx (password manager), ffmpeg (console based video editor/transcoder), mpv (Video Player. Extendable via Lua, uses Lua for UI, also uses ffmpeg behind the scenes), hexchat (IRC), rtorrent(CLI based torrent manager), mcomix (manga/image viewer), blender (3d modeling/animation), kodi (smart TV replacement), krita (image editor), firefox
[*]Random Services I remember that I run on my network: DLNA (video/music/image server. mostly used for anime), shairport sync (Allows iphone users to stream music to houshold speakers), IKEv2 VPN(StrongSwan), DNS(Bind9), PostgreSQL, Django, SSH, NTP, Samba v4 AD (Windows file-share and centralized remote management)
[*]Languages I know: Python, Perl, Lua, JS, Bash, HTML, CSS, ... etc?
[*]Languages I am Learning: Rust, Japanese
[*]Languages I regret learning or trying to learn: Perl6(its never going to take off), PHP(not for me)[/ul]
Fun things I have done:
[ul][*]Shakugan no Shana theme![ul][*]GDM based
[*]Rotating wallpaper on desktop AND login screen
[*]Themed windows
[*]Customized notification sounds. Used bgm and catchphrases from the OST
[*]Login screen alarm for alerting about unauthorized access attempts while I am nearby. If left shift was not held down on resume, we would play the OST on full volume!
Fun Story! My friends once attempted to play To Love Ru (on my PC) in the middle of lunch in HS. I shutdown the computer, but they stole it back from me, turned it on... and I walked away. 15 seconds latter the cafeteria fell quite as music blared from my PC. Everyone was looking at our table while I stood by the vending machine thinking they would force it off or pull the battery. Instead they folded their arms on the table and shoved their head in it in embarrassment. Ended up having to go back and turn it off myself. The vice principle was not pleased, but I was luckily only scolded[/ul]
[*]Same as above for Hayate no Gotoku. Was much easier bc their soundtrack includes a whole lot of 1 phrase tracks. For instance, "You Got Mail Mail ga Todoita wa".
Just look at titles in any character CD for it on AniDB
[*]Recovered deleted files from a camera's sdcard. No big deal, but you should have seen the panicked face of those around me at the time. Unfortunatly, most people use their phones now, and most phones are encrypted. I may be able to bypass security, but deleted files will not generally be recoverable.
[/ul]
TL;D(want to)R: I like Gentoo the best bc it runs great when properly configured, but it is extraordinarily difficult to get use to get used to. Recommended for those already somewhat familiar with linux who want to dive into the deep end of the CLI, or want the most configurability that a PM can give. Bar noobs from entry bc they will drown and never come back.
My Intro to Linux
I myself started with Ubuntu. When I first learned of GNU/Linux, what attracted me most was the configurability of it all. Windows, for me, was a nuisance due to the many hurdles I had to jump through to make simple changes (ever tried changing how the lock screen looks? Changing the bg is already a pain, anything past that is hell).
Configurability:
Linux offered a great deal of configurability and options for everything! Not only can you personalize the looks of your desktop, taskbar, lockscreen, change the audio of the login/logout, and the image/video played on boot. But there is even a pallor of different programs specifically designed for each task.
Something as simple as displaying program windows, a near completely inconfigurable task in MS, has 6 different popular programs for doing it, with different layouts (eg. stacking vs tiling WM). Not to mention the fun you can get with desktop effects(eg. wobbly windows), or the practicality of Virtual desktops (a concept MS finally imported with Win10).
When I switched, the main drive was the configurability, but the ease of use was quite surprising. With Win8, MS finally has an App store, but us linux users have had that for years! What more, ours is actually useful. Everything you want is normally in the app store, and the few items that may be missing are available in user supported app repositories which are just as easy to use. This greatly reduces the risk of getting viruses, and for us competent users, it nearly eliminates the need to do a background check on a program before installing it.
One of my favorite aspects of the linux community is that they never tell you know. Everything is possible, its just a matter of how much time you are willing to put into it. With Open Source code, you can quite literally change anything you don't like about any program. Once you get it the way you like it, you can share it with others or send it back upstream for review and consideration! This nice and supportive community is what kept me going with it until I went completely insane!
Going Insane: A Distro Hop To Gentoo
After about 2 years with Ubuntu, debian, and its quite/evil step sister, Backtrack (now knows as Kali) linux, I decided I wanted to try switching to something even MORE configurable! With linux, we have something called "Distros", a fine tuned package of various programs and preferences which work together to create a unique user experience. Each of these is like its own Operating System. We use a site called
DistroWatch to keep track of them and currently there are 276 Actively maintained Distributions of Linux(Try beating those options Windows)! Now, you may be wondering why? Well, each distro is tuned for a specific purpose. You have the general everyday distos with no specific target user. Distos aimed at Professions like Graphical designers, musicians, physicist, chemist, geographers. Distros aimed at hardware such as embedded platforms in general, android phones, TVs, XBox, routers/firewalls, etc. And Distros aiming to fulfill a specific purpose such as PBX distros, Firewall/Security distros, Surveillance Distros, etc. All of these distros can gain what the other has simply by installing a lot of programs and changing a lot of config files, the main purpose of using a specific distro is that most of the stuff is already how you want it.
Why Gentoo: The motive for insanity
So, Why did I chose Gentoo? Well, my main problem with Ubuntu was keeping my bleeding edge programs up to date. Unlike most users, I was testing the latest of... everything. For most programs that I personally installed, I wanted the newest/unpublished/unstable version of it. Ubuntu supported this, but not very well. Ubuntu is made to be like an entry point to linux. Everything is how most users want it, and most users want everything to be stable! But I was trying to watch 10bit MKVs and other things that our anime world had adopted which, at the time, the stable releases of VLC and FFMPEG had several bugs with. I needed to stay on the nightly release and was sick of manually updating the installer for it and going through dependency hell! Thats when I learned of Gentoo...
Enter Gentoo: 3rd times the charm
Gentoo is significantly different from Ubuntu. If Ubuntu is the entry point to Linux, Gentoo is the exit. It took me about 5 minutes to figure out how to install Ubuntu the first time. It took me 3 tries and over 32hrs to install Gentoo successfully (I blame the unusual drivers my HDD used and GRUB2's lack of documentation at the time). Even now that I know how to do it, without a script it would still take me 2-3 hrs to install Gentoo properly. So, why is it so complex?
Gentoo, unlike most distros, believes you, the user, should setup and configure everything for your own system. That way everything runs the way you want it, and is optimized for your own needs. This means, everything needs to be configured by you! What more, gentoo does not take many steps to make this process easier. Everything is manually done by you. Partitioning, formating, and mounting your HDD/SSD, setting up fstab, configuring the kernel (do you know what drivers your computer requires? How about which ones the programs you want to use require? Can we optimize anything for your most common tasks?), and setting up your boot manager (UEFI, GRUB2, etc). But then, as if that wasn't enough, we have the real hell and gem of Gentoo.
Emerge: The Package Manager
Once you finish installing gentoo, a task for which you deserve a small medal, we have the real challenge. Installing programs! Unlike most other distorbutions, Gentoo is Source based. This means the package manager doesn't install pre-compiled code, but instead downloads the original source code and compiles it itself. This means installs usually take significantly longer, but we have a parole of options and optimizations we can do because of this! Normaly, a distro like Ubuntu distributes packages with just about every option enabled. This means all features can be used, but also means the program is often running code that fulfills no meaningful purpose for the end user. By configuring every program to your specific needs, Gentoo end up generating programs that are (often noticeably) faster and more stable than binary based distributions. You pay for this speed and stability with compile times and configuration time. Configuring every program individually would be hell though, which is why gentoo has something called USE flags. Basically, its a list of features you use that a large number of programs support. If a program offers that feature, it will be enabled if you flagged it on. I always install programs with only the use flags I need.
Once I got things are up and running, gentoo was the most stable OS and distro I ever used. The only time I would have problems is during or directly after upgrading a program (usually a new upstream problem). Ever had X11 crash on you? I never had that problem with gentoo except for 2 broken X11 builds, and on initial install when I had yet to properly configure xorg.
Between the hands on experience required for every task, the informative news letters/emails that you receive from the package manager, and the helpful community. I consider Gentoo to be one of the best distros for learning Linux. Go in a noob, come out a master. Of course, I don't recommend anyone not up to the task to try it. It is a CLI hell that only the clinically insane would go through.
End Gentoo Rant
Well, I didn't mean to type all of that. Believe it or not, I edited out about 3 pages worth of material (which probably made it sound more sporadic, and possibly completely removed any form of flow). I also use Arch for quicker installs, and CentOS for RedHat like experience (I have my RHCSA certificate, nearly ready for RHCE). Also playing with rPi and aurdino, but need a decent soldering iron before I can do anything too fun.
On a side note, If anyone here is into drawing/image editing, Krita is great. IMO, GIMP is for photos, Krita is for digital graphics (non-photo pictures), and Inkscape is our vector image editor (though, imo, it needs a lot of improvement which I am doubtful it will get).
