Why GNU/Linux Rocks

[devilock76]

I pretty much stick with Debian, and Debian based distros. I've considered Arch. I dismissed it before due to lack of package signing, but now that they have that going, I might give it a try. Probably not though. I don't see much point in making things harder than they have to be.

I thought that way for a while and avoided it, glad I changed my mind. But here in we get to the real power of Linux, there is something for everyone...

Ken

[sgreger1]

Thunderbird handles multiple accounts. I know it does 3 accounts, and I suspect it's unlimited. Evolution's alright. I tried to like it, but it had some peculiarities that irritated me. Thunderbird is cross platform. There's no reason you couldn't take the mail you received in Linux, and drop it into a Windows machine running Tbird. That kind of flexibility's valuable.

The problem is that it [Thunderbird] doesn't actually handle multiple accounts. You have to go in and manually change which account is your active account. In Outlook it will display my inboxes for all 4 of my email accounts all at once on the left panel, I can send mail from any of the 4 without having to change any setting etc. It just bakes them all into the panel on the left that says "inbox, sent" etc, it just has a new tree for each email account.

If anything can do that I would be happy.

[lxskllr]

I don't understand. Here's 2 accounts, and I imagine it'll do as as many as I choose...

[Los ßnus]

The problem is that it [Thunderbird] doesn't actually handle multiple accounts. You have to go in and manually change which account is your active account. In Outlook it will display my inboxes for all 4 of my email accounts all at once on the left panel, I can send mail from any of the 4 without having to change any setting etc. It just bakes them all into the panel on the left that says "inbox, sent" etc, it just has a new tree for each email account.

If anything can do that I would be happy.

Thunderbird lets you have as many accounts as you want. You just need to set up a seperate "Sending" account for your SMTP server. So when you make a new account for the first time it sets this up for you. You just need to go into your settings and add a "sending" account or whatever its called. Then when you make a new email account with thunderbird it should be available on the dropdown.

A bit confusing yes but it works. I'm not at home so I can't provide screenshots but if you play with it you'll figure it out.


also back to CLI mail programs. never tried mutt out but alpine or pine ****ing rocks! super lightweight and nothing says 1337 D3WD like CLI based email!

[sgreger1]

Wtf? How did you guys get this to work? I configured manually the out going Smpt thing so that both accounts were on there, but even though it gives me the option to choose which one to send from when composing and email, it will only send from one. More importantly, it only displays the inbox for the original account. I will have to play with it more when I get home, glad to know it's at least possible.

I don't think i'm 1337 enough yet to use cli based email. Not that I couldn't since I imagine it's easier than regular email, but because there is no reason to do something that limits functionality (i.e. viewing pictures). Yes, I know you can open the link but again, the purpose of clients is to increase functionality to the desired levels, not to reduce it so it looks cool. Would be usefull if I didn't have access to all of my emails on my iphone, then i could be really cool and SSH into my home computer and use the email via the terminal, but it's 2012 so no real reason for that.


Speaking of which, anyone looking for the best iphone app for SSH/Telnet etc, check out iSSH. It's $10 but works better than the other 3 apps I tried. It is extremely functional and actually displays the text properly. It is absolutely awesome to be able to just SSH into your server or whatever and do whatever you want on the CLI from your phone.



Also, I set up my server as an SSH proxy for my home computer yesterday. God linux is so easy it's amazing. The command line makes everything so fast and simple. A single line of text in the CLI, then just go switch the settings in firefox to look for the SOCKS proxy, switch remote DNS to 'True', and blam, all set up. And it's not even noticeably slower than my regular internet (havn't tried downloading anything though). I will run a speed test on it later today to see if it is actualyl slower. The server is on a fast 100Mbs connection and my home computer is on a 36/7 Mbs up/down connection so it doesn't seem to interfere too much.

[Los ßnus]

Maybe the fact your using the main inbox is your problem? on the left navigation pane in thunderbird, there should be a list of all your accounts so you can expand them and see the folders within. Personally I use IMAP so IDK if POP3 is different but when you are under the inbox for the specific account, it should use that servers settings.

[devilock76]

Speaking of which, anyone looking for the best iphone app for SSH/Telnet etc, check out iSSH. It's $10 but works better than the other 3 apps I tried. It is extremely functional and actually displays the text properly. It is absolutely awesome to be able to just SSH into your server or whatever and do whatever you want on the CLI from your phone.

This is one place Android wins over IOS. There are better and free SSH and VNC solutions on Android than IOS. Yes I have both. And as much as IOS is pretty rock solid I like the freedom of android. IOS still kills for music apps though, but it is slowly getting to be a closer game.

Ken

[sgreger1]

Maybe the fact your using the main inbox is your problem? on the left navigation pane in thunderbird, there should be a list of all your accounts so you can expand them and see the folders within. Personally I use IMAP so IDK if POP3 is different but when you are under the inbox for the specific account, it should use that servers settings.

That is the problem though, on the left navigation pane it doesn't show any of my other accounts. I only had a few minutes to play with it, I must be messing up something simple. Now that I know it can do it I will find a way later on.

[shikitohno]

I don't see much point in making things harder than they have to be.

For me, the slightly more involved initial setup actually does the reverse. I spend a little bit more time installing it and configuring stuff, and in the long run that makes things much easier for me. Between having set it up myself, and Arch almost never patching stuff, things work exactly the way I expect them to 99% of the time. For an example of how Ubuntu fails me in this regard, try setting up a console login. First, they have no /etc/inittab file like everyone else does. Some googling reveals Ubuntu uses /etc/init/rc-sysinit.conf to control the default runlevel. So I go in, change it to runlevel 3. Now every time I boot this machine, it pops up a warning that Ubuntu is running in low-graphics mode, and asking me how to proceed. Every time, I wind up cursing the devs who thought this was a good idea and saying, "I know, I want this damn thing to be doing what it's doing. Bugger off with your menu and just let me do as I please."

A lot of times, I find that the simplifications made in systems were designed with the least skilled users in mind, at the expense of those who actually know what they're doing.

[lxskllr]

For me, the slightly more involved initial setup actually does the reverse. I spend a little bit more time installing it and configuring stuff, and in the long run that makes things much easier for me. Between having set it up myself, and Arch almost never patching stuff, things work exactly the way I expect them to 99% of the time. For an example of how Ubuntu fails me in this regard, try setting up a console login. First, they have no /etc/inittab file like everyone else does. Some googling reveals Ubuntu uses /etc/init/rc-sysinit.conf to control the default runlevel. So I go in, change it to runlevel 3. Now every time I boot this machine, it pops up a warning that Ubuntu is running in low-graphics mode, and asking me how to proceed. Every time, I wind up cursing the devs who thought this was a good idea and saying, "I know, I want this damn thing to be doing what it's doing. Bugger off with your menu and just let me do as I please."

A lot of times, I find that the simplifications made in systems were designed with the least skilled users in mind, at the expense of those who actually know what they're doing.

You're going from almost the widest extremes you could though. We'll remove LFS and Gentoo from the discussion since they're ridiculous outside of a hobby activity, and that leaves Arch at the hardest end, and Ubuntu at the easiest. A better comparison would be Debian sid, and Arch. They're both rolling releases, and neither weren't custom crafted for the n00b. I have no experience with Arch, so i can't compare, but Debian's treated me right, and it allows a great deal of customization without being exceedingly manual.

Edit:
For anyone interested, here's a thread from reddit asking why Arch is so popular. This'll give a wide range of opinions that may be useful to some...

http://www.reddit.com/r/linux/commen...the_arch_love/

[Los ßnus]

You're going from almost the widest extremes you could though. We'll remove LFS and Gentoo from the discussion since they're ridiculous outside of a hobby activity, and that leaves Arch at the hardest end, and Ubuntu at the easiest. A better comparison would be Debian sid, and Arch. They're both rolling releases, and neither weren't custom crafted for the n00b. I have no experience with Arch, so i can't compare, but Debian's treated me right, and it allows a great deal of customization without being exceedingly manual.

Edit:
For anyone interested, here's a thread from reddit asking why Arch is so popular. This'll give a wide range of opinions that may be useful to some...

http://www.reddit.com/r/linux/commen...the_arch_love/

I gotta say I ****in love Debian for my web server. But I feel like Ubuntu has better software repos. That's the real reason why I stuck with it.

I never had a reason to mess with run-levels so IDK what a practical application for them is.

[shikitohno]

True, they're aimed at opposite ends of the spectrum in terms of users. I was simply pointing out one area where Ubuntu screws over a user who actually knows what they're doing in favour of making it almost idiot proof for the people who are just trying out Linux and want something that's not too difficult. Changing the default runlevel your computer boots into shouldn't require you to edit one config file, and then track down the one that makes a warning menu pop up, and go edit that to make the menu go away. I find it unlikely that a user who has no clue what they're doing is going to accidentally edit that particular file and change it to boot to runlevel three.

Ubuntu has done a great job of making Linux easier to run for someone who no particular technical skills who just wants to dip their toes in the water. I'm just pointing out one example of how this makes things much easier for the clueless Joe on the street, at the expense of making things more of a hassle for a user who knows what they're doing. Debian is quite a bit better in this regard, but they're also know for patching things all to hell. As a result, you can't necessarily count on certain parts of your knowledge to translate well to other systems. Arch leaves things pretty much close to stock. Unless you intentionally changed where files go, your knowledge of how to do something on Arch will generally translate fairly well into knowing how to do it in Gentoo, Fedora, and the BSDs, amongst others. The same holds true going from those systems to Arch. Debian and its various spin-offs tend to do things their own way, often somewhat randomly.

It's frustrating to use when all your experience on other systems tells you, "Okay, just installed foo, its global config file should be /etc/foo.conf," or something similar, and you find that in Ubuntu that file doesn't exist. Then you go on Google and find out that on Ubuntu it's held in /usr/share/local/doc/just/fscking/with/you/bro for no real good reason. It's little things like that that ultimately lead to my frustration with these distros. They're not necessarily deal-breakers on their own, but as they accumulate over time, eventually you just say, "Screw it, I'm going to use something that does things in a sane way, just like everyone else but them seems to do."

That's my reason for avoiding them personally. Only running Ubuntu at the moment because the wireless card on this machine didn't want to play nicely with Arch for some reason, and the live environment automatically detected the correct drivers. In that area, it can certainly be nice, but the little things just build up over time. Also, I really hate the package manager. Using one command installing/upgrading/removing programs, and a different, but related one for searching for packages seems just plain silly. Googling, it seems their is a facility to search with apt-*, but it's a relatively unmentioned command called apt-cache. What can be done in Ubuntu with a combination of apt-*, aptitude and dpkg commands can all be done under Arch with pacman and the corresponding flag, which is all nicely documented in the pacman man page.

Of course, as was said earlier, such is the beauty of Linux. I can find this distro completely annoying, but there's an alternative out there that works great for me. You like these sorts of distros, they work well for you, and there's plenty of people working on them.

[devilock76]

You're going from almost the widest extremes you could though. We'll remove LFS and Gentoo from the discussion since they're ridiculous outside of a hobby activity, and that leaves Arch at the hardest end, and Ubuntu at the easiest. A better comparison would be Debian sid, and Arch. They're both rolling releases, and neither weren't custom crafted for the n00b. I have no experience with Arch, so i can't compare, but Debian's treated me right, and it allows a great deal of customization without being exceedingly manual.

Edit:
For anyone interested, here's a thread from reddit asking why Arch is so popular. This'll give a wide range of opinions that may be useful to some...

http://www.reddit.com/r/linux/commen...the_arch_love/

I would consider PCLinuxOS even more beginner end than ubuntu, it is Mandriva based. Open Suse would be up there as well.

I consider Arch and improvement over Slackware. Ok not exactly a direct relationship but similar state of mind in the users. Slack has the benefit of a more stable history for use as a server over Arch, that is about it. Arch, better package management, documentation (IMHO), and of course very bleeding edge.

Ken

[devilock76]

I gotta say I ****in love Debian for my web server. But I feel like Ubuntu has better software repos. That's the real reason why I stuck with it.

I never had a reason to mess with run-levels so IDK what a practical application for them is.

Then you are probably not the type of user who would enjoy Arch...

Ken

[devilock76]

To add to what shikitohno says though, well addendum, I do not slight the Ubuntu project. I just find the distro not for me. Ubuntu as an overall project has done absolute wonders to bringing Linux to the consumer desktop mainstream in a way no other distro has, that is a fact plain and simple. To do that they made some choices that will annoy the purist or two but the fact is that us purists are not the average computer consumer public. I think most of us accept that. We suggest arch because if you want to learn LINUX it is a more pure way to go, as is Slackware, and even Debian to a degree. Like BSD is better for learning a true Unix. If you want to learn RHEL then you learn that. Arch skills are a bit more transferrable if you are going for that. That is all. It all depends what a computer is to you. A tool to get a job done, well whatever gets that job done great. A source of income, similar. Hobbyist, 133t stuff, something else.

Truth is I fight the battle of mixing music and computer geek tasks often times in the same boxes. Or mixing server duties with workstation boxes. My solution works for me, YMMV. YMMV should be a universal catch phrase with linux, that or you get out what you put in, but that is kind of general for all computers.

Ken