Best Linux 2020

I'm actually using Windows with WSL as a daily driver at the moment. Eric Raymond thinks that Windows will soon become effectively a Linux distro though I'm not sure how true that is.
 
Eric said:
I haven't been following, does it affect headless servers?
Click to expand...
That depends.

You can use "snap list" to find out. Some of your apt-get commands likely got silently diverted to snaps instead of .deb

They seem to work fine...but it just doesn't sit right with me.
 
Eric said:
I haven't been following, does it affect headless servers?
Click to expand...

Depends what you need.

Generally things downloaded from snap are slightly outdated and deemed stable by Snap.

If I am using an Ubuntu based server I remove snap if I configure said server myself. Its also been removed from all of our servers at work, and on the servers I manage I requested that ZFS not be used as well - for some reason these servers have SSDs and ZFS + SSD = SLOW
 
CT_Biker said:
Depends what you need.

Generally things downloaded from snap are slightly outdated and deemed stable by Snap.

If I am using an Ubuntu based server I remove snap if I configure said server myself. Its also been removed from all of our servers at work, and on the servers I manage I requested that ZFS not be used as well - for some reason these servers have SSDs and ZFS + SSD = SLOW
Click to expand...
ZFS is quite tunable though, I'm sure one could figure out how to make it faster.

ZFS isn't always what you need for other reasons. It's overkill for many simpler applications.
 
newby_investor said:
ZFS is quite tunable though, I'm sure one could figure out how to make it faster.

ZFS isn't always what you need for other reasons. It's overkill for many simpler applications.
Click to expand...

ZFS scales really well if you are using large RAID 56 and I do like it. But I do not have the time to invest into at and learn how it works under the hood.

What I did notice is that ZFS creates a lot of metadata(which I am assuming is memory block location and size etc etc) and I am not quite sure which model it uses for I/O calls - I am certain its using Interrupts as CPU loads generally arent that high during long reads and writes(I simulated this as generally the server isnt being hit with large file requests, just a lot of requests) I am surer if I set the server up to use Polling it would reduce I/O latency - but I do not have the time and I would need further study in this regard.

My boss must have worked on Solarias hardware or a company that only used Sun Microsystem hardware - he swears by Java, ZFS, enjoys debating why AIX and Solaris were the best
 
CT_Biker said:
ZFS scales really well if you are using large RAID 56 and I do like it. But I do not have the time to invest into at and learn how it works under the hood.

What I did notice is that ZFS creates a lot of metadata(which I am assuming is memory block location and size etc etc) and I am not quite sure which model it uses for I/O calls - I am certain its using Interrupts as CPU loads generally arent that high during long reads and writes(I simulated this as generally the server isnt being hit with large file requests, just a lot of requests) I am surer if I set the server up to use Polling it would reduce I/O latency - but I do not have the time and I would need further study in this regard.

My boss must have worked on Solarias hardware or a company that only used Sun Microsystem hardware - he swears by Java, ZFS, enjoys debating why AIX and Solaris were the best
Click to expand...
There is a lot of metadata associated with ZFS, I think it may be journaling mostly. There are also a lot of tuning parameters that one can tweak. Some people make a real hobby out of it. I don't remember noticing extreme latency with it, but I remember that it was pretty heavy on my server's RAM (I was using an 8GB microserver at the time).

I used to run it at home with a fairly basic configuration and it worked well (raidz1 configuration). I have since switched to glusterfs because it's hard to scale zfs beyond a single machine and I wanted redundancy. It's actually been really easy to use.
 
newby_investor said:
There is a lot of metadata associated with ZFS, I think it may be journaling mostly. There are also a lot of tuning parameters that one can tweak. Some people make a real hobby out of it. I don't remember noticing extreme latency with it, but I remember that it was pretty heavy on my server's RAM (I was using an 8GB microserver at the time).

I used to run it at home with a fairly basic configuration and it worked well (raidz1 configuration). I have since switched to glusterfs because it's hard to scale zfs beyond a single machine and I wanted redundancy. It's actually been really easy to use.
Click to expand...

I see that there is a lot of data generated, not a bad thing though. I havent the feintest idea of where to start tweaking, but hopefully I will be able to play around with it more one day.

I actually find it quite interesting that ZFS is polarizing when it comes to scaling and roubstness. Many say it scales well, others they that there are alternatives which are far better - but hey, welcome to the *Nix world!
 
CT_Biker said:
I see that there is a lot of data generated, not a bad thing though. I havent the feintest idea of where to start tweaking, but hopefully I will be able to play around with it more one day.

I actually find it quite interesting that ZFS is polarizing when it comes to scaling and roubstness. Many say it scales well, others they that there are alternatives which are far better - but hey, welcome to the *Nix world!
Click to expand...
Tuning has to do with things like how big your caches are, and compression strategies, things like that. Here's a guide that I have followed in the past, made a measurable performance improvement, not that it was important for my home-lab use-case:

ZFS performance tuning

A generic piece of advice on tuningZFS is a mature piece of software, engineered by file- and storage-system experts with lots of knowledge from practical experience. Sun invested a lot of money and b
martin.heiland.io martin.heiland.io

ZFS scales well if you have a big chassis where you can fit large numbers of drives, or JBOD-things which you can connect to a server with SAS. Compared with a networked, software-defined storage like GlusterFS though, or Ceph, it's very difficult to scale. In my case, a little HP microserver initially with three hard drives, I had space for one more, ZFS made it practically impossible to add a single disk. BTRFS does better at that but it is less stable, no raid5/6 available.

No complaints about robustness though, if used properly it can be very good at ensuring good uptime and data safety.

It comes down to knowing your tools and your requirements. Use the right tool for the job that you have to do.
 
cavedog said:
I'm struggling with wifi on Ubuntu. It keeps on disconnecting. Not sure why can't find a reason why. Windows was not doing it on the same laptop on the same wifi so I know it's an Ubuntu issue.
Click to expand...
I'm a few months too late, but did you solve your issue? I had a similar one, USB kept switching on and off, etc. I found that powertop/tlp was suspending the device...
 
For those with lagging and or no keyboard and mouse (frozen mouse) issues in Ubuntu.

Upgrade your Linux Kernel.
Many guides online.
Fixed it on my laptop.
I'm using DDE though.

UbuntuDDE - Your Beautiful Ubuntu Linux Distribution

UbuntuDDE is a flavor of Ubuntu system with Deepin Desktop Environment. UbuntuDDE is a linux distro based on Ubuntu with the most beautiful desktop environment.
ubuntudde.com ubuntudde.com

Love it.
 
Last edited:
Been using Ubuntu Studio and Strawberry Media Player for about 6-7 months

Much better sound reproduction compared to Windows 10. Bit of a fiddly interface. JRiver media player a good second.

Have tried Audiolinux- difficult to use and spoiled by updates that interfere with ASIO drivers
DaPhile also good, but no Tidal support

Any recommendations? Always willing to try
 
Kali and BackBox...

Do something sexy with *nix for a change
 
|tera| said:
For those with lagging and or no keyboard and mouse (frozen mouse) issues in Ubuntu.

Upgrade your Linux Kernel.
Many guides online.
Fixed it on my laptop.
I'm using DDE though.

UbuntuDDE - Your Beautiful Ubuntu Linux Distribution

UbuntuDDE is a flavor of Ubuntu system with Deepin Desktop Environment. UbuntuDDE is a linux distro based on Ubuntu with the most beautiful desktop environment.
ubuntudde.com ubuntudde.com

Love it.
Click to expand...
Thanks... See this now a few days after wiping my laptop and installing 20.10 - I was on 20.04 until my mouse konked out and could no longer click on anything.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top
Sign up to the MyBroadband newsletter
X