Yes as far as I’ve found so far, the features track quite well, and I’m really aiming to get proficient with the standard interface. I’ve found a few minor differences, but I tried stock Mint (which is Ubuntu 20.04 based) for a while, and I didn’t want to go backwards from Trixie (the current Stable Debian version) so I opted for LMDE which is based on Trixie. I use Debian Stable because of the “2-year cycle” (that’s why it’s called stable); Because stock Mint tracks the latest LTS release of Ubuntu, it’s actually a fair bit more out of date than Debian at this stage, and the next Mint version, based on the new LTE Ubuntu, isn’t slated to come out until December.

So far it’s not been too bad for a hybrid system - I have had a couple of issues, but this is most likely attributable to being a hybrid. I’ve found that I like Cinnamon, which stock Debian does not (as far as I know) support yet - I have used MATE for about 15 years because I don’t get on with Gnome 3 or KDE. You get all the nice things about Mint that I found impressive when I tested it - the printer and scanner support is very good, and the configuration utilities are quite reminiscent of Windows ones (good for new users, but I personally don’t care). Still not sure if I’m going to stick with it long-term, but happy with it for now - I largely stopped distro-hopping when I switched to MATE.

I know right. I had a right game reinstalling Win 10 on a lenovo netbook - I had to put a supported, unmanaged version on it for installing lenovo dock firmware updates. For some reason, the default graphics mode was totally corrupted - almost unreadable, and rotated 90 degrees. Once the installer had finished, I had to manually install the right driver for the graphics hardware, and that fixed it. Took hours - total amateurs. For shits and giggles, after I’d finished with with the firmware updates, I installed Mint on it - and it was flawless, and done in half an hour. This is the way to do it!

Favorite: Debian Stable (For my uses, it was the least trouble)

First: Slackware (1995, installed from floppy disks, also a short stretch in 2009)

Current: Linux Mint Debian Edition (LMDE) (Using because I need to support users on stock Mint)

Distro you liked the least: Novell SuSE (Used in a corporate setting)

Distro you want to use in the future: Unknown

Distro you used for the longest time: Debian Stable (15 years)

Distro everyone likes but I don’t: Ubuntu

Honorable mention: DietPi (RaspberryPi and SBC focused OS)

Over time, I’ve used quite a lot of different distros: Red Hat, Red Hat Enterprise, Scientific, CENTOS, Fedora, Mandrake, Damn Small, Puppy, CrashBang, Raspbian, Bazzite, to name just the ones I can remember off the top of my head now.

Everyone who uses O365 is pushed to use the web versions by the O365 ecosystem. When you click on Word/Excel/Outlook/whatever from your menu, it opens the web version; to use the locally installed app, you have to go to File/Open in Desktop or similar. The Open and Save dialogs default to using OneDrive - saving to local filesystem requires extra steps. The locally installed ones are becoming increasingly hard to use, by design, and the new features seem to be going into the web versions first and the local versions “eventually”. For example, the new excel “matrix” functions did not work in local excel the last time I tried to use them, though they might now, but there were a few features (special formatting I think) that only worked on the local version. Templates for word do not work on the web version.

Interestingly, the web 365 apps seem to work on Linux Mint, but I’ve not used them extensively, or on another distro. I did a migration from Win10 to LM last autumn, and I was genuinely shocked to find that web Outlook and OneDrive work on Firefox on LM. Confirmed that web Excel and Word worked enough to allow display and editing of documents - not an extensive test, but definitely worth a look. Obviously, there are still differences between the web and desktop versions, but it might even be possible to run them under Wine, but I have not tried that, and woudn’t expect it to go too well tbh.

Can confirm. I used Linux and Unix almost exclusively for about 20 years, and when I more recently had to use Windoze again for work, this is pretty much what happened.

Had to do some work with SuSE post Novell acquisition for a customer. IIRC the package manager is a bit odd, but I haven’t looked at it in what nearly 15 years, so I can’t really remember much about it. What I CAN remember involved running packet traces using Wireshark - it was mostly network problems, I think, so nothing to do with SuSE. It was certainly very popular in Europe, though I have no idea what they’re doing these days!

You never know … maybe THIS year!

The way windoze 11 is going - people really hating it - you never know, but I’m not holding my breath. Linux is still very niche, and people are wary of “strange” “new” things, especially FREE ones - where’s the catch? I’ve seen it surge and blossom over the years, but it’s still got a really tiny install base (as long as you don’t count Android and embedded tech, where the OS and kernel are largely irrelevant to the user). But I don’t see people moving over to Linux in droves any time soon, really: I’ve seen too much.

For context, I’ve been using it since [dredges up old memories] slackware was new, so about 1994, when a work colleague and I installed it (off about 20 floppies) onto an old 386sx PC with probably 4MB of RAM. Been using it ever since - and from Red Hat 4 onwards (about 1999) it’s been my only OS on my own computers. I’ve always preferred it, and I’ve seen it grow in so many ways - I’d still use it if it was illegal. I haven’t tried EVERY distro, but I have tried most. These days I mostly stick with Debian or Debian-based distro’s (I’m currently on Mint LMDE).

Don’t have any experience with this particular model, but I have found that with most printers on Mint you don’t have to “do” anything at all - if it’s on the network or plugged into the USB, the system will find it and install a driver automatically. I’ve used MANY printers with Linux over the years, and some were a right PITA to set up, but so far all the printers I’ve tried with mint have “just worked”. The only problem I’ve had recently was that when I updated to the Debian Trixie based LMDE 7, a bug in CUPS misconfigures EPSON ET2860 when automatically discovered, but it still works on stock Mint 22.3 without manual intervention. The fix is to manually add it, rather than accepting the auto discovered one, so it’s a problem with the discovery function, not drivers, and I suspect it’s due to some kind of quirk with this printer’s firmware that defines how it interacts to discovery queries on the local LAN.

Yeah it was wild, but I suspect few orgs do things that way any more.

You mean in the context of high availability?

tl;dr: It’s to test if the cluster fail-over configuration is working properly.

So this was before things like Kubernetes or Terraform were a thing, so had to be done by the operating system itself. The simplest HA cluster is made of two nodes, one in “active node”, the other “passive”. The active node does all the work, and the passive node just keeps its data synchronised with the active node. I used to use DRBD for this, which is a system for copying writes to the active node over a network link to the passive node. That only gives you a “second, up-to-date copy” which is not that useful on its own - you also need a way to automatically switch over to using the passive node if the active one “dies”, and for that I used to use “heartbeat”, which simply passes packets back and forth between the two cluster members - ping-pong style - and if the passive node notices that the active node hasn’t sent its scheduled packet for, say, 10 seconds, it cuts it off the current active node (kills it), and promotes itself to the active role, thus preserving the service. Killing the “other node” is necessary to stop data corruption or user requests going to a node that can’t actually service them, and is called STONITH - Shoot The Other Node In The Head. STONITH can involve an electronically controlled switch, which literally cuts off power to the “other” node, or can isolate it on the network, by shutting down its network ports on the switch, or in a VM setup, sending a notification to the hypervisor to kill the VM.

The reason you need to be able to kill the kernel on the active node, is that when you manually shut down the active node, it automatically informs the passive node that it’s going down, known as an “orderly fail-over”, and you’re not actually testing if the heartbeat fail-over works, you’re just testing an orderly fail-over. Killing the active node’s kernel tests that the passive node is properly configured to take over during a catastrophic failure of the active node. You can watch the heartbeat status go from “up” to “down”, and then see the passive node decide to take over, promote itself and bring up its services, and begin processing requests.

To make sure it’s all working, you need to test orderly fail-overs first, from both nodes, then test disorderly fail-overs both ways, by using the kernel gun on the active node.

Things moved on from Heartbeat-based HA clusters to multimode clusters managed by Corosync and other software, enabling other strategies to be employed. This was eventually supplanted by “orchestration” systems like Kubernetes, and proprietary Virtual Cloud systems that move this functionality to the platform rather than the operating system.

Nah man. “kill” doesn’t shut the system down quickly. This is the “instant death” way - the kernel reset gun - no shutdown scripts, no disk sync, just reset to BIOS boot sequence, instantly:

As root:

echo 1 > /proc/sys/kernel/sysrq

echo b > /proc/sysrq-trigger

If you change out the “b” in the second command for “o” it will just halt the kernel instead of rebooting. Still switched on, but the system is doing absolutely nothing.

I used to use this trick all the time to test high availability server clusters.

Yeah “but not as annoying” lol. No idea what you mean about jeeps: I’m in the UK, and not a car enthusiast either.

What about Microsoft Bob? Doesn’t that count as their first attempt?