The end of my Debian madness?

Earlier this year, I had decided to go exclusively for Debian (or Debian-based, but not Ubuntu-based) distributions. But this happened:

After 2 days of installing (and re-installing), I finally settled. Hopefully this will stick for a long time.

Merry Christmas!

I messed up my EFI boot

I have Debian installed on /dev/sda4 and it’s using EFI. I installed Arch Linux to another partition, /dev/sda5 the other day and it created a new GRUB2 menu during boot. Unfortunately, I somehow messed up the installation and when I chose to boot Arch from GRUB2, I get an error:

error: no such device: d4103fa-d940-47ca-...
Loading Linux core repo kernel...
error: no such partition.
Loading initial ramdisk...
unaligned pointer 0x22
Aborted. Press any key to exit.

Once I pressed any key, the Debian GRUB2 menu was displayed (giving me the idea that 2 GRUB2 menus have been installed to the EFI boot partition) and I was able to boot into Debian.

Since Arch didn’t want to start, I reformatted /dev/sda5 to remove it and went to remove it from the EFI boot parition. I searched the web on how to do this and came across this post which basically says that GRUB2 isn’t needed to boot Linux in EFI; EFI stub can be used. Thinking it would work, I reformatted /dev/sda1, where my EFI boot partition is, and followed the instructions.

Reboot…computer is stuck with a black screen with a blinking cursor on the top-left corner. Not a good sign. Waited a full 5 minutes to see if it would boot up. Nothing. Rebooted 10 times more. Nothing.

I knew I messed up my EFI boot.

After doing a lot of reading, I felt that it would take too much time (4chan was waiting…LOLs) to get my boot loader back up without GRUB2. So I decided to reinstall GRUB2 via a chroot environment using Mint 16 live USB (booted in UEFI).

Inside Mint, opened a Terminal and

(mint)$ sudo mount /dev/sda4 /mnt
(mint)$ sudo mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/boot/efi
(mint)$ for i in /dev /dev/pts /proc /sys; do sudo mount $i /mnt$i; done
(mint)$ sudo chroot /mnt

(chroot)# apt-get --reinstall install grub-efi-amd64
(chroot)# exit

(mint)$ for i in /sys /proc /dev/pts /dev; do sudo umount /mnt$i; done
(mint)$ sudo umount /mnt/boot/efi
(mint)$ sudo umount /mnt
(mint)$ sudo reboot

After POST, the Debian’s GRUB2 menu showed and I’m once again able to boot into the computer.

Knoppix 7.2 Experience

In my search for a viable distro to use as my main OS that's either vanilla Debian or Debian-based (and not Ubuntu-based), I stumbled on Knoppix. I know that I've heard of this distro before but never really checked it out for reasons unknown. But this distro usually gets mentioned in online forums where the question is about PC troubleshooting. Most suggest the use of Knoppix for times when the main OS doesn't boot or is infested with viruses, etc.

I decided to give it a go. Besides, it's always useful to have a bootable Linux distro in case my main OS does decide to falter.

Debian: From CLI to GUI

Debian's latest stable release has been out since last May 2013 and I'm very eager to make it the main OS on my computer.

I have used Arch Linux in the past and I liked its K.I.S.S. approach where everything is built from the ground up. But since I decided to limit my Linux explorations to Debian-based distros for now, Arch will have to wait. That's where I got the idea to do a minimal install of Debian and build it up from there.

Wireless Network Connection via CLI

For the past few years, I have been using my trusty D-Link DWA-125 wireless dongle on my PC to connect to a wireless network. I have written about how to connect to WiFi via the command line but that was for unsecured networks. Recently, I've been fumbling around with Debian and did a minimal netinstall (to build it up with a GUI desktop) -- sort of a "from scratch" installation, like how Arch Linux installation is done. Since netinstall without a desktop environment drops you off at the CLI on first boot, I needed to find a way to connect to a WiFi network without the use of GUI network managers.

USB Thumb Drives: Mounting, Unmounting and Re-mounting

One of my hobbies is Linux distribution hopping. If you don't know what that means, it's that I regularly browse DistroWatch for news about new Linux releases. If something catches my interest, then I download the ISO, try out its live session in VirtualBox, and then finally, if impressed, install it to one of the partitions in my PC. And if it's that good, then I use it as my main OS.

The medium I use most when creating the installation media is a USB thumb drive. It's usually a no-brainer; just plug-in the thumb drive and the OS does its thing and auto-mounts it. The next part involves unmounting the thumb drive so that I can use the dd command to write the ISO to the thumb drive. I don't use the right-click » "Unmount" via the File manager because I just like typing in the command line

    $ sudo umount /dev/sdb1

and unmounted goes my thumb drive. Now I can proceed with

    $ sudo dd if=/path/to/file.iso of=/dev/sdb bs=4M; sync

and after some time, it finishes and I know that the distributions installation media is freshly baked. But sometimes I want to check the contents of the USB thumb drive, so I usually pull-out the drive, put it back in again and let the OS auto-mount it. So I thought to myself, "Isn't there a way to mount the USB thumb drive via the command line after dd command finishes without me pulling out and plugging back in the drive?" Apparently there is. And the command, in Ubuntu, is udisks. And using it is easy, it's just

    $ udisks --mount /dev/sdb1

and the USB thumb drive is remounted. Apparently, this same command can also be used to unmount the USB thumb drive

    $ udisks --unmount /dev/sdb1

Note that there is no need for the sudo superpowers to use the command.

That's it! Hopefully this will be useful for somebody out there

elementary OS 0.2 Luna Experience

elementary OS 0.2 Luna announced the stable release on Aug 11, 2013. I heard about this Linux distribution (distro) when happened upon InfinitelyGalactic's Pear OS 7 review on YouTube and read the video description. So I downloaded the beta 2 ISO image for elementary OS 0.2 Luna and fired it up on VirtualBox. I played around with it a bit but dismissed it, saying too bad it's still in beta...it would have been a great main OS replacement for me (well, sort of). But since a stable version is out, then I immediately backed-up all my data and installed it on my desktop computer.

In Search of a Main Operating System

I've been using the Linux operating system for close to 5 years now. My first foray was with Ubuntu 8.04 and ever since, I've been switching between distributions (a.k.a. distros) but I have always used Ubuntu as my fallback, and starting 2012, it was Mageia. But recently, I decided to just stick with Debian-based distros so I don't need to memorize a whole lot of troubleshooting and CLI commands.

Here's a list of the distros I wanted to use, in order of my preference:

1. Debian 7 (Wheezy)
2. CrunchBang 11 (Waldorf)
3. Linux Mint 13 (Maya)
4. Ubuntu 12.04 LTS (Precise Pangolin)
5. (Tied) elementary OS 0.2 (Luna) or Pear OS 7

And here are some of my personal thoughts about said distros.

Debian 7 (Wheezy)

I really wanted to use this as my main OS as I feel it is very flexible in terms of total user control. Similar to what I felt when I used Arch Linux in the past, building a customized setup with the 'net install' ISO of Debian 7 was very empowering to me as a user. But I had to look elsewhere because the boot process of my system was rather inconsistent. Most times it would boot up. But sometimes, it just freezes, and I have to do a hard-reset just so it can reboot and finally continue to an up and running OS. Also, I get sound issues with PulseAudio. I don't know if both issues are because of hardware incompatibilities, I guess I need to investigate it further in the future. But I needed a working computer so I moved on.


CrunchBang 11 (Waldorf)

Hell bent on using a Debian-based (except Ubuntu) system, I landed on the web pages of CrunchBang. I have heard of this distro before but never really considered it because I thought it was based on Arch Linux (which I also like). And when I read that it's a customized Debian-based distro using Openbox, I had to give it a go.  My preferred desktop GUI when I used Debian was LXDE and, if I wanted to go lighter, Openbox (with tint2 as the panel); CrunchBang fit the bill. Using virtualization technology to test it, I fell in love with CrunchBang immediately! With all my data backed-up, I installed it on my physical machine. And it worked fine for a couple of days, until after unmounting a USB device caused a kernel panic! I thought it to be a one-off event, but it started happening more. Also, the inconsistent boot up I experienced with Debian 7, I was experiencing them again in CrunchBang 11. So again, I said goodbye to it, and moved on.


Linux Mint 13 (Maya)

Out of personal options with pure Debian-based (except Ubuntu) distros (note: I say personal options, because there are a plethora of Debian-based distros out there, like Trisquel, etc. but those didn't make it to my personal list), I came back to Ubuntu-based distros. Now, there's nothing wrong with Ubuntu. In fact, I owe it all to Ubuntu as it paved the way for me to using Linux. But I don't like their decision with using Unity (more on this later). Good thing Linux Mint was there to pick up the torch. And it isn't the no. 1 distro in Distrowatch for nothing. It's what I would consider to be a n00b distro as everything (except for the kitchen sink) is thrown in there by default. Adobe Flash player works by default, codecs to play MP3s and M4Vs and other proprietary formats are there. I probably would consider it to be a distro that works out-of-the-box. Not much tweaking and such. I really didn't have any issues with the distro itself. It booted up reliably 99% of the time, sound issues were gone, etc. I guess the issue was with myself, I got bored! I got bored because I wasn't tinkering with the command-line to get things to work. Come to think about it, I think Linux Mint 13 (Maya) XFCE would be my new fallback distro if others don't work out well for me.

NOTE: I could have used Linux Mint Debian Edition (LMDE) to satiate my hunder for using a Debian-based (and not Ubuntu-based) distro, and I would have used LMDE, but it's a (semi) rolling-release distro (not that there's something wrong with that...I like Arch Linux) and it didn't fit my needs. If you haven't gleaned already from my list, my main requirement is a long-term release distro, so...


Ubuntu 12.04 LTS (Precise Pangolin)

Ubuntu is what got me started using Linux. I got my first laptop in 2008 and it had Windows Vista pre-installed. I've read all the flak and dissing regarding said OS received. So I downloaded Ubuntu 8.04 LTS (Hardy Heron), wiped off Windows Vista, and the rest, as they say, is history. Now, when I got my new desktop rig setup earlier this year, Ubuntu 12.04 LTS was the first OS I installed into it. And like Linux Mint, I really didn't have any critical issues. It booted properly 99% of the time, sound worked alright, non-free drivers/codecs/plugins were easy enough to install. What killed it for me was Unity. What I really didn't like about it was the application panel was stuck to the left side of the screen and it couldn't be moved somewhere else. Also, the integration of the context menus to the top panel was annoying -- use case: I have some 80x24 terminal windows running during a typical session which I like to put on the lower-right corner of my 1920x1080 resolution screen. Now, I want to access the context menu, like 'Preferences' for the terminal emulator. So, I'd have to drag the mouse from the lower-right corner all the way to the upper-left corner just so I can click the 'File' menu. I know I can use keyboard shortcuts, but still, it can be annoying for non-maximized windows. But this doesn't mean I will never use Ubuntu again...but then again, with them ads popping up from Dash searches, BY DEFAULT, gets into your nerves quickly.


elementary OS 0.2 (Luna) or Pear OS 7

Both these distros struck me as what I would describe as a 'Mac OSX'-ish looking OSes. I haven't had extensive experience with Mac OSX (except for times when I walk into an iStore -- Apple products resellers where I'm located -- and tinker with their MacBooks on display) so I can't comment much if these 2 OSes indeed work as close as how a Mac OSX machine would work. And I've only tried running both on virtualized environments so I don't have much to comment on with regard to how they would kick it when installed on my physical machine. Both are Ubuntu based, elementary OS 0.2 (Luna) uses 12.04 LTS and Pear OS 7 uses 12.10 (a cue that I will most likely not go with Pear OS 7).

Pear OS 7 is what I would consider to be the closest resemblance to Mac OSX as far as I can say. The dock houses icons which are very, very similar to Mac OSX. I can probably surmise that Pear OS 7 was created as some of distro to be used by transitioning Mac OSX users to Linux (similar to what Zorin OS is to Windows users). It's aesthetically pleasing graphically and it totally screams 'MAC OSX!' to me. And similar to Linux Mint, Pear OS 7 comes with pretty much everything; Quote. "And it comes with thousands of free applications. Pear OS 7 does everything you need it to. It’ll work with your existing PC files, printers, cameras and MP3 players." Unquote. This will probably go very well with new Linux users as well.

elementary OS 0.2 (Luna) is also another distro that looks like Mac OSX at first glance. But what it really is is something simpler. I don't know what's so appealing about it, but I would say the closest adjective I can pin on it is elegant. Like Pear OS 7 (and Mac OSX), it is also dock-centric. What's probably great about this distro is that it follows the "a new version will be released when it's ready" philisophy, similar to that of Debian. That means that you are not "pressured" to update every 6 months to the next release of the distro which makes it somewhat stable in a way. Of course, it's based on Ubuntu 12.04 LTS (Precise Pangolin) so it will be supported until 2017. Unlike Pear OS 7 which throws everything into the fold, elementary OS has a much more minimalistic approach. It doesn't come with proprietary plugins and modules installed. That makes it somewhat harder for Linux n00bs to use out-of-the-box. It also comes with it's own desktop environment called Pantheon (a port of Gnome 3, I suppose) and it's own applications written from scratch like Scratch text editor.


Conclusion

So, what am I using now? Inasmuch as I'd hoped to use pure Debian, or pure Debian-based (except Ubuntu), distro, I have to say that the Ubuntu-based distros I mentioned above are what's giving me better experiences. As I mentioned, my first fallback right now would be Linux Mint 13 (Maya) but since discovering elementary OS 0.2 (Luna), I decided to give the latter a go. So as of this posting, I am using elementary OS 0.2 (Luna) as my main OS.

External Links:

• Debian (http://www.debian.org)
• CrunchBang (http://www.crunchbang.org)
• Linux Mint (http://www.linuxmint.com)
• Ubuntu (http://www.ubuntu.com)
• Pear OS (http://pearlinux.fr)
• elementary OS (http://elementaryos.org)