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Desktop Linux Reviews Forum > What OS are you here with... and whatever!

Full Version: What OS are you here with... and whatever!

Thread Split: Some posts in this thread have been moved here

From: masinick [#1]
 8 Jul 2009
To: ALL

On the Newbies Linux Forum, there is a kind of catch all topic that started as a "What OS are you using at the moment..." and degraded into an anything goes topic.

I am not sure if we want to keep this in "General" or move this to off topic, but how about if we use this as a kind of journal of what OS we are using on any given day - and extend it by adding what browser we are using as we enter this site?

I was checking a bunch of browsers. Turns out that pretty much all of my Mozilla based browsers have the Adblock Plus add on installed, so since I want to give Jim some add site revenue - and even click on a few of them every now and then, at least once every few times I visit, if not more, I will try to come here with a broswer other than one based on Firefox or Mozilla/Seamonkey.

Right now, I am here in the sidux (Debian Sid based) distribution using the very fast Midori Web browser, a relatively recent Webkit based browser, which has better behaving features than Google Chrome and no discernable difference in speed. A few months ago, Midori was fast, but extremely unstable. The Debian Sid version now works pretty well - GREAT on this site, for instance - and I can click Jim's ad generators every now and then to help out the cause!

EDITED: 18 Jul 2024 by JIM

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From: masinick [#2]
 8 Jul 2009
To: ALL

BTW, Midori on sidux is using 176M of Virtual Memory, 58M of Resident Memory, and 26M of Shared Memory, making it one of the most memory conservative browsers in the "full featured" category - not the lightweights like Dillo, Links, and so forth, which often cannot render all sites.

I will come back over time with resource usage of various browsers so you will get a decent idea. Of course, the numbers vary with the sites being used, how many tabs are open, the amount of graphical content, etc., but you can at least get a rough idea by watching htop occasionally.

I do this with Seamonkey nightly and watch the memory use climb as graphical pages are invoked and as more and more browser history is acquired and retained (same with Firefox).

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From: masinick [#3]
 8 Jul 2009
To: ALL

Back here (then off to bed). Using Google Chrome, just updated, which is now at Version 3.0.192.0 on my sidux system.

Memory usage is interesting. Lots of threads, so with htop it is a bit hard to tell, but virtual memory is 162 M, resident memory is 40 M, and shared memory is 26 M. Seems, at first glance, to be less than Midori, but I am not sure that is the case. Will have to investigate again using other monitoring tools.

Performance between Midori and Chrome are close; I'll take the appearance of Midori any day though.

One thing this build improved is bookmark handling; finally a decent bookmark handler. Beware of spell checking; right clicking on highlighted words that are candidates for spell checking just deletes the word. Not very useful!

Fonts are a disaster. Only one font is inherited; you can use Ctrl-+ to increase the font size, but go to another page and it is forgotten.

Google Chrome OS built on this? Long way to go my friends, long way to go. GMail and Google Reader may be two efforts that are pretty good, and Google has a decent search engine, but I do not see this browser occupying more than a testing spot for me; Seamonkey wins by a landslide.

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From: Cagey (KGWAGNER) [#4]
 8 Jul 2009
To: masinick [#3] 8 Jul 2009

No, the Google Chrome OS is built on Linux. The general public hasn't seen it yet, but it's expected to have a very simple desktop. We should see betas within the next couple months in preparation for a late 2009 release. They expect it to be the default OS on some notebooks in 2Q 2010, probably the ARM-based units rumored to be coming.

Google's Chrome Browser is based on Webkit, which was derived from KDE's HTML layout engine.

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From: evers310 [#5]
 9 Jul 2009
To: masinick [#1] 9 Jul 2009

I'm here in Mac OSX 10.4 with Firefox 3.0.11 for the time being...

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From: tlmck [#6]
 9 Jul 2009
To: masinick [#1] 9 Jul 2009

You can of course disable Adblock on this site as I do.

Before installing Adblock in my new PCLOS 2009.2, I visited ET for old times sake. What a barrage of ads! At one point, they took up half the screen! Geesh! I disbled it over in Ubuntu Firefox as well, and it was the same thing. Hopefully Jim never has to go that route.

At any rate, I have tried every other browser out there, but they all fall woefully short of Firefox. Wake me up when someone builds a better one.

I have also decided to give PCLOS an extended trial. So far, only minor annoyances. It is running off an external USB 2.0 drive, and is as fast as Ubuntu 9.04 at this point. After a few more updates, I may move the drive inside to see if it gets even faster. At this point, I have about worn out my $10 Coolmax drive enclosure swapping drives. May have to get another one.

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From: masinick [#7]
 9 Jul 2009
To: tlmck [#6] 9 Jul 2009

quote: tlmck
You can of course disable Adblock on this site as I do.

Before installing Adblock in my new PCLOS 2009.2, I visited ET for old times sake. What a barrage of ads! At one point, they took up half the screen! Geesh! I disbled it over in Ubuntu Firefox as well, and it was the same thing. Hopefully Jim never has to go that route.

At any rate, I have tried every other browser out there, but they all fall woefully short of Firefox. Wake me up when someone builds a better one.

I have also decided to give PCLOS an extended trial. So far, only minor annoyances. It is running off an external USB 2.0 drive, and is as fast as Ubuntu 9.04 at this point. After a few more updates, I may move the drive inside to see if it gets even faster. At this point, I have about worn out my $10 Coolmax drive enclosure swapping drives. May have to get another one.


I know that I CAN do that, but 1. I am lazy, 2. This gives me the opportunity and excuse to try out other browsers, and 3. I can, so I do. That also gives me the opportunity to look at the impact of the ads upon the site, both in appearance and in function, versus no ads.

By the way, in some of these Linux specific threads, there have been some pretty good Linux specific ads - give a few of them a click every now and then. There are some good Linux products and services out there!

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From: masinick [#8]
 9 Jul 2009
To: Cagey (KGWAGNER) [#4] 9 Jul 2009

quote: Cagey (KGWAGNER)
No, the Google Chrome OS is built on Linux. The general public hasn't seen it yet, but it's expected to have a very simple desktop. We should see betas within the next couple months in preparation for a late 2009 release. They expect it to be the default OS on some notebooks in 2Q 2010, probably the ARM-based units rumored to be coming.

Google's Chrome Browser is based on Webkit, which was derived from KDE's HTML layout engine.


Yes, I understand that the OS itself has a Linux kernel. I also understand that the browser is based on Webkit. When I made the comment that "Google Chrome OS built on this?", I was not intending to imply that the Chrome OS was a browser. Some words out there by careless media writers suggest that, but I do know better.

What it does sound like, however, is that in place of many of the core underlying things that we know in general purpose distributions, Chrome OS may - and I do not know all the details - so at this point I am speculating - make the browser directly accessible immediately after boot. Some recent Kiosk software has taken a similar approach. Not sure if Chrome OS intends to take this further - for example, writing code that calls the Chrome browser directly from the init process, starting a network, then starting Chrome right alongside, but that may be one direction this could be going.

Have you been able to find any details on just what they are planning to do? For example, will they have an X server or will they implement browser graphics in some other way?

If they bypass the traditional Linux stack and use the kernel with some other approach, that could be interesting.

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From: Cagey (KGWAGNER) [#9]
 9 Jul 2009
To: masinick [#8] 9 Jul 2009

I think your speculation is be correct. Google's intent is to support the browser, not create a distribution. As far as I know, there's no intention of packaging office productivity software, media players, or other applications like you'd find in a more traditional distribution. It will simply allow people to boot a machine and get the user interface (the Chrome browser) going, at which point they'll be able to start whatever online services they use. Very lightweight, fast, and to the point.

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From: evers310 [#10]
 9 Jul 2009
To: masinick [#1] 9 Jul 2009

Now I'm here in Linux Mint with Firefox 3.0.10...

I'm really liking Mint so far. It may become my new favorite distro.

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From: Cagey (KGWAGNER) [#11]
 9 Jul 2009
To: evers310 [#10] 9 Jul 2009

It's been mine for a long time. There are no compromises, it uses the APT, it comes with 99% of what you need, and it's not unattractive. Plus, since it's essentially Ubuntu, it has a massive support infrastructure with tons of documentation. What's not to love?

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From: masinick [#12]
 9 Jul 2009
To: evers310 [#10] 9 Jul 2009

quote: evers310
Now I'm here in Linux Mint with Firefox 3.0.10...

I'm really liking Mint so far. It may become my new favorite distro.


Evers, as KG says in the post after yours, "What's not to like about Linux Mint?"

(Well, I could get picky - Clem turned me off with his politics and I already have some personal favorites well established), but if you know me, you also know that I can separate my personal favorites from what I recommend for others, and Linux Mint is definitely one of the three distros that I recommend for casual use - even for experienced users. (The experienced users can have more than one distro, and include a simple one just to do the routine stuff). The other two distros that I recommend for routine use, also because of their stability and simply having all the basics covered, are SimplyMEPIS and PCLinuxOS. These other two are packaged by a very small team - typically one, with occasional help from others, but they have two GREAT systems behind them - SimplyMEPIS gets fed directly from Debian, and PCLinuxOS gets fed directly from Mandriva.

Good choice, hope it works out well for you.

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From: masinick [#13]
 9 Jul 2009
To: ALL

I am here using sidux (Debian Sid based distro) and Midori (Web browser) - want to try to click on a few of Jim's advertising links - and remind others to do the same to help him out. The Google ads have actually been doing fairly well here, and seem, for the most part, to track some of the things we are discussing in the threads.

Midori was actually being considered for use by Paul Sherman in his next release of Absolute Linux 13.x. I have not checked back to see if he ended up using it or not, but the reason he was interested is that he saw the initial Midori footprint to be 1/3 the size of Firefox at the time he was doing beta testing for his next release.

Midori, a few months ago, was unstable and not ready for that kind of use, but in forums like this one, and also forums using phpBB, Midori has been as solid as a rock, and it also works very well in the Yahoo and Google services. These are the places that I spend 75% of my time (at least). Midori also passes my "Drake and Josh Soul Man" Youtube test, which means it can play the typical audio/video stuff out there. So keep an eye on Midori; I am using it more and more often as a second or third browser, and will use it quite often when I visit here.

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From: masinick [#14]
 9 Jul 2009
To: evers310 [#10] 9 Jul 2009

quote: evers310
Now I'm here in Linux Mint with Firefox 3.0.10...

I'm really liking Mint so far. It may become my new favorite distro.


Hey guys, if you actually want to support one of Lynch's advertisers, ASA Computers has some pretty solid systems, which appear to be constucted out of well made components. Because they are not as high volume as some of the large manufacturers, you may not consider the pricees to be outstanding, but on a desktop, for example, a low end, Quad Core unit starts at around $450, which isn't bad. By the time you hop it up with more memory, larger disk, etc., the price jumps pretty quickly. Still, these guys look like they know their hardware, and they are worth a second look.

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From: masinick [#15]
 9 Jul 2009
To: evers310 [#10] 9 Jul 2009

quote: evers310
Now I'm here in Linux Mint with Firefox 3.0.10...

I'm really liking Mint so far. It may become my new favorite distro.


Penguin Computing is represented here too. If you need some high end gear, either for workstations or servers, check them out too. They have been in the Linux business a long time and their stuff looks rugged, tough, built to last and they can preconfigure it with a stable Linux system for you.

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From: evers310 [#16]
 9 Jul 2009
To: masinick [#14] 9 Jul 2009

I build all my own systems. Thanks though. :-)

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From: evers310 [#17]
 9 Jul 2009
To: Cagey (KGWAGNER) [#11] 9 Jul 2009

I may have to change my sig... heck I dont even use Gentoo anymore, I dont have time. :-(

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From: masinick [#18]
 9 Jul 2009
To: evers310 [#17] 10 Jul 2009

quote: evers310
I may have to change my sig... heck I dont even use Gentoo anymore, I dont have time. :-(


Me neither. sidux is what does it for me. Here with sidux, the distro, and Midori, the browser.

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From: Cagey (KGWAGNER) [#19]
 9 Jul 2009
To: evers310 [#17] 10 Jul 2009

The need to optimize to the Nth degree has really dropped off in recent years, so I've lost interest in Gentoo as well. If I were doing something realtime where I didn't want to waste a single clock tick, it would be more attractive. But, as things are, even lower end machines have an embarrassment of riches when it comes to processing power.

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From: bill_ky (JULIAN516) [#20]
 9 Jul 2009
To: ALL

I am here on a System 76 laptop, which means the Ubuntu 8.10 that came with it. Browser is Firefox 3.0.11. Configuration is extremely stable and very functional.

I am dual-booting sidux (Xfce) but I have not finished the configuration. Once done I will want to compare its functionality with that of Ubuntu.

BTW, sidux installed less than 5 minutes.

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