Well, thanks to Andrew G and others who mentioned ZFS in the SATA disks
thread.

I've been playing with it and - wow, it is impressive.

Installing on Debian is a breeze.

It seems perfectly happy on partitions because it would be insane to run
/ on it - primarily because few rescue USB images would cope.

So I went to my old favourite:

/dev/sd[abcd]1 - md-raid1 - ext2 - /boot
/dev/sd[abcd]2 - md-raid1 - ext4 - /
/dev/sd[abcd]3 - md-raid1 - SWAP

and /dev/sd[abcd]4 for ZFS as a RAIDZ1 setup.

After the manual step of making sure grub was installed on all 4 disks,
I have "destroyed"[1] disk1, and readded it, then "destroyed" disk 2,
repaired it and pulled another disk and just readded.

[1] Boot from rescue, zero 1GB of the ZFS partition then zero 1GB of the
front of the disk.


I must admit, the re-adding was a little weird:

zpool offline tank1 scsi-SATA_WDC_WD20EFRX-68_WD-WMC4M3224833-part4
zpool online tank1 scsi-SATA_WDC_WD20EFRX-68_WD-WMC4M3224833-part4
zpool scrub tank1

I was expecting
zpool replace tank1 scsi-SATA_WDC_WD20EFRX-68_WD-WMC4M3224833-part4

but it did not like that.

However, I had rsync'd a load of (expendable) stuff onto it so a
re-rsync showed me that the data had survived.

Very very cool.

Nice that I can divvy up lots of "filesystems", add flexible pool quotas
to each and not in effect have lots of bits of wasted space all over the
place like LVM.

On 06/04/14 23:44, Tim Watts wrote:
Well, thanks to Andrew G and others who mentioned ZFS in the SATA disks
thread.

I've been playing with it and - wow, it is impressive.

Installing on Debian is a breeze.

It seems perfectly happy on partitions because it would be insane to run
/ on it - primarily because few rescue USB images would cope.

So I went to my old favourite:

/dev/sd[abcd]1 - md-raid1 - ext2 - /boot
/dev/sd[abcd]2 - md-raid1 - ext4 - /
/dev/sd[abcd]3 - md-raid1 - SWAP

and /dev/sd[abcd]4 for ZFS as a RAIDZ1 setup.

After the manual step of making sure grub was installed on all 4 disks,
I have "destroyed"[1] disk1, and readded it, then "destroyed" disk 2,
repaired it and pulled another disk and just readded.

[1] Boot from rescue, zero 1GB of the ZFS partition then zero 1GB of the
front of the disk.


I must admit, the re-adding was a little weird:

zpool offline tank1 scsi-SATA_WDC_WD20EFRX-68_WD-WMC4M3224833-part4
zpool online tank1 scsi-SATA_WDC_WD20EFRX-68_WD-WMC4M3224833-part4
zpool scrub tank1

I was expecting
zpool replace tank1 scsi-SATA_WDC_WD20EFRX-68_WD-WMC4M3224833-part4

but it did not like that.

However, I had rsync'd a load of (expendable) stuff onto it so a
re-rsync showed me that the data had survived.

Very very cool.


google 'ZFS horror' before you get too happy.

The incidence of people saying 'never ever use ZFS because' is ..enough
for me to have noticed it..



Nice that I can divvy up lots of "filesystems", add flexible pool quotas
to each and not in effect have lots of bits of wasted space all over the
place like LVM.



--
Ineptocracy

(in-ep-toc-ra-cy) €“ a system of government where the least capable to
lead are elected by the least capable of producing, and where the
members of society least likely to sustain themselves or succeed, are
rewarded with goods and services paid for by the confiscated wealth of a
diminishing number of producers.

On 07/04/14 10:51, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

google 'ZFS horror' before you get too happy.


Ok will do - I am not yet committed...

On 07/04/14 10:51, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

google 'ZFS horror' before you get too happy.

The incidence of people saying 'never ever use ZFS because' is ..enough
for me to have noticed it..

To be honest the only one I can find that's vaguely worrying is:

http://forums.freenas.org/index.php?...t-horror.1219/

and that's old.

Googling and limiting to the last 12 months - I really can't find
anything that worries me. and I do have real automated backups.

Bear in mind I have gone though 2 full disk replacement cycles - sadly I
cannot hot-pull a disk as the HP doesn't support that (don't want to
mash the electronics).

If you want true horror it was ReiserFS circa 2003 - loads of lab PCs
and the odd server coming up (or rather not) with bits of /etc/passwd in
/sbin/init !!

In article , Tim Watts
writes

To be honest the only one I can find that's vaguely worrying is:

Colleague has just lost several TB of data in a ZFS pool. Machine hung,
needed power cycling, on coming back up zpool had vanished. No backup.

It went to a data recovery firm, after looking at it they quoted £5k
/per hour/ and they cannot guarantee to get anything back.

Google for 'zpool vanished' - seems to be a common problem.

Too bleeding edge for me.

--
(\_/)
(='.'=)
(")_(")

On 07/04/14 12:02, Mike Tomlinson wrote:
In article , Tim Watts
writes

To be honest the only one I can find that's vaguely worrying is:

Colleague has just lost several TB of data in a ZFS pool. Machine hung,
needed power cycling, on coming back up zpool had vanished. No backup.

It went to a data recovery firm, after looking at it they quoted £5k
/per hour/ and they cannot guarantee to get anything back.

Google for 'zpool vanished' - seems to be a common problem.

Too bleeding edge for me.


You don't want to try btrfs then!

On 07/04/14 15:20, Tim Watts wrote:
On 07/04/14 12:02, Mike Tomlinson wrote:
In article , Tim Watts
writes

To be honest the only one I can find that's vaguely worrying is:

Colleague has just lost several TB of data in a ZFS pool. Machine hung,
needed power cycling, on coming back up zpool had vanished. No backup.

It went to a data recovery firm, after looking at it they quoted £5k
/per hour/ and they cannot guarantee to get anything back.

Google for 'zpool vanished' - seems to be a common problem.

Too bleeding edge for me.


You don't want to try btrfs then!

yes, Look on the face of it ZFS is bleeding edge brilliant.

What they are trying to do makes huge sense, BUT because they are using
and abstraction layer above the disk to make all the good stuff happen,
if you lose that, its a helluva job to get the data back.

The theory is that you wont ever lose it and can plug disks in and out,
at will. And that makes a lotta sense on a 24 disk array with 4 gigabyte
Ethernets in it coupled to 20 sun CPUs grinding way at a database.

I looked at RAID and various novel filesystems here, and decide that
actually I didnt need high AVAILABILITY or massive performance beyond my
ageing 100mbps switch anyway: what I need was a simple way to handle the
inevitable loss of a single disk.

So I picked a trad system and two disk one of which mirrors the other
every night.

So by all means play with ZFS BUT I would recommend you mirror the whole
ZFS array onto something every night that is slow conventional and is
likely NOT to be writing data when the power goes down and wipes the ZFS
array clean.


The key point is that RAID is an availability solution, not a backup
solution, and ZFS seems to be the ultimate logical extension of RAID.

If you want a backup solution, don't bother with raid. just mirror the
data with e.g. rsync under cron once a day (or night)


--
Ineptocracy

(in-ep-toc-ra-cy) €“ a system of government where the least capable to
lead are elected by the least capable of producing, and where the
members of society least likely to sustain themselves or succeed, are
rewarded with goods and services paid for by the confiscated wealth of a
diminishing number of producers.

On 07/04/14 17:42, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

yes, Look on the face of it ZFS is bleeding edge brilliant.

What they are trying to do makes huge sense, BUT because they are using
and abstraction layer above the disk to make all the good stuff happen,
if you lose that, its a helluva job to get the data back.

The theory is that you wont ever lose it and can plug disks in and out,
at will. And that makes a lotta sense on a 24 disk array with 4 gigabyte
Ethernets in it coupled to 20 sun CPUs grinding way at a database.

I looked at RAID and various novel filesystems here, and decide that
actually I didnt need high AVAILABILITY or massive performance beyond my
ageing 100mbps switch anyway: what I need was a simple way to handle the
inevitable loss of a single disk.

So I picked a trad system and two disk one of which mirrors the other
every night.

So by all means play with ZFS BUT I would recommend you mirror the whole
ZFS array onto something every night that is slow conventional and is
likely NOT to be writing data when the power goes down and wipes the ZFS
array clean.


The key point is that RAID is an availability solution, not a backup
solution, and ZFS seems to be the ultimate logical extension of RAID.

If you want a backup solution, don't bother with raid. just mirror the
data with e.g. rsync under cron once a day (or night)



All good points. I have a backup that runs rsnapshot 4 times a day - so
I'm pretty bombproof I also mirror my most critical data to my laptop
('cos I use it there.

In article ,
The Natural Philosopher wrote:

yes, Look on the face of it ZFS is bleeding edge brilliant.

What they are trying to do makes huge sense, BUT because they are using
and abstraction layer above the disk to make all the good stuff happen,
if you lose that, its a helluva job to get the data back.

I'm assuming all these horror stories are on Linux (or rather, non-solaris)?

We've run ZFS for all disks for many years, and have many many TB (if not
PB) of data on it and I don't think we've ever had a failure. It has saved
us many times over though :-) We often take snapshots - frequently on
machines with churn we'll take them automatically every 20 mins or similar.



The theory is that you wont ever lose it and can plug disks in and out,
at will. And that makes a lotta sense on a 24 disk array with 4 gigabyte
Ethernets in it coupled to 20 sun CPUs grinding way at a database.

This is all on Sun machines, and to be fair, much is backed onto large
HDS disk arrays which are resilient in their own right.

I'm interested in ZFS on Linux though - we have a couple of large Solaris
systems that we are migrating to RedHat (we are moving from Solaris entirely)
and these particular systems have many TB of files and more of an issue,
many many millions of files. Migrating those will be awkward... hence my
interest in importing a zpool from the solaris machine onto RHEL if it's
an option. Sounds like it might be a bit hairy on something other than
Solaris though :-(

Darren

On 07/04/14 20:18, D.M.Chapman wrote:
In article ,
The Natural Philosopher wrote:

yes, Look on the face of it ZFS is bleeding edge brilliant.

What they are trying to do makes huge sense, BUT because they are using
and abstraction layer above the disk to make all the good stuff happen,
if you lose that, its a helluva job to get the data back.

I'm assuming all these horror stories are on Linux (or rather, non-solaris)?

Oddly enough I can find very few on linux and a good few of those are
syadmin ****ed up.

A fair few are on MacOSX and others on some BSD NAS variant.

We've run ZFS for all disks for many years, and have many many TB (if not
PB) of data on it and I don't think we've ever had a failure. It has saved
us many times over though :-) We often take snapshots - frequently on
machines with churn we'll take them automatically every 20 mins or similar.



The theory is that you wont ever lose it and can plug disks in and out,
at will. And that makes a lotta sense on a 24 disk array with 4 gigabyte
Ethernets in it coupled to 20 sun CPUs grinding way at a database.

This is all on Sun machines, and to be fair, much is backed onto large
HDS disk arrays which are resilient in their own right.

I'm interested in ZFS on Linux though - we have a couple of large Solaris
systems that we are migrating to RedHat (we are moving from Solaris entirely)
and these particular systems have many TB of files and more of an issue,
many many millions of files. Migrating those will be awkward... hence my
interest in importing a zpool from the solaris machine onto RHEL if it's
an option. Sounds like it might be a bit hairy on something other than
Solaris though :-(

Darren

On Mon, 07 Apr 2014 19:18:35 +0000, D.M.Chapman wrote:


I'm interested in ZFS on Linux though - we have a couple of large
Solaris systems that we are migrating to RedHat (we are moving from
Solaris entirely)
and these particular systems have many TB of files and more of an issue,
many many millions of files. Migrating those will be awkward... hence my
interest in importing a zpool from the solaris machine onto RHEL if it's
an option. Sounds like it might be a bit hairy on something other than
Solaris though :-(

I believe some of those files are mine! :-)

But I mirror them all offsite..

--
Use the BIG mirror service in the UK: http://www.mirrorservice.org
My posts (including this one) are my copyright and if @diy_forums on
Twitter wish to tweet them they can pay me £30 a post
*lightning surge protection* - a w_tom conductor

On 07/04/14 20:18, D.M.Chapman wrote:
In article ,
The Natural Philosopher wrote:

yes, Look on the face of it ZFS is bleeding edge brilliant.

What they are trying to do makes huge sense, BUT because they are using
and abstraction layer above the disk to make all the good stuff happen,
if you lose that, its a helluva job to get the data back.

I'm assuming all these horror stories are on Linux (or rather, non-solaris)?

We've run ZFS for all disks for many years, and have many many TB (if not
PB) of data on it and I don't think we've ever had a failure. It has saved
us many times over though :-) We often take snapshots - frequently on
machines with churn we'll take them automatically every 20 mins or similar.



The theory is that you wont ever lose it and can plug disks in and out,
at will. And that makes a lotta sense on a 24 disk array with 4 gigabyte
Ethernets in it coupled to 20 sun CPUs grinding way at a database.

This is all on Sun machines, and to be fair, much is backed onto large
HDS disk arrays which are resilient in their own right.

I'm interested in ZFS on Linux though - we have a couple of large Solaris
systems that we are migrating to RedHat (we are moving from Solaris entirely)
and these particular systems have many TB of files and more of an issue,
many many millions of files. Migrating those will be awkward... hence my
interest in importing a zpool from the solaris machine onto RHEL if it's
an option. Sounds like it might be a bit hairy on something other than
Solaris though :-(

Darren

Look m8 I really dont know. I am not speaking from experience, but from
hearsay. As I said it didn't enter my thinking because its not summat
that offered me more than what I have.

BUT there have been troubles. Somehow it seems you can lose all your
data irrecoverably. IF you have a proper non ZFS backup in place or all
the UPS stuff, then fine.

I just wanted to flag that up so you could do your won research etc etc.

--
Ineptocracy

(in-ep-toc-ra-cy) €“ a system of government where the least capable to
lead are elected by the least capable of producing, and where the
members of society least likely to sustain themselves or succeed, are
rewarded with goods and services paid for by the confiscated wealth of a
diminishing number of producers.

In article ,
Bob Eager wrote:
On Mon, 07 Apr 2014 19:18:35 +0000, D.M.Chapman wrote:


I'm interested in ZFS on Linux though - we have a couple of large
Solaris systems that we are migrating to RedHat (we are moving from
Solaris entirely)
and these particular systems have many TB of files and more of an issue,
many many millions of files. Migrating those will be awkward... hence my
interest in importing a zpool from the solaris machine onto RHEL if it's
an option. Sounds like it might be a bit hairy on something other than
Solaris though :-(

I believe some of those files are mine! :-)

Heh, maybe :-)

The majority of them (10s of millions) form the British
cartoon archive http://www.cartoons.ac.uk/

Each hires image is tiled into many small images. There are many thousands
of huge images...


But I mirror them all offsite..

So do we, but we let the disk array do that for us

Tim Watts wrote:
Well, thanks to Andrew G and others who mentioned ZFS in the SATA disks
thread.

I've been playing with it and - wow, it is impressive.

What's performance like? Last time I tried btrfs, on SSD it was slower than
ext3 on HDD. Doing apt-get upgrade was an absolute killer. Be interested to
know how ZFS on Linux compares.

Theo

On 08/04/14 23:48, Theo Markettos wrote:
Tim Watts wrote:
Well, thanks to Andrew G and others who mentioned ZFS in the SATA disks
thread.

I've been playing with it and - wow, it is impressive.

What's performance like? Last time I tried btrfs, on SSD it was slower than
ext3 on HDD. Doing apt-get upgrade was an absolute killer. Be interested to
know how ZFS on Linux compares.


"bonnie++ -f" tests I did last week:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/...rive_web#gid=0

You want to look at the "godzilla" machine tests - same hardware, lots
of configurations, various ZFS setups vs LVM+MDRAID+XFS/EXT2/4

All "HDD" tests were using WD RED SATA drives (2TB).
"USB3" tests were a pair of Sandisk Extreme USB3 pendrives.

One High power VMWare ESXi system and one Linode.com VM for comparisons
with " real mans systems".


The numbers mean sod all - it's the relative numbers you should consider.

Tim Watts wrote:
On 08/04/14 23:48, Theo Markettos wrote:
Tim Watts wrote:
Well, thanks to Andrew G and others who mentioned ZFS in the SATA disks
thread.

I've been playing with it and - wow, it is impressive.

What's performance like? Last time I tried btrfs, on SSD it was slower than
ext3 on HDD. Doing apt-get upgrade was an absolute killer. Be interested to
know how ZFS on Linux compares.


"bonnie++ -f" tests I did last week:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/...rive_web#gid=0

You want to look at the "godzilla" machine tests - same hardware, lots
of configurations, various ZFS setups vs LVM+MDRAID+XFS/EXT2/4

Very useful, thanks. So about a factor of 2 drop in IOPS, but a factor of
10 on the write/read latency (I think).

It's random write that tends to be the tricky one - on HDDs it causes lots
of seeking about, while flash devices (SSDs, SD cards etc) get their
knickers in a twist trying to erase blocks. Obviously it depends on your
workload, but it tends to match apt-get upgrade and big compile runs which
is where I start feeling the performance hit.

Theo

In article ,
Huge writes:
On 2014-04-07, D.M.Chapman wrote:
In article ,
The Natural Philosopher wrote:

yes, Look on the face of it ZFS is bleeding edge brilliant.

What they are trying to do makes huge sense, BUT because they are using
and abstraction layer above the disk to make all the good stuff happen,
if you lose that, its a helluva job to get the data back.

I'm assuming all these horror stories are on Linux (or rather, non-solaris)?

I believe so. And likely reverse engineered.

I'm interested in ZFS on Linux though - we have a couple of large Solaris
systems that we are migrating to RedHat (we are moving from Solaris entirely)

Isn't everyone? )

Have a look at Nexentastor, which is a storage appliance distro based
on Illumos, the opensource version of what was Sun Solaris/opensolaris,
which has many of the key ZFS and Solaris kernel developers working on
it for well over 3 years now.
There's also a server distro OmniOS, again based on Illumos.

With these, you have the inherited goodness of Sun Solaris, and full
support available for some of the products/distros if you need it,
without having to work with Oracle or be tied to Oracle hardware.
You can build out your own Software Defined Storage architecture.

[Disclaimer - I work for Nexenta]

--
Andrew Gabriel
[email address is not usable -- followup in the newsgroup]

In article ,
Andrew Gabriel wrote:

I'm interested in ZFS on Linux though - we have a couple of large Solaris
systems that we are migrating to RedHat (we are moving from Solaris entirely)

Isn't everyone? )

Have a look at Nexentastor, which is a storage appliance distro based
on Illumos, the opensource version of what was Sun Solaris/opensolaris,
which has many of the key ZFS and Solaris kernel developers working on
it for well over 3 years now.

Heh, aware of it. Trying to consolidate on RHEL and VMware with management
from single Satellite instance so would rather stick to the one OS where
possible but...

[Disclaimer - I work for Nexenta]

Ah, I'd missed that. Congrats on the escape ;-)

Darren

On 10/04/2014 13:17, Huge wrote:
On 2014-04-10, Andrew Gabriel wrote:
In article ,

This falls between two stools for me, since it's way OTT for home and I
have little or no input to the decision making process at work. I am
thinking about what to upgrade my very elderly Ubuntu too, though.

Shiny new Ubuntu?

If your computer can cope, anyway. Otherwise, unless there are new
programs that won't run on your version, why bother?

--
Tciao for Now!

John.

On 10/04/14 14:28, John Williamson wrote:
On 10/04/2014 13:17, Huge wrote:
On 2014-04-10, Andrew Gabriel wrote:
In article ,

This falls between two stools for me, since it's way OTT for home and I
have little or no input to the decision making process at work. I am
thinking about what to upgrade my very elderly Ubuntu too, though.

Shiny new Ubuntu?

If your computer can cope, anyway. Otherwise, unless there are new
programs that won't run on your version, why bother?

+1


I keep thinking 'ooh mint 16 looks sexy' and then realising that
probably its so sexy it will need a bigger CPU to drive it and that's
going to cost money.. and really I have better things to do with my time.

What I WOULD like but see no hope of getting is 2x speed increase on
internet UPLOADS.



--
Ineptocracy

(in-ep-toc-ra-cy) €“ a system of government where the least capable to
lead are elected by the least capable of producing, and where the
members of society least likely to sustain themselves or succeed, are
rewarded with goods and services paid for by the confiscated wealth of a
diminishing number of producers.

On 10/04/14 15:52, Huge wrote:
On 2014-04-10, John Williamson wrote:
On 10/04/2014 13:17, Huge wrote:
On 2014-04-10, Andrew Gabriel wrote:
In article ,

This falls between two stools for me, since it's way OTT for home and I
have little or no input to the decision making process at work. I am
thinking about what to upgrade my very elderly Ubuntu too, though.

Shiny new Ubuntu?

Horrid user interface. I need to find something that's better than Unity -
jabbing my eyes out with a spike, for example.

Mint then, Mint 16 cinnamon. All the eye candy but traditional layout



If your computer can cope, anyway. Otherwise, unless there are new
programs that won't run on your version,

This.

why bother?

Oh, believe me, I really don't want to do this.

Then dont :-)



--
Ineptocracy

(in-ep-toc-ra-cy) €“ a system of government where the least capable to
lead are elected by the least capable of producing, and where the
members of society least likely to sustain themselves or succeed, are
rewarded with goods and services paid for by the confiscated wealth of a
diminishing number of producers.

In article , The Natural Philosopher
scribeth thus
On 10/04/14 14:28, John Williamson wrote:
On 10/04/2014 13:17, Huge wrote:
On 2014-04-10, Andrew Gabriel wrote:
In article ,

This falls between two stools for me, since it's way OTT for home and I
have little or no input to the decision making process at work. I am
thinking about what to upgrade my very elderly Ubuntu too, though.

Shiny new Ubuntu?

If your computer can cope, anyway. Otherwise, unless there are new
programs that won't run on your version, why bother?

+1


I keep thinking 'ooh mint 16 looks sexy' and then realising that
probably its so sexy it will need a bigger CPU to drive it and that's
going to cost money.. and really I have better things to do with my time.

What I WOULD like but see no hope of getting is 2x speed increase on
internet UPLOADS.



No fibber out your way yet?..
--
Tony Sayer

On 10/04/2014 16:11, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
I keep thinking 'ooh mint 16 looks sexy' and then realising that
probably its so sexy it will need a bigger CPU to drive it and that's
going to cost money.. and really I have better things to do with my time.

Mint 16 starts faster and loads Firefox and Thunderbird quicker than XP
on this here machine. TB also re-sorts news items faster under Mint.

What I WOULD like but see no hope of getting is 2x speed increase on
internet UPLOADS.

That's an ISP problem.


--
Tciao for Now!

John.

On 10/04/14 23:12, John Williamson wrote:
On 10/04/2014 16:11, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
I keep thinking 'ooh mint 16 looks sexy' and then realising that
probably its so sexy it will need a bigger CPU to drive it and that's
going to cost money.. and really I have better things to do with my time.

Mint 16 starts faster and loads Firefox and Thunderbird quicker than XP
on this here machine. TB also re-sorts news items faster under Mint.

What I WOULD like but see no hope of getting is 2x speed increase on
internet UPLOADS.

That's an ISP problem.


ER no. Its a copper/distance problem.



--
Ineptocracy

(in-ep-toc-ra-cy) €“ a system of government where the least capable to
lead are elected by the least capable of producing, and where the
members of society least likely to sustain themselves or succeed, are
rewarded with goods and services paid for by the confiscated wealth of a
diminishing number of producers.

in 1303578 20140410 155247 Huge wrote:
On 2014-04-10, John Williamson wrote:
On 10/04/2014 13:17, Huge wrote:
On 2014-04-10, Andrew Gabriel wrote:
In article ,

This falls between two stools for me, since it's way OTT for home and I
have little or no input to the decision making process at work. I am
thinking about what to upgrade my very elderly Ubuntu too, though.

Shiny new Ubuntu?

Horrid user interface. I need to find something that's better than Unity -
jabbing my eyes out with a spike, for example.

Mint. Based on Ubuntu but streets better.

On 11/04/14 08:23, Bob Martin wrote:
in 1303578 20140410 155247 Huge wrote:
On 2014-04-10, John Williamson wrote:
On 10/04/2014 13:17, Huge wrote:
On 2014-04-10, Andrew Gabriel wrote:
In article ,

This falls between two stools for me, since it's way OTT for home and I
have little or no input to the decision making process at work. I am
thinking about what to upgrade my very elderly Ubuntu too, though.

Shiny new Ubuntu?

Horrid user interface. I need to find something that's better than Unity -
jabbing my eyes out with a spike, for example.

Mint. Based on Ubuntu but streets better.

+1

--
Ineptocracy

(in-ep-toc-ra-cy) €“ a system of government where the least capable to
lead are elected by the least capable of producing, and where the
members of society least likely to sustain themselves or succeed, are
rewarded with goods and services paid for by the confiscated wealth of a
diminishing number of producers.

On Fri, 11 Apr 2014 12:21:20 +0100, The Natural Philosopher
wrote:

On 11/04/14 08:23, Bob Martin wrote:
in 1303578 20140410 155247 Huge wrote:
On 2014-04-10, John Williamson wrote:
On 10/04/2014 13:17, Huge wrote:
On 2014-04-10, Andrew Gabriel wrote:
In article ,

This falls between two stools for me, since it's way OTT for home and I
have little or no input to the decision making process at work. I am
thinking about what to upgrade my very elderly Ubuntu too, though.

Shiny new Ubuntu?

Horrid user interface. I need to find something that's better than Unity -
jabbing my eyes out with a spike, for example.

Mint. Based on Ubuntu but streets better.

+1

+1 too but let's not lose sight of the fact that it's actually based
upon the Ubuntu _'flavoured'_ version of Debian.
--
Regards, J B Good

On 11/04/14 13:19, Johny B Good wrote:
On Fri, 11 Apr 2014 12:21:20 +0100, The Natural Philosopher
wrote:

On 11/04/14 08:23, Bob Martin wrote:
in 1303578 20140410 155247 Huge wrote:
On 2014-04-10, John Williamson wrote:
On 10/04/2014 13:17, Huge wrote:
On 2014-04-10, Andrew Gabriel wrote:
In article ,

This falls between two stools for me, since it's way OTT for home and I
have little or no input to the decision making process at work. I am
thinking about what to upgrade my very elderly Ubuntu too, though.

Shiny new Ubuntu?

Horrid user interface. I need to find something that's better than Unity -
jabbing my eyes out with a spike, for example.

Mint. Based on Ubuntu but streets better.

+1

+1 too but let's not lose sight of the fact that it's actually based
upon the Ubuntu _'flavoured'_ version of Debian.

yes, debian maintain the kernel and basics, Ubuntu add some rather handy
collections of packages that are more user oriented and Mint built the
user interface, tools and the installation, which together with a good
support forum are why 'mint' and not 'ubuntu'

What I like about Mint is they don't try to fix what works - just what
didn't. User interface, user tools (especially noob level user tools)
installation for noobs, and support.

the package system from debian is more than good enough if given an easy
user interface.

Mate an cinnamon are nice balances between eye candy, configurabilty
flexibility and usability.

In particular the main thing is that the default desktop environment
works straight away, and is remarkably XP like in where things are and
how things are done, but you are not constrained to use it that way:
other options exist so you CAN but don't HAVE to, remodel the 'desktop
experience' in different directions if you are a real power user who
spends a lot of time doing particular things.

Every 6 months or so I get irritated by some feature or other and spend
a day trying different ways..sometimes I keep them, sometimes I dont.

But I never get as irritated as with XP ;-)


--
Ineptocracy

(in-ep-toc-ra-cy) €“ a system of government where the least capable to
lead are elected by the least capable of producing, and where the
members of society least likely to sustain themselves or succeed, are
rewarded with goods and services paid for by the confiscated wealth of a
diminishing number of producers.

On Fri, 11 Apr 2014 14:42:43 +0100, The Natural Philosopher
wrote:

On 11/04/14 13:19, Johny B Good wrote:
On Fri, 11 Apr 2014 12:21:20 +0100, The Natural Philosopher
wrote:

On 11/04/14 08:23, Bob Martin wrote:
in 1303578 20140410 155247 Huge wrote:
On 2014-04-10, John Williamson wrote:
On 10/04/2014 13:17, Huge wrote:
On 2014-04-10, Andrew Gabriel wrote:
In article ,

This falls between two stools for me, since it's way OTT for home and I
have little or no input to the decision making process at work. I am
thinking about what to upgrade my very elderly Ubuntu too, though.

Shiny new Ubuntu?

Horrid user interface. I need to find something that's better than Unity -
jabbing my eyes out with a spike, for example.

Mint. Based on Ubuntu but streets better.

+1

+1 too but let's not lose sight of the fact that it's actually based
upon the Ubuntu _'flavoured'_ version of Debian.

yes, debian maintain the kernel and basics, Ubuntu add some rather handy
collections of packages that are more user oriented and Mint built the
user interface, tools and the installation, which together with a good
support forum are why 'mint' and not 'ubuntu'

What I like about Mint is they don't try to fix what works - just what
didn't. User interface, user tools (especially noob level user tools)
installation for noobs, and support.

the package system from debian is more than good enough if given an easy
user interface.

Mate an cinnamon are nice balances between eye candy, configurabilty
flexibility and usability.

In particular the main thing is that the default desktop environment
works straight away, and is remarkably XP like in where things are and
how things are done, but you are not constrained to use it that way:
other options exist so you CAN but don't HAVE to, remodel the 'desktop
experience' in different directions if you are a real power user who
spends a lot of time doing particular things.

Every 6 months or so I get irritated by some feature or other and spend
a day trying different ways..sometimes I keep them, sometimes I dont.

But I never get as irritated as with XP ;-)

The main stand out irritation with XP is its braindead version of
explorer when I've got it set up to open each folder in its _own_
window.

The only thing worse is the even brain deader explorer views in Vista
and win7. I guess the lobotomy given to win2k's explorer when they
perverted it into that stinkhole called winXP was no accident.
--
Regards, J B Good

On Fri, 11 Apr 2014 08:23:22 BST, Bob Martin
wrote:

in 1303578 20140410 155247 Huge wrote:
On 2014-04-10, John Williamson wrote:
On 10/04/2014 13:17, Huge wrote:
On 2014-04-10, Andrew Gabriel wrote:
In article ,

This falls between two stools for me, since it's way OTT for home and I
have little or no input to the decision making process at work. I am
thinking about what to upgrade my very elderly Ubuntu too, though.

Shiny new Ubuntu?

Horrid user interface. I need to find something that's better than Unity -
jabbing my eyes out with a spike, for example.

Mint. Based on Ubuntu but streets better.

You can always ditch Unity on Ubuntu. I just went back to Gnome.
--
(\__/) M.
(='.'=) If a man stands in a forest and no woman is around
(")_(") is he still wrong?

On 14/04/14 08:54, Mark wrote:

You can always ditch Unity on Ubuntu. I just went back to Gnome.


XFCE...