Which Linux distributions do you use?

[AlexBrinister]

The title says it all! :)

Alex Brinister

[joelg236]

Laptop = Crunchbang, Old Desktop = Lubuntu, Media Server = Debian (stable) and New Desktop = Ubuntu 12.04.

[F22Rapture]

Mint

[dcarr]

+1 for Mint. I install stock Gnome 3, my preferred desktop environment. I don't care for Unity or Cinnamon.

Ubuntu 10.04 for building Android source.

[Anupam Goli]

Fedora on both systems with gnome 3 and LXDE for my laptop when its on battery. I'm more of a fan of Red hat base, but I also am well versed with Debian (used that for 3 years before moving over to Fedora). I've never been a fan of Ubuntu.

[joelg236]

Mint

Cinnamon or MATE?

[DominickC]

On my Mac, I boot BackTrack off of a USB. I've got a Dell Precision 470 workstation running Ubuntu Server 12.04 LTS, and an MK802IIIs running Lubuntu.

[pyroslev]

Xubuntu and Crunchbang.

[rondinol]

Ubuntu 11.10 installed on a 7,1 Macbook Pro from mid 2010. First computer I got. Once I got into tech stuff I couldn't stand the mac software. Hope to build a full tower desktop to run my Ubuntu setup this summer.

[gixxy]

Arch Linux (Gnome Shell DE) or Debian on computers. CentOS on the LAN server.

[sebflippers]

Ubuntu 12.04/BackTrack5 - Laptop
Arch - Embedded projects

[codes02]

Arch when I feel lazy, gentoo when I don't.

[z_beeblebrox]

Mint 14, Cinnamon.

I got sick of Windows on my desktop and had used and liked Mint before so I decided to switch.

[bear24rw]

Gentoo + Awesome WM

[Michael Hill]

Main work - RHEL 5, will be CentOS 6 soon
Development server - Ubuntu 12
Secondary server - CentOS 5
EC2 Instances - CentOS 5

[AlexBrinister]

The reason why I'm asking is because there is a GCC 4.8 VxWorks toolchain (as of now, only for Linux) here (http://firstforge.wpi.edu/sf/projects/c--11_toochain). The goal of the toolchain is to allow teams to use the C++11 standard in their code and to bring robot code development to Linux. The project is currently officially supporting Ubuntu and Debian, but I have suggested that we also include Arch and Fedora users (as I'm most comfortable with those distributions). It seems like Red Hat-based, Ubuntu-based, and Arch-based distributions are the most popular.

Alex Brinister

[byteit101]

The reason why I'm asking is because there is a GCC 4.8 VxWorks toolchain (as of now, only for Linux) here (http://firstforge.wpi.edu/sf/projects/c--11_toochain). The goal of the toolchain is to allow teams to use the C++11 standard in their code and to bring robot code development to Linux. The project is currently officially supporting Ubuntu and Debian, but I have suggested that we also include Arch and Fedora users (as I'm most comfortable with those distributions). It seems like Red Hat-based, Ubuntu-based, and Arch-based distributions are the most popular.

Alex Brinister

Yea, Thats just because those are the only two distros I regularly use with familiarity. If anyone know how to package for rpm, arch, gentoo, etc... please let me know. Its not supposed to be Ubuntu only :)

[CodeYeti]

I use Debian for my workstation, and Arch for embedded projects.

[Joe Ross]

I use Debian on my servers, and Ubuntu on my laptop and desktop.

[hiyou102]

I use Fuduntu and Fedora on my laptop and Ubuntu on my desktop. I usually use GNOME 2 or 3 as my desktop environment.

[AlexBrinister]

Does Fuduntu use the standard Fedora package conventions?

Alex Brinister

[catacon]

Over the years, I have used just about everything. Right now I use Mint 14 since it is much like Ubuntu without all the junk.

Our robot is using Ubuntu 11.10 server for vision stuff.

[techhelpbb]

I use Ubuntu, RHEL, Mint and CentOS.

I've used just so many it would be silly to list them all. Somewhere I have Xenix and UnixWare on 5.25" floppies.

I still use a lot of Solaris even thought now it's all Oracled up :rolleyes:

[JesseK]

We use RHEL at work, so I use CentOS at home on my dev-box-slash-server. There's no use in learning so many OS's individual commands, so I don't bother with Ubuntu.

If the Unix community would get off their butts and provide a better way for Virtualized Guests to access the raw graphics card power for CAD in a VM, maybe I'd make the full switch away from windows since I prefer to develop in Linux. Until then, I'll always have Windows for CAD, gaming, and the HTPC.

[ekapalka]

I typically use BackTrack 5 R3 (off of a USB drive) on just about every device I can. I also use Arch Linux ARM on a raspberry pi.

[apples000]

I use debian and ubuntu. I started using ubuntu in 2008 (8.04), and loved it, so I've stuck with it since. Unfortunately, I can't get used to the Unity or gnome 3 environment, so I've been using lxde/xfce/gnome 2 on my different computers.

[connor.worley]

Fedora w/ XFCE

[hiyou102]

Does Fuduntu use the standard Fedora package conventions?

Alex Brinister

It can install Fedora RPM packages but is missing many of dependency's found in the Fedora repository. If a dependency is missing I can always just look it up online and install it.

[plnyyanks]

I've got Fedora on my laptop and desktop. Which reminds me, I've got to get Ubuntu 10.04 up somewhere for Android work...

[faust1706]

Ubuntu 12.1. that is the software for our O Droid X board, our vision processor, for this year's robot.

[Akshay]

Xubuntu

[Ido_Wolf]

Personal desktop - Ubuntu 12.10, old laptop - Puppy Linux (Precise), old desktop - Lubuntu.

By the way, LabVIEW for FRC (well, LabVIEW RT) is the only application that I couldn't either replace with a native Linux alternative or use with Wine, which is why I still have a Windows installation as the main OS on my new laptop, and on a virtual machine in my desktop. I'm eagerly waiting for this to end.

[AlexBrinister]

I wonder if one can request LabVIEW for Linux (http://sine.ni.com/nips/cds/view/p/lang/en/nid/2541)from FRC. Also, FRC should be asked if they could start supplying support for the Linux version of Wind River Workbench.

Alex Brinister

[Ido_Wolf]

I wonder if one can request LabVIEW for Linux (http://sine.ni.com/nips/cds/view/p/lang/en/nid/2541)from FRC. Also, FRC should be asked if they could start supplying support for the Linux version of Wind River Workbench.

Alex Brinister
I assume you can, but since it lacks FRC components/updates it probably wouldn't help you much. I've also managed to get a Windows installation on WINE, but certain components failed to install (MS Silverlight etc...), so it was up and running but I could only get individual VI's to open. Full fledged robot projects just couldn't load, quite obviously.

I assume Linux enthusiasts (other than myself?) would rather just go with C++ and find all sorts of workarounds to get code running the same way a WindRiver project would. But honestly, I'd love to see FIRST taking measures to make this project more Linux-friendly. We're aspiring to bring the most out of science and technology, and as far as technology goes Linux had always been an important of the computer science world and its incredible community of programmers never fails to deliver top notch software. It would've been great if FIRST acknowledged that part of the industry, at the very least with a Driver station/Dashboard version for Linux distros.

[AlexBrinister]

I assume Linux enthusiasts (other than myself?) would rather just go with C++ and find all sorts of workarounds to get code running the same way a WindRiver project would.


You are correct. I'm using this toolchain (http://firstforge.wpi.edu/sf/projects/c--11_toochain).

From what I understand, FIRST is skeptical of Linux because it would take a tremendous effort to port everything and to train their staff how to deal with Linux problems. They chose a system the majority of people use or can quite easily learn to use so they would reach a larger taregt audience. As more and more people start using and preferring Linux, I think they will make the switch. I think they also need to start opening up their software to the teams so as to get a wider base of ready and willing programmers so the porting would potentially go faster.

[wlmeng11]

Arch on my personal machines (laptop and desktop).

Our team's server is Ubuntu.

Our Raspberri Pi that is for vision processing is running ArchARM.

I know that others on my team are running Ubuntu, Fedora, and Gentoo.

[jds2001]

Well, being a Fedora contributor, Fedora is my Linux distro of choice. But I'm writing this on a Windows box! Why you ask? FRC is the reason I have to use Windows. Mainly the DS, but the NI Vision Assistant is nice too. And Inventor. And whatever else there is that I'm not thinking of.

However, like has already been said in this thread - we're here to inspire the scientists of tomorrow. That inspiration can't happen without exposing them to what they're using in the real world, and in reality - that's going to be Linux. That's all that I use at work except for productivity apps (Outlook, etc - and that's because of where I work requires it, ew!), and it's just going to be going more and more that way.

I hope that with the RFP for the 2015 control system, Linux support was taken into account. Not holding my breath, though.

[AlexBrinister]

I hope that with the RFP for the 2015 control system, Linux support was taken into account. Not holding my breath, though.


byteit101, rbmj, and I are working on the custom toolchain (http://firstforge.wpi.edu/sf/projects/c--11_toochain) that will allow programmers to build and test their software from the three major platforms (Linux, Windows, OSX). So far, we the compiler suite (Gcc, Binutils) is working on Linux. However, we are still working out packaging and Windows/OSX builds.

We encourage people to join this project as byteit101 has brought it up at WPI and they like the idea. If the project can be successfully finished by next season, the FIRST Research Group at WPI is willing to accept it as an official build platform for next season. You can check out the Developers page on the Wiki to see what needs to be done. There are plenty of things to do so any contribution, big or small, is welcome!

For Arch users, there is a working build of the toolchain on the AUR. Check out the Wiki. However, I'm working on repackaging, so stay tuned! Ubuntu packages are being worked on too.

Alex Brinister

[taichichuan]

+1 for Mint. I've used Connamon, Mate, XFCE and currently KDE. XFCE is great for a lower powered laptop. KDE really requires GPU acceleration to make it fly with lots of eye candy.

[flameout]

This is probably beating a dead horse by now, but I'll add that I'm currently on Mint (Xfce, but I'm eyeing Cinnamon).

Additionally, my last year as a student programmer, I did all my work on Gentoo.

[gluxon]

I am a full Ubuntu guy. Running 13.04 Beta because I can't wait for it to come out! (though I'm on Windows atm for FRC dev)

I wish FIRST would release a Driver Station port for Linux. Can't imagine that would be too complicated. :'(

[indiv0]

ArchARM on my RPi (thinking about doing vision processing on it for off-season play), and Arch on my desktop and laptop with mainly Awesome WM or Xmonad (i3 is pretty nice too).

[Alan Anderson]

I wish FIRST would release a Driver Station port for Linux. Can't imagine that would be too complicated. :'(

Given the difficulty of supporting the Cypress I/O board even under various versions of Windows, you should probably stretch your imagination a bit.

[gluxon]

Given the difficulty of supporting the Cypress I/O board even under various versions of Windows, you should probably stretch your imagination a bit.

It should be as simple as recompiling for Linux. Unless I'm mistaken, it's the same LabView runtime.

[Greg McKaskle]

I believe the Cypress board requires a Programming Tool that discovers the device and downloads a new custom firmware. It requires a Service called CyMiniProg3Service to be running that recognizes the device when plugged in and reconfigures it. It requires a DLL called NICYAPI.dll which does the lower level USB communications.

If you can get those three items ported over, or equivalent substitutions, you are correct, it will be simple.

http://www.cypress.com/?app=forum&id=2492&rID=72383
This forum thread may be related to the first item. I didn't search the second. The third item, along with the custom firmware were made by an NI employee -- in volunteer mode.

My point is, it doesn't hurt to ask "why" or "what would it take" questions. Those typically lead to good investigations and research and learning. But assuming something is simple can make trivialize the other people's work.

I can assure you that nobody has an agenda to keep linux or other operating systems out of the FRC system. In fact, the blue 2009 DS ran linux.

Greg McKaskle

[techhelpbb]

My point is, it doesn't hurt to ask "why" or "what would it take" questions. Those typically lead to good investigations and research and learning. But assuming something is simple can make trivialize the other people's work.

Greg McKaskle

With the changes to the GUI in Windows 8 and the end-of-life of Windows 7 all but an eventual assurance. No alteration in course from Microsoft's code name 'blue'.

What would it take to port the DS software to Linux legally in FIRST circles?

(I realize this diverges from the original topic so taking it to another topic is probably realistic.)

[Greg McKaskle]

I feel like we now have several threads about the ifs, whens, and whys of porting the DS to linux. As answered before, it is technically doable, but the testing and support effort need to be considered as well.

I think this thread about the variety of distributions in use acts as an interesting data point. Which distribution(s) would the DS target?

Greg McKaskle

[techhelpbb]

I feel like we now have several threads about the ifs, whens, and whys of porting the DS to linux. As answered before, it is technically doable, but the testing and support effort need to be considered as well.

I think this thread about the variety of distributions in use acts as an interesting data point. Which distribution(s) would the DS target?

Greg McKaskle

I proposed for the 2015 control system that instead of trying to pick a distribution to install on top of, that perhaps FIRST should 'own' a distribution to create a foundation for their own.

In the spirit of Edubuntu (http://www.edubuntu.org/) and the like: Other-educational-systems (http://edubuntu.org/other-educational-systems).

There is obviously a set of relationships to somewhat narrow choices:
RedHat, CentOS, Fedora
Debian Linux, CrunchBang, Ubuntu, Mint

Then there's possibly just as important a question as to what graphical shell (window manager) is a better choice.
Really also a question of whether FIRST considers Qt(with the possible commercial entanglement) or something else.

In any event, because FIRST would need to train people I figure they need at least some assurance that there is some consistency and that may best be served by 'owning' a fork. Just as Mint has come up a frequent choice in this topic yet it is derived from Ubuntu.

[floogulinc]

Desktop - Lubuntu
Laptop - Crunchbang (setting it up right now for competition tomorrow lol)
Almost any server we use/have - Debian Stable

Also, for development we use Sublime Text, Git, and UCPP (with SublimeFIRST).

[jhersh]

The third item, along with the custom firmware were made by an NI employee -- in volunteer mode.


Actually 2 custom firmwares... One for the communication / debug chip and one for the application SoC.

One easy way around this would be to ask for a board with a simpler interface. :D

Joe

[rbmj]

Then there's possibly just as important a question as to what graphical shell (window manager) is a better choice.
Really also a question of whether FIRST considers Qt(with the possible commercial entanglement) or something else.

Qt has been FOSS (LGPL) for quite some time now. There is no longer any sort of commercial entanglement.


In any event, because FIRST would need to train people I figure they need at least some assurance that there is some consistency and that may best be served by 'owning' a fork. Just as Mint has come up a frequent choice in this topic yet it is derived from Ubuntu.

'owning' a fork seems like a lot of work when they could just pick a stable base (such as debian or centos) and build on top of that.

W/R/T all of the Cyprus issues, are there really *that* many teams that actually use that feature? I know some do, but I feel like 90% of teams don't use it, and most of the teams that do are advanced enough to move to a different platform if necessary (if they're following the rules they have to rewrite everything each year anyways...).

[techhelpbb]

Qt has been FOSS (LGPL) for quite some time now. There is no longer any sort of commercial entanglement.


I just spoke with Digia about this exact matter less than 2 weeks ago.
There is an issue there and before anyone assumes anything, they best speak with Digia about it. I'm sure FIRST will do any due diligence required I have no need to speak for them.

[techhelpbb]

Whenever I scroll a post down all the content disappears.
So I have to post twice, sorry.


'owning' a fork seems like a lot of work when they could just pick a stable base (such as debian or centos) and build on top of that.

The issues are going to be more subtle. FIRST switches back and forth between static IP and DHCP. Things like 'Gnome network manager' won't play well with that universally. Then there's going to be the introduction of interface changes that might be adverse to FIRST's needs that a stable base can change without a second thought.

At some point when you start bundling up specific versions of things with specific requirements you are as much a fork of Ubuntu as Mint. We could discuss where that point is at length, but I suspect that point becomes more cogent when your organization has specific requirements and won't comply with the changes (ether immediately or ever). At that point there is autonomy involved.

Annoyingly I can blind type and it appears when I click save...so:
1. I support using Linux because it means that it removes the licensing issue Microsoft/OSX introduces on the team's end.
2. I support using Linux in the sense that it likely means more open code base.
3. However, I was just the CSA in Mount Olive and I worry that asking people to downgrade and upgrade packages is going to be a bit more work than asking people to limit the cameras to 320x240x15fpsx50% compression.
Even with lots of shell / Python to reduce the interaction. So realistically I think FIRST should have version control on everything that might impact them so their QA is more thorough.

[Ido_Wolf]

I feel like we now have several threads about the ifs, whens, and whys of porting the DS to linux. As answered before, it is technically doable, but the testing and support effort need to be considered as well.

I think this thread about the variety of distributions in use acts as an interesting data point. Which distribution(s) would the DS target?

Greg McKaskle
Linux Mint, and Ubuntu's variations will probably be all the same or at least very similar releases, and then an additional release for Fedora will probably cover most FRC/Linux users.

Another solution would be source code releases, but we're still talking about proprietary products at the end of the day so...

[byteit101]

Linux Mint, and Ubuntu's variations will probably be all the same or at least very similar releases, and then an additional release for Fedora will probably cover most FRC/Linux users.

Another solution would be source code releases, but we're still talking about proprietary products at the end of the day so...

I tallied up this thread a week ago and found this:

(ubuntu + lm) ~ 35%
debian ~ 30%
fedora ~ 15%
Arch ~ 10%
Gentoo ~ 5%

The debian family is usually fairly similar, so you can safely say debian family is 2/3 of the total.

[codes02]

Linux Mint, and Ubuntu's variations will probably be all the same or at least very similar releases, and then an additional release for Fedora will probably cover most FRC/Linux users.

Another solution would be source code releases, but we're still talking about proprietary products at the end of the day so...

Source code releases aren't the same as an open source development model. My opinion is that most of the gain for the company doing the release is only seen if they actually develop in the style of an open source project: clear route for patch inclusion, licence to encourage contributions, and open development practices.

Also, can you clarify what you mean by "proprietary products at the end of the day"?

Edit: ah, got it: source code releases was for multi-distro support purposes. I'll leave my comments, but they are now mostly irrelevant.

That said, other binary products (nvidia's drivers, eagle, and oracle's jvm, for example) have no issue running on whatever linux they are thrown at. I advise caution in building a DS towards a particular linux distribution. Don't assume so quickly that targeting it in that way is a requirement.

[davidzz123]

My first Linux Distribution was Ubuntu and after a while a got bored, so I researched and installed ArchLinux. I really recommend this distribuition, it is a interactive way to learn more about Operating systems and how they work.

[Ether]

Pardon the brief thread hijack, but I guess there are probably some Linux gurus here. Quick question if I may?

can dd write an output file to a ntfs file system?

for example, I want to save an image of the MBR on sda to a file in a folder in sdb1, where the file system in the sdb1 partition is ntfs:

dd if=/dev/sda of=/mnt/sdb1/MBR.img bs=512 count=1

Will this work, and not corrupt the filesystem in the sdb1 partition?

[rbmj]

Pardon the brief thread hijack, but I guess there are probably some Linux gurus here. Quick question if I may?

can dd write an output file to a ntfs file system?

for example, I want to save an image of the MBR on sda to a file in a folder in sdb1, where the file system in the sdb1 partition is ntfs:

dd if=/dev/sda of=/mnt/sdb1/MBR.img bs=512 count=1

Will this work, and not corrupt the filesystem in the sdb1 partition?




dd only sees files. As long as you can write to the location, it won't corrupt anything. It's only dangerous when your output file happens to be directly mapped to disk.

[Ether]

As long as you can write to the location, it won't corrupt anything.

I guess that was my question. Can dd safely create (and write to) a file on a partition whose file system is ntfs?

Or will it try to create the file, and wind up corrupting the file system because ntfs is not supported?

The target ntfs partition is on a USB external hard drive, if that matters.

[rbmj]

If you've mounted the ntfs partition correctly, you're good to go. As long as it's mounted, the concept of a partition is transparent to the userland tools. It'll write to it as if it's on the root and the filesystem driver will do the actual write. Most linux distributions have the proper support to write to ntfs enabled. If you can echo foo > bar, then you can dd.

And if you can't, it should stop you by giving you a permission denied message before it lets you do something that can nuke the partition. It's only "disk destroyer" if you start playing with outputting to files in /dev - that's the only time it actually writes bytes to raw disk - and really anything written to those files can be dangerous, just dd does it the most. They might be special files, but they're still just files, and dd doesn't do much of anything special - it just moves bytes around, like a really low-level cat.

[flameout]

dd if=/dev/sda of=/mnt/sdb1/MBR.img bs=512 count=1

Just to be 100% clear:

For the reasons explained by rbmj above, this command is perfectly safe.

The output file, /mnt/sdb1/MBR.img is a normal file -- it is not a device node, and does not control anything inside the kernel. Therefore, writing to it is a safe operation.

The underlying filesystem is sufficiently abstracted away such that dd is never aware it is writing to an NTFS partition -- it simply tells the kernel "put this data into this file", and the kernel deals with the filesystem itself.

[Ether]

Just to be 100% clear:

For the reasons explained by rbmj above, this command is perfectly safe.

If you've mounted the ntfs partition correctly, you're good to go. As long as it's mounted, the concept of a partition is transparent to the userland tools

What happens if the sdb1 target partition is accidentally not mounted? Will I just get an error message and no damage done? Or are all bets off, and no telling what dd might do?

dd if=/dev/sda of=/mnt/sdb1/MBR.img bs=512 count=1

[Ginto8]

What happens if the sdb1 target partition is accidentally not mounted? Will I just get an error message and no damage done? Or are all bets off, and no telling what dd might do?

dd if=/dev/sda of=/mnt/sdb1/MBR.img bs=512 count=1


There are two possible scenarios, depending on how you have /mnt set up -- either /mnt/sdb1 exists as a regular directory when you don't have anything mounted to it, or /mnt/sdb1 doesn't exist when nothing is mounted to it. In the first scenario, dd will create the file MBR.img in /mnt/sdb1/, but this will be on the root filesystem, not the ntfs filesystem. If /mnt/sdb1 doesn't exist, dd will complain with a message like this:
dd: opening `/mnt/sdb1/MBR.img': No such file or directory

The only times you have to worry about corrupting a filesystem are a) when you have faulty drivers (if you install them from an official repository they're pretty well tested) or b) when you're writing directly to the drive itself (eg. /dev/sdb or /dev/sdb1). If you successfully mount a filesystem, you are no longer accessing the raw drive, but instead accessing the actual files of the filesystem, as though the root of the drive were simply a subdirectory of /mnt/.

[techhelpbb]

There are also builds of dd for Windows.
My experiences with dd match those listed above.

dd for Windows (http://uranus.chrysocome.net/linux/rawwrite/dd.htm)