Linux/BSD replacements for XPians

[lowen]

...

Well, that's one really good part to MSDOS/OS/2--you need only have support for the basic INT 13 devices to get booted--everything else can be loaded from separate device drivers after that.

So are there any viable microkernel Linux/Unix alternatives for the x86/x64 platforms? Or is that just an idea that's passed its prime?

Well, the linux kernel has had loadable modules for a really long time now; Red Hat variants even have initial ramdisk support for udev-based dynamically loaded modules (so you can, say, take a disk from one kind of SCSI controller to a different SCSI controller and the disk still boot successfully); since Fedora 12 or 13 (RHEL/CentOS 6) the dracut system handles this quite nicely.

For hardware that's not supported directly it's not hard to build a loadable module without rebuilding the whole kernel; the elrepo.org repository builds RPM packages for many pieces of hardware, especially including nVidia 3D accelerated drivers.

I'm running CentOS 6 on several year old hardware; my main laptop is a Dell M4300 (Penryn C2D). It's quick enough to run Windows 7 in a VM while having reasonable performance for normal tasks. A simple 'yum install' of a package (through CLI or through GUI, for that matter) is enough to get pretty much any driver without rebuilding a kernel.

Now to go to pre-XP hardware, I have run as recent as CentOS 3 on Pentium 133 and slower hardware; and I ran Red Hat Linux 8 on a 486DX4-100 tp build distribution packages for the PostgreSQL project in the '99-'04 timeframe.

I still run Red Hat Linux 5.2 (NOT Enterprise Linux; 1998-vintage RHL 5.2) on an AMD K6-2 450, and it's very serviceable.

The ISO's and repos for all of these packages ever since the very first Red Hat release are still available for download, and even for non-Intel architectures such as SPARC and Alpha.

But since you mentioned microkernels, you could always run Darwin. The Linux loadable module framework isn't too different from the Darwin/XNU/Mac OSX kernel extension (kext) framework.

 

[Chuck(G)]

I've tinkered with Linux since the first Slackware release and RH since 5.something (I bought the CDROMs for the early ones--it simply wasn't practical to download a CD with a POTS modem back them). And before that, 4.2BSD on a VAX 11/750 and Xenix on a custom 186/286 rig (that was a nightmare!). I still have some of my original Unix notebooks--things were a lot simpler back then.

Speaking of microkernels, I was surprised to see that Minix is still with us--I thought it had withered away.

What's the word on ReactOS? Still stuck in development?

 

[Caluser2000]

I still run Red Hat Linux 5.2 (NOT Enterprise Linux; 1998-vintage RHL 5.2) on an AMD K6-2 450, and it's very serviceable.

The ISO's and repos for all of these packages ever since the very first Red Hat release are still available for download, and even for non-Intel architectures such as SPARC and Alpha.

That's certainly one thing I like about Linux. Archived isos are easy to get hold of. I hate when trying to look for info on some of the older stuff and google gets smart and points to thing related to Enterprise LInux even though my search criteria is quite clear.

 

[Doug G]

I've been wedded to RedHat for years, and prefer Fedora for workstations and CentOS for servers. I have Fedora 19 on an ancient Dell Celeron laptop and it runs well. My Dell PCMCIA wifi adapter worked fine out of the box. I also have older versions of Fedora on some even older hardware.

I appreciate the 'cutting-edge' that Fedora balances on, and have had very few problems with any software or drivers. You do have to jump through some minor hoops to get multimedia fully working, due to RH strict adherence to GPL only software in their distribution repos.

 

[Chuck(G)]

Okay, here's an example of what maddens me and probably other people. I have a USB MIDI adapter set up connected to my synth keyboard. Generic USB driver, nothing special. XP recognizes it and places it as the default MIDI device with nothing more than a little baloon on the right side of the screen.

After horsing around a bit on Ubuntu 12.04 LTS, I finally convinced Audacious to use it. No problems, right up through Ubuntu 13.10. I update my machine to 14.04, and the MIDI capability goes away. If I try old-time Timidity, it just discards GM voices it doesn't understand. I can still boot XP in VBox and it plays nicely. It's been reported on the Ubuntu forums and no one seems to have any idea why the MIDI support went away or what to do about it.

I've got a little MP3 player--Ubuntu doesn't seem to be able to mount it, yet I can plug it into XP (via VBox) and it works just fine.

These are current production devices, or nearly so. What's going on? You'd think that at least MIDI support would be thoroughly tested and supported by now. Why does crufty old XP keep getting it right?

BTW, running a MIDI player in WINE gets it right.

 

[lowen]

Okay, here's an example of what maddens me and probably other people. I have a USB MIDI adapter set up connected to my synth keyboard. Generic USB driver, nothing special. XP recognizes it and places it as the default MIDI device with nothing more than a little baloon on the right side of the screen.

I have three USB audio/MIDI adapters myself, all three made by Tascam: a US-224, a US-428, and a US-144. I had some serious issues getting them to work reliably on XP (default audio device kept changing back to the motherboard audio, etc), but under the Debian-derived A/V Linux distribution I was able to make the US-224 work smoothly (I've since put them on older Mac OSX machines, since that support is rock-solid). So I'm familiar with the issues, and I'm very familiar with the frustrations. But I understand that that is one of the trade-offs to using certain Linux distributions, and is one of the reasons I won't use any straight Ubuntu again.

The major difference between using these under Linux and under XP was that the detailed knobs I needed to tweak to get them reliably recognized were documented (although not really well documented), and easily available for modification; under XP, it was totally undocumented and required registry editing. Six of one, half a dozen of another; Id rather drive 'vi' than 'regedit' any day of the week.

After horsing around a bit on Ubuntu 12.04 LTS, ...

Why does crufty old XP keep getting it right?

Audio and MIDI devices are notorious under Linux, this is a fact. That's why I mentioned above that the ideal Linux would be dependent upon how XP was used; in this particular case I would say you'd want a Mac (or a 'pseudo-Mac') or use a specialized audio distribution like A/V Linux ( http://www.bandshed.net/AVLinux.html ), which is quite good (good enough that Harrison Consoles endorses it for running the Linux version of their professional audio DAW product, Mixbus. If you've never heard of Harrison, you've heard audio mixed through Harrison consoles; major albums, like Michael Jackson's Thriller, were and are mixed on Harrison consoles).

BTW, running a MIDI player in WINE gets it right.

Now this is interesting. If WINE sees the device, the Linux kernel sees the device; it's the libraries that your MIDI player uses that doesn't.

This is at one time the greatest weakness and greatest strength of a typical Linux distribution; it's like putting together a 'parts' PC rather than just getting a Dell or an HP that's already put together. It's more of a project; and some prefer that.

But if 'DLL Hell' on Windows XP bothered you, then a typical Linux distribution will give you nightmares, that much is true.

The layers of device support under Windows are somewhat hidden from view; in a typical Linux distribution the admin of the system has to be aware of the layers (just because the kernel has a driver does not mean the desktop environment can use the device, for instance).

 

[lowen]

...You do have to jump through some minor hoops to get multimedia fully working, due to RH strict adherence to GPL only software in their distribution repos.

Let me address this for a minute.

You can purchase completely legal and licensed multimedia codecs for Linux through a company by the name of Fluendo ( http://www.fluendo.com/ ). This includes a functional, if spartan, DVD player application.

I realize most people just download and install VLC or similar, but if you want (or need) to be legal you need licensed codecs, and Fluendo has them.

Also, not all software in RH's repos is GPL. Open source, yes, but not GPL. An example is PostgreSQL, which has a BSD license.

 

[Hatta]

Now this is interesting. If WINE sees the device, the Linux kernel sees the device; it's the libraries that your MIDI player uses that doesn't.

Yeah, that's an application problem. Something changed in the configuation of PulseAudio or something else so Audacious doesn't know which device to send MIDI to. Run 'pmidi -l', you should see your device in the list. Configure Audacious to use that device and it should work fine.

These kinds of audio problems are sadly characteristic of Linux and have been for years. Not a hardware problem, people just can't agree on what sort of audio system to use. ALSA, Pulse, OSS, Jack, Gstreamer, whatever. That's one of the more attractive characteristics of the BSDs. They have OSS4 in the kernel, and it just works.

 

[lowen]

...That's one of the more attractive characteristics of the BSDs. They have OSS4 in the kernel, and it just works.

Yeah, I was once a customer of 4Front, back when that was the only game in town for an Ensoniq AudioPCI (before Creative bought it).

And that was the core problem, really, for the Open Sound System; it went proprietary and alternatives were made. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OSS4#Free.2C_proprietary.2C_free Had OSS never been proprietary things might be different today in terms of audio on Linux. I'm glad it's now BSD licensed.

Now, JACK has a different purpose in life, and that is guaranteed latency. It works fine with various backends, including OSS and ALSA. When you do overdubs you want low-latency, but you absolutely must have consistent latency, and JACK does this. For other uses JACK is overkill, but if you need JACK, you really need JACK.

Pulse is a whole different species, and for serious audio work just gets in the way. For normal playback purposes it's, well, underkill.

 

[Chuck(G)]

I also find it interesting that, although, there's a fine typesetting package (lilypond) that's been around for years under Linux, there are only half-baked and problematic transcription front ends. Windows has several decent ones (Finale and Sibelius being the prime examples), but MuseScore on Linux is a regular nightmare. I routinely work with orchestral scores and while I like the look of Lilypond scores, I'd sooner chew my own leg off than use MuseScore or Rosegarden. "Awkward" and "buggy" doesn't even begin to describe them.

So, am I missing something obvious? Or do I keep running Sibelius in VBox? This isn't a matter of free software--I'd happily pay for a good product; I've done that for years already.

 

[lowen]

..
So, am I missing something obvious? Or do I keep running Sibelius in VBox? This isn't a matter of free software--I'd happily pay for a good product; I've done that for years already.

You're missing something obvious.



To the MuseScore and Rosegarden developers, their software works fine; open source is and has always been about the freedom to program to your own liking.

If you want an interesting experience, try doing some nonlinear video editing with the extraordinarily powerful cinelerra package; the author likes it, and uses it. It's not an easy package.

However, if you get a major manufacturer/developer behind something, such as Harrison in the case of Mixbus, you can see a fine but not exactly friendly open source package like Ardour turned it into something far more polished, in the case of Mixbus. I use Mixbus every week to do audio production, and it's smooth. At least in my workflow. But your mileage may vary. Ardour 3 has MIDI workflows, but not direct notation transcription as yet.

In open source, the developers scratch their own itch, so to speak, and while many developers are sympathetic to other users' needs it boils down to the program being what they need. In pure open source, that is. Commercial interests warp this a bit; now, if you could get someone to bankroll a rosegarden cleanup (de-thorning?) you probably could get what you want.

Open source quality is so spotty simply because each program is something of an island; some packages simply have better developers than others. But this is true with commercial software, too.

 

[Chuck(G)]

Open source quality is so spotty simply because each program is something of an island; some packages simply have better developers than others. But this is true with commercial software, too.

For this purpose, I'm not especially interested in open sources. Both the owners of Finale and Sibelus, have, over the years, refused to consider any sort of *nix hosting--but they do offer Mac OS X versions. Heck, Sibelius started off on the Archimedes Acorn. They both get the request several times a year and say that there are no plans, nor are they interested. They're not particularly interested in file interchange between the two products either, although it can be accomplished after a fashion.

So what's the perception of Linux/BSD in the world of commercial software? Is it that there's too much variation? Or do they not want to end up supporting the quirks of the various Linux versions?

 

[lowen]

...
So what's the perception of Linux/BSD in the world of commercial software? Is it that there's too much variation? Or do they not want to end up supporting the quirks of the various Linux versions?

I'll put on an old hat; I built commercial RPM packages of a particular open source database for a commercial enterprise back in 2000. The scene hasn't changed much, other than feeping creaturism. So what I say below is what I learned from first-hand experience supporting commercial packages on several Linux distributions. Also, while I'm much more familiar with commercial server applications, many of the same issues arise with server apps as do with desktop apps, even though I know you're more interested in desktop apps.

Variation is a problem; support more of a problem, especially for users who insist on installing key pieces of the system from source but don't tell the vendor but blame the vendor when the software doesn't run.

Commercial software vendors of course vary in their Linux support, if they support it at all. Server software will typically specify 'Red Hat Enterprise Linux' or 'SuSE Enterprise Linux Server.' The desktop gold standards are one of the LTS Ubuntu flavors, SuSE Enterprise Linux Desktop, or RHEL Desktop. Progressive Networks (now RealNetworks) supported Red Hat Linux as one of the server platforms back in 1997 when I brought an internet radio station online for a client; the choices can be found archived at https://web.archive.org/web/19961220190754/http://www.realaudio.com/products/server/technical.html and at that point in time Red Hat Linux fit the bill for me after doing due diligence (the application/webserver I wanted was the old Naviserver product; the only affordable solution that covered both RealAudio Server and Naviserver (soon to known as GNNserver and then AOLserver) was Red Hat Linux. Naviserver, by the way, was the very first commercial multithreaded webserver, back in 1995. We are on the Vintage Computer Forums, right? Well, 1995 is definitely vintage as far as web software goes!

There are exceptions; Harrison will support just about any Linux that has reasonable audio. They do that by statically linking libraries and building dependencies themselves.

The variations and churn in the Linux distributions are both a gift and a curse: a gift in that you have choice; a curse in that you have possibly too much choice.

Having said that, I have (or have had) and run (or ran) the following commercial software, both server-side, and desktop-side:
The aforementioned RealAudio (later RealG2 and then Helix) server on RHL.
The aforementioned Naviserver/GNNserver/AOLserver on RHL connecting to a Postgres95 (later PostgreSQL 6.5) database.
Scalix e-mail server: best supported on RHEL and CentOS.
Draftsight CAD: universal support, and a wonderful example of a desktop package done right.
Fluendo DVD Player: universal support, special packages for Ubuntu/Debian and RPM systems.
Fluendo GStreamer codecs: universal support, special packages for Ubuntu/Debian and RPM system.
QCAD 2D CAD: Windows, OS X, and several Linux distributions. Now available mostly open source as well.
Harrison Mixbus: best supported on AVLinux, works on CentOS and others. Built on the Ardour open source DAW.
Matlab: old version ran beautifully on an older CentOS.
LABview: older version, but preferred RHEL or similar.
Codeweavers' CrossOver: supports basically all Linux (Crossover is a commercially supported WINE and can run lots of Windows software natively on Linux)
VMware Workstation: older version (I use KVM on CentOS at the moment) but was pretty much universal in support.

But it's hit and miss with commercial vendors, too. One commercial vendor that shall remain nameless (since they're no longer around) did a Linux port of their quite popular Windows program, but did it by embedding WINE in it (it acted drunk, too!).

I hope that's helpful, and I'm a bit sorry for the length.

 

[Doug G]

Also, not all software in RH's repos is GPL. Open source, yes, but not GPL. An example is PostgreSQL, which has a BSD license.

Sorry I wash't specific enough, I should have said gpl-compatible license as in http://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html

 

[Chuck(G)]

Well, maybe I'll revisit Red Hat just to see if their stuff has stood the test of time.

I still like OpenBSD for servers; no frills and carefully controlled source. But I'd hardly put that in a desktop environment.

 

[tingo]

I mean to try a 32-bit PCBSD (probably 9.1) distro. Judging from what I've read, it may actually be faster than the 64-bit 10.0.

Interesting. Please report your findings here.

Right now, my current recommendation is that if you don't live in the Linux world and want to move from Windows, try Ubuntu with XFCE or LXDE, or Xubuntu/Lubuntu (which is pretty much the same thing).

FWIW, Xubuntu is what I use when I have to use Linux. Comes down to XFCE (I prefer that over the other alternatives, and it is quite stable, unlike flavor-of-the-year Ubuntu) and that it works, or I can make it work if something fails.

Most of my machines run FreeBSD (mostly 8.4-stable, but some 9.2-stable, and a few test machines with 10.0-release or -stable) since it is the poison I am accustomed to.
My laptop runs Xubuntu (checking; 12.04.4 LTS) mostly because it has "switchable graphics" (read: nVidia Optimus), but also for battery life (with external gfx turned off I get almost 6 hours on battery). It is also very handy to have to have a Linux machine when I just want to test something quickly which doesn't work out-of-the-box on FreeBSD.

 

[vwestlife]

I'm currently trying out "AV Linux" (based on Debian, with the Xfce desktop UI), and I noticed a couple of problems right away:

* When I first boot up, it offers to connect me to my wireless network, but does not do so automatically, and if I ignore or dismiss that pop-up, I could not find any obvious button or drop-down menu icon (such as the universal "radio waves" symbol) in the task bar to get back to the WiFi settings later.

* Upon startup, it shows another pop-up offering to download something called "Wine Mono", but when I click OK, it just sits there saying "Downloading..." forever, without giving me any indication that it is impossible to download the file because it has not connected me to my WiFi (see above).

* My computer has a built-in SD card reader, and Linux does support it, but when changing cards, it refuses to show the contents of the new card unless I reboot. Even after clicking "eject" and/or "safely remove", it still shows the contents of the old card.

* In the Open File dialog box, there are no buttons to go back or up one level, so if you make a mistake in navigating the folder structure, you have to start all over at the root directory of the drive.

* Double-clicking the control menu does not close a window, and double-clicking the title bar does not maximize or restore a window. Maybe most people don't use these tricks, but I do, and it's annoying to not have them work in a modern PC GUI.

* Files I saved to the desktop were lost after rebooting. Maybe that's because I was running the "live DVD" version, but I did run it from a bootable SD card, so I assumed that it would be able to retain saved data, or at least warn me upon shutting down or restarting if it wouldn't.

 

[Ole Juul]

I don't think that AV Linux is a good choice. It is very specialized and requires stuff that is not generally needed on a common desktop system. There's likely also not a lot of people working on it. I tried it some time ago and it was not usable. Linux sound systems are notoriously broken so I had high hopes too. I do understand that they've gotten a second wind, but it's still probably a small group. If you're serious about getting it all working, I'd hook up with them. It could save a lot of time.

As for saving files. I suspect that it is by design that a live distro doesn't save files. That's just good security if you're using it for banking and such. I have seen live disks be able to do that though, but it was a special setup. Yes, this is not a "desktop system" by design, but they've doubtless taken most of the stuff from elsewhere and not had resources to change stuff that might be nice to change. Again, a few people can only do so much.

By the way, I think you're generally better off setting up networking by hand and not using a GUI. I'm not really into Linux these days, but it used to be that the first piece of advice to those with network woes was to uninstall the networkmanger and just get on with it. It's only a few entries and info is all around, or you can ask on a forum like LinuxQuestions.org. Perhaps GUI network setup has changed, but I'm just sayin'.

 

[Ole Juul]

An old guy has specifically asked me for a Linux replacement, so I just now ran a live xubuntu-12.04.4-desktop-i386 on an XP aged machine. It all seemed to work well. Of course to be a complete success, I'll have to install it on his system to see if I can get printing and scanning to work with whatever peripherals he has. By XP aged, I'm talking about an Intel D915 MB with 3 GB ram in this test case. I'd expect most machines needing upgrading to have the same 10 year old hardware specs. My friend's computer is about that age.

I've never tried Abiword before, but it looks a lot like anything else, and I see it can save as a .pdf, so it's probably all one needs for office work which my friend does a lot of. He'll want a spreadsheet too, and I didn't check that yet. Anyway, the test will be if I can convince this old long time XP user that it's fine. Perhaps I'll have to give him a whack upside the head to get a positive response. . . . but whatever it takes. The only alternative that I can see is to buy a new machine.

 

[lowen]

Well, maybe I'll revisit Red Hat just to see if their stuff has stood the test of time.

FWIW, they weathered the Great Recession quite well, so they have to be doing something right. CentOS is probably the single most popular Linux for servers out there, and that's essentially Red Hat's work (CentOS aims to be 'bug-compatible' with RHEL after all).

I still like OpenBSD for servers; no frills and carefully controlled source. But I'd hardly put that in a desktop environment.

I've used OpenBSD on a number of systems, and while it is a bit different from the typical Linux distribution, it's not so different that skills aren't portable. I would use it on an old (but not yet vintage) DEC AlphaServer 2100, but the SMP support on Sable isn't the best in the world, and when you have 4 275MHz EV45's in the box you really do want to use all four. Yeah, OpenVMS works fine on the box, but I'm not a VMS-head. Nor do I want to pull out the Windows 2000 beta for Alpha that I have from an old MSDN subscription......

There again, it really goes back to answering the question "what do I need the system to really DO" when it comes to replacing XP, as one size does not fit all when it comes to Linux or BSD.