OT: Any one here using a rolling release linux?

[perl514]

Venerated Monks,

Wish you all a very happy new year. I hate to begin the first question here that's not really related to Perl, but have no other go. Is there anyone here using a "Rolling Release" linux?

I am running on Ubuntu 12.04 and its a great os, but for past some days, its been crashing/freezing on me. Also, every two hours or so, the internet connection goes belly up. May be I installed something that messed it up, so I did a full re install, but the problem returns.

I tried Debian earlier, and its quite smooth, but I cannot for some reason dual boot that and Windows 7. I tried CentOS/Scientific Linux, but my laptop temperature shoots way too high and it scares me.

Anyone here using a rolling distro? From what I gather, these are sweet spot between stability and comparatively newer packages. Sabayon and Manjaro are two rolling releases that are a sweet spot between extremely easy to install/use and hardcore geek sort of linux flavour. Anyone tried it here?

I am on a thinkpad T430 with 16 GB RAM, and its a good laptop, so I am pretty sure its got nothing to do with bad hardware.

I presume there would be a lot of linux users here, and they could possibly provide some pointers.

[aitap]

I tried Debian earlier, and its quite smooth, but I cannot for some reason dual boot that and Windows 7

This looks like an easy problem to solve. First, I would suggest re-running update-grub (because the one run by debian-installer does not always work properly), then, if the former does not help, locating Windows partition and writing Windows menuentry manually in /etc/grub.d/40_custom (there are many HOWTOs about chainloading a partition on the Net). Or maybe grub fails to run Windows EFI bootloader because it is run in BIOS mode (or otherwise); this is also easy to spot (you should have either both grub-efi package and bootmgr.efi somewhere or both grub-pc and bootmgr without extension) and easy to solve (install the appropriate GRUB package; copy grubx64.efi to /EFI/BOOT/BOOTX64.EFI on your efi partition if you installed grub-efi). Hope that helps. I can write more detailed instructions if you are interested.

Speaking of rolling-release distros, I haven't used them by myself; I tried staying on Debian "testing" for 1.5 years, but then realized that if I switched to stable, I would have the same (or even more) stability without updating 100 packages every week. Software is a bit old here (Perl v5.14.2, for example), but there are some third-party repos from which I can install new Mozilla software and new VirtualBox, and there is always perlbrew if I want a newer Perl.

[perl514]

Hi aitap

Thanks for the reply. Yes I would very much be thankful if you could provide a detailed method or point me to a link where the detailed steps are provided. I did search the net, but most of the stuff I found was either high level steps or too much details. Though I am comfortable with the cli, I recently started using Linux and hence do not possess enough knowhow to fiddle in depth.

As for the "system perl" shipped with Wheezy, that should not be a problem. I had, a while ago, compiled Perl 5.16.3 and it had worked just fine. I can do the same/use perlbrew.

Thank you once again for helping me out on this.

[aitap]

Sorry, I don't know any detailed guides on debugging Windows boot via GRUB2. In order to fix the problem I'll need some information first. _{Just the basic facts,} how exactly doesn't it boot, what exactly is written in the Windows menuentry in grub.cfg, what is your hard drive partitioning layout, what files are present in the root of Windows partition?

[ww]

Considered to be marked "OT" and downvoted because your years as a Monk and the Monastery's stated purposes should have told you to seek out a more appropriate venue.

Approved because you have a record of Perl related questions and as a bow to the fact that you may find users with strong opinions on your specific *nix question. But noted also, that my install of 12.04 runs for weeks... and generally gets restarted only when a power outage exceeds the life of my UPS.

[perl514]

Hi ww,

I fully agree that I should have posted this on the forums of the said OS. I did check similar threads and perform the changes suggested in there, but that really did not help. I however also wanted to take the opportunity to see what version the other monks were using, but EOD, I should have followed the rules and I am sorry I did not.

Having said that, I am glad that your Ubuntu 12.04 works fine. Are you using Unity or on XFCE? I am on Unity.

[ww]

Likewise.