Distrubution Specific Guides

The ext4 filesystem -- and its preceding versions, known for its stability and reliability has long been the default filesystem used by most Linux distributions. However, the Btrfs filesystem, due to its scalability and next-generation fault tolerance and self healing features have helped it gain popularity.

openSUSE pioneered its use as the default filesystem almost ten years ago, provisioning it on installations with a complex but very rational subvolume layout, along with Snapper to manage …

In a recent article on this site, a process to convert a Fedora 39 installation on a Btrfs filesystem with a simple subvolume layout to the hierarchical subvolume layout style of openSUSE with Snapper integration, automatic creation of snapshots, GRUB menu integration of snapshots, and other conveniences was presented. Since then Fedora 40 (and Ultramarine Linux 40) has been released. The installation and configuration presented in the earlier article survived a release upgrade to 40 …

Fedora, in recent releases has used the next generation Btrfs filesystem by default for new installations. Unfortunately, a default installation of Fedora, or Fedora based distributions which closely follow Fedora, such as Ultramarine Linux, do not create a Btrfs subvolume layout which allows some of its advanced snapshotting and rollback features to be used easily -- without requiring Btrfs commands to be issued from an external system, or to allow snapshot and rollback management utilities, …

The Arch wiki suggests a subvolume layout for an Arch system installed on a Btrfs subvolume for use with Snapper that sacrifices the ease of Snapper rollbacks and its full functionality for a simpler subvolume layout and a perceived streamlining of system restoration to a snapshot, but requires manually manipulating the snapshots from an external system via chroot or a live ISO.

This article presents a process for installing Arch Linux from an existing Linux …

Many distributions provide printer drivers for printers, and some have tools to set up printers, however depending on the distribution, the drivers may be generic drivers may not permit the printer's full capability, especially if it is a multi-function device. Other utility software to perform maintenance functions may not be available at all. To get the full capability, it is usually best to download and manually install drivers and other utilities from the support website …

When I tried Solus 3.9999 in late 2018, all of the software I needed at that time was available in the distribution's default repositories. Now, having installed the recently released Solus 4.1 Fortitude Plasma Edison, one important program for me, Kile, built using KDE technologies, is not available in the distribution, and the developers refuse to package it. It is available in other distributions and I have been using it regularly recently in Arch, openSUSE …

For some people, the typical method of installing Arch -- using the downloaded ISO installation environment, which provides all of the very basic command line tools to install Arch, and manually configuring everything, is more difficulty than they are willing to endure. The most intimidating element of this process being configuring the network during installation. Fortunately, Arch, like any distribution, can be installed by using a chroot environment from an existing Linux installation, greatly simplifying …

The primary reason I wanted to try Void Linux was for its build system, xbps-src, a complement to Void's binary package management system, XBPS. It can be used to build and install source packages from Void's Github repository or to build and install software made available as source packages from third parties. In this post, I present my experience building two programs that are not available from Void either as binary or source packages …

Although openSUSE is an excellent distribution in its core design, the project's adherence to certain FOSS principles prevent it from installing proprietary packages by default. This includes packages necessary to enable the proprietary Nvidia drivers through the Nvidia kernel modules. This limitation includes the Nvidia drivers specifically used with the Bumblebee graphics processor switching program. Fortunately, openSUSE provides optional repositories that contain the necessary packages. This article describes how to enable the the full capabilities …

Many Linux users install software from source using the steps ./configure, make, make install. This method is easy but unattractive because it bypasses the system's package management tools, and any software installed using this method doesn't allow for the management of the software with the package manager. A method almost as simple that allows the package manager to track the installation is to use the rpmbuild tool to create an rpm package …

After using Sabayon 14.08 for several months, I became increasingly frustrated with the lack of software in Sabayon's repositories which I had become accustomed to being available in other distributions' default repositories. There wasn't even a method for building binary packages from third party or upstream source using a simple tool like rpmbuild for RPM based distributions for installation and management by the system package manager. This article describes one way to mitigate the lack …

My biggest complaint with Sabayon after using the 14.08 release for more than three months was the lack of a way to get software that is not available in the Sabayon repositories for management by the Entropy binary package management system. There didn't appear to be an easy way to build binary packages from source or from a third party tarball as there is for RPM based distributions through the rpmbuild tool. As it turns …

One of the attractive features of NixOS is the ability to declaratively configure all aspects of the system from one configuration file called configuration.nix or for manageability, with this file and input files -- imports in the nix expression terminology --) that are called from this file. Even nix expressions (package build scripts) that can initiate a custom package build, starting from downloading a source tarball to configuring the custom package, can be integrated into …

Arch implements the loading of Intel processor microcode updates at boot differently from other distributions. While other distributions include the microcode into the initramfs (the replacement of the initrd) image, Arch leaves this as a separate image, which is loaded by Arch's GRUB at the same time as the initramfs. Because the implementation of GRUB through the scripts in /etc/grub.d/ by other distrubutions doesn't account for this difference, other distributions' GRUB try to …

This article describes how repositories are structured in openSUSE, as well as listing some of the useful repositories not enabled by default at installation, and how to manage repositories using both the zypper tool and the YaST "Software Repositories" module. Although, originally written as a supplement to the openSUSE 13.2 review, it applies to newer versions of openSUSE's regular release as well as openSUSE's rolling release, Tumbleweed.