Linux Fans!

[hawkeye]

Hey, I never thought to bring this up: I'm a Linux guy, and I don't know a single person who uses linux regularly, and just recently I am able to guess (due to his post in "Haha...Oops") that goratrix is more than likely a linux guy. So basicly, Goratrix, am I correct in my guess, and are there any other linux fans out there"

[goratrix]

You are correct. I use linux on two computers. Mandrake 10.1 (or whatever version comes out. I like to keep it updated) and RedHat7.3, with kernel updated and last versions of samba, apache, sendmail, iptables,squid and I could post a complete rpm -qa but that won't really help. Although lateley I've been using a winxp for gaming purposes and some college work. You know... not everyone knows how to open an OO.o document... :-(

Anyway... it's good to see that I'm not the only nerd on this forum ;-)

[hawkeye]

Cool, Gentoo has been my only linux system, but I've tried quite a few when I was just starting. I might have never used the others as much because I started trying linux when I was 13, a bit early for a very good knowledge of it.

[goratrix]

I bet it was the SHADOW bit... lol... I was hoping nobody wuold pick that up... Anyway, how did you come to the light? (started using linux)

[hawkeye]

I started using Linux due to boredrum, hence the diving into it at 13, when most people ever even knows what it is. After a while, I liked being different and being able to change just about anything. A own my own computer, and have for quite some time (Im on my 2nd Personaly owned PC). I also have always been very talented at computers and was in need of a more fun challenge than fixing windows all the time.

[goratrix]

I can understand you. I started using linux three years ago. And mainly because I got and old alphaserver with RedHat 7.3 on it. And i didn't have windows NT server to install on it. So I was kind of forced into learning... I now can do almost anything I want with linux. And the things I cant' do on linux I probalby can't do them either on windows... However, I must say that now windows poses a greater challenge... I spent two days trying to find a way to change an env. var on windows for my java compiler to work. On linux it would have taken me two lines. So... there is the difference...

[tinkergeek]

Well, I am new to the forum, but think this is a wonderful topic to introduce myself on.

My teacher slipped me a Mandrake 6.0(?) disk in the 5th grade and I have been hooked ever since. I recently installed a copy of XP on a spare computer to refresh myself, and boy is there a world of difference still between each OS. Right now, I am running Ubuntu Linux. It is based on Debian and is quite nice. The switch from KDE to Gnome was difficult, but I still mostly like doing things from the command line.

So, hello to everyone (especially the linux geeks).

[goratrix]

Well, there's now three of us... the mumbers go up. BTW, I've never heard of Ubuntu.. I will search a bit. And I tried KDE, GNOME and XimianDesktop quiet a while. And I'll stick with KDE for a long long time. Until they make a neural interface probably... so... that's a long time.

Welcome to the forum btw. Take a look to the introduce yourself thread. Perhaps that is a good way to start as well. :-)

[Corny]

ubuntu seems to become a fashion now ;) someday i'll try it, but til then i will stick to debian (sarge) for now. i don't use KDE or GNOME (both too slow and bloated for my taste), but i have Ice WM installed, its small, fast and clean. however for some decoration and "wow" effects to show windows users i installed 3ddesk (http://desk3d.sourceforge.net/) and gdesklets (http://gdesklets.gnomedesktop.org/) :twisted:
but usually i just use my window manager to have more consoles open on one screen :)

[Micah]

Ok, seriously....I don't get the advantages of Linux, even though some of my friends use it. Never asked them about it though.....So what's up with it? why bother using it?

[goratrix]

The question should be... why bother using windows. With Linux you get all the compatibility you have on windows, plus it's easyer to use and to manage. So... in windows you have to change an environment variable. What do you do? you wither type the command line every time you start the console mode. Or you can modify win.ini or autexec.bat (not a good idea) Or you can go to system properties/who knows what/environment variables and add it. On linux you have a simpler way:

$ echo "export PATH=$PATH;/new/path/you/want/to/add\ yey\!" > $HOME/[.bashrc .bashprofile]

So... that's not so hard after all isa it? and you still have a graphic user interface where you can do everything you want... And if you want to run that Windows-only game... don't worry!! you have wine, winex or transgaming technology... so it's not like you can't play. In my case I use windows out of lazyness. I am experiencing some problems with my graphics accelerator drivers on linux, and thus I can't play games.

However, since this week I have time I will fix it and go back to the light!!!

[Paul_UK]

Total Linux newbie here! :smilewave

I work in IT and have to maintain around 100 Windows 2000/XP systems plus a few Windows servers. I also use Windows systems at home. I'm just starting to dip my toe in the Linux water out of curosity. I am a bit fed up with the endless security holes in Windows, and the fact that the software is so damn expensive - so Linux does seem more attractive.

However I regard the PC and OS are a tool, to allow me to do useful work (or surf the web :) ). I don't want to spend much time playing with, configuring and fixing the operating system.

It all depends on software availability though. There seems to be reasonable range of free software out there (including OpenOffice and FireFox which we know from the PC side). I need to look at wysiwyg website editors (I currently use Dreamweaver), photo editing (Corel PhotoPaint) and PDF creation/editing (full version of Adobe Acrobat).

I had a brief play with Linux around 4 years ago (a version of Red Hat from a magazine cover disk) but at that time it seemed very disjointed and inconsistent.

I have just been sent a copy of the Ubuntu CDs and have tried the "Live" bootable CD on my Dell Latitude D600 laptop. It boots and runs OK, athough the sound doesn't work, it can't set the screen resolution above 1024 x 768 (the native display resolution is 1400 x 1050) and it can't see the wireless LAN adaptor. There's info on the Ubuntu forum about this however, and it doesn't sound that difficult to sort out.

Obviously I need to do a proper install, and have obtained a replacement hard drive (plus mounting bay) for the PC to try doing this on (so I don't risk my Win XP installation on the existing drive). I've also got a desktop system with more conventional hardware wich I may try it on first.

I have no idea what the desktop GUI is, but it has what looks like a menu bar across the top which I rather like. It seems to be quite easy to find things with this, and it doesn't waste too much screen space.

I have also downloaded the SuSE Live DVD and booted from that. With this the sound works but the display and wireless still don't. The GUI with this is a wide bar across the bottom which looks rather chunky and childish compared to the Windows one. I don't like this as much as the one with Ubuntu.

I'm tempted to keep playing with Ubuntu. As well as the GUI, I also like their approach to licensing and the freeware concept:

Ubuntu will always be free of charge, and there is no extra fee for the "enterprise edition", we make our very best work available to everyone on the same Free terms.
Whereas the free SuSE (now owned by Novell) is labelled as a "demo" to try to get people to spend money on the same thing in a pretty box with support.

Red Hat also seem to be pushing the commercial supported Linux products and using the freeware and open source users to do their development for them (for free???).

I suspect this is the reason for the current popularity of Ubuntu - plus the fact that they are giving away CD-ROMs nearly as freely as AOL!! See http://www.ubuntulinux.org/ for details.

It's good to know there's some Linux experts here that I can ask my newbie questions to....

[goratrix]

Lol... I would be thirlled to see the 'Linux Nerd' category in the main discussion forums... Although I could suggest a forum just like this dedicated to linux: www.linuxquestions.org It's where I go to solve all the problems google doesn't help me with... not many though.

[tinkergeek]

I'll throw another plug in for Ubuntu. It is a nice system, things Just Work. I used to run Slackware and ArchLinux, but Ubuntu is definately just as good. The user interface is consistent and it has decent hardware detection. Plus, they are giving away free CD's. :-D

[goratrix]

Ohhhh mandrake 10 and LG cd-rw that was fun. It was the first time I ever updated the firmware of a CD-RW... I've done it before on my alphaserver, but that was not really hard...

[desko]

I've pretty much given up hope of sticking with Windows, just a matter of time now till i change to linux, even though i've never used it. Windows is being shittier than usual - corrupted registry, windows is dead :bang: Argh! I hate it!
Anyway, which distro would you recommend i try?

[Micah]

Hey, Windows Explorer lets me view these forums...what more does one need?

[hawkeye]

Desko, as for a distribution, dont plan on jumping into everything, it takes a while to learn. I suggest trying knoppix, just to get used to linux before you actualy install it. Knoppix is a live CD distribution, meaning that it doesnt install anything, but is a fully working system. From there you can decide on what distribution you can handle (Debian and Gentoo's a bit more in depth than others like Mandrake and Red Hat).

[Paul_UK]

You can get a Live CD for Ubuntu as well - and I think many of the other distros.

[goratrix]

Mandrake has a live distro as well. However I would suggest that if you are jumping from windows to linux you choose one of the softwer distros, like fedora core or Mandrake. The others are a bit harder to learn and understand.

[cavillor]

Mac OS X is now a certified Unix operating system. Does that count? :-D

If I couldn't use OS X, I'd use Ubuntu.

[xequar]

I recently started dipping my toes into Linux, and installed Ubuntu on my old computer. I haven't figured much of it out yet, but I'm trying.

[Torture]

What's Linux like? I've been using Windows XP for the past few years, I could use a change.

[Paul_UK]

With many of the mail Linux distros, including Ubuntu, you get a live CD which you can use to boot your PC into Linux without affecting anything on the hard disk. So you can try a few and see which ones you like. Because nothing is installed there is no risk to your Windows installation, and if you don't like it just remove the CD and boot back to Windows.

The live CDs will generally let you install it too, if you like it. If you want to have a dual-boot arrangement where you can choose Linux or Windows when the PC boots up, read the instructions on the website carefully first (the installers often default to wiping the hard disk which would lose your Windows).

You need a broadband connection to download live CD images and some CD writing software (such as Roxio or Nero) that can create a CD from an image file. The CD writing in Windows doesn't do that.

[LNahid2000]

The Linux penguin is cute, but I've never actually used Linux except to reset the password on a Windows system.

[Kenko]

When I get bored and don't have a lot to try I try playing around with linux distros, usually in a virtual machine. I think linux makes an excellent server software, and I'd like to use it full time use however some problems with it I have:

a) Installing software that doesn't come as part of a package (.deb for debian distros) starts becoming a major pain in the neck with dependency heck and other problems. Sometimes third party packages can cause problems. I had a prof that uses FreeBSD on his machine, and he went to install a CAD package and it trashed his OS because of dependency issues.

b) With a lot of distros, apps, etc (KDE, and Gnome environments are really bad for it) Linux can suck a LOT of resources without even doing a whole lot. The hardware requirements for a lot of normal desktop distros is as bad or worse than Windows. And there seems to be a lot of development effort going into making it pretty instead of making it function better or easier to use, etc. I know I could use twm as a window manager but that's just ugly.

c) It lacks the polished feel. The whole system is a cabbage patch system that doesn't fit together nicely. Since there are millions of distributions that do more or less the same thing, it makes it harder to get software to run, etc. than if there were only a single distribution that everyone used.

Apple finely came out with a Unix OS that is so easy anyone can use it. And since there's only one stream of OS X, there's only one package format, so it's easy to get things installed. However a lot of Apple's business practices makes them as bad or worse than Microsoft in many regards. Plus I hate the fact that as best I can tell, there's no "free" way to load on a custom theme or otherwise customize visuals. I found a third party utility that can remove shadows, and I've found shareware Shapeshifter for themes, but I can't for the life of me find a free way to load a theme or customize it myself that removes transparencies and fancy textures so I can get quicker response over a network connection.

As far as distros... personally I like DSL (Damn Small linux) since the LiveCD is only 50MB it will run on anything, and quite quickly on any modern machine. It comes ready to use with a lot of software that most people used (web browsing, word processing, media playing). I tried running an installation with it, got the DSL packages to work fine. I tried using the conversion option to convert it into a debian install, but it is an old kernel version so a lot of packages aren't available. I tried upgrading the kernel and that didn't work. And on and on it goes.

[Miaplacidus]

I use openSUSE 10.2 (x86-64) and absolutely love it.

[JSG]

I thought you'd post Mia ;)
I sometimes use Kubuntu/Ubuntu and my little brother (9yo) uses Edubuntu everyday.

[Miaplacidus]

Well... I'm not so in love with openSUSE anymore. It is great but it has a major problem - RPM. Whenever I try to upgrade something, it gets all f***ed up............................. so now I'm on Kubuntu Feisty.

[Rette]

I recently installed slackware 11.0 on my laptop. This should be an interesting experience, I think...

I had been using ubuntu, which was nice, but I really want to try something a little more unix-y. I'm actually trying to get into systems administration, so I want to get really, really familiar with how linux works underneath.

[paul7836]

I have used Ubuntu for a few years now. (I prefer KDE though)

[Miaplacidus]

(I prefer KDE though)

So do I...

[step49x]

I've been using Xubuntu for almost a year, now. I'm a big fan of it, and use it a lot more than Windows XP (they're both installed on my laptop). I do have the advantage of not being a gamer, which really made the switch from Windows to Linux much nicer. I also like the free web developing tools that are out there for Linux (XAMPP (http://www.apachefriends.org/en/xampp.html) + me = :icon_bigg )

I've used KDE and Kubuntu a little bit, but the animated mouse icons annoy me (yes, i'm sure i can disable those, but i'm lazy. xubuntu works, so i'm sticking with that).

[GQMan]

i just tried out puppy linux and wasnt impressed.

[Miaplacidus]

i just tried out puppy linux and wasnt impressed.

Well, Puppy Linux is a minimal version, not designed for everyday use... It's more of a proof-of-concept than anything else.

Try Ubuntu, or openSUSE.