Linux Fans!

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 O document... :-(

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

 

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)

 

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...

 

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).

 

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.

 

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 and gdesklets :twisted:
but usually i just use my window manager to have more consoles open on one screen

 

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?

 

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!!!

 

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:

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....

 

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.

 

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

 

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...

 

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?

 

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

 

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

 

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.