Well maybe it isn't that bad but I can't get either wireless lan card to work.
Talk about a user unfriendly OS. And I have to get used to using this on a daily basis.
Kill me now.
Ly-nux is teh poopzorz IMO...
But, hey... It's an open source server OS that will run on a 486. :laugh:
Quote from: RVertigo on January 20, 2006, 04:12:06 PM
Ly-nux is teh poopzorz IMO...
But, hey... It's an open source server OS that will run on a 486. :laugh:
so will win95 :thumb:
I've tried to 'make the switch' to linux about 8 times now (last one was 2 months ago), and everytime I end up returning to win, since linux is not user friendly yet (suse, mandrake, ubuntu, etc etc).
Yes, for the average user who only wants to write letters, surf the web or listen to music, linux offers no problems, but when it comes to hardware support, getting the most out of video/sound devices (one must use generic drivers), and multimedia support (video editing, and multimedia in general), it just sucks hard.
You have to spend half of your life compiling who-knows-what, searching for dependencies, etc... not to mention the 70/80+ background services that run in Linux with a default installation (against the 17 services I have running on my win box).
I've been using Linux since about kernel 2.0, mostly because I work in science. I have grown to like it. It's the only thing that lets me still use my 333 mHz laptop with up-to-date software. It's also free.
Things have gotten much better as it's gotten more popular. Even so, there's a lot of room for improvement. A lot of problems can be circumvented by choosing hardware that's a generation older.
You rarely have to compile stuff anymore. On many distributions you can just type apt-get install (whatever software) and it will pull software and any dependencies off the internet and install it on your computer. No need to go to whatever random website and download it.
I'd recommend Ubuntu/Kubuntu if you want something more user friendly. After that, I use CentOS or Fedora Core.
im running SUSE 10.0 the damn thing detected everything no problems.. thing rocks!
Unbutunu didnt run on my laptop .. its 2 years old..didnt like my video card.
SUSE10.0 rocks!
you can download the version from bit torrent - i downloaded the open source version OSS my dad bought the retail SUSE 10 so i got both.
Quote from: johnWell maybe it isn't that bad but I can't get either wireless lan card to work.
What card(s) and what distribution. Are you trying to replicate your hosted server environment at home, or do you have any flexibility on what you're running?
Quote from: subcYes, for the average user who only wants to write letters, surf the web or listen to music, linux offers no problems, but when it comes to hardware support, getting the most out of video/sound devices (one must use generic drivers), and multimedia support (video editing, and multimedia in general), it just sucks hard.
I have no intentions of starting yet another OS religious battle, so I'll just respond with the following :
I run linux (debian) at home, and besides "writing letter, surfing the web and listening the music", I do the following :
- connect to the office using cisco vpn software
- rip and transcode or re-encode my dvd's (the kids like to scratch them up, so I create backups of everything)
- transfer miniDV video for editing on my machine, and author DVD's
- download and manage all my financial information
- some resonably advanced photo-editing (bought a digital SLR last year, and got into this)
- sync with my treo 650 (usb and bluetooth)
I'm not saying it does everything a windows machine does (I miss first person shooters and not being able to run google earth), but not very much more. And yes, I agree that win98 will run on a 486, and that it's a reasonably decent OS for most, but I find that most of the bleeding edge hardware released today will have a better chance running on linux than on a win98 machine.
I have been messing around with other operating systems for a few years now, my favorite alternative being BeOS (Now called Zeta, www.yellowtab.com)... Linux was always there, but with too much to configure I never was able to settle on ONE flavor or get ahold of installing shiet ... I've tried a few distros... Most of them seem the same, but I suppose if you're hardcore linux fan you'd see the differences. The endless options of configuration also lead to a problem of no set standard for applications.
I currently use a distribution alongside my WinXP called Ubuntu (www.ubuntulinux.org) which uses GNOME window manager. I must say that Mr. Shuttleworth (Of Thawt fame, also an Astronaugt) is brilliant. His team managed to create a simple OS which is easy to use and offers a huge library of downloadable and 100% compatible software ALL Free!
I am quite sure you can get that wireless card to work, it might take some time of reading through forums to get the right info... Check www.ubuntuforums.org... Great wealth of knowledge there.
Linux has come along way and in many ways it's faster than Windows! My 0.2c :)
Anyone have a newer version of Linux on CD they would send me if I paypal them the costs for shipping? I have some OLD linux CD's laying around..Redhat 5.0, Mandrake (forget the version but circa 2002), etc. But I want to try a newer here at work.
Anyone? :thumb:
Quote from: Phaedrus on January 31, 2006, 07:23:19 AM
Anyone have a newer version of Linux on CD they would send me if I paypal them the costs for shipping? I have some OLD linux CD's laying around..Redhat 5.0, Mandrake (forget the version but circa 2002), etc. But I want to try a newer here at work.
Anyone? :thumb:
You can get the best distro shipped to you for free...
https://shipit.ubuntu.com/
hmmm Ill have to check that out, thanks
Hey Phae, if you've got time, I can download and then Direct Connect (through AIM) the newest version of Red Hat Enterprise (get it free through the school.. woohoo!). I'm on a T1 here, so if you've got a decently fast connection, the 4 CDs should only take an hour or so to transfer... Drop me a PM, or better yet, get on AIM and let me know!
Yeah, thats my problem. I have dial up at home :mad: and a split T1 at work, but my boss would get annoyed if I DL'd something that size during peak hours. Maybe if I come in at some oddball time like 4am or 10pm, but I dunno if I wanna do that. :laugh:
Well, damn... like someone else said, ubuntu is good...
Quote from: NiceGuysFinishLast on January 31, 2006, 05:21:11 PM
Well, damn... like someone else said, ubuntu is good...
Yes, I think it's a slick setup myself. When I get my linux box all squared away it will have Ubuntu in it.
Yeah Linux in general is a pain in the ass to get set up and everything working. Once it does though it can go forever.
I figured I would just add an update.
I've got SUSE Linux 10 up and running well. Got it pretty much configured how I want it. I ended up buying the CD's a while back on ebay for shipping and media costs, basically. I have my machine dual booting Win XP home and SUSE Linux 10 now. I kept the XP partition around for work stuff that I need, but have been using Linux for all of my own stuff. I really, really like it. It has come a long way since last time I used it and when I first started out with it back with Red Hat 5.0.
I went with SUSE because I'm a Novell kind of guy, and couldn't be happier with it. :thumb:
I never did try Ubuntu.
I did, however, download a copy of Slax 5 (a small, live CD distro of slackware). It is also very cool, and DEFINITELY worth checking out for anyone that wants to give Linux a shot but doesn't want to partition or go through the install process. It just runs right off a bootable CD:
http://slax.linux-live.org/
So I have my SUSE 10 / Win XP home and my Slax CD to carry around with me. All is well in the world :icon_razz:
Hey I had no idea we had some linux geeks here!
Awesome!
And here I was thinking I was alone in the world :kiss3:
Cool, I haven't tried it; however, Suse 10 is supposed to be pretty f@$%ing cool - glad to hear you like it... Novel got XGL to work pretty good which makes the OS a bit MAC-ish with neat visual effects (if you have a good videocard), I'm eager to check out. Yeah new version of Ubuntu will be out sometime early June, I'm running Ubuntu 5.10 at the moment.
And have tried Slax Kill Bill edition, module based so you can make your own custome live cd - it's tight and i'm a geek but I prefer Gnome :).
:laugh: I saw the Kill Bill edition but passed and just D/L the standard one. And yes, Gnome kicks ass. :thumb:
I was even surprised that my USB flash drive works under SUSE Linux. I wasn't expecting it to, but it did. :o And of course with programs like The Gimp (alternative to Photoshop/PSP), OpenOffice (alternative to MS Office), Gaim (alt to AOL IM), and a whole slew of other apps, it almost makes even needing Windows questionable.
The only quirk I've found thus far is that I am having a hard time getting my El Cheapo Walmart-bought Lexmark printer to print. I'm working on it, though. :thumb:
Sweet, Suse is taking mammoth steps with every release it seems ... Check out gnomefiles.org if you haven't already... Two killer apps, TunaPie and Streamtuner.
I prefer my fluxbox with the custom keybinds I made for it
I've used linux for about 6 months now. Started on a school where we got forced to use it as their motto is "Opensource is good" or something.
I've been through quite a few different distro's.
Archlinux - It sucks btw. Shitty packetmanager and it can't figure out it's dependencies
Debian - Nice OS, run it on a webserver at home.
Ubuntu - Use it on my laptop here at school, and i dont really like it. Too much work getting the java compiler to work (will switch back to debian as soon as im done with exam project).
Knoppix livecd.
And some various mods of existing distro's which i can barely remember.
My current opinion is that linux sucks at home, where im using my pc for gaming etc. But here at school it works like a charm, and im getting more and more used to it.
About the gnome vs. KDE thing. I like both but for different things, sometimes the one is better than the other imo. but that differs from person to person.
I've been playing with linux since I was a wee little thing. Now at school most of our lab machines run either Linux or UNIX so you get pretty comfortable with doing everything in a command prompt. I actually prefer doing a lot of things in a command prompt; I would take building C apps in GCC over Visual Studio any day. When it comes to running your own machine, the best way to get everything to work, and you can get everything to work, is to figure it out yourself. You really just can't depend on the various configuration apps that come with most distros today to get everything working 100%. I mean yeah it's a little harder and not so user friendly, but user friendly is what XP Media Edition is for.
Linux will run on anything. It's fairly common to use it as an embedded OS on some fairly simple RISC microcontrollers. A joke my friends and I have is it can run on a toaster.
I've been running linux and linux alone on my PC for about a month now, and for the most part I'm ok with that. What proves to me linux is just a far better piece of code compared to Windows is how it handles hardware errors. Windows assumes everything is working 100% and if there is the slightest hardware problem you have an unhandled exception and that wonderful blue screen of death. Linux is pretty good at recovering from small errors. My main reason for running linux is my CPU is fubar; Windows will crash no matter what I do, it won't even begin to boot up before it blue screens. For linux, I have the thing underclocked 100Mhz and it runs just fine. Any faster and it will start to become unstable, but whatever, it's still faster than Windows.
I've been running Mandriva which totally blows. I've been trying to burn Ubuntu on a DVD the past couple days, but my only DVD burner is in my laptop which is now having issues as well. You know what, I hate computers, I hate them all, I just have the worst luck.
Unix is a pain in the ass ... if you're trying to learn ... however once you do learn it ... it will keep you employed forever ... not need to ramp up and learn new technologies every 2 years, no need to compete with 100's of college kids with their java and NT knowledge ... Learn it 15 years ago with no real idea of what I am going to do with it, and the thing is ... it has never failed to find me a job ...
Windows is pretty and friendly, but it will bury you in obscurity cos every freaking bored house wife knows it ... Unix, 1/2 the crap wont work unless you know exactly what you're doing, and its reserved for the hard core geeks ...
Now If you want Job security ... AS400 ... yea baby ...
Cool.
Srinath.
All of the desktops/workstations at work are being switched over to Ubuntu/Kubuntu (whichever I prefer). The reasoning behind this is we want to move away from XP and its security holes. Everybody will use terminal server to do most of their work and for large files use Openoffice locally.
A couple of users have started using TS exclusively in preparation of the change, but many flat out refuse to change. This is where I will become the most hated person in the company.
I am happy with this in some ways, but see a near revolt from the management team. The IT manager wanted to switch suddenly, I have suggested mapping out a plan to implement this change and also prepare the users. I see a number of issues cropping up. I want to setup a couple of test machines to work out as many kinks as possible before making this leap.
As much as I love Linux (read the first page of this thread), I'm not sure it's ready for power "business" users. Have any of you tried to sync up a treo 650 or 700 using USB? Or tried connecting to outlook / exchange without having the web client enabled (for security reasons)? Or tried reading an MS Excel spreadsheet in openoffice that was previously password enabled?
I think it could work for some environments, but not all. I can totally imagine my current office (small web app shop, mix of product and professional services) go Linux all the way, but I couldn't imagine my previous company (Deloitte Consulting) successfully moving in that direction. You really need to evaluate what you do as a company and then figure out what the best platform is.
Quote from: seshadri_srinathNow If you want Job security ... AS400 ... yea baby ...
I don't know.. I have a few friends that are AS/400 wizards and they're having a tough time finding a job. It was my first tech job, but man am I ever glad I don't have to type the letters "wrkactjob" anymore.
As400 and travel go hand in hand, and in the US, have it and security clearance and you're guaranteed a $200 an hour job. Or so I heard from people who may have wanted me to feel jealous ...
Cool.
Srinath.