lookin to get off windows opinions and info would be appriciated on linux & ubuntu

[evilfunnystuff]

me and a couple buddys are considerin switchin to ubuntu or some other linux os anyone got any wisdom to drop on me

main thing im worried about is compatability issues

[constituent]

go to the different sites and search for your different bits of hardware + compatibility.

that's probably the best way to start...

my wife uses open suse and enjoys it quite a bit...

i've funked around w/ ubuntu and pclinuxos w/out much success.

[Omphfullas Zamboni]

Instead of testing your hardware, you can always download the Live CD Image to test for compatibility. If Ubuntu boots from the CD, you know your good.

[LibertyIn08]

Linux is great (my main operating system), if you don't like the following:

Hassle-free plug-and-play device compatibility (although Vista is a step backwards in this area)
Computer games (TuxRacer doesn't cut it, and Wine isn't quite there)
Good codec support out of the box (Due to licensing issues)

What is wrong with Microsoft, if I may ask? Most people ditching them for philosophical reasons seem to come from the left, not the right.

[pcosmar]

The live CDs are great, you can check whether or not it will run on your system and can compare different window managers.KDE, Gnome, Fluxbox and others give a lot of choice.
Most distros also have help forums, and can answer questions specific to that distro.
PCLinuxOS also has a hardware database.
http://pclinuxoshwdb.com/

I can tell you that it runs nice on my HP laptop. dv 1410. The only problem I had was with the builtin Cardreader (Texas Instruments). They are not very linux friendly, but I did find a hack to make it work. I seldom ever use it. Most cameras are detected by digikam.

For those wondering,
1.6 Celeron M
512 ram.

Dual boot with Win XP ( I seldom boot XP, but I paid for it)

I started with Slackware, but it is not recomended for new users. (good learning experience)
Have used Mandrake (now Mandriva), Xandros ( easy/user friendly) Linspire, Yopper, Arch, and several others. Till I found a favorite.

[ryanmkeisling]

Why not try out a Mac. You know I bought a Dell inspiron with XP and a Mac G3 laptop at the same time a while back. The Dell stopped working after one year (the screen went blank among many other problems) while the G3 is still a great functional computer which will run OSX with zero problems, the dell could never run Vista, and could barley run XP. OS X is stable and secure, of course it costs more but the mac will last a lot longer and give you far less headaches. It is a far better product and I could not even imagine thinking about microsoft ever again. IMHO and I am neither left nor right.

[NoxTwilight]

Most likely Ubuntu will give you what you need with the least amount of hassle. Using the Live CD to test is an excellent idea if you have older hardware.

I dual boot XP and Ubuntu and while I do spend a lot of time in windows due to the work that I do I WILL eventually move to a linux only environment. Just a matter of time

What is wrong with Microsoft, if I may ask? Most people ditching them for philosophical reasons seem to come from the left, not the right.

For me it is Philosophical. As a consumer I resent their monopoly and greed. And Balmer is a crazy man - he wants to rule the world.

The Open Source community is the perfect place for liberty minded geeks

I will point out that the OS community will expect you to use all the available resources to try to solve your own problems BEFORE you ask for help. Be sure to share what you have already tried. They will be happy to help you but tend to resent those that ask expecting immediate answer without any effort made to utilize the tremendous amount of information that is available. Any small problems I have had I have been able to handle on my own simply by searching on google or linux forums. If I can, anyone can

Cheers

[lucius]

I am at this jumping-off point as well--no vista for me.

[Kludge]

I am at this jumping-off point as well--no vista for me.

*shrug* So stay with XP. It's a solid OS. Just because MS will stop supporting, doesn't mean hardware devs will any time soon. DX9 is still the standard.

[LinuxUser269]

live cds to start look into

Ubuntu is the best i have worked with and it has lots of help online ,

Slax I have used with very good results

Puppy Linux I use on my laptop with no hard drive . it boots live from cd and i use a usb flash to save the sessions .

hope this helps

GeexBox is an awesome stand alone media player

[pcosmar]

Here are a few links to help you on your way.
There are more, but this will give you an Idea.
http://www.linux-tutorial.info/
http://www.yolinux.com/ ( RP supporter) http://www.yolinux.com/TUTORIALS/
http://www.howtoforge.com/

[LibertyIn08]

Most likely Ubuntu will give you what you need with the least amount of hassle. Using the Live CD to test is an excellent idea if you have older hardware.

I dual boot XP and Ubuntu and while I do spend a lot of time in windows due to the work that I do I WILL eventually move to a linux only environment. Just a matter of time



For me it is Philosophical. As a consumer I resent their monopoly and greed. And Balmer is a crazy man - he wants to rule the world.

The Open Source community is the perfect place for liberty minded geeks

I will point out that the OS community will expect you to use all the available resources to try to solve your own problems BEFORE you ask for help. Be sure to share what you have already tried. They will be happy to help you but tend to resent those that ask expecting immediate answer without any effort made to utilize the tremendous amount of information that is available. Any small problems I have had I have been able to handle on my own simply by searching on google or linux forums. If I can, anyone can

Cheers

God forbid! A company designed to... make money! :P

The Open Source community is also a place that is resentful of business interests, except when it benefits them. After having dealt with so many requests for obscure portions of non-existent source code (it was written in perl: there is no source!) with a distro I helped run, I grew tired of it.

Too many individuals wanting something for nothing without contributing. I'm not going to pour my heart and soul into a project anymore to be verbally abused by a 21 year old who wants everything laid out for him with a silver spoon.

I love open source, as someone who has used Linux and BSD for years. However, the attitude pervasive among many members, the us vs. them mentality that Corporations are the Bad Guys (tm) is frustrating and not useful. Cooperation is the key, and a good balance can be struck between the two development models. Sadly, dogmatic thought often outweighs logic.

[NoxTwilight]

God forbid! A company designed to... make money! :P

The Open Source community is also a place that is resentful of business interests, except when it benefits them. After having dealt with so many requests for obscure portions of non-existent source code (it was written in perl: there is no source!) with a distro I helped run, I grew tired of it.

Too many individuals wanting something for nothing without contributing. I'm not going to pour my heart and soul into a project anymore to be verbally abused by a 21 year old who wants everything laid out for him with a silver spoon.

I love open source, as someone who has used Linux and BSD for years. However, the attitude pervasive among many members, the us vs. them mentality that Corporations are the Bad Guys (tm) is frustrating and not useful. Cooperation is the key, and a good balance can be struck between the two development models. Sadly, dogmatic thought often outweighs logic.

I have heard this and respect your much greater experience in the community than what mine has been. I come only from the view of a basic user and an average consumer rather than anything else. My boss who is much more involved has made similar comment so I know you speak accurately. He also hates MS with a passion. Skewed outlook? Most assuredly. We all judge based on experience

I still will always encourage anyone to try Linux if they are interested as I am sure you would.

Cheers!

[Perry]

Why not just run both windows and Unix? You can run windows from within Unix as well.

[ChickenHawk]

I installed Ubuntu on a 650Mhz HP pavilion that had been running XP sp2. Ubuntu is slower less stable and of course less compatible than XP was. Needless to say I was a bit disappointed considering all the hype I've read from all the Linux Kool aid drinkers on the Internet. I'm sure being open source has some advantages but in terms of general usability I think I would stick with XP or even Vista.

[NoxTwilight]

Why not just run both windows and Unix? You can run windows from within Unix as well.

Personally I do .. all my machines are dual booted .. xp & ubuntu.

I will point out that my machines are pretty fast and all modern hardware. While some linux distros will run better than windows on older machines, you have the issue of tweaking for hardware issues as well as speed issues. Don't expect an old machine to run fast on linux just because it's linux. Old slow machines are still old slow machines.

[LibertyIn08]

Personally I do .. all my machines are dual booted .. xp & ubuntu.

I will point out that my machines are pretty fast and all modern hardware. While some linux distros will run better than windows on older machines, you have the issue of tweaking for hardware issues as well as speed issues. Don't expect an old machine to run fast on linux just because it's linux. Old slow machines are still old slow machines.

Oh, I definitely encourage people to try Linux and BSD out. I simply have some issues with portions of the community, most notably the hard-liners in Stallman's camp.

I run NetBSD, Gentoo, Mac OS X, and Windows XP SP3 at the moment.

[nayjevin]

Most likely Ubuntu will give you what you need with the least amount of hassle.

QFT

My experience:

Got a hair to both ditch windows and try linux for fun, so i took my second computer and tried out about a dozen distros. Ubuntu is easiest and is well supported, and the structure of the company appears to be non-evil, which is important to me.

Others, like Damn Small Linux (fits on a mini-cd, 72 mb if i remember right) are great for some purposes.

It was fun, now I'm back to windows, because, even though i like spending hours on end learning new things, i got tired of wading through scripts for hours to do simple things like get audio to work with divx. Also I play games from time to time, and WINE was brutal.

The other thing is that I like to have my computer on lockdown - - that was one of the major things that appealed to me about linux - it is more secure -- when set up properly. However, I found that I would never know enough about linux security to catch up and know for sure that my box was even as secure as a default windows setup (which ain't secure).

I'm no genius, but I am the guy my family calls with computer problems, but I found that the learning curve was too steep to be practical. I can cruise around in dos, but unix commands, even after HOURS of research and practice, were so foreign to me that even the simplest tasks required getting on the linux forums to figure out -- and sometimes it just seemed no one was having the exact same problem I was having -- so the best I could do is attempt a fix that was similar, and that would blow out my audio or something, and a downward spiral from there.

I recommend linux for a second computer, second hard drive, or separate partition, but if you grew up with windows, you probably won't want only linux in your house. Believe me, there will be SOMETHING that you can't get to work on your linux install, unless you spend MANY hours of research and careful tweaking.

There are things you might not think about before you switch to linux -- for instance, your audio doesn't work, so you begin troubleshooting -- where the hell is the control panel? device manager? not there. so you search online, and some guy has the exact same problems as you - and the instructions for what worked to solve his problems seem straight forward -- so you try it -- and it doesn't seem to do anything. 2 weeks later you realize you've blown out your codecs capability. where the hell is system restore? etc etc

or this is a true story:

oops, that processor I had in my closet was a 64, I forgot, so i download the 64 version of ubuntu. install, and get going, and firefox doesn't have flash player yet, so i go to install it -- won't work. look online, and you have to do this script + workaround to install a 32 bit version of firefox, then install flash. works! so i close firefox, and when i open it again, it's the 64 bit version, because the shortcut on my desktop points to the old version! oops, but no problem - just make a new shortcut on the desktop -- now where is program files? hahahhah nope, not that easy, /etc /etc /etc

Linux is fun for a geek, don't get me wrong. Just don't expect it to relieve your need for Windows entirely, at least yet.

Also, if you have a linux master you can hang out with frequently (which I assume you don't) your experience will probably be far different than mine. Also, if you have used solaris or unix and know the basic directory structures and bash (command prompt) commands, your experience may also vary -- I started from the ground up, and even though I know DOS and have HTML, VB, and some C++ experience, Linux was a chore and a half.

[nayjevin]

Why not just run both windows and Unix? You can run windows from within Unix as well.

hahahahahh

maybe you can, but don't assume I can, or the OP can.

[Carson]

Duel Booting is not as hard as it sounds.

The way it used to work was you had your Microsoft version installed first because Microsoft had trouble playing with others.

Then you installed Linux in a different partition.

Then, if everything went well, when you first boot up your system you are given the choice to boot to Windows or Linux.

With a machine that has only Linux on it you can check to see how long your machine has been running. You type into the terminal the command prompt "uptime" on mine.

I run BOINC on some machines and the Linux machine I've seen with a runtime of about 257 days (Then a power failure hit) . On the Windows machines they are always going down for updates.

[nayjevin]

Duel Booting is not as hard as it sounds.

tru, but running virtual terminals is a bit more complex.

[pcosmar]

tru, but running virtual terminals is a bit more complex.

That was not my experience. I installed Virtual Machine from the repository. Opened and set it up, (It guided me through the process) and installed the Windows CD that came with my laptop.
It worked fine, no muss no fuss.
After 30 days it wanted to be registered,as I already have it registered on this computer, It would not allow it.
I only tried it to see how it worked.
Since I never have any real use for windows I uninstaller it.

Though there is a learning curve with Linux, I have never found it difficult.
I don't feel I lack ANY functionality. Everything works.
I am not a total GEEK. I got my very first computer in 2003, I started using Linux in 2004.
I find I get very frustrated ( and usually pissed) when I have to use windows. I have cleaned crap out of two recently, for friends. It is an aggravating experience, and I only do that for good friends.

[pcosmar]

Ubuntu is a popular version of Linux with a few fans here. It is not my favorite, but it is well known.
This is a video of the setup of VituralBox on Ubuntu. It was similar to my experience in PCLinuxOS.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?do...GdyqTsDg&hl=en

Some from the Big Players.
Novell
http://video.google.com/videoplay?do...GIt4jsDg&hl=en
http://video.google.com/videoplay?do...GIt4jsDg&hl=en
http://video.google.com/videoplay?do...GIt4jsDg&hl=en
IBM
http://video.google.com/videoplay?do...GIt4jsDg&hl=en
This is just cool.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?do...HayIznDg&hl=en

[evilfunnystuff]

thanx guys just the info i was lookin for

i know if i went to a linux forum to gather opinion it would be pretty biased.

i think ill let my friend try it first.

its not an ancient machine and its my first comp (ya im a newb lol)
from maybey 2004 or 2005 its a 2.5 gig dell with 1 512 ond one 256 ram

reasons for wantin to leave windows ?

competition if everyone goes uses windows they have no reason to fight and put out products to the best of there ability at the best value.

+ i just dont like windows stuff it doesnt seem stable and is pretty virus prone

also bill_derburg gates doesnt leave me with the impression that he actualy wants whats best for his customers (no it not just that he went to bilderburg i just think its funny to call him that)

i kinda wish i would have gotten a mac but i dunno buyin one now is certainly out of the question though so no need to dwell on it

i think ill probly try it out ofter i check for compaability with a live disk

anyways thanx for the advice and info everyone was exacly what i was lookin for

[Unspun]

So, who's brave enough to try Gentoo?

[LibertyIn08]

Gentoo was my first step outside of BSD into Linux, somewhere in 2001 I believe.

[Unspun]

Gentoo was my first step outside of BSD into Linux, somewhere in 2001 I believe.

I use it at home and love it. It's just a bit of a bugger setting up for the first time. It took me three days from blank partition to DM to internet connection... but once it was all up it is totally worth it.

[pcosmar]

So, who's brave enough to try Gentoo?

I have played with VidaLinux which is Gentoo based and I have a Gentoo disk (somewhere).
I also have a "Linux from scratch" disk, but they are a lot of work. After learning on Slackware I went searching for more user friendly distros.
There are many.
I always suggest that people try a couple Live CDs and get the feel for different setups and window managers before they decide on one.

I made the jump from windows to Slackware because they said it was too difficult. I am hard headed like that.