Linux help?

I dont know how many Linux users we have here, and there's more than enough places out there on the web. But I'm posting this to offer what help I can to people interested in this AWESOME operation system. I would like to promote people to give it a try...you'd be really surprised of what it can offer you and break the chains that are the evil MS!

If you have any questions I'd love to answer them.!

Hi, yeah i have linux and so does a couple of mates i know, i downloaded it firstly cos i hate ms and i just wanted some practise on as much programs as i can.

We had quite a few Linux systems at work recently... Problem is, it's only a good OS for advanced users (which aren't the majority of our client base...) We since scrapped the idea (but still support it, we just don't promote it much) for this reason...

Shame really, as it is a promising OS, but not for the masses... Nice to see someone proposing help though...I'll just say right now, I haven't worked with it much... Thanks for the offer!

Actually as a desktop OS Linux is finally coming around, the latest offerings from RedHat, SuSE and Mandrake are rather nice, and friendly enough for average computer users to use with a bit of help. I've heard rave reviews about SuSE 9.0 which was just released a few days ago.

Grommer > what kind of a setup do you have for *nix, and what distro do you primarliy use?

dude, Gaz, I dont know what distros you were using at work, but Linux as a desktop solution has come an _extremely_ long way. As a person wanting a desktop solution and more (I shudder to say) like Windows, then I would shoot for Red Hat 9, Mandrake 9.2 (just came out a few weeks ago) and Like AH, I've heard nothing but awesome reviews of the German made SuSe linux.

I would have to disagree with you Gaz about it being for advanced users. It depends on what exactly it is a person wants to do. If you're wanting to use it as a server OS, then yes, the learning curve is _extremely_ high. But for a desktop solution, it has everything.

I've been in charge of keeping my 60 year old mom in laws pc up and running on Windows. She's been infected with at least 5 - 10 virus' this year alone. I was sick to death of fixing it. So one day, I wiped her drive, loaded Mandrake 9.1 on there, and havnt looked back. It took her about a week to get comfortable with finding her word processor (OpenOffice), she loved the fact that she didnt have to worry about virus' or spyware, or trojans. Or that she only needs to update her system about once a month, and then I setup a cron job to do it automatically for her. She also like's the fact that it#s free.

AH, my setup is nothing too fancy. I have to physical drives, one with a small Win partition (yeah, I know, I still have a gaming addiction) and the rest is for Red Hat 9 (10 comes out in a few weeks whoo hoo!!) I've tried a lot of the major ones, Mandrake, Red Hat, Suse, Slackware, Debian. I downloaded the Gentoo 1.4 tarballs and have been considering giving that a shot, but that's a long install. I have an athlong xp 2200+ 512 megs of memory, radeon 7500, sound blaster live 5.1 player. two 60 gig drives. nothing too fancy, but Linux flys on it. I was running a http, ftp , pop3, Samba server for awhile, but got bored with the web site, couldnt think of any ideas. My next project is a small Linux media box. Have you seen those MS media boxes that have that special OS? I'm gonna build one of those super tiny case machines, slap a network card, video card with tv out, and a nice sound card, hook it to my home theatre so I can stream MP3's, and videos from my server pc.

anyhoo, I've gone on for WAY too long. Dude, Gaz, you should seriously give the Linux another shot and stick with it. Stick those users with the new Suse, or Red Hat that's coming out soon.

Grommer > sounds like a nice setup, I've been thinking about doing something like the media setup, but more along the lines of a massive fileserver for my home network, so i can stream my mp3s out to my other computers, or to my home stereo as you were thinking. On a side note, did you hear about the problem with Mandrake 9.2 killing LG cdroms? Its become quite the buzz lately.

yeah, I saw that on over at Slashdot. not exactly the best start for a brand new release eh? Yeah, the media idea is gonna be the next craze I think in home entertainment, I mean, that's really the only way that it can go. That's why you see MS trying to get a jump on it with their special OS.

Heya...

I use Linux, and I think it's great... For 'desktop' use and development use. I much prefer it to M$ Windoze.

Also... If your a developer (like me) you will love Linux, as you have many compilers and other development software - Including Perl, C/C++, Java, PHP, LISP and Pascal.

I actually run a dual boot system with Linux RedHat 8.0 and Windoze XP Professional, I only use Windoze as I am starting to do a lot of developing on that platform, as Windoze seems to be growing as a development platform. Need to keep up in this game, lol.

Anyways... I do really think everyone should give Linux a try! If your not a computing guru, don't worry... All the major distrobutions like RedHat, SuSe, Mandrake and the likes are very user-friendly to beginners.

Oh yea... Also I'd like to mention... Linux is 'free open source software' plus is very stable and secure compared to MS Windows and maybe even Mac OS platforms. I don't use Mac OS often, so I don't know how good that is is security, anyone here who knows about Mac OS and how secure it is compared to Linux, please enlighten us.

So... Final word... Try Linux!

PS. Didn't somebody bring out a distro called "Lindows"? Which is supposed to be very user-friendly.

Dude, Gaz, you should seriously give the Linux another shot and stick with it. Stick those users with the new Suse, or Red Hat that's coming out soon.

Wasn't my decision alas...was up to the bosses and the clients. Personally, I think it was coming into it's own...(plus, as a free license OS, we wouldn't have to pay MS, to program for it...) The hardware compatibility is what killed us...most retail type hardware (scanners, etc.) simply aren't supported on it... If they could get their act together on this...they could seriously take on MS, first through retailers, and then other business....but not currently....

Yea your right Gazrok...

Hardware compatibility is a problem with Linux. I had to go out a buy a new hardware modem for �50 just to go online in Linux, lol. But then a lot of modems these days are software based ones that rely on Windows software. So that isn't Linux's fault.

Printers and scanners are a problem though. Also graphic cards can be a problem. I used to have a NVIDIA Geforce 2 MX200 32mb PCI, it works fine in Linux... But many Linux distros like RedHat don't have the 3D drivers for the chipset, so you need to install them yourself (not a pleasent experience). So for gamers... Not good at the moment. (And yes, you do get games like Quake and Unreal on Linux)

So when Linux gets better at hardware compatibility, Linux will definately overtake Microsoft.

I dont know about completely take over MS as it would take a LOT to take that demon out. I couldnt agree more about the rest of the points made though. Hardware support, while not as good as MS, is getting there. I'm not into development much, but know when having to install things from source I dont need to go out and download anything. ATI and NVIDIA now support Linux cd drivers (for most newer cards anyways).

Ahh...games, my one and only true addiction. And the only reason I have a WinXP partition on my drive. Dude, if game developers would start making more native Linux ports for games, a TON of people would switch.

Gaz, one way to sell them to switch is to give them the TCO (total cost of ownership) compared to that of MS products, and I guarantee they would consider...plus, you'd be considered a hero for saving the company and clients a whole ton of money.

Hey MetalHead, you gonna switch to the upcoming RH 10 when it comes out? It comes with the 2.6.? test kernel. I've heard nothing but good things about this kernel. Much better hardware support, instead of emulating SCSI for cd burning it has direct burning features available. and people say it hasnt come a long way ...

Grommer...

I'm not sure really... I'm pretty happy with RedHat 8.0 at the moment. If I did change my Linux distro I would probably try out Slackware or Debian.

I will wait until it comes out and see what reviews it gets. I will probably get it though, and use it on one of my 'testing machines' first.

Linux has come a long way yea, lol. Do you know if RH10 will have MP3 and NTFS mounting support 'out of the box'?

My guess is no, they didnt have it with 9, so I doubt they'll include it in this version either. Who knows??

Hmm... True.

Not exactly a problem though... just download and install a couple of plug-ins and there ya have it. I still haven't worked out why they didn't. Wasn't it to do with some sort of licensing fears?

Anyway... You've got me excited about RH10 now, lol. Problem is... I can't download a copy easily - I'm still using a dial-up connection; so I will have to wait until it gets into the shops, or until some company like www.yourlinux.com... stock it.

I tested RH 9,

That sucked hard..

I couldnt even play Tux Racing..
(That had FPS of 0,5 i think.. with Athlonxp 2044 mhz @ 370mhz FSB and Radeon 9100.. 512 KHX RAM (2x256 PC-3700..) at 6,2,2,2 in a DDR DUALCHANNEL which is at sync with the FSB..)



No video playback and MP3s didnt work (When i got XMMS and MPlayer these did.. but the installation was far from easy..)

Also i noted that the RH 9 didnt support my EP+8 Rda+ Mainboard (nForce 2) or my Radeon 9100 128mb and Samsung SyncMaster 753s monitor at all..
(All text / fonts were quite blurry..)



It sucked big time..
(But had it worked properly and the had it had installers instead of 'tar's, i would have gone totally for Linux.. and gotten rid of Windows..)



[Edited on 30-10-2003 by FULCRUM]

Sorry to hear about that FULCRUM...

I must of been lucky... On all the computers I have installed Linux on those sort of hardware peices were fine - But then I have not ever used RedHat 9.0. RedHat 8.0 was fine to my liking though.

I can't play Tux Racer either, lol. It just has such a slow frame rate! Even the cursor is no way smooth. It didn't work with my Geforce 2 MX200 card, or my on-board intel grpahics chipset.

I don't really mind though... As I don't play PC games... I leave that to the PS2

If the games dont work..

It is a sing of that the OS doesnt support your GPU or MB CHIPSET..

So..



(There isnt any another option thanto uninstall the OS.. No point in using one that doesnt function fully!)

Btw,

R U Somekind of a Metallica fan?



I Also used to be.. i still have all the Albums (except the St.Anger or what ever..) as Orginals..



Metallica rocks bottom!

Well I love Linux...

Perfect for my development work.

Yea... I am a Metallica fan, lol. How did you guess?

I have most of their albums (kill em all, ride the lightning, master of puppets, and justice for all, black album, load, st anger)

Not sure what I like most. Probably Master Of Puppets or Ride The Lightning. Yea... They rock!!!

hey Fulcrum...dude, that sounds like the results of a possible bad install. it happens, no fault of yours. did you only try it once??

If you're a linux nOOb, I'd just suggest you install 'everything'

Redhat ships version 9 w/out MP3 support. XMMS offers the download you'll need.

For me, I use 'APT' more and more (Im sick of dependency issue! - APT helps!)
freshrpms.net...

More and more, companies are making their drivers available for linux. Nvidia offers a closed-source driver that I use.

Stick w/ it guys. Once you get your Linux system configured to your liking, it's complete bliss.