Both my kids and my wife use Ubuntu at home. We have two PCs on Hardy Heron and one on Gutsy Gibbon. The Gutsy PC will probably go to Hardy soon because Gnome Rhtyhmbox stopped working with my daughters iPod a few weeks ago and GTK-Gnutella isn't maintained for Gutsy anymore so its a little out of date.
I have the only Windows PC in our household, well its not really mine - it belongs to my employer.
I also have a web server running something between Edgy and Fiesty... Apache2, PHP5, mySQL.
I'm a Windows expert and more or less a beginner to intermediate level Linux user and I really don't see how anyone would want to screw with Windows, Ubuntu is loads better. I wouldn't use Windows at all except that is what my employer pays me for.
Bought a new Dell Inspiron laptop preloaded with Ubuntu Intrepid Ibex for my wife and it arrived this week. 2 GB memory, 2GHz Pentium T4400, 15.6" glossy LCD screen -- got it complete and delivered for only $460 and change. Its really sweet and she loves it. It blows my Windows Laptop away which is remarkable considering I've got a much faster processer than she does. Windows sucks, but I get paid to use it so I can deal - lol
My son was impressed with her Intrepid Ibex and he wanted an upgrade, so we decided to load Jaunty Jackalope on his PC and test that out. The whole process of backing up his files and work, downloading and burning the Jaunty CD, rebooting into the install, repartioning his hard drive, and installing Jaunty took under an hour. Try doing that with Windows. It would have taken less time than that, but the installer appeared to get "stuck" at 82% "Scanning the Mirror...". and it took me a few minutes to realize it was going to take all night if we waited because the default Ubuntu mirrors are painfully slow on occasion, so I just went to the router and pulled his network cord out so it would time out and continue. The install was complete and ready to reboot before I could walk back to his computer. Rebooted his computer, put the cable back and added the Jaunty Restricted pacakges from universe so he could have Flash, Java, mp3, DVD and all those goodies and enabled the Restricted nVidia drivers and it was rocking.
I'm going to setup a local mirror on one of my machines or change to Georgia Techs mirror and install a Jaunty Jackalop over my other Hardy Heron and my Gutsy Gibbon this weekend. Once I have a faster mirror setup instead of the default us.archive.ubuntu mirror which is painful slow, I should be able to install and completely update both machines in 30 minutes or less.
And anyway, getting back on the subject of Dell and Ubuntu -- I highly highly recommend you give them a try next time you buy a computer. Their custom distro of Intrepid Ibex has Java, DVD MP3, Adobe Flash, Compiz and everything enabled right out of the box.
For those looking to use old machines, check out Damn Small Linux (DSL). It can be installed as a standalone OS for under 100 MB. It has my 512MB 4Gb SOny Vaio from 1994 running just as fast as my work computer for word processing and internet access and any regular stuff. Sweet stuff.
For those looking to use old machines, check out Damn Small Linux (DSL). It can be installed as a standalone OS for under 100 MB. It has my 512MB 4Gb SOny Vaio from 1994 running just as fast as my work computer for word processing and internet access and any regular stuff. Sweet stuff.
Seconded! DSL is easy to use once you get used to the spartan interface. It's great for those people with old computers that just want to be able to use email and internet.
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Fermenting: ESB Kegged: Extra IPA, Brown Ale, American Wheat, Blackheart Stout Coming Up: Dunkleweizen, 3C Pale Ale
Tenchiro - At least I'm not the last holdout still using Fedora, on version 10 now looking at moving to 11.
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In Primary: Belgium Chimay clones.
In Secondary: Braggot, pale ale, end of the world white.
Conditioning: Mead, Cider, braggot, Belgium Wheat.
On Tap: Clones, Chimay Blue, Red, Porter, malted cider.
Bottles: Far, far, too many to list.
I use CentOS because that's what I run on a majority of my servers. Nice having the same EVERYTHING so I can have my devel test environment wherever I go.
Got into RedHat back in '98 with release 5.0 and I've used debian, gentoo, SuSe and Slackware but always end up back with RedHat releases. Now it's CentOS. *shrug*
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White Dog Aleworks and Drafthouse
This may come off as a little bit snobbish, but after using RedHat for so long, Ubuntu just doesn't do it for me. I'll still take it over Solaris, but that isn't saying a whole lot (enter potential Solaris advocates). I like having full root access and you just can't do it with Ubuntu. Superuser is not the same as root. It's great for a novice Linux user since it protects you from potentially wrecking the OS, but it just has a nerfed and sterile feel to it.
Then again, if I'm using a Linux/Unix OS, I'm rarely using the GUI and Ubuntu seems to have been developed around it. To each his own.
FWIW - Vista is a piece of crap transitional OS. I highly recommend not using it, unless you loved the way ME worked.
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Poor planning on your part doesn't necessitate an emergency on mine.
I like having full root access and you just can't do it with Ubuntu.
Uh, yes you can get full root access - its just not the default. I can setup my Ubuntu machines to use a root user just as quickly as I can setup your RedHat machines not to and make your red hat machines do it the way Ubuntu does.
But the question really is why ? Ubuntu's way is just better as it doesn't encourage people who don't really know what they are doing in the first place to think that they need to have full root access.
Quote:
Superuser is not the same as root.
Strictly speaking of user privildge, yes it is exactly the same thing. Now as superuser you won't have a /home/root hierarchy setup by default unless you take steps to create it yourself, but doing that would encourage you to run as root now wouldn't it ? Next thing you know people would be saying stupid things like "I like having full root access".
Why the butthurt? No need to get hostile. You like Ubuntu, I don't. I don't use RedHat everyday, but when I do, it's on a network security level. That means I need full root access to lock down/securely configure the system. All I'm saying is that I feel like Ubuntu is a Linux OS for the Windows user. It's always in self preservation mode.
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Poor planning on your part doesn't necessitate an emergency on mine.
Linear Mode
