How bad does linux suck? (Poll)

[98EXL]

Thats because you aren't supposed to boot from the CD. Your playstation isn't a PC.

well the PS3 didn't recognize the application loader on it....should have no problem

 

[brauhaus]

i think you should try another Linux based OS, using just one and saying they all suck isn't a fair judgment...

I use Ubuntu at home and love it, I use Windows Vista and other than a few issues, I don't think it's that bad...

All OS have a learning curve, some are worth taking the time to learn, others require more time if you have it...

Try Ubuntu, it's done me well.

 

[jcarson83]

I'm try Kubuntu right now on a virtual machine. Its not that bad just a little tricky to get configured right. It may have been good to try gentoo first since it was really difficult now everything else will seem easy.

 

[Tankenator]

I'm try Kubuntu right now on a virtual machine. Its not that bad just a little tricky to get configured right. It may have been good to try gentoo first since it was really difficult now everything else will seem easy.

What kind of configuration do you need to do? any of the ubuntu derivatives are pretty much plug and play, as far as operation goes. Now if you have to set up the network and such there is a bit of configuration with that, but if you put a windows release on the same machine it would require the same setup. Printers (as long as supported--hp seems best there) are dead easy.

But i dont know if vmware allows usb access so that might be moot

 

[Kevin Dean]

Keep in mind that the virtual machine might change the experince somewhat.

On Ubuntu "proper" Hardy, my HP PSC printers literally install themselves. Even the LiveCD autodetects and configures my printer. A little bubble pops up and says "HP_Deskjet" ready for use!" and that's it.
<sarcasm> It's such a hassel to go to "Administration -> Printing -> Share this printer" when I wanna print from my Debian rig. </sarcasm>

 

[Tankenator]

Keep in mind that the virtual machine might change the experince somewhat.

On Ubuntu "proper" Hardy, my HP PSC printers literally install themselves. Even the LiveCD autodetects and configures my printer. A little bubble pops up and says "HP_Deskjet" ready for use!" and that's it.
<sarcasm> It's such a hassel to go to "Administration -> Printing -> Share this printer" when I wanna print from my Debian rig. </sarcasm>

My experience is very similiar with the cheepie hp from wally world we have here.

My wife was sick of the slowdowns and such with her machine (older 3gig pentium 4 with HT dell with 512meg of ram, generic intel onboard graphics) under windows, along with the spyware and virus' that my stepdaughter, i believe, in her browsing many of the anime sites she likes to frequent gets on to the machine. So i re-sized the windows partition and set up a hardy system on there--wireless was flawless with wicd (due to my purchasing a ralink based card) and the hp printer which only flashed its light under windows (due to unknown corruption of the software under windows) was recognized promptly after plugging it it under ubuntu. I even enabled emerald and ccsm for the eyecandy just for giggles and grins, and it works pretty well--not as well as my nvidia carded machine (and i have turned off the wobbly windows--that slowed the system down and gave tearing of the screen artifacts) but the transparency is there and AWN works like a dream.. She is pretty happy with it, as long as email and web works shes pretty much happy--and i was even able to keep the stepdaughter happy by getting flash working for youtube......

 

[jcarson83]

What kind of configuration do you need to do? any of the ubuntu derivatives are pretty much plug and play, as far as operation goes. Now if you have to set up the network and such there is a bit of configuration with that, but if you put a windows release on the same machine it would require the same setup. Printers (as long as supported--hp seems best there) are dead easy.

But i dont know if vmware allows usb access so that might be moot

Its a little tricky with VMware. First you have to get VMware tools installed and its not in the repositories. There are a bunch of permissions I had to change in order to do this. The auto update didn't work right. It froze ate 92% while updating the SSL. So I had to go in and manually do a apt-get upgrade thing. That fixed it. My mouse wheel didn't work so I had to do in to xorg.conf and fix that with a little tweaking. Its not windows but its fun. I'm not ready to throw my vista in the trash by any stretch but it reminds me of the dos days when I started playing around with computers.

 

[Tankenator]

Its a little tricky with VMware. First you have to get VMware tools installed and its not in the repositories. There are a bunch of permissions I had to change in order to do this. The auto update didn't work right. It froze ate 92% while updating the SSL. So I had to go in and manually do a apt-get upgrade thing. That fixed it. My mouse wheel didn't work so I had to do in to xorg.conf and fix that with a little tweaking. Its not windows but its fun. I'm not ready to throw my vista in the trash by any stretch but it reminds me of the dos days when I started playing around with computers.

Oh i can see this as a problem with vmware, not really one with the distro...But glad you had success with it. It'll grow on ya, and before long youll have a dedicated partition with linux stuff all over it

 

[billtzk]

I've been running Slackware for years, and I love it. Rock solid and easy to customize. I installed Ubuntu on a laptop for a family member, and I had no problems with it, but I prefer the straightforward simplicity and industrial strength and stability of Slackware for my own use. For anyone without Linux or Unix background wanting an easier transition to Linux from another operating system, though, I'd recommend Ubuntu as I think that distro has done a great job of incorporating ease-of-use features, especially when it comes to updating the OS and installing packages. Slackware is more of a nuts-and-bolts system builders distro.

 

[bsay]

Posting from my computer running Ubuntu. Linux is great!

 

[bernerbrau]

That you tried jumping right into Gentoo is your problem, man. Get yourself Ubuntu or Debian; there's plenty for your inner geek to mess around with, without having the amount of hanging-rope that Gentoo will provide.

And for the guy who said it's risky to try to run a business on Linux, my company has been running its core operations on open-source Linux architecture for ten years. We record, compress, track, transcribe, and deliver about 1000 phone calls daily, and our server's uptime is now approaching 800 days.

And best of all, we never had to pay a single cent in licensing.

 

[Yuri_Rage]

I love Linux. My desktop is an Ubuntu machine, and I use it every day. I really enjoy the ease of software development under Linux. Sometimes hardware setup is a PITA, but I'm willing to accept that. The lack of adware/spyware is a big bonus. My latest endeavor was to incorporate a few shell scripts into a php oriented weather page accessed through the Apache server that runs in the background and serves my home network. It takes about 5 minutes (as opposed to a single click) to get the same amount of weather information when accessed through all of the individual sources. Works great for a quick check as I'm running out the door for work. It defaults to my local weather, but I grabbed the weather over HBT's server for the screenshot. Late at night, some of the values get reported as N/A...probably a date issue on the weather.com site.

The screenshot took about 10 seconds to grab and upload thanks to another shell script along with the ImageBot plugin for FF3.

 

[Kevin Dean]

Oh snap, Yuri posted screenshots!



Not much going on in this (obviously "posed") screenshot. In the foreground, BeerSmith. Behind it, Debian Lenny running XFCE inside a KVM Virtual Machine while browsing HBT. Way in the back, Rhythmbox opened for gits and shiggles.

Now I'm tempted to really set up "something nice". Damn you, Yuri!

 

[postman]

I like Linux Ubuntu and Xubuntu. The latest version is so easy to install and remove with the Wubi installer. To remove it, just go to the add/remove program in your windows control panel. I personally think it is more user adjustable. You know and can control every program on there. Just getting started, it does everything you basically need, but delving deeper can reveal some hurdles to get over. Nothing is impossible with it, but somethings need research. Hey, it's free.

Also, every program is free! My two favorite appllication are Gparted for partitioning and clonezilla to clone your present computer onto another. But then again, I'm kind of techy. Just my two thoughts.

 

[98EXL]

I'm on a Fedora box now.....my buddy and I goto DSL running very light on an old machine for the garage this weekend, pretty cool

 

[Kai]

That's an excellent analogy, but it also illustrates a problem. Taking your analogy a step further, if I want to "turn the key and go" in my car or truck, I have a myriad of choices of brands, models, body styles, colors, options. If the motor vehicle world were like computers I would only have a choice between a Ford or a custom car. There would be no Chevy's or Toyota's or Ferrari's. Either buy a vanilla car from one company or you're on your own with your personal custom vehicle.

. . .

I think, though, that what many of us who use computers on a daily basis are crying out for is an alternative to Windows. If only someone could put a lot of resources behind a new, commercially distributed OS that would take the best of Linux, but would also be as easy to use and work with as Windows. I think people would buy it.

Um. OSX? Built on BSD Unix core, able to run many linux-family apps in X11, easily portable, more stable, frankly better and easier human design? You basically just described OS X. You've got to at least include it - your choices are a Ford, a Bimmer, and a custom car.

Obviously it has some of the same problems as Windows (enforced monopolies, exclusivity, lack of co-operation with open-source community), but it's a viable option, and, in my opinion, the obvious choice for people who are dissatisfied with Windows and disinclined to learn linux.

 

[Buford]

Linux can suck just as hard as Windows, but it's come a long way. It's a case of finding the right tool for the job.

I have four PCs at home all running XP (one dual-booting Ubuntu), but I just ordered parts to set up a small headless media server running Ubuntu Server. I just can't see how all the overhead of Windows would be in any way beneficial in that case. I have three routers at home that use Linux; two running Tomato - one as a primary router and the other as a wireless client bridge - and a hardhacked one with a 4GB MMC card using a customized OpenWRT build that I use as a mini file server.

My desktop at work is an ANCIENT install of Red Hat, and it can be a real pain sometimes. The newer server machines I've set up with Debian Etch and Ubuntu Server are a lot easier to deal with. Once you get the basics down it's not hard to use, especially with a modern distro. It's a lot easier now than it used to be, the old distros required a lot of tweaking and futzing with to get them to be even worth using on a desktop PC.

 

[TwoHeadsBrewing]

Are you using WINE to run BeerSmith?

Oh snap, Yuri posted screenshots!



Not much going on in this (obviously "posed") screenshot. In the foreground, BeerSmith. Behind it, Debian Lenny running XFCE inside a KVM Virtual Machine while browsing HBT. Way in the back, Rhythmbox opened for gits and shiggles.

Now I'm tempted to really set up "something nice". Damn you, Yuri!

 

[Kevin Dean]

Are you using WINE to run BeerSmith?

I am indeed. The irony is noted.

 

[bluefoxicy]

How bad does linux suck, or not suck if you wish?

I used gentoo for about a month to six weeks and then just gave up and went back to vista.

Gentoo: start at command line. Determine how to construct the system (desktop environment, compiler optimizations, installed applications). Manually configure your kernel. Manually configure the boot process.

Ubuntu: Put CD in. Play. Click "Install." It automatically resizes Windows' partition to be smaller; installs a boot loader that can still select Windows; installs GNOME and a bunch of requisite applications; and tells you to reboot.

Gentoo is not where you want to start my friend. If you're into that sort of thing Gentoo is awesome, and I've used it. I used to select the folks I wanted to get started on it, because they specifically wanted to do something like that. For everyone else, I hit them with Ubuntu; then there were many in the middle that wanted to do some work but couldn't handle Gentoo immediately, so I sent them on a Debian system (you learn more up front about how a package manager works that way, but that's it).

 

[98EXL]

only complaint so far (maybe I'm a tard) is no 64-bit Firefox install for Flash

 

[Yuri_Rage]

Another Linux plus:

I'm consolidating information across several drives with differing filesystems, totaling nearly a terabyte of storage. The drives are spinning like mad (including the one housing my OS), but Linux is handling the process sharing so well that I've barely noticed any degradation as I go about my normal routine of using FireFox, GIMP, and other apps. Most any Windows machine would be severely crippled by that amount of information transfer.

 

[Kevin Dean]

The drives are spinning like mad (including the one housing my OS), but Linux is handling the process sharing so well that I've barely noticed any degradation as I go about my normal routine of using FireFox, GIMP, and other apps.

I keep all of my data on encrypted LVM and the only time I've ever seen drive I/O become an issue was when I used shred on a 30Gb KVM guest. Overwrites on an encrypted volume sucks...

You're consolidating data, are you using LVM? That's been my latest "toy" and I'm absolutely smitten by it.

And finally, if you're up for some total freakout material for high drive I/O performance, ever set ext3's journal mode to "writeback"? Massive file transfers are blazingly fast but I'd not suggest doing it for anything other than kicks, since you essentially journal very little of your filesystem.

</geek spaz>

 

[Kevin Dean]

only complaint so far (maybe I'm a tard) is no 64-bit Firefox install for Flash

I'm running Flash here on Debian on AMD64. What distro are you using?

 

[jcarson83]

Another downside. I can't get VMWare tools to work for the life of me.

 

[sause]

only complaint so far (maybe I'm a tard) is no 64-bit Firefox install for Flash

I had the same thing happen to me on Ubuntu so I switched to Opera as a browser and it works comma as well as being faster.

 

[Tankenator]

Another downside. I can't get VMWare tools to work for the life of me.

Whats the issue?

 

[jcarson83]

I figured it out. But HBT will spoil you when it comes to quick responses. I posted the question on ubuntus forum and posted the answer and no one has responded.

VMWare tools has a bunch of permissions issues and I had to chmod +x to a bunch of files in order for it to do the initial config correctly.

 

[Philip1993]

The poll wasn't the slightest bit biased...

 

[Tankenator]

I figured it out. But HBT will spoil you when it comes to quick responses. I posted the question on ubuntus forum and posted the answer and no one has responded.

VMWare tools has a bunch of permissions issues and I had to chmod +x to a bunch of files in order for it to do the initial config correctly.

Im not familiar with the modern vmware, but that was the case 5 or so years ago with it.....good for you man....