Author Topic: Linux  (Read 3318 times)

Offline BlackBox

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« on: September 14, 2006, 06:21:08 PM »
Well, I recently got sick of windows and decided to install Linux on my system.

I'm really liking it so far. I installed Ubuntu 6.06 - a good distro if you don't want a lot of work (which made it a good choice for a primary OS). It's based off of Debian so it uses the apt packaging system (which is one of the best IMHO).

Here's a screenshot of firefox as well as Xchat (irc) and XMMS (media player) running under Gnome:


Who else out there uses Linux (or another unix for that matter)?

Offline Leviathan

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« Reply #1 on: September 15, 2006, 04:58:25 AM »
Dont use it for desktop and dont use it much realy. Still a noob to linux.

Offline dm-horus

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« Reply #2 on: September 15, 2006, 07:09:46 AM »
hacker, you bast. i see your ubuntu is fully up to date. mine's been downloading all nite and wont be done soon at all >:o the only issue i have with linux is how delicate it is. since i dunno what im doing its easy to screw something up very badly. last time i tried to listen to a song on linux, i had to mount the disk the files were on and ended up deleting the bootloader and losing my dual boot! and the issue of internet. my modem happens to be an exceptionally tough one to crack for linux and i have to use connection sharing with another comp to get online, which usually has probs.

i notice that alot of distros tend to move forward well up to a point where there are still lots of "exposed wires" that noobs can "short out" easily. Ubuntu is one of the best distros ive ever used. the ease of updating and software installation is superb. im gradually switching over and even made a huge leap tonight as i got the nvidia drivers working nicely. now if i could just get the modem....

Offline BlackBox

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« Reply #3 on: September 15, 2006, 02:08:20 PM »
For modems there is some utility I heard about that will detect your chipset (I had to use this - I have a gateway branded fax modem but it uses a Connexant chipset. The chipset is what you need the drivers for (of course).

Check out www.linmodems.org, has links to various modem drivers and resources.

As for the downloading, I did change the repositories. (Edit /etc/apt/sources.list or just go to System > Administration > Software Properties). The defaults for me were us.archive.ubuntu.com - I removed the us. part on all of them (that way it just picks any mirror, it happened to be faster than just choosing the US mirror).

As for your problem mounting the filesystem, this is my guess what happened.

'mount' syntax:
mount -t <fstype> <something> <somewhere>

For the 'something' parameter you probably entered the device name of the actual hdd, not the partition, I.E /dev/hdb instead of /dev/hdb1
That will cause problems since it will be looking at the very beginning of the hard drive, I.E. the master boot record and the partition table, rather than going to the first primary partition.

Although there it should have failed since it would give an error about 'superblock not found', rather than attempted to write to the disk.

Use -o ro as a parameter if you want to force readonly mode (preventing that problem).

So far things are very good. I still have to install printer and correct video drivers (the X server is using vesa mode right now) but I should have everything fully working soon.

Offline Mez

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« Reply #4 on: September 23, 2006, 03:05:17 PM »
I use it. Will be using it far more as part of my Uni course, far easier to program on, far more powerful interface.

Linux is not always an OS for noobs. Ubunto is simple enough to be used by noobs and provides the command line interface so that users can learn more about linux.

Windows has progressed so that the interface is simple enough to be used, but lacks the power required for more intensive tasks like data processing.  Ever heard of a research project being housed on a Windows server?

Once you know enough about linux you can sometimes wrtie your own drivers or know where to find existing drivers and know what to edit to make them work!


dm-horus have you created the mount point i.e. created an empty directory to mount the filesystem on?

Offline dm-horus

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« Reply #5 on: September 24, 2006, 10:48:12 PM »
got my new version of ubuntu in the mail last week! it came a month sooner than my last version did.

BTW Mez, ive got everything running quite smoothly and I can actually make use of my distro. Im learning about drivers and im trying to get more in-depth and learn more about linux. Id just like to make sure im not doing anything to ruin my install ;)
« Last Edit: September 24, 2006, 10:49:53 PM by dm-horus »

Offline Quantum

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« Reply #6 on: July 07, 2007, 02:45:56 PM »
Linux is a good program


You can mainly use it for a server for hosting and creating a program


It is really has many uses you should have an xp comp too because Linux does have it's problems.  :D  
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Offline Mez

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« Reply #7 on: July 08, 2007, 02:12:49 PM »
You don't need a windows comp. Just virtualise.

The only thing I cant do on my Linux comp is play op2 and to solve that I use vmware, running XP home.

Just a minor correction Quantum, Linux is an OS not a program.

And you can use it as a full time desktop.  but yes it is better than windows at the majority of hosting task.

Offline BlackBox

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« Reply #8 on: December 15, 2007, 04:12:12 PM »
Figure I'll necro a topic that hasn't seen much light in a while.

I personally am using Linux again as my primary desktop OS and have been for the past few months. I have very few problems.

Like Mez, I still have Win XP installed in VMware for doing things like playing OP2. There is also a DRM music service that I sometimes use (Ruckus) that uses WM DRM and as such only works on Win XP / Vista. VMware isn't too big of a pain though, I download the files, unprotect them, and use the 'shared folders' mechanism of VMware to copy the resulting WMA files into Linux for playback.

Also a note on newbie-friendly distros. I personally use openSUSE 10.3 right now (having switched from Fedora 8) and think it is potentially a lot more newbie-friendly than Ubuntu, for a few reasons. First of all, the system configuration tools (YaST) are all in one place (compared with Ubuntu, they are assorted in the "Administration" menu and I don't think work as well, have as many options, or are as easy to use as YaST).
openSUSE also offers you the selection of window manager to use (GNOME/KDE/other).

Personally I think KDE is a lot more user friendly and resembles Windows a lot more than GNOME does. (For example, saving a file in a KDE based application to an unusual place like a flash drive or Windows partition: the window that pops up asking for the location to save the file to gives options such as "home folder," "storage devices," etc. Clicking the storage devices option gets you to a list of the mounted volumes in the computer. In GNOME I remember having to manually browse to /media/<volume title> all the time, which takes extra time and most newbies to Linux won't know to do this).

Hardware support: openSUSE detected all of the hardware in my laptop correctly except for the phone modem (which I don't care too much about, I don't even have a land line telephone so I couldn't even use it if I wanted to). I did have to install the binary nvidia driver for 3d support, as well as the firmware for my broadcom bcm4311 wireless card. Although I know how to do both of these manually I wanted to see about some sort of automatic installation method (so I could easily receive updates, etc for the nvidia driver). The documentation on the openSUSE website is 100x better than the ubuntu documentation. Typed nvidia into the search function on their wiki and up came a page with a "one click install" link that automatically loaded YaST and installed the necessary package. Likewise there is good documentation on how to install the broadcom firmware so that the wireless card may be used, and same for installing proprietary codecs such as mp3, wma, etc (just ran a similar package and the correct repositories were automatically added to YaST and the correct packages selected for installation).

That and SuSE uses RPM instead of deb for its packaging format... which makes it easier on most users since most binary software for linux is distributed in RPM (if not distributed in just a plain tar.gz file). This makes it easy to install.

Anyway.. that's my current experience with Linux.. few problems so far.

Offline Mez

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« Reply #9 on: December 16, 2007, 11:06:03 AM »
Yep I agree with you there Blackbox.  I run openSUSE 10.2, because a, upgrading is a hassle and b, don't fix it if its not broken (It would probably take me 3 days to reinstall everything how I like it anyway).

Only reason I can see for not auto installing nvidia drivers and the broadcom firmware is because they are not open source.  Perhaps the retail edition (dual double dvd) might have them?

Offline BlackBox

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« Reply #10 on: December 16, 2007, 12:19:26 PM »
Yeah, I think thats the whole reasoning there (for pretty much any Linux distro). Though the Broadcom firmware legally can't be included with the distribution (they might be able to get away with including the driver file from the OpenWRT project and then having the install process automatically extract and save the firmware from it), since Broadcom doesn't allow redistribution.

Nvidia allows redistribution of their drivers but most distros consider it to be against the whole open source policy.

Offline Leviathan

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« Reply #11 on: December 16, 2007, 02:46:38 PM »
I use CentOS on desktop.

Offline Ro@m

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« Reply #12 on: December 18, 2007, 03:31:33 PM »
I use dyne:bolic besides windows xp...
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