well gonne redo my whole comp soon and hearing so much about linux makes me curious.... i have al my windows software and have reloaded everything before (erased HD and started from scratch) and it helped alot... so do explain

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See my lame film creations..
See F-I-E-R-O's Fiero store!

Best thing to do if you want to try out the linux experience is download, burn, and run one of the livecd versions. They keep your existing os intact (if you have one ), and load up the os off the cd. You can try all the apps (they can be a bit slow loading sometimes), and if you soemhow manage to screw everything up, you just reboot. It's nice to try out a flavor of linux before you take the time to install it. There are a number of good ones, with varying desktop managers and productivity apps. Common things are mozilla/firefox, openoffice.org, etc. There are a few good package managers out with graphical user interfaces now as well, which make keeping your os and software updated a lot easier than it was in the past.

Check out Knoppix for one of the best liveCDs in my opinion. I believe ubuntu has a livecd out as well now. I'm currently on gentoo, and have used a number of others in the past (to varying degrees). I am far from the most knowledgeable linux person on the forum, but I am learning and enjoying the experience

Linux is the little guy in the Peanuts cartoon with the blanket right?

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Whade' "The Duck Formerly Known As Wade" Duck
'87 GT Auto
'88 Ferrario

I have a few cd's of Ubuntu if you want to try it. It comes with a live cd as well as an install cd. Gentoo is the geekiest version IMO and not newbie friendly.

Suse has a very good LiveCD as well.

quote Originally posted by Cliff Pennock: Suse has a very good LiveCD as well.

That's how I got my feet wet with Linux, after a few years of being brainwashed by the Mighty "MS"


Having the whole OS on a CD is kinda nifty.

Download a few, try them out, pick your favorite flavour(s), then dance the Linux Lambada!

is it "user friendly"? for someone like me who is only moderately computer knowledgeable?

If you want to try it as in play with the browsers, try some games, open some docs, play with the apps that are on there, it's very user friendly. There's even some windows managers that have themes to make it looks like windows (98,2000,xp), if you so desire. Things start to get unfriendly when you want to deviate from the norm (install nonstandard packages, change the configuration, etc). The good news is you only have to mess with that if you want to. I had a roomate in college whose windows os got hosed near the end of the semester. I gave him a Knoppix livecd and he was able to do his papers, browse the net, and chat on IM. He's not very computer literate, and he managed fine

Hmm explain Linux....

Well if Windows is Ford, Well known and comfortable,
The Linux is Ferrari, Sleek, Sexy, Powerful and oh so exclusive.

Anytime I need a machine to be rock solid stable, and running 24/7 for years on end.. I install Linux.

[This message has been edited by 8Ball (edited 06-12-2006).]

Works great on servers as a command line GUI (I use it daily), but for everyday use, I would suggest to stick with windows..

If I ever switch, it will be to AROS.

www.aros.org

I'd say give one of those "liveCD" versions a shot. I tried "PClinuxOS" on a spare PC. I ran it live from the CD and then got brave and installed it on a XP machine with a second dedicated drive for Linux. Figured out the dual boot OS which took some time but got it to go.

It took me a month to get a sound card and driver to make a sound. The modem was fun too. Scrap the software modem and go for a external hardware modem. US Robotics for cheap on ebay. Think I just paid 9 bucks for a 56K v90 plus shipping. Finally got linux to dial the modem.

The most difficult part of Linux for me is the terminology. Some or most of the menu names give you little clue as to what they do. Good luck once you get the hang of it.

Last night I downloaded a antivirus program; AVG?#$. Think it was 11 mb and did it dialup style. It downloaded the whole thing and acknowledged so but it never told me where it put it.
Search did'nt help either or the program that installs packages..??? I'm still looking.

Bottom line for me is I was more comfortable and able to learn raw DOS 2.11 in the 80's with a completely black screen with a cursur and no PC computer experience whatsoever.

It depends what you want to do with it. If you want an easy, (mostly) no hassle system then SUSE is probably your best choice. Debian (which Ubuntu is based off of) is extremely stable, but it isn't updated as much either. Both of these distros are pretty good with automatic hardware detection (SUSE is a bit better from what I've experienced) and they both have graphical package managers to install programs and update the system. Debian is more of a "normal" Linux distro in that you do a lot more from the command line than SUSE.

The basic commands are all the same for each distro, like to switch folders and move files and stuff like that. Again, the main differences come in the package management. For example to get a package from Debian you use apt:
> apt-get install mozilla-firefox
It then grabs the package and installs it. Everything is downloaded through APT, including the base system when you first install it (they have both net install cds and full iso downloads for most all distros). Where Gentoo differs is that it uses portage as it package manager.
> emerge mozilla-firefox
The entire OS is also pulled through portage. The main downside to Gentoo is that everything is compiled from scratch, rather than just installing the binary package. The base OS install took about 8 hours to complete on my 64 bit machine. My old Athlon took almost 24 hours. They say this allows you to tweak the programs exactly for your system, but I haven't really noticed any differences in speed or anything like that.
SUSE uses YaST to manage everything. It is completely graphical, and you can manage everything from screen resolution to package installation to hardware. SUSE can also use RPM, which is a common package manager first used by Red Hat if I remember right.

I currently have Debian and Gentoo on my computers at home and SUSE on my laptop. I like Gentoo because it forces you to learn everything right down to the smallest detail, but yes, it is also very annoying and can becoma a pain in the backend at times. I find myself using the SUSE system the most. It basically comes down to this... in order to use Linux you will have to learn new stuff. It just basically comes down to how confident are you in your abilities to read. If you can't find it in a man page (help file) then find a forum and post a question.
http://forums.suselinuxsupport.de/index.php
http://forums.gentoo.org/
http://forums.debian.net/
You can't beat the Linux community... well except for maybe the Fiero community

Hope my endless rambling help you out some.

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[This message has been edited by wikid_one (edited 06-12-2006).]

ohm not sure if anyone mentione dit before, but GIMP is kinda nice (graphics package) check out that puppy once ya install yer favorite species of penguin.

quote Originally posted by FieroRumor: ohm not sure if anyone mentione dit before, but GIMP is kinda nice (graphics package) check out that puppy once ya install yer favorite species of penguin.

I believe GIMP is still available in Win32 format, also free. A lot like Photoshop, I've used it in both environments.
Myself, I don't mess with dual boot, I have HDD drawers, one with XP, one with Mandrake 10 (Now Mandriva), just shut down and switch hard drives in minutes. These days with the removeable drawer at $15, a 200GB drive under $100 it's cheap.
I'm no expert in Linux, I just dabble, but I'm at the point now that I could make a total switch. USB support is mature, device drivers are getting much better.

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'87 GT, daily driver
'78 Toyota longbed, parts runner
'84 F250 Xcab, BIG parts runner
'87 30' Kit Classic TT, living in it.

Just use Vmware to create a virtual machine, in this case it will run Linux inside the Windows environment so that you can hack computers using Linux and Windows at the same time and will operate together off your network card.

I posted a pic of my Suse disk a while ago... Ah, found it:

quote Originally posted by wikid_one: It depends what you want to do with it. If you want an easy, (mostly) no hassle system then SUSE is probably your best choice. Debian (which Ubuntu is based off of) is extremely stable, but it isn't updated as much either. Both of these distros are pretty good with automatic hardware detection (SUSE is a bit better from what I've experienced) and they both have graphical package managers to install programs and update the system. Debian is more of a "normal" Linux distro in that you do a lot more from the command line than SUSE. The basic commands are all the same for each distro, like to switch folders and move files and stuff like that. Again, the main differences come in the package management. For example to get a package from Debian you use apt: > apt-get install mozilla-firefox It then grabs the package and installs it. Everything is downloaded through APT, including the base system when you first install it (they have both net install cds and full iso downloads for most all distros). Where Gentoo differs is that it uses portage as it package manager. > emerge mozilla-firefox The entire OS is also pulled through portage. The main downside to Gentoo is that everything is compiled from scratch, rather than just installing the binary package. The base OS install took about 8 hours to complete on my 64 bit machine. My old Athlon took almost 24 hours. They say this allows you to tweak the programs exactly for your system, but I haven't really noticed any differences in speed or anything like that. SUSE uses YaST to manage everything. It is completely graphical, and you can manage everything from screen resolution to package installation to hardware. SUSE can also use RPM, which is a common package manager first used by Red Hat if I remember right. I currently have Debian and Gentoo on my computers at home and SUSE on my laptop. I like Gentoo because it forces you to learn everything right down to the smallest detail, but yes, it is also very annoying and can becoma a pain in the backend at times. I find myself using the SUSE system the most.

<-- see now im clueless i know basics. thats about it.... im more than willing to learn though. so in all reality, what makes linux better? speed? interface? safety? why do YOU prefer it?
so will adobe photoshop work on it?
what about a video editing program?
or u torrent?
can i program millions of toasters from around the world to permanently burn all the bread put into it therefore causing mass confusion and ultimately world domination?

sorry got a bit off on that last one...

continue ....

Natively Photoshop will not work on it, but GIMP is just as good as photoshop. As for other apps, there is a linux equivilant for everything you can imagine, and pretty much anything you could possibly need is free.

I tried Linux. All I'll say is that it gave me a whole new appreciation for the Windows GUI.

quote Originally posted by Blacktree: I tried Linux. All I'll say is that it gave me a whole new appreciation for the Windows GUI.

You must not have been running the new Novell XGL Desktop

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7910243476273161565&q=xgl

quote Originally posted by paulcal: I have a few cd's of Ubuntu if you want to try it. It comes with a live cd as well as an install cd. Gentoo is the geekiest version IMO and not newbie friendly.

kubuntu is so much better than ubuntu. GO KDE! and how is gentoo geeky? it only took me 2 days to get it from livecd to kde desktop

quote Originally posted by 8Ball: You must not have been running the new Novell XGL Desktop

I want, I want!

Linux is still basically a hacker's OS.

There's plenty of good software for it, and the claims of stability are not overstated. But if you intend to do anything serious with it, you may rapidly find yourself waist deep in user's guides.

*nix OSes are very powerful but the power is a double-edged sword. You can issue a single command which will wipe out your entire hard drive in a matter of seconds. There are few or no protections because the OS is built around the concept that the root password (ie the administrator) knows what he's doing and won't issue a boneheaded command, like switching to \root and typing rm \*

I used to work for a computer service company and I was their resident Xenix guru. Linux is better than Xenix ever was, but I still prefer to use Windows. It's got the software and the driver support; it's stable enough for my purposes.

If I was putting together a machine which had to work 100% all the time (say, a web server or something) I would fit it with some variety of Linux.

Ed

quote Originally posted by edhering: *nix OSes are very powerful but the power is a double-edged sword. You can issue a single command which will wipe out your entire hard drive in a matter of seconds. There are few or no protections because the OS is built around the concept that the root password (ie the administrator) knows what he's doing and won't issue a boneheaded command, like switching to \root and typing rm \* Ed

actually it is rather hard to wipe your hard drive. unless you are skilled in unix, you normally wont be able to switch to superuser or wont know what the exact sequence of commands will be

quote Originally posted by edhering: and typing rm \*

Actually, that would be rm -rf \*.

Ah, remember the good ol' DOS days... Let me quote a support call I often got during those days:

Client: "Hello? Yes, it seems there's something wrong with my computer, all files have been wiped!"
Me: "Why, what happened?"
Client: "I wanted to clean my harddisk a bit and wanted to delete a directory, C:\OLDSTUFF, but after I deleted that directory, all my files were gone!"
Me: "So what did you do?"
Client: "Well from the root directory, I did cd oldstuff, then I did del *.*"
Me: "Sounds good to me..."
Client: "Then I wanted to check if all files indeed have been deleted an did a dir"
Me: "Okaaaaay..." (beginning to suspect something)
Client: "I noticed that for some reason, two files were left: '.' and '..'"
Me: "You didn't..."
Client: "So I deleted those manually by typing del . and del .."

LOL!!

I remember one instance.

Me: are you at the DOS prompt and there is a flashing cursor right?
Customer: yes.
Me: ok type in CD space DOS
Customer: clickity clackity Okay..
Me: Press enter
Customer: Oh... It says bad command ON file name.
Me: Humm... you typed in CD then hit the space bar then typed in DOS right?
Customer: Uhhh.. ckickety clackity... yeah.

hmmmmm..... maybe im not computer literate enough to be doing this whole linux thing....

quote Originally posted by Cliff Pennock: ... Client: "Then I wanted to check if all files indeed have been deleted an did a dir" Me: "Okaaaaay..." (beginning to suspect something) Client: "I noticed that for some reason, two files were left: '.' and '..'" Me: "You didn't..." Client: "So I deleted those manually by typing del . and del .."...

LOL, thanks Cliff! That made my morning.

BabadooFunk, don't let yourself get overwhelmed at the thought of learning Linux. It's just a learning process. You had to learn how to use Windows, right?

If you're not ready to take the plunge into Linux, just try one of the Live CD distros like Knoppix. http://www.knopper.net/knoppix/index-en.html You can use it to play around, and get the feel for Linux; without needing to install it on your hard drive. Download it, and give it a try.

quote Originally posted by 8Ball: You must not have been running the new Novell XGL Desktop

That wasn't out yet. Besides, I was having a hard enough time trying to get the OS (ubuntu 5.1) to run my monitor at anything beyond 1024x768@60Hz. In Windows, I run it at 1280x1024@75Hz. Linux, in comparison, looked like a flickery cartoon show. And that was with the latest nvidia video driver (for my 6800GT).

Plus, constantly using the command prompt drove me up the wall. In a week of playing around with Linux, I think I used the comand prompt more than 10 years of using Windows.

I won't even get into games and multimedia stuff.

quote Originally posted by mysticfire6602: actually it is rather hard to wipe your hard drive. unless you are skilled in unix, you normally wont be able to switch to superuser or wont know what the exact sequence of commands will be

But aren't you given root access when you're running Linux on your own machine? Besides, if my years as a computer tech taught me anything, it's that people can be VERY creative when it comes to stupidity.

Anyway, Cliff was right about the command line switches for RM. Most of my work was in installing the OS and setting up users, not basic file maintenance.

Ed

PS No, actually, I just wanted to make sure no one actually DID that. yeah, that's the ticket....

quote Originally posted by edhering: But aren't you given root access when you're running Linux on your own machine? Besides, if my years as a computer tech taught me anything, it's that people can be VERY creative when it comes to stupidity.

actually you are right. you ARE given root if you choose a root account when making one. i was thinking of having to switch to superuser to install and uninstall stuff. opps, lol

Actually, some of the more 'friendly' distros have you run as default as not root, and only sudo when you need to do things. That way you can't get into too much trouble without knowing you have full privileges.