So who here uses linux?

[Daniel.]

I searched and found a few REALLY old threads and decided against reviving them.

Anyways, who here uses linux?

I just swapped out my xp box at work for one running GooBuntu. It's basically 6.08 Dapper Drake with lots of Google tweaks on it.

I'm totally new to unix commands and whatnot, but I think it's been a good learning experience so far.

I'm going to try and install Beryl and kiba-dock tomorrow. :)

[decco]

I've got a linux box setup right now that I have linked to my windows PC via Synergy. It's all still pretty new to me. So far I like Debian the most. Beryl/Compiz is a lot of fun to mess with.

[BustedS13]

doesn't integrate with the rest of my electronics, can't do it. gotta run windows to stream media to the 360. xbmc can probably do *nix but i'm not too interested. also i occasionally play games
i might set my mom up on it though. she opens way too many email extensions, and all she does is internet/email

[decco]

You can stream media to the 360 using uShare, it works pretty well. As for games WINE can be a PITA sometimes.

[BustedS13]

You can stream media to the 360 using uShare, it works pretty well. As for games WINE can be a PITA sometimes.

yeah, if you actively transcode on your comp and use up resources. you can stream natively from xp/vista.

the only reason i'd ever touch *nix would be to do this to my mom's laptop

http://gengeek.es/wp-content/uploads/2008/02/momfriendly.png

[SochBAT]

Yea. Ubuntu/Xubuntu user.

Ditched XP a year and some ago.

I'm still really new to it, but being a forum junkie, its so effing easy to find shit.

I love how it seems to speed the living fuck outta old machines too. Legit. I want to try new distros, but i'm worried shit'll conflict and crash.

Took me a long while to get my Nvidia legacy video card to work, but then again, i JUST installed it.

Not gonna lie, i want more people on Linux. So much safer than XP. And the fact they can't fuck shit up without permission is amazing.

[decco]

yeah, if you actively transcode on your comp and use up resources. you can stream natively from xp/vista.


uShare doesn't transcode because it doesn't support it. Fuppes will transcode though.

[Helghast]

I jumped on the GutsyGibbon release.
Ubuntu Distro.

I tried it for 1 month.
ahhhhh..I was so confused with almost everything.
Ubuntu is supposed to be the one that made people switch too.

One day I'll dual boot it on the laptop, and mess with it more.
But for now, I got XP on such a lockdown, it hardly uses ANY Resources.

[SHIFT_*grind*]

I have a Mac at home and my work machine uses XP, but I've been working a lot lately on our Linux server (Ubuntu). When you're working with huge fucking text files (meaning, ~30GB huge), you can't exactly open them in Windows; all you can hope to do is post the files on the Linux server and write Perl scripts to pull out pieces of them and get some sort of clue about what you're dealing with =\

[BIZERK]

I've used Linux for the last few years and I love it, but not for personal use. We use it alot at school for the network/security functionality it provides. gotta love opensource!

[w0nderbr3ad]

I have the ubuntu 7.10 disks sent to me but I can't get the setup running on my desktop and I get lags and freezes during install. I need a new desktop to play on.

[jworks]

I actually want to run Linux on my computer I think its about time for me to ditch XP cause I don't want to go to vista. Is it hard to set up? (I have no experience in Linux, aside the fact that ubuntu is really awesome) How much space does it take with OS and typical programs and what kind of programs can I run from windows.

[BIZERK]

i would do some research before you wiped your system and loaded it up. Newer distro's that i've delt with need to be burned to DVD, but you could install older distros that you can load from multiple cds.

The main issue is if the distro of Linux you are getting will natively support your hardware without any extra installation. Linux isn't exactly like windows were you can just go out and get a driver and double click an .exe and have the driver installed. Sometimes it's easy and sometimes it takes some work and searching around forums to locate the files you need. The good news is that since Linux is opensource there will more than likely be alot of useful info for whatever problems you run into.

[SINxSELEKTAH]

i have my laptop dual booted for Win XP and Linux Mepis

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v111/sinxselektah/snapshot1.png

[SW20Racer]

bout to start messing with linux thanks to soooshi, gonna crack out on it until i get the asus. looking forward to it.

[SochBAT]

Actually, if you're down, you can use NetBootin (?)

You DL the program, run it, restart your comp, and it installs linux ubuntu via Internet. Thats what i did for my laptop. Its pretty easy to set up. Most things should auto-detect and give you medium performance. When you want to start really pushing things is when it gets a bit iffy.

I had the longest time settin up my video card, then i found a script i could use to use a graphic interface as opposed to constant coding.

gksudo dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg

A few minutes later, everything was running legit. So cool.

Also, Sw20, the EEEPC runs XandrOS. Its a prettier, more simplistic linux that isn't what ubuntu is. Its backbone is native linux, but again, you're going to be using the GUI more often. Youtube "DownloadSquad eeepc" and check it out.

[SW20Racer]

a simple user friendly interface is just what i need for now i dont really have the time for learning all the commands and stuff...as long as i can get on the internet, and utilize an external memory device for music (found a 32gig thumbdrive, can use it in the car too) and get sound to come out the speakers im set. linux just seems a bit much foreign, like when i started studying japanese as a second language, that shit was HARD and i wasnt comfortable with it, now its nice 'n easy. feel dumb after being spoonfed by windows for so long...

[Kn1ves]

can anyone provide links for me

i found an old laptop that i want to convert to linux to mess around with

(it currently has windows 2000 and is really slow ~500mhz)

just need a clean install of a copy of linux that'll delete everything off the harddrive and i can work from there. can anyone help me? :)

i don't really know what version to use

[Daniel.]

Sorry i cant help you knives. im still a noob.

the beryl project wiki page and host is down so i couldnt install it today. :(

here's the links for those that are interested.

http://www.beryl-project.org/

http://youtube.com/watch?v=ZD7QraljRfM

http://youtube.com/watch?v=xC5uEe5OzNQ

[SochBAT]

can anyone provide links for me

i found an old laptop that i want to convert to linux to mess around with

(it currently has windows 2000 and is really slow ~500mhz)

just need a clean install of a copy of linux that'll delete everything off the harddrive and i can work from there. can anyone help me? :)

i don't really know what version to use

https://launchpad.net/unetbootin

Download it, install it on the laptop. When you restart, it'll ask you questions, wipe the drive, all that jazz. You're left with a choice of Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Edubuntu, or Xubuntu to install. xubuntu is AMAZING for slow computers. so install it.

If you've got any trouble, PM/IM me.

[ALEXTHESUS*PECT]

i don;t understand 1 post on this thread!

[SochBAT]

Its all 1337 talk anyways.

We're all nerds =[

[Sir]

i got so many damn computers laying around, but never enough time to mess with it. I tried soft booting ubutu, didn't dig it much. I think I tried Suse as well. Nothing special for a bare system, but it worked great. Left it alone as I'm trying to get the Network+ exam done, after that, I'll play some more with it.

Even converted my Linksys router to a Linux :D

[SochBAT]

You should undo it. And run Super Tomato on it.

Boosting your Wireless Signal from 40% to 70% is effing legit.

[S14DB]

So, the closest us commoners will get to Goobuntu is http://www.google.com/linuxrepositories/index.html

[Helghast]

You should undo it. And run Super Tomato on it.

Boosting your Wireless Signal from 40% to 70% is effing legit.

Tomato blahblahblah

DD-WRT is where it's at.

..okay it's the same thing, but for some reason I prefer DD-WRT.

:love:

[Matej]

I used to be all about Knoppix haha.

[Nismosigma]

I ran my box on ubuntu for about 3 months last year. It wasnt the smoothest of transitions since I was a Windows guy, but I gotta say that it was alright. I liked some things and hated others. I loved the fact that any type firmware or software could be downloaded pretty easily. The only 2 things that ever bothered me were
1- No flash support... (i think it was flash, I dont remember, all I recall was that i couldnt watch vid's and some music offline wouldnt work)
2- Lack of a decent music player. I used Amarok and while the interface and functunality were great, it would constantly crash.

I guess with the new version of it, it would be less buggy and probably alot better than it was before, but im satisfied with what I got now. XP with SP3 and aston shell. Better than SP2 even in "beta" flavor.

[BIZERK]

if you just want to try linux out you can download the live media version and burn it to a DVD. then reboot with the DVD in the drive and have at it.

[S14DB]

I can't get a liveCD to work to save my life.

[SINxSELEKTAH]

I ran my box on ubuntu for about 3 months last year. It wasnt the smoothest of transitions since I was a Windows guy, but I gotta say that it was alright. I liked some things and hated others. I loved the fact that any type firmware or software could be downloaded pretty easily. The only 2 things that ever bothered me were
1- No flash support... (i think it was flash, I dont remember, all I recall was that i couldnt watch vid's and some music offline wouldnt work)
2- Lack of a decent music player. I used Amarok and while the interface and functunality were great, it would constantly crash.

I guess with the new version of it, it would be less buggy and probably alot better than it was before, but im satisfied with what I got now. XP with SP3 and aston shell. Better than SP2 even in "beta" flavor.

there's a flash plug-in you could DL for firefox and XMMS works exactly like WinAmp.

never been a fan of Gnome though, KDE works more like Windows

[SochBAT]

I couldn't get a LiveCD to work for me either. There were small things here and there that didn't work well out of the box, per say. The stock burning program ALWAYS stopped burning during the process, so i'd only have like, 15mb burned, and it'd eject.

Using K3B is solves that.

And for all you porn guys, you don't get any kind of virus browsing pr0n sites. No trojans or enema viruses you need to watch out for. Thats to cool part about open source. No one would want to try to hack or encode viruses because the source is available to EVERYONE, and deleting it is as easy as deleting a few lines of script.

Windows on the other hand...

[BIZERK]

linux isn't completely impervious to virus's and such. i think it's just people don't target linux as much, considering there is such a large percentage of machines out there running windows.

[Helghast]

I haven't gotten any sort of virus from surfing my german-midget-scat porn.

[BIZERK]

yeah, it's highly unlikely that you'd get one. if you search for linux viruses, you get very few hits. The ones I found were dated back several years.

[Matej]

The reason why Linux has very few viruses is because Linux developers wouldn't do that to themselves, they're in love with their kernels, it's scary. Many Windows viruses have been created by diehard Linux and Mac users, once I heard that Apple actually paid people to write Windows viruses.

[SochBAT]

I think its because its windows. You close something off, people will find a way in.

Destroying it from within = WIN.

PS. I can't see who repped me, so i don't know who to respond to. PM me if anyones got questions!

[S14DB]

Well I got Ubuntu Running. Had to edit a line in grub and the network came to life. Still using the generic video driver till I can figure out the exact video chip I have. Stupid Unichrome...

[SochBAT]

there should be a line of coding you can use to figure it out.

and if you can't get the optimized setting you want, you can always rely on the stock vesa driver. It its a failsafe to work.

To edit your resolutions, IIRC, the script is 'sudo gedit /x11/etc/xorg.conf'

but before you do ANYTHING to xorg, make sure you copy and make a backup. I forget teh command for that off the top of my head tho.

[S14DB]

I have it working is more of just getting the right driver so that games run faster.

[S14DB]

So, what are the must have applications and utilities?

[BIZERK]

to copy that file it would be "cp /x11/etc/xorg.conf /x11/etc/xorg.bak". you may have to use sudo to get appropriate permissions to do that.

[SochBAT]

AJ, depends what you want to do with it all.

For music, tons of folks use Amarok. I don't, because it doesn't have WMA format support.
Audacity for audio stuff.
GIMP is stock, but you can code it and make it GIMPShop, the PS of Linux, with is almost identical.
GTKPod for ipod linking.

There are other really amazing tools to have, and Gutsy Gibbon has tons already integrated in.

As for games, play Tremulous. Its legit. Its like Aliens v Humans.

[mr2man07]

heres my Ubuntu 7.10 gutsy gibbon.

Dual boot with Vista. I only use vista for my TV tuner as i don't have the patience to do the mythtv front/back end setup.

http://i153.photobucket.com/albums/s240/mr2man07/Screenshot.png

[S14DB]

I think I want kiba-dock and some widget/gadget program in ubuntu 7.10

Any good guides for kiba-dock ubuntu and a widget app?

[Daniel.]

I think I want kiba-dock and some widget/gadget program in ubuntu 7.10

Any good guides for kiba-dock ubuntu and a widget app?

wish i could help you out. im having a hard enough time trying to get beryl installed.

[SochBAT]

http://youtube.com/watch?v=-ARpBeMD-i0
Installing kiba-dock in Gutsy.

Daniel, hit me up on aim!

[SochBAT]

You should already have Beryl/CompizFusion on Gutsy.

in terminal, type

sudo apt-get install compizconfig-settings-manager

[chibo]

Been running linux on all of my machines except the gaming/CAD computer since 2000. First distro was red hat, moved to slackware, gentoo, and finally ubuntu.

My laptop(used 90% of the time) runs Ubuntu, the file server is FreeBSD (not linux, but it qualifies in this thread), and my gaming/CAD computer runs WinXP.
I wrote a quick tutorial on getting Ubuntu running on a Dell laptop with the ATi mobile card and centrino wireless. This shit is much easier if you've got a lot of time to read and experiment. In reality it's pointless for almost anyone to switch to Linux, WinXP is a far superior daily OS and it is very stable when maintained properly. I personally prefer Linux because of the control it gives me and doing shit in the console is quicker for me.

[SochBAT]

I'm really suprised to see how many actually use linux.

I really did think i was probably only one of ten on Zilvia that did.

[chibo]

Well I got Ubuntu Running. Had to edit a line in grub and the network came to life. Still using the generic video driver till I can figure out the exact video chip I have. Stupid Unichrome...
lspci | grep VGA
Paste the result.

[lflkajfj12123]

i remember installing ubuntu and thinking the shit was weak

so i tried doing archlinux but the shit was so complicated i eventually gave up

and then moped around eating food thinking about all the time i wasted

depressing evening that was

[S14DB]

lspci | grep VGA
Paste the result.

01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8378 [S3 UniChrome] Integrated Video (rev 01)

[SochBAT]

Super bump. Likely not to get any bites, but fuck it.

Gateway LT2104. Amazing netbook. Win7 Starter is fucking shitty though. Pretty, but not as refined as it should be. SOOOO, I installed Lucid Lynx on this bitch. Right off the bat, it boots faster, shuts down faster, starts EVERYTHING faster. I love that Linux takes what you've got and seemingly supercharges it.

The ONLY gripe i've got with 10.04 LTS right now is the rare occuring spotty wireless. It will randomly DC then reconnect a few seconds later. I've tried using karmic kernels and Jaunty ones too, but no dice.

Otherwise, shit is snappy as a motherfucker.

[Crondy]

I want lol

[tgd89]

Super bump. Likely not to get any bites, but fuck it.

Gateway LT2104. Amazing netbook. Win7 Starter is fucking shitty though. Pretty, but not as refined as it should be. SOOOO, I installed Lucid Lynx on this bitch. Right off the bat, it boots faster, shuts down faster, starts EVERYTHING faster. I love that Linux takes what you've got and seemingly supercharges it.

The ONLY gripe i've got with 10.04 LTS right now is the rare occuring spotty wireless. It will randomly DC then reconnect a few seconds later. I've tried using karmic kernels and Jaunty ones too, but no dice.

Otherwise, shit is snappy as a motherfucker.

I have the same problem with oneric on my asus, it's occasional enough that I haven't looked into it.

[Crondy]

I bought a laptop for 125 bucks with windows 7, videos are slow as shit and it doesn't have anything worth keeping. i researched linux and decided to give it a go, but the one install method i tried didnt do anything, i just installed it to a cd and tried to run it, that was a while ago and i gave up pretty quick because of no internet at the house.

anyone got a link to their favorite linux system? preferably ubuntu, just because i heard it was easy to get started.

all i want to do is have a quick connection, be able to play one or two games like bf3, and watch videos without having to wait a half hour to let it load. f that s.

[BustedS13]

I bought a laptop for 125 bucks with windows 7, videos are slow as shit and it doesn't have anything worth keeping. i researched linux and decided to give it a go, but the one install method i tried didnt do anything, i just installed it to a cd and tried to run it, that was a while ago and i gave up pretty quick because of no internet at the house.

anyone got a link to their favorite linux system? preferably ubuntu, just because i heard it was easy to get started.

all i want to do is have a quick connection, be able to play one or two games like bf3, and watch videos without having to wait a half hour to let it load. f that s.

if your computer can't play videos, i'm willing to bet it won't run BF3 very well.

[Crondy]

lol i know, that's why im trying to fix this pos.

[Razi]

I'm running Archlinux on one of my laptops for the heck of it.
It's not an easy install like Ubuntu though.

If you're running Linux, I doubt it'll be easy to install BF3 on it.

[Crondy]

yeah i saw a minimum requirements list somewhere and it said you need windows 7.. wtf? really?

[tgd89]

yeah i saw a minimum requirements list somewhere and it said you need windows 7.. wtf? really?

Thats because the game was coded for a windows platform (direct x, win api, ect..), put linux on the laptop, and build a desktop to play BF3. Gaming laptops tend to be pretty pricey.

[Crondy]

sweeeeeeet ill look into it, thanks for the heads up. best link to download ubuntu straight to the pc? windows is burning to the ground tonight!

[tgd89]

There are a couple different options for installing ubuntu, from here : Download Ubuntu | Ubuntu (http://www.ubuntu.com/download)

You can install it from a usb drive, burn it to a cd, or download their window's installer 'wubi'.

The last option however will not get rid of your windows parition, and isn't quite the same a dual booting ubuntu. My suggestion is to put it on a usb drive/cd, reformat, and install on a clean partition. This is assuming there isn't any information you need to keep (back it up otherwise).

[Crondy]

thanks for the link, but that's exactly what i tried doing. i installed it to the cd and when i put it in it just says blank cd? ill try the usb though thanks.

[tgd89]

Well you need to use something that can burn the iso image to a cd, just ordinarly burning the data on isn't the same. The usb should work fine too, there are instructions for both the usb and cd methods underneath the download section.

[SochBAT]

Update! I'm ran 11.10 Oneric Ocelot, but rolled back to 11.04 Natty Narwhal in UbuntuClassic. I hate unity. I understand its designed for more functionality, but its always annoyed the shit out of me because I felt it was too kiddish, huge bubbly icons, pretty ass graphics. Not my cup of tea. Anywho, just about every kink that plagued me before was remedied with a fresh install and updating the system.

No more spotty wireless, no more finicky power-manager, just really spot-on. The one thing that still isn't fully supported, to the best of my knowledge, is the multimedia SD card port, and even then, it doesn't matter much to me.

@Crondy, I suggest you download the alternate iso of Ubuntu, Alternative downloads | Ubuntu (http://www.ubuntu.com/download/ubuntu/alternative-download). Its a text-based installation as opposed to the fancy schmancy graphical one normally used. Download that, mount it to a USB and BAM! You're in business.

[Crondy]

alright thanks for the tips, does it erase my windows automatically or do i have to do it manually?

[Darren]

when you boot from the install cd / live cd, you can delete the info on the hdd if you want, or just use the available free space for whatever version of linux you're going to use...

if you use your freespace, then you can dual boot, and most versions of linux will setup a dual boot automatically with windows....

[sftmb]

just wanted to chime in here. I work as a Systems Engineer at a datacenter here in Seattle with a little over 200 servers all running CentOS, which is a RedHat based Linux Distro. Linux hands down is the best OS I've ever used. While some of the lesser known ones like BSD may be a bit lighter and more similar to traditional unix, the little things that new linux distro's provide put them over the top IMO. Getting wireless and graphics drivers to work no questions asked is nice. lol