linux users, what do you use?

[crioten]

just seeing how many people out there use linux...

what cool programs/utilities/software do you use?

any good tips/tricks to get started in it? im just diving into it b/c i think its pretty cool

[MakotoS13]

mandrake 9.2 and moove are my drugs of choice.

[midwest_racer]

mandrake 10.1

[crioten]

how often do you use linux?

i use mine right now just to do some simple stuff (just b/c i dont know too much about it yet...) but on the other half of my HD i run win2k...

[Kreator]

Debian 3.0
Not setup for personal use though.

[MakotoS13]

all my comps run XP pro corp most the time. i tinker with linux and use it to learn.

[bobafett]

i used to run mandrake 9.2 with KDE, now i am running RH FC3 because i am trying to set my extra machine up as a server.

coolest programs imo are GAIM GIMP and open office... all of which are available for windows i believe!

nah linux has alot of cool stuff, but it can be a PITA, i have to search for a how to just to accomplish anything! :P but its a lot of fun...

[m0rex]

Linux is used more for servers/programming/hacking/cracking/etc... For personal use it works but if you try to make some photoshop like graphics it sucks well atleast i havent tried it personally. Really linux is just reliable and hard to use but you can do a lot of stuff in it. Its not simple and easy to use which would make the Operating system another pos like MS but i still use windows though so if you are just hating MS then change or if spyware/slow computer pisses you off.

Now for tricks and tips theres a lot so just RTFM. Its not easy at first to use after a while you will get used to it and probably like it thats if you are trying to configure stuff and trying new things. Theres a lot of utilities my favorites are gcc and frozen bubble but theres too many really that i use a lot.

[Phlip]

What is Linux?

[Kreator]

yeah same here. Every PC i have sports an XP. The Linux machine is the server i use for learning and for hosting my website. I can hardly imagine how people use linux for everyday work machines. There is like no software written for it :-/

[m0rex]

What?!? Theres software its just hard to use/install/configure/use. Thats what makes people think there isnt any software most of it is also free.

[1101]

I havnt had a Windows on any of my computers for 2 years now.
Debian on my main box (apt-get is great)
Slackware on my other 2.

I've ran many, many other OS before
All the windows from 3.10 and on
MS-DOS 6
FreeDOS
DrDOS
BeOS
AtheOS
FreeBSD
QNX
Plan 9
and more that i've forgot about.

Linux:
Red Hat
Mandrake
Debian
Slackware
Fendora
Gentoo
and many more.

No software, thats just silly, debain has 1000's ready to apt-get and linuxpackages.net has many for slackware. If you adverous you can download the source from places like freshmeat.net or sourceforge.net and do the standard.
./configure && make && su -c "make install"
I'd avoid doing that as it doesnt leave a clean way of checking dependencies for furture software.

Getting started using linux, coming from windows, is a steep learing curve. The "man" command will be your best friend, use it.
www.tldp.org
www.linuxhelp.net
Are some good places to start.
When I was first learning unix I had the 2 computers, so I could look at help on the web on one and mess with the other. I was reinstalling weekly just messing with things till now I have box that still has slackware 8 running as a server/firewall.

[1101]

Applacations you cant live with out (atleast for me)
Openoffice.org
kate ( K advanced text editor)
Konsole
gcc (g++ specificly)
xgdb and gdb (core dumps, the CS students enemy)
firefox / mozilla
americas army (YES you can play games on linux) www.americasarmy.com
Wine for some apps ( never got half life 1 to fully work through)
gAim
gimp is just as good for 90% of people who use photo shop.
xpdf
xine (should try mPlayer, heard it's better)
xmms (it's like winamp)

[kazuo]

Mandarake and slackware is crap.

Yay for debian

GENTOO

SuSe is good too.

For those of you who dont want to be system administrators at home, or are beginners at LUNIX, get SuSe... or gentoo.

I only recommend debian for people with experience. Its not the most "user-friendly" thing out there. But it is the shit.

[MELLO*SOS]

Slackware is the shit.

There are TONS of apps for linux, go to freshmeat.net or sourceforge.com to find links to specific packages. If you don't see an app that you want, then it's your job to develop it and make it available to others... That's how it usually works with most open source platforms.

[1101]

Mandarake and slackware is crap.

Yay for debian

GENTOO

SuSe is good too.

For those of you who dont want to be system administrators at home, or are beginners at LUNIX, get SuSe... or gentoo.

I only recommend debian for people with experience. Its not the most "user-friendly" thing out there. But it is the shit.

woh there guy, mandrake is crap, more newbie oriented but Slackware.... such blasphemy should never be echoed.

Slackware derived from SLS, it's the oldest running linux distro, more "Unix like" then any other one, to do anything in Slack requires a text editor. Everything is much more streamlined and less bloated and BSD style init scripts kills System-V anyday in my book.

gentoo, for a beginer..... I dont see that happening. It took me 20 hours to compile KDE if I remember right. A true beginner should learn using a cd based distro such as knoppix because you dont run the risk of killing your windows partation and if you mess something up, just restart and "linux" is working again.
Another newbie friendly way to run linux is the kind that installs into a windows directory and you start it from windows basicly, I dont have much knowledge about this kind of setup as I've never done it before.

[mooboy]

knoppix std haha

If you guys want to tinker knoppix is the way to go.

[atom]

Debian and slackware to do actual work, if you want to just mess around with linux and have pretty shit on the desktop use something like gentoo, suse or mandrake.

I started out on slackware them moved to debian since slackware didn't have good package management at the time. If you have a spare hard drive I would just download as many distro's as you can and try them all. Find one you like and just stick with it.

[Kreator]

i meant more to the sense of retail software. Like games. How many of the games made for pc are actually transferred to the linux box? Most of these companies see no use in writing programs for linux as there is so little use of it in pcs compared to windows. That's what i meant.

As for the server side of things, i'm very satisfied with software provided. have so far found every program i wanted to have on my server available for debian.

[m0rex]

Ut04?

lasfjlsadfjlsblahblahblah

[crioten]

ive been doing some reading and there are like some kind of emulators that allow you to play windows games on linux...

but as to how well that works, i dunno...

i know this sounds lame, but im mainly using linux to learn how to do some basic cracking/hacking crap (i think its fun lol) and to set up a server that i can use as well

[Marty]

What is Linux?

I second this, what the heck are you guys talking about?

[1101]

Linux is an alternative UNIX like opearting system with the addition of a desktop environment such as KDE or gnome it fuctions much like Windows.

"Emulators" exist to run windows applications such as games on windows,
Wine and WineX (made by transgaming i think, costs money)
WINE is a recursive just like GNU such that WINE means "WINE is not (an) Emulator"

www.winehq.com
http://www.transgaming.com/

some must see tools for "hacking" (i use the term lightly)
ethereal
dsniff
hping (hping2, i cant remember)
hunt
any of the 802.11b scanners

and ofcourse
nmap

These tools are fun to use when you have 5 computers on your own network to mess with, obviously dont go scanning other peoples, etc.

[crioten]

linux is an open source operating system... pretty much its a free windows that doesnt crash :)

not very popular for everyday users, due to the fact there arent a lot of games/programs out there for it

mostly nerds use it :) and servers love to run it b/c it is very stable

edit: lol what he said too

[m0rex]

Im not a nerd and i use it. Well for hacking those tools are just almost mainstream tools. Ethereal sniffs packets, dsniff monitors data, hping makes packets, nmap scans ports and its not that illegal just like drifting; do it where you can just dont go drifting in front of the white house if you know what i mean. Dsniff is really fun when you can do an attack on a network called arp poisoning then you can just see all the passwords/usernames that go through the network.

Now the real fun stuff is where you make your own stuff and somehow if you want integrate it with some of these tools like making a program that sends out a lot of packets then analyzing it with ethereal or compiling an exploit and learning what it really does in ethereal. But these tools help alot when learning just set up some win98, xp, linux boxes and have some fun destroying the network. Everyone starts a script kiddie just ask a lot of questions and read a lot. I hate this stuff now its a waste of time unless you are deticated but it helps you learn a lot of new things along the way just dont try anything on secured networks unless you know what you are doing.

[1101]

Im not a nerd and i use it. Well for hacking those tools are just almost mainstream tools. Ethereal sniffs packets, dsniff monitors data, hping makes packets, nmap scans ports and its not that illegal just like drifting; do it where you can just dont go drifting in front of the white house if you know what i mean. Dsniff is really fun when you can do an attack on a network called arp poisoning then you can just see all the passwords/usernames that go through the network.

Now the real fun stuff is where you make your own stuff and somehow if you want integrate it with some of these tools like making a program that sends out a lot of packets then analyzing it with ethereal or compiling an exploit and learning what it really does in ethereal. But these tools help alot when learning just set up some win98, xp, linux boxes and have some fun destroying the network. Everyone starts a script kiddie just ask a lot of questions and read a lot. I hate this stuff now its a waste of time unless you are deticated but it helps you learn a lot of new things along the way just dont try anything on secured networks unless you know what you are doing.

Yeah the tools I posted are quite mainstream, I wasnt about to point him to the latest 0-Day Sploitz :D
Watching the code read / nimba outbrakes with ethereal was quite interesting for me through, someday I hope I'll be able to write software like these tools.

[crioten]

heh, you know i didnt really mean nerd :)

yeah, i dont think ill get too into it, i dont think i have the attention span to do it lol

[bladen]

I Run a primary Gaming machine with Fedora Core 3 , 2 Fileservers running Debian Sarge, and a custom firewall built using FreeBSD,

i run Neverwinter nights, Doom 3, UT2k4, and a few other new games on my system...

somewhat more complex then windows, but at least my games dont require cd's in the system to play.

Check with the game vendor website, there are plenty of games that windows versions will install to linux with some tinkering.

I personally dont like FC3 / RH distros, i have had nothing but problems with them , Debian is my *nix of choice...