Thread: Linux users

Originally Posted by Presently42

I'm quite disturbed by one commentor's encounter with Ubuntu. I am wondering from where the CD image was obtained and ef the installation was done correctly.

Got it from the Ubuntu website, and well how many ways are there to install an OS that it could be done incorrectly?

I had them send out a free CD which I haven't used, because at present I really can't be bothered with it again.

Not sure why you'd be disturbed at my comments unless your a programmer for Ubuntu, but hey each to his own.

I installed Ubuntu.

I use it every now and then when I"m in a hurry.

Problem is though:

Bitcomet is only on windows
Powerdirector is only on windows
games are only on windows

and I can't get WINE to run anything properly in Ubuntu.

Other than that great system. If I didn't have the above gripes I'd love using it all the time.

Originally Posted by kaptain_zero

PClinuxOS on the main machine downstairs and, if I just can't get a win app to behave under Wine, I'll fire up VirtualBox with a copy of XP inside... So far I seem to have to do that about once a year at tax time, just because none of the tax apps I've tried are willing to run under Wine yet.

Upstairs for the missus and meself I'm still using Mandriva Free 2007, I keep laughing every time my wife comes running because she got some email warning about viruses etc.... I just keep telling her to not worry and carry on as usual.

By the way, I'm really impressed with Virtualbox over VMware... it's just so easy to set up and get going... VMware is downright ugly in comparison but I guess once you figure it out it's probably just fine. I also find XP boots faster in VB that it does native for some reason and it's so stable I don't bother with dual boot anymore... I just make a shared drive so I can transfer stuff back and forth between linux and the VB OS.

Regards

Christian

Thanks Christian,

For some reason Virtualbox had escaped my attention. Tried it out this afternoon on my Fedora 9 box and it is truly excellent - I love the seamless mode

Seriously, anyone who has Windows software issues in Wine should give this a try. Here's a very user-friendly tutorial I found that makes setting it up a breeze. Once your windows virtual machine is added, installing windows software is as easy as mounting the CD/DVD drive, starting the virtual machine, and letting the installer do its job. I've had Office 2007 running on Fedora as if it was made for linux! Way too cool.

James.

LX_Emergency, BitComet is among the most contraversial bittorrent clients. I didn't really read into the article explaining why the "boycott" (the boycott was also against another particular bittorrent client that evades me at the moment) was started since I don't use it anyway. For my torrents, I use Deluge. I heard Ktorrent is also good if you use KDE or don't mind having another graphics toolbox running.

Also, almost all liveUSB will have a GUI, same thing with liveCDs. However, I doubt there are any live distributions that have a GUI on a floppy. Most distributions nowadays don't have a floppy install option, since most PC's nowadays don't have a floppy drive. I don't even have a floppy drive. Finding a distribution that still supports floppy disks is pretty difficult. The only ones I know are slackware and possibly debian. That's not to say you can't use a floppy. If you have the know-how, you can make your own floppy disks from a distributions iso. Some linux distributions will give instructions on how to do this.

OLD_SCHOOL, sometimes if a connection is too slow or the medium being downloaded is too big it will be dropped by either ISPs or even by the browser. For these people, Ubuntu (and a few other Linux distributions) offer a free service of providing free discs. Or you can order them from osdisc.com, and pay something like $2 for shipping and handling.

jockeys, I'm not sure what language you use, but there are other IDE's available under Linux such as Eclipse using a C/C++ plugin will add, as you can guess, C/C++. Personally I just use a simple text editor such as vim to edit my files and compile with gcc/g++. As for vpn, think you can trick your company into thinking you're using Windows? Sort of like a user agent string or something? I mean I gain access to certain sites I'm not allowed to have access to by tricking it into thinking I'm a googlebot.

Presently42, I wouldn't necessarily say Amarok is the best jukebox player out there... I've heard from many people that it's quite bloated, and of course there's the issue that it uses qt libraries. Currently I use exaile, but I've been thinking about using gmusicbox or something else.

Originally Posted by Jimbo

I've had Office 2007 running on Fedora as if it was made for linux! Way too cool.

You use Office????? I thought you're LaTeX person. I haven't been even considering wysiwyg for quite some years now - it's much easier for me to make it in LaTeX.

Ooh, LaTeX users as well? I'm abandoning the office suites as well, whether it's Microsoft Office or OOo. Well not just office suites, but word processors, spreadsheets, presentation software and everything that makes an Office suite.

So far I'm using LaTeX for text processing, I'll be using some kind of SQL database (or a text file) along with sage to replace spreadsheets, and then I'll be using a basic image software, probably feh, to replace presentation software (or make pdf slideshows using LaTeX).

Originally Posted by Berticus

OLD_SCHOOL, sometimes if a connection is too slow or the medium being downloaded is too big it will be dropped by either ISPs or even by the browser. For these people, Ubuntu (and a few other Linux distributions) offer a free service of providing free discs. Or you can order them from osdisc.com, and pay something like $2 for shipping and handling.

You mean like the installation cd? I have the Ubuntu one, which I had sent to me after I had my issues, but never used it.

I don't want to boot between OS' I just want one universal one. I would love to use Ubuntu over windoze but aside from the (what I call) major issues, some of my minor issues are, hardware incompatability, Camera, built in memory card reader, printer (though eventually got that working) and scanner etc. Oh and my language bar stopped functioning which is a PITA though can work past that issue.

I dual boot Windows XP with Fedora 8. I tried Ubuntu but it did not have many apps. I prefer open Office to Microsoft Office anyday.

Originally Posted by gugi

You use Office????? I thought you're LaTeX person. I haven't been even considering wysiwyg for quite some years now - it's much easier for me to make it in LaTeX.

Gugi - I am a LaTeX person, but I wanted to test out VirtualBox with whatever came easily to hand. Actually, I still need to use Office on occasion because everyone else I deal with seems to use it, and cross-communicating gets to be a real chore otherwise. OpenOffice is good, but it's not fully compatible with some templates my University requires me to use (entering student marks into their Excel spreadsheet for example).

I've been using TeXLive on my windows machine for a good while now (never tried MikTeX), and the standard teTeX that came with Fedora. Interestingly, teTex is on the way out and Fedora have switched to TeXLive as of Fedora 9.

James.

Old School, try downloading a copy of PCLinuxOS, it's about 700megs so it fits on a CD. I've found that out of all the more popular *nix's, PClos is the most complete and friendly to set up. The downloadable cd is a live cd so you can boot to it, bring up the desktop and check things out before you actually install anything. Most of the codecs are included so if you surf to a website, no need to go looking for this and that, just to play a little video etc.

I've tried the buntu disks here but none of them were capable of handling my hardware, PClinuxOS recognized them all and drivers were correctly installed. I do have one scanner that is *NOT* supported by Sane though there is a non included driver that sort of works if you compile it. I have more than one scanner so for day to day stuff I just use my little HP all in one printer/scanner/fax and my high end scanner that I rarely need anymore can be used by starting XP in VirtualBox. I really like how Virtual box can take direct control of a device connected to a USB port rather than trying to communicate with the device via linux and it's drivers.... this solves a lot of problems for the time being though I must say that hardware support is growing by leaps and bound for linux.

There are games available for the Linux platform, Valve is apparently being ported to Linux and there are some quite good native games as well... The biggest poke in the eye was UT3 who claimed to be bringing out a Linux client dropping the ball for whatever reason and the client never has shown up... too bad really, I quite enjoyed an occasional battle in UT2004 which did run just fine in Linux.

There are third party derivatives of Wine such as Cedega that specialize in getting Windows only games working in Linux.... These things are not free or open source but they do help getting linux users into the game so to speak.

Linux is here to stay and as more and more people make the switch, we'll see more and more hardware and software catering to us. Dell and HP both offer Laptops with Linux as an operating system, AMD with ATI have been releasing vast amounts of documentation to the Linux community this past year in an effort to get better support for it's hardware, Asus is now including an *instant on* linux operating system built into some of it's motherboards so you don't actually have to boot your machine up, just to check your email or grab the latest updates for your bios etc.

And I think most importantly, you don't have to be a Nerd or a Geek to run linux anymore... it's just as easy as Windows... no wait, I take that back, it's way easier to install than XP or whatever else it is that MS is flogging these days...

Try a copy of PClinux, if it works as a live cd, it'll work off your hardrive even better!