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I want to learn Linux since I want to breakaway from the stanglehold of the Wintel Cartel. With Micorsoft Windows XP and Office XP limiting installation to one PC per licensed copy and Intel still demanding higher prices for their CPU's, in comparison to what AMD has to offer in their Thunderbird and Duron chip's, I was hoping to find some relief in Linux.
My Experince with computers starts back in 1983 with a Commandor 64. Since then I have
progressed through DOS and ALL of the Windows platforms. I am a Computer Consultant and own my owm company, building and repairing PC's, and also teaching computer classes at out local college. So you would think that learning Linux would be fairly easy.Instead I have found a Linux community comprised of multiple distributions, each claiming to be better than the other. Two desktops, KDE and Gnome, in which to simulate a GUI interface over X. An almost impossible hardware configuration problem based on the 'luck of the draw', whether any phepherial combination will work or not.
And this is the operating system of the future?
I LOVE IT! I haven't had this much fun learning something new in at least five years. GO LINUX !!!!
Glad to hear your enjoying yourself!! True
linux is harder to set up and learn, but once
yet get it set up and have a basic knowldge
of how things work you'll love it! From what
I have seen and read if you have not picked
up a copie of Linux yet my advice would be to
get mandrake 7.2 (or wait about a month or so
untill 8.0 final comes out) it has a really
easy install and great hardware detection,
and once this is done it is like any other
Distro it also has hardrake for configuring
hardware and drakconf (kinda like control
panel) where many config tools are kept.The
desktop you choose is really personal
preferance if your new to linux and want to
make the learning a bit easier try KDE it has
somewhat the same feel of a windows OS I use
Gnome/enlightenment myself because they give
you a bit more freedom of the look and feel
of your desktop. I would also suggest going
to www.linuixnewbie.org they have great info
and ho-to pages to do alot of basic things to
get you going (as well as some more advanced
topics) and if you are going to get mandrake
there is also www.mandrakeuser.org a great
site for tips and how-tos for mandrake
specfic topics.
Well I hope I've helped point you in the
direction your looking for and remember
have fun!!!
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Heh Robbo2,
Thanks for all the information. I will check out the sites you mentioned. I bought RH Linux 7.0. But I'm going to try Mandrake [thanks for the tip about 8.0] and also SuSE.
I want to learn all of the distro's so I can make a decision on which one to stick with.Again, thanks for the information. It is very much appreciated.
And I am having fun. I'm downloading some more bells and whistler for Linux and have ordered Netscape 6.0x.
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Ron,
First of all, you have no need to use an Intel chip with windows, AMD's chips work fine with it.
Since I can remember, the Windows licence allows you to install it on 1 desktop, and 1 notebook, you have never been allowed to install it on many PC's? If you have you have been doing the wrong thing, this is't something new in WinXP/OfficeXP it has been like it for at very least 7years.
May be fun learning it, just give it a few months and wait for its unfriendlyness, and its inability to do simple tasks to shine through. Many love Linux at first, hey its free, crashes less than windows, sounds pretty damn good hey? then you find, s--- me modem dont work, or my printer, or that new game everyone has, the new DVD player you got wont work ,it is actually slower than windows if you use gnome/kde, text is stuffed up in browsers above 800x600.
You have been warned.Robbo
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Well first of all this guy has stated that he
is computer consaultant and teaches computers
@ some school so I think he knows the short
commings of windows and seems like the type
of guy who LIKES TO TRY NEW THINGS!!! man why
can't you leave people alone why "warn them"
do I "warn" people "watch out for robbo he'll
tell you linux sucks because he hates it" no
I don't but maybe I should! I'm really not
trying to start anything I actully enjoy
discusing the Pros and cons of linux and
windows. but why bug people who are just
looking for help about LINUX or asking a
question about LINUX or trying to get help
for LINUX. They DON'T ask what anyone thinks
about how "good" it is or if windows is
better. so why bother? really I would like to
know?
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LOL - like Windows is perfect?
Gee, I have never seen a Windows OS computer lose it's printer, modem, sound card or just flat fail to boot.And I expect problems with Linux.
If computers ran perfectly, I'd be out of business!
Licensing: Who died and made Bill Gates God? When you purchase a product, it is yours. If you bought a hammer and there was a lable on it stating " after driving 100 nails, the user will discard this product and buy a new one ", would you do it? I would look for a hammer that didn't have such a strict or prohibitive "license".
I'm running Linux on a AMD K-6 III 550MHz system. Though I am tempted [and most likely will do it] pop in a new hard drive into my Intel PIII 900 with 512 MB of RAM and take it for a spin. Should be interesting to see how KDE or Gnome responds to a system with some power.
Anyway, I am enjoying myself. I have Netscape 6.0x, Star Office 5.2 and KDE 2.1 coming on disk from a friend. And guess what? No license agreements!
Later :-)
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Glad Robbo didn't make you not want to try
linux! as for kde/Gnome running slow, I havee
heard of people saying they had this problem
but I personally have never had it I run
Gnome and Enlightenment at the same time on a
PII 350 with 190MB of RAM and an 8MB video
card and it runs great, better than windows
infact (for me anyways! I cannot speak for
everyone) I have heard FAR less people say
X-windows runs slower than windows than the
amount that say X-Windows runs better! also
if Gnome/KDE/Enlightenment run a bit slow on
your system there are lots of other window
managers out the that do use far less
resources such as XFCE3
(http://powerusersbbs.com/xfce/index.html)
which I just tried out yesterday and it runs
great! thats the thing with linux, you have
more choice of what your system runs and how
it runs it!!
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Oh please
Ron, yes it is yours, and you buy it on the condition you will only install it on 1 laptop, and one desktop, you're accepting that when you use it.
A hammer is slightly different.
Without wanting to go on and on will mention a few things.1)Light bulbs, technology exist to produce a lightbulb that would last over 20 years, for less than $5. why dont they make them? the lightbulb people wouldn't make any money?
2)Video players, tv's most electrical things, have a "built in lifespan" haven't you noticed, things just dont last like they used to? Its no accident, you are made to buy a new video every 5 or so years, this keeps manufacturers in businuess.
Whether this is a good thing or not is another matter, but you are buying windows and agreeing to those terms, by all means go make your own operating system and do what you want with it, he made it and spent billions on it, give him the credit he deserves.Robbo
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Ron,
I have been into linux now for a couple of years. My advice is not to try learning all of the distros, but in fact learn one that is really popular very well. My expereince has taught me that each distro has different methods of configuring the system, and this is on top of the standard set of config utils .
If you learn the utilities that are linux standard and not distro specific, you can then jump from distro to distro without any problems.
Shaun
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Robbo2 - thanks once again for the information. I will check it out. And I am also going to be checking software that allows Linux to run Windows apps.
And my other project for 2001 will be trying what is called a "zero footprint PC". Using components from a laptop and incorporating them into a keyboard. I ordered a barebones system yesterday with a intregrated mobo for audio, sound,USB and networking, CD Rom and Floopy. I have the HD, CPU, Ram and modem
plus one of Viewsonic's new G70m graphics series monitors with built-in speakers & microphone. The keyboard itself standard size, with the exception that it is thicker to accomodate the internal parts. Should be interesting to see how this goes over. I am hosting a cocktail party next month for my clients to unveil this project and get their opinions. At the same time, I will be demonstrating Linux also. Wish me luck.Robbo - thanks for the enlightening thoughts.
A little history. When IBM was getting ready to introduce the first PC, they needed an OS. They went to Gates/Allen who didn't have one. So the boys from Redmond bought a OS from a fellow programmer for $50K. They dubbed it DOS and "licensed" it to IBM.
And Gates was able to convince Steve Jobs that he was a Apple ally and Jobs gave him a prototype of the Lisa computer. Six months later Windows appears. And just because it looked like Apple's OS.....it really wasn't. So said Gates.
So when you support Gates and his "thugs from Redmond", you attack every decent God fearing person on this planet.
May I suggest you uninstall Linux from your computer, pay Gates his $90 and install Windows ME. You can then join the ME forum and join in their complaints of this new OS.
:-)
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Great points Ron!! Also did you know apple
got the idea for the GUI from XEROX? they
went for a demonstration at XEROX and then
the apple shows up!" I think they actully
gave a few people there stock in apple so I
guess they "kinda Paid" for it, but I know a
few of the people that worked on it were not
to happy about letting apple have a look at it!
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Thanx for the lecture.
Actually Bill Gates 'n Tim Paterson bought "86-DOS" from a computer company in Seattle, and did a fair bit of work on it, changing it completely, named it "MS-DOS" (for microsoft), this happened in 1980.
They made it to run on the soon to be released IBM PC.
Put simply they didn't simply buy one, they bought one, and fixed it up alot.
They did borrow the GUI idea from Xerox, and the only real link to windows and apple is possible the start button/taskbar.
I wont go on, but check out the facts beofre making crap up eh?
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Heh Shaun,
Good point. I might just do that. RH 7.0 seems to work OK for me. And I am using both Gnome and KDE, though I must admit, I like KDE the best so far. I just want to experiment some with the different distro's.
And as with Windows, everyone has a difference of opinion. I use Win2K on my systems. Different strokes.........Robbo2
Xerox's tech. dept. also developed software to make the mouse work with the GUI. But their B of D felt that something called a "mouse" was beneath the dignity of the Xerox company. So Apple got that also. And this along with Lisa was given to Gates.Don't get me wrong, I think Gates business strategy of licensing his software was a stroke of genius. Had he just sold DOS to IBM, I am sure the world of technology would be much different today.
What strikes me about the importance of Linux, is that 10's of thousands of people have developed a community in which their programming time and energy is shared. And that the fruits of their labor is available to anyone who wants it. Now maybe from a business standpoint this may seem odd, but for myself and other newbies like me, this opens up a whole new world of interesting shared knowledge.
It's kind of like teaching. I teach to share of myself. To pass on what I have learned and experienced, to others, who thirst for the knowledge. I make more money as a Consultant, but the rewards of teaching far outway the latter.
Have a good one everybody. I sincerely appreciate all of the help and information.
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Don't look at hardware with Linux quite the same as you do Windows. Honestly Linux is on intel stuff about 75% of it but with the right hardware who cares? It blows Apple out of the water and whats more with Linux you can move onto Apple hardware which is somthing Windows cannot do. Where I work we have Sun Netras running Sparc Redhat.
There is some argument about client side windows around but wipe out those silly NT servers. I would certainly have had an NT server if it were not for Linux(freeBSD maybe). My Linux server servers NFS shares when I am in my usual Linux or smb shares by Samba on windows so I always have my data even when playing games on the toy OS win98. Yeah Linux is really tough on me without memory leaks crashes and viruses.
My WindowMaker GnuStep machine at work has many wishing they had the same. It is ofcourse much faster than Windows but I do customize the kernel and I will not run window managers that hog memory if I don't have it. Whats nice is IceWM will smoke on 16meg of RAM. On less than poweful machines you can run nice light weight GUIs but remeber Bill says that you shouldn't because he is short on cash.
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Radhat on a sparc I never had the pleasure of
using that how dose it run compared to
solaris on the same hardware? I'm just wondering
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James - great points. Memory leaks, viruses and crashes. All to famaliar in the Windows world.
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Not using betas, have a virus scanner (maybe even just don't open emails of naked women), choose your hardware right.
Secure (enough for its use), Stable, no virus', no crashes.... Sounds like windows to me.
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Never really did a test side by side but I am sure someone has. Generally Solaris gets beat to hell on intel but I do not think Solaris gets just due on intel. Their are the odd intel only things when running Sparc Redhat.
One is a news server running inn(production) and the other runs Mysql and postgreSQL amongst other toys. The Mysql is starting to run production stuff though because it keeps our logging data and creates roll up tables for a PHP/Mod-perl/Apache/ Application. Basically utilization of the other machines.
Nice thing is Linux is a little more hip out of the box than Solaris with all the GNU goodies.
I am also making a little noise about turning a few AIX machines into Linux. I would like to have a four way RS/6000 Linux desktop with Fortran to see if I can crunch into a nice round number how much I dislike Windows :-)
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is it my imagination or are you just a boob robbo.
You are microsoft's little b*tch....(captured conversation)
BillyG: robbo, jump!Robbo: wow, i can jump really high!
BillyG: robbo, give me some money,..come on boy, give me some more money!
Robbo: here ya go, wow, this is great, i will listen to everything you say master billy. you are the greatest! i will not think for myself, i will only preach what ive been told by you sir!wow, golly gee!
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