Kitz Forum
Computer Software => Linux => Topic started by: Floydoid on November 29, 2007, 04:03:14 PM
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the way it does things really does annoy me and it seems to take so much longer to do some things :/
That's just how I felt when I first upgraded from 98se to XP, but once I learned how to tame it I was fine... and at the moment I don't feel like contributing any more to Uncle Bill's coffers, so I'll stick with what I know and like for now.
Just digressing slightly, I often think it would be fun to try installing Linux on my old machine just for something to play with, but there are so may versions of it out there I wouldn't really know where to start.
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It is something worth considering if you have the time to play and something that kept me amused for a while..
Was several years ago that I dabbled though.
/ cue eric
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We have no intentions of putting Vista on any machine here - ever. That's coming from someone who has (until February) 10 licenses of Vista to play with.
It simply offers nothing new or compelling but (once again) raises the bar for hardware requirements. Apart from DX10 (which WILL be backported) there's nothing in Vista that anyone needs or really wants. Aero (3d interface) isn't new - although it is for MS.
Its a waste of money in my very humble opinion.
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>> / cue eric
Well yes, you know my views. :)
I've long ago passed the point where Windows became more difficult to use than Linux, but it took some time to get there. Lots of people try a Linux distro, discover that it doesn't work like Windows, and give up. That's a shame, because Linux really isn't more difficult, it's just very different. It takes time to learn it. The reward of perseverance is a big one - freedom.
If that sounds rather too philosophical, I can only draw your attention to the numerous postings on all sorts of forums (including this one) complaining about the various ways in which Microsoft takes information from you and makes changes to your system without your knowledge or agreement. That doesn't happen in Linux; your system is yours and yours alone, and only you can make changes to it.
And there's really nothing which Windows can do that Linux can't do as well or better, and it often is better. OK, there's a small list of hardware which hasn't yet got adequate Linux drivers, but it's really a small proportion of the total. But on the other hand, most hardware is automatically configured during installation, and for mainstream hardware it's usually the case that the drivers are already on your system as kernel modules supplied as standard.
You've pushed me into missionary mode :) so I'd better leave it there, but if anyone wants to try out Linux there's plenty of community support and I'll be more than pleased to do my bit to help.
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Eric, I'm up for the challenge, so what do you recommend?
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>> there's a small list of hardware which hasn't yet got adequate Linux drivers,
Regretfully that was the one thing that actually deterred me.
I spent quite a while in search of a solution for my sound card.
- Bear in mind I was using an older "play machine". TBH looking back (aside from the sound card incident) I spent most of the time setting up a partition and installation/ ensuring permissions were correct.
Once it was installed (I used RH) and most of it set up then as far as the day to day stuff there wasnt anything too hard about the GUI at all.
Software apps back then for linux was also a concern of mine - at the time I was also playing a lot with photoshop/Flash...
but most linux users seem to do ok and find alternatives.
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>> at the time I was also playing a lot with photoshop/Flash..
In view of what I said above - out of curiousity I just looked at GIMP to see how far that had developed over the past few years
http://www.gimp.org/about/introduction.html
Its come on a long way since I last looked... and pretty damn good for a freebie.
Big thumbs up to that one.
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I tried the gimp once about a couple of years ago and gave up on it, I found the user interface such a mess I couldn't work out how to use it at all... I hope Linux isn't like that.
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Hi, many different choices out there. I had a frustrating time trying to find a version that would recognise all my computer hardware.
Ubuntu Feisty Fawn finally did the trick. Available here if you wish to try it.
http://www.cyberciti.biz/tips/download-ubuntu-feisty-fawn-704-cd-dvd-iso.html
I have tried to persevere with Linux for some time but I am still not taken by it in comparison with Windows.
Each to their own I guess.
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Not being any sort of artist, I haven't paid much attention to GIMP, but I agree that its interface used to be pretty horrible. I just ran it up to see what the current version looks like, and it looked pretty clean and accessible to me. It uses separate windows for different parts of the GUI (which you may or may not like) and by default just two windows open, but after that it's hugely configurable. Of course, for less demanding requirements there is a plethora of competent and easy-to-use image editing programs. My favourite is Kolourpaint. http://kolourpaint.sourceforge.net/about.html
As to what distro I would recommend, that question is a bit of a poisoned chalice of course :) but I'll stick my neck out and suggest Mepis http://www.mepis.org/ . Version 7.0 is on the verge of release, but the current RC1 pre-release version, which is what I'm using here, is as near complete as makes no difference. It has one notable bug, in that the setting of the locale and keyboard layout during installation doesn't work, so you have to correct it after installation, but that's easy enough to do.
Other very solid and easy to use distros are PCLinuxOS http://www.pclinuxos.com/ and Mint http://linuxmint.com/ . But these are all very personal choices, and others will have different opinions.
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I personally like Gentoo(Programming), Ubuntu(Laptops,Day to day desktop) and CentOS(for servers)
I find it funny that on a Intel GMA intergrated GPU:
Vista with Aero: FAIL
Ubuntu with the exact same effects: PASS
Vista in my opinion is a OS for dummies so to speak. Its been dummyfied so much that people with more than one brain cell can't use it!
It is also sluggish compared to XP as the machine or OP code is executed A LOT slower. It is also little things like telnet.exe is not installed by default and you can't diagnose network problems as well because it has to "MAP" out your network before you can see any figures.
Maybe Windows "Seven" will save the day. Personally i think the only thing stopping linux been alot better than windows is that developers are to lazy to port apps to linux.
James
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It has one notable bug, in that the setting of the locale and keyboard layout during installation doesn't work, so you have to correct it after installation, but that's easy enough to do.
What on earth does that mean?
BTW I'm not one for doing much graphics work - PSP 7 suits me fine.
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Just had a quick look at some of the download sites and it seems you d/l an 'ISO' whatever that is (excuse my ignorance) - what on earth do you do with an iso file?
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>> What on earth does that mean?
The layout of the keyboard settings ie UK or US etc. If you have the US layout then certain keys are in a different postion - off the top of my head the most common ones are " above the 2 for UK and @ are in different places. Therefore just like in Windows you have to set the country setting for the keyboard.
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Just had a quick look at some of the download sites and it seems you d/l an 'ISO' whatever that is (excuse my ignorance) - what on earth do you do with an iso file?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_image
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>> What on earth does that mean?
The layout of the keyboard settings ie UK or US etc. If you have the US layout then certain keys are in a different postion - off the top of my head the most common ones are " above the 2 for UK and @ are in different places. Therefore just like in Windows you have to set the country setting for the keyboard.
Yes, that's the keyboard layout part. The more general part is the 'locale' which refers to all the country-specific settings such as number, currency and date formats. In the Linux world (and elsewhere) this is called i18n which is shorthand for the 20-letter word 'internationalisation'. Linux distros come with a host of software packages called i18n-something and the appropriate ones should be installed for the country which you select during installation. Mepis doesn't currently do this correctly, so after installation you have to manually install a couple of packages with i18n-en_GB in their names, which is easy enough to do.
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One small trap for the unwary with ISO images is that you must write them to CD as images, not as data files. In effect it's a bit-by-bit, track-by-track copy of the raw data on the CD or DVD, and to reconstruct the hierarchy of directories and files on the original the image has to be written as raw data, not as a file. (This is very similar to restoring a Ghost image of a hard disk.)
If you're using Windows CD writing software, there are one or two programs which don't have this capability, although most do. Nero certainly does; I have a feeling that Microsoft's own efforts don't, but I may be wrong.
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If you are a bit unsure i would recommend testing the installation and then the OS in VMware: Linky (http://www.vmware.com/download/ws/lic_602_win.html)
Just click the evaluate and you should get it for 30days. My recommendation would be to try installing as many as you can in the 30 days and test to see which one suites your needs. Also some distros have "Live CDs" where you can boot into them(that would be a good idea to see if it picks up your hardware correctly).
EDIT: If you "mess up" in VMware you are ot going to loose any data :)
James
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Yes, and in fact you could use VMWare Server which is completely free for personal use, and has most of the features of the full VMWare product.
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you must write them to CD
Oh well that puts the tin lid on it then... when I first got a CD writer I never did get to grips with how to use the Nero software to write CD's so I just gave up on it.
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Good point roseway. I forgot about that one :) .
Shame that you are giving in on linux but i have one last suggestion:
https://shipit.ubuntu.com/ (https://shipit.ubuntu.com/)
They will ship the CD to you for free(takes a couple of weeks usually).
Roseway might be able to tell you where to get more of the distros this way?
James
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Don't give up just yet. If you install VMWare Server (or Workstation), one of its options is to install a guest OS using an ISO image as the installation source. This works very well, and you don't need a CD at all.
Jabns is quite right about Ubuntu, and that would be a good option. You can also buy Linux CDs and DVDs at modest prices from places like http://www.thelinuxshop.co.uk/catalog/index.php .
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Thanks for all the info guys, but it all seems a bit too complicated for me.
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Fair enough, and if you change your mind we'll always try to help. :)
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Actually on second thoughts a live cd version seems tempting... just one inane question - if you are going to install Linux on a drive, does it need to be formatted to fat23, NTFS or some other file system, and what size of drive would be the minimum requirement just to play with it?
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The live CD is standalone of course, and doesn't touch the hard drive. If you want to install it the installer will set up the necessary partitions for you and format them as required. NTFS and FAT32 are no use to Linux, because they don't have the necessary support for file permissions, which is a basic part of Linux security.
You need two partitions for Linux, one for the normal files and one for swap. (Linux can use a swap file instead of a separate swap partition, but a separate partition gives better performance. It's normally recommended that the swap partition is twice the size of your memory, but 512 MB is big enough for all normal purposes. For the main partition you probably need 3 GB for a modern system, although some lightweight distros fit into a lot less.
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Ah because I have some redundant 6 gig drives, so Linux would work on one of those?
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That would be fine.
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So the Linux installation will set up the partitions and file system?
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Yes, and if you're giving it the entire 6 GB hard disk you can just tell it to use the whole disk and leave it to get on with it - you don't need to make any decisions about partitioning. If there are other hard disks in the PC you will need to confirm which one to use (be careful of course), but it should be clear from the description you'll be given. Hard disks are given names like hda, hdb, etc or sda, sdb, etc, where 'a' is the first one, 'b' is the second, etc. (oversimplification, but near enough).
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It sounds like it's way smarter than the windows setup procedure.
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Hi, an ISO image merely means that the image is bootable. Not all CD/DVD software writers are capable of burning an ISO image but Nero should be able to do so. It is not the same as just copying.
Here is another free program that will burn an ISO image, just in case you need it.
http://cdburnerxp.se/
exo
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As I said earlier Exo, I never managed to get to grips with CD-writing.
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As I said earlier Exo, I never managed to get to grips with CD-writing.
Hi, if you have a CD Writer that works, do you want some help with burning a disc?
exo
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>> an ISO image merely means that the image is bootable.
Not exactly... it doesn't have to be bootable. ISO just means the image is in a particular format, and this type of format is known as "ISO" - it's a standard format that most CD burning proggies understand. As compared to .NRG which is Nero's proprietary image format, etc.
Floydy, an image of a CD means it's a "carbon copy" of the CD, including all file tables and data etc.... On its own it's not much use but once you burn it to CD it's like making a clone of the original disc.
In Nero you just go to Recorder / Burn Image, browse for the .iso file and burn it. Probably the easiest burn operation to do in Nero actually :)
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As I said earlier Exo, I never managed to get to grips with CD-writing.
Hi, if you have a CD Writer that works, do you want some help with burning a disc?
exo
Nah it's OK, I've got by all these years without the need to write to CD's.