I am in the process to changing my PC to Linux OS system. I am curious if there are other Linux users out there, and also which OS system you use eg. Suse, Redhat, Linspire, etc. I am sure there are others out there. After testing a PC, a Mac, and a Linux machine over the last week, even though Linux is definitely the smaller of the three OS systems, it definitely has superiority over Windows, and Mac. The downside is of course the amount of products available in the market place.

Yes, I have a 30 GB partition for linux. I have TT installed in it too, but I rarely use it.

I run slackware linux. I've ran most of them at one time or another.
Try several and use the one that fits your brain, choice is good
Infinite Monkey is using Fedora linux.

I guess you are a developer of some sort? If not, what kind of "superiority" is there to Linux that would make you want to use it as your primary os? Why would you choose to be incompatible with 99.9% of the mainstream software in the world? Just curious......

It runs fast. ;)

Fast, Flexible, Customizable, Stable, Fits my brain. I'm a pretty mainstream/average guy and it does everything I need a computer to do.read my email, play games, write documents, write code, chat, surf the web, operate servers (email, database, web,... ) and it fits my brain.

Ahhhh... I get it dash.

I would NOT be able to use Linux I guess because I use Final Cut Pro, MS Office, Adobe After Effects, Cleaner, AvidXpress Pro, Photoshop, Dreamweaver, Flash mx, Illustrator, and on and on and on in my daily work.....

@TG: Well, if you are already stuck with a PC, then Linux is the best choice. WINE will give him is MS Office if needed. At NASA, I use both a Mac and a Linux box. I waste too much time trying to get the Linux interface to my liking, but at least it keeps running (versus that crappy PC box during my activiation).

In my experience, Gentoo Linux is the best! It only installs what you need and specify, so you aren't buried in a bunch of crap that has no purpose to you. Try removing a program that is a dependent to a bunch of software you didn't want in the first place. RedHat is quickly becoming the Microsoft of Linux as far as bloatware is concerned.
I haven't tried slackware, but their users seem to like it.

- BombJames Bomb

@ My Dearest TankGirl,

At home I have a network:- It consists of a Linux Firewall (an old PC), and a DSL router (CISCO) which then connects my two PC's: the first uses Linux OS, and the other uses the Gates OS. I use my Linux PC to play TT, as it is fast. One comment people tend to make when I play TT "geez you have a quick fire rate".

My PC I use to program, and also to use the more complex software NOT yet available to Linux. For the record young lady, Adobe and some of the programs you mention are available in Linux.

I am currently using Suse as the operating system. I am thinking of buying an old PC so that I can get more familiar with Unix, but at the moment my hands are tied up. I do program a little bit. In Linux, Hot-Keys don't exist with your OS, therefore I created one so it would work with my PC. I used the foundations of a basic program I found online, and customized it to my liking.

I have never been much of a Mac fan, but then again opinions are personal. I like the flexibility that Linux, and Windows tend to provide. Linux is also very stable, and is less likely to be affected by a virus attack.

I suppose when I play with my Linux system I like to be a minority that stands above the rest of the majority LOL.

One thing I like about lx is that it is very DOSish. There arent a zillion threads all competing for resources. The speed advantage is tremedous. While not as robust as unix it still gets the job done FAST.

My goal after I get a connection with decent upload speed (fingers up to my current isp) I will have a lx box JUST for hosting a ftp server and file storage and for hosting TT. Then I can do everything else on my pc. Right now it sucks cause most people get lag on my server. Just to play TT I have to shut down my file server, web server, chat programs, file sharing programs, and sometimes even my streaming progrock.com radio.

B

@TG: a lot of the adobe and macromedia things are coming to linux soon, I've heard. But with mac OSX being unix based now , almost all the things you might want on linux are available already, just hidden.
if your running mac OSX and are interested find some unix/linux defectors who are using macs (they are out there). They will be able to tell you how to access all the low level unix stuff.

From a graphics producitivity point of view, I recently took ~4000 images and automatically generated medium, small and extra small versions of all of them with a script that took me 10 minutes to write. The graphics guys were very happy.

@Bolo: please do not compare DOS to the linux kernel or bash shell, blasphemy! :)

@JamesBomb: you must have a faster computer than me. Doesn't gentoo compile everything from source in order to optimize everything for your hardware?
Cool idea and I like that portage is written in python, I tried it once and like it, but then I had to wipe that machine and make it a clone of a production server for
development and testing :(

@dash: oh yes, it compiles it ALL from source. Installations take more background crunch-time, but the end result is much cleaner. Besides, its not like you are spending every day installing software. It's like using Fink in OS X: everything is fresh and tuned to your box. Sadly, my gentoo box has been moved to another project. They issued me a new development box, but the (*&$@( has Redhat on it. I just haven't had the time to mess with it though. I spent a half-hour just trying to find and disable all the background "gui-sniffers" that were eating up my clock ticks. Ah well.

- BombJames Bomb

Dash: I wasnt saying that lx is DOS limited but rather the GOOD thing about dos is present in lx.

B

Personallly I think you should get Windows 2000, but that's my opinion (one of the most stable OSs in the world)

Excellent DOS capabilities!

Last edited: Monday, August 02, 2004 at 8:08:03 AM

@Leeds: That HAS to be sarcasm. Someone get me a shovel
- BombJames Bomb

@ James, Erm, that thing about being one of the sturidts OSs came from my mum, and I think she should know, working in IT!

..Leeds...
I am a STAR in ICT at school, I know what Windows 2k is like!

Last edited: Sunday, August 22, 2004 at 3:40:10 PM

@Nukleuz

I'm not quite sure what I would recommend as a specific Linux distro. I'm using Fedora Core 2 right now, after finally getting fed up with Debian. A lot of people seem to really like Suse and Mandrake. Fedora, Mandrake or Suse are probably your best bets, because they're the most user friendly. I like Fedora because it's based around Gnome, which I find to be more aesthetically pleasing than KDE as a user environment because it's closer to the elegant simplicity of the Mac interface, which like, even though the hardware is underpowered and overpriced and the original MacOS was a piece of crap under the hood.

I'd stay away from Debian and Slackware at first. They're a little tougher to set up and maintain. Slackware in particular, though, is considered to be worth the effort if your knowledge and skills are up to it, but it's not for n00bs. Personally, I aspire to one day be a Slacker like Dash, but I'm not there yet.

@TG

There's a certain irony in that comment coming from a Mac user. XD

As much as I like Linux, I'd have to say you're right about it not being a realistic alternative in your line of work. It is perfectly workable for a lot of people, though. Plus, it's free, stable, fast and runs on cheap hardware.

From a usability point of view, as with the perpetual Mac/Windows debate, the crux of the argument comes down to not whether your OS of choice has more software than the other, but rather if it has what you need. For many of us, with Linux the answer is yes. For you, the answer would obviously be no.

Several of the programs you mentioned, however, including MS Office, Photoshop, Dreamweaver and Flash MX can be run under Linux using WINE, a compatibility layer that converts Windows API calls to Linux ones, letting Windows software run on Linux without need for an emulator and a complete Windows install (like you need with Virtual PC on Mac).

I use Photoshop this way at home. I've tried MS Office on WINE and it works fine, but frankly prefer the free and open source OpenOffice.org. I also use the open source GIMP rather than Photoshop for simple graphics work, although it is limited in its lack of CMYK capabilities. I also use other Windows graphics programs under Wine, like SmartSaver, which shrinks file sizes for the web, and NeatImage, which is a very good program for removing noise from digital photos.

Having said that, I recently got some extra work (I'm a photographer), which required a fair bit of post-processing and decided to switch back over to Windows for a while. While Photoshop works okay in WINE, there are still enough little annoyances that really start to weigh on the nerves after six or seven hours.

I also have to say, however, that I use Macs at work (small newspaper) and find them perpetually annoying. Most of the problem is that we're still on OS 9 because the publisher doesn't want to shell out for new hardware and software. I can understand his position, considering how God-awful expensive Macs are, but that still leaves us using computers that crash frequently because of the lack of protected memory spaces, can't multi-task at all and have to be constantly tinkered with because the pathetic OS can't dynamically allocate memory. I really have to laugh when I think about how, until recently, all the Mac fanatics still insisting that OS 9 was superior to Windows. Remember "Windows 95 =Mac 1984"? That was hilarious. As bad as Windows95 was, it was still light years ahead of anything Apple produced until OS X.

As an example of the advantages of Linux and x86 hardware over Macs, we recently needed a spare computer at work so customers could browse thumbnails and full-size images to select reprints for purchase. Besides being pathetically slow, none of the Macs in our office (we've got nothing faster than a 1Ghz G4) was able to run a thumbnail viewing program for any length of time without crashing. We're talking about a large number of pictures because we keep everything we shoot and let people choose from the whole lot.

No matter how much memory we allocated, the thumbnails caches would get too big and the machine would lock up. Restarting the program didn't help either; the thumbnail cache had to be deleted, which the front office girls weren't comfortable doing.

The publisher was none too thrilled about shelling out for a newer machine with OS X just so people could look at pictures. So, I said don't worry about it and built a X86 machine running Debian Linux for less than a quarter of what a low-end new Mac would have cost. People use a simple open source program called gThumb to look at thousands of picutres a day. It's the cheapest machine in the building and also the fastest. It's also been running for over two months without a reboot. My publisher likes Linux.

Sorry for the length of this post, and the Mac bashing. I guess I was venting.

Anyway, there are other Linux users around here if you need help Nukleuz. Dash would be your best bet, but I'll try to help if I can.

Good Luck.

Monkey

Last edited: Sunday, August 22, 2004 at 11:20:53 PM

I use SuSE linux.P.S. W00t to WLAN in linux !

LINUX R00lz BILL GATES EXPLOITS PEOPLE FOR MONEY