Thread: linux finaly

Originally Posted by soundman

After many false starts over the years I finaly have a linux desktop up and running, and it is starting to grow on me.
I am typing to you on a ubuntu 10. whatever desktop, and it seems to have come a long way from the early versions of ubuntu and others I tried in the past.

The installation was certainly easier than loading XP on this machine, and this includes operating system and a whole software sweet.

It seemed to find everything ( so far) and know what to do with it.

Apart from handling the dual head video card.....it will drive either one output or the other but not both.

How I live with it long term.. good question..... but I am hopeful

but for the moment, as far as this machine is concerned....bill gates you can drop on your head.

cheers

A sound choice, Sandman. The desktop would be Gnome, but there are alternatives.

Notes for others:Last I looked, the kind folks behind Ubuntu would even send you a CD (plus spares for your friends) free. I got the original release on free CD, I think it was posted on the Isle of Man. Or Switzerland. Not Australia.

Other versions of Ubuntu include Kubuntu which uses KDE, and Xubuntu wich uses XFCE. XFCE is lighter-weight and so more suited to less powerful computers.

GNOME, KDE and XFCE are basically the user-interface, they all do the same sorts of things, and different folks have different ideas of which is "best."

Having installed from any of the CDs, all the alternatives are available, and all can be installed together.

Other distros of Linux more-or-less suitable for beginners include Fedora and OpenSUSE. Oh, and Mandriva. If you don't like big downloads, keep an eye on the computer magazines, including Linux Format.

A couple of important things to remember;
Linux, while it does the same sorts of things as Windows is not Windows or even very like it. You will spend time learning new ways of doing things. There is no A: floppy drive, and there's no C: drive.

Linux doesn't run Windows programs, but for most common purposes there are equivalent programs. Some, such as Firefox, Thunderbird and OpenOffice.org are available for Windows and Linux, but don't expect to find much commercial software such as MS Office, Photoshop etc on Linux, but OpenOffice.org is a good alternative for typing documents, spreadsheets etc, and The Gimp can do things to your photos, and there are several programs for managing your collections, creating albums etc. Read the documents on your supplier's website, and subscribe to relevant forum(s) and mailing lists where you can ask questions (and get flamed if you haven't done your homework!).

I get paid to install and manage Windows, and I've also installed and used most popular Linux distributions. Mostly, installing Linux is easier, and there's rarely any problem finding drivers. In contrast, mostly when one installs Windows, one needs to find drivers - its difficult to download the driver for your network card, and things are worse if you also need a driver to use a USB drive so you can download with another computer.

Printing can be an issue. HP is probably best, from the viewpoint of getting the printer working, as it has an open source project to supports its products. Apparently, at least one printer actually runs Linux internally. Recently, we got some HP computers at work, and they come with a diagnostics DVD. The DVD boots Linux, so I expect good support from HP on its PCs for the future.

Support for Epson printers is quite good, while any support for Canon is provided in spite of Canon, not with their help. If you have a Canon printer and ot works, fine, but if you're buying a new printer, consider almost any other brand, Except Lexmark inkjet printers.

Postscript printers of any brand are likely okay, but it never hurts to as Google first.


Keep at it Soundman, consider all those Windows viruses you can't catch now. And don't worry about defragmenting disk drives, it's not necessary. Nor is rebooting when you install/update software (excepting for the Linux kernel) - unlike Apple's OS X where I had to reboot a server today because I installed an updated browser (Safari).

I run only Linux systems at home and earn my living supporting them.
I've never had any problems with it and have usually been able to find a Linux version/equivalent for most software applications. (CAD is the exception here).

I'm currently stuck with "Macrohard".

Years ago, I mucked around with Linux Redhat ver 2 & a few other versions thereafter. It was fun.

I'm about to rebuild my computer & I will be dumping Macrohard. I'll be using Ubuntu.

Strangely, I still prefer the days of DOS (Unix)...it was more challenging.
I hope that Ubuntu can provide a "command line interface" for us diehards.

Anyway, who needs viruses & malware when you can be virtually rid of them by using a different (& free) OS?

You may need to install a restricted driver for the video card from manufactures web site. open 'synaptic package manager' and do a search for 'restriced extras' and it will get some things like flash and mp3 going. If you need help, just ask. Enjoy!

Originally Posted by elkangorito

I hope that Ubuntu can provide a "command line interface" for us diehards.

Select 'Terminal' from the system menu. or if really serious CTRL-ALT-F1 you can do multiple logins on CTRL-ALT-F1 through to CTRL-ALT-F7 CTRL-ALT-F7 will get you back to the graphical interface

You can definitely do a double head on linux, but finding a driver to do it might not be obvious. I'm sorry I don't know how to help, I don't use the modern linux's and if I had your problem I'd just write it from scratch.

Unix goes about things differently to microsoft. It is both functionally equivalent and adds a lot more, but you do have to stop and think sometimes how to work through a task.

Well worth learning though. Sorry I can't be more help.

Originally Posted by soundman

Apart from handling the dual head video card.....it will drive either one output or the other but not both.

What brand of graphics card is it?
I have dual head running on an old Matrox card without any problems.

If you want to try a linux distro that's fast, and doesn't need much in the way of resources, try Puppy Linux.

I'm running it on a sub-$300 EEE netbook with 512Mb RAM, and am quite impressed.

As for finding equivalents for Windows programs, have a look at your distro's package manager. Work your way through every piece of free software available, and by the time you get to the end of the list, you'll have forgotten what you started looking for

Cheers,
Andrew
Ubuntu 8.04 on desktop, Xandros & Puppy on EEE

Im running ubuntu on my Dell lappie. I think its great, clean and fast. Im sold!!

The ubuntu forums are a great support.

Try the Compiz Cube Effects - they are a pretty groovy way to manage your desktop.

Originally Posted by elkangorito

I

I hope that Ubuntu can provide a "command line interface" for us diehards.

It does, all distros do. I edit inittab and add a few more TTYs - I normally have 12 of them, with X on tty13.

It's a little different when you have upstart (Ubuntu, debian? and maybe soon Fedora), and openSUSE has hard-coded X to run on tty7, so that has to be tracked down and fixed.

tty13 is reached with right-alt-F1 (but not from within X).

If that's not enough, screen is great.

Originally Posted by Johncs

Printing can be an issue.

Its an old thread, but I wanted to rectify a possibly outdated statement. The latest Ubuntu distros actually have great support for Canon printers, especially the PIXMA range. See the screenshot for the drivers, it prints colour just fine.

Originally Posted by pellcorp

Its an old thread, but I wanted to rectify a possibly outdated statement. The latest Ubuntu distros actually have great support for Canon printers, especially the PIXMA range. See the screenshot for the drivers, it prints colour just fine.

I think every driver is there except the one for my printer (MP600R). I have always wanted to use linux on my main computer but the Data Acquisition app that we use for racing is MS dependent. Is there an emulator?

Hi,

You can use WINE - does handle quite a lot of microsoft apps by implementing many of the core Microsoft APIs.

Even Adobe Photoshop has Silver status on wine!

http://appdb.winehq.org/objectManage...rsion&iId=2631

I do not believe there is a way to emulate a windows printer driver natively in linux - never had to try though! Some clever bunny did invent a way to wrap msdos network drivers for use with linux!

I love my Ubuntu laptop , hardly ever use windows if I can help it. At work I use windows but only to run VMWARE to run my CentOS java development environment

If you really want to put windows in its place - you could run VMWARE on your linux OS, and install Windows inside of it. Thats how I get Google Sketchup working until Google gives us a linux edition, my opinion is that Windows does not deserve to be installed on the hardware, it belongs in a VMWARE or not installed at all

Cheers
Jason

Originally Posted by pellcorp

Its an old thread, but I wanted to rectify a possibly outdated statement. The latest Ubuntu distros actually have great support for Canon printers, especially the PIXMA range. See the screenshot for the drivers, it prints colour just fine.

I reread the post I was quoting, and I misunderstood - its very true Canon support is provided in spite of Canon itself, but Ubuntu and other distros have made great progress towards providing drivers for common printers in the canon range. My IP5200R is one such example, it works great!