[.Hack]

Who here uses linux? If ya do, what distro? How do you like it? So many questions!

[n2o2]

I use Mandrake Linux 10.0 on my small P2-400 webserver and 10.1 on my Dell Inspiron 8100 which I plan to replace with a Powerbook 15" in the next few weeks.

A great distro. There is also a PPC version available.

[Brad]

I use Red Hat in the labs on campus. It's alright, but I have no particular affinity for it.

[Ryan]

I have Yellow Dog installed, but I only boot into it when I'm feeling paticularly geeky, or bored. I plan on installing either SuSE or Mandrake on the PC I'm working on building.

[Wickers]

Die hard Slackware user right here!

But I just installed ubuntu to test out and so far I'm in love.

I've used these distros for a fair amount of time each:

- Slackware (been using it for years on my desktop at home)
- SuSE (spent three months as my main OS, but I grew tired of it. Now I use the live cd to test out hardware for compatibility.)
- Gentoo (used it to replace SuSE, but after doing a stage 3, then 2, then 1 install I grew tired of it too. I know it pretty well, but I don't think I'll go back anytime soon.)
- SLES (Used it to setup an FTP server at my work... Yah, I know any distro can do that but I got it on a trial license from novell and needed a reason to use it.)
- RedHat (was my first taste of linux... and boy was that taste bitter. I'll never go back)
- SLAX (my 2nd most used liveCD)
- SystemRescueCD (not 100% linux, but hell, I LOVE this CD)
- DSL (damn small linux. I have this on my pen drive... kinda use it to show off)

I just can't get enough...

[.Hack]

anyone use fedora? I'm about to install that on our windows pc...

[Wickers]

Originally Posted by .Hack anyone use fedora? I'm about to install that on our windows pc...

Yup... for all of a weekend. Don't like it one bit, far to slow and hand holding. But in any case, good luck!

[Brad]

Remember, Vicky, that hand-holding is generally a good thing for beginners just getting their feet wet with Linux.

[kretara]

I've played around with Gentoo, RH, Debian and Suse.
Of all the Linux distro's I like Gentoo the best.

[.Hack]

Originally Posted by Brad Remember, Vicky, that hand-holding is generally a good thing for beginners just getting their feet wet with Linux.

yeah, I've never done the Linux thing before, so I figured Fedora Core 3 would be a good place to start... good reviews on it too!

[Random Hero]

My server is running on CentOS which is basically RedHat recompiled with CentOS logos.. I ran Mandrake 10 as a desktop for a while dual booted with my XP, but after realizing I never booted into Mandrake anymore, did all my *nix stuff on either my Powerbook or on my server, I dumped the partition.

Originally Posted by \/\/ickes Yup... for all of a weekend. Don't like it one bit, far to slow and hand holding. But in any case, good luck!

I've been playing with Fedora 3 at school and it looks very promising, a great improvement from Fedora 2. It handles plug-n-play wonderfully (until now Mandrake 10 was really the only distro that did a decent job of this) along with all the other auto-configuration that the community needs so allow Linux as a viable contender in the Desktop OS market.

Now.. if someone would just come up with a windowing system that would opporate just as smoothly. KDE is too bloated and clunky, and Gnome is about the same with less themes.

[Wickers]

Originally Posted by Brad Remember, Vicky, that hand-holding is generally a good thing for beginners just getting their feet wet with Linux.

Yah, yah...

Well getting your feet wet with fedora might be a good idea, but let me tell you...
RedHat 7.x -- my first dip into linux, nearly had me sick of linux in just a few days.

Then the light came down on me... Slackware that is.
And Linux has been my hobby there after.

[Wickers]

Originally Posted by Random Hero Now.. if someone would just come up with a windowing system that would opporate just as smoothly.

KDE... a 'windowing system'? X11 is a 'windowing system'... kwin is a window manager.. and KDE is a desktop environment.

hehe...

I don't think KDE is bloated... nor do I find Gnome slow either. It all has to do with overhead. Fedora (and SuSE for example) tweak out KDE to fit their needs, adding suport for features that make the desktop seem very intergrated. The result is good desktop, but a slugish feel. Also of note is the amount of 'junk'** installed and running with a standard fedora install.

(side note: I have found that starting with next to nothing and building up is much better then installing everything (making things bloated) and trimming the fat)

Now, if you were to compile KDE fresh from www.kde.org and install it... you would see that KDE is a very good and fast DE. (or you can install Slackware and KDE... for Slackware leaves 90% of the software included unchanged from the original developers. Sure, it would take some effort to make it as seemless as most distros do today, but it's fast non-the-less.

** Junk: well not junk so much as stuff that does not need to be running, but is because they want everything to be supported.

[eleazar]

debian user on a fileserver, gentoo on another pc, fluxbox on gentoo, cli only for the fileserver.

[Barto]

Another happy Slacker here. I didn't really use Linux before diving in the deep end with Slackware, but I did stuff around a LOT in the OS X command line environment before really using Linux.

My experience is similar to Wickes, I tried to use Mandrake and that put me off Linux for a couple of years. Now with Slackware I really use Linux. I tried SuSE for a while but went back to Slackware - any Slackware user will know why.

[dfiler]

We use RH 9 on our servers here at work.

It's rock solid and quick. But damn... don't try and upgrade anything. The dependancies seem infinately recursive. Arrrrgh!!

[JayReding]

I use Ubuntu on an old Duron 600mHZ with 256MB of RAM - which seems like it should be dog slow, but I can run Firefox and even do some Python coding for GNOME on it without much hassle. I've been really impressed with Ubuntu, it's based on Debian so you get all the nice Debian tools and Debian stability, but also more modern packages.

I'm a big fan of Debian, just because it seems to work better with package management and tends to be more stable even when using "unstable" packages. YMMV, of course...

[p-trick]

I'm using Ubuntu on my old iMac (bondi slot loading).
Not a competitor of OS X, but definitely better than the OS9 I ran on it for years.

Ubuntu turned an old iMac into a usable machine for browsing the internet with newer software...

[Luca]

I'm thinking of installing some distro of Linux on my laptop. It's a cheap old Celeron 433 that I got for around $150. Mainly for basic internet surfing and also for making presentations. My concerns are that I would have to of course figure out how to install Linux (no small task from what I've heard), and also I'd have to make sure my wireless card and video output both work under Linux. If I miss out on one of those things, there's no point to installing Linux. Is there any place I can go to see which video chipsets and wireless cards are supported under Linux? Also, which distro would be good for a fairly old, slow computer like mine?

[Random Hero]

Originally Posted by \/\/ickes KDE... a 'windowing system'? X11 is a 'windowing system'... kwin is a window manager.. and KDE is a desktop environment.

You know what I mean.

[thuh Freak]

Originally Posted by Luca I'm thinking of installing some distro of Linux on my laptop. It's a cheap old Celeron 433 that I got for around $150. Mainly for basic internet surfing and also for making presentations. My concerns are that I would have to of course figure out how to install Linux (no small task from what I've heard), and also I'd have to make sure my wireless card and video output both work under Linux. If I miss out on one of those things, there's no point to installing Linux. Is there any place I can go to see which video chipsets and wireless cards are supported under Linux? Also, which distro would be good for a fairly old, slow computer like mine?

from my understanding, older comps tend to have pretty good Linux-compatibility; better than new/top-of-the-line sometimes. Theres cds out there known as "Live Discs" or somesuch, where you can burn it, and boot into a GNU/Linux environment. It basically allows you to play around with GNU/Linux without re-partioning your hd. The most popular live disc is probably Knoppix, but I know that Gentoo has live discs too. The other distros probably do too. They are great for discovering hardware compatibility.

Installing a GNU/Linux distro isn't hard, its just harder than OSX and Windows installation. I've done YDL, Debian and Gentoo, and I can't really say any of them is hard. I don't much remember YDL (except that I didn't much like it when it was running), but Debian was a very easy install. It's an ugly installer, but you basically just follow the on-sceen instructions and you can even do an internet-install (meaning you download a bare-bones Debian install disc, and it downloads all the programs and kernel stuff as needed from the internet). If you are already comfortable with the CLI (even OSX's CLI), Gentoo stage3 is as easy as partitioning the drive and copying some files over. Stage2 and Stage1 are very similar to Stage3, except part of the installation is compiling all (stage1) or most (stage2) of your programs. If you want a difficult install, you should get netbsd or openbsd and try installing it on a performa. I had to drop into OpenFirmware, connect a serial line to my printer/modem port, plug it into another comp, and all kinds of stupid bullshit. And it still didn't work.

Until my g3/350 broke, I primarily booted into Gentoo, and only used OSX for my iPod. Supposedly Linux works well with iPods, but I wasn't ever able to get it working. Now that my real computer is broken, I just use a tablet that work gave me, until I buy a mini or a g5 (probably not for a few months).

[Kurama]

there's a new distro called Xandros it's basic purpose is to migrate Windows users to switch to linux; they added some good features such as running games, and photoshop CS.

It looks awefully familiar to XP.
http://www.xandros.com/images/screen...p_original.png

Kumara, please do not post inline images larger than 600 pixels wide. Posting large images is generally considered rude because it distorts the forum page layout for users on small screens. - Brad

[Barto]

Actually Xandros has been around for a few years now, and is aimed primarily at small businesses rather than home users. The applications included with Xandros are generally older versions compared with other distributions. It also costs money (but you can download a "demo" version that includes advertising and limits CD burning to 2x for free... I know, stupid).

Linspire (aka Lindows) is one of the many "convert dumbass XP users to Linux" distributions, as is Lycoris (aka Redmond Linux - Microsoft is based in Redmond, geddit).

[.Hack]

Originally Posted by Luca I'm thinking of installing some distro of Linux on my laptop. It's a cheap old Celeron 433 that I got for around $150. Mainly for basic internet surfing and also for making presentations. My concerns are that I would have to of course figure out how to install Linux (no small task from what I've heard), and also I'd have to make sure my wireless card and video output both work under Linux. If I miss out on one of those things, there's no point to installing Linux. Is there any place I can go to see which video chipsets and wireless cards are supported under Linux? Also, which distro would be good for a fairly old, slow computer like mine?

It all totally depends on your amount of experience. If you're familiar with the Linux environment, the go for Slackware. It's totally configurable and stable. But if you're new like I am, try Fedora. The beauty of Linux is that there are so many options (I'm sure you knew this already lol ), and I think I remember you saying that you have windows installed on one of your pc's... I've played around w/ a version of linux that runs atop of your windows environment. It's basically PearPC for linux, but I'd have to find the link. So try a google search if your interested, but I'll try and post a few links!

EDIT: found the links!
Colinux - runs linux atop the windows environment, much like PearPC
Fedora Core 3 - good for beginners like myself!
Slackware - great, solid system for experienced users!

[Wraven]

Originally Posted by .Hack I've played around w/ a version of linux that runs atop of your windows environment. It's basically PearPC for linux, but I'd have to find the link. So try a google search if your interested, but I'll try and post a few links!

And AN answer is... Knoppix. But .Hack is correct below. SLAX is much faster.

[.Hack]

Originally Posted by Wraven And the answer is... Knoppix.

HOLY CRAP NO! I recommend, SLAX linux. It's built off of slackware and is MUCH faster than Knoppix (i've got the SLAX cd lying around somewhere, a friend and I compared it's performance to SLAX and the difference was phenomenal!). So try SLAX if you're going to go the bootable cd route!

SLAX

[Wraven]

Ok, let me clarify - I was just answering your question, and it is AN answer. I will update the post above. I agree with your rebuttal. SLAX is much faster.

[.Hack]

Sorry Wraven, I didn't mean to come off sounding rude, my apologies

[satansam]

i had Linux for a few days about 5 years ago. Mandrake it was. it was all peaches and glory until it came to finding a Photoshop and Flash replacement... ho hum! back to Windows ME i toddled.

was a good change though

[.Hack]

windows ME! ick! That was just a nightmare for my family... but I guess it worked for some people...