Observations and inanities by a second-shift assistant supervisor in the Puppy-Grinding division of the Evil Atheist Conspiracy® (our motto: "Sure it's cruel, but think of the jobs!"), your host, Brent Rasmussen.
A Linux Story
PZ mentioned yesterday that Skatje has installed Ubuntu on her desktop. I have also been playing with Linux - more specifically the newest king of the Linux distros, PCLinuxOS 2007. I installed it on my test machine - an older Athlon 1800 with 2 gigs of RAM.
All I have to say is, "Wow, wow, wow, wow." It is incredibly good. So easy to install, so easy to use, and it's open-source.
Amazing. When the heck did Linux get so good? The last time I tried - not more than two years ago - it was a frustrating exercise in futility. This time it works perfectly. It detected and installed drivers for all of my hardware and peripherals, connected to my windows network, installed all the cool software I would ever need to do just about anything by default, cooked me breakfast, vacuumed the floor, and washed my truck. Heh.
In any case, I'm keeping it installed for a while. I'm playing with a new open-source virtual machine called VirtualBox that allows me to create virtual machines and install just about any operating system that I want, except OSX of course. So, I have Windows XP running in a virtual box in "seamless" mode that allows me to run Internet Explorer as if it was installed on the Linux machine itself - for accessing those pesky work sites that only run in IE - and for running Photoshop and Illustrator CS3. Eventually I may learn to use The Gimp and Inkscape, but for now it's nice to work with familiar software. I already use OpenOffice, Firefox, and Thunderbird, so there's absolutely no learning curve there.
All in all I'm pretty pleased! Maybe I can completely avoid moving to Vista after all!
Do any of you run any version of Linux? What are your thoughts?
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quantian
I'm no computer geek, I have barely a clue as to what I'm doing. PuppyLinux seemed to work okay for me and I can boot it from a CD, but I wanted to try Quantian because of all of the applications that come with it (statistics, GIS, &c.). Well, that doesn't fit on a CD. So I found out I can boot from a cluster Knoppix iso on CD, but now I have to figure out how to get to all those Quantian applications.
Once you try it, you'll never go back
I've been using Linux at home on the desktop since '94 when you had to download four floppies from slackware over a 28.8 modem to get the kernel up and running (oh those were the days). I can't remember the last time I actually paid for software. Granted, I've never needed Word or Office and I don't play games, so I've never actually needed Windows to do my work. But I just can't imagine switching to Microsoft and losing all of the freedom you have with open source. Besides, everyone knows that Linux is to Atheism like Microsoft is to Christianity.
And I know that in the past Linux hasn't been as user friendly as Windows and can be a pain in the ass to get working with certain hardware. But some of us consider those challenges to be fun :-)
Why did you choose PCLinuxOS
Why did you choose PCLinuxOS 2007 instead of Ubuntu,etc.?
Two Words: Feisty -> Gutsy
I had Kubuntu Feisty running just fine first. Then, I made the awful mistake of trying to upgrade to Gutsy. 16 or 20 hours later my entire installation was borked, I was frustrated and desperate - and then PCLinuxOS 2007 came waltzing into my life like a sultry new character in a Mickey Spillane novel, sweeping me off my feet.
As much as I liked Kubuntu - and I did like it a lot - The Feisty -> Gutsy upgrade scared me away from any Ubuntu distros for a while. I've since realized that it was probably my own hardware, and the fact that I was trying to do the upgrade through the KDE Synaptic packet manager (which is the only way you can do the upgrade, for us relatively new Linux geeks) during the Ubuntu server's busiest time ever in their entire history.
In other words, I probably should have waited at least a day or two before starting an upgrade that required almost 800 megabytes of downloaded information to proceed properly. Heh. I was excited about the 7.10 upgrade and wanted to get it immediately.
PCLinuxOS2007, though, caught my eye because it replaced Ubuntu as the top distro at Distrowatch. Then, I was FLOORED that it found and configured everything on my test PC without even a small hiccup. And it had Firefox installed by default. I frickin' LOVED that. ;)
I'm probably going to install Gutsy from scratch in a VirtualBox and play with it a bit, because I am still interested in it.
i think i did my upgrade at
i think i did my upgrade at some ungodly hour of the late night/early morning. only took a few hours. and that was with the pauses as it waited for me to notice that some operator input was needed...
so yeah, if you want to switch back, i'd say something else messed with your install. but hey, if you dig the new distro, stick with that!
Thanks
I have wanted to go to Ubuntu for awhile but with every effort something seemed askew so, being technically challenged, I backed off. It would be so great to end my long association with microsoft. PCLinuxos2007 sounds more my speed. I had not heard of it or Distrowatch before. Thanks.
Ubuntu
Moving from Vista (which is the cause of the 47 heart attacks I've had resulting in the quadruple bypass which I am currently recovering from) to Ubuntu is the smartest move I have ever made. They are polar opposites. Ubuntu does with 700 megabytes what Vista can't do with 7000. Nuff said!
me too!
i've had a pretty similar experience. tried suse linux a few years ago... but it was a pain, and they barely had any of the drivers my laptop needed to function.
then a couple of months ago i tried putting ubuntu on the old laptop i used for my "media center" now (it's jacked in to my tv and stereo and external drives with all my mp3s and movie files).
works, fan-frickin-tasitically.
i have had a few issues, but mostly that's with stuff "off the reservation". meaning, programs not yet officially sanctioned to operate on ubuntu. however, i have a buddy of mine who's a linux master and he just SSHs in to my machine and helps fix issues.
just upped to the new ubuntu (7.10?) and i dig it.
oh also
my lady went full-on, putting ubuntu on her primary laptop. and also discovered the use of the virtual machine (she uses VMware). a marvelous end-run around the compatibility issues.
i haven't tried to go full on yet... still a bit wary. plus as much as i loathe MS office... open office still will not cooperate with it (despite how much they say they will).
also a big fan of realVNC... because i can tap into my lin-top from my win-top with no issues whatsoever.
go ahead, go full on..
Go ahead and go full on with Ubuntu (or whatever Linux distro you like), install a VMware or an open source VirtualBox virtual machine. Then install TinyXP on it (www.nliteos.com). From there you can run whatever Windows programs you like seamlessly right from your Linux desktop - like Brent is doing with his Linux machine.