Any Linux users here?

[ME BIGGD01]

What Distro are you using and what is your purpose for Linux.

Please list your Pro's and Cons.

What would you suggest a person jumps in to if you were to suggest a distro.


Thanks

[BobtheCkroach]

Ubunto is the most common recommendation for new users.

I personally prefer Fedora Core, but that's because that's what we worked with in school.

[Nitro]

Ubuntu is the "standard" if you will for people new to Linux. It's not bad but I am partial to some others.

Personally, I'm in love with Knoppix, which I use as a Live CD. The main reasons why I love this particular distro is because it is one of the fastest booting distros I've ever tried (I've tried 2 dozen distros) and the GUI is quite nice and it has all the drivers for the audio, video, etc and al lthe progs u need to do your everyday tasks. I had problems getting audio to work out of the box on other distros but this one had no probs at all. Cons? There was one thing but it alludes my mind atm. it was quite small like probably the size of the text on default or something silly like that.

also, i like Damn Small Linux. This distro is about 50mb and i burnt it to a mini cd. it is very simple...yes it IS gui but a simple gui. loads VERY fast. great live cd to use on any comp from a 486 up to your quad core rigs. cons are probly that its a very basic os but i dont use it for the bells and whistles, but for a quick boot on a comp with no hdd to get on the internet if my other comps dont work or if im at another location and i dont want my browsing history left on their comp, i fire up the os.

hope that helps a little

[ME BIGGD01]

You know that's a pretty good Idea Nitro, using a disk to boot an os for quick emergency or hell maybe just to test things out.

I may do that and hold in a bag. Can you access a hard disk from the cd?


Also I have been hearing a lot of good things from Ubunto users. I may give it a try. I am curious what you all mean by for beginners? Now it's been years since i have messed with Linux and in those times I was using a command line interface to get anything to work. That was a pain in the arse but doable. I hope in todays times they have advanced into gui when configuring things. I know you still have those nerds that prefer it but I cannot see it being that productive in todays world.

[Nitro]

You know that's a pretty good Idea Nitro, using a disk to boot an os for quick emergency or hell maybe just to test things out.

I may do that and hold in a bag. Can you access a hard disk from the cd?


Also I have been hearing a lot of good things from Ubunto users. I may give it a try. I am curious what you all mean by for beginners? Now it's been years since i have messed with Linux and in those times I was using a command line interface to get anything to work. That was a pain in the arse but doable. I hope in todays times they have advanced into gui when configuring things. I know you still have those nerds that prefer it but I cannot see it being that productive in todays world.
Yes, you can access hard discs from the cd, even hdd's that are connected via usb.

by beginner,s it means that you dont have to type in commands into the terminal or command line to get things done. point and click is quite prevelant in linux distros these days, its even in Solaris, for the most part but defintely not anywhere near as much.

[BobtheCkroach]

So I've had Ubuntu installed on my system for about a day now, playing with Wine. I was able to get WoW installed and working without *too* much trouble, and it works fantastically.

I've got the Orange Box installed, but it's very problematic. It says that I've got a DirectX 8.1 card, even though I have a 9 card, so some things, like water effects, look like crap.

On top of that, I started getting what's apparently a very common error for steam games on Wine, and it won't go away, so now when I run any of the games, I just get an error that I can't seem to get rid of no matter what I do, so I'm kinda frustrated by that, but I was really happy to see WoW work so darn well.

[Nitro]

Don't use steam on Linux

[BobtheCkroach]

Don't use steam on Linux

Because it doesn't work well, or for some other reason?

[Nitro]

Because it doesn't work well, or for some other reason?

Because it doesn't work well and there doesn't seem to be anything in the near future that would seem to fix that problem.

[BobtheCkroach]

When it was working, it worked great, but it slowly regressed into this weird error that I get everytime. Too bad. That will be one of the biggest reasons why I can't apparently cut the Windows cord right now.

Oh well...Valve posted a job position for someone to port their games to Steam, so here's hoping that's on the horizon! :)

[ME BIGGD01]

When it was working, it worked great, but it slowly regressed into this weird error that I get everytime. Too bad. That will be one of the biggest reasons why I can't apparently cut the Windows cord right now.

Oh well...Valve posted a job position for someone to port their games to Steam, so here's hoping that's on the horizon! :)


BoB, You mau just want to use Linux for all of your work and use Windows specifically for gaming pr specific MS apps.

I think this will be the trend until a switch over and more support is seen as a reason to make apps for Linux based OS's. I actually see this in the future because more and more are switching.

[BobtheCkroach]

BoB, You mau just want to use Linux for all of your work and use Windows specifically for gaming pr specific MS apps.

I think this will be the trend until a switch over and more support is seen as a reason to make apps for Linux based OS's. I actually see this in the future because more and more are switching.

Well, I don't really use my computer for anything but gaming, and some general web browsing, so there's no reason to have linux if I can't get gaming working on it.

And I code in .NET @ work, so I definitely can't move away from windows there :P

[BobtheCkroach]

I'm going to be trying out an application called "Cedega". It's similar to wine, but they target gaming specifically and they claim to have support for a lot more games (of note, Steam and it's games)

Cedega has a monthly subscription of $5, which I don't mind paying if it actually works well.

I had to purchase at least 3 months of service to begin with, so I'll have it through January no matter what. I'll keep you guys appraised of how it goes over the next little bit here as I give it a try.