Linux Thread - beta version 5 build 6200 alpha release 2
Mr_Grinch
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I'd like to give it a shot. I have a spare laptop that's currently running Windows XP but I don't use it much. I've recently got used to using Mac OS and I'm loving it, and I'm already adept enough at using XP so I thought I'd try and get another operating system under my belt.
Where do I start? I'm pretty technically minded, so give it to me straight G&T.
::Edit:: Also recommend me "Essential Apps" please. Web Browsing, Email, IRC...anything nifty
Where do I start? I'm pretty technically minded, so give it to me straight G&T.
::Edit:: Also recommend me "Essential Apps" please. Web Browsing, Email, IRC...anything nifty
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I like KDE infinitely more than Gnome, but I had issues with Kubuntu. The easiest versions of Linux that I've used with KDE were Suse and Mandrake (which has since changed its name to Mandriva). I am willing to try Kubuntu again though, as Ubuntu has hella lot of support.
Wii Code: 1040-1320-0724-3613 :!!:
I know I'll have to do my own research at some point but this place is normally insanely helpful
PSN: SirGrinchX
Oculus Rift: Sir_Grinch
As far as cool apps go, give beryl a try. It's a hardware accelerated window manager similar to Aero in Vista, but has cooler widgets like the desktop cube and the "ring" Alt-Tab switcher. There's another one called Compiz that Ubuntu 7.04 installs (but doesn't enable) by default which does something similar, but I've never tried it. There's a few videos on youtube of what they can do.
Finally, read this link, and keep it handy. How software installation works in Linux is one of the biggest adjustments you'll have to make.
Okay, think of names like Ubuntu, Suse, and Mandriva as cars. Now KDE and Gnome are just parts of the car, specifically they're the pretty aluminum/plastic outside that everybody sees. Now there are a lot of things that go along with the exterior, just because of the way it's shaped.
KDE and Gnome are basically the graphical interface for different distributions of Linux, which can be found in many different versions (ala Ubuntu and Kubuntu). The graphical interface is composed of your desktop, taskbar, program icons, etc. Gnome tends to be more stable, but KDE is more graphically pleasing (shiny). It's all a matter of preference, but in many distributions you can actually install both and then just choose which one you like best.
Wii Code: 1040-1320-0724-3613 :!!:
Ubuntu is a Linux distribution. Linux is really just an operating system kernel, which isn't a lot of use on it's own. A distribution is basically all the little pieces of software that make up a complete "Operating System" as the term is normally understood, tested for compatibility, appropriately configured, and packaged up with a nice installer.
Gnome and KDE are desktop environments, and the two most common choices. They're basically the GUI that you see when you use the computer. Which you choose is a matter of preference, as though software is generally designed for one or the other, it'll work in both. You can even install both at the same time and select which one you want to use when you log on.
Spec wise it's nothing fancy, it's 4 years old or so now. A P4 2.6ghz, 512MB RAM, 30GB Hard Disc Drive, 64MB Intel shared graphics (Samsung V25). It's a sturdy little thing (Although the power connector did fall off the board so I have a make-shift solution I created with some solder and some speaker cable) so I thought I might as well use it to learn something new.
Anyway, forsee any probs with that spec?
PSN: SirGrinchX
Oculus Rift: Sir_Grinch
For reference, I'm running Ubuntu 6.06 on a 3.06GHz P4 with 1GB of RAM and a Geforce FX 5200 (desktop) and Ubuntu 7.04 on a 1.6GHz Pentium-M with 512MB RAM and a Mobility Radeon 7500 (laptop). Since it's a laptop, you might find that some of the hardware is a bit of a pain to get working (WiFi especially), although that's significantly improved with 7.04.
Read up as much as you can. Linux can seem a little intense at first (when messing with files in console and such). But over time it becomes very easy and quite fun.
For references:
Ubuntu Forums
Gnome
KDE
Linux.com
My 360 is [strike]back[/strike] [strike]bricked[/strike] back!
Hell yes.
If you need help this is the best place to ask. One of the nicest things about it is, believe it or not, the high proportion of beginners that post. Unlike forums dedicated to other distributions, most people on there won't assume that you know your way around the Linux filesystem and command line. There's nothing worse than getting advice that seems more cryptic than the problem.
After you learn Ubuntu, it might be better to switch off to something else (Ubuntu is very very bloaty). I just switched from Ubuntu to ArchLinux (my Ubuntu install was over a gigabyte or two, my ArchLinux install is only about 500 megabytes or less). But first, learn Ubuntu, and try to stick with a Debian distribution after you move on.
I've been using Linux since the Bad Old Days, so I remember when things were VERY confusing for new users. I'll explain why the Linux way of doing things seems to naturally create this huge pool of confusing software choices. I'll then explain what's happened in recent years to make this more manageable.
Linux programmers writing open source write software to scratch an itch. They see a need and they write something for that need. They also make their software available to others for free, because they want to help people. If the software is good and useful, then it becomes "popular" and lots of people use it, and the person's reputation in the community goes up.
Commercial software vendors also write software to help people. Because they want to make money with their software, though, commercial software vendors will try to ensure that their software is useful for a large number of people. This usually drives companies to eliminate redundant products and choices. So when you install Windows you only get one "window manager," and your experience is always consistent. The X button at the top right always tells the OS to close the window. The Start button always shows the Start Menu, etc.
People writing Linux software don't have these same filters on their creativity. So you end up with a HUGE number of people producing interesting, useful software. If you have a unique need, one of these specialized software packages can probably help you. If you're a newbie, though, you may not WANT to understand your choices well enough to feel confident you can pick the right thing.
Linux distributions (distros) help. People know that the process of finding and installing all that software takes considerable work. To make things easier, Linux distribution vendors will package together a bunch of free software and put it on one CD. They will even write an installer that will help you pick and install things easily.
This too-many-choices problem persisted with early (and many current) Linux distros, though. For convenience, these distros would include multiple redundant pieces of software. This actually makes things worse: now instead of going to individual project web pages, reading what the authors wrote and seeing screenshots, you now see "Pick one or more of these window managers: FVWM, FVWM95, OLVWM4, etc." (There was no KDE or Gnome yet, and remember Slackware 3.1 was fast on a 486 with 16 MB RAM.)
So if you're technical and you have a lot of patience for installing and tinkering, you install one and see if you like it. If you don't like it you remove it and install another, etc etc.
If you're not technical, you say "Buh?" and you go back to Windows.
Now window managers are pretty well sorted. You have KDE and Gnome and everything else. But what about other things? If you want a text editor, you still get a huge list of choices. "I just want something like Notepad!" So you'll scan the list, not see anything named "notepad," and then install something at random. You may get something like Notepad; you may get an advanced text editor with built-in programming language syntax highlighting and hex editor support; or you may get something else weird.
Of late we've seen a new breed of Linux distro: an organization will really care about giving new users a good first experience, so they will do a lot of filtering and installation work for you. When you use Gentoo, for example, you're using something that has been lovingly fitted together in a way that makes things easier to use.
But these distros can't make the problem go away altogether. For one thing, there are still many Linux users out there who were trained in the old way of doing things, so they are still comfortable finding and installing random bits of software. If you ask them for advice, they may assume you are the same as them, and they may recommend their one favorite option. Or five people will recommend five different things, and expect you to try all five of them.
Above all, be prepared to occasionally run into a confusing set of options -- but ask for help or advice when you do.
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I actually switched from ArchLinux to Ubuntu. Don't get me wrong, I could use Arch, and I loved the way it worked, but I found myself constantly tweaking things or putting stuff back together after system updates. When I got to school, I needed to have something that "just worked" all the time with minimal interference. The horrifying breakage of the OpenOffice.org spreadsheet program's excel spreadsheet export function the day before I had something due also helped. I love cutting edge, but I kinda need stable. :-/
I think the tweaking is really meant to be the point of KDE. Gnome, by comparison, deliberately seeks to reduce the number of options available to the user, in the name of consistency and usability. I'm not implying that's a bad thing, I use Gnome myself, but the intentions behind the design of the two are very different.
It's actually kind of similar to the Mac approach, in that the idea is that you'll work in the way the designer intended, rather than determining your own optimum from many different possible approaches to a given task.
This is one of the things I think Ubuntu has got exactly right. Updates are incredibly simple and completely painless. Even major upgrades, like 6.10 -> 7.04. Before I did that, I backed up my entire home directory to a network share, then felt a little silly when it went completely smoothly.
Edit: I don't use GNOME or KDE, I use FluxBox. It's completely customizable, it's like making your own windows manager from scratch:
You'll notice there's no start menu button. You right click to get that. Those icons were added in with another program I think, normally the desktop doesn't have any icons.
In this example the task bar is on top.
I actually haven't had any problems with it so far. In fact it took me less time to configure it than it did Ubuntu, mostly because I was already familiar with Linux while installing it, where as Ubuntu was pretty much my first serious Linux install. The only thing I haven't done so far is configure 3D acceleration, but that's a pain on any Linux distro.
I love the *box's (Running Openbox on my laptop).
But I would suggest running the default desktop enviroment (Gnome in Ubuntu, KDE in Kubuntu) until you get a decent understanding.
My 360 is [strike]back[/strike] [strike]bricked[/strike] back!
Agreed. It would have been a pain to use FluxBox if I hadn't already learned the CLI. Actually, if I recall, I learned the CLI while trying to get FluxBox setup. In fact I learned everything about Linux by just jumping in. That's probably not a very smart thing to do
Edit: Xfce looks hot. I'm going to try that out a bit.
Edit 2: Neato. Comparison of X Window System desktop environments.
System -> Administration -> Restricted Drivers Manager in Ubuntu. Check the box next to "NVIDIA accelerated graphics driver" and you're set.
That's not painful IMO.
Thats how I learned! That and LFS (Linux From Scratch). Nothing like compiling every base package from scratch
My 360 is [strike]back[/strike] [strike]bricked[/strike] back!
Heheheh. Now configure your Xorg file to get all 3D apps to actually look and run well :P .
Edit: I'm in Xfce4 now. This is so slick.
That's done for you. In fact, if you want to use Beryl the necessary settings are also configured for you. And if you don't already have the NVIDIA drivers installed, it'll take care of that as well as part of the process.
Enter the Linux zealotry (not saying you guys are btw, just recounting my own experiences) All yelling at the top of their lungs that their particular favorites are the best.
Every time I try, I'd get through the install with zero problems but I'd always run into the same issue: Then what? I build the box just fine, but then I need to find something to DO with it y'know? Then it gets harder to devote time to learning it when you don't really have a clear cut objective of what you're trying to get to.
Not saying any of this is Linux's fault, I freely admit that its as much my lack of...ambition..I guess, than anything. But it is still a hurdle that exists
So my advice is, don't wade in thinking "whee im going to learn Linux" as your objective. IMO you need to be able to say, "Hey I need to build X, let's try using Linux for the job instead of MS/IBM/whatever. Until recently, we've been a Novell shop at work, and we used Zenworks. Their imaging software uses a boot CD with linux on it. I never made ANY headway learning Linux until they slapped it into Zenworks and I had to learn a bit of the networking commands in order to utilize it for work.
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If you want eye candy, Beryl is just cool to mess with.
Just my 2 cents.
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No it isn't. In fact, it has never done that for me. I had to scour the Ubuntu forums for somebody elses configuration and copy and paste and set everything just right to get it to work. The hardest part of getting Linux to work has always been 3D acceleration because it has never configured it for me and I have to go searching to forum archives.
Thankfully though I don't plan on playing any games on Linux, so I don't have to worry about it this time around.
Edit: Now this is a fun "Look what I can do!" video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ALqduQfm09c
And I'm telling you that it does, in fact, do this. I decided to do a clean install of Feisty about a month after release and it works exactly as I described. You can read the release information here for Feisty. The "Desktop Effects" and "Easier install of proprietary drivers" sections are of interest.
If I balls up, no big deal, I've got my macbook and desktop machine whilst I fix it
Cheers for the advice thus far, I shan't be going ahead for another couple of weeks but any other suggestions in the mean time are most welcome. Or just use the thread to natter about OS related stuff.
PSN: SirGrinchX
Oculus Rift: Sir_Grinch
sudo apt-get install <package-name>
sudo just puts you into super user mode for this command, bypassing pretty much all security.
apt-get is the program used for downloading packages from the repositories and then installing the package
install is just an option to install, there are others like "remove"
and then the name of the program you want to install
you can use: sudo apt-cache search <regexp> to look for packages from the command line.
Linux is a mess because everything depends on everything else. So to install one package you might have to install 6 others first. Debian just takes care of all of that for you, or at least throws an error so you know things won't work.
That's my two minute primar on apt/Debian that is probably completely wrong.
I use the E17 window manager at home. It doesn't have all the crazy spinning cube effects or anything, but its got probably the fastest (and still pretty damn pretty) 2D gui I've ever seen on a Linux desktop. The window manager is a small small part of much much MUCH more powerful set of libraries for application development. Kinda like the next-next gen of Linux applications where the front end GUI is kept almost entirely separate from all the backend stuff. Its neat and has fantastic performance!
Then I install it, use it for a week, and go back to Windows.
Not dissing Linux here - it's a great server OS, and what I use when I have a web/NAS server up and running at home. But I don't have any use for it as a desktop OS.