Mar 10, 04
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Mandrake's annoying because you kind of are stuck with their stable tree and nothing else. And apt is a bitch to get going with it. BTW, Mandrake uses Redhat's system (RPM). KDE has nothing to do with it. There's a software installer you can use to install anything on Mandrake's CDs. Outside of that I'd say install Fedora Core. 
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Mar 10, 04
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Well I've used ReHat9 and Fedora Core, but one big problem for me is [for out-of-the-box installations] that there is no NTFS support. Slackware and Knoppix are beautiful when it comes to reading stuff off the Windows drive. I'm waiting for the NTFS partitions to become more writeable from the Tux.
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Mar 10, 04
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Sadly, blame Microsoft for that. Yay closed standards!
VFAT support is there, though, so feel free to use that for data between Win/Linux. And, no, it's not out-of-the-box problems. That's a kernel-level problem. They had NTFS support but the writing was highly unstable so they've since just made it read-only.
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Mar 10, 04
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Mar 10, 04
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also, im not asking for help. thank you though. i was going to use linux because i didnt like xp. but then i got my mac and im happy. im sure ill play around with linux sometime in the future. its what all the cool nerds use.
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Mar 10, 04
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back when i was actively using redhat and dualbooting i created a small fat32 partition (about a gig or so) for the sole purpose of just transfering files between linux and windows (ie. documents, music)
i want to try and install slackware during the summer... ive only really used mandrake and redhat.. i didnt like mandrake, and i liked redhat because of the easy-to-install rpms. however, i hear that once you get over the installation barrier of slackware its much simpler to maintain
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Mar 10, 04
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also, i think the main think which throws most people off the whole installation process of certain things on linux is that you have to actually compile the program you want to install beforehand, whereas on windows you just sorta unpackage files
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Mar 11, 04
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once you learn how to untarball things, and the command for viewing files (less), compiling programs is relatively easy. there's just three commands if you want to be lazy.
./configure make make install the tough part can be dependencies, which you can track down and compile using the same process. but then they can be dependant on other dependencies, and herein lies the difficulty. aside from that, once you get the basic tools down, you're set. as for slackware, it has a packaging tool tool, and it gets the job done. i rarely use it, though, unless i'm looking for .tgzs on the slackware site, or forced to search for a precompiled version of a program that just wont complile (as was life with gaim .74 and the mozilla NSS libs). the main reason for this is that no one uses it. there are a few groups out there who compile and put together tarballs for slack. Dropline Gnome does this, but only indirectly, as they have their own frontend to unpack the tarballs. either way, i love their product as it takes most of the work out of keeping my system up to date. i'd even dare say that with DG, installing software is easier than it is on windows.
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Mar 11, 04
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But yeah, I had the FAT32 partition to swap files too. It's just that sometimes you get really annoyed when you're in GNU/Linux and you realize there's this file you want and you can't copy it from the NTFS partition. BTW does anybody know of any programs that would mount ext3 in Windows [even if only read-only] so that you could get files the other way around?
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Mar 11, 04
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but in the end you still have to deal with the interfaces and windows envy of most open source software.
i see the argument for desktop linux for things like tinkerers, people who like free (as in beer) software, and corparate enviroments where the os is standardized and locked down to a specific set of apps. in the real world when im getting paid, i cant fuck around with dependencies and figuring out why library y isnt working with app x. most installers/packaging systems are pretty good a aleviating that, but anything that is past my immediate knowledge means i have to spend time researching dumb shit. but for 'real work', i don't think you can beat osx for its mix of mac software, apt-get(fink), X11 and windows file compatibility. windows 2000 is a really great os too. i always have a few linux servers to run my shit on, it doesnt really matter what desktop my 14 terminal windows sit on.
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Mar 11, 04
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But then I am sure that the SuSE or RedHat enterprise editions take care of most of those issues. And I think they still are pretty much free [as in no-charge] software... you're paying for the manuals and the tech support and the physical discs. Last RedHat Enterprise I saw was CAD$150 with 7 CDs and one DVD of software. XP HE was CAD$169 with no software.
How's that balance hangin'? Anyway, as I said from a sysadmin's p.o.v. the fewer people know how to handle GNU/Linux, the better it is... most reliable servers will still be on some form of *nix. [hehe, even the www.hotmail.com server used to be, I do not know if they made the transfer to Win2003Server yet]
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Mar 11, 04
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Open source games/business tools/productivity tools are mediocre at best when compared to windows and apple offerings. it's not even a contest. How valuable are you to your customer when only half the documents you open display and save properly? For a tinkerer or someone who likes free stuff it's great, but neither of those people are making money. Even the most linux zealot people in my company who run it on thier desktop and scorn microsoft have to login daily to a windoze terminal server to do things. It's a windows world on the desktop and in the boardrooms. Servers have nothing to do with it. Completely different market, and thats where Linux shines.
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Mar 11, 04
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For sure.. as much fun as it can be to fuck around with Linux (or whatever... FreeBSD is my personal fav), its just too awkward to rely on for day to day tasks, especially in a business environment.
It's great for when you need to throw together a cheap file or web server, though. Though I'd still like to try and set up Samba 3 as a windows DC w/ AD, just for kicks. Of course, I'm kinda lazy and probably won't.
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Mar 11, 04
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heh. In reply to everybody:
Mandrake the easiest distro to use? nonono. Have you seen Knoppix? HAH. Put in the CD. ;) I used to use cluster-knoppix, it was quite decent, wouldn't have to patch my kernel every time with openmosix, which could be a pain in the ass most of the time. ah yes, apt-get. I was on the debian development team for awhile developing apt-spy and some other varieties of it. And as for NTFS support in Linux, just recompile your kernel with ntfs support. :\ VMware is your friend. Atilla; damn. I like your rack. :D oh, and I like to consider myself a cyber-punk. :070:
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Mar 11, 04
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Mar 11, 04
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On that note, I use linux for day-to-day things. Yes, I am a tinkerer and yes, I like my Free as in Bzzr software (as well as free as in spzzch) but, honestly, all it takes is a bit of know-how, a little effort on the learning curve, and your everyday menial tasks become exceptionally easier to work with IMHO.
I don't do gaming outside consoles much, which is a plus, but I do do the following quite regularily with GNU/Linux: - Use my computer as a jukebox - Interweb playing of all shapes and sizes (Web, e-mail, IM, MUD) - Video editing - MUD programming - Word Processing/Writing Features I like about linux that wouldn't get me going to Windows any day: - Serving is just easier to work with (especially if you have headless machines) - General system troubleshooting is a lot less counterintuitive than non-*nix systems I've used - Openssh - Bash > DOS of any variety. Now before everybody jumps on the Cygwin recommendation, I prefer to run all this stuff natively and I don't like the bulk enforced upon me by Windows. Sometimes I like opening up to runtime 4 and dealing with CLI-only. Learning Curve's harsh, I agree, but don't go around saying you can't do day-to-day tasks. Becuase that's just outright wrong.
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Mar 12, 04
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It's harder than Mandrake. The question on the table was whether Knoppix's install was the easiest. I really REALLY beg to differ.
PS: I'm not saying I can't do it. But I've done a lot of work on the lower-level stuff in linux. Few people are that involved in their computers.
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