Guys i need help

More of a toy?

Linux has a Huge potential for a desktop environment. Stick a linux box in front of a user who does nothing but browse the net and use office applications and you have a safe computer from them and hackers + a full office suite great browsers and a bunch of little games. Right out of the box and for free, or with full support for about $40 bucks, compared to hundreds of dollars for a Windows machine. Anything you can do with a browser in Windows you can do with Linux, so online games etc are possible. Gaming on Linux is up and coming, I personally will be buying any games that come out for Linux rather than windows to help support that. Perhaps I should have been more precise in saying controlled by communities, also many companies, Novell, RedHat etc. The simple fact that it is open source code means bugs and security flaws can be detected and fixed by programmers out there, rather than just 8 people or whatever who have access to it. We can see how this benefitted the Mozilla Project.

Morals, concept, control over my own computer, preference, development ability, server ability.

Its all about preference. Use what you want. They all have their own ups and down's.

Sorry for the FreeBSD mistake. I do look forward to trying it out someday in the future as it is another O/S I would like to know. When most people talk unix I think SCO Unix and not BSD. SCO < ALL

 

Your better off trying it yourself. Its all about I like this color or this taste over another.

I'm far from a pro, I just love working with computers and have an unsatisfied hunger to learn more each day

 

naw ill keep it simple with my lil windows heheh, linux and UNIX sound really confusing, and i dont even kno why they have em or why people use it...

 

Unix, Linux and BSD servers are faster and more reliable than windows. Google who has an estimated 100,000 server all Run Linux. Because of Linux's open source it has also spawned into a desktop O/S.

I like having choice. Would you like if there was only one car company and you only had to choose their cars? Well I wouldnt like if I could only have Windows on my machine. Some people dont care but I do.

 

oo i see and what do you mean when you say its open source? people keep telling me its that but i dont kno what you are talkin about

 

Well an O/S is made of of Code. Most are written in the C language. Microsoft keeps their code locked up. Linux on the other hand anybody can download and modify, change it how they see fit and redistribute. It has had its share of problems and it has also had some good results.

 

Hey Robster they released RC1 of the new Debian installer


http://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer/News/2004/20040807

 

oo i see now, well what would someone do to modify linux

 

The simple answer is download the Kernel source code, make a change, compile it

 

yup im lost i dont even kno what a kernal or compiling is lol you've lost me lol

 

basically, they would take the linux kernel (meaning the main part of linux..what makes it work) and add whatever features they want to it, or fix a bug or compatibility problem they might have run into.

essentially the idea is that if its available for anyone to work on, it will be a lot more compatible with everything, since people are able to fix it themselves if they see fit.

 

oo i see now k00l

 

@ Wookie:
Yessir, but, the real thrill for me is the release of sarge stable. Last I heard, it was to be about around 15 Sept!
@ X_40's_X:
The compiling means this:
You write code. Code is a computer language, say.... like the C language. Then, you have a file with this code written in the file. You, a human, can fairly easily understand this file with the computer code, C, (if you know the language C).
But, the computer needs to be given instructions in another type of code, call it, say... assembly language, or machine language, where the code is then in binary form, you know, all ones and zeros.
So, the COMPILER will take your "human readable" code that you wrote, in C, and convert it into this "lower level" language. This is called compiling.

Some languages are called scripts. They don't have to be compiled.

If you are up to looking into some kind of language (not a bad idea), then a scripting language may be easier to learn, and a better choice, unless you really have a big desire to learn C (as I do).

One such "easy" language to start may be one called Python.
If you have an interest, I can help to find a link to some introductory sites.