Here penguin penguin penguin....

I finally did it. I installed Linux on my desktop. Not the whole hog, mind, I'm still dual booting (you just can't replace Photoshop). I'm loving it!

The distro is SuSE 9.3, and I've not been without problems. When I first installed, the mouse didn't work at all. I had to edit the x config to make it look at the right device, but now it works perfectly. Currently I'm looking for the 3D acceleration drivers for my graphics card so I can play UT2004 which I've installed (tee hee!).

You may also be surprised to know that I'm currently installing SuSE on my laptop too! Haha! We'll see how that goes. The mouse seems to be working, which is a good start. I have a feeling graphics chipset will be more work, however.

Anyway, I'm very proud that I've got it all up and running and I'm managing!

 

Installing any Linux Distro is not without hiccups, nice OS takes a little getting used to things are done a little differently. Sometimes I get my Syntax mixed up between Windows/Linux.

If your graphics card is an nVida based card, then there is a good chance that Linux drivers will exist for the card.

That darn Penguin is just what a geek needs for a mascot.

 

Oh yeah?

Well, I have Photoshop, Linux and Unix compatiblity along with a working trackpad

Guess the OS

 

AIX?

 

Mac OSX 10.4

 

Oh yes? I also have some money

The install on the laptop is taking time. I had to find a mirror with a good software list, which is proving difficult as the only way you can check is my going through the install and check whether it'll "Evaluate software options" correctly.

Trackpad works fine, as does the graphics/screen (surprisingly). Dunno about sound yet though.

 

Being as I'm still new in the geek world...and I've never played with Linux, or any dirivitive of it!!! But I've always heard that a TRUE geek loves Linux on the side!!!

So can someone kind of fill me in here...other than the fact that it doesn't require near the system resources...what is it about that OS that has geeks all over the world, double booting??

I've been thinking about attempting it just for the challenge...however, I have absolutely no idea what would be my advantage to having it???

Just looking to enrich my knowledge....

Roger

 

Roger,

If you just want to try it out, there are bootable CD's that load the OS so that you can run Linux from the CD. It is like a preinstalled environment.

I've used Knoppix and Phlak, but there are many more.

And to answer your question, well first of all Linux is free.

It is also very stable. It can be tricky at first, but crashes way less then Windows.

Also it's open source, so you can pretty much do what you want with it.


-Steve

 

A linux I like and recommend is slax linux live. It works off a cd. Its a pocket os you can take with you. Heres link http://slax.linux-live.org/

 

Welcome to the penguin club goldfish, I'm running Fedora Core 4 64 bit, tried a lot of the distros but I just prefer this one.


Suse is pretty good though, in fact that would be my second choice.

 

You crack me up Adryn...

 

Oh yes PHLAK is a great Live CD. As is Whoppix DSL (Damn Small Linux) is a goodun too, and fits on a 64MB memory stick. For servers, I like Debian best because apt-get is just so easy to use (for a command line utility)!

I'm liking SuSE so far. YaST is fairly comprehensive, but it needs to work out wireless NIC administration as well as wired. I've been having to use iwconfig to do all the wireless stuff.

The main reason I decided to start running Linux is to give myself a challenge and see what its like on "the other side", a world without spyware and viruses to worry about, and open source software. The last bit being both an advantage and a disadvantage. For instance, if I wanted to know how a certain little gadget that monitors CPU usage words, the source code is right there. And also you can be sure there are no hidden back-doors, because the source is open to the public to view.

However, open source working can be a disadvantage when it comes to product development. For instance, there is a video player xine, which has well over 15 different front-ends. They all do pretty much the same thing, but they're written by different people. Also, big companies writing open source are more reluctant to put money into writing code that the end user can just take away with them.

Anyway, I've not used Windows for some time now, and I'm working on a way of using Emulated Photoshop I'm now a pro with vi (unix Visual Editor) or clone vim, which is a useful skill to have, when a lot of servers use it as console text editor. Not looked at emacs just yet though. I would like to find some sort of a good HTML editor for Linux - I don't mind migrating from Dreamweaver but I'll need somthing decent to replace it.

 

Well, 3 days later and I've just managed to get xine working correctly: It plays DVDs now! Before it wouldn't play commercial DVDs due to "potential patent violation".... ??? Windows Media Player seems to manage ok? Either way, I got the full version rather than the version bundled with SuSE, which has support for DVDs, among other things

I've also managed to get my printer working. Now that was a pain. Why, oh WHY did they decide to put a "test printer" button on a page that preceeds the page that selects and loads the driver for said printer? It's just not logical!

I've learnt to love wget because it just looks so awesome

Wireless was fun, but its working, at least for the basic stuff I need it for right now. Unfortunately, my Orinoco card isn't fully supported (with Monitor mode) so I can't use any of the WiFi surveying programs that I need, so I'll still be booting off a LiveCD for that support.