Linux

I've used Linux for going on four years now and I couldn't imagine going back to Windows.

It's not that it's necessarily better: it's just that the basic principles for how Linux systems are organized are usually simple enough that if something goes pear-shaped you can track it down and fix it... as compared to Windows, where too often the solution I've been given has been "Well crap, guess you gotta reformat and install!". Also, where Linux systems usually go wrong is in installation. If I have a problem it's almost certainly going to crop up the first time I boot it, and once it's resolved I don't ever have to worry about it again.

The versatility of the command-line is one of Linux's greatest strengths, in my opinion. It's not that it's a superior interface, necessarily, it's just that it's very flexible and can be used to do many things, sometimes more quickly than you could do with a GUI.

My one piece of advice? Remember the man-pages, they are your friend, and so is Google. Oh, and never run a command if you don't know what it does. For some reason there's a class of troll on Linux support boards who likes to give commands like rm -rf / (DON'T TRY IT, it erases every file on your filesystem!) as answers to every question.

 

One of the first things I do after an install is to modify the rm command in the .bashrc file to rm -i. Just in case I'm deleting something important, the terminal will tell me I'm stupid and ask me if I really want to proceed.

 

I'm planning building custom pc with linux. and maybe add dual boot. I know some programs cannot run on linux wine.

I found this great site. It got everything you needed to know and more.

 

On Ubuntu's forums/irc rooms in particular it got so bad they had to change the default behavior to preserve the root directory to render the command useless, but there's a flag you can pass that overrides it. Which makes me wonder: why bother changing it in the first place? The malicious bastards will just add the flag to their advice and their marks will never know better.

 

In the event that you're planning on installing Ubuntu/you're not too familiar with setting up dual-boots I recommend looking into Wubi. It installs Ubuntu to a disk image file on your Windows partition and jimmies it so you can boot from the file instead of Windows (I'm not familiar with the Windows bootloader so I don't know exactly what it does... but it works).

Good luck with the Linux PC! What vendors are you looking at for parts?

 

Do you know what distro of linux you'll be using?

 

im not that new to linux, but quite new to linux comand line, only just been learning how to bash script a few things. starting to get better at using google. how good you are with linux is relative to how good you are with a search engine.

thnx to the rantings of a friend... i've gotten interested in xmonad, and am, among other things, working on learning to configure xmonad precisely to my needs. i think most important things to get to grips with when learning linux, and choosing a distribution, are package management (installing n shit), desktop environment (window managers n other interface shit), and then command line comes after that. you can use linux like a windows dummy, never needing to know what's going on... but i don't reccomend it. you'll be left as dumb and incompetent as a windows user. no offense... i was one for over a decade too.

beauty of linux is you're not cuffed to the passanger seat door. you can use the driver seat freely, even take a peek inside to see what's going on. and everyone else can too*. so u can share in the benefits of the collective knowledgepool. unlike in proprietary (win/mac)... u just gotta click accept on the "let us fuck you up the ass" clause before installing.

* they can see the source code, not your data, unlike in windows, its the other way around.

 

While Linux is a very versatile and stable OS, it do not have any killer apps or commercial software compiled to it. Which outside of the server market, makes the OS a dead duck.

If all you want out of a computer is surfing the net and do some chores in open-office, Linux is more than enough.

Video editing, graphics manipulation/creation, 3D modeling, music making and near all other creative software require a PC using Windows or OSX. For (medium to large integrated) office use, you cannot escape using a windows solution. And gaming, well...

One very good thing about Linux though, tinkering with it is a great way of learning how a modern OS works, or at least, should work

I stepped my baby-computing shoes back when a OS was burned into the ROM of the machine (ZX Spectrum and C64), later doing UNiX at University and going for the metal on my Amigas.

Todays commercial OS are entirely inept in that regard. They're like modern car engines, you need a fucking degree just to change the oil and spark-plugs. Unlike in the good old days, when all you needed was a spanner and some enthusiasm

 

Thats the most problem I have for linux. It may or not work for computer graphic artist. The reason why I want linux cause it takes small part of ram to run linux. maybe 10% but look at vista, it takes about 45% of ram.

 

I know that we're a small group, but Macintosh users who own pre-Intel chip machines have a great option with Yellow Dog Linux which is a Red Hat port to the Mac OS. It will not run on the Intel chip machines.

I liked it very much when I ran it. Especially for a specific XHTML/CSS editor called Blue Fish.

And if you're really bored and you're running Linux and you want to play around with Mac OSX you can load MoL (Mac on Linux) and you'll be playing at Steve Job's playground in no time.

I'm not sure why anyone would want to do that outside of sheer boredom but there it is! LOL

LumperDawgz

 

That is just wrong on many levels. Whilst true that Linux got a smaller footprint than Vista, or XP and OSX for that matter, you cannot measure it in RAM usage. I'd rather look at disk usage.

Vista, and the upcomming Windows 7, reserves a sizeable chunk of available memory in a pre-emptive fashion to better do memory-management. Thus speeding up any dynamic memory expenditure as applications are launched and exited. A step forward if anything, since a more ad-hoc approach (as in XP and Linux) can result in memory threads being left open even after it is no longer used by a process. Not to mention fragmentation of available memory, that leads to a rather large stack of memory pointers that is essentially not needed. Slowing down the entire system.

In XP you need to reboot every so often just to clear up memory and flush the outdated memory pointer stacks. In Vista, you don't.

 

You can measure the ram. I got it. right now, the XP os is running at 35% without programs running. When I run with 3d program, it goes up to 60%. that takes alot of ram usage.

 

Ooh, now that's a dubious claim.

Can Linux be made to use less than 10% of your total RAM? Yeah, but you probably wouldn't want to use it. Most modern Linux desktops are probably somewhere between XP and Vista in terms of system requirements- while they're not as profligately wasteful of system resources as Vista, you'll still want maybe half a gig of RAM to run a stock Ubuntu install, for instance.

There are exceptions, of course. You can download distributions that fit onto a floppy disk. But you probably don't have a uclinux 2.4 kernel running a busybox shell in mind when you say you want to try Linux.

I suggest trying a Wubi install on whatever hardware you have now... it leaves your Windows partition intact so you can install/get rid of it easily, and it lets you get a taste for how Linux behaves better than a LiveCD.

 

Theres a lotta linux servers out there too.

 

Quite a few big companies use Linux, Google? Linux, Craigslist? Linux, Facebook? Linux, the list goes on. Most people would be surprised at how prevalent it is these days. I've been using Ubuntu myself for the past 3 years and I love it. Like somebody previously said, theres a lot of things you can't do as well, but for most, Linux will suffice.

 

I would rep you if it would let me. It is refreshing to hear realism as opposed to "L1|\|U>< r0(|<$ Ph0r 3\/3r'/7|-|1|\|9! (Translate(Copy and then Paste))"