Ubuntu 9.10

[ifelloverboard]

It's been a couple years since I've used any Linux outside of my servers and being as I'm about to get my second 64 bit lappy here soon I'm planning on dropping Ubuntu 9.10 on it. No dual boot as I did in the past, this time I'm going straight Linux. Linux is notoriously immature (in the past) as far as drivers go in terms of networking, webcams, printers, etc. It looks like a lot of those issues have been resolved so I'm giving it a shot.

On a 64 bit machine compared to Windows 7, Ubuntu flies. You're talking like a 1.5 gig difference in RAM usage. If you don't know what Ubuntu is, have a look... (nevermind this guy's choice of music)

YouTube- Linux Ubuntu 9.0.4 & Compiz Effects

 

[Claverhouse]

The odd thing is that for me any linux distribution immediately installs drivers without fuss whereas Windows demands coddling. F'rinstance, I don't have to install chipset drivers supplied by the motherboard manufacturer --- back with Windows 2000, which was pretty good for it's time, one had to reinstall Windows now and again due to degradation: I once installed the chipset drivers after updating the main files with rollovers from Update.

That was a bad experience.


Even as late as XP, Windows demanded a floppy drive for SATA disk drivers, when linux slide straight in. A floppy disk ! Couldn't they demand cassette tapes or wax cylinders ?


Sound is a mess on Linux still: too many variables, but it's soon sorted out. Just wish the music ( and graphic image ) apps were slightly more polished. No player on Linux or Windows came close to the Creative Player ( only of use on Windows ) that came with the card. And no linux graphics tool has the excellence of Irfanview.

I don't miss Windows, not even for gaming; but I miss some apps...


I've got knoppix and Ubuntu 7 livedisks for when hard disks fail etc., maybe I'll download the Ubuntu you mention.




Claverhouse

 

[del]

I haven't used Ubuntu in over a year, but it had some sound and wireless issues last I was messing with it. You could easily look it up prior to purchasing your computer (the Ubuntu community is notoriously well supported; pretty much every problem has come up in some Linux forum at one time or another). Regardless, it's probably sorted out by now.

I'm using Debian and openSUSE now, and the driver thing with openSUSE was a breeze. I assume it's the same with Ubuntu as well -- Linux has come a LONG way.

Also, openSUSE 11,2 comes out in less than a month. Yay.

And ew, compiz.

 

[ifelloverboard]

I love it for a couple of reasons. Mainly control, it's cool factor, and speed.

I don't play games that often but once every 3 to 6 months I will go out and buy a game and just play it 24/7 for a week. Gaming isn't the main concern as there are workarounds.

Claver... yeah Ubuntu 7 was the last one I have on a disk. Supposedly according to the word on the street a lot of the driver issues with wireless and other devices has been fixed since then. 9.10's stable release is at the end of this month.

Del... those were the same issues I had with it.

 

[Ogion]

I tried Ubuntu once. Dind't like it much, and i preferred Debian. I think ubuntu is a bit bloated for me. Now i use Archlinux.
And i concur, "ew compiz" :P

Ogion

 

[Toad]

That movie was cool. I'm thinking about building a really good desktop for gaming. Does Ubuntu support video games?

 

[Anthile]

That movie was cool. I'm thinking about building a really good desktop for gaming. Does Ubuntu support video games?

With WINE you can play actually a surprisingly large amount of games but being linux, it can be hard to figure out how it works.

 

[Toad]

I think the huge amount of resources saved by using Ubuntu is plenty enough reason to kick Bill Gates in the balls while saying "bye bye".

I have used Windows my whole life (never even tried using a Mac). I am ready to try something new.

 

[del]

You can actually try Ubuntu without installing it by downloading the CD.

I should say that all those effects in the video won't be enabled by default, so don't be disappointed when you first load it up (but they are easy to enable).

Does anyone know how Kubuntu is these days? It used to be that it sucked compared to Ubuntu, but I imagine their KDE4 support gotten better.

And yeah, games are workable in Linux, but for many people it isn't worth the trouble. Also they might not get WINE support until a bit after their release, so don't plan on being able to purchase games the day of their release.

 

[ifelloverboard]

If you've never used Linux before and you still want to play games... dual boot or put it on an old machine and use it to learn on. Learning the command line is like learning a new language. It will be slow at first and you'll want to quit but keep at it and eventually it will all start making sense.

 

[fullerene]

^^what he said.

I had a friend install xubuntu for me some 2 years ago, and it did take quite a while to get the hang of. It's a really nice OS, though. Loads faster than Vista (which I still have on dual-boot in case new games come out that I like. Right now I only really play Starcraft and occasionally Diablo II, though, which both work perfectly well on xubuntu through Wine).

Every so often something creeps up that turns out to be a huge pain in the ass (*cough* Skype), but most problems are solved with a quick google search. There's nearly always someone on some forum or another who says "just type [.....] into your terminal, and it'll fix it right up." Just avoid those "rm -rf /*" bastards and you probably won't screw things up too badly .

Once it starts making sense it's really nice. I actually prefer using linux to listen to music, because its faster to type the first few letters of the song you want to hear and hit tab, rather than sorting through lots of windows and looking to double click on it. And if you break out Gnome (a desktop environment, for those who don't know) or something like it, you get a perfectly fine looking desktop that's very windows-like anyway, so you don't even have to use the command line if you don't have to. Eventually I migrated to fluxbox, though, which works quite nicely as well.

I would recommend breaking out the CD to try before you install... but keep in mind that it runs much slower on the CD than it would if you didn't have windows running in the background.

 

[Claverhouse]

If you've never used Linux before and you still want to play games... dual boot or put it on an old machine and use it to learn on.

Or preferably, place Windows on the old machine, and devote the better to Linux.

Learning the command line is like learning a new language. It will be slow at first and you'll want to quit but keep at it and eventually it will all start making sense.

Lest this put people off, I would mention that it is as optionable as DOS was to earlier Windows. Do it if you want, but with modern distros and environments --- I use and recommend KDE. 4.3.2; betas are more fun but learners should stick to stable versions --- doing stuff the slow command line way is only necessary if you are interested in computing. I doubt if I touch the CL more than once a quarter: anything that can't be done instantly with a mouse prolly wasn't worth doing anyway. Computers, like everything really, are merely tools for one's will.



Claverhouse

 

[Ogion]

doing stuff the slow command line way

Ok, wait. I don't want to force anybody to use commandline, but i gotta at least defend it Commandline ain't slow at all. When you know what you do, it's a LOT faster than Gui. Granted, you gotta learn things first and can't just click...


Ogion <--Loves the commandline.

 

[del]

I can see both sides of the command line...

In openSUSE I *never* use the command line. The way they put together their releases is just beautiful and I don't feel the need to play around with it too much.

Plus KDE, which openSUSE does absolute magic with, has lots of graphical ways of getting things done. To do the same thing in many other desktop environments, I'd probably have to open up a terminal.

Meanwhile, on my other computer running Debian squeeze/sid and Xfce, I considerably get into its innards and screw around with it. Sometimes not for the best, but I always manage to fix it, and really that's the fun of it lol. Again, after the initial set-up it's really unnecessary, but I'm way more familiar with Debian and I enjoy configuring it to perfection.

I think that's why I have a computer running a stable distro (openSUSE 11.1) -- it's nice to have something to play on that you don't compulsively feel like you have to prod around on all the time. Plus I wanted to try KDE4, and openSUSE was the only thing I could find to get it to work reasonably well (although 4.3 is in Debian's testing repository now and works fantastically).

Regardless, I do see why it's nice to avoid the terminal. Most people don't care to know how their cars work, either -- much less their computer. But if you know what you're doing, the terminal is definitely faster.

So my experience is the same as Claverhouse: at least in modern distributions aimed at a general audience, you probably won't ever have to use the command line unless you want.

 

[walfin]

Sound is a mess on Linux still: too many variables, but it's soon sorted out.

Midi is a mess still, I think. Timidity is a sucky synthesizer and hardware MIDI often doesn't work. Problems with rosegarden. But generally normal sound is OK and completely plug n play.

Commandline ain't slow at all.

Not to mention that it's cool when you make the yakuake console come down from the top of the screen. But claverhouse is right, you can actually use (k/x/l)ubuntu without having to use a command line at all.

GNOME's a smart choice, I think. KDE4 on Ubuntu tends to crash/freeze quite a lot, and xfce/lxde are a bit bare.

If you're wondering why the windows icon appears for me, that's because I'm not at home.

 

[aracaris]

Tempting, it looks really nice, I'm surprised it doesn't eat up more system resources, but then again, it seems like perhaps one of Microsoft's real pitfalls as of late is that they aren't very good at keeping down how their OS uses resources. Operating systems are not an area of expertise for me, or even close but I know Vista is a real hog, and I just stuck with XP partially for that reason. I've been pondering trying out a different OS for a while, but would definitely still keep Windows on one hard drive.

 

[fullerene]

I'm debating taking a class in OS senior year, but I'm not sure I will. It's legendary in how much time it takes up, but it seems like it would be pretty bad ass to have an operating system that you wrote from the ground up, when the smoke clears.

 

[Madoness]

Now that you all got me interested, I had to try it. After some difficulties to get my wifi working, I'm actually quite impressed with Ubuntu 9.04, seems to be quite smooth, and these effects If 9.10 is going to be even better, I'll start thinking of leaving xp for good.

(I have had ubuntu and some other distros in the past, but have had some issues. This time, it seems to be good enough.)