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  1. Man of Steel freebird73717's Avatar
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    For me I have been using Linux for about one and a half years. I started out with Ubuntu and have stuck with that. I've played with others but Ubuntu fits me best.

    I'm not a "purist" as I still use windows (xp and vista on a new laptop) and I have no problem using windows programs in linux with the help of wine. Still I love linux and will continue using it.

    So what about you? How long have you been using linux and what was your first distro?

    p.s. I thought about a poll but honestly there would be way to many options!
    Donadagohvi (Cherokee for "Until we meet again")
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  2. Banned
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    Originally Posted by freebird73717
    For me I have been using Linux for about one and a half years. I started out with Ubuntu and have stuck with that. I've played with others but Ubuntu fits me best.

    I'm not a "purist" as I still use windows (xp and vista on a new laptop) and I have no problem using windows programs in linux with the help of wine. Still I love linux and will continue using it.

    So what about you? How long have you been using linux and what was your first distro?

    p.s. I thought about a poll but honestly there would be way to many options!
    the answer to your question is not that easy primarily because it depends on what your definition of "using" is. if you mean as my primary OS, then the answer would be 0 time, but i used to do reviews of linux distros in the old extremetech forums as well as the main page and forums of a now defunct site, and i have tested damn near ever desktop OS you can name from beos 5 to solaris (including 10) to freebsd to damn near every flavor of linux you can name, hell i even made a couple of different custom remasters and for a while was working on a custom distribution called appropriately enough "deadrats' linux", but the fact of the matter was i never found any compelling reason to not use windows and switch to linux.

    now don't get me wrong, i thought redhat 9 (right before the start of the fedora project) was excellent, i like the latest suse, i absolutely love pc-bsd, vector soho is top notch as was peanut linux back in the day (i think it was 9.3 where it was configured by default to "talk" in a female voice) and arguably the most professionally done distro was lindows/linspire, but be that as it may, it still lacked an all encompassing api ala DX, the file hierarchy to this day continues to be one of the dumbest i have ever seen with that silly /, /root, /home, /etc, slash this i say, the /fstab makes me want to f'n stab somebody and the man pages has such a gay sound to it.

    in short linux, despite all the progress it has made, is still mired in it's unix roots from 30 years ago. could what's wrong with it be fixed? sure, but the community, the really fanatical, quasi-religious proponents would never allow it, they consider it a retarded badge of honor to smack you head against the wall custom compiling modules and the kernel then editing some obscure config file to get all the features of a high end sound card to work.

    me, i'm not that nerdy, i actually like girls, i don't have the time to jerk around trying to get my computer to work, i would rather double click an exe, click next a couple of time, reboot and be off and running in less than 3 minutes.

    p.s. nothing personal, but ubuntu has to be one of the most over-rated distros ever, if i absolutely had to use a non-windows OS my first choice would be pc-bsd, then freespire, then vector soho then suse then fedora, but ubuntu? i think i'd rather waste my time with debian proper or slackware or possibly even knoppix rather than ubuntu and all the idiotic off-shoots.
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    I've been using it since 2005. My first distro was Suse Linux 9.3, and I'd been using it exclusively until shortly after Microsoft began threatening various distros, claiming that part of their networking stack was in their distro. I was disgusted when Novell and Microsoft got into bed, so I ended up going to the only distro at the time that didn't give into them--Ubuntu. Needless to say, I was sold.

    Right now it's installed on my laptop as a secondary OS, and up until a massive HD failure last month, I was also using Mythbuntu on my home system. I've also tried Fedora 8 and I even went back to OpenSUSE 11 briefly, but I will put Mythbuntu back on one of these days. I have to figure out how to set it up like I have my Vista setup right now, so that I can convert the OTA HD stuff I record into DVDs. Most of the tools I use run in WINE, but I'd rather go with native Linux solutions wherever possible. The day I get it to that level of usability, Vista is gone for good. Linux does everything I ask of it, and it does it faster and more reliably, and the simple act of turning the computer on and leaving it sit for fifteen minutes unused doesn't crash it.

    As far as I'm concerned, Vista is what Linux would be if Microsoft got their hands on it--bloated, buggy and grossly overpriced.
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  4. Member edDV's Avatar
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    I first used Linux on a Sun SPARC about 1995 I think.

    The first time I installed Linux at home was about 1996 with an early PC distribution from Caldera that later became Open Linux. The following year I installed an early version of Red Hat on a second PC machine.

    Years later I switched over to SUSE.

    I don't use Linux that much these days but I try to make it to the LinuxWorld Expo each year for an update.

    I've even retired my Samba server in favor of Windows Home Server Lazy me.
    Recommends: Kiva.org - Loans that change lives.
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    1991 ... from the days of compiling system configurations and kernels ... the only way.

    To many these days want a one-click solution and be-all end-all ... it wont happen.
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  6. Get Slack disturbed1's Avatar
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    I first installed a Linux OS sometime in 1999. Pretty sure it was Red Hat. Shortly after my first experience, I tried just about every distro there was. Settled on Slackware and Vector Linux for a while, until Pat dropped Gnome, and Ubuntu came around. Sick of the Ubuntu way, and constant breakage, tried a few other distros, even liked Arch for a short while. Finally went back to Slackware. Which is where I should have never left in the first place.
    Linux _is_ user-friendly. It is not ignorant-friendly and idiot-friendly.
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    I've using Ubuntu for about a year, only time I use windows is for gaming and photoshop stuff, cant convince the wifey to use linux at all, pure stubborn
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    deadrats wrote:

    now don't get me wrong, i thought redhat 9 (right before the start of the fedora project) was excellent, i like the latest suse, i absolutely love pc-bsd, vector soho is top notch as was peanut linux back in the day (i think it was 9.3 where it was configured by default to "talk" in a female voice) and arguably the most professionally done distro was lindows/linspire, but be that as it may, it still lacked an all encompassing api ala DX, the file hierarchy to this day continues to be one of the dumbest i have ever seen with that silly /, /root, /home, /etc, slash this i say, the /fstab makes me want to f'n stab somebody and the man pages has such a gay sound to it.

    in short linux, despite all the progress it has made, is still mired in it's unix roots from 30 years ago. could what's wrong with it be fixed? sure, but the community, the really fanatical, quasi-religious proponents would never allow it, they consider it a retarded badge of honor to smack you head against the wall custom compiling modules and the kernel then editing some obscure config file to get all the features of a high end sound card to work.

    me, i'm not that nerdy, i actually like girls, i don't have the time to jerk around trying to get my computer to work, i would rather double click an exe, click next a couple of time, reboot and be off and running in less than 3 minutes.

    p.s. nothing personal, but ubuntu has to be one of the most over-rated distros ever, if i absolutely had to use a non-windows OS my first choice would be pc-bsd, then freespire, then vector soho then suse then fedora, but ubuntu? i think i'd rather waste my time with debian proper or slackware or possibly even knoppix rather than ubuntu and all the idiotic off-shoots.
    I agree with most things you said. Apparently the Linux fanaticals
    have not learned anything useful from the errors of Microsoft .
    I have never been a *real* user of Linux, but I do have tested several distros --- and none of them has managed to make me seriously consider switching to the "wannabe UNIX". For example, I can't stand a distro which greets me with the stupid message "Error: only one processor found" during the boot process . Also, I do not the see the point of a multi-user environment when there is only one person who will use the damn PC (this criticism applies to WinNT as well --- especially when the OS itself is the main/only generator of the infamous "corrupt user profiles" ).
    Honestly speaking, "Linux Is Not UniX" ---
    --- but even Mr. Torvalds has refused to see the obvious truth, I guess.




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    Originally Posted by Midzuki
    For example, I can't stand a distro which greets me with the stupid message "Error: only one processor found" during the boot process
    you just reminded me of an error message i used to see on a regular basis when i was doing linux reviews (i used to do them in the old extremetech forums and my reviews were quite a popular attraction, routinely generated a couple of hundred posts worth of discussion) and it's not like i am some neophyte, in college one of my dual majors was comp sci and i also went through pace university's certified unix admin program, i know my way around linux and unix pretty well, anyway the message i would see would be that the install routine could not find the install media (usually because it couldn't see the optical drive) despite the fact that the install routine was being loaded from the install media. it's like telling me you can't find your car when you are sitting in it, it just used to drive me crazy and the thing is that trying to work around that error message is a real test of patience. needless to say that no distro that gave me such a message ever got a good review from me, even if i was able to work around it.

    or when i would see a kernel panic for no apparent reason or the sound module (this would happen with OSS all the time) would just unload for no reason or when x-server would stop working for no apparent reason and upon next boot it would default to run level 3 and i would have to sit and **** around with config files using vi (arguably the most poorly thought out and executed text editor ever created, it makes notepad look like word on steroids) trying to get x to work again.

    what a pain in my ass...

    Originally Posted by Midzuki
    Also, I do not the see the point of a multi-user environment when there is only one person who will use the damn PC
    that's part of the archaic unix roots from the late 60's/early 70's. unix was originally designed to run on massive main frames in a lab at bell labs and since computing resources were scarce in those days they designed it so they could connect dumb terminals to the main frame and all the user would be able to able to work at the same time and think they were the only ones using the main frame at the time (this is a very simplified explaination, as what's happening is that the OS uses the concept of "slices" to allow each use access to just a portion of the computing resources. this is great if you have a shit load of users that need to connect to one massive main frame and all the work absolutely needs to be done on said main frame, but for a desktop? i can understand supporting multiple user accounts, as more than one person might have to use the computer, but not multiple simultaneous user enviroments.

    of course we also have unix to thank for the wide spread adoption of C, probably one of the more half assed programming languages of all time. what happened is as unix gained wide spread adoption within universities, big businesses and government agencies, the need for people that could maintain it, patch it and update it grew and since it was coded in C universities started teaching C and moving away from pascal, the dominant language for a while to write applications.

    unfortunately C is an extremely "free flowing" language that allows a programmer to write code with varying degrees of cohesive structure, and quite frankly it leads to buggy software, software that can be a real bitch to debug, C++ is better to a degree, but you can still get away with way too many programming shortcuts as far as i'm concerned.
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  10. Member GMaq's Avatar
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    Some interesting points, and interesting ideas on what types of distro are best (or not at all).

    I am into Linux 2 years now, It has been a bittersweet mix of learning a whole lot with the accompanying frustration in equal amounts. I started with MEPIS 6.5, moved to Ubuntu which despite all the flaming by Hardcore "Nixers" is a great introduction to Linux if you didn't major in computer science, I still use Ubuntu Gutsy 7.10 after a brief kick at the can with Hardy. The decrease in Kernel efficiency and interference of extra security conventions like Gnome Policykit have completely sucked any fun for me out of the direction Linux is headed. I am completely out of breath with Ubuntu's 6 month release schedule with products that more and more resemble a UNIX based Vista. Having learned to compile has enabled me to keep current and taught me a lot in the process, but that's only because I find it interesting personally. I use my computer mostly for multi-track audio recording and some video work so a stable reliable setup with a dependable -rt Kernel is a must.

    I already see the 3rd party packaging for Hardy falling way behind, the exact same thing happened to Dapper 6.06, by the time it's LTS term was up it was ridiculously archaic, and Hardy likely will be too. Where is the Linux (other than Servers) that would be a long term stable alternative to Microsoft products? Many businesses still use Win2K! A 6 month release model fosters no confidence for any end user other than Linux enthusiasts, what business or corporate environment is going to want to use a 6 month release model or an LTS that languishes from a sustained lack of updates and interest?

    It is my belief that Linux in general hit it's high point on the graph about a year ago, it was able to provide solid and in some cases better alternatives to many (not all...be realistic) applications, maintain it's security by it's own unique merits - not software, and coax equal and usually better performance out of dated hardware.

    And in spite of all this I still love it! In a few days I am releasing a A/V Centric Gutsy Remaster with many improvements, updates and a collection of current solid, stable and productive Linux Audio and Video apps. Despite the OS politics of it all the Grassroots ethos of the F/OSS movement is a pretty interesting study in Human Nature. Thousands of Developers doing it simply for the "love of the game" is a refreshing perspective even if the execution of it is flawed and messy.

    Anyway, just another opinion to be taken or left, thanks for the opportunity to vent.
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    Originally Posted by GMaq
    Anyway, just another opinion to be taken or left, thanks for the opportunity to vent.
    2 things:

    1) i would love to try your remaster, i know how hard it can be, i made a number of remasters over the years and quite frankly thought they all sucked, so i would love to see what you came up with, any links?

    2) in all honesty, my favorite non-microsoft OS is PC-BSD, once i tried that i realized that linux, for the most part, with a few exceptions, is just a poorly done unix, it's one of the few alternative OSes that i think stands a good chance of giving windows a real run for it's money if a company like redhat or novell decided to get behind it.
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  12. Greetings Supreme2k's Avatar
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    Slackerware in 1998. Ubuntu (server), mepis (old desktop), DSL (old 500Mhz laptop), and Rockbox(?)(In my Sansa), presently.
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  13. Member GMaq's Avatar
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    Originally Posted by deadrats
    Originally Posted by GMaq
    Anyway, just another opinion to be taken or left, thanks for the opportunity to vent.
    2 things:

    1) i would love to try your remaster, i know how hard it can be, i made a number of remasters over the years and quite frankly thought they all sucked, so i would love to see what you came up with, any links?

    2) in all honesty, my favorite non-microsoft OS is PC-BSD, once i tried that i realized that linux, for the most part, with a few exceptions, is just a poorly done unix, it's one of the few alternative OSes that i think stands a good chance of giving windows a real run for it's money if a company like redhat or novell decided to get behind it.
    deadrats

    1) I am uploading the ISO now and if all goes well will probably put a post in the Linux forum here tomorrow. I would truly appreciate if you (or anyone else reading) checked it out, I'm sure I missed some bugs somewhere!

    2) I have heard a lot of good things about both PC-BSD and Solaris. Perhaps I will kick PC-BSD around in Virtualbox and see what's what, unfortunately neither of them have an -rt (Realtime) Kernel yet and limited Audio hardware support which if Ubuntu, Fedora or openSUSE shine anywhere it is in specialized applications like that. The upcoming MEPIS 8 looks quite promising with it's Debian Lenny base, it's taking forever to get out of beta/RC though.
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  14. Man of Steel freebird73717's Avatar
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    Gmaq!

    Brother how you been? Haven't seen you around in a while. Hope everything is going ok. I'd love to check out your new take on ubuntu but currently my main rig is kaput(fried motherboard) and all I have is my wife's laptop (which she adamantly says I can't mess around with)

    Looks like you've been busy.
    Donadagohvi (Cherokee for "Until we meet again")
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  15. Member GMaq's Avatar
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    Freebird!

    I'm finer than frog's hair how bout yerself?

    Sorry to hear about your Mobo, that really sucks in any case but especially if you are a developer!

    Are you sure you can't squeeze a little ext3 partition on that laptop? She'll never notice. Well maybe that GRUB boot screen might give it away, just tell her it was a BIOS update!
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    I tried installing Madrake in the year 2000 I think. Could not understand how to use it and gave up. I tried RedHat in 2002, used it a little but did not understand how to install software and gave up. I can say I did not use Linux then, just installed it and did not know how to use it.

    Then I tried ubuntu 8.04 ehen it came out in April 2008 and since then I have used ubuntu, Linux Mint and tried some other distros in virtualbox. I also use SlugOS linux on my Linksys NSLU2 NAS unit. I have made a file server using ubuntu 8.04 server on an old PC. But two months ago I started to use OpenSolaris (it's not Linux, but some kind of unix like OS) when I built myself a new file server on a new PC using opensolaris and ZFS file system.

    My main Linux OS is now Linux Mint Elyssa but I use triple boot with WindowsXP and Windows Vista also on the same PC. I like Linux very much but I think it is easier to work with video applications on Windows so I use windows as much as Linux nowadays. The things I like with Linux is that it is great for servers and when I want to make special setups. The free thing with Linux is also very nice, not just "free of charge" but that everything is open source is a good thing too.

    I just have to mention opensolaris again. The file system ZFS is really impressing. Making snapshots and advanced raidsetups is dead easy. As a file server it's wonderful. I am getting speeds around 90 MB/s over gigabit ethernet to my Windows Vista desktop. To Linux the speed is about half as much compared to Windows Vista client. Windows XP is as slow as Linux regarding network speed.

    But as desktop system I think Windows still is better. I actually have started to like Windows Vista nowadays, especially when discovering the good network performance. I have heard good thing about Windows 7, but not tried the beta. Windows XP feels very old... But I will probably still use Linux as alternative OS, especially on older computers.
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  17. Get Slack disturbed1's Avatar
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    Originally Posted by ronnylov
    I like Linux very much but I think it is easier to work with video applications on Windows so I use windows as much as Linux nowadays. The things I like with Linux is that it is great for servers and when I want to make special setups. The free thing with Linux is also very nice, not just "free of charge" but that everything is open source is a good thing too.
    That was my main hurdle 3 years ago. I was just too accustomed to the pretty GUI interfaces for the video apps on Windows. After a while I learned (memorized) most of the commands for the things I do with dvdauthor, mencoder, mjpegtools .... I even use HCEnc through wine at the command line level. The other day I was playing around with Windows 7 in a VM, checking some new and old Windows video tools. I was totally lost, and found it completely inefficient to have to drill through menus and click this and that. Funny how I used to think it was such a burden to have to type a few switches in a terminal .

    I can relate other's issues with Linux to my issues with Windows (today). We are creatures of habit, and when you've used something for so long, anything new or different can be a burden.
    Linux _is_ user-friendly. It is not ignorant-friendly and idiot-friendly.
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    I installed pclinuxos 2007 on a 10 year old desktop which was ticking me off in windows xp but was still too well equiped with equipment and in perfect working order, other than the OS, to trash.

    I do a lot of audio work. Things that would make XP choke and die in the same PC are handled fine and relatively quickly in this distribution. I have a newer computer with Vista, but the pclinuxos 2007 breathed new life into a machine I still use daily.

    The only time it gets turned off is during a power outage (or if my 2 year old hits the power button when i am not home).

    These are computers.....machines.....tools to accomplish a job. I will never be a complely sold out user of just one operating system. When I go fishing I have a box full of different lures and tools to try to catch fish. What ever I need to finish the job.
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  19. My favorite Full Linux distro is/was Mandrake now Mandriva. That was many moons ago, maybe version 5.x (1998 or 1999)
    I used it just for testing and playing around, never as a primary OS. Out of the distros back then, I think it had the most going for it. I tried them all.

    I still have a FreeSCO diskette somewhere. I used it for 3 years everyday as a remote office router
    tgpo famous MAC commercial, You be the judge?
    Originally Posted by jagabo
    I use the FixEverythingThat'sWrongWithThisVideo() filter. Works perfectly every time.
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