About Linux

Gmax

Gmax

kuahahahaha
is a Forum Moderator Alumnus
I was considering installing Linux on my system along with Windows, and I had a few questions about it.

What are the significant advantages of using Linux over Windows?

Do you know of any good Anti-Virus software for Linux?

Is it hard to get a hang of using Linux?

Has anyone here tried out the Beryl Project, and if so, how good is it?
 
It doesn't really crash, or even slow down after a year of use. Try that with Windows (pain).

You don't need antivirus software. There are no linux viruses.

It's easy to use the GUI. The console can be difficult at first if you aren't used to such things. If you graduated from DOS in the early 90s, it's easy (and infinitely better).

I don't even know what the Beryl Project is.
 
Linux is a bit more programmer friendly from my experience.. which isn't all that much experience. :x The computer science and engineering department at school has Linux systems and it didn't take long at all for me to get used to it. It's not any more difficult than Windows, it's just slightly different so you have to adjust. Not a big deal, though. Yeah, I haven't heard of any viruses to speak of. Pretty much ditto what Surgo said.
 
Surgo said:
It doesn't really crash, or even slow down after a year of use. Try that with Windows (pain).

You don't need antivirus software. There are no linux viruses.

It's easy to use the GUI. The console can be difficult at first if you aren't used to such things. If you graduated from DOS in the early 90s, it's easy (and infinitely better).

I don't even know what the Beryl Project is.
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http://linux.softpedia.com/get/Multimedia/Graphics/Beryl-19790.shtml

Thats a link that describes the Beryl Project. The speed maintenance sounds good, since my Windows has really slowed down over the past year.
 
Okay, so it's another window manager...like KDE...I've been using KDE for almost six years now.
 
I believe I read in some magazine a few days ago that it could be used by users of both KDE and GNOME. That was pretty much the first time I came accross Linux, and I've been wondering whether it was worth installing Linux for all work related purposes. Well, since it won't be taking up more than 5-10 GB of space, I suppose it'll be worth it. The lack of viruses seems like a pretty huge advantage.
 
tl;dr:

beryl is basically a vista-lookalike windows manager, that is compatible with both kde and gnome. i have tried it on a friend's laptop where it worked sweetly, and i failed to set it up on my fedora 8 VM. but from my experiences, i can say that there are not many functional advantages of using beryl, none that i've found anyway. it does look cooler than most KDE themes, however.

an advice on linux is somewhat hard to formulate without knowing what you are going to use it for.

if you work with DOS or the windows command shell, you'll feel that installing linux has several advantages, since bash is infinitely more powerful than cmd. also, linux has been the preferred workspace for a lot of developers, so if you're into programming, you might consider linux. however if that is the reason you're migrating to linux, i feel mingw/msys or cygwin are better alternatives rather than having to partition the entire disk and install a ton of software (even though cygwin manages to do the ton-of-software part).

long story short, if what you want is essentially a new operating system to work with, then install linux. if for some reason you are reluctant to partition your drive, then there are plenty of alternatives you can try to get some good linux apps running with windows.

these are my views on the topic. feel free to disagree
 
I am also very interested in dual booting with Linux, especially since I will not be listening to music on this laptop once I get my desktop Wednesday, so I will not miss foobar!!
 
It's really easy to dual boot. Make sure you install Windows first though, or on a separate hard drive, because there's no guarantee it even recognizes the existence of partitions that aren't its own. After that, you'll want to:

* Make sure you have free space for a new partition.
* Get a Linux distribution (I use Debian; its installer wasn't too user friendly when I first installed it, but it's come a -long- way; I hear Ubuntu is very user-friendly, and it's also Debian-based).
* Install it on your new partition! When you do this, make sure to install something called "grub". Not LILO, grub.
* If grub wasn't installed yet, please install it at this time. You can make a bootable grub CD or floppy and install it / boot from there if you need to.
* Do the puppet master! At this point what you write in the grub configuration file in order to get Windows booting depends on what drive and partition Windows is on. (Windows doesn't like it if it's not on the first partition of the first drive, but grub has the ability to fool it to make it think it is -- if you need help with this, just PM me.)
* Install cool packages if the installer didn't do it already (if you're using Debian, now is the time). You'll at least want KDE, Firefox (Iceweasel in Debian), openoffice.org (alternatively; KOffice is great), xpdf (if you like viewing pdf files), xmms (if you like listening to music), pigeon (if you like IMing (formerly called gaim)).

If you're not hardcore and don't like editing files on the command-line with vi or emacs, kate is a great text editor for when you don't want to load up a full word processor like oo.org or koffice.

If you're a programmer or want to learn programming, you'll want (all debian package names):
* gcc (and pretty much all gcc packages, except like gnat or gfortran or whatever)
* libc6-dev and libstdc++-dev
* vim (or emacs if you happen to enjoy copious amounts of penis)
* make

Packages that you won't want to download from Debian right now but if you're a programmer you may want anyway include:
* Java (it's not packaged yet, but it's getting there -- get it from Red Hat or Sun right now).
* Eclipse (because of the status of Java).
 
I installed Ubuntu (with GNOME) recently, so I'm dual booting with Windows XP now. The Live CD installer handles GRUB by itself, so all you really have to do it is make one new partition for the operating system and one for swap space, which is easy enough. The few issues I've had so far...

  • Using the wrong video driver gave me a blank screen on startup, so I had to reconfigure X at the recovery command line. That is fixed now, and it was based on my old Intel video card anyway.
  • The fonts in Firefox looked pretty ugly until I installed Microsoft fonts and changed the default to Verdana.
  • Amarok is less customizable than foobar2000 and has weaker support for Replay Gain, although it's still a decent application and I'm not as dedicated a music listener as some other people anyway.
  • I liked the ability to tile multiple channel windows in mIRC, but XChat doesn't have the same feature.
 
Amarok was a piece of shit the last time I tried it, so I stuck with xmms. Is it getting better? As in, does it no longer segfault all the time?

Also, yeah, XChat is...somewhat okay. It's not urgent, but a better IRC program really does need writing.
 
Can Linux run games? Reason I'm asking is I'm building a gaming PC and have considered using it. Games I will play:

Crysis
GOW
COD4
*other shooter games*

Can Linux do it?
 
Why don't you google about all of those games instead of expecting everyone else to do all of the work? If they are Windows only, then you might be able to run them on Wine. Wine also has a compatibility database that can be used for finding how certain games run on it.
 
chaos said:
Why don't you google about all of those games instead of expecting everyone else to do all of the work? If they are Windows only, then you might be able to run them on Wine. Wine also has a compatibility database that can be used for finding how certain games run on it.
Click to expand...


I didn't realize that. Sorry, I'm not a computer guy.
 
Well, I've learned some C++. I am also doing a 4 year Computer Sc. & Engineering course, which involves a lot of programming, so I'm guessing it would be advantageous for me to dual boot with Linux. Thanks a lot for the help guys.
 
You can boot linux via live cd or boot linux from your usb(my slax for example) And you can emulate linux by using vmware or qemu.
 
I am using Linux Mint (a Ubuntu based GNOME distro) and am loving it! The firefox Windows fonts are all installed by default as are mp3 and dvd codecs.

Banshee (sudo apt-get install banshee) is the best music player, not XMMS and certainly not Amarok. It is basically a cross between Foobar and iTunes.

You can check the games at http://appdb.winehq.org/ I don't think there are linux clients for them!

And finally the Beryl project is obsolete. It has been merged back into Compiz as of last year. As for what it is, it is a window decorator that adds fancy 3D effects - such as the infamous Cube - into either Gnome or KDE (or Fluxbox).

I really would recommend linux, but only if you know what you are doing. Otherwise it is far too easy to destroy your entire system: sudo rm -rf / being the classic example. That said the GUI is getting more and more idiot-proof as time goes on...

edit: Since you say you are going to be playing games you might need to use fglrx - PM me if you need help setting it up - I have been doing battle with it for a while now and got it conquered!
 
I tried installing VMware and QEMU on my Ubuntu, but neither will install. I tried using another of the built-in terminals, and now the main Terminal won't open.

I need QEMU or VMware to get access to the internet, so how do I fix these problems?
 
Goddamn guys, Smogon is NOT a tech support forum. Go ask on ubuntuforums.org or something.
 
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