Korean Job Discussion Forums

[SuperHero]

I'm getting a new kick ass machine later this summer and planning on taking my current computer and running a dual boot ubuntu windows just to play with linux and become familiar with it. Anyhow I had a little time today and did some research and watched a couple of google videos on it. I was pretty impressed with the live CD as you can go surfing on the net right in the middle of your install - how useful is that for troubleshooting?

anyhow check out these two videos -the first one is kind of goofy
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6104490811311898236

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2369893842637434537

[rocklee]

Amazing what a difference a video makes in providing walkthroughs on installations and general how-tos. Should be the future for manuals.

[mrsquirrel]

I had problems with the dual boot with Ubuntu and had to manually edit Grub (boot loader) for a first-timer it was a bit of a panic when I couldn't access windows to get to my old files but after a good search around everything turned out good.

[SuperHero]

[SuperHero]

I've decided that Linux isn't worth the trouble. I've tried three times to get it installed on my old computer following the instructions on the Ubuntu site and it just doesn't work.

There is no way that Linux can be a serious contender for windows or Mac o/s when it's such a pain in the butt to get running. And how can it be when it can't run most commercial software, has 100+ different distributions to choose from resulting in a fractured market that is already for the fringe.

Just because a product is open source and free doesn't make it good. Open source is a great idea, but without proper leadership and direction Linux will remain at best a fringe o/s for Microsoft haters and uber geeks. When I first posted on the Linux forum asking for help, I got loads of help, but much of it was peppered with anti Micro$oft rhetoric and Linux bible thumping that would make a Korean subway evangelist proud. This type of community is not one that is going to draw people in. The above reason is also the one of the main reasons that I avoid Mac Fanboys.I was merely interested in trying it out.

I happen to think that Microsoft has done a great job with XP and quite possibly with Vista (less than 2 weeks using Vista now, but happy). I am not defending MS, the company has made mistakes and their product is not perfect, but it is damn good and definitely not as bad as Linux people make it out to be. The only reason Linux doesn't get viruses (and this goes for Mac as well) is that they are not big enough for the hackers to bother writing code.

Additionally in my research it is very common for people to have trouble finding drivers for printers, wireless access and other peripherals including older equipment which is where I expected Linux to excel since they claim it's the o/s to revitalize and speed up an older pc. With windows there is no problem; most equipment works immediately when plugged in. Of course it's still a good idea to go to the web site and install the latest drivers, but it's not necessary.

Essentially at this point I feel that Linux is not a mature or even close to mature o/s. I would like to add that I am familiar with shell access and using command line code. I've used this when maintaining my web sites as the server is running Linux. Linux is fine server software, but it is not ready for the end use.

I haven't given up on Linux. However I won't be checking in again for a couple of more years.

[mrsquirrel]

I don't like Ubuntu, had too many problems with it.

I have recomennded several times SuSE 10.3

It's the only distro I have had that hasn't caused me any problems.

Linux is fairly easy to use, all depends if you are prepared to do some learning or not.

[SuperHero]

[mrsquirrel]

That's all part of the joys of it. Not having to be the same as everybody else.

Ubuntu is the Mac of Linux, really hyped up, everybody expecting it to work out of the box, but when they can't get the wireless card to work or graphics are causing problems they give up or get all frustrated.

I tried and tried with it, just couldn't get my wireless adapter to be seen, a techy said to use SuSE he had never had any problems installing it on peoples machines.

He was right, nothing was really wrong, there were a few niggles that were easily sorted out by the support forum, no more than my windows install.

Compared to my windows setup it was stable, never crashed, never needed restarting for updates, nothing, just ran.

It will be going back on this week, had to take it off and use windows a while back for the missus.

If you want some fun you could always try OSX86 and see if you can get that to run if you have a processor that runs SSE2 instructions.

I have been running Leopard all this week and I still can't see what the fuss is about.

[SuperHero]

If it were possible to install OSx or leopard or whatever on a run of the mill pc I would try it - but I don't think it is possible, though it must be getting close now that Macs use intel processors.

[mrsquirrel]

I'm sitting here on a Thinkpad R60 with it running.

You want OSX86-

Latest version of Leopard is kalyway-Leopard.10.5.1

http://isohunt.com/torrents/?ihq=kalyway

google - osx86

[SuperHero]

[mrsquirrel]

It might be network manager.

I had a few issues with it.

Are you connecting wirelessly or cable. Either way I had issues for a bit.

I disabled it and used ifup command to get past it

if you go into YAST and look for network settings the first tab that you come to should allow you to deselect network managed and use traditional connection.

give that a try.

Also check in the firewall settings/connection settings that it's not set to block all. that happens automatically for some reason on two of my installs.


.

[SuperHero]

I've tried everything that you suggested.

[cj1976]

I tried Linux and whilst it does look nice and has some useful apps pre-installed, I found it to be more trouble than it's worth. Everything you can do on Linux can also be done on Win XP - with half the effort.
I tried using Ubuntu in my laptop but I could not figure out how to get the Wi-Fi going and after trawling through various forums to no avail, I gave in and re-installed XP.
To be honest, unless you really hate Microsoft or Apple there isn't much point in using Linux.

[JustJohn]

I've now tried 6 linux distros and while most of them had something that needed to be done I found it quite easy to look up the solution on the internet in each case. Not sure why everyone makes such a big deal about it.


For what it's worth, you people might want to try mandriva. It has video drivers and everything pre-installed. I didn't have to tweak anything to get it running. Only reason I'm not running it right now is because I want to try more versions and I think the start button is ugly.