For those of you who want to try Linux
Mar 19, 2006 at 4:48 AM Thread Starter Post #1 of 44

Welly Wu

Headphoneus Supremus
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Red Hat is releasing Red Hat Fedora CORE 5 Security Enhanced Linux this Monday, March 20th, 2006: http://fedora.redhat.com . Red Hat is a major distributor of Linux in North America and their Fedora Project is one of the top five most recommended and popular Linux distributions especially for those with a background in Microsoft Windows or who are trying to learn more about Linux. RHFC5SELinux is quite mature in terms of development and it is very stable along with being highly compatible with most PC hardware including AMD Athlon 64, ATI/NVIDIA graphics cards, and the new 2.6.14 kernel which has better support for 802.11b/g Wi-Fi. I highly recommend that you check it out and download / burn a DVD ISO disc this Monday. I will download it and add it to my library, but I am sticking with CentOS 4.2 which is closely tied to Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 AS SELinux. Thank you for reading and do share your opinions if you decide that 2006 is the year to try Linux. By the way, do not forget that FreeBSD is another excellent UN*X clone that is free, open source, mature, and extremely secure / stable too.
 
Mar 19, 2006 at 6:10 AM Post #4 of 44
Fedora CORE has a short learning curve due to its GUI driven setup and user interface. I learned how to use it from the get go and I am constantly learning all of the power terminal commands daily. Try it.
 
Mar 19, 2006 at 7:04 AM Post #6 of 44
Well... it's free, there's lots of open-source software available, it's secure, it's stable, and it uses less resources. That's the main idea of it, anyway... I think.

I'm dual-booting Windows XP Corporate and Ubuntu at the time, and I like Ubuntu a hell of a lot. However, I have a Radeon 9600, and I, for the life of me, can NOT get dual monitors working. I just can't. That's why I'm in Windows right now, actually...
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Mar 19, 2006 at 7:07 AM Post #7 of 44
I want to switch to Linux because I have no doubt it is superior to Windows. Actually I have Ubuntu installed. THe thing that stops me is windows only programs. If I could get my AV-710 to work I might consider using it for part of the time.
 
Mar 19, 2006 at 7:22 AM Post #8 of 44
I really want to go linux because I hate windows. I just built a new PC, I only need a power cord for my monitor.

I can't decide whether to install with XP or Suse 10. I have both.

One thing that's really confusing me is the file systems. I have XP pro on my laptop, which came as Fat32 for some reason. My external HDD (which I share between desktop and laptop) is NTSC. Now I come to understand that Linux can't write NTSC, but CAN write Fat32, however Fat32 is pretty much worthless to me because I do so much video and Fat32 has a 4GB cap on file sizes. At the same time here are *nix file systems that have no file size restrictions, but can XP read them? Write to them? So if I use an ext3 file system on my HDD I can't write anything to it with windows? And if I use NTSC on my HDD I can't write anything to it with Linux? Lame.

I also don't know if my onboard video will be OK with Linux. This is my Mobo:
http://www.dfi.com.tw/Product/xx_pro...YPE=LP&SITE=US

There's no foobar for Linux, there's no EAC for linux. PITA.

I also need no know if Suse 10 will let me use Dvorak keyboard layout or else I'll have to buy a special keyboard.

I've had people suggest I dual boot Windows and Linux, but I really don't understand how dual booting works, especially with the file format issue.
 
Mar 19, 2006 at 7:34 AM Post #9 of 44
Thanks- I was wondering when they were getting around to releasing FC5. I will absolutely download it Monday morning and have it running by evening. I've been with this distro since RH7.3 (2001) and am always impressed with how well it progresses from major release to major release. I'm hoping the percentage of 64 bit code goes up.

For those of you who have not tried Linux and are interested in it, this would be a good time to check it out. If you don't know how to download and burn an ISO, you can buy ones on eBay for a few dollars. Also, most Linux users would be pleased to burn and give you a copy. From there, just boot from your optical drive and install. The installers are GUI and hardware recognition is quite good on most major distributions.

If you're not sure and want to check it out before the big step of wiping your hard drive and installing something you've never used before, get one of the live distros. Ubuntu has an excellent one and many people love Knoppix. Those will let you get a feel for it without a major committment.

If you do decide to take the plunge, go to the bookstore and get a copy of "Running Linux" published by O'Reilly. It is technical, and there is a bit of a learning curve to Linux. However, the rewards are great. My boxes never crash. Never. No virii, malware, etc. etc. You've probably heard all that. But there's another advantage: Linux is fast. The code is lean and efficient. It makes older machines snappy again. I run AMD64 machines (one Athlon64 and one dual Opteron) and they scream. Nothing can touch them. Ripping, burning, rendering, anything. I have two Macs running OS X 10.4.5 (G4 and Intel) that I love and use, but Linux on AMD64 wipes the floor with them.

One other advantage: great community. If you run Linux, you'll find a great community out there for you, just like Head-Fi. Your friends on the message boards will help you through the transition.
 
Mar 19, 2006 at 8:07 AM Post #10 of 44
I thought about trying linux on my Lappy, but when it first came out at least, there were a feww people that had trouble gettting it running. I think in my comp that I am planning on building I will dual boot with linux. Thanks for the tip though, I'll def check it out

actually I would have tried linux except x64 and a new vista beta had come out. By the time I was done tinkering with both of those I was getting tired the whole OS switching thing
 
Mar 19, 2006 at 8:23 AM Post #11 of 44
Would it be possible to dual boot Windows XP and Linux Fedora? I wouldn't mind running out and getting a 2nd hard drive dedicated to Linux.

Before I do, I have a couple questions:
1. Would I be able to play games on Linux? (Ex. Counter-Strike, HL2, etc..)
2. What if there are some programs that I'd try running on Linux like Adobe Photoshop and Macromedia Dreamweaver, would it be possible to get it to work on Linux?
 
Mar 19, 2006 at 9:53 AM Post #13 of 44
I'm currently posting this message from Ubuntu, switched a few days ago and it was well worth it. Fortunately everything works fine, my sound card, my monitor, my printer, all my video codecs work great...I can't really see myself going back to Windows (although I still have it on my computer, I usually just boot into Ubuntu) as Linux is just so much better. AmaroK is an amazing music player, I like it a lot more than foobar2000 and there's a host of other great programs out there. I would recommend anyone to try Ubuntu, it's got a great community and it's very easy to setup.
 
Mar 19, 2006 at 1:06 PM Post #14 of 44
I use gentoo on another machine of mine, and I'm very happy with it. It is a little complex though but nothing you won't learn fast.
 
Mar 19, 2006 at 4:28 PM Post #15 of 44
Quote:

Originally Posted by XxATOLxX
Would it be possible to dual boot Windows XP and Linux Fedora? I wouldn't mind running out and getting a 2nd hard drive dedicated to Linux.

Before I do, I have a couple questions:
1. Would I be able to play games on Linux? (Ex. Counter-Strike, HL2, etc..)
2. What if there are some programs that I'd try running on Linux like Adobe Photoshop and Macromedia Dreamweaver, would it be possible to get it to work on Linux?



Dual boot should be no problem. You can get a pretty complete Linux install in just a couple gigs if you don't plan on loading up with extra applications. As for your questions:

1. Pretty unlikely
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Games are one of the big areas where Linux loses out to Windows. Even though your hardware is the same, Windows and Linux use different executable formats and most game makers don't bother to include a Linux compiled version of their games because it's not worth the effort/disk space for the relatively small market (same reason there has been a comparative lack of Mac games). There is a Windows "emulater" called WINE that is supposed to be pretty good but I don't think it's up to the task of running modern games at high frame rates. I could be wrong.

2. I dunno about Dreamweaver, but Linux has a very capable (FREE) Photoshop clone called GIMP (gimp.org). Again, you may be able to run the Windows programs under WINE, you may not. The nice thing about open source is that if there is a commercial product that is useful but expensive, people have probably started a project to clone the functionality in a program that'll be available free.
 

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