[jamont]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Wodgy In the real world, commercial developers need to release binaries that work consistently across multiple distributions. Users need to be able to just install stuff. Programs shouldn't have to be "packaged" first. Package management should be optional, not mandatory. It doesn't do any good to stick your head in the sand and deny this problem exists. It's a major hurdle for application developers and end users, and a huge waste of time for the package maintainers. Linux will never hit the mainstream until people can just distribute binaries and have them work on any reasonable generic distribution and be confident that these binaries will still run two years from now. This is true of almost every other major operating system, including some Unix-based ones such as NeXtStep.

Wodgy is right. Again. This is a huge problem for anyone trying to do real work on Linux. I have a machine that runs RH 7.1 and will do so forever because I have binaries that I need to use that work there but not on recent RH, Suse, whatever. What a mess...

 

[Young&Foolish]

Quote:

Originally Posted by jamont Wodgy is right. Again. This is a huge problem for anyone trying to do real work on Linux. I have a machine that runs RH 7.1 and will do so forever because I have binaries that I need to use that work there but not on recent RH, Suse, whatever. What a mess...

The fault lies with the commercial/Open Source developer of your binaries who has ceased support, not the family of Linux distributions, because binary incompatibility between stable releases is the nature of the beast and everyone is aware of this from the outset. The same is true to some extent of Windows or any other operating system in that if support of a particular program ceases then future binary compatibility isn't guaranteed.

On the subject of a lack of commercial support for Linux: it isn't binary incompatibility between stable releases or even incompatibility between different distributions which is the cause because support isn't that difficult, but one of there simply being no market outside of Enterprise Linux for commercial applications; the nature of Open Source development will force out commercial development without there being some unique "must have" application.

 

[Alu]

I'm using gentoo, and I'm perfectly happy with it. The installation was easy, the setting up was easy,
and the usability is overly decent. I have it on my main system (there only is one anyways right now

), say my silent storage pc.
All of the good programs work on linux anyways, except for foobar, which should really be ported
imho, and which can be used through cedega.

Don't pay for software.

My 2 cents.

 

[AdamWill]

I never used foobar when I was on Windows, so I'm curious - what does it have that Linux players don't?

 

[viator122]

So here's a little input from a first-time linux user. After all the hubbub lately regarding linux, I decided to give it a shot. I downloaded and burned to a CD SLAX linux, which got good reviews on the thread in the members lounge. I stuck in in my CD drive and rebooted my computer, and SLAX started up no problem. The first thing I noticed was that the GUI is not nearly as nice as OSX or XP. In fact, it looked like a poor copy of the XP GUI. Nevertheless, I continue. I notice there is a media player pre-installed. Great, let's bring up a video clip, I thought. No dice. SLAX won't let me look at my hard drives. Hmm, if i can't see my hard drives when using SLAX LiveCD, it kind of defeats the purpose of using a LiveCD, doesn't it? Anyway, I continued to poke around and tested out Konqueror. This does not display web pages nearly as well as XP or OSX.

I will continue to play with it a bit more tonight because I want to keep an open mind, but my initial impressions were not all that favorable. I don't think it ran any faster or performed any ordinary functions (web browsing, playing media, etc.) better than XP. I came away thinking "What was the point of that?" Yeah, it may be more secure and yadda yadda yadda, but there didn't seem to be any compelling reason for me to switch over.

 

[diskvask]

Konqueror basically uses the same HTML engine as Apple Safari, which is said to be fast but not as compilant as the Mozilla engine. I prefer it to firefox because of its responsiveness in KDE and it's very convenient that it works as a file manager as well.

Promissing linux alternative to foobar2000; http://fondriest.frederic.free.fr/realisations/lamip/

 

[AdamWill]

viator: never, ever judge performance from a live CD. After all, it's reading everything *from a CD*. they always perform terribly (except the tiny ones which can cache themselves entirely into memory, and therefore run very fast indeed). As the next poster said, Konqueror is known to have a less comprehensive rendering engine than Mozilla, so if Slax includes that or Firefox (I dunno if it does), try it out. Even Windows users love Firefox, it must be good.

Other problems - the hard disk one sounds like a problem with Slax, most distros won't have any trouble making your existing drives accessible. KDE interface is a matter of taste, I don't much like it either, but some people love it. And it *is* entirely themable, so if it's just the design you don't like, bear in mind it will be different on other distributions, and if you don't like it you can change it.

 

[Stephonovich]

Quote:

Originally Posted by viator122 So here's a little input from a first-time linux user. After all the hubbub lately regarding linux, I decided to give it a shot. I downloaded and burned to a CD SLAX linux, which got good reviews on the thread in the members lounge. I stuck in in my CD drive and rebooted my computer, and SLAX started up no problem. The first thing I noticed was that the GUI is not nearly as nice as OSX or XP. In fact, it looked like a poor copy of the XP GUI. Nevertheless, I continue. I notice there is a media player pre-installed. Great, let's bring up a video clip, I thought. No dice. SLAX won't let me look at my hard drives. Hmm, if i can't see my hard drives when using SLAX LiveCD, it kind of defeats the purpose of using a LiveCD, doesn't it? Anyway, I continued to poke around and tested out Konqueror. This does not display web pages nearly as well as XP or OSX. I will continue to play with it a bit more tonight because I want to keep an open mind, but my initial impressions were not all that favorable. I don't think it ran any faster or performed any ordinary functions (web browsing, playing media, etc.) better than XP. I came away thinking "What was the point of that?" Yeah, it may be more secure and yadda yadda yadda, but there didn't seem to be any compelling reason for me to switch over.

First off, as AdamWill mentioned, KDE isn't for everyone. However, bear in mind it also has themes, which are much more encompassing than Windows. If you can't find a theme you don't like, try Gnome. If you don't like large GUIs, try Fluxbox. If you're really a minimalist, try Blackbox. Ad infinitum.

As for speed, again, it's mounted from a CD. Of note if you've got more than 256MB RAM (preferably >=512MB), launch SLAX with 'slax copy2ram' at the boot sequence. This will take a bit longer to boot, but will copy everything to a RAM disk, which means things come up pretty much instantaneously. Append 'eject' (slax copy2ram eject) if you want access to the CD drive after it's booted.

On disks mounting, they're probably NTFS, right? SLAX doesn't mount NTFS by default, last I checked. It could easily be modified to do so, or just run mount /dev/hda1 (assuming your Windows drive is IDE, and the primary master - in layman's terms, if you have one hard drive, and it's like 99% of consumer computers sold, it's /dev/hda1) and it should mount. Well, have a mount point first. As root, 'mkdir /mnt/windows && mount /dev/hda1 /mnt/windows' should work. Of note, Knoppix does mount NTFS drives by default. It's also bigger, and has more programs. Worth trying. I just personally like SLAX better because it's smaller and has more of what I want.

 

[viator122]

I didn't mean to come across as saying that SLAX is slow or anything, I just don't notice a big improvement over XP. When you say "launch SLAX with 'slax copy2ram' at the boot sequence", what do you mean exactly?

I will try to get the drives mounted and I think I may try to put a different distribution on an old laptop I have lying around for a more in-depth exploration of the linux world.

 

[Stephonovich]

Quote:

Originally Posted by viator122 When you say "launch SLAX with 'slax copy2ram' at the boot sequence", what do you mean exactly?

When the SLAX boot menu comes up, and says 'Type slax to continue' (or something of the sort), type 'slax copy2ram' instead. Or, as I mentioned, 'slax copy2ram eject' if you want the CD drive to be available.

Quote:

I will try to get the drives mounted and I think I may try to put a different distribution on an old laptop I have lying around for a more in-depth exploration of the linux world.

That's the spirit. Soon, you'll have acquired a nice stack of old hard drives, each with a different Linux distro on it