[ls20]

i connected my ipod to ubuntu for the first time..and it even recognized that and placed an ipod shrotcut with the ipod icon on my desktop

im the furthest from a "omg linux = l337" zealot you'll find, but it really is painless

 

[CarbonTi]

Currently on Gentoo. Got to Gentoo after short stays with SUSE and Fedora.

Linux isn't for everyone, you gotta be inclined to know a little about what you're doing because you will always have to tweak or repair something. So, yeah there is a price to pay in knowledge and time. But MSFT isn't free after the OS license is paid for either because MSFT users become captive to Bill & Steve's business model and attendant MO's.

TINSTAAFL.

 

[vagarach]

You should have been more careful, even with a corrupted display, you could have killed X and fixed things from the command line, atleast changed the X.org conf file back to the generic driver. I know ubuntu defaults to 24bit colour depth, this may have caused the problem. You installed gentoo, so clearly the technical side of linux isn't a problem for you, it just seems like all that distro hopping was a waste for a savvy linux user.

I first tried linux back in the mandrake 8.2 days, (all craziness with compiling KDE 3 and rpms, fglrx, getting DRI working) and ubuntu now is so amazingly polished comparatively! The *perfect* general computing OS. Gnome fits so perfectly with it, I doubt you even need KDE to help with the move from windows to linux!

I really like using OS X, above the other two, but it ain't free

.

edit: actually, I *first* used linux in the form of pclinux (i think thats what it was called), the ambitious distro built to live on a normal windows drive, that I had gotten off a pcformat magazine cover disc. Back in 1999 I didn't even know how lucky I was to have installed and uninstalled it with zero problems, I just kinda assumed it would work

. I remember I waited like 3 hours for it to install, played the space fighting game that came with KDE2, and got bored with it

. Those were the days, ahhhhh.

 

[krmathis]

I have limited experience with GNU/Linux, but ran FreeBSD as my primary OS some 3-4 years ago.
It takes some time getting it all up and running (configuring, compiling, etc.). But when you get it all right its quite easy to use, and very stable.

Since then I have moved on to Mac OS X, and are never looking back.

 

[aphex944]

Quote:

Originally Posted by vagarach /img/forum/go_quote.gif You should have been more careful, even with a corrupted display, you could have killed X and fixed things from the command line, atleast changed the X.org conf file back to the generic driver. I know ubuntu defaults to 24bit colour depth, this may have caused the problem. You installed gentoo, so clearly the technical side of linux isn't a problem for you, it just seems like all that distro hopping was a waste for a savvy linux user.

Yeah, I'm sure I could have fixed the issue with Ubuntu. It would've just taken updating the nv driver, but even that would have taken awhile because of the packages I would've had to download just to install it. I was able to edit the xorg.conf and actually get back into X, but I could never get it working right at the resolution, refresh rate, and color depth I wanted(presumably from the driver problem).

The whole goal this time around for me was to install Linux without much hassle or time. I was hoping everything would be easy breezy, but it definitely did not turn out that way.

 

[Illah]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bizzel /img/forum/go_quote.gif Illah: What kind of problems did you have to fix?

Well I once had a ClarkConnect Linux box as a router/firewall/fileserver. Spent days on that thing, money on the hardware, etc, only to hate it. A few months later I bought a $40 WiFi router and never looked back.

I was also a hardcore overclocker for a while. I was running tests for "fun". I now realize how much monkey-labor I was doing for no reason at all. It requires no intelligence really, just following instructions and wasting time. I still tweak out machines, but after a day or two of work I live with what I have.

Then there's audio...all sorts of time wasted on minutia.

Then cycling - I was tweaking this and that all day for no reason. Now I just work on the only thing that makes any real difference...the engine (aka my heart, lungs, and legs

).

Basically I reached a new Zen when I stopped giving a damn

It sucks the fun right out of life when you start geek-ifying things to death.

--Illah

 

[wafflesomd]

Quote:

Originally Posted by goldenratiophi /img/forum/go_quote.gif Ubuntu graphics support = total suck. I don't know why I can get my monitor to display at normal 1440x900 resolution out of the box on every Linux distro EXCEPT Ubuntu. You just gotta find a distro that works for you. I don't like Ubuntu or Mandriva, but Debian and Gentoo both work great for me.

You eithe have no drivers installed, or you need to config your xorg config.

I use ubuntu as my main OS. I have for years.

24 hours is in no way a long enough period to judge linux. Use it more, and actaully figure out what your doing. It will be much more rewarding in the end.

 

[philodox]

Any minor problems I had during my Ubuntu install were easily fixed by having a quick peek at ubuntuguide.org

It seems to me that most people that have issues with Linux don't even try to fix them. Looks like Linux may not be for you if you get dissuaded that easily.

 

[Bizzel]

Quote:

Originally Posted by wafflesomd /img/forum/go_quote.gif 24 hours is in no way a long enough period to judge linux. Use it more, and actaully figure out what your doing. It will be much more rewarding in the end.

Agreed. It takes me at least two days to configure a linux system to exactly how I like it. It's much quicker on XP but linux stays exactly how I've configured it, no unexpected errors, changes, updates, viruses, etc.

 

[PiccoloNamek]

Quote:

24 hours is in no way a long enough period to judge linux. Use it more, and actaully figure out what your doing. It will be much more rewarding in the end.

What's even more rewarding is having something configure itself and work properly the first time.

An OS shouldn't require work or arcane knowledge to set up and maintain. It should get going by itself and get the hell out of the way. This is especially true for people who have been using another OS their entire lives. I was a DOS junkie and have been using Windows since version 3.1. Being told by Linux users that I just need to spend time and completely learn the ins and outs of a new OS isn't very appealing at all. Why can't Linux reach a point of development and acceptance that everything simply works on it?

 

[Illah]

Quote:

Originally Posted by PiccoloNamek /img/forum/go_quote.gif What's even more rewarding is having something configure itself and work properly the first time.

My thoughts exactly. I'm a firm PC lover but I have to give Apple loads of credit in this area. If cars were like Linux nobody would drive!

It's a tweaker OS for sure, but it will *never* reach anything close to a mass adoption until grandma can use it...and at that point the tweakers probably won't like it anymore

--Illah

 

[aphex944]

Quote:

Originally Posted by wafflesomd /img/forum/go_quote.gif 24 hours is in no way a long enough period to judge linux. Use it more, and actaully figure out what your doing. It will be much more rewarding in the end.

Of course not, I completely agree. But being that I have years of experience with Linux, just not recently, this doesn't apply to me. I know how great Linux can be, but honestly it was much more of a pain this time around than it was several years ago. Sure, it took longer, but I don't remember it ever hard locking. I'm on newer, faster hardware now, but I figured compatibility and hardware would have grown together on an open source operating system.

The whole reason I even wanted to install it again was because there aren't any applications I'd really be missing in Windows, AND I've been reading for months about how mainstream and easy to use the installers have become. I thought I could get it away with it "just working." Obviously not so in my case!

 

[Hi-Finthen]

Well these are some of the reasons i thought I would buy a preinstalled Ubutu O.S. Dell computer, forestall problems, and as they do gain market share then all the drivers will be then written by the hardware providers and better software applications will be written too.

I've had major headaches with M.S. and their endless updates which conflicted on ocassion, as well as with picking up virus or other bugaboos, yes while using AVG, firewalls and having to do total reinstalls...

As I don't game, I figure the Ubuntu Dell @ $289 shipped should be a worthwhile experiment...Time will tell~

 

[infinitemonkey]

I recently returned to Windows after using Linux as my full time desktop for about three years.

In that time I got pretty good at sorting things out. The more you learn, the more you understand. Once you get the hang of it, you can get a system up and running from a bare hard drive in less than an hour. Another hour after that and you've got everything set up and all of your favourite apps installed. Setting up Windows and getting all my apps installed took a lot longer than that, I can tell you.

Linux has nearly all of the apps I need and want. Most of what's not available, I can run through WINE. Photoshop, for example, runs pretty well with WINE, as does MS Office if you need that.

The other upside is great stability. My uptimes typically ran to several months, normally limited only by power interruptions.

On top of that, there's the warm and fuzzy feeling that you get from freeing yourself from Microsoft.

So, why did I switch back? Was it to run the eye candy wonder that is Vista? Nope, I'm actually running a copy of Windows 2000 I got off eBay cheap.

What finally pushed me back was the unending need to continue upgrading. It never stops with Linux. The only way to stay current with your individual applications is to upgrade the whole system. There are some backports available, but for the most part interlocking dependencies for libraries and such push you to reinstall your whole system every six months or so if you hope to stay current with your applications.

You can't just settle in and leave things. Inevitably some nagging problem with some program you use will be fixed, but it won't be available for your current distribution. So, you end up upgrading. You can try to upgrade the distro without reinstalling, as Debian/Ubuntu lovers will tell you it's so easy to do, but I've never had that work without seriously screwing something up.

In the end, I finally got sick of it and went back to the dark side. I'm not promising to stay here, but for time being it feels like coming home from a long camping trip.

 

[PiccoloNamek]

Quote:

It's a tweaker OS for sure, but it will *never* reach anything close to a mass adoption until grandma can use it...and at that point the tweakers probably won't like it anymore.

You know, I get the feeling that they purposefully act to keep it a tweaker's OS and not something that would be suitable for mainstream use.