Linux Mint discussion

jay pettitt on 21/8/2009 at 18:52

Quote Posted by Renzatic

I'm always kind of interested in Linux stuff, despite ever having barely used any form of it. Thanks to this thread, I'm once again considering grabbing VirtualBox and grabbing a copy to try out. I just have one question before I do. The one question that cuts right to the quick and addresses the single reason why I have yet to give it anything other than a interested cursory glance. That question is...

What can I do with Linux? Sure, it's about the most solid OS around, it's free, flexible and, thanks to Ubuntu, fairly user friendly nowadays. Despite all those very nice pluses, it's kind of a waste considering how hugely lacking it is on the software side of things. You have Wine, sure. But that's alot of extra effort to go through when I can just pop a disc in the drive in Windows, wait 5 minutes for the install to finish, then go about my day trouble free. Open source software? Hit or miss. When it's good it's great, but most of the OSS apps I'd be interested in still aren't as good as the software I've paid for. Like Blender for instance. Nice, sure, but kinda clunky (also has a creepy cult-like fanbase). Gimp. Decent, but still missing alot of features I regularly use in Photoshop. I could always use Wine to get Modo and PS up and running, but then I've come full circle to the issue stated above.

From my experiences, most people who use Linux use it because they like to screw around with Linux and occasionally watch movies/listen to music. For anything else, they usually have a Windows partition for those just in case moments. And that's what gives me pause. Makes me wonder why I should go through all the trouble when, sooner or later, I'll have to go back to Windows for something again eventually.

So hardcore Linux geeks, dispute me. Convince me.

I only use linux, haven't used windows for well over a year - don't have it installed anywhere. Infact the only time I've used windows in the last two years was to briefly play Bioshock. I use Linux for typing, surfing, emailing, making pictures, spinning web pages, playing music, making funny sounds and playing world of goo. Sometime in the next few weeks I'll be using it to make a small film about averages. I don't use it for updating virus definitions, scanning for spyware, filling in forms, clicking 'next', updating drivers or otherwise worrying about, fiddling with or tweaking my PC.

The other thing that I use Linux for is contributing to making it better by putting my awesome ideas into (http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/) ubuntu brainstorm and occasionally reporting a bug. Linux is democratic - which I think is brilliant.

You don't, for example, get photoshop (though apparently you can if you're keen*) but I don't own a copy of photoshop, so that's no great loss. I do seem to get by with a .raw editor like rawtherapee (I use lightzone because it's easier, but that ain't free anymore) and Gimp. Photoshop is undoubtedly awesome, and having good tools is a must - but you can spend too much time worrying about having the hippest tool of the moment instead of getting busy and making stuff with what you've got to hand. That said, if you've paid $thousands for Photoshop, Modo and all the rest, then perhaps an operating system that doesn't run them isn't the smart choice. You need a Mac.

I wouldn't necessarily think of Linux as especially solid as a desktop OS - while Linux itself almost never falls over, applications (damn you Flash) and window-managers sometimes do. You're unlikely to notice more uptime than with windows XP or Vista, which were pretty good. You will find yourself spending less time endlessly fiddling with things though. Unless you really want to.

Contrary to the popular image of a 'nix hacker, it's the almost complete lack of faffing about and tweaking that appeals to me. I just switch on, get things done and switch off.

* - my experience of Wine is that it's a hit when it hits, but a miss when it doesn't - I use it for T2 fan missions quite happily - but yeah, it's still a fair way from being home away from home for windows users - some stuff works really well, some stuff doesn't.

Zerker on 21/8/2009 at 21:35

I have Xubuntu installed as the primary OS on my EEE PC and enjoy it, although I still have the Windows partition for playing some older games that have trouble with Wine (like Worms Armageddon). Similarly, my main machine is a Mac Pro, which also dual boots Windows (but I only use a VM for Linux).

I also installed Yellow Dog Linux on my PS3 but I honestly can't think of why. I may reformat that again.

But I do like it on my EEE PC :D

Briareos H on 21/8/2009 at 22:38

After years of fiddling with various Unix variants as a desktop OS, I've come to appreciate Windows a lot, especially the clean Vista / Seven UI.

I use as little Linux as possible, both on moral and usability grounds. I have no qualm with Free Software philosophy, however I do think that many (open source) developers are cunts. I can't stand Torvalds and his in-the-face attitude, I can hardly stand most Linux devs anyway, what with their "let's rip off other open-source projects and pretend we thought about it first".
Another problem, a bit more general, is that GNU is a great concept (which is even more than that, a mindset basically) but in execution it's inconsistent and sometimes poor. The compilation tools in particular are a steaming pile of shit when you start digging a bit.

I would recommend Linux to a beginner user who doesn't want to ever have to dive into the obscure mechanics of Windows, and who just wants simple things, done. Or to someone interested in how Unix works but with a soft learning curve, able to learn what are environment variables, file systems, processes and daemons, etc. while retaining windows, buttons and multimedia functionalities. I think any other average user is better off keeping Windows/OSX unless the price comes into the equation.

My current choice of OSes is :

* Vista/Seven for desktop, multimedia (couldn't live without Foobar2000 anyway) and gaming;
* OpenSolaris for developing. It is the perfect OS for that task, as you can fine-tune and analyze every nook and cranny of the kernel at compile/runtime, profiling is piss-easy, and the Sun compilers are robust;
* NetBSD for secure servers maximizing uptime;
* Linux for experimental servers with no idea of how many package dependencies will have to be installed to get such or such thing to work, to get latest support for some Linux-only software, etc.

Glimpse on 21/8/2009 at 23:26

Quote Posted by Griffin Bain

Also if you do not have the computer on the internet or on a networking is there a way to get programs and utlities without using the repository?

I use Debian (lenny) a fair bit, and you can download pretty much their entire repository and burn it to DVD (or CD) for offline use. There is a bit of non-free stuff not included (like packages from debian-multimedia.org) but you can download and install them by hand.

(http://cdimage.debian.org/debian-cd/5.0.2a/i386/iso-dvd/) for the DVD isos...

You can also buy the full set of DVDs very cheaply from online retailers. Think I paid six pounds for Etch when it was released.

(http://www.debian.org/CD/vendors/)

There is also autopackage, but its choice of software is a little limited.

(http://autopackage.org/index.html)

And for Ubuntu, Apt-on-CD works quite well.

(http://aptoncd.sourceforge.net/)

Hope that helps :)

CCCToad on 22/8/2009 at 17:46

so how do I go about splitting my partition so that I can install Ubuntu on it?

doctorfrog on 22/8/2009 at 17:53

The Ubuntu setup (and just about any semi-friendly Linux distro these days) will guide you through partitioning.

Though I count myself a Linux neophyte, I dare say that for most casual desktop installs, it doesn't really matter how you split up your partitions anyway. Throw it all into one big slab.

jay pettitt on 22/8/2009 at 18:41

Ubuntu defaults to putting everything on one partition + a swap file, which is fine.

My favourite though (I'm guessing you're at least a little bit familiar with partitions) is to make a partition for system files and another for documents and stuff, though that might just be because I am old fashioned, but it allows me to easily do a fresh install or change distribution without having to back up my documents. 10GB is probably more than ample for the root (system) partition. The shiny new ext4 file system has been trouble free for me. The root partition is identified as / (this'll hopefully make more sense in the doing than it does in the explaining).

Then I make swap partition. As I understand things hibernation mode dumps physical memory into the swap file - which means the swap partition should be at least the same size as your physical memory. In my experience swap space is much less of an issue for Linux than it is windows, so I wouldn't waste disk space by allowing any more than your physical memory. The file system has to be swap.

Then I make a /home partition using whatever disk space is left for my documents - again I'm using the ext4 file system and it seems good. If you're thinking of dual booting and space is tight then it's worth keeping in mind that Linux is happy reading and writing to windows file systems including NTFS - ie you can get access to and use windows' my documents folder in Linux, but windows won't talk to anything non-MS - files stored on a linux partition won't be readily available to you in Windows.

If you're talking about squeezing windows up to make space for Ubuntu, then I think Ubuntu detects existing operating systems and guides you through doing all that automagically.

heywood on 23/8/2009 at 02:06

I haven't tried Linux Mint.
I still run Slackware.

I learned UNIX working with DEC, Sun, and SGI machines, and so I felt pretty much at home when I started running Slackware and BSD. Over the years, I tried Ubuntu, Red Hat, SuSE, Yellow Dog, Debian, Stampede, but kept coming back to Slack. Mainly because of the BSD-style config system. It seems to have the fewest scripts in between you and the program or driver you're trying to configure. Half the battle with Linux is configuring programs or drivers to work with your hardware. And with other desktop oriented distros, I feel like their configuration systems are getting in the way more than helping.

I realize I'm very much in the minority with this opinion.

CCCToad on 23/8/2009 at 03:00

I think the question was a bit misunderstood.

I want to install Ubuntu, but make sure my vista installation is safe so i can use it for gaming.

jay pettitt on 23/8/2009 at 07:19

Sorry.

In the olden days they used to recommend defragging Vista first, I'm not sure if that's still necessary, but it can't hurt. Then just pop the Ubuntu install CD in, reboot and let it do it's thing. It'll give you the option as to how much space you want to set aside for windows and 'nix via a colourful slider bar thingy and it does the rest. My mum can do it.

If you're really scared, Vista apparently has a disk management widget that will also shrink your vista partition - find it by right clicking on my computer and hunting around a bit. It's not as friendly as the Ubuntu system though.

In my experience Linux doesn't need oodles of space like Windows, among other things there aren't huge games to install. 10GB for system (+ extra for swap & whatever you want for documents) is really generous. Ubuntu (including OpenOffice, Gimp and oodles of applications) will fit snugly into 5GB + swap + documents and will squeeze into less if you're keen.

Something that tripped me up the first time I did it with Vista (I think I was trying to install ubuntu first) was that my Vista Disk was one of those nasty OEM restore things that rudely wipes the entire hard drive with no regard of other operating systems and returns your PC to the state it left the factory.