42 replies to this topic

[Chukkzy]

As we halfway derailed another thread to a Linux discussion I thought I make one exclusively...

So yeah, Linux, what can I say? It always struck me as incredible that there is an open source (free, its all free!) alternative to paid Windows, one that lets you do at least as basic things as browsing the net, checking your mail and more... And with the years it became more and more compatible with hardware, it became more and more usable and even games start to support it now (okay, mostly indie games, but heh!) on a broad base.

I remember that I gave up on an old Suse distro I tried to install on my 486, I had to compile the kernel and it took me a whole afternoon to find out its not working out. A good sideeffect was, after reformatting to FAT16 (or 32? Can not remember) the bad sector on my HD was gone. Later I got Fedora, because I needed something fairly up to date as I made my first steps into the internet (not really, but borrowing my sisters ISDN line did not cut it at some point, and I bought a 56k modem for me at home).

What do you think? Will it get as big that it becomes a "Windows Killer" some day or will it stay in the nerd corner?

[SpleenBeGone]

I started with DSL, because that's all I could bare to download on my 56k line. There's not a whole lot I can't do with a debian system through WINE now, and I hear there's a modified version that works for steam games, I'm interested in trying that. Compiz may be my favorite thing about linux, I love being able to make it look so different and take advantage of my graphical power on the desktop.

As far as it ever beating out windows? I don't think so, people like money too much. I do hope it gets more mainstream though. I know that Dell offers Ubuntu on some of it's computers now, that's a big step in the right direction.

[LD50]

when i'm not being lazy, i adore linux. first distro i used was opensuse, hated it. kinda abandoned it for a while till i was recommended crunchbang by a friend. i used that distro for the longest, even after completing my first gentoo install (which is an awesome feeling >.>)

will it beat out windows? i don't think it will. while it offers something great, most users can't even be trusted to sign in to their windows machine without breaking something. though, admittedly i'm seeing more and more linux servers than i used to see.
not to mention the various distros, on top of user customization, makes porting to the platform much more hassle than most companies are willing to take for such a small market.

[SpleenBeGone]

Gentoo is a ball buster.

[LD50]

yes it is

[Chukkzy]

A distribution I always liked was Vector Linux, Slackware based and pretty lightweight... I also remember there were rumours of a "Microsoft Linux"

[SpleenBeGone]

I've never heard of Vector Linux. Could you give us some more details on it?

[Chukkzy]

http://vectorlinux.com/

Its actually very nice and convenient, I am always surprised that its not more popular. Vector is streamlined to efficiency, less bloated though ofcourse you can install all the nifty things. I had it on my old P4 1.8 machine and its really sweet.
If I remember correctly there are also special media editions with stuff like Blender preinstalled, or music production software and other stuff.

[SpleenBeGone]

I like the look, very clean and streamline. Almost like OSX actually. I may have to give it a try.

[LD50]

i was gonna complain about the lack of *box, but then i saw their light edition >.>

[stackcollision]

I tripple-boot my laptop with Windows (for games and game development), Ubuntu (for home), and Backtrack (for stuff at work). I love using Linux, but I spend so much time developing my game that I don't get to use it much at home. All of our systems at work run Linux, though, so I still use it all the time.

[SpleenBeGone]

Yeah, I'd use linux a lot more if it had the same kind of compatibility as well. Sometimes getting Adobe products and games to work through WINE is hell.

[Diabolical_Jazz]

Hey, I can join in this discussion now! =D

As of t'day I'm dual-booting windows 7 and Ubuntu 10.04 LTS.

...the bad news being that my wireless card shits the bed when I boot Ubuntu.
[I totally have a handle on how to fix it now, though, after about four hours of searching.]

[SpleenBeGone]

Awesome.

Yeah, when I first installed, I had a 58k modem, which took a lot of work to get right as well.

How are you liking it so far?

[Diabolical_Jazz]

So far it makes me want to murder kittens.

But I think that it'll be a lot better once I'm past the wireless card problem.

I also have to adjust the partitions so that it has some more memory. But these are problems for another day.

[SpleenBeGone]

Well how do you feel about the look and layout?

[Diabolical_Jazz]

The look and layout are smooth. Really nice.
It'll take some getting used to to have the "X's" in the opposite corner, but everything about the layout works for me.
And everything seems to be in a pretty logical place. I haven't really had trouble finding anything yet.

[SpleenBeGone]

Yeah, I had the window control problem too, then once you get used to it, it'll be confusing when you boot into windows and they're on the other side again. :lol

[LD50]

can't you change that?

but for the life of me, i can't remember how.

[Diabolical_Jazz]

Well, I'll live, anyway.

I wouldn't be surprised at all if you could change that in Linux. I've gotta get everything functional before I start changing things like that though.