Linux Discussion & Screenshot thread

[TMac3000]

Thought I would create this as a place for Linux fans to post general comments, screenshots, and other stuff concerning their Linux systems. I can't provide a screenshot of my desktop, as Linux is on my other computer (I use me mum's machine for Orbiter), but I can provide a little background.

My first encounter with Linux (I like to think of it as my zeroth encounter) was Red Hat 5.1. I ran it on a 286 machine with no mouse, and so found very little use for it (although there was a really neat text adventure).

My first "real" Linux was Fedora 9. I moved there from Win XP Home, and found it quite frustrating for the first couple of weeks, what with no internet and having to hustle a flash drive back and forth between two machines. But about a month later, a friend of mine got me a wireless router setup, and Linux became truly beautiful.

Since then, I have been through Ubuntu 9.10, 10.04, and 11.04, OpenSuSE 12.1, and now Linux Mint 12 with KDE desktop. 9.10 was my first Ubuntu, and I fell in with it right away. It had such a smooth, peaceful feel to it, and everything worked right out of the box The change to the purple theme with 10.04 was irksome but tolerable. But the final straw came in the form of Unity. I tried to use that horrible interface, and very quickly decided that Ubuntu had gone in a direction that was no longer for me.

OpenSuse 12.1 with KDE desktop was next, and a huge disappointment The clock was never right, my file sharing wouldn't work, and it kept losing my wireless settings.

Today I'm rocking Linux Mint 12 w/KDE, and I just love it:thumbup: I've added the analog clock and weather station widgets for a desktop with all the glassy slickness of Win 7 and none of the cost.

So what have your experiences been. Fire away!:tiphat:

 

[Jarvitä]

I actually first learned about GNU/Linux after my HDD died in 2001. A friend told me about Knoppix (one of the first live-CD distros), offered to burn me a CD and I'd been using it for 6 months while I had no hard drive - living a half a year with no local permanent storage other than a stack of 3.5" floppy diskettes, on a 56k dial-up connection, imagine that. After I got a new HDD, I installed Debian and never looked back.

 

[TMac3000]

For a moment I actually considered moving from Linux Mint to Debian Squeeze, because 1) Debian still uses Gnome 2, and 2) I thought I would not be able to run Inform 7 otherwise. Fortunately the version of Inform 7 packaged for Ubuntu 11.04 also works on Linux Mint 12, so the move was unnecessary (though I'm still thinking about it)

 

[Artlav]

Linux is a toolset, not a desktop OS.

For me the first encounter was with Red Hat something, around the turn of the century. The result was me learning the value of backups.
Second encounter was with Red Hat also, later version. This time it ended with realization that second hard drive is not a good place to keep backups if you think rm -rf / is like format C:.

Eventually i got to know it, and now use it professionally on the systems we design where i work.
It makes a lousy desktop OS, but if you need something to do a clearly defined task, from slightly-better-than-trivial flight computer on an RC toy to supercomputer systems, it's often the perfect choice.

Red Hat 5.1. I ran it on a 286 machine with no mouse

Huh?
286 was a 16bit processor, i never heard of Linux running on that.

 

[TMac3000]

I actually first learned about GNU/Linux after my HDD died in 2001. A friend told me about Knoppix (one of the first live-CD distros), offered to burn me a CD and I'd been using it for 6 months while I had no hard drive - living a half a year with no local permanent storage other than a stack of 3.5" floppy diskettes, on a 56k dial-up connection, imagine that. After I got a new HDD, I installed Debian and never looked back.

Just curious: Gnome or KDE?

---------- Post added at 05:42 PM ---------- Previous post was at 05:39 PM ----------

Huh?
286 was a 16bit processor, i never heard of Linux running on that.

Well, believe me, it ran. It was pretty useless without a GUI though

 

[Artlav]

Well, believe me, it ran. It was pretty useless without a GUI though

THE 286?
The Intel's 80286 CPU that was obsolete by the end of the 80's, before Linux was even made?
Are you sure you're not mixing things up somewhere?

The only kind of Linux i heard of that could run on 286 was the ELKS, a hobby project backport from 2002.
Red Hat 5.1 was out in 1998, way before then, and there is no way to mate the two in any case.

 

[garyw]

no point in my providing a screenshot of the centos server I run as it doesn't run a GUI and to me, thats the power of linux - no desktop, nice small OS size.

 

[TMac3000]

THE 286?
The Intel's 80286 CPU that was obsolete by the end of the 80's, before Linux was even made?
Are you sure you're not mixing things up somewhere?

The only kind of Linux i heard of that could run on 286 was the ELKS, a hobby project backport from 2002.
Red Hat 5.1 was out in 1998, way before then, and there is no way to mate the two in any case.

1998:hmm: that be about a year after I moved to the town I currently live in. As I recall, the machine in question was a very old hobby box that I had brought with me and was trying to restore. I no longer have it with me. I would provide a screenshot if I could:tiphat:

 

[Jarvitä]

Just curious: Gnome or KDE?

Neither, StumpWM when I need X and Emacs with ansi-term when I don't.

 

[Linguofreak]

Thought I would create this as a place for Linux fans to post general comments, screenshots, and other stuff concerning their Linux systems. I can't provide a screenshot of my desktop, as Linux is on my other computer (I use me mum's machine for Orbiter), but I can provide a little background.

My first encounter with Linux (I like to think of it as my zeroth encounter) was Red Hat 5.1. I ran it on a 286 machine with no mouse, and so found very little use for it (although there was a really neat text adventure).

If you were running Red Hat, I guarantee you that the machine in question was not a 286.

My first "real" Linux was Fedora 9. I moved there from Win XP Home, and found it quite frustrating for the first couple of weeks, what with no internet and having to hustle a flash drive back and forth between two machines. But about a month later, a friend of mine got me a wireless router setup, and Linux became truly beautiful.

Since then, I have been through Ubuntu 9.10, 10.04, and 11.04, OpenSuSE 12.1, and now Linux Mint 12 with KDE desktop. 9.10 was my first Ubuntu, and I fell in love with it right away. It had such a smooth, peaceful feel to it, and everything worked right out of the box The change to the purple theme with 10.04 was irksome but tolerable. But the final straw came in the form of Unity. I tried to use that horrible interface, and very quickly decided that Ubuntu had gone in a direction that was no longer for me.

I personally took a look at screenshots of Unity and decided that I was going to stay on Lucid till it EOLed, then switch over to Xubuntu (since I know I can get XFCE into a configuration that, while not optimal, is acceptable). Actually, this machine will probably remain a Lucid machine even past the EOL for Lucid, but I hope to replace it as my primary machine by then.

...all the glassy slickness of Win 7...

Yuck. I hate the glassy slickness of Win 7. (Which is one reason that KDE never caught on with me: I couldn't figure out how to get rid of the glassy slickness or define a color scheme I liked).

It makes a lousy desktop OS

Howso? I find Ubuntu 10.04 to make a very good desktop OS, at least on par with NT-kernel Windows versions (that it blows DOS-kernel Windows versions out of the water goes without saying).

I'm not so happy with the DE alternatives available now that Gnome 2 has been replaced by Gnome 3, so future Ubuntu versions may not quite be on par with 10.04, but frankly, many of my problems with Unity probably aren't as much of a concern if you're the type of person (I'm not) that can stand to use a laptop trackpad in lieu of a full mouse, and Unity may even offer some advantages for trackpad users (though it still seems to have configurability problems relative to Gnome 2). So I'd say that current and future versions of Ubuntu probably are fairly good as desktop OS's for portability-focused laptop users, though they're problematic for less portability focused users.

 

[Artlav]

Howso? I find Ubuntu 10.04 to make a very good desktop OS, at least on par with NT-kernel Windows versions (that it blows DOS-kernel Windows versions out of the water goes without saying).

Depends, really.

I don't like recent glamorous versions of Ubuntu and Fedora - the further they go, the more chaotically unstable they become, with ever changing GUI that makes less and less sense.

I've tried a Ubuntu LiveDVD from a few months ago, and there was almost nothing on it except for a web browser!

Fedora 16, that one of my inept colleagues updated to, got some cryptic, video-player-box like GUI, a mix of iPhone and DVD menus. All that after spending an hour to manually complete the installation since the installer failed to install Grub 2 and quietly forgot to mention that, leaving the system unbootable.

All that on top of resource consumptions that makes Windows 7 look small and fast.

Another scenario where it makes a lousy desktop OS is trying to move the accounting department onto Linux to stop virus outbreaks or survive surprise inspections (here there is software and there is licensed software, the latter is a rarity).

For one thing, Windows-familiar accountants loose faith in computers quickly, as the Arch Linux works differently (interpreted as "computer is broken"), with things like recalculating stuff on desk calculators, saving after every word, bad mood and other symptoms of novelty intoxication.

On the other hand, all accounting programs here are made for Windows, and Wine is never perfect.
So really it's like judging a fish by it's ability to climb a tree.

For personal use on the primary computer i find Windows 7 to be more hassle-free than any Linux. I've also never found a development environment for Linux that would be even remotely as good as Visual studio, or any IDE at all for Pascal family of languages (that would be at least slightl-better-than-sucks).

At the same time, Linux allows for rather interesting combinations.
Slax on an old laptop makes a nice unbreakable system for internet browsing. Whatever you do to it, a reboot fixes everything.

 

[Urwumpe]

I don't like recent glamorous versions of Ubuntu and Fedora - the further they go, the more chaotically unstable they become, with ever changing GUI that makes less and less sense.

I like to disagree there - I just had a live CD with a recent Ubuntu as base, the new window manager of it is pretty well done and not slow at all, just a bit unusual if you expect the usual suspects. It is closer to MacOS in some aspects.

 

[Spacethingy]

First contact with Linux was made about a year back, after wondering what some of you guys were on about. I tried to make a portable pen-drive version of Ubuntu on a rather old memory stick, got bored waiting for something to happen... :facepalm:

Anyway, I moved on to little OS's like Puppy on a memory stick, and quite enjoyed using only the memory stick for a while - until I scrambled it trying to install WINE so that I could play Orbiter... :facepalm:

Lubuntu seems quite nice from the liveCD I made, haven't got round to trying it proper yet.

 

[Linguofreak]

Depends, really.

I don't like recent glamorous versions of Ubuntu and Fedora - the further they go, the more chaotically unstable they become, with ever changing GUI that makes less and less sense.

I won't argue about the GUI, but there's not really any current OS where I'm truly happy about the default GUI anymore, so I take it for granted that part of installing a new system will be tweaking (or overhauling) the GUI to my liking (even Win7's defaults are horrible, fortunately, they're configurable enough that you can get a sensible desktop without having to install anything. But as long as you have a decent connection, you should be able to download a more sensible DE than Unity for Ubuntu).

All that on top of resource consumptions that makes Windows 7 look small and fast.

Heh? Now, granted, I've not worked much with the most recent Ubuntu versions, but my 10.04 laptop boots at around half or 2/3rds the memory usage of my parents' Win7 machines.

Now, one thing I will say about the suitability of Linux as a desktop system is that my laptop shipped with Ubuntu on it, and that my experience with it has been much better than with machines that I've personally installed Linux on.

 

[jimblah]

I know a lot about linux...

But I hardly use it anymore. Bodhi Linux 1.4 w/Enlightenment is installed next to Windows 7 Pro, but like I said...

Linux has lost its novelty for me compared to learning Orbiter. In fact, someone will have to pay me to do anything other than play with Orbiter on a computer. It reminds me of something my instructor for data structures said during lecture, "When I go home after the day the last thing I want to do is fiddle with a computer."

I started with Red Hat 6 from a cd I checked out that was in a book at the Public Library in 2001. That was how I got around the 56k download. I like Gnome3, it will make a nice Desktop.. I mean window manager... or what ever it is when it matures.
:lol:

 

[TMac3000]

I took one look at Gnome 3 and ran screaming in the other direction:leaving:
It was horribly ugly, and the controls made no sense whatsoever. I used to be a dedicated Gnome 2 man. Now I'm a firm believer in KDE

 

[luki1997a]

I'm using Debian(testing ver.) w/ GNOME 3. I don't like window borders look, so I changed it, to GNOME 2-like. BTW it has great animations and is fast and easy to use.

I don't know why do you say KDE's look is better than GNOME 3 one. IMO KDE looks ugly. Big interface connected w/ "glassy" elements.. Not for me. The only beautiful glassy look is in Windows 7. All others(except Vista and 8) are crap. Glassy look just looks like crystal icons But it's my opinion. If you like it, that's good, but I'm a person who likes well-made things(I also don't like crappy graphics in games).

Returning to thread, I like Debian. I use it for a week and I had to reinstall it 2 times(1st one installed wrong image, 2nd one uninstalled all apps:compbash, but now it works. It's just great My previous linux was Ubuntu. I have been using it for about a month, but then it became very annoying. I also didn't like look. My first ubuntu was 11.04 and last 11.10. Debian is ways more complicated, but I think it's better.

 

[Eccentrus]

currently using Ubuntu 12.04, the first Ubuntu (and Linux) I used is 7.04, and that was messy, really, really, messy, quite a long way they've gone now, from an OS that breaks every time you install an update, to one you can play Minecraft better than in Windows

on another note, my long-time favourite was PC-BSD, Ubuntu might only survived for a week on end (I was a bad boy), but that one can stand abuses for 6 whole months

 

[TMac3000]

My first encounter with Ubuntu was 9.10. I was running Fedora at the time, and quickly fell in love with the slick graphics and smooth, peaceful feel. After a few visits via live CD, I decided to move there. But when Unity came along, I decided Ubuntu wasn't for me anymore.

 

[Eccentrus]

yeah Unity, kind of sucks, been trying to find a way to remove it and return it to the original Gnome look, but based on my experience, me tinkering on things like that will definitely, break it, :lol: