as you may well have guessed.......

i'm a linux user, with a vitriolic hatred of all things bill gate$

was just wondering how many of us are there.

i have been using linux for 2 years now, i am by no means a skilled linux user, i was a pretty highly skilled home user of doze (not arrogance, by any means)

the transition from doze to linux was a piece of piss.

i will not waste anyones time by extolling the virtues of GNU, or slamming doze.

just interested in who uses the operating systems that aren't funded by bill (as in dollar bill )

Want to do this , but god it was a wrench from the spectrum to windows98 in 2001 and im 50 and want to use the machine and not have to relearn a load of stuff to use the machine again. Went on a course using a unix operating system a while back, it was a sound operating system and Linux is essentially an application of unix. Gates is finally going to burn some of the operating system on to a chip in the next version (vista?), due, when they are fucking ready, but rather than burning the whole operating system and completely cutting out badware it is stuff to do with media licencing and copyright content. On the new version it will be impossible to copy licenced content. Gates might have signed microsofts downfall. Anybody remember user friendly, (what a hedgehog), well maybe now a system that does what it says it will do when you press button 'x' can emerge and the nightmare of microsoft is just something that old people in 100 years time will wake up with in a cold sweat in the middle of the night, "Its alright dear, go back to sleep it was just a bad dream"

i started by shrinking my doze partition using bootit next generation, and then installed mandrake 10 in the free space.

after a few teething troubles getting mandrake onto the internet, 2 hours of going back into doze to search the internet for how to make my ntl modem work with mandrake, and that was me done.

never logged into doze again for nearly a whole year after that.

I'll be back using linux as soon as theres a sibs friendly one i can use for everything i need, but i've got to admit its fecking easy to use is linux.
I've still got it on here just waiting for me to suss how to get the speedtouch working, i do use it for watching those movies that gate$ wont let you.
Just boot into linux go into doze pull the movie through and watch, NO codec issues.

I use SUSE. Well easy to install and use.

Check out some of the cool visuals theyre putting into the next release 10.1 out in a few weeks

http://www.novell.com/linux/xglrelease/

the gimp is an amazing piece of software, used for a lot of tv animation and prettiness.

oh yeah, that's right; it's free too

Thats whats is great about it it's ALL free.....

wish i could dohped needs M$ to run my proggys,
they are much easier to regfix or even find a version for my old mac than it is to get Maya runing on *nix
Theres just not the support needed by the larger program developers,
there are free alternatives for home users,
but i seriously dont have time to learn another set of programs that aren't compatible with the gear i use at uni

maybe also when theres some serious gaming on the platform too, likes Half Life 2

Suse is nice and idiot proof, I mean I managed to install it....

Not tried 10 yet still with 9.3.

Linux user over here, been running it about 5 years, since Mandrake 8 (i think). Currently using Arch Linux, i used to maintain KDE for Arch for about 1 year. So far i've used Mandrake, SuSE, Debian, (K)Ubuntu, Arch, Redhat, Fedora. Found Arch ot be my fav, very lean and configurable, don't personally like SuSE myself, too bloated and what not.

I run 3 linux boxes, my Arch desktop, a Debian server and also an IpCop dedicated firewall/router. I do live my Linux i do

i tried suse and tbh depsite the brilliance of yast, too much of it was crap.

it won't run any movie formats, it won't install the standard bittorrent client, and the ktorrent client just took the piss it was so slow, i never got into double figures on the kibs download speed, yet peeps were uploading in the 30's.

i am currently attempting dyne:bolic, but it is sooooo different to anything i have used prior, that i ran away scared, also i couldn't find anywhere to control the mouse speed, it barely makes it a few inches on the screen before i ran out of mousemat.

i am going to buy a 20gb ish hard drive and just stick a load of linux os's on there and just play around for a while.

mandrake was a simple switch from window$, although since i tried suse and then reformatted back to mandrake i can't get it to install limewire due to unsatisfied java, despite having jr2e version 5 installed.

but then mandrake is simple

I'm using Ubuntu 5.10 with Automatix, on my primary drive and on the other I currently have a Debian/GNU with my own shellscript and patches. Dynebolic running in the other partition http://tinylinux.sourceforge.net/

Edited to add link.

gave up windoze 3 years ago in favour of macs, and all i feel ive done is swapped one set of problems for another.

windoze is shite, but pc's are generally quite reliable ime, whereas mac os x is truly wonderful but the hardware is absolute shite.

ive had a powerbook and now have an imac and have had hardware problems with both. screen failure, a PCB board failure, 2 dvd writer failures and subsequent replacements, and thats without having ever used the damn dvd drive, or hardly ever anyway - all in the space of 3 years, whereas with 20 years nearly of PC useage, i can barely recall any hardware faults.. in fact, i cant remember anything breaking down!!

having said that, windoze annoys you on a daily basis, or it did me anyway, its just a crap operating system, period, whereas with macs, at least whilst the hardware is actually working, its a pure pleasure to use, the operating system is just gorgeous.

ive tried various flavours of linux and that would be my next choice should i ever turn my back on macs, which to be fair, i probably wont be doing even though i think the build quality is generally rubbish...

i do like the design of mac hardware though, swanky is the word i would use to describe the imac, although some may feel i should have omitted an "s" somewhere in that description...


edit: also love the fact that theres no viruses on macs, something thats a constant concern with windoze.

Ubuntu seems to be a good starting place if you're used to Doze and it has all the tools any casual desktop user or developer will need I've decided to try this SuSe 10 business (spare drive goes in ), KTorrent at the mo

@plantation

Unix

Freebsd 6.0 stable

Same here, can you run Liberty Basic programs on Linux. Presumably but do you need to have written them on Linux.

you think? talk to arnie...

nah for liberty basic you need windows, i recently started learning to program and have to go into doze if i want liberty basic.

there are basic apps that will run under linux yabasic (Yet Another basic)

as linux is written in C, it is mainly C progrmming environments that are available.

Love Basic, under certain circumstances Basic is quicker than C, apparently. And so fucking easy, why make it hard. If you want hard go straight to machinecode.

linux is written in C, for me that is the ideal place to start as i get to learn how linux works in the process.

then java after that.

One of the reasons I chose Ubuntu is the Python, GNU, Debian and the C, C+ & C++ terminals you can have from you Apps list

have 7 computers in my house at the moment, most run windows but i have one linux machine, has 4 kernels tho , need to have microsoft tho to be honest, some web pages still dont like to work in lkinux and playing games in linux, although possible most of the time, is the biggest headache ever!

go debian

I just installed Mandrake last night. Was pretty much painless apart from getting it to boot to the right graphics card. I like how you can change everything to your own settings. I just need to plug in my other 3 hard drives. Do you just have to plug them in physically and it willl recognise them automatically? Like windoze?

Have a look at Cedega for gaming under linux, it runs many Windows games pretty flawlesly even heavily DX dependant ones like EVE-Online (shameless plug for a great game)

I have used linux on and off for a few years, i only stopped because there was a lack of computers. i always had an interetst in computers and stuff..

I have used Slackware (the first distro i tried), I currently have a v10 partition on my laptop,.
I use Ubuntu 5.10
Redhat 8 ( i haven't bothered with Fedora)

These are the distros i use most often, i have tried the 3 BSDs (FreeBSD, OpenBSD and NetBSD).. and i have tried some other Linux distros.

I haven't messed around with computers, programming languages etc. for a while but hope to do soon ..

I've only had a PC for about 18 months now and i'm just not good enough on it to dare trying something like linux.I would really love to though,for obvious reasons.
For instance,i have no idea what most of you are on about with distro's and the other stuff either.

I hate MS with a passion too as my copy of XP is[i think you can guess]and i would like to re-install every 6 months,as XP just gets clogged up no matter what you do and a fresh re-install is what most poeple i know do.
Trouble is i'm got good enough on a PC to be able to change the ?[you know].So i end up with a clogged up PC despite using loads of cleaners.

Plus i don't know if Nuedo 2,Sonar 3 and adobe audition would run either.
I've got an ATI AGP card too and i was told it won't work on linux,is that true ?

You wouldn't believe the things i've had to do to keep this thing working.

It's a shame as i have several copies,one's a corporate one too-the FCK blah blah devil's thing and i've got everything needed apparently,except knowing how to do it that is.

Oh wow. I just had to delurk to add myself to this list.

I did my time with Windows, and thoroughly detested every moment of it. I went through most of the big name Linux distros over the years, not really having a clue what I was doing for the most part.

And then I found Gentoo.

3 years on I'm a self-employed sysadmin running VoIP networks in several countries. I find it very satisfying building quality services using nothing but Free software. And I owe it all to Gentoo: it got me off my fat derriere and /made/ me learn something.

I'm not sure what I like best about Linux and its kin. It could be the dependability, but I think it's probably more to do with the relative ease with which most problems can be diagnosed and fixed. Far too many issues on Windows can only be solved (to my knowledge) by a reinstall, mostly because it's nigh on impossible to figure out exactly what the root of the problem is.

A work colleague of mine detests Linux because "there are thirteen different steering wheels". Hey, at least I've got something to turn when it doesn't all work. I never did find the steering wheel on Windows.

So if there's any fellow stoners trying their luck with Gentoo I'll happily volunteer my knowledge to help you out.

Deanbo, did you know you can try Linux out without having to install it. Try downloading a 'live CD' (or DVD) of Kubuntu or somesuch... see how you get on with the desktop with no commitment.

P.S. is SuSE really going to ship with X.Gl soon? I thought it was still very, very alpha, and months away from being usable. But then I've been busy...

My problem apart from not being able to afford windoze is i just can't invest that much energy into learning all this stuff.
I'm not stupid in the slightest but i just find these things extremely complex.
I use a PC as a web browser and record myself playing guitar with it and i find nuendo and sonar daunting to say the least.
As i'm stuck in 24/7 as a carer friends stopped knocking a long time ago so i haven't even got any mates to help me either[non any better than me],and a standard basic re-install will cost me £50.
I've done it myself with the FCK[devil] one and i thought it was dead easy and installed all my apps myself as the guy just does a basic fresh re-install[pirate].So i know i can do it but i won't get USB 2 drivers with that[no SP's],and i really need them too.
I've even got SP2 and all updates to now on disc as well,i just find it too hard to understand what to do with them.
I've got way too much still to do on amps and guitars and the time spent playing and fixing guitars too.

I'll DL it though as you're kind enough to supply a link

I think you may be under estimating your ability too as i don't even know 1 person who runs linux myself,and at least one of 'em is an MS engineer[the one who wants £50] but he doesn't know either nor can he understand Nuendo or sonar.

After reading more about dynebolic, as mentioned by Dohped, it seems that it may be a little more suitable for your needs as it comes with a bunch of audio stuff preinstalled.
Not tried it myself though.

Fervent's Studio To Go looks like it might be promising too, but they want money for it! I haven't managed to find anywhere to, erm, make an offsite backup of it yet though.

Take care buddy.

I've tryed linux out a few times over the years and never once have i been able to get on the net with it....wont recognise my modem i think!!

Tryed to play a game on linux, resulted in crash, wont recognise my G/card (had a gforce 3 and an ati but still never worked) .....

Made myself a little kitchen pc in the hope of getting linux running:

1.7mhz P4 cpu
256 dram
Gforce 5 Gc
120gb hd
Cd & Dvd drives
Wireless net card

Done a dual install of linux and XP and got online no probs with XP but linux?? never happened for me,, i have Looked around a hell of a lot of forums to try n get it online but never got it up n running proper

All i can say is i do everything i need to on my m$ machine with no problems at all ....... why

I must take back the doubt I cast previously upon Xgl.

It's very good. I've been running a cvs checkout from a couple of days ago for around 12 hours now and it's solid. And sooo pretty. Especially playing videos with multiple opengl xscreensavers superimposed. And then spinning the cube.

When I finally got it working my flatmate commented, "you're never going to get another girlfriend". I can't help think she may have a point.

For a KDE user such as I, the only problem I've found so far is because you're running gnome-window-decorator instead of kwin as a window manager, KDE taskbar has no idea about running apps; minimize an app and you've lost it... can't even alt-tab to it.

Finally something tangible to show in response to "show me something Linux can do that Windows can't". At least until Vista ships.


-- stavs

im a mac user i hate windows i also have a laptop running linux

After careful dissection and fichering with Ubuntu and SUSE 10 I've decided to bin them in favour of a Debian kernal and my own GNU/KDE shell for maximum interaction. I know no-one is interested but I thaught I'd tell you anyway

good scots word

Ya don't have to use Apple hardware, as you know well ya do if ya have a powerbook or iMac as I sit and type with my 15" Powerbook I bought the iMac G5 and sold it within 5 months and bought the PB ,,,,,,,,, I'm prolly going to get one of the 20" iMac if I decide to go back to work

Personally I think that Macs are, and always have been crap for all but graphics packages. You can build a PC with 2-3Gb processer and full multi media compatiblity for £200-300. So why comprimise? The Mac's main attraction was the single unit plug and play. The AOL of the hardware world, overpriced under performing twaddle Don't get me started on OSX

Edited for syntax.

os x is ace, pisses all over windoze.

Anybody know anything about Cougar OS which is sort off Voodoo Linux. Apparently its a Windows emulation linux. Even Bill is getting in on this Windows CE is supposed to be a Voodoo Linuc Microsoft development. Is all that right. Has anybody tried it, can't find a free download via google, Linux is supposed to be free source. Only site I found was a cache of a site, but hitting 'get site now' button called a forbidden request message so doesn't exist now????