linux

[Jerrick]

@vanpaun

So that would be all the time :).

Only once.

[Tak]

@uni57

Who actually uses Linux?

I do. Every day, all the time. I don’t have any installation of another OS.

[johnfoss]

I think my web server runs Linux, don’t know what flavor. Meanwhile I’m running FreeBSD Unix. Sort of. Mac OSX runs on top of it and I seldom use the command line.

[evil-nick]

@uni57

I think many people just “play” with Linux. All the different distributions give them something to do and talk about. “Well, I was running Baseball Cap Linux but I just switched to Scooby Doo Linux. Much nicer! It more efficiently utilizes the available bogomips. And it’s so cool because now all the system files are in a different place!”

Who actually uses Linux? I can’t seem to get away from Windows, but for my Unix needs, I use FreeBSD. Which distribution you ask (I heard you)? The distribution.

I’m not at all anti-Linux. I just think having so many distributions is stupid. (Back in the day, I was partial to Slackware.)

I use Linux 99% of the time, occasionally I use OSX for video editing or viewing web pages in Safari (making sure they render correctly), or if my wife happened to be booted into it. My work machine runs Ubuntu, and the Macbook dual boots it, I use Ubuntu as much as I can on the Mac Our gaming system uses XP, but it is a gaming system.

My Sony Reader (ebook-reader) runs Linux. My brother and my dad both have Tom-Tom GPS units in the car, they run Linux. A lot of HD TV’s use Linux. So actually, yeah, a lot of people use Linux

Our NAS box doesn’t run Linux, it runs FreeNAS which is based on FreeBSD if I recall… But it’s still awesome Open/Free/NetBSD, Gnu/Linux, Gnu/Hurd, it’s all good Open Source FTW!

[masterfulmoron]

I would use it if I could connect my laptop to the internet. or if I actually had something to do on it besides playing games

[evil-nick]

Assuming you’re using wireless, is the card not supported? What kind of laptop is it?

I use Linux for work, and for general surfing… We have a gaming PC we built that runs Windows, but when we’re not using it to watch movies (it has the biggest screen of our computers, and it’s bigger than our TV), my wife and I use either Linux or OSX (My preference is Linux ;)).

[masterfulmoron]

Its an old Toshiba satellite. it originally had xp on it. and I downloaded slackware 12.0 on it and haven’t programmed it to recognize all of the bells and whistles.

[john_childs]

I just managed to get Kubuntu 8.10 installed as a dual boot. Took me about a half-dozen tries with the installer to finally get it installed correctly. I was having problems with the installer not correctly installing and configuring GRUB for my dual boot scenario. I need GRUB installed to a partition and not the MBR. The instructions in the install said to type in something like “(hd1,0)” when they really meant type in something like “/dev/sdb1”. It is pathetic when the instructions in the installer steer you wrong. Does anyone beta or QC this stuff?

I tried the Kubuntu alternate install CD (the text mode install) and that installer finally worked and steered me in the right direction. The graphical installer on the standard desktop install CD failed me.

That’s my Linux experience for the morning. Now to install better fonts and figure out how to get dual displays working.

[john_childs]

I’m getting more stuff installed. Printer worked right off the bat (Brother laser printer HL-1440). My scanner is no go (Canoscan 4400f). No linux drivers. That’s not good.

Also no drivers for my M-Audio FW-410, but I already knew that it had no Linux support. No high quality music playing in Linux for me.

Still haven’t figured out how to get my second display to function. An easy process in Windows. I’m not sure how to go about it in Linux.

Welcome to the world of Linux.

[john_childs]

Well that was quick. I’ve already borked my linux install. Every time I login now I get a fatal error that Plasma Workspace has crashed. Then I’m greeted with a black screen. All I have been doing is installing stuff and looking around. Haven’t even gotten around to try to get dual displays to work.

I’m not sure if I’m going to try to figure out how to recover/repair or just do a reinstall from scratch.

I’m not liking this linux thing.

[Tak]

@john_childs

The instructions in the install said to type in something like “(hd1,0)” when they really meant type in something like “/dev/sdb1”. It is pathetic when the instructions in the installer steer you wrong. Does anyone beta or QC this stuff?

Hmm, it should take either something of the form (hd1,0) or the form /dev/sdb1. It’s possible that grub had hd1 mapped to something besides sdb …

Now to install better fonts and figure out how to get dual displays working.

If you have an nvidia card, NvidiaMultiMonitors - Community Help Wiki may be helpful.

Every time I login now I get a fatal error that Plasma Workspace has crashed. Then I’m greeted with a black screen.

http://kubuntuforums.net/forums/index.php?topic=3096602.0 may be helpful.
If the problem persists, may I recommend the GNOME or XFCE desktops?

[jtrops]

I tried KDE4 with plasma, and it is not ready for prime time. I don’t know if they are calling it beta, but it is buggy, and everything isn’t working yet. Maybe it’s a little further along than alpha, but it doesn’t work as well as most beta software that I have used. I upgraded my OpenSuse box to KDE 3.5, and it works much better. If you want a 3d desktop Compiz works really well, and isn’t nearly as finicky as plasma.

Xfce is a really nice lightweight wm, and there is an ubuntu variant “xubuntu” that comes with it standard. The laptop I’m on right now has xubuntu, and it is the lightest best build of ubuntu that I have tried. I am not generally a fan of debian based distro’s, but every now and then I give ubuntu a shot. This system really flies, so it will most likely stick around for a while.

I have gnome on my fedora box, as that is the default wm, and I like it a lot. I went with fluxbox on my arch laptop just to keep it as fast and light as possible.

If you really want plasma it will be a while before it is stable; although, it is getting a lot of development, so it might not be that long.

Jerry

[john_childs]

I’ve got it working again. Turns out I had to do a reinstall anyways. The ext2 driver for Windows can only handle inodes that are no more than 128 bytes. The only way to change the size of the inodes is to reformat and specify the size of the inodes during the format. It’s working now and I can access (read/write) the Linux partition from Windows.

This Linux stuff gets messy.

I’ll work on the multi monitor setup later.

[Jerrick]

@john_childs

I’ve got it working again. Turns out I had to do a reinstall anyways. The ext2 driver for Windows can only handle inodes that are no more than 128 bytes. The only way to change the size of the inodes is to reformat and specify the size of the inodes during the format. It’s working now and I can access (read/write) the Linux partition from Windows.

This Linux stuff gets messy.

I’ll work on the multi monitor setup later.

Goodluck. =p

Only if ultramon was for linux. Or maybe it is? Hmm

[evil-nick]

Posting from my new Kubuntu 8.10 install on our Macbook I’m used to Gnome, but KDE has gotten much better recently. 4.1 isn’t bad, though it does have some rough spots.

I haven’t tried dual-monitors with the Mac yet, though I used the Nvidia control panel on my desktop for 2 monitors. I used PowerTop to get the battery life almost equal to OSX, so I can finally use this in Linux on the go All I need to do is turn off tap-to-click, it annoys the crap outta me

[john_childs]

I’m posting this using Kubuntu 8.04. I had to downgrade. KDE4 is not ready yet even for my use. I crashed it again and the GUI would no longer work. I don’t have enough linux-fu to recover from problems like that. So back to the old KDE for me. I’ll keep an eye on KDE4 development and try it again when it is more stable.