Ubuntu. Its a linux distrobution that runs Gnome, X and everything else you need right out of the box. But, the box is free. Thats right, Ubuntu is totally free. You can download it legit or even order CDs. If you order CDs, they will send you them free of charge! No cost for the CD or for postage.
Im using Ubuntu right now and I went to view a video in the gallery. It loaded up in MPlayer. It gives me a percent completed and once it hits 50%, I hit play. It plays all the way through without any interuption. I can pause it without it restarting (stupid Windows Media Player) and, best of all, once it’s done loading, I can rightclick on it and hit download. Awesome.
Except a compiler and the necessary headers along with the utility files like make. The first time you get something that needs to be compiled you’re going to be cursing up a storm while trying to get Ubuntu configured to compile.
Linux is not a magic place with no problems of its own.
Not really. I just hit apt-get install build-essential to get the things needed to compile like make and libc etc… Then I untar a tarball, go to the directory and do ./configure && make && sudo make install
I’ve gotten to level 34 in Ubuntu, almost got the Warding Rune and the Soul Staves…but then I got ganked by this higher level n00b, and de-leveled…now I’ll never get to be in a Hell’s Crest raiding party.
Can anyone tell that I miss having the time to play MMO’s?
Not hard? What planet are you living on? None of that is obvious. Who do you expect to know that you need to install the build-essential package so you can compile stuff. A normal linux distribution would have that stuff already installed for you.
As long as Linux has secret codes like that that need guru knowledge to configure it is never going to be ready for prime time desktop use by the masses.
I have Kubuntu installed in a VMware virtual machine so I can play with it. It’s fun for that, but I could not get along with it as my primary OS.
If all you want to do is surf the web, watch videos, and IM then I guess Linux would work with some restrictions. Like no support for Flash version 8 or 9, yadda yadda yadda.
I’d be more likely to switch to Mac OSX before Linux. At least stuff works on the Mac and you can find common peripherals that will work on the Mac with manufacturer support. For example, my M-Audio Firewire 410 sound module will not work with Linux.
Ubuntu is not hard, for they have a magical thing called a support forum. if you find anything confusing or need to figure out how to do something, just ask and in five minutes you will get an answer.
If you want to do that sort of audio playback, editing, and recording you’re going to need to carefully research the hardware support, driver support, and software support for Linux. Carefully check the driver support and application support so you know what features they support. The drivers could be dumbed down and turn your fancy professional level sound module (card) into a basic generic sound card with basic generic sound quality.
The problem with my Firewire 410 is that the Firewire based sound modules have very little to no support in Linux. The USB based sound modules have better support. The PCI based sound cards have better support.
Check out the Open Sound Systems pages for what they support. I think that’s the best bet for Linux support.
Be aware that there are other limitations to Linux based solutions besides just the driver support. For example there are issues with ASIO support in open source applications. ASIO gives you low latency editing, which you need for mixing and other audio editing. Audacity does not include ASIO support because of licencing issues with ASIO (owned by Steinberg) and the GPL. Other open source projects are going to have the same problem. One solution would be to find a closed source (possibly commercial) application for Linux. Or see if it will work in WINE, but that’s hardly an elegant Linux solution.
You don’t have those sorts of problems with Macs or Windows.
True, you don’t get the compiler stuff by default in Ubuntu, but I don’t remember the last time I needed it… And I’ve been a linux user for almost a decade now, having run Redhat 5.x through Fedora Core 4, as well as Slackware, Debian, Gentoo,a nd finally Ubuntu. The only reason I’m not uring Ubuntu these days is because the Macintel support isn’t quite there on the Macbooks yet… as soon as it is, I’m switching back… My desktop still runs Ubuntu as its primary OS, my only prob with it on my Mac is the battery life is crap :’( But I miss my Linux-ing :’(
I got a Ubuntu CD off my friend, but my mum won’t let me install it on the computer .Oh well, at least i can still use the other free software on the cd.
I got curious and decided to look at what Linux can do for professional sound support.
ALSA (Advanced Linux Sound Architecture) has support for many cards including some M-Audio cards and USB modules.
The Linux community has developed JACK to address the low latency requirements for professional editing. JACK requires the sound card to have ALSA support. JACK seems to be an open source replacement for ASIO.
For software there is MusE, Rosegarden, Audacity, and others which support JACK so should be able to handle real audio editing and playback.
So it looks like it is theoretically possible to do real audio with Linux, but I have no idea how well it actually works in practice and how well the various cards and sound modules are supported.
If you go to the M-Audio web site and look for Linux drivers they will direct you to the Open Sound System web site. I’m not sure if M-Audio is supporting ALSA driver development for their cards or not?
I’ve checked out some sequencer(I don’t remember the name) sample songs some time ago. They were pretty good, but nothing compared to what you can get in Fruity Loops. Audacity is good, I think. Anyway, if I installed Linux I’d still have a Windows XP which I’d use for sound recording and sequencing.
It’s just that it would be a shame if I had M-Audio Audiophile and would not even be able to do simple playback under Linux. I’m not considering doing any sound editing on Linux. Not now, at least.
Exactly! People want it to “just work” and “out of the box” not any of this search and find the solution… the numerous solutions that might work. People just want it to work, really, out of the box. That’s the problem with most linux distributions, including ubuntu. Unfourtunitley, it seems like a lot of ht linux crowd wants complete open source, gpl-lisenced software. It’s simply never going to happen and this ideal, IMO, is what is preventing linux from becoming mainstream.
Ahh, we are a dieing breed, my friend. Many an hour I spent fiddling with such things. OPne of the reasons I enjoy CLI’s so much, even on the mac. Plus, the Linux drivers for my wireless work better than the Mac ones
Was that you on the Gentoo forums about Tom Cort unicycling (one of my padawan apprentices. ;))
You should never get locked out of Windows or be unable to repair Windows due to a GUI problem. Windows 2000/XP has a safe mode that runs a standard VGA video driver. You would have to work hard to mess up the VGA driver support. If you do, there is always the recovery console that is, gasp, a console. You can run some disk repairs, registry repairs, and other repairs from the recovery console if necessary.
Thanks for describing the linux community mentality. It’s that mentality that IMO has prevented linux from becoming more mainstream.
Most people who use a computer are not computer literate and do not know the internal workings of a computer operating system, nor should they know how it works for that matter. They just want to turn it on and have it work – out of the box – to be able to browse the web, to send email, to view a video, or do whatever else they need. They do not want to waste their time troubleshooting their video card, and for that matter, nor do I. I have much better things to spend my time on than to do my taxes or to try to figure out why the latest kernel update hosed my X configuration due to my video driver. I just want it to work, and so do most people who use a computer.
For most people, a gui is more intuitive than trying to find what text file you need to edit. Hiding most minor underlying tweaks to the user is less prone to causing problems for the average user.
When you mention MS-DOS with it’s AUTOEXEC.BAT and CONFIG.SYS, and comparing it to today’s linux, you are only making it look like linux is very outdated and old-school.
The biggest struggle I’ve had when using linux is it’s lack of support for proprietary things. Yes, I know, the linux thinking is that proprietary is bad, but the fact is that you will not get rid of it. It’s a valid business model and some businesses will still choose that and in the marketplace, it may be the best available product. Ubuntu suffers this. It’s had some of the Debian ideals where it wants to only have “free” software included, which means no proprietary video codecs or anything. As long as these distributions do not support these proprietary offerings, easily out of the box, they will never become mainstream.
It’s the same mentality that drives people to perform their own automotive maintenance as well, IMO. Not saying it’s good or bad, just an observation.
Businesses are figuring out ways to slip proprietary drivers into Linux with minimal fuss. I installed Fedora Core 5 on a year-old Sony Vaio laptop a month ago, and both the video card and the wireless 802.11g were unsupported in the “open-source” sense. However, the manufacturer for both items is Intel, and when I went to their website, they supplied pre-compiled driver binaries for both pieces of hardware that were easy to install. Later updates didn’t hose them, either.
CPU frequency scaling and power management worked flawlessly from day one, which is the first time that’s ever happened to me while using any flavor of Linux. The battery lasts longer while booted into Fedora than it does in Windows.
Linux still has a long way to go, but the amount of work required to get an install completely functional on newer hardware after the initial installation has been steadily declining.
Year-old? The problem I encountered was that I built a computer and installed ubuntu… the video card was not really known to the open source community yet, even though it was an nvidia card. Clicking the automatic upgrade in ubuntu killed my set up. Even the typically described solution did not work for it. I was hosed and didn’t have the patience to mess with it. Therefore, I started using my Mac OS X laptop as my main computer. Which is good for the applications I run. As for this overpowerful computer, it’ll become a backup server – to store unicyclist.com files and any backup files from any other site I run.
.Oh well, at least i can still use the other free software on the cd.