Zen Internet Support Forum

What Linux forum would be complete without one?

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David Nelson
Team Leader
Business Support Unit
Zen Internet

I have been a Gentoo user for quite a few years now. I dabble in Ubuntu a bit lately but don't have it currently installed.

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David Nelson
Team Leader
Business Support Unit
Zen Internet

I'm running Kubuntu Dapper x86_64 (living life on the edge ;) ) - 'though I've got ubuntu-desktop installed as well - on my main PC, and I'm setting up a server just over the room with Debian Sarge.

xF,

...Nick

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A lot of people say I'm crazy. Most of them are me.

Red Hat 9 is very stable and I am now rewasonably familiar with it. For dily computing I use the Gnome gui - for admin and configuring server operations (as root) I prefer the CLI. (in that respect the RH9 machine fulfills both a server role - Apache, MySql and as a local fileserver) as well as a desktop computer and those single user functions)

I have dabbled with FC4 but find the gnome implimentation less friendly that RH9 - I suspect that I would find little difference in useability if I was using the FC4 machine as a server and operating at the CLI level, and I could get used to the gnome implementation as a desktop machine.

Knoppix is a great little pack and go distro! Bang the CD into a machine that boots off the CD rom, plug in a USB pen drive that has previously been configured to hold your home dirtectory and you have a Linux environment in an envelope! Its also graet for troubleshooting, machines that won't boot - it has rescued both a linux and a windows machine for me.

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The box said "needs Windows 2000 or better" so I installed Fedora Core 6

I run slackware on a number of boxes here and slamd64 (slackware for AMD64) on my laptop.

I also use a few debian boxes and a gentoo box quite regularly too.

With me,

I have really not yet settle down with any specific distro as such. I am trying each new one that comes out the FC5 appears to be ok but looking forward to the next Suse.

As long as it has Tux Racer, BZFlag and Chromium I am happy. I do however remeber the old Suse 7. something it took me a couple of hours to set up my modem as that was my 1st delve into linux. I have kept the manuals and thet still actually come in handy sometimes.

Koppix is good but I do have a real bug bare on all the distro that I am sure someone would rebute me on.

How come it's so hard to get a  MPEG,AVI,DVD player that is bundled with a distro. I know about Xine but for somereason I have never never managed to get it to work !!

Is it me? (probably!)

Bar that I like linux and will keep plugging away at the plugings also never really managed to get RealPlayer 10 to work either LOL but there both for a different thread.

 

Doug

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Do you really care what my actual home system and network is I am sure yours will be bigger, better and faster.

I'm no expert on the subject but this is my understanding on the DVD player issue. Distros can't ship with DVD players as the decoders for DVD technology has to be licensed. For a free DVD decoder they can sometimes suggest using VLC which I believe includes DeCSS to decode the DVD but this will have legal issues in some countries particularly the U.S. As the majority of the distros users will generally be in the U.S. they can't distribute this code with the rest of the operating system but they can be downloaded afterwards if the user is in a country where DeCSS is legal.

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David Nelson
Team Leader
Business Support Unit
Zen Internet

History: RH7.3 SUSE RH9 FC1-5.  Not tried any others. Current FC5.

I use Mandriva because I have been using Mandrake for some time back when it seemed to be the easiest distro to install and the only one optimised for Pentiums.

Im considering making the jump to Ubuntu for the easiest to understand system or perhaps Gentoo for optimisation.  Id like to recompile the mains apps I use on Mandriva for my specific CPU (P3 733 on the server, recompiling the kernel seemed to reduce CPU overhead significantly for transfers over gigabit ethernet) but im not very savvy compiling and have no idea how to do that with the SRPMs and get them installed over the existing packages in the right places etc.

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Ex-Zen Home2000 Customer

I have been running Ubuntu on a spare machine for the best part of a year now and just wonder

Why do you have to go right round the houses just to install a software download or update, why not just a setup.exe?
Why do I have to mount drives etc (a second hard drive is a bit of a pain really)?

I have two PC's running XP and I can't even imagine Linux ever being a serious threat to Windows.
I can understand why Linux is so good for a server etc but a desktop machine no.
Maybe it's just that I have used Windows in one form or another for so long now but I do find Linux so unfriendly once I get past just using an application.

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Ken

Zen Active 8000

By the time a family pays off the mortgage for a home in the suburbs, the home isn't home,and the suburbs aren't suburbs.

Not sure what Ubuntu uses for updates, but I use Red Hat 9. I update/upgrade using YUM, the command is

yum update

easy!

Installing softwatre depends on he package, the package management system which varies from developer to developer. If its an RPM package rpm -Uvh is easy, but many applications need compiling first - additional flexibility at the expense of complexity.

All disk drives have to be mounted on any OS - Windows does it automatically (you don't get a choice) you can set Linux to do the same by editing /etc/fstab. Again greater flexibility. Hardest thing with Linux is to remember that it is file system orientated, not disk oriented. As a user it is irrelevant where a directory is physically stored, all you want is access to the file, whether it is on a local drive, USB drive, network drive or wherever.

The REALLY nice thing about Linux (compared with Windows) is that everything is relatively transparent. Most things are controlled by scripts, which while not 'plain english' are human readable. No registry, registry keys, incomprehensible strings to worry about - and of course it is generally stable.

I use my Linux machine for about 90% of my desktop use, in addition it is running (in the backgraound) an Apache web server, Mysql database and a PHP application.

With Gnome or KDE as the GUI, I don't think that Linux systems are any harder (for a user) to use than Windows. System administration is different, but on balance, I would say that Linux is slightly simpler once you get beyond the mundane - however a good knowledge of the CLI is definitely beneficial.

Windows is only apparantly easier because of the numerous wizards that have been written - fine if they do what you want, but anything unusual can be a nightmare.

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The box said "needs Windows 2000 or better" so I installed Fedora Core 6

I've used SuSE for about 10 years, & have it on both my machines. I also have a machine that I test other distrbutions on, just to see what they're like. :-)

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Windows free for 11 years! :)
Mandriva 2008.1 64-bit
Mandriva One 2008.1 32-bit
FreeBSD 7.0

*cough* Where's the option for  FreeBSD / *BSD's on the poll?

That would come under other

Nathan Flynn:

*cough* Where's the option for  FreeBSD / *BSD's on the poll?

That would be in the poll in the BSD forum

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David Nelson
Team Leader
Business Support Unit
Zen Internet