RootsChat.Com
General => Technical Help => Topic started by: daveanpat on Sunday 20 August 06 11:32 BST (UK)
-
Hi
Has anybody out there tried useing Linux? If so what is it like ? I am downloading SUSE- Linux at the moment.
David
-
Hi daveanpat
Yes.
It's complicated and fiddly. Unless you are fairly computer literate you will have a lot of problems trying to get devices to work.
On the plus side it is more stable, efficient and secure than Windows and many of the worlds web servers use Linux because of that. Linux is the homemade version of Unix which has been around since the 1960's. It was manily a command line operating system in those days but they have tried to make it more user friendly by adding a GUI interface. Because it is homemade and free there have been a lot of problems in getting commercial comapanies to divulge their various drivers that are needed to get devices like monitors, disk drives and CDROMS to work.
It has become more user-friendly and easier to use but it is not for the computer novice.
downside
-
Hi Downside
Thanks a lot.I think I will leave well alone then!
Cheers David
-
It's complicated and fiddly. Unless you are fairly computer literate you will have a lot of problems trying to get devices to work.
Not necessarily, most distros have the drivers available for just about everything the average user would need unless the equipment is really esoteric in which case I doubt if even windows would have a generic driver.
Regarding using Suse Linu have a look at
http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm?articleID=1751.
If you want to try linux without any permanent effect on your windows set up,try Knoppix which boots and runs from a CD without affecting the hard drive.
-
I guess if you do buy a 'fairly esoteric' plugin piece of hardware then it will probably have a CDROM with the drivers on it - only they probably will not be written for Linux. You may then have to search the web to see if any kind soul has decided to write some drivers for this bit of kit - unless you are capable of writing your own. :)
I doubt if there is going to be an exodus to Linux even if it is free.
downside
-
be careful your prejudice is showing ;)
Linux is more stable,faster (on the same equipment) and far more secure than windows .... as regards drivers for equipment it is easier to get Linux drivers than it is to get drivers for some versions of windows ....
-
I have no objections to Linux - I've been working in a Unix environment for many years and I am well aware of its advantages over Windows.
I haven't used Linux for a while now. I did install Mandrake a few years ago but I couldn't get the internal modem to work (amongst other things). If you cannot connect to the Internet then the attractions of Linux diminsh pretty fast. The other disadvantages are the type and range of software available for Linux.
I guess I could have a look at the newer versions and see what has changed.
Having had a preliminary look at the download and install porcedures I can see that newbies will be easily deterred from trying it.
I'm slightly mystified about the Knoppix release. I'm not sure how that works. All operating systems need to write to the hard drive - logs etc. What are the security implications of an operating system that can be booted on any PC? Presumably it is storing files on a hard drive somewhere. I can't see how you can do anything productive with a system that runs from a CD. It's probably misleading to believe that it takes up no space on a PC hard drive. It would probably slow to operate as well as it is limited to the speed of the CDROM.
downside
-
Having had a preliminary look at the download and install porcedures I can see that newbies will be easily deterred from trying it.
I'm slightly mystified about the Knoppix release. I'm not sure how that works. All operating systems need to write to the hard drive - logs etc. What are the security implications of an operating system that can be booted on any PC? Presumably it is storing files on a hard drive somewhere. I can't see how you can do anything productive with a system that runs from a CD. It's probably misleading to believe that it takes up no space on a PC hard drive. It would probably slow to operate as well as it is limited to the speed of the CDROM.
downside
To be fair a Newbie would have as many problems getting to grips with Linux as they would with Windows or Mac OSX.
I knew nothing about Linux 5 months ago but managed to install Ubuntu Linux and configure it myself and it use it much more than Windows now. Yes it took a bit of perseverance but was no harder than learning Windows for the first time.
As for the LiveCD (Ubuntu and many distros use these nowadays) it does not install to the hard drive and is generally used to test a system for compatibility issues BEFORE you decide to install. They are not really designed to be used on a permanent basis.
-
Hi xrchris
I'm glad to hear someone has managed to get it working. I've just wasted a day trying to install Mandrake 9.1 from an old CD and guess what? Yes, I can't get my USB modem to work (surprise, surprise).
It says my USB keyboard and mouse are not recognised but they both mysteriously work.
On the plus side I've managed to get my USB printer to work and the sound works (that's a first).
Without an Internet connection it is worthless so I guess I'll have to waste a bit more time trying to sort it out but I am not optimistic.
Good old Windows - you shove a CD in and manage to get something working straight away. :D
downside
-
Good old Windows - you shove a CD in and manage to get something working straight away.
Having spent the last day and a bit trying to get a windows installation (XP Pro 64) to work I am less inclined to agree. As you say
Without an Internet connection it is worthless so I guess I'll have to waste a bit more time trying to sort it out but I am not optimistic.
having to download drivers for basic equipment, burn them to CD and then transfer over ... (once I'd got it to recognise the DVD Drive) is a real pain. last time I agree to do a favour without asking what it is first ;D
-
I almost got it to work!
Although my USB modem was recognised I later discovered I had to its microcode.
I then got an error message FIRMWARE_FILE undefined.
I then followed endless solutions posted on the Internet and downloaded certain files. Having discovered that I didn't have a basic C compiler installed, I managed to get that sorted out and have had to use make and other long forgotten commands. Then I sorted out chap-secrets and pap-secrets and I seemed to be getting some response back from my ISP whilst in a shell with lots of techie information whizzing past.
The bottom line is that it is not really working. I read a comment that many people give up on Linux because they cannot use it to connect to the Internet becuase of modem problems. I can understand why.
downside
-
Hold the front page!
Just as I about to give up I found another Linux forum and found the solution.
I can now use Linux to surf the Internet - although it looks slightly weird compared to I.E.
I'll have to look at the other problems about the USB keyboard and mouse in the future. As both of these actually work the situation is not terminal.
Cheers
downside
-
Hi daveanpat,
I'm a Linux user & find that it works fine for me. The great Windows v. Linux question has been done to death elsewhere many times before; there are members of both camps that feel passionate about their OS.
Like xrchris, I'm using Ubuntu, which has good community support & is easy to set up & get working. If you'd rather have some support backup, you might consider paying for a supported distribution. Take a look at Distrowatch http://distrowatch.com/ for descriptions of the various distributions available. SUSE is probably not a bad choice for someone who's never used Linux before.
The bootable CD distributions won't write to your hard disk unless you specifically request to mount your hard disk or a USB drive in order to read / write to it.
Linux doesn't work with all hardware. There are Linux compatibility guides available so that you can check that your new hardware will work before you buy it. Having said this, the only compatibility problem I've had is with modems.
If you want to try Linux because you're looking for a good, stable OS that's easy to maintain & learn about, you could do worse than to give it a try. If you're looking for a free copy of Windows, Linux is going to disappoint you as there are many differences between the two systems.
Linux and it's associated software is updated regularly. The distribution that I use http://www.ubuntu.com/ has a new release every 6 months with regular updates in the interim period as software is improved.
I think downside's experience shows us:
1. It's worth getting a recent distribution. Your transition into Linux is not going to be eased by attempting an installation from a distribution release of 3+ years longevity.
2. Linux is not Windows. Anything that is not I.E. will look slightly weird compared to I.E.
(although it is actually possible to run I.E. under Linux. )
Arnie.
-
Hi Arnie
Many thanks and to all the others for their input, it has been very informative.
The main reason for the question in the first place was just that I like to try almost things and I thought I might have a crack at it.
Thanks again to all
David
-
Hi arnietheother
An update on my previous posting. I did download the latest version from Mandriva and burnt the image to CD. I then clean installed it and as per usual I couldn't get the modem to work. When I tried to to follow the steps I had taken to get the previous installation working I ran into all sorts of problems like no gcc compiler. As this was a simple one disc edition it did not contain many of the features you normally get with Linux. So I reinstalled the old edition again.
I guess if you are going to install Linux the lesson I learnt is that you need to get a full edition rather than mess about with the one CD desktop versions. That means getting a 3 CD version or a DVD. Linux has become quite bloated in the last few years. I remember a time when it only occupied a few MB of disk space.
downside
PS I downloaded Firefox for Linux and it looks quite good compared to Konqueror.
-
Downside,
Sorry to hear that you had modem problems with the latest free Mandriva distro. I gave up on Mandriva myself after v.9.1 in favour of Fedora Core 2 / 3 / 4 / 5, then after a brief association with SUSE, moved to Ubuntu via debian. I got a broadband connection while using Fed core 5 & have never had a connection problem since then.
Just to clear up a common misconception - that of confusing Linux with a Linux distribution:
"Linux has become quite bloated in the last few years."
Perhaps the Mandriva distribution has become bloated, Linux hasn't. Linux is still used to run custom applications on embedded systems having computing power comparable to 1980s machines.
Here's the listing for the current Ubuntu linux kernel for my sytem - a whopping 1.4MB.
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1414477 2006-05-23 17:56 vmlinuz-2.6.15-23-386
I suspect that the kernel size is dominated by the driver code.
A distribution takes the linux kernel & attaches services & applications to it. Each distribution has it's own aims. Some aim for minimalism & speed such as puppy linux http://www.puppylinux.org/ and DSL http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/ Others such as Ubuntu, aim to supply a high quality desktop system entirely from free software and so have a bigger footprint. Ubuntu and its derivatives (kubuntu, edubuntu) run and install from a single disk, with updates and thousands of other applications available online through software repositories.
Here's one nocternal person's experience installing both Windows and Ubuntu on a PC:
http://rhosgobel.blogspot.com/2006/06/installing-ubuntu-comparison-of-ubuntu.html
Arnie.
-
Hi I have two hard drives in my computer one runs XP the other run Ubuntu 6.06. I installed Ubuntu about 3 weeks ago and it really is great I now only use XP for Voip calls. I had tried linux in various forms over the years and could never get the hang of it . Ubuntu really is user friendly and the forums are very helpful. If you are looking for a user friendly OS try it. It has a feature called Automatix which will install most of the software you need to get it running e.g flash-player adobe etc. My kids use my computer as well and it runs nearly of their websites so no complaints from them a big + My other 3 computers run XP but I will not upgrading to Vista they will gradually be switched over to Ubuntu. I tried Ubuntu live on them and they will all run on it when it's time.
-
Hi leytone10
I tried Ubuntu (the dark one) and immediately I got error messages about my modem but I persevered and did an install. Very nice GUI and nice sounds. Strange idea of having the task bar at the top of the screen?
Bad news, no danger of getting my Speedtouch modem to work. Even worse I couldn't log on as root in order to change certain files. Apprently I only had sudo root permissions. I didn't realise that root's password was root :o
So I quickly installed something called PCLinuxOS. I took one look at the wallpaper and went wow - get that on to my system right now!
I got error messages about my speedtouch usb modem straight away. This distro is actually a souped-up version Mandrake or Mandriva as it is now called.
I have to face the fact that all these distro's recognise my speedtouch usb modem and offer a certain amount of support. They all require that I obtain a FIRMWARE file from Thomson. There is a Linux firmware file at their website but no instructions about how to install it. You then have to wade through various Linux forums to see how people cope with trying to get this device to work with different distros.
The bottom line is that I have only managed to get it to work on the old Mandrake 9.1 (2.4 kernal) version. It won't work on any of the new releases. Speedtouch is quite a common modem, the only problem is that Thomson expect it to be used on a Windows system and only offer minimal Linux support.
Yours enviously
downside
-
Hello leytone10. Nice to see more Ubuntu users on Rootschat.
And hello again to downside. You could have a look on the linux incompatibility list to see if your modem's listed:
http://leenooks.com/
On Ubuntu there's no root user enabled by default, instead the first user registered (and any subsequent user given sufficient rights) is able to perform administrative tasks through sudo, which is a bit cryptic at first but does give some advantages. It is possible to enable the root user if you prefer to have one.
Task bar? They're known as panels in the land of Gnome and you can rearrange the layout so that it resembles Windows if you wish, with a launcher in the bottom left corner.
Hopefully, Thomson are referring to the embedded software in the modem when they talk about a firmware file and not a custom linux kernel (you don't want a modified linux kernel from them as typically these kernels are only compiled for a handful of distributions & so might not work with yours). So the linux firmware file is probably just their latest flash code supplied with an installer that's executable on a linux system, but without instructions!
Maybe this upgrade will make it work with later kernel versions?
Have you considered getting another modem?
Arnie.
-
Hi arnietheother
Guess what? I'm typing this message on the pclinuxos distro I downloaded last week. I finally got the Speedtouch 330 modem to work. In the end it was something very basic that was missing, an entry in /etc/resolv.conf that contains two dns numbers for my ISP:
nameserver 194.168.4.100
nameserver 194.168.8.100
I remember that when I installed the old Mandrake distro that it had an Internet Wizard way of setting up my connection. As soon as I put a couple of DNS numbers in I connected to the Internet shortly after.
This distro does not have that kind of wizard so I've been trying to work out what files it consults when trying to connect. As I mentioned the actual hardware is recognised as soon as I boot up and both the green LEDs come on straight away. I do have to obtain the Firmware file and install it, but I obviously overlooked the DNS thing.
I can actually play DVDs on a Linux system! It has Kaffeine included in the package.
So the moral of this story is never give up and never buy a piece of hardware just to make life easier. ;)
downside