Linux

[chimpoid]

I tried a few attempts at Linux and got frustrated over a couple of years on and off.
Went through, Redhat, Suse, Fedora etc. Finally when I started using RedHat enterprise at work I started to figure things out and dual booted Ubuntu at home to see how it felt.

That was some time ago now and I have booted windows about 3 times in the last 6 months (mostly to check some exe file or similar). Ubuntu just works and there is scope there to noodle about if you so desire. Admittedly, it was confusing at first as you don't need to pop open a shell whenever you need to do something. It is, as stated, more "windowsey" than most distro's.

It's an easy intro to linux. Try Ubuntu, get a feel for the OS in general. You'll pick up a few things involving command line and how the file system works along the way and then perhaps think about having a blast with some of the other variants like slackware or debian once you have some basic "linux knowledge" under your belt.

Chimpoid

 

[Ferentix]

What I would like to know is; can you buy a computer WITHOUT the regular windows XP, thus saving on price? All Dell computers seem to have windows included?

Well, I'd suggest one of the following:

• the following lists of Linux friendly vendors for home and laptop computers:
  http://www.linux.org/vendor/system/desktop.html
  and
  http://www.linux.org/vendor/system/laptop.html
  
• Or, build it yourself, with help from the Linux hardware compatibility HOWTO
  

And are there any draw backs to having linux instead of windows?

Sure, there are pros and cons to everything. In the end it will depend on your preference. Personally, whilst I still have a lot to learn about the commands I can use, and how the system is structured etc, I like the powerful command line it gives, and also the various different desktop environments (I like Fluxbox, XFCE and KDE so far from what I've seen of each )


My old computer has had, in the last few months, had 3 different distros on, Ubuntu 5.10 (Breezy badger), Vector Linux, and now Gentoo. I tried Slackware too, but it ended up not really working, and I couldn't be bothered. Gentoo is by far the best distro I've used yet (In terms of how I've liked it so far). However, I broke my installation just after I finished building the X-Server Still trying to fix that... Also, the computer is quite old, and it took all day to install the base system, and another 12/13 hours to build the X-Server.

But I've enjoyed the experience so far

So I hope you find a distro that suits you, and enjoy using it! Good luck!

 

[Rayek]

What's cool about Linux is that you have so many choices to go into. And if you don't like one distro, it shouldn't cost much (a few blank cds or a dvd at most, and if you want to factor in the internet connection that you paid for to download the distro).

I DO NOT suggest Ubuntu. For beginners who absolutely know that they're going to be using the GNOME desktop environment, sure it's an okay distro. But SUSE has incredible setup tools that not only makes updating friggin easy, it makes searching for, and locating system-optimised programs, and installing them a real breeze. And, though SUSE has always been a little more KDE friendly, it is installed with many desktop environments, so you can switch between a few to get the feel of what you like, instead of hunting down a KDE off the internet and installing it.

I think someone asked this sort of question, so I'll adress what I know:
Pros of Linux:
Notorious for stability. It never quits when you don't want it to.
Software installations, minus the Kernel updates, never have you restart your computer.
Totally free, most software for it is free, also.
Free updates.

Cons of Linux:
Very little proprietary games support.
Hard to get used to, if you're used to the standard c:\doom\doom.exe way of looking at things.

The first con of Linux is really the only reason why I still have a windows partition on my computer. Dual-boot is easy, and if you have the drive space, I'd encourage it for the first few months, while you get used to Linux.

 

[Ferentix]

Hard to get used to, if you're used to the standard c:\doom\doom.exe way of looking at things.

Personally, I've found the standard Linux directory structure and way of referring to things more logical and useful than the standard Windows way.

Under Windows, the drives get assigned arbitary letters. Under Linux, the name of a device *usually* tells you what the device/volume actually is, for example HDA1 is the primary HD, first partition, HDA2 is the same hard drive, but the second partition.

Another possible disadvantage of Linux is that if you are undercautious, you can cause big damage with a single command (see this thread for an example), but then again, you could set it up so only an admin account is allowed to do this sort of thing, and only be admin when necessary. As long as you take the right precautions, you ought to be OK

Oh, and Linux may or may not be more secure than Windows, but do remember that there still ARE vulnerablilities in software etc, and there ARE viruses that affect Linux, so you would still be well advised to use virus scanners once in a while and get important security patches. Linux isn't totally invincible, OK ?

 

[DemonStar55]

Oh, and Linux may or may not be more secure than Windows, but do remember that there still ARE vulnerablilities in software etc, and there ARE viruses that affect Linux, so you would still be well advised to use virus scanners once in a while and get important security patches. Linux isn't totally invincible, OK ?

​

yeah, but most of that depends on your configuration

linub magazine issue for Jan says "there can be anywhere from a few dozen to 400 viruses for linux, depending on your configuration"

 

[Rayek]

What's cool about Linux though is that most changes to configuration requires the root password, unlike in Windows, where the registry can be changed by anyone and anything that gets on your computer. It's so hard to keep your ergistry clean, especially when you don't know what's fine to delete, what's spyware, adware, and viruses. Very little of the viruses/adware that attack Windows can actually attack Linux systems, because of the different configuration and different utilities that Linux has.

Edit: another good thing about SUSE and it's update utiliy, is that most of the updates are fixing flaws in the security of certain programs, that, once they're found, they fix immediately.

 

[Ferentix]

Well, in my case, my Linux box IS essentially invincible to remote attack- it doesn't have any sort of network connection Only way it can get infected is by floppy, and it is of course impossible to remotely crack it

 

[Rayek]

The only way i can forseeably see that anyone could have access through the College's ResNet is if someone knows or cracks my root password. If soneone actually finds it out, i think they deserve to have a peek . Most of the people who would even wat to do that to me I know anyway, so they'd probably do something harmless, like make my background porn or something easily fixable

 

[G Morgan]

I absolutely love the root password safety net. Anyone who has used a Starforce game in XP will be glad when they realise that piece of shit would be slammed by a Linux system. Of course SF games won't run on Linux even under Wine/Cedega but thats a small price to pay to avoid crappy pieces of buggy code taking over your entire system.

 

[WarmFluffyUK]

Here's something for a laugh, I was looking into getting a hard drive for my Playstation 2, and came across a PS2 Linux distro, I think it is based on Redhat. The package they were offering came with:

PS2 NIC and IDE interface
40Gig IDE HDD
PS2 USB Keyboard
PS2 USB Mouse
SVGA monitor cable
Linux install disc

All this for £80 with educational discount.

I ran the linux installer, which incidentally required the use of a whole memory 8M memory card and it worked. I was surfing the web on my playstation 2. The only problem was that the PS2 only has 32m of ram, so it was pretty slow. I guess I could have learned more about the CLI and not ran X and I could have used my PS2 as a web server :lol:

If anyone is interested, here's the kit I bought 2 years ago:
Playstation 2 Linux

 

[G Morgan]

Could be interesting (have an ethernet port in my bedroom so would be a nice addition for my PS2, the fact I already have a mail/www PC there is irrelevant I want overkill ) how easy is it to add the HD to the PS2 (I assume the standard PS2 is the one it works on). Also would it be posible to get hold of all the hardware yourself for cheaper and download a distribution in true Linux style.

How does it impact your general games play. I assume the memory card is used as a kind of boot disk to allow you to easily switch from PS2 to Linux box. I also assume you can use your TV rather than getting a dedicated monitor with all the fuss that would entail.

 

[WarmFluffyUK]

Could be interesting (have an ethernet port in my bedroom so would be a nice addition for my PS2, the fact I already have a mail/www PC there is irrelevant I want overkill ) how easy is it to add the HD to the PS2 (I assume the standard PS2 is the one it works on). Also would it be posible to get hold of all the hardware yourself for cheaper and download a distribution in true Linux style.

How does it impact your general games play. I assume the memory card is used as a kind of boot disk to allow you to easily switch from PS2 to Linux box. I also assume you can use your TV rather than getting a dedicated monitor with all the fuss that would entail.

​

I'm not sure there is anywhere else you can get the actual PS2 Linux Distro disc, you could try contacting the folks at linuxplay.com or looking on eBay.

For the hardware:

Keyboard and Mouse
The keyboard and mouse are just standard HID-Compliant USB devices, so I think any PC mouse and keyboard will work. I tested this with a keyboard on the PS2, and a USB Microsoft keyboard worked fine.

Network and drive interface
The IDE/NIC interface is just one little box that plugs into the back of the old style PS2 (Not the new slim one). You can pick one of these up all over the place, I have seen them in our local Curry's electrical store and at Woolworth's. This will also enable you to play any of the online PS2 games too!!!

Video Cable
The SVGA video cable can be obtained from the same outlets as the IDE/NIC card.
Edit: By the way, you can't use this cable to play PS2 games on an SVGA monitor, it will only have an output from software that supports it.

IDE Hard Drive
The Hard drive is a little trickier, even though they say that the IDE drives have been specially modified for the PS2, I found this to be false, I have plugged a larger 80Gb drive into the PS2 and it's been working fine for almost a year now. The only problem is, that the placing of the IDE connector and the Molex power connector on the back of IDE drives are not always exactly in the same place, so you will have to find a drive that matches the placing of the connectors on the PS2 board.
Edit: If you had a 2.5" Laptop style HDD, and one of them little cables that allows you to plug these drives into a standarg IDE port, you can always use that drive instead

Monitor
Regarding displaying the X interface on a PAL or NTSC TV, I didn't try it myself and on the website they say it is possible by editing the X config file, but I think you need to use the SVGA cable on a PC monitor to initially set it all up.
To be honest though, I don't think that using X on a TV would be good enough, the picture would probably be too fuzzy to be readable. I know SVideo from my PC outputted to my huge TV is only just okay, so composite from the PlayStation would be even worse. It doesn't do any harm to give it a go though as you could always use a bigger font or point size .

Good luck in finding it all :rolleyes:

Edit: By the way, did you know that if you found the IDE/NIC card and a hard drive for the PS2, you can obtain some software called HD-Advance that allows you to copy 90% of all your games to the Hard Drive. You then boot off the HD-Advance disc, and play your games from the HDD. They load faster too!!

 

[G Morgan]

Will have to do some searching and see how the financial situation is (have a lot of projects in the air at the moment without installing Linux on a PS2 just because I can , though it would be funny if my mates start it up and it looks like a PC). I'm intending on upgrading my SKY+ box to a 250GB HDD so that will leave me with a spare 40GB one to use somewhere. Thats most of the expense out of the way though they only sell the OS with the kit if I'm reading the site correctly.

 

[WarmFluffyUK]

Will have to do some searching and see how the financial situation is (have a lot of projects in the air at the moment without installing Linux on a PS2 just because I can , though it would be funny if my mates start it up and it looks like a PC). I'm intending on upgrading my SKY+ box to a 250GB HDD so that will leave me with a spare 40GB one to use somewhere. Thats most of the expense out of the way though they only sell the OS with the kit if I'm reading the site correctly.

​

If I was you I would keep an eye out on eBay, you do get things like PS2 Linux popping up from time to time .

 

[DemonStar55]

the kit

just DVDs