When it comes down to it. Linux looks how you want it. If you can't find a GUI (Gnome, KDE etc etc) that suits your needs, you can download another, or if you're competant enough, program your own.
But most of the GUI's i've used and so on are usually the same kind of format as windows. Toolbar at the bottom and so on.
However if it's just the interface that's bugging you, there's a fair number of windows shells you can install on your computer (LiteSTEP etc) that can make it look like linux, or however you want, also i've found these easier to customise.
What you need to ask yourself is, can you do all the things you use your computer for now under linux. Are you competant with linux. If something goes wrong, do you know where to turn. For a few people i've heard of converting to linux i've asked them those questions and half the time they either just "want to get rid of Microsoft" or "want to make it look cool". I, myself, have tried a few distro's myself and find no actual use for it, since i use programs like Photoshop on a daily basis. And please, don't mention GIMP.
ThansalThe New ScumJoin Date: 2002-08-22Member: 1215Members, Constellation
oy, Gimp is good, just not NEARLY as intuitive as PS, and PS aint intuitive <!--emo&:p--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/tounge.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='tounge.gif'><!--endemo-->
As for lightStep, go look through the 'post your desktop' some one posted one I asked WTH it was and they linked me <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo-->
as for commands:
mkdir, cd, look familiar? yah they aint that bad
Also most stuff that runs with X has a joyus little toy called tabcompleation <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo-->
you type the start of your thing and then hit tab, it will compleat the typing for you, if there are more than one posibilities you can hit it 2 times and it will give you a list <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo-->
Also if you want to know how to do something these are the 2 commands:
man *command* this gets you the man page (aka manual) for that command. It is very indepth, explains how it works and what commands you can use with it like you could learn that "rm -r sierra" would remove your sierra dir and EVERY thing in it including subfolders <!--emo&:p--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/tounge.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='tounge.gif'><!--endemo--> don't ever do that <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo--> the man pages will also give you a list of other simmiler or related commands at the end <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo-->
appropo (sp?, I never use this cmd) also acts sorta like man and will pull up things related wo that you want. forinstance appropo copy will probably bring up cp
correction it is apropos (just SSHed into the CS department's server <!--emo&:p--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/tounge.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='tounge.gif'><!--endemo-->) lets see what apropos copy does. Ok it gives me a very long list of comands, fortunatly cp is at the top so I learned that cp will copy files <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo-->
and here is what linux looks like when I ssh in from my home machine to the lab: avicker@occs:~$ is my command line cd is change dir, ls is list (same as dir) my actual home dir is: usr/users/students/avickery. but cus thats my home dir I don't have it show me that in my path <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo--> oh and cookie is the fortune cookie program that one of the students wrote, it has now been apropriated for the use of quotes, be they insightful, amuzing, stupid or what not. That was the last one that got me in there.
I'm running XP Pro and Redhat 8 w/ a KDE shell. I've customized KDE like none other and gotten to look pretty good.
I'd take a Linux screen, but that would require me to reboot into Linux, and I'm incredibly lazy. <!--emo&:p--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/tounge.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='tounge.gif'><!--endemo-->
moultanoCreator of ns_shiva.Join Date: 2002-12-14Member: 10806Members, NS1 Playtester, Contributor, Constellation, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Reinforced - Shadow, WC 2013 - Gold, NS2 Community Developer, Pistachionauts
<!--QuoteBegin--Error404:+May 4 2003, 03:12 PM--></span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (Error404: @ May 4 2003, 03:12 PM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin--> If you've got enough hard disk space, dual boot is the way to go.
XP pro is really good actually, the only MS OS that I actually think is worth running just because it's surprisingly stable. <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd--> agreed, ive had fewer crashes in XP than the Gentoo users down the hall.
I prefer Windows 2000 stability, but Windows XP Pro has the features so i kept XP Pro even though i didn't want to
But I realised that XP can be just as stable if not more than 2000 if you go into the system properties and go to the advanced tab then go to the Graphical Performance settings! Taking all the graphical crap off XP Pro that is just not needed really makes ur machine about 100 times faster and stops it from crashing! I've loved XP Pro ever since! It's just all that graphical shite which is just not needed! Fine if its an internet cafe or somert and you want style, but for your home machine why do you need all that style stuff, all you want is a functional machine that dosen't crash!
Anyway, linux.
I have Mandrake Linux and love it. I run a Team Fortress server on a linux machine and I swear you can get around 12 players on a Linux server on a 256k upload DSL line before it starts to lag. I swear Linux makes a great Half Life server. I ran Windows 2000 on the same machine and on the same connection and got 4 players before it lagged but linux ran 12 players quite happily!
Although the best Operating system in the world is MAC OS. It has the stability of Linux with the user friendlyness of Windows! Cannot beat MAC OS!
TalesinOur own little well of hateJoin Date: 2002-11-08Member: 7710NS1 Playtester, Forum Moderators
I have to point and laugh at Macintrashes... I use G4s at college for Maya, and they crash literally at least once an hour... closer to every fifteen minutes to half-hour if you even try to work with the model isoparms at all. Compare to both my Whistler (winxp... it's cr*p, still a beta OS, but is needed to run Maya properly as well as handle my large RAM) and Slackware installs of Maya, which have yet to crash, period.
Or my Linux NAT machine, which has an uptime currently of 172d 14h 27m 56.. 57.. 58s, and only that short due to needing to swap out a net card and a case fan.
This is kinda off-topic, but I have to say that MacOS just sucks lemons when it comes to multi-tasking. You can't do anything while it's printing or opening a document in an application.
If you have XP Home, throw it in the bin now! Get XP Pro instead, it has retained the Win2000 task manager which is great for seeing which processes are running.
Just to clarify, our glorious NS does in fact run under winex.
Anyways, I might as well put my opinions here.
Linux really isn't a replacement for normal desktop use for the average user yet. Much functionality has been duplicated, notable solid examples include OpenOffice (a replacement for the Microsoft Office product line), Winex (an attempt to emulate windows games and other software), and the Gimp (although it can't compare to the features and abilities in Photoshop).
It really shines as a development enviroment. Free tools such as the amazing gcc are abundant for Linux. I find that I just plain can get things done faster and more efficiently in Linux compared to a Windows enviroment for just about everything relating to development (excluding Visual Basic tools, which isn't a huge loss for me), probably due to the previously mentioned customizing abilities. One of the strengths (or weaknesses) of Linux is that there usually are multiple choices for a program, window managers or desktop enviroments being the case in point. There were some screenshots of KDE I saw before, other options such as Gnome are also avaiable (sorry, I don't have a screen of Gnome). Even within these plenty of customization can be done.
Stability also deserves another mention. Stability in Linux isn't some quality inherent in the OS as it is usually laid out. It really is more closely linked to the open source nature of Linux. Things are stable because if something isn't stable people will go in and toy with it until it is stable. Memory leaks and protection errors which are common in windows are just programming errors, which are usually hunted down and found in Linux. Furthermore, there is no reason why Windows and its programs can't have equal or better stability compared to Linux, its just that companies that develop the software often don't have the resources or will to hunt for all of the little bugs that can cause instability. The end result for Linux is uptimes in terms of years sometimes. Very impressive for an OS that is as young as Linux is.
Time to pimp for my favorite distro =). Gentoo!!!!! Ok, so my largest complaint about linux was maintaining all of the programs on it, since they generally change quite quickly. Gentoo is a source based distribution, which means that EVERYTHING is compiled, instead of just using binaries. Yes its slower, and you'll want broadband, but it also means that everything is optimized for your machine, and things run faster than generic builds. Their program called "Portage" is amazing. It allows you to install dependancies and a program with one command. Or it also allows you to update the entire machine in one fell swoop. For example, Xfree 4.3.0 recently came out, and to update I would have needed to download and install new versions of about 20 libraries and then install xfree itself. Gentoo's command was: <!--c1--></span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>CODE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='CODE'><!--ec1--> ~# emerge -u xfree<!--c2--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--ec2--> It took a while, but when it finished, I had xfree 4.3.0 with no trouble at all. Gotta love it.
Oh, and the obligatory screenshot.
Eterm for the terminal windows, fluxbox for the window manager (i like the minimalist stuff i guess), gaim for icq/aim stuff, and xmms for music (pretty much a winamp clone), Mozilla for browsing (sorry, its shaded at the top in the pic).
It won't let me post my png link here, ugh. Ok, I'll make you click! Hah! =/ <a href='http://www.owix.org/images/desktop.png' target='_blank'>Screenshot</a>
TalesinOur own little well of hateJoin Date: 2002-11-08Member: 7710NS1 Playtester, Forum Moderators
The list of distros I'd tossed up was more explaining the relatively common ones for Linux-newbies, and giving a recommendation for 'my first Linux'.
On the slightly more advanced side, I actually prefer Sorcerer over Gentoo... not fully sure which came first, but I'd heard about Sorc and the Grimoire (using the 'cast' command to essentially do what emerge does) about a half-year before I'd heard a squeak about Gentoo, so the latter'll always have a negative connotation in my mind, seeming to have pulled a copycat of Sorc. Along with the fact that Sorcerer makes it clear that if you have over a gig of RAM in the machine, you don't need a swap-partition. Even compiling the HUGE programs fully in memory at once.
Though I must say, even with the extra ease induced by cast/emerge, (basically) a LFS system can be a pain in the.. neck, when you find out exactly which of your favorite tools you're missing, then waiting to nab them all and let 'em compile before you can get on with work/life.
<a href='http://www.compsoc.man.ac.uk/~afoster/screenshot-huge.jpeg' target='_blank'>Hooray for triplehead!</a>
Yes, that's Linux, with three monitors. <!--emo&;)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/wink.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='wink.gif'><!--endemo-->
As for distributions - I used to use Red Hat a lot (the screenshot's from a few weeks ago, when my main PC ran Red Hat 7.3) but I recently switched to SuSE. It's possibly a little rough around the edges in places, but YaST (a general-purpose, gloriously powerful system setup thingy) is great, and the core system seem to work brilliantly. Compare that with my experience of Red Hat, in which it was superficially wonderful, but its innards were often a mess.
I really appreciate SuSE's additional instructions which come with a lot of packages, describing any SuSE-specific oddities and improvements. It's much easier than having to read generic, OS-agnostic instructions and figuring how the hell they relate to your particular Linux distribution. It's morally weak compared with a true, manly installation provided by one of these roll-your-own distributions, but it saves a hell of a lot of time...
Oh, and I plugged my USB mass storage device digital camera in. It automatically loaded all the relevant drivers and automatically set up device permissions and mount points. This was greatly appreciated. <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo-->
<!--QuoteBegin--></span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->Along with the fact that Sorcerer makes it clear that if you have over a gig of RAM in the machine, you don't need a swap-partition. Even compiling the HUGE programs fully in memory at once.<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Comments
But most of the GUI's i've used and so on are usually the same kind of format as windows. Toolbar at the bottom and so on.
However if it's just the interface that's bugging you, there's a fair number of windows shells you can install on your computer (LiteSTEP etc) that can make it look like linux, or however you want, also i've found these easier to customise.
What you need to ask yourself is, can you do all the things you use your computer for now under linux. Are you competant with linux. If something goes wrong, do you know where to turn. For a few people i've heard of converting to linux i've asked them those questions and half the time they either just "want to get rid of Microsoft" or "want to make it look cool". I, myself, have tried a few distro's myself and find no actual use for it, since i use programs like Photoshop on a daily basis. And please, don't mention GIMP.
As for lightStep, go look through the 'post your desktop' some one posted one I asked WTH it was and they linked me <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo-->
as for commands:
mkdir, cd, look familiar? yah they aint that bad
Also most stuff that runs with X has a joyus little toy called tabcompleation <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo-->
you type the start of your thing and then hit tab, it will compleat the typing for you, if there are more than one posibilities you can hit it 2 times and it will give you a list <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo-->
Also if you want to know how to do something these are the 2 commands:
man *command*
this gets you the man page (aka manual) for that command. It is very indepth, explains how it works and what commands you can use with it
like you could learn that "rm -r sierra" would remove your sierra dir and EVERY thing in it including subfolders <!--emo&:p--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/tounge.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='tounge.gif'><!--endemo--> don't ever do that <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo-->
the man pages will also give you a list of other simmiler or related commands at the end <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo-->
appropo (sp?, I never use this cmd) also acts sorta like man and will pull up things related wo that you want. forinstance appropo copy will probably bring up cp
correction it is apropos (just SSHed into the CS department's server <!--emo&:p--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/tounge.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='tounge.gif'><!--endemo-->)
lets see what apropos copy does. Ok it gives me a very long list of comands, fortunatly cp is at the top so I learned that cp will copy files <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo-->
and here is what linux looks like when I ssh in from my home machine to the lab:
avicker@occs:~$ is my command line cd is change dir, ls is list (same as dir)
my actual home dir is:
usr/users/students/avickery. but cus thats my home dir I don't have it show me that in my path <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo-->
oh and cookie is the fortune cookie program that one of the students wrote, it has now been apropriated for the use of quotes, be they insightful, amuzing, stupid or what not. That was the last one that got me in there.
I'd take a Linux screen, but that would require me to reboot into Linux, and I'm incredibly lazy. <!--emo&:p--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/tounge.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='tounge.gif'><!--endemo-->
XP pro is really good actually, the only MS OS that I actually think is worth running just because it's surprisingly stable.
XP pro is really good actually, the only MS OS that I actually think is worth running just because it's surprisingly stable. <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
agreed, ive had fewer crashes in XP than the Gentoo users down the hall.
But I realised that XP can be just as stable if not more than 2000 if you go into the system properties and go to the advanced tab then go to the Graphical Performance settings! Taking all the graphical crap off XP Pro that is just not needed really makes ur machine about 100 times faster and stops it from crashing! I've loved XP Pro ever since! It's just all that graphical shite which is just not needed! Fine if its an internet cafe or somert and you want style, but for your home machine why do you need all that style stuff, all you want is a functional machine that dosen't crash!
Anyway, linux.
I have Mandrake Linux and love it. I run a Team Fortress server on a linux machine and I swear you can get around 12 players on a Linux server on a 256k upload DSL line before it starts to lag. I swear Linux makes a great Half Life server. I ran Windows 2000 on the same machine and on the same connection and got 4 players before it lagged but linux ran 12 players quite happily!
Although the best Operating system in the world is MAC OS. It has the stability of Linux with the user friendlyness of Windows! Cannot beat MAC OS!
Now if I can just find instructions on how to burn it in English...
Or my Linux NAT machine, which has an uptime currently of 172d 14h 27m 56.. 57.. 58s, and only that short due to needing to swap out a net card and a case fan.
<a href='http://themes.freshmeat.net/' target='_blank'>http://themes.freshmeat.net/</a>
If you have XP Home, throw it in the bin now! Get XP Pro instead, it has retained the Win2000 task manager which is great for seeing which processes are running.
Just to clarify, our glorious NS does in fact run under winex.
Anyways, I might as well put my opinions here.
Linux really isn't a replacement for normal desktop use for the average user yet. Much functionality has been duplicated, notable solid examples include OpenOffice (a replacement for the Microsoft Office product line), Winex (an attempt to emulate windows games and other software), and the Gimp (although it can't compare to the features and abilities in Photoshop).
It really shines as a development enviroment. Free tools such as the amazing gcc are abundant for Linux. I find that I just plain can get things done faster and more efficiently in Linux compared to a Windows enviroment for just about everything relating to development (excluding Visual Basic tools, which isn't a huge loss for me), probably due to the previously mentioned customizing abilities. One of the strengths (or weaknesses) of Linux is that there usually are multiple choices for a program, window managers or desktop enviroments being the case in point. There were some screenshots of KDE I saw before, other options such as Gnome are also avaiable (sorry, I don't have a screen of Gnome). Even within these plenty of customization can be done.
Stability also deserves another mention. Stability in Linux isn't some quality inherent in the OS as it is usually laid out. It really is more closely linked to the open source nature of Linux. Things are stable because if something isn't stable people will go in and toy with it until it is stable. Memory leaks and protection errors which are common in windows are just programming errors, which are usually hunted down and found in Linux. Furthermore, there is no reason why Windows and its programs can't have equal or better stability compared to Linux, its just that companies that develop the software often don't have the resources or will to hunt for all of the little bugs that can cause instability. The end result for Linux is uptimes in terms of years sometimes. Very impressive for an OS that is as young as Linux is.
Time to pimp for my favorite distro =). Gentoo!!!!! Ok, so my largest complaint about linux was maintaining all of the programs on it, since they generally change quite quickly. Gentoo is a source based distribution, which means that EVERYTHING is compiled, instead of just using binaries. Yes its slower, and you'll want broadband, but it also means that everything is optimized for your machine, and things run faster than generic builds. Their program called "Portage" is amazing. It allows you to install dependancies and a program with one command. Or it also allows you to update the entire machine in one fell swoop. For example, Xfree 4.3.0 recently came out, and to update I would have needed to download and install new versions of about 20 libraries and then install xfree itself. Gentoo's command was:
<!--c1--></span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>CODE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='CODE'><!--ec1--> ~# emerge -u xfree<!--c2--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--ec2-->
It took a while, but when it finished, I had xfree 4.3.0 with no trouble at all. Gotta love it.
Oh, and the obligatory screenshot.
Eterm for the terminal windows, fluxbox for the window manager (i like the minimalist stuff i guess), gaim for icq/aim stuff, and xmms for music (pretty much a winamp clone), Mozilla for browsing (sorry, its shaded at the top in the pic).
It won't let me post my png link here, ugh. Ok, I'll make you click! Hah! =/
<a href='http://www.owix.org/images/desktop.png' target='_blank'>Screenshot</a>
--Dep <!--emo&::skulk::--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/skulk.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='skulk.gif'><!--endemo-->
On the slightly more advanced side, I actually prefer Sorcerer over Gentoo... not fully sure which came first, but I'd heard about Sorc and the Grimoire (using the 'cast' command to essentially do what emerge does) about a half-year before I'd heard a squeak about Gentoo, so the latter'll always have a negative connotation in my mind, seeming to have pulled a copycat of Sorc.
Along with the fact that Sorcerer makes it clear that if you have over a gig of RAM in the machine, you don't need a swap-partition. Even compiling the HUGE programs fully in memory at once.
Though I must say, even with the extra ease induced by cast/emerge, (basically) a LFS system can be a pain in the.. neck, when you find out exactly which of your favorite tools you're missing, then waiting to nab them all and let 'em compile before you can get on with work/life.
Yes, that's Linux, with three monitors. <!--emo&;)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/wink.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='wink.gif'><!--endemo-->
As for distributions - I used to use Red Hat a lot (the screenshot's from a few weeks ago, when my main PC ran Red Hat 7.3) but I recently switched to SuSE. It's possibly a little rough around the edges in places, but YaST (a general-purpose, gloriously powerful system setup thingy) is great, and the core system seem to work brilliantly. Compare that with my experience of Red Hat, in which it was superficially wonderful, but its innards were often a mess.
I really appreciate SuSE's additional instructions which come with a lot of packages, describing any SuSE-specific oddities and improvements. It's much easier than having to read generic, OS-agnostic instructions and figuring how the hell they relate to your particular Linux distribution. It's morally weak compared with a true, manly installation provided by one of these roll-your-own distributions, but it saves a hell of a lot of time...
Oh, and I plugged my USB mass storage device digital camera in. It automatically loaded all the relevant drivers and automatically set up device permissions and mount points. This was greatly appreciated. <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo-->
<!--QuoteBegin--></span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->Along with the fact that Sorcerer makes it clear that if you have over a gig of RAM in the machine, you don't need a swap-partition. Even compiling the HUGE programs fully in memory at once.<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
*Cough*. No. Swap is definitely a good idea...