S
Sirius
Guest
Hello,
That's fantastic that the Cassiopaean community is so in favor of Linux. Meanwhile I am a Linux enthusiast, too. And I have already tested and used many distributions. Several years ago a workmate gave me the advice to use Linux and to have a look on it. At that time I wasn't familiar with it, I knew it only by hearsay. He burnt two DVDs for me with a distribution and a lot of extra software and I began to test it. Then I tested openSUSE, Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Fedora, BackTrack, ArchLinux, several security and rescue systems and other less notable systems.
What I have noted for a long time is this peculiar STO acting of Open Source. To give without any requirements and charges and nevertheless to profit in doing so. And to network (though rather literally in this case), to contribute by your own will, if I may use this word, to share your insights and those things that has been already said here. Some companies and schools are going to replace Windows with Linux and MS Office with OpenOffice.org. Pupils are more being taught OpenOffice.org these days, that is what I noticed. The problem is, however, and this is my great problem as well, that a lot of software, especially commercial software, run only under Windows and mighty applications are usually Windows applications. So you cannot get rid of it completely, you still need it, but you need Windows because other software (deliberately) depend on it. These commercial producers want to hide their numerous configuration files and other files and libraries in system folders, store information in the Windows registry and they do not want necessarily to be studied and understood by average users and software developers. Windows and its very file structure and organization is simply based on chaos without specific policies, that is among other things one reason for its many security issues. The result is also that each developer can organize his application that way he wants, that means he can store configuration files anywhere. If you want to develop for Linux or even Mac OS X, you have to follow some guidelines. There is a question some people ask, if Linux were so popular and widely used as Windows, would it be consequently equally vulnerable? And the answer is no, it would not, even if viruses and all kinds of malware were targeted on Linux mainly. There are possible security leaks and faults both on Linux and Mac OS X with its derivates such as iPhone OS, but fewer. And they can be found by everyone, because Linux (just Linux, not Apple stuff) is Open Source. That is its strength.
I am using Ubuntu 10.04 LTS with Gnome Desktop and for testing purposes sometimes gnome-shell with Zeitgeist, I don't like KDE. Though Fedora is a good choice, too. It is very stable. Ubuntu with its new boot script and Grub2 is extremely fast, that's a real advancement and it started actually with 9.04 last year.
I love minimal Linux systems. There is Tiny Core Linux, for example, that needs just about 16 MB space. And even smaller systems need just 8 MB. However, Tiny Core Linux has a graphical environment (there is also TinyLinux, another and similar project). If you are interested, here is an overview of such systems: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Minimal_Linux_distros
These systems might be just toys, but they are funny and perhaps it's easier to build them from source than building a complete and large system from scratch.
Yesterday I downloaded the LFS book and I will read it soon (on a pretty Linux-based ebook reader, of course) and maybe try to build a Linux system this way. Thank you (it was Potamus I believe) for mentioning this project. I knew it vaguely, I sought for books and information about Linux and how to build your own distribution, but LFS seems to suit my needs.
That's fantastic that the Cassiopaean community is so in favor of Linux. Meanwhile I am a Linux enthusiast, too. And I have already tested and used many distributions. Several years ago a workmate gave me the advice to use Linux and to have a look on it. At that time I wasn't familiar with it, I knew it only by hearsay. He burnt two DVDs for me with a distribution and a lot of extra software and I began to test it. Then I tested openSUSE, Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Fedora, BackTrack, ArchLinux, several security and rescue systems and other less notable systems.
What I have noted for a long time is this peculiar STO acting of Open Source. To give without any requirements and charges and nevertheless to profit in doing so. And to network (though rather literally in this case), to contribute by your own will, if I may use this word, to share your insights and those things that has been already said here. Some companies and schools are going to replace Windows with Linux and MS Office with OpenOffice.org. Pupils are more being taught OpenOffice.org these days, that is what I noticed. The problem is, however, and this is my great problem as well, that a lot of software, especially commercial software, run only under Windows and mighty applications are usually Windows applications. So you cannot get rid of it completely, you still need it, but you need Windows because other software (deliberately) depend on it. These commercial producers want to hide their numerous configuration files and other files and libraries in system folders, store information in the Windows registry and they do not want necessarily to be studied and understood by average users and software developers. Windows and its very file structure and organization is simply based on chaos without specific policies, that is among other things one reason for its many security issues. The result is also that each developer can organize his application that way he wants, that means he can store configuration files anywhere. If you want to develop for Linux or even Mac OS X, you have to follow some guidelines. There is a question some people ask, if Linux were so popular and widely used as Windows, would it be consequently equally vulnerable? And the answer is no, it would not, even if viruses and all kinds of malware were targeted on Linux mainly. There are possible security leaks and faults both on Linux and Mac OS X with its derivates such as iPhone OS, but fewer. And they can be found by everyone, because Linux (just Linux, not Apple stuff) is Open Source. That is its strength.
It depends upon your laptop, your screen resolution, your hardware (e.g. graphics card, CPU speed and architecture, network card, etc.) and of course your purpose. Since netbooks have been introduced, a trend to use Linux (e.g. Ubuntu Netbook Remix) for them has started. It saves the consumer money as well. But if you have a powerful 17'' laptop, you are able to use each Linux, I think. Most Linux distributions can be tested without installation if you have a Live CD (that's not usual for commercial operating systems like Windows and Mac OS X). Thus incompatibilities can be determined early enough and you can search for another distribution or install just prearranged packages that guarantee that your desired system runs properly after installation.
Yes, because it is OpenGL-based. However, with unsupported / old / otherwise bad graphics cards you cannot work effectively with Blender and other software that use OpenGL rendering. My laptop has an ATI Radeon XPRESS 200M onboard chip which is unfortunately blacklisted by ATI and they no longer provide proprietary drivers for this and related models. This factor slows down my system a little bit, I guess. Sometimes it hangs up without an obvious reason.
There was recently an article about programmers who achieved running Photoshop with the newest version of Wine (v1.1 from the developer repository).
I am using Ubuntu 10.04 LTS with Gnome Desktop and for testing purposes sometimes gnome-shell with Zeitgeist, I don't like KDE. Though Fedora is a good choice, too. It is very stable. Ubuntu with its new boot script and Grub2 is extremely fast, that's a real advancement and it started actually with 9.04 last year.
I love minimal Linux systems. There is Tiny Core Linux, for example, that needs just about 16 MB space. And even smaller systems need just 8 MB. However, Tiny Core Linux has a graphical environment (there is also TinyLinux, another and similar project). If you are interested, here is an overview of such systems: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Minimal_Linux_distros
These systems might be just toys, but they are funny and perhaps it's easier to build them from source than building a complete and large system from scratch.
Yesterday I downloaded the LFS book and I will read it soon (on a pretty Linux-based ebook reader, of course) and maybe try to build a Linux system this way. Thank you (it was Potamus I believe) for mentioning this project. I knew it vaguely, I sought for books and information about Linux and how to build your own distribution, but LFS seems to suit my needs.
.
