Thread: Linux

Maybe this poll?

Sorry the following is so long!!! The disc burning software referenced in the
following is CD Burner XP, which I absolutely cannot recommend, just from my
experience.

>>SuSE and Red Hat are almost easier than installing Windows XP, so it's an
easy Linux experience. That's only if they support all your hardware, however.
Once they start having hardware issues, then these big distros are no good.

Too true - I'm a linux noob, having used it ever so slightly for my intro class in C
over a year ago (for some reason our lecturer just wanted us to use it). We
were shown how to log in, open a text editor and compile with gcc, and that
was pretty much it. We didn't have to use it after first year (just finished
second year now), but I figured that studying an engineering degree I might
want to have a bit more experience with UNIX/Linux systems, so I downloaded
SUSE 10.1 (we had used SUSE 8 or 9 in college, so I figured I'd stay in "familiar"
teritory).

After a 4 hour download of a 3.5 GB ISO, (broadband rocks ), I discovered
that I couldn't burn the ISO to DVD, I had to download a plugin for Windows
to write the disc. Eventually I had to download a burning suite with ISO
support. I burned the disc as instructed, and started my install. The boot froze
while loading the installation guide! Tried and retried again, but it kept on
freezing. Fearing that I had a faulty download, I got the checksums,
downloaded some checksummer recommended by opensuse.org, whose readme
was more than a little cryptic. Eventually I ran the checksums and they showed
up ok, so I figured it was a bad disc.

I burned a new disc, exactly as before, and retried. Got much further this time,
and actually completed a minimal install, and finally had linux! I tried it out for a
while, but I hadn't set up my broadband correctly, and I eventually restarted
and booted windows to read up on linux (how to set up broadband). When the
time came to restart, low and behold, it wouldn't read my video config - no UI
to fix it!

Went back to windows, read opensuse's forums and discovered that this was a
common enough problem, and read a number of solutions involving Sax2.
None of these worked, so I eventually read the man page for sax and found a
-c flag - which was described as sax attempting to find a working config on its
own - it worked!!!

Unfortunately, my user had somehow gotten screwed up, and I couldn't log in
normally! I decided to try and run the repair tools, but they kept on crashing,
so I eventually tried a reinstall - and that froze!!! Repeated the disc burning,
finally reinstalled, configured my install with the programs I wanted, and the
install failed on adobe acrobat. Restarted again, took acrobat off the list and
finally it got through, configured my broadband, had to sort out my display again
as before but I finally got it up and running!

It's running now on a generic video configuration because I haven't gotten
drivers for my graphics card yet, but that's because I'm afraid to do more
damage! I lost 3 days on that installation! That was about a month ago, and
I've barely touched it since, partly because of the comforts of my dad's laptop
(installed Linux on the home computer), but partly because I'm not feeling
up to it just yet, waiting for the battle wounds to heal.

From the number of catastrophes that happened, it probably sounds like I've
never had a serious install before, but I've been around windows more times
than I can count. I ran windows 98 virtually without AV and firewall for a good
while and kept it very clean, I think I only had 2 reinstalls over the course of
4 years, which IMO is not too shabby, but I've never had an experience like
Linux. Undoubtedly, a large part of the problem was the software I used to
burn the discs (unless maybe the discs themselves were dodgy, but they
were brand new), but it was still ridiculous.

Aw, it's nice to see there's another person that has the same
moral objection to wordwrap that I do. Right on, Richie T. Right
on! Wordwrap is evil! Don't let nobody tell you no different,
comrade!

Thanks ethic - high praise!

I took up the format after seeing too many newbies posting code with what I
like to call "ultra comments" - somewhere in the region of 150 - 300 characters
in the same line. Then when they type their question, it just keeps on going and
going and going and going and................ and cos I'm on the laptop I hate
horizontal scrolling!

Only 22 voters in the poll, not enough to conclude anything.

Originally Posted by joeprogrammer

...Linux Torvalds...

5 posts since, and no one has called him on this yet?

One thing to keep in mind is a vast majority of linux users that I have met are elitists, bordering on being ..............s. I use linux as a hobbist, a bit at work, but since we write stuff in java/php/perl it all runs fine on windows/linux without any problems. A lot of them think and are willing to openly say that windows creates idiots. While they don't understand it is mostly the level of abstraction that windows allows, and most distros of linux can't come close to, that makes it the supirior product for the masses. And if Linux was in the majority, the viri/spyware would be written for it and suddenly a lot of these people would find their systems not as secure as they think it is.

http://www.ctrlaltdel-online.com/comic.php?d=20060513 replace mac with linux and add a little bit of security...

EDIT: Sorry, I was just coming from working on my new box for the last couple hours and finally got it working. I have found a lot of linux users to be elitist, and if you aren't part of their club they don't have time for you, but I also have found some who have really helped me and I did them an injustice with this message.

Most of my questions were something like... hey I have been googling and searching forums for like 20 mins... anyone have a good guide for *****