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The Rational Response Squad is a group of atheist activists who impact society by changing the way we view god belief. This site is a haven for those who are pushing back against the norm, and a place for believers of gods to have their beliefs exposed as false should they want to try their hand at confronting us.
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I have. Although I am writing this post on my lappy that has XP.
If you want to get your feet wet, I would recommend that you get the LTS version of Ubuntu.
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LTS?
I downloaded Fedora 10 last night. What do you think of it? I heard Ubuntu wasn't beginner friendly. Or was it Gentoo?
What's a good Desktop Environment/Window Manager?
After eating an entire bull, a mountain lion felt so good he started roaring. He kept it up until a hunter came along and shot him.
The moral: When you're full of bull, keep your mouth shut.
MySpace
Sorry about that. LTS=Long Term Support.
Ubuntu releases a new regular version every six months with 18 months of tech support available. Then every four versions, they release the new LTS version based on the third version in the series and that tech support is available for three years.
I recommend LTS versions for people who are just getting started because they are rather unlikely to have undetected bugs in them that can frustrated a new user. Also, you should be aware that the tech support from the Canonical foundation costs some money if you need it.
The linux community will give you plenty of free but largely useless help by pretending not to understand your questions or outright refusal to provide answers. That is just their way of encouraging you to learn what they already know.
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Thanks for the info. I'll look into it. I do have a programming background so I should be able to adapt fairly well.
After eating an entire bull, a mountain lion felt so good he started roaring. He kept it up until a hunter came along and shot him.
The moral: When you're full of bull, keep your mouth shut.
MySpace
Well, I have not used Fedora in several years, so I can only comment on the older version which was called “red hat” officially and “red hate” unofficially because it was very quirky.
As far as Ubuntu/Gentoo, you have them reversed.
While you can get Gentoo in pre-compiled binaries, it is more normally distroed as code source that you then have to spend a few hours compiling on the machine that you intend to use it on (thus requiring another linux distro to even attempt). It will be a nice zippy OS with only the specific optimizations needed for your machine. However, if you want to add new hardware, you get to that all over again.
With Ubuntu, you DL an ISO file which when burned makes a bootable CD which will provide a working but uninstalled version of linux to test on your machine. Also, a full compliment of software including the firefox browser and open office applications will be available as soon as you boot from the CD. Obviously, that makes it run slower than it will if installed to your HD but that is a simple fix.
You don't usually have to rebuild your OS when adding new hardware but even if you do need a new driver, it has a version of autodetection that should just go to an approved source and grab a driver for you automatically. It is fairly rare to have to do a manual driver install in Ubuntu but even then, it can be done with a few clicks of the mouse.
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Damn you Gene Simmons! Now I have to wait for another download! Thanks for the info. I'll have to queue it up on the bit torrent.
After eating an entire bull, a mountain lion felt so good he started roaring. He kept it up until a hunter came along and shot him.
The moral: When you're full of bull, keep your mouth shut.
MySpace
FYI the RRS server runs on linux (I helped build it). I use Ubuntu Studio at my house because it has all the stuff I could ever want to create music. http://ubuntustudio.org/
Your god's silence speaks loud and clear
Cool. How is it speed wise?
I'm typing this out on a machine that dual boots Debian Linux and Windows XP. Windows is rarely seen, ever since I got World of Warcraft running under WINE.
Linux is the most stable, feature rich OS I've ever used. Find a distribution that fits your mindset and dive in. And I can run two concurrent sessions of WoW under it on Linux, if that tells you anything about speed and stability.
All that is necessary for the triumph of good is that evil men do nothing.
Somehow I missed ubuntustudio. But I will be sure to check that out because I too am a musician and have been planning to recycle some old hardware to make a dedicated production box. BTW, I am such a nerd that I have never less than three working computers in my 450 square foot condo. My lappy with XP, a smoothwall router (smoothwall is also a linux variant but it is specifically for use as a router/firewall) and my main box for gaming.
Just out of curiosity, a couple of questions:
What sound card do you use for your production box? I have a Tascam US-122 but there is very little info on getting it to work with ALSA kicking around (at least as far as I have been able to find).
How much support is there for MIDI? I have several synthesizers and it would be nice to know that those that can be connected will actually work.
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Agreed. Linux will boot really old hardware just fine. If memory serves, ubuntu will run just fine on a machine that can only reach the lofty speed of 200 Mhz. So it will make new hardware run like a seven year old boy at a NAMBLA convention. Don't expect it to run faster than it can run but do expect Olympian performance.
As far as stability goes, rebooting is something that you really only need to do when you install new hardware.
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I've been using Ubuntu for over a year now and I completely fell in love with it. I dual-booted with WinXP for three months, the last two months of that Windows saw no use. XP went poof at that point so I could get my disk space back.
I'm no "computer geek", but for all the warnings I got about how hard linux is... I found it easier to use, configure and troubleshoot than I found XP to be.
Plus, the new desktop effects (Compiz Fusion) really appeal to my sens of fun =^_^=
Wobble, you silly windows! Wobble!
"Anyone can repress a woman, but you need 'dictated' scriptures to feel you're really right in repressing her. In the same way, homophobes thrive everywhere. But you must feel you've got scripture on your side to come up with the tedious 'Adam and Eve not Adam and Steve' style arguments instead of just recognising that some people are different." - Douglas Murray
Ubuntu comes with many software packages pre-installed and the system performs decently. Installing new software or removing pre-installed software ruffled my feathers none. Overall, I quite liked it.
I chose to remain on Windows, though. As much as I liked Linux, it did not meet my needs. Within its vast repositories of software—which has practically everything from Pong to programs that evaluate the phylogenetic relationships of species—I could not find a copywriter program like StyleWriter. That irked me. It also does not support alt-codes for typing Unicode characters. On Windows, I hold Alt and type a few numbers (my hand remains on the numberpad). On Linux, however, I must press Ctrl-Shift-U (more keys) and type a few letters and numbers (traveling all across the keyboard), assuming I can find the series of letters and numbers on the enormous Unicode character list on the Unicode website. These two things together drove me crazy. If I knew anything about Linux programming, I would have started to rectify my problems, but I don't know anything about that.
If neither of those problems would bug you, then you would probably love Linux. Those gripes are the biggest ones I have, and they're not very serious from the standpoint of an average computer user.
Stultior stulto fuisti, qui tabellis crederes!
Visual, have you considered informing the devs? That should be an easy fix and one that can be implemented in the next version.
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Linux since RedHat 5. I don't remember when that was. I installed it on a couple of machines I got from the garbage at this place I worked. Worked like a charm, and has since then.
Saint Will: no gyration without funkstification.
fabulae! nil satis firmi video quam ob rem accipere hunc mi expediat metum. - Terence
Does anyone know a good place to get drivers? I searched it but came up with nothing useful.
Been using Linux since October 1993, with SLS 1.03, before a 1.0 release of the kernel. Except for a short time with OS/2, it's been my primary OS since then. I only use MS-Windows under duress.
I have used pretty much all the distros at one time or another. I was a Debian fan for the longest time, mostly because of the package management (how it handles system and software installs). I now use Gentoo, as it takes the Debian base, brings the software more up-to-date, and gives a lot back to the Debian community. It and Fedora 10 are probably the best distributions, from a new user standpoint.
As most commercial software houses target MS-Windows specifically, you may have problems replacing some software, as VP noted. For the most part, though, 99% of all users could switch pretty seemlessly to Linux. The days of MS-Windows being simpler to use are long gone.
As for destktops: I prefer Gnome, but that's because I prefer to program in C, and KDE uses Qt, which is written in C++. It makes it difficult to program KDE apps in C. Or in Objective-C, my favorite OO language. From ease-of-use, they are about the same. I think KDE has a slightly better OMG, EYE CANDY! appeal, but it's debatable. Gnome is just more conservative.
Really, the DE doesn't matter a whole lot. I used Enlightenment as my WM for the longest time, with no full-on DE. I only switched to Gnome because I started programming apps using Gtk+, the widget set on which Gnome is built.
Anyway, that's my take on it.
"Yes, I seriously believe that consciousness is a product of a natural process. I find that the neuroscientists, psychologists, and philosophers who proceed from that premise are the ones who are actually making useful contributions to our understanding of the mind." - PZ Myers
Depends on which drivers. Most drivers come with the kernel, or are in separate packages in a distribution. Some drivers (like the latest ATI drivers) are downloaded and installed directly from the vendor's website.
"Yes, I seriously believe that consciousness is a product of a natural process. I find that the neuroscientists, psychologists, and philosophers who proceed from that premise are the ones who are actually making useful contributions to our understanding of the mind." - PZ Myers
The problem I'm having is that I have a USB Network Adapter and I don't know my way around th OS enough to set it up. Not having access to the internet under the Linux OS makes it hard to search for solutions.
After eating an entire bull, a mountain lion felt so good he started roaring. He kept it up until a hunter came along and shot him.
The moral: When you're full of bull, keep your mouth shut.
MySpace
See if you can get the windows driver working under WINE. There are no guarantees when you do that but it works for most exe and dll files.
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Thanks for the info guy's. Got everything working fine now.
I used (and loved) Mandriva Linux for about a year.
(THE YEAR OF NO BLUE SCREEN OF DEATH !!!!
:D 
)
Then I couldn't hack it anymore. I'm a gamer, and frankly, you can't game on Linux. Publishers just don't support it (because they're motherfuckers.
). So, until someone in the gaming universe gets their head on straight (or WINE becomes a useable application, whichever comes first), it's Win-DOH!s for me.
*Sigh*
- Leon Trotsky, Last Will & Testament
February 27, 1940
It'll probably be the same for me. Gotta love those shooters!
I considered it, but did not inform anyone. I did not know how to contact the relevant developers. As such, I decided to submit a bug report to the Gnome development team because I figured they would forward the request to the right people, but I gave up when I had dug through dozens of categories and subcategories and found myself completely lost—I felt like Theseus trying to make my way through the Minotaur's labyrinth but without the love of Ariadne. If you know how to make it through the labyrinth, please submit a feature request for Alt-Code support.
Stultior stulto fuisti, qui tabellis crederes!
Well, I'm not sure about getting through the Labyrinth, but you definitely need the scarf of the Red Queen when you reach the end.
- Leon Trotsky, Last Will & Testament
February 27, 1940
All depends on what game you are talking about. I run World of Warcraft right out of the box. No special installation, no tweaks to Wine at all. And, as I said, it will run multiple concurrent sessions. Before Wow, I was playing Doom 3 and the original Enemy Territory on here. So, I can't say much for a broad spectrum of games, as I don't install that many games, but there's been very little that I couldn't get to run on Wine when I wanted to give it a try.
All that is necessary for the triumph of good is that evil men do nothing.
That's neat. Which build of Linux were you running?
If you meant me, Debian Etch unstable, with an nvidia Geforce 7300GS. Not a powerhouse of a game box, but it gets me around Northrend just fine. Plus, I can do actual work on it in the meantime. I'm primarily a Perl developer, and this machine acts as a test server for a lot of what I do.
All that is necessary for the triumph of good is that evil men do nothing.
I have to cop to it: I do have a small partition (10 G) for MS-Windows, which I boot once in a while to play games. Mostly it's C&C 3, or Zero Hour, or the like. I played Doom 3 from Linux, as the kind folks at ID like alternative OSes. I also use it to write and test the few C# apps I have to write (front ends for custom databases, which run on Linux, of course).
Most of my gaming in on the consoles, a 360 for Gears of War, and a PS3 for the rest (Ratchet and Clank is the best game series ever).
Aaaanyway, every time I use MS-Windows, it's like somebody is shoving wooden splinters covered in glass, vinegar, and lemon juice into my eyes and behind my ears. It fuckin' hurts. It's the operating system that set computing back a decade, and it feels like it.
That's my rant. I'll keep my mouth shut about it now.
"Yes, I seriously believe that consciousness is a product of a natural process. I find that the neuroscientists, psychologists, and philosophers who proceed from that premise are the ones who are actually making useful contributions to our understanding of the mind." - PZ Myers
I get weird looks and responses when I say this. I've been using unix in general for at least 13 years now, and having to use any form of windows is just painful. I want my tiling window manager, zsh, vim, screen, mpd, mutt and python.
I'm such a nerd I've made a pam module (and accompanying set of python scripts to deal with xscreensaver and such) so that to login I need only to plug in an MMC card and it turns on my encrypted drive that has my configurations - if my GPG key is present it logs me in. Removing the card locks the screen, turns the monitors off, sets the XMPP status to away, pauses the music, kills the programs that save any passwords and unmounts the encrypted volume where all the passwords are saved. Plug it back in and the screen is unlocked, monitors come on, programs previously killed and the music restarts at a low volume.
Windows? Bah. I've got some 300 servers running Debian, Solaris or FreeBSD and I'd take a system with nothing but a vt100 serial terminal any day.
Hey! That was me who said that, not Kevin!
Yep. My big things: virtual desktops. Scroll-up windows. Xscreensaver running in the root window of my login screen (I likes me the eye candy). And, as you, the ability to script anything. Most other things you can do on MS-Windows, once you've installed all the necessary things (the complete cygwin, including EMACS (the One True Editor) and Perl (the One True Scripting Language)).
I'm so doing the MMC thing. It's completely unnecessary for me, but fun. I don't suppose you've got your PAM modules available? Or are you gonna make me write some myself? (Not that it's hard, but I'm lazy.)
"Yes, I seriously believe that consciousness is a product of a natural process. I find that the neuroscientists, psychologists, and philosophers who proceed from that premise are the ones who are actually making useful contributions to our understanding of the mind." - PZ Myers
Woops, I removed the wrong quote attrib at the top.
I think I'll release it sometime, I don't consider it complete yet. I'd like to merge the PAM module into a patch to the encfs PAM module to make it a little easier/cleaner.
If you want to try writing it yourself, I'd start with the x11 scripts; my basic setup is like this:
all of the dotfiles (~/.muttrc, .vimrc, .zshenv, .zsh/, .zshrc, etc) are in ~/.etc/ and linked to there from $HOME (this being partially because I also keep them in git and have a script to distribute them to/pull from a central repo to copy across machines) and .etc itself is stored on my encrypted MMC
I have a python script started by awesome when I login that starts itself as a DBUS listener for HAL events (DeviceAdded and DeviceRemoved) that mounts the encfs partition to ~/.etc/ and checks for the GPG key (and shuts the system down quickly if it isn't there).
The easier part is the DeviceRemoved handler, just run xscreensaver-command -l, kill mutt, kill any ssh tunnels, kill the terminal controlling my screen session and unmount ~/.etc/
I put it all together in about 6 hours of boredom one night, the hardest part is going through the docs on the HAL/DBUS end
EMACS, Perl? Pah, vim and python are far better.
I know somebody else suggested using WINE to load the windows drivers--it doesn't quite work that way.
http://www.linux-usb.org/usbnet/
I actually uninstalled Ubuntu and installed Fedora10. Fedora10 would recognize it just fine and connect right after installation. It just happened to be very slow. It was fine for websites, but when I tried to download anything of medium size it would freeze during. After about 15 failed attempts to download the flash player I gave up on it.
After eating an entire bull, a mountain lion felt so good he started roaring. He kept it up until a hunter came along and shot him.
The moral: When you're full of bull, keep your mouth shut.
MySpace
Bah! I will have EMACS flame you if you insist on uttering such nonsense!
I love flame wars. They are the best.
"Yes, I seriously believe that consciousness is a product of a natural process. I find that the neuroscientists, psychologists, and philosophers who proceed from that premise are the ones who are actually making useful contributions to our understanding of the mind." - PZ Myers
Last week, I installed Fedora 10. Since then, I have not booted Windows XP. Within 20 minutes I installed Apache, PHP, MySQL, PhpMyAdmin, and Mediawiki, counting download time. I have customized Gnome Panel to behave similar to Windows, autohiding and showing only a 1px strip to unhide it, then I cleared the desktop of all icons, installed some fonts from Windows and enabled anti-aliasing, modified the keyboard settings so I can type some Unicode characters more easily, and more. Today, I learned how to use Rsync to quickly back-up my Home folder, which contains my e-book collection, to a different hard drive and tomorrow I will figure out how to use cron to make daily backups automatically. I really like Fedora so far
Here's a screenshot (click for full size):
(Click here for the wallpaper.)
Stultior stulto fuisti, qui tabellis crederes!