The EADD Linux Technical Gibberings Thread

[felix]

In this thread we shall discuss the trials and tribulations of kate using Linux for the first time. Or talk about any other Linux or open source software etc. Anyone else out there using, or thinking about using a GNU/Linux distro?

The first few posts have been copied from gibberings - here we go...

Felix has put Linux Mint on my 'puter 8(8( I gave into pressure (bloody geeky men) so it's all looking a lil odd and I've already complained about 5 things It's like speaking Japanese, which I can't do but I'm trying!...New operating system = head confuzzlement

Lxde/kde/gnome?

 

[felix]

Lxde/kde/gnome?

none of the above - Cinnamon!

it's well lush and perfect for transitioning from Win7.

 

[koneko]

^^
Say's him ...it's weird Watsons hold my hand! :D

Want sparkles and bells please

 

[watsons torment]

none of the above - Cinnamon!

it's well lush and perfect for transitioning from Win7.

never even heard of it but just been reading up, looks pretty cool & is now on the download.

i'm well out of touch with modern desktop interfaces.. i'm still using fluxbox which only looks slightly more modern than amigaOS

 

[koneko]

never even heard of it but just been reading up, looks pretty cool & is now on the download.

i'm well out of touch with modern desktop interfaces.. i'm still using fluxbox which only looks slightly more modern than amigaOS

Basically you're telling me you're not gonna hold my hand Watson? tis Scary! 8(

I like cinnamon in cakes mostly 8)

there is no right click paste on img's bad....

 

[felix]

never even heard of it but just been reading up, looks pretty cool & is now on the download.

i'm well out of touch with modern desktop interfaces.. i'm still using fluxbox which only looks slightly more modern than amigaOS

I'm surprised you even use a DE, you propellerheaded dork! isn't the command line good enough?

never heard of fluxbox but i'll take a look. i've got an old fannying-about box with LXDE on it, but it runs like a dog and i'm thinking of wiping it. what distro would you recommend with fluxbox?


btw, breakcorefiend... wow.

 

[watsons torment]

I'm surprised you even use a DE, you propellerheaded dork! isn't the command line good enough?

never heard of fluxbox but i'll take a look. i've got an old fannying-about box with LXDE on it, but it runs like a dog and i'm thinking of wiping it. what distro would you recommend with fluxbox?


btw, breakcorefiend... wow.

well fluxbox can be used with any distro really and i'm guessing you're not going to be very impressed with it after using win7/cinnamon/kde/gnome because its a bit(lot) lacking in features & sparkle, it is how ever very fast/stable/light and you could probably run it on a pentium 1

you should try out archlinux on your fannying-about-box if its at least i686, you can use Blackbox, Fluxbox, GNOME, IceWM, KDE, LXDE, Openbox, WMaker, Xfce, blah blah and it even has the packages for Cinnamon which i'm currently installing, the default install of arch is very bare bones especially if you're used to things like ubuntu/mint that come with everything preinstalled/configured. But it has an excellent package manager called pacman with which to build up your system.

the installer is text based & it's more of a ballache to get up and running than anything ubuntu based but it's worth it in the end because you end up with a bloat free & uber fast system

 

[koneko]

NSFW:

well fluxbox can be used with any distro really and i'm guessing you're not going to be very impressed with it after using win7/cinnamon/kde/gnome because its a bit(lot) lacking in features & sparkle, it is how ever very fast/stable/light and you could probably run it on a pentium 1

you should try out archlinux on your fannying-about-box if its at least i686, you can use Blackbox, Fluxbox, GNOME, IceWM, KDE, LXDE, Openbox, WMaker, Xfce, blah blah and it even has the packages for Cinnamon which i'm currently installing, the default install of arch is very bare bones especially if you're used to things like ubuntu/mint that come with everything preinstalled/configured. But it has an excellent package manager called pacman with which to build up your system.

the installer is text based & it's more of a ballache to get up and running than anything ubuntu based but it's worth it in the end because you end up with a bloat free & uber fast system

Practises... and that ^ shit scares me

 

[felix]

well fluxbox can be used with any distro really and i'm guessing you're not going to be very impressed with it after using win7/cinnamon/kde/gnome because its a bit(lot) lacking in features & sparkle, it is how ever very fast/stable/light and you could probably run it on a pentium 1

you should try out archlinux on your fannying-about-box if its at least i686, you can use Blackbox, Fluxbox, GNOME, IceWM, KDE, LXDE, Openbox, WMaker, Xfce, blah blah and it even has the packages for Cinnamon which i'm currently installing, the default install of arch is very bare bones especially if you're used to things like ubuntu/mint that come with everything preinstalled/configured. But it has an excellent package manager called pacman with which to build up your system.

the installer is text based & it's more of a ballache to get up and running than anything ubuntu based but it's worth it in the end because you end up with a bloat free & uber fast system

I'm ready to be more adventurous with the spare box (whose name is 'Ted'), so I reckon I might give Arch a go. lots of people seem to like it.

here are the basics of Ted's vital statistics:

Processor AMD Athlon(TM) XP1900+
Cache Size 256kb, Frequency 1611.58MHz
Memory 507MB (191MB used)
Operating System Linux Mint 11 LXDE
Kernel Linux 2.6.38-8-generic (i686)
Compiled #42-Ubuntu SMP Mon Apr 11 03:31:50 UTC 2011
Display Resolution 1680x1050 pixels
OpenGL Renderer Mesa DRI nv11 20091015 x86/MMX+/3DNow!+/SSE
Audio Adapter EMU10K1 - SB Live! Platinum [CT4760P]
Host bridge VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8366/A/7 [Apollo KT266/A/333]
PCI bridge VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8366/A/7 [Apollo KT266/A/333 AGP] (prog-if 00 [Normal decode])
Ethernet controller Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL-8169 Gigabit Ethernet (rev 10)
VGA compatible controller nVidia Corporation NV11 [GeForce2 MX/MX 400] (rev b2) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
BIOS Award Version ASUS A7V266-E ACPI BIOS Rev 1006
Board ASUSTeK A7V266-E

do you reckon old Ted would be able to run Arch without falling to bits?

 

[watsons torment]

TED is quite a beast!, Arch will run on that no problem.

even with 512mb ram & graphics card from the past, it should still be a fairly nippy system if you use a lightweight DE like fluxbox/xfce

 

[felix]

yep, those are it's two major weaknesses. I do have a GeForce 4 Ti4600 (128mb) kicking about but it acted like it had the flu the last time I plugged it in. might give it another go again.

looking at some screenshots of fluxbox, I like! show us a screenshot of yours, please?

also, do you use conky? got a cool config I can try out?

let's get Big Ted cooking with gas. :D

 

[Allein]

I've recently loaded ubuntu onto an old EEE PC 4G I from flea bay for less than £50 and it runs a fekin treat for sofa surfin, wher as it was a pile of shite with the build it came with.

Its so good I'm thinking about messing about with some of the other Linux builds on a spare laptop to see how they look

 

[jancrow]

My laptop is an oldish compaq running narwhal without Unity, much, much faster than xp on the same machine (dual boot but I only use ubuntu), tis slightly buggy where graphics are concerned, I think because it was an upgrade install. I might have a look into something with a lighter footprint although I do like the way Gnome looks.

 

[Arnold]

Avoid Mandriva as a distro for a while, looks like they might go titsup in the near future.

Guess which distro I installed a few months ago as I couldn't be fucked setting up slack!

 

[tragiclemming]

I admin a few Centos 5 boxes for work (mainly mail and web). Use Fedora 16 on a netbook for general use. Prefer xfce as a desktop environment. Gnome 3 is growing on me. KDE is horrible.
Have other *nix boxes at home for storage, music and film playback (mainly os x).
Everyone needs to try a modern linux distro just to realise that the dogshit preloaded onto their computer can be easily wiped away without causing a scandal. Windows 7 on a netbook is fucking painful, even with decent RAM.

 

[koneko]

Everyone needs to try a modern linux distro.... .

This is evening 2 for me on Mint with Cinnamon on my laptop which doesn't get used for anything like my work machine, I'm mostly pissing about at home browsing, music, pics etc. But, yeh I it now.

It feels warmer, softer - it's nice and the transition has been a lot easier than I thought.

Yes Mint is very refreshing :D

Recommended.

 

[felix]

wey hey! delighted to see we have some local experts to call on, hah! :D

My laptop is an oldish compaq running narwhal without Unity, much, much faster than xp on the same machine (dual boot but I only use ubuntu), tis slightly buggy where graphics are concerned, I think because it was an upgrade install. I might have a look into something with a lighter footprint although I do like the way Gnome looks.

"without Unity" being the important part of that sentence, no doubt.

I got back into Linux about 6 months ago via Ubuntu and was hugely impressed by its ease of use. I'd tried SuSE many years ago (when everyone was on dial-up, and I actually bought a boxed set complete with huge printed manuals etc.), but rapidly lost patience with constantly running into basic fucking problems such as getting on the internet. I had to manually fuck about with it every single time I used it. getting wifi working reliably was a joke and not worth the bother.

so Ubuntu 10.04 (Meerkat) was a complete revelation - total piece of piss and so easy to install and use. however - for the hardware I'm using - there were still a few minor niggles (even with fresh installs of 10.10 and 11.04), but Mint has fixed every single one of them. Mint with the Cinnamon DE is a total joy to use.

I would wholeheartedly recommend LinuxMint to anyone who's thinking about trying it out. Windows 8 is looking like it's going to be a massive pile of steaming tablet-oriented shite, so this is a good time to dip your toe in and give open source operating systems a go.

anyone can go here and download a 'Live CD' version, which runs in your system memory without changing a thing on your computer. if you like it, you can install it alongside Windows and choose which one to run when you boot up. if you don't like it, chuck the CD out and try again in another year; no harm done.

I am fucking delighted with our computer ecosystem now, as you can maybe tell.

 

[tragiclemming]

Felix,
Had a look at Cinnamon. Looks nice, but it is essentially Gnome 3 which is noticeably slower in terms of UI compared to XFCE or LDXE. Couldn't work out if you're running Cinnamon on 'Ted' ? If so, you may want to try out XFCE. Chief Penguin abuser Linus Torvald uses it. Nuff said.
Of course, the beauty of Linux is you can try it and ditch it if you don't like it! From terminal:

sudo apt-get install xubuntu-desktop

This should work on debian based systems. Logout and log back in, picking the new xfce desktop option.
Warning. The UI contains mice.

 

[jancrow]

"without Unity" being the important part of that sentence, no doubt.

Absolutely, it fockin' stinks, first thing I did when I upgraded was roll back as much as possible to the old appearance, can't remember what I did but I'm always logged in with 'classic ubuntu (no effects)'.

so Ubuntu 10.04 (Meerkat) was a complete revelation - total piece of piss and so easy to install and use. however - for the hardware I'm using - there were still a few minor niggles (even with fresh installs of 10.10 and 11.04), but Mint has fixed every single one of them. Mint with the Cinnamon DE is a total joy to use.

This is exactly where I picked up the ubuntubaton- I had long wanted to give Linux a try but was put off for fear that I'd spend forever tweaking the thing to make it run acceptably, or that it wouldn't be reliable enough out of the box to safeguard things like work email to. Got a new (second hand) laptop and thought I might as well try the Live CD, hmm, that worked really well, OK, chucked a Ubuntu partition on the laptop with the intention of dipping in from time to time to see how it worked but found straight away that it was faster than XP on the same machine and really usable and stable, so that's all I use on the laptop now.

I will give Mint a spin next time I have the urge to do something techie, see if that irons out the (minor) problems I've been having.

 

[felix]

Absolutely, it fockin' stinks, first thing I did when I upgraded was roll back as much as possible to the old appearance, can't remember what I did but I'm always logged in with 'classic ubuntu (no effects)'.

yep - I think we were very fortunate to get in *just* in time to see how good Ubuntu is with Gnome as standard. Unity is a fucking dog's breakfast, I think I lasted about two hours before googling 'how do i get rid of Unity?' along with the rest of the planet. :D

God bless Canonical and all the work they've done for Linux on the desktop, but - like a lot of people - I'm really pissed off at the way they're appearing to treat their established userbase with contempt by not listening to the fucking widespread derision for Unity. no doubt tablet-y things are the thing of the future and will explode even further over the next couple of years, but the choice of using Unity (or not) should be displayed in huge unmissable letters at the installation process. (e.g. "Are you using a desktop computer or a tablet? tick one option and we'll install the most appropriate DE". I'm sure Unity will improve, but I don't appreciate being an unwitting beta tester for something as important as that.

This is exactly where I picked up the ubuntubaton- I had long wanted to give Linux a try but was put off for fear that I'd spend forever tweaking the thing to make it run acceptably, or that it wouldn't be reliable enough out of the box to safeguard things like work email to. Got a new (second hand) laptop and thought I might as well try the Live CD, hmm, that worked really well, OK, chucked a Ubuntu partition on the laptop with the intention of dipping in from time to time to see how it worked but found straight away that it was faster than XP on the same machine and really usable and stable, so that's all I use on the laptop now.

I will give Mint a spin next time I have the urge to do something techie, see if that irons out the (minor) problems I've been having.

same here - this laptop is actually treble-booting Win7, Ubuntu 11.10, and Mint! but it's been weeks since I booted into Windows. when I do, it feels all weird and I'm instantly reminded of its bizarre little quirks and sluggishness. it also makes me feel a bit creepily weirded out & unsafe for some reason. :D

sounds like we're going through the same journey here, so I might have experienced the same minor problems as yourself recently - what are they?