Linux lovers?

I use Simply Mepis, nice distro. Very easy Debian based. Installs easily from 1 live cd instead of 5, never understood why redhat needs 5 cd's it just seems silly. the package manager provides you with every program you could want. Gentoo however is still the fastest OS i've every seen but difficult to begin with.
 
FreeCiv just doesn't compare to the real thing, though. Maybe that's just me!

Currently using Slackware 10.1. Going to install FreeBSD 5.3 later. The whole thing looks far more, uh, centralised than any Linux distro. It has me very interested. Still, CS student and all.

okay, guys : GNOME VS KDE. Lightweight wm people can just. Just leave my sight. =/
 
I hate KDE icons and toolbars with passion... in other hand, Nautilus, GNOME's file manager is nice looking.
 
I've tried mandrake and suse. I prefer mandrake. compatibility issues require me to be on windows XP more often than not though. I tried to install FreeBSD with terrible results(lost everything I had on windows and the thing didn't install right) I might try it again one of these days.
 
Use WinXP a lot for compatibility to/from work. Also keep it running because it's a lot easier for visiting family to use. Also have mandrake 10 installed and I love it.
 
B-52 said:
Currently using Slackware 10.1. Going to install FreeBSD 5.3 later.
Good choice. Slackware 10.1 is what I'm using as well. I may reboot into FreeBSD later, though (the disadvantage of having 11 OSs installed on one's computer is that you end up continuously rebooting the computer because you can't decide which OS to use...)

B-52 said:
okay, guys : GNOME VS KDE. Lightweight wm people can just. Just leave my sight. =/
I use both (not at the same time, obviously), and KDE has some advantages over GNOME and vice versa. I think GNOME looks better (and its applications tend to blend in better with GNOME's interface than KDE apps with the KDE interface. But, KDE has better configuration options (I don't like Gconf...), and would it kill the GNOME developers to allow a multiple desktop background setup like KDE does?
 
I'm planning to install Linux and give it a look. I'm trying to decide between Fedora, Debian, Mandrake or Suse as I've heard they're decent enough. I have no prior experience with either Unix nor Linux. So what should the best option be? And how much HDD space should I allocate on one of those things?
 
Aphex_Twin said:
I'm planning to install Linux and give it a look. I'm trying to decide between Fedora, Debian, Mandrake or Suse as I've heard they're decent enough. I have no prior experience with either Unix nor Linux. So what should the best option be? And how much HDD space should I allocate on one of those things?
Fedora's probably your best choice. It's relatively friendly to people who don't have much experience with Linux, and the most recent version (3) is stable. The downsides of Fedora, though, is that it takes up a lot of disk space (You'll probably want to reserve at least 10GB for Fedora), and it doesn't come with support for playing media files (Red Hat is afraid of being sued over patents on MP3s), so you would have to install support for media files.

Another good one to start out with is Mepis, which is based on Debian, but is easy to install, and can even be run without installing it on the hard drive.
 
Linux sounds pretty cool, I've never looked into it pretty much for two reasons:

1) I mostly play video games
2) Windows works fine for me... it doesn't crash, and I know how to use it decently. Sure Linux might be better (and most likely is), but I'm happy with what i have now.
 
Padma said:
I'll admit to being a Mandrake fan ;) but Mepis would be an excellent trial distro. IIRC, you can download it as a Live-CD, that can be booted up and run from the CD, without installing it, to see if you like it.
Yes, that would be the version called "SimplyMepis", which allows you to run Linux without installing it, and if you want to install it, you can, and the install takes place in an application on the KDE desktop.
 
Yes, I would describe myself as a Linux Fan. Well, perhaps not a fan, I am using Linux because I amanged to mess up my Main Boot Record, so now Windows won't work. So then I switched to Ubuntu Linux. I think I am the only Ubuntu user on CFC :)

I am amazed that this is all free. I mean, you have a OS, that can do most of the things Windows can, totally free. And it runs fine. As long as you know what you are doing, that is. I have yet to have a single crash. Yes, I am loving Linux. I just need to get DVDs and Movie Files working again.

I have Mandrake 10.0 from a Friend, perhaps I should install that as well, and play around with it . . .
 
Chairman Meow said:
Yes, that would be the version called "SimplyMepis", which allows you to run Linux without installing it, and if you want to install it, you can, and the install takes place in an application on the KDE desktop.

If it's just for trying out without having to touch your HD, Knoppix is an excellent choice as well. I always keep a knoppix-cd around as some panic-boot-disc, in case all other options fail, so that I can still access my data

@aphex_twin: I'd say that Suse, Fedora and Mandrake are pretty much identical when it comes to functionality and ease of use. Any of them would be a good choice for your first linux experience. Debian is, IMHO, a bit harder to manage but once you got it running it's a great system (and apt-get just beats any YaST/RPM-Tool i've seen so far)
 
I've emulated various Linux distros on my XP box through VMware, but I haven't really seen any substantial reason to mess with partitions and do a full install.
 
Well, I have this Knoppix live CD to give me a general feel then I'll decide what to do...
 
I installed RH7.0 about 3 years ago, and once again when I got a new computer 2 years ago. I uninstalled it around this time last year, because I never used it. It was much more a time consuming toy than anything of particular use. If I could play games on it I would replace windows, however. I intend to install some other distro when I buy a new hard drive after the exams.
 
Yeah, the biggest problem with Linux is you can't usually get "the next BIG game" to run on it right away. Some game companies do provide Linux ports, or at least make it easy for a 3rd party to do it, but for most you have to hope that the Cedega project manages to get it working,

Hardware manufactureres are finally beginning to understand that there are a *lot* of Linux users out there, and are starting to turn out drivers for their stuff that run under Linux, not *just* Windows. But unless you have cutting edge hardware, chances are that everything you've got already has open-source drivers available. Heck, my ATI Radeon 9000Pro works better with the open source drivers than it does with the proprietary ATI driver!

I can currently do everything on my Linux box that I used to do in Windows. Yeah, some games don't work. For me, that's a small price to pay for a more stable, more secure platform. After all, Civ3 runs fine under Cedega. ;)
 
Wow! Whadda ya know? There are actually more Linux users on CF then Poly! :)

I'm surprised noone has mentioned Suse yet. Have been playing and running happily next to my Win98 partititon since 5.2 and I'm up to 9.2 now. Plus Knoppix from time, excellent distro...

GNOME VS KDE? KDE, it comes as the standard with Suse so I used that ever since. However the later releases of KDE are starting to really push the limits of my humble cel466 now. I'm thinking of trying out xfce. Light but still good looking http://www.xfce.org/
 
I'm writing this from under Knoppix. If this is just a "demo" of the real thing I can only say WOW :eek:
It only took me 10 minutes to configure the thing. Now to see if it can play 3d games. Can you recommend something to try?

Again, WOW ;)
 
Back
Top Bottom