Linux users check in here!

Re: Linux user check in here!

Said it before love Linux, hate Windows. I have a shuttle PC on my desk running windows XP, mainly for the wife and kids. Of course the kids have to have games and a few other programs that are windows only. Don't use that machine much. At one time I had it duel booting, which was fine, had accounts for everyone in the family and really they don't know the difference, well my wife doesn't know the difference the kids knew the minute the splash screen came up (they were 4 and 6 at the time ) I found that since then I really wasn't using the Shuttle much so that is now just a windows machine and I don't mess with it much, until I hear Dad the computer's not working, at which point I get up walk over and hit the reset button (stupid blue screen of death) One of these days I'll get it back to a duel boot.

My main computer is a IBM Thinkpad R51, I've had it for a few years now and by far it is the best machine I have ever owned. For the last 6 months I've run Ubuntu on it, right now I'm running 7.10 (Gutsy Gibbon), for those that don't know they give each version a code name first. Over the years I've tried many, the only other distro that worked well for me was SuSe but I have long since dropped them, although it works the best on the Shuttle. Red Hat is another I've tried but always seem to have some issues.

Most distros now are getting to the point where you don't have to worry about entering strange text codes into a shell (command line) to get the OS to do something, in fact when you get into the latest GUI in Linux some of the 3D stuff is quite impressive. Loading software is just as easy as a windows system

 

Re: Linux user check in here!

Also for those using Ubuntu there is a online magazine I just ran across, haven't really read it yet so not sure how good it is
http://fullcirclemagazine.org/

 

Re: Linux user check in here!

I think the number of linux users here at the monkey, and universally, will only increase. This may be the best time to spread the word on alternatives to the Redmond nightmare.

 

Re: Linux user check in here!

Although I'm not really a user yet, I do plan to give it serious time in the near future, if not on my laptop, for sure on the new computer I'm planning.

I just last week bought a March issue of PC World and they have a story on 157 free downloads a lot of which are open source or Linux programs. They also gave mention to Linux in several places in the magazine.

Something confused me about Linux from the live cd disk. The only OS that is loaded when I ran Mint was the one on the disk, yet the net worked fine. I have a secure internet connection through my router and DSL modem, but I didn't have to mess with resetting any of those settings for running the disk. Where is that code located, in the computer bios, a driver or the router? What problems might I have if I where to format my drive and load mint on my computer with my router settings? Just thinking out loud. Would I have to bypass my router to set up my connection?

 

Re: Linux user check in here!

I tried a Linksys router when I bought my second router, first was a US Robotics. It kept dropping out on me when two of us would be online at the same time. The Linksys wouldn't work for me. Then I bought a D-Link and it worked a little over a year before it died on me. Then I was in Florida staying in a motel on the beach and they had a Netgear always got on easy (wasn't encrypted for guest use), Every day before I left the motel to go to the beach to swim and fish, hey, I'm an old guy, I didn't go to watch the girls, I'd be able to get on with their router.

When I got home is when the D-Link died on me. I remembered the Netgear at that motel and decided to give it a try. My Daughter-in-law gets on line with her laptop at about 300 ft away through walls and all. They, son and her live next door, she has vista on her laptop and uses it to talk on the phone. Of course the connection sometimes doesn't work too good, and I had to put in the security code for her, but I an impressed with what the Netgear will do.

 

Dumped Windoze today and installed gutsy gibbon on my acer laptop, had some issues with wifi and sound but found the workarounds on their forums. I do believe this is the distro for me. The people on the forums are not snobs like a lot of linux users I have dealt with and not once have I seen RTFM on the forum. Not even missing microsucks right now

 

I use Linspire 5 CNR edition, and it has been great. The wife's XP pro has been to the shop twice last year. My Linspire has been slow lately, and it doesn't get all Flash player sites, especially after AT&T took over our account from SBC. Getting alot of 404's latley. I'm wondering how to do a virus check on it. Is there a site I can go to that you can trust? Monkeys just think differently! Must be the lack of flouride and meds in the water, and the avoidance of lame stream media.

 

Antoher Linux user checking in. I'm running a mixed environment here - 3 desktops and 2 laptops running assorted older Windows and 2 desktops and 1 laptop on linux. All connected more or less happily to each other and the net, so life is good.

Laptop is Mandriva 8.0, as is the older desktop. Big desktop is Sabayon 3.4F

Left on the ToDo list is to get my older scanner working from the linux side and to get the onboard wifi working on the laptop. Mandriva picked up the USB wifi with no problem but the onboard Atheros is still balking. Just a matter of time.

-Mary

 

Hi another linux user here,

I'm running Ubuntu 8.04 on my Acer laptop. Other than a few mistakes I made early on, Hardy has been great. I installed Xubuntu 7.10 on my daughters Toshiba and it ran ok, speed was nice but some apps froze up from time to time, just enough to be annoying. I switched it with Dreamlinux, and so far it is a little slower, but stable.

Now, if i could get puppylinux to work with her wireless card. I would definitely switch again, it is amazingly fast! If you have an older machine it is worth a try and it's only a 83 meg download for the newest release!

Regards,

Mike

 

I've been poking around on Ubuntu on a virtual machine for a while. Nothing serious, just kicking the tires.

Now that XP is rolling off support in few months, I've decided to jump in with both feet. Today I picked up a used laptop (only $100) with Gutsy loaded.

 

I just installed Ubuntu on my old Powerbook G4. Having some troubles setting up a wireless Internet on it. Any suggestions?

 

Ubuntu has never been wireless friendly, I run a dual boot Windows/Ubuntu setup on my laptop. if I have no choice but to use wireless, I just boot into windows. sorry I could be no help, I'm in the same boat as you and I watch the Ubuntu forums for the fix for this problem.

 

I'm using PCLinuxOS on my laptop (HP) duel booted with windows XP and had to hunt down drivers (package manager) and install them, then it worked. But yes, when I first started messing around with different Linux versions, I had to be hard wired to my router to get online.

However, I do not travel enough anymore to worry about wireless, if I do, I can switch to windows if I have to, but even then I try to work (surf) in Linux when possible. Reminds me, I need to set my laptop back up for wireless since the last reinstall of Linux.

Note edited to add: I went ahead and reset up my laptop for wireless, this is what i had to do;
First I opened the package manager and searched for ndiswarapper, it gave me a list of several, about 20 or so. Then I just went ahead and downloaded them all, you can do only a few and then go back and uninstall the ones that don't work for you. The reason I did them all is different wireless routers use different drivers.

Next I went into the administration center and configured a wireless connection. When I tried the first driver it didn't work, so I moved down the list until I found one that did. Since my router has a wep key I had to enter that and so on.

Hope that works out for you.

 

How compatible is the camera phone interface? I'm using Linspire 5, but am considering Ubunta 5.04 version.

 

Wish I could help answer your question, but I've no experience with camera phones. As for Ubunta, I use PCLinuxOS and do have a digital camera I can view pictures, download them to my computer etc. It's a bit of a learning experience for me, as I've only been using Linux less than a year. If I've had a problem viewing any movies or pictures, I've always found a program either already in the package or downloading through the package manager that gets me what I need.

One thing, I might have already mentioned is that I had to try different versions of Linux before I found one that would work right on my HP computer (AMD64x2 processor). So, I'd advise testing Ubunta before converting to it.

All in all, I am very satisfied with Linux and open source.

 

New guy here, but old time Linux user. Currently on our machines in the house 3 run Linux Mint & Gloria both KDE and Gnome. My laptop and old p3 600 wtih 128 megs of ram runs Vector 6. Our Media center PC runs Sabayon 5.1 with XMBC as the media desktop and my machine boots Linus Mint 7 KDE, Sabayon 5.1 KDE, and Open Suse 11.2. Oh I have WIndows xp running in Virtual Box so I can do our taxes.

Chuck

 

Just rebuilt my box. AMD 64 x 2, and installed Ubuntu 8.04 LTS. It rocks, and I get updates to keep it secure. Bill gates worked with NSA too closely to trust Microsoft.