Linux and other adventures into the unknown.

[Marc101]

I love Linux, I have various versions I tinker with and as far as music and movies in the ones I use the ability is stock. The interface is point and click as is Windows and for a majority of Windows applications there is a program called Wine that basically makes the app think it is on a Windows based system.
As far as Nav programs and such I would not have a clue, but as of late a majority of software developers are making Linux drivers available and if not there is a chance someone has made one.
It really comes down to what you use your computer for, if it is just web stuff, movies and music Linux is allot better imo and there are many versions out there. I play with Live CDs alot which are cds that you dont even need to install anything other than allow a little disk space to save your prefs. Gives you the ability to try a few flavors out. I personally like Puppy Linux. so far everyone of my computers I've tried it had no drivers issues and only one did not have it's wireless network card detected.
Since it is free and does most anything Windows can at half the hardware requirements its cool.
There is a learning curve, but starting with a few Live CDs and you will get the hang.
By no means am I a Linux guru I mess with it allot, have it on one laptop I use for work and I don't mine answering what I can.
My main PC I still use XP since the game I am currently messing with wont run in Wine.

[BentSailor]

Originally Posted by tdw

I'd downloaded onto a USB stick instead of a CD cos Ubuntu site said that was cool.

Cool? Perhaps (it is nice being able to take your operating system, applications, etc around on your USB key), but it is not alwas as reliable as people might like. It generally requires having the computer setup to boot from USB before the CD &/or hard-drive and that is just a security risk most machines won't stick on as the default.

Booting from CD is the quickest and easiest method in almost all cases, no matter how "cool" some geeks think the USB method is

I now have what looks like a prefectly operational Linux machine and while I still need to download/setup a few bibs and bobs it seems to be AOK. Linked straight into my home wireless network without any drama

Excellent. Always good to hear that the device drivers kicked in without effort (that's the worst problem that can occur on installation if you ask me!)

Next step is to see how the DOS emulater works and whether or not I really can get MaxSea up and running. All in all very impressive though I'm a bit iffy about no Malware protection. We'll see.

As always mate, buzz me if you need a hand. Putting together systems that emulate / integrate with ancient (relatively speaking) operating systems and software is what gave me the financial security to leave the city for the central coast

As for the malware though, the reason there isn't explicit protection is that, in general, you don't need it for Linux. Two reasons really - firstly because the number of Linux users makes it non-rewarding to create them (not enough machines for it to work on) and secondly because Linux is pretty damned secure against such things as built from the ground up.

Basically, unless you're opening you machine to the Internet full-time (say as a web server), you'll have to really go out of your way to get anything but what you explicitly install on your Linux box to run. Remember, the vast majority of malware is designed to run on Windows, which means you have to help it to even start up on your Linux machine

[tdw]

Originally Posted by BentSailor

Cool? Perhaps (it is nice being able to take your operating system, applications, etc around on your USB key), but it is not alwas as reliable as people might like. It generally requires having the computer setup to boot from USB before the CD &/or hard-drive and that is just a security risk most machines won't stick on as the default.

Booting from CD is the quickest and easiest method in almost all cases, no matter how "cool" some geeks think the USB method is



Excellent. Always good to hear that the device drivers kicked in without effort (that's the worst problem that can occur on installation if you ask me!)



As always mate, buzz me if you need a hand. Putting together systems that emulate / integrate with ancient (relatively speaking) operating systems and software is what gave me the financial security to leave the city for the central coast

As for the malware though, the reason there isn't explicit protection is that, in general, you don't need it for Linux. Two reasons really - firstly because the number of Linux users makes it non-rewarding to create them (not enough machines for it to work on) and secondly because Linux is pretty damned secure against such things as built from the ground up.

Basically, unless you're opening you machine to the Internet full-time (say as a web server), you'll have to really go out of your way to get anything but what you explicitly install on your Linux box to run. Remember, the vast majority of malware is designed to run on Windows, which means you have to help it to even start up on your Linux machine

As Bent now knows I only used the USB stick as if it were a CD to install the operating system. In fact Ubuntu was not happy with that and in the end I burnt a CD and did it from there.

After a few weeks of Linux I have to say that in the main I think its pretty damned fine. It boots in under 30 seconds, seems utterly stable and once you get the hang of it the user interface is OK. Maybe not quite so moron friendly as Windows but not bad overall.

Negatives ? I cannot play any of my music which is all in WMA format. Probably a mistake on my part when I first ripped the CDs but there you go. ( I also ripped at to high a quality so all my files are way to large.) I'm going to have to work out how to convert WMA to a different format as I have yet to find a Linux media player that will play WMA. Amorok seems the preferred choice but not working for me.

Bent you have been a serious help on this and I reckon you'll point me in the right direction for the music. I guess we can chat about this as we fluff our way around LM.

Google Earth doesn't look as good on Linux as windows and I cannot find a version of Spider solitaire as good as the Windows version either.

[JordanH]

Originally Posted by tdw

Negatives ? I cannot play any of my music which is all in WMA format. I have yet to find a Linux media player that will play WMA. Amorok seems the preferred choice but not working for me.

Cannot? CANNOT? Fear not, dear TDW.
I trust you're familiar with how to open a terminal and get to a command prompt; Do so then try this:
$ sudo apt-get install ubuntu-restricted-extras

This should install all the codecs for the music formats of your choice. It will certainly let you play WMA's.

My personal choice is to run almost everything from the command prompt, so I use mplayer to play all movies and music... call it laziness, but it gets the job done without needing a mouse. It certainly handles WMA's once the codecs are installed. You may need to install this as well. Obviously the following will do the trick.:
$ sudo apt-get install mplayer

Originally Posted by tdw

Google Earth doesn't look as good on Linux as windows and I cannot find a version of Spider solitaire as good as the Windows version either.

I don't use Google Earth, but graphics should look as good as Windows. I don't see why they wouldn't unless your video card drivers aren't installed correctly. Do you have an NVidia chipset? If so, make sure you install their proprietary drivers... that makes a WORLD of difference.