[Closed] Anyone use Linux?

[url= http://www.ubuntu.com/ ]Ubuntu is your friend[/url]

seconded. Ubuntu is by far the easiest one to set up, seems to have the most compatibility and looks quite nice too. Download the cd from the link provided and give it a go, you'll be up and running in less than an hour.

How easy is it to use for someone who has only ever used Windows?

And, can you get drivers for printers, mp3 players etc. to work with it?

thirded Ubuntu is surperb, if you have problems creating the boot disk you can get one from amazon for 4 quid.

Ben - any sign of the rest of the money you owe me at all........

DrP

try puppy linux- especially small and good for old pc's. mainly like using windows 😉

I installed Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty) about a week ago, having never used Linux before.

I much prefer it already, and didnt need to set up any drivers or anything, it all just worked out of the box.

Recommended.

ubuntu never look back unless you have an ipod

DrP - you have the money, according to paypal anyway.

yep, most things will work out of the box but the great thing about Linux is that there is an absolutely massive knowledge base of information out there on the internet that's been freely created by thousands of geeks hammering away in their bedrooms every night. The internet support community is immense and as long as you understand that lots of nerds (not geeks) will hang around support forums waiting to shoot newbies down (bit like here really), you will still get excellent advice there.

Ubuntu will come with a very nice GUI that you will find easy to use and the beautiful thing about it is if you need something you just tell ubuntu to go and get it, it will download everything you need off the internet for you, it's great. Far easier to use that many of the more professional linux distros. I know plenty of unix/linux experts who use it out of preference, myself included.

Ubuntu it is then, I'll give it a try.

Cheers guys.

Ubuntu

You might want something my chunky like Redhat or Debian later, but deffo start with Ubunto

Ubuntu again. Download the bootcd and mess about, see what you think.
I found the O'Reilly book - Ubuntu Hacks or Hacking Ubuntu invaluable.

Only £1.56 of it....

Still £5.44 owed matey - I have emailed about it...

DrP

"thousands of geeks hammering away in their bedrooms every night"

Erm... 🙂

I'm running Ubuntu 9.04 on a netbook and it's great. I'm not sure I could use it as my only PC though...
You can run Ubuntu from a USB stick or CD without installing anything on the PC to see if you can get on with it. Could be a good option if you're not sure...?

Ubuntu is fine for what it is, but don't expect to find drivers for all peripherals. Check the Ubuntu forums before you install.

If you have an old PC you might want to try Xubuntu as it is better on older hardware.

Kubuntu, Ubuntu but with a slightly different look (KDE), is what I have become accustomed to. Now when I must use a Winblows (XP) computer it feels.... well, a bit retarded in comparison.
If your PC is especially old then there are linux flavours that suit lower spec. machines, e.g. Xubuntu, puppy linux (both already mentioned above), ...etc.
If it is your first time installing an operating system on a PC then I would suggest you tread lightly and do a little research beforehand. I for one prefer to partition my hard disk drive a little during installation. What I generally stick to is a 10Gig root partition (/); a 10Gig home partition (/home); a swap partition (/swap) the same size as the amount of RAM memory in the machine; the rest as a data partition (/data) to keep music, videos,...etc. But that does depend on the size of your HDD!
Can't say I have experienced or witnessed any negative posting towards new linux users from the more experienced ones on the linux forums I visit but neither do I deny that it probably exists.

I just converted my girlfriends laptop to Ubuntu and she loves it compared to XP. Previous boot-up time was about 15 minutes, Ubuntu booted in 90 secs.

I had my work desktop running Intrepid a few months ago and had it working just how I wanted it... Right up until a power spike killed the disk.

I'm now going further down the XP rabbit hole, but wishing I had the guts to make the move again. It was faster and a stack easier to use. Not sure how the iPhone would work on it though...

Or maybe Linux Mint? which is basically Ubuntu but with all the media codecs etc. preinstalled (and is presumably a tasty shade of green rather than orangey-brown, by default, although it's easily changed to your taste).

Will admit I've not tried it, since I use Ubuntu (Jaunty) with the media stuff added where necessary.

Here is a good useful book I found online for free.

[url= http://books.google.com/books?id=kHLlJzI6L20C&lpg=PP1&pg=PP1#v=onepage&q=&f=false ]Ubuntu Pocket Guide[/url]

This may be a really dumb question, but can you use windows type apps?

We have outsourced exchange for our emails so I really need outlook (I think), I also have a couple of old laptops that became too slow so am interested in trying linux ... also would I be able to use windows games & watch dvd;s on ubuntu? (I suspect the answers will be no, no, yes)

you can try Wine and install windows on that, defeats the object really though and it's going to be slow on some old laptops. You can watch DVD's on linux though no problem.

You can get evolution to work on an exchange server, but I'm not sure all functionality will be there - Linux distros are not generallt designed as a corporate desktop solution and that's where exchange is primarily used. Providing you don't want to access hardware with the programs you can use WINE to run windows games/apps etc but it can be a bit flakey at times and when accessing hardware its really a hit and miss option. You can watch DVDs with it natively anyway.

The only reason I dont run linux all the time is because no-one else I work with does, which means swapping too and fro is too much of a pain.

Your other option is to run windows under a VM in the same PC, but if you're not sure on setting the above up I'd steer clear of virtualised machines.

You can run both on the same laptop just not at the same time.
I don't know unbuntu but even sub normal such as our copper are using it so I think it should be very easy?

I find suse to be quite user friendly too.

Ubuntu question?

Do you need to use virus protection/firewall with it? If not, why?

Been using it for a few months and find it great for what I need.

Wine covers all the apps that I still need to use under windows and love the simple way Ubuntu lets you load up new apps for all the rest.

Still getting my head round Gimp, any simple user guides about?

real_ben10 - unbuntu is that good I would have paid for it if it was not free, give it a go 😉

Ta...

cheers guys, nice one Juan, made me laugh 🙂

[i]Do you need to use virus protection/firewall with it? If not, why?[/i]

I'd not bother with anti virus protection. Definately use a firewall though, although if you have a standard broadband router you don't need to bother.

Why no anti-virus? There simply isn't enough linux viruses in the wild to justify it.

Not sure about your email situation but for someone used to Windows Ubuntu is great. There are some serious brains even here, loads of info on the Web, really easy. Takes about 45 seconds to boot up on my PC and all is up and running. The only downside so far has been the newest Firefox doesn't work, so I use Opera if STW gets too slow.

Yup, same here - hardware firewall (in my router) and no AV or firewall on the linux machines. Part of what makes them a lot faster I think.

IIRC the last count of viruses for OSs went something like:
mac - 10 or so.
Linux - 40 or so (mostly now security'd out so dead)
Windows - 30,000 or so, mostly harmless.

As viruses largly rely on social engineering to infect, and linux is becoming more popular with non-techies, I expect it'll increase for linux but it'll take time.

@ski - http://lmgtfy.com/?q=gimp+tutorials 😆

I've been using Linux as my desktop since 1992, initially SLS & then Red Hat variants since 1995.

I work for Red Hat as a solutions architect. Linux is the only O/S i've worked with since 2000.

IMO, the only time you need to look at running AV on Linux of you're using it as mail/file etc server for Windows. That's not for protecting the server, but the client systems. Some people run AV scanners for compliance with standards such as PCI-DSS, though even then, they're often not mandatory.

Whilst i don't disagree that there's few viruses for linux, there's plenty of exploits that allow a reasonably competent cracker to gain control of your system. So just because it's linux, don't assume you're safe, you're not. You certainly should enable the firewall & run SELinux enabled in targeted mode. Keep the system up to date with security patches.

The security risks are greater if you're using Linux as a desktop. Take a look at Mark Cox's RHEL risk reports for the vulnerability comparisons between a bare bones Linux server build & a full desktop build. See what happens when you add something like firefox 😉

Used linux in varoius forms since about 1999, mostly on servers.

Put Ubuntu 9.04 on my mum's new Dell a few months back, has possibly saved me several support visits in comparison to Vista. She gets on with it no bother.

& run SELinux enabled in targeted mode. Keep the system up to date with security patches.

I used fedora (core4) as a basis for realtime control (with RTAI) and found SE had to be disabled, though I left it enabled on my server. I had no end of trouble with it, but I'm glad to say that it seems to be much more friendly in later versions.

I used fedora (core4) as a basis for realtime control (with RTAI) and found SE had to be disabled, though I left it enabled on my server. I had no end of trouble with it, but I'm glad to say that it seems to be much more friendly in later versions.

Heh. +1. Those early implementations of SELinux were rather too restrictive. There's no point in having a security policy that's so draconian you can't get any work done unless you switch it off.

The only downside so far has been the newest Firefox doesn't work, so I use Opera if STW gets too slow.

I have Shiretoko 3.5.4pre running on mine, which is the latest Firefox. It runs great.