unix \ linux \ other alt. os \ free software \ open source casual discussions

[ziggurat]

Greetings

I've been thinking to start a thread about this since before, so here it is. I've been using ubuntu on my laptop since I bought it, and feel comfortable enough now that my vista partition just living in it dormantly. If I need a software, I always manage to get it from the repo, it's just a matter of choosing which one to use. Most of the open source games also can be search directly in it and get installed in a minute.

To get this started, do you use other than windows in your desktop/laptop? ( if I'm not mistaken, Mac is considered as a unix based system too right? ) What's your opinions on it? How do you get around the major windows software/application dependency eg: MSOffice, acrobat reader, flash bla bla bla ?

Oh, I'm not a guru, but I can use google efficiently so if you have a question, I'll try to answer it

Btw, this is my desktop, just for your amusement (the x-chat icon just sitting there, I use irssi now lol )


 

[RoyMoy]

These days it's much easier to use an alternate OS for non-work purposes. One big reason is that you can simply do a lot of stuff through the web browser and internet pages use standard/open languages to function. It's probably the same for a lot of people. They use windows at work and use something else at home. It's rarely the other way around I would gander.

The only reason I still have to use windows is usually work/school related. Usually because you have to use some specialized software that only runs on windows. Even then I try ways to work around it. I can usually get away with not using Office because Openoffice, et al have pretty decent file format support for Office files and I'm lucky enough not to have to deal with files that use a lot of crazy MS Office specific formatting/scripting. In another instance I was able to get a windows only document reader to run on WINE.

It's not as difficult to make the jump as some would think, especially if you are tech-savvy to begin with. If you're a really casual user who uses only browser, you probably won't notice a difference at all (just need to know what icon to click on to get onto the "internet"). Even Linux has a version (abeit crappy) of flash.

For PDF OS X has it's own built in PDF reader. I'm sure Linux has a PDF reader that can open most PDF files. I even heard windows has an alternate pdf reader. Which is great, because I'm not fond of adobe's crazy installers.

[ziggurat]

^ Nice post, RoyMoy. I agreed with all  your points. I think after Microsoft released Vista, some of windows users made the jump to linux. I also read about some of the tech-savvy linux advocates that installed ubuntu on their moms' / relatives machines and changed the firefox icon to look like IE because they're tired of cleaning the malwares, spywares and other junks on the machines

The windows usage for works also is true and corporate tends to use older version of IE to cope with legacy systems / websites they're still using.

On my laptop, flash is quite decent where I'm using the experimental x86-64 / amd64 libflash plugin. Only on heavy flash-based games on facebook that the cpu will do extra work and the laptop's fan spin faster. Wine is a god-sent to linux user, I played a couple of windows only game using that

The pdf reader in my ubuntu is document reader ( I have no idea if it use any plugin to read pdf, lol ) . Until now, it never fail to open any pdf files that I have. Yeah, for windows there are many alt. eg: foxit reader and sumatra. They're pretty decent, small executables and faster than adobe. Although I've read comments regarding advances featured pdf files that can't be open by them, so you still need acrobat reader.

[LaJon]

Love the open source philosophy, love open source software, but all the open source operating systems I've used have come up short.  Never had a good reason to leave Windows because of that, but a good chunk of the programs I use within Windows tend to be open source programs.

Also, here's a great open source PODcast done by TWiT everyweek: FLOSS Weekly

[3headedknight]

^ Yeah same here, everytime I try a linux distro it comes up short somehow.  However they seem to be getting better each time I come back and try them again.  Nevertheless I probably won't switch over completely because I've got several apps with no linux equivalent.  Unless Wine/the available VMs get better.  However, for someone who just does stuff like word processing and internet browsing, I think Linux is pretty usable if they're willing to spend a little time getting used to what's changed from Windows.

[nachdenki]

I have both win7 and gentoo on my PC but I'm usually using win7 because linux lacks one important thing for me:
A good driver for my sound card.
I have a creative xfi card so I actually want to make use of it but linux (alsa at least) only has a very simple driver supporting no features of the card.
I tried the PulseAudio sound server with Equalizer plugin, since kde4.4 additionally also Amarok with Equalizer, but that doesn't produce any good sound either (pretty much like you can't improve a bass if there is none to improve).
Since listening to music is one of the most important things I do with my PC this is something that makes me choose windows over linux.

In most other aspects linux is equal to windows, except for games stuff but I don't play much so I could use linux most of the time.
I've also got MySQL and Apache to use the same files on linux and windows so I can just switch between them without problems.
Flash is running just fine in Firefox (I think I emerged some proprietary package called adobe-flash...). I had some sound problems first but I think it's fixed now.
For PDF I found KDE's Okular most convenient since I wanted a feature that lets me make notes on the documents.
For MSOffice OpenOffice is good enough in most cases. I'm looking for the next big release though because I don't like their interface much and it's slow as fuck most of the time.
Oh and I seriously miss windows's IME for Japanese input on linux. Setting up a good replacement is sooo troublesome. I've got some basic stuff running but I don't know how to add words there and how to change the activation key lol. Best would be one windows like shortcut and a support for the windows IME text files because then I could just import my list (I think there is something like that but only with Japanese installation instructions etc. etc.)

[Amplifier]

KDE here, gnome sucks.

Would like to dual-boot, but it's too much effort at the moment and my main HDD is too small to bother right now. I settle for the occasional goofing around with VirtualBox (which also makes it handy to run questionable programs in ReactOS).

used to only run linux, hopped from distro to distro. back then, gnome was ugly as sin and ran like shit, so KDE was pro

[ziggurat]

Nice to know that everyone has their share of toying with linux. Here is a new cap of my current wp. It's lxde, openbox-based. I torched my ubuntu and pop-in debian lenny It's a bit of hassle at first because debian come with minimal install, I even get a black screen after starting x due to open source ATI driver not supporting my current graphic card. After a bit compiling and tweaking, it's all good.



Second cap, showing irssi (irc client) + herrie (mp3 player +last.fm scrobbler) + google chrome

[nachdenki]

haha text based, why don't use use text browser as well? 

Since I just booted linux to do some stuff (I have more free space available here  ) I also made a screenshot

Currently KDE environment with Openbox window manager (because compiz is currently broken , that's what I was actually using for fancy effects)

[leavekuda]

Ehhmm, i used the OS base on my needs.

for desktop there should be ms windows
for server at low risk security threat or more hardware friendly using Linux
for high security like on-line server , I count on OpenBSD

[ziggurat]

I made a blog to document shit i did. I'm sharing it here for your amusement
http://portgasbox.blogspot.com

[pikapikapika]

Linus tells it how it is.

[Foxy Brown]

http://www.stormfront.org/forum/t786671/

[daigong]

lol zigg guess what I attempted to boot into linux with a USB to fix my phone



I got distracted

Nixie Pixie improved over the years, Ubuntu does look tempting to fuck with http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLC57C60F699A5C44D&feature=plcp

[ziggurat]

lol, what a troll. that will be a good boost to linux user on desktops a lot of bewbs in her vids