Hippyland Open Source Support

Let's have a thread where people learning to use Linux and other open source software can post questions and get answers.

 

Excellent idea, I would totally support that. I would not consider myself pro at Linux, but I think I would be able to help out, and provide support. I guess I will get it started! I just got my desktop working again, and I need a new distro for it. I use Ubuntu on my laptop, and it works good, but I need something new. I got a copy of elive 1.0 from then net, but I don't really like the enlightenment desktop style. What do you all think? I am really open to anything here. Thanks.

 

Taking a look at Distrowatch (www.distrowatch.com) it seems the number two distribution (Ubuntu is still number 1 big surprise there lol) is PCLinuxOS. GUI appaears to be a modified KDE environment using the latest kernal and the community site says it comes packed with Open Office 2.2.0, Firefox 2.0.0.3, Thunderbird 2.0, Frostwire, Ktorrent, Amarok, Flash, Java JRE, Beryl 3D and uses synaptic for access to 5000+ additional programs. Link is here for quick access http://www.pclinuxos.com sounds like something worth checking out to me.

 

PCLinuxOS? I will give it a try. Here is your article.

 

hahaha I just wrote an article too, and since I just spent alot of time on it I'm gonna post it anyways

Ubuntu (http://www.ubuntu.com/) is a very popular and easy to learn Linux distribution created by Mark Shuttleworth (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Shuttleworth). Some of the benefits of this is that Ubuntu has lots of funding but also benefits from a community of both traditional volunteer coders as well as hired individuals. Also Ubuntu has traditional forum based community support but it also offers live technical support. See the pattern? Best of both worlds at no cost. Ubuntu is also starting to make it's way into the hardware industry with Dell now selling a line of desktops and notebooks with Ubuntu instead of Windows (which considerably lowers the cost). Some of the technical benefits are as follows:

>Security - In a Windows world Ubuntu/Linux is secure, all those little viruses and trojans do not work on Linux because Linux is based off Unix, which has an entirely different file system (called ext2 and ext3) from Window's FAT and NTFS systems. This does not mean that Linux is 100% safe, what it means is that the only way a person can really damage your operating system is if they were to figure out your password and get root status, root being a security feature that places certain admin duties in their own account which can only be accessed when called on. Ubuntu takes this one step further, in the past to make changes to the system one had to actually log into the root account, now with the help of a program called sudo, all one has to do is enter their password when prompted, make the changes as root, and when they close out the program the account reverts back to user level. A firewall is still unfortunately a nessescity (I use firestarter) and also an antivirus is helpful not so much to protect yourself but to prevent one from passing along a virus to a windows user when we share files.

> Useability - Ubuntu is open source, which means we are free to alter it (assuming we understand how linux can be very unforgiving when we make errors) any way we choose. But with Ubuntu by default alot of things are simplified and automated which helps the new user out alot. When installing you don't have to figure out which driver in a big list works for your keyboard, just type the keys it asks and it figures it out for you. Updating is semi automatic, instead of having to use a command line to manually connect to the servers and check (which you can still do if you want) Ubuntu uses a program called Synaptic. This program tells us we have updates, which are actual software upgrades that offer improvements to the programs installed on the system, as well as traditional updates that are not discovered by some corporation and released when they feel the time is right, but rather flaws discovered by a community of actual users and made public as soon as they're found. Synaptic also acts as a huge multi server repository where we can easily search through thousands of programs with a simple search. Automatix is a good one to get right away, it allows you to browse a collection of the more unauthorized Linux choices such as comercial DVD playback. So in a nuttyshell Ubuntu is designed to be easy enough for a newbie to pick up and play with, but also is still Linux which means even an advanced user is welcome to tinker and reprogram as they wish.

>Cost: Ubuntu is free, Linux is free. Some may try to charge for it, unless they are charging for the cost of a blank disc or shipping they are scamming you. Others will claim (such as the Linux version Linspire) that they are charging in order to provide the user a choice between open source and payed software. The software that such distributions offer be it open source or payed, is based off open source programming, open source programming code is free, so this too is a scam. The time of companies selling what basicly amounts to data for sometimes hundreds of dollars and controlling the source code preventing the user from altering the program as they choose is drawing to a close. In it's place we have what's called the open source community. The open source community in many ways resembles the hippy community. Their are no leaders, their may be those who contribute more than others but it's all just people coming together and contirbuting as they can to software for everyone to use and modify as they see fit.

>Downside: To be fair (as open source should be) here are a few of the downsides to Linux. The first is that alot of pc games do not run on Linux. Some do, I play Unreal Tournament 2k4 just fine, and I have a huge collection of Nintendo, Sega, And PC Engine (Turbo Grafix 16) games I play. Also though most hardware is supported, and Ubuntu community focuses ALOT of work on this, some products are not supported well, this is largely due to the fact that many venders refuse to release the source code to their drivers, which means the community has to reverse engineer and sometimes outright hack the drivers to get something to work. Not all companies do this, my Nvidia graphics card and my Soundblater are bot fully supported under Linux but some corporations are well, corporations, so you may run into hardware issues especially with brand new hardware. Another downside which isn't really a downside depending on how one looks at it is that Linux stops for every error, this can be frustrating because often the reason given may be confusing, but in the long room this benefits us because not only does it make for a more stable system, but it gives a trial by fire way of learning Linux. So yes at times their can be a bit of a learning curve, especially for those fresh off the windows (their sure was for me), but in time things make sense, and speaking from personal experience they start to feel much more logical than how the same thing is done on windows.

In closing I want to point out one last benefit, this is not an Ubuntu benefit but a linux benefit, and one that got me interested in linux in the first place. When a program on Windows crashes it will slow down the system, sometimes taking the whole operating system down with it. THIS IS NOT TRUE WITH LINUUUUUX, with linux instead of everything being built into everything else, everything runs as independant applications, what this means is that if you're in open office writing on the word processor and your music player plays something it doesn't like and freezes, your word processor won't freeze too, and to close the music player all we have to to do it click close X, and tell it if we want to wait and see if it fixes itself or kill the program then and there, cool huh. I hope this helped a few people and with that said...

Party on Dudes
Dharmony

(PS good article agentyellow )

 

Hey Dh4rm0ny, you got some skill, awesome article. And just for everyone to know, PCLinuxOS did not install correctly, it is unclear why. I am pretty sure that it is because I have a SATA drive, and not IDE, it has given me some trouble before. I got 2 new distros to try out though. One is Dreamlinux 2.2, and the other is Linux Mint 3.0. Wish me luck!

 

On IDE drives Linux gives the option to place the file system on one drive and the user directory on another, so I'm guessing that sata drives need to be partitioned this way during install. I remember the first time I ever installed Linux I only formatted the system drive and left my windows storage drive ntfs hoping I could just access it no worries. I could but it felt tacked and required an extra program which was still experimental at the time. It wasn't until I formatted both during install that they worked right.

Party on
Dharmony

 

But the thing is, nobody uses Linux. Hackers go after Windows because there are so many Windows systems.

 

Ubuntu can be used as a server, the install disk even gives the option of installing an old school unix style command line operating system (ala dos). Every distribution of Linux be it Ubuntu or Fedora or any of the other distributions are the same operating system just configured differently for particular uses. Ubuntu is the easy to use good for beginners distribution, Fedora is the true to it's root hardcore open source that takes a bit of configuration no matter what we wanna use it for. But to answer your question more directly yes Ubuntu can be used as a server, it's just a matter of surfing around the synaptic repositories to find the software ya need.

 

Yeah, I was aware of this when I started using linux (that I could make multiple partitions), but I always just got one drive and formated the whole thing in ext3, and it was working for me. Now I'm trying a dual boot with Vista and Linux. It seems to be working. Right when I got the drive (from the store), I used Gparted to create all the necessary partitions (/, and SWAP, and another one for storage {and obvisouly the NTSF for vista}). First off, PCLinuxOS would just not boot (into the livecd), so it was out of the qustion. I then tried Linux Mint 3.0, and it worked great, so I installed it no problem. Works great. It is pretty much just a derivative of Ubuntu.

 

I'll be honest I've never even used an sata drive before, I stay pretty lowtech and modify parts as needed. But that's cool that ya got it working (Linux and Vista haha your computer is heaven and hell man )

-Dharmony

 

I know right, me too usually, but I have wanted one for so long, I just had to spring for it. It has been working out great so far (except the problems booting PCLOS). No real advantages though. If I had to get another drive, and had a choice, I would probably go SATA again, just because most motherboards (that I have seen) are only coming with one IDE slot now.

 

Well let's put it this way, Ubuntu has a security script that allows a remote address to attempt a connection twice if after two times the remote address does not provide the right information that IP is blocked from further contact. If an outside source attempts to view the network settings Ubuntu runs what they call a glad file which blocks ANY further access to the network settings until the computer reboots. Also Firestarter, the linux firewall I use is comparable to Synaptic Firewall in that I can see each individual incoming and outgoing connection, the port it's using, and with a simple right click I can resolve the host name and find out their ISP and origin. With Windows I had to download 4 programs at a cost of well over a hundred dollars (if I had actually payed for them) just to do what Linux does out of the box, imo that is pitiful and a disgrace on Window's part.

 

So the mobo companies are trying to phase out IDE eh? Well I hear sata does offer faster data transfer and the ability to set up a raid environment (for those who may not know a raid environment is when two hard drives are linked together and treated as a single drive by the operating system) but what can I say, in the words of David Carradine, "you know me, I'm all about the old school".

-Dharmony

 

http://counter.li.org/estimates.php Nobody but several dozen million people.

 

Compared to several billion Windows users, that's nobody.

 

And what about the 12 Mac users in the world? Linux is just like that platform in the sense that no one will make Mac spyware/virus cause way fewer people use these platforms. Windows is where it is at if you are looking to make money.