Recommend me a distro!

[RESmonkey]

So certain things in EE are better done in linux/unix platform?

I think I might stick with Ubuntu. The forum for Ubuntu is huge, the package manager is built-in, you don't start off as a super user (root), and I've used it before.

Any last suggestions/comments?

 

[silverpig]

Originally posted by: RESmonkey
I want apt-get. I've only once attempted to compile my own from some tar.gz and failed horribly. There was no guide on how to do it, though. There probably is on, by now.

bash$ tar -zxvf foo.tar.gz
bash$ cd foo
bash$ ./configure
bash$ make
bash$ sudo make install
bash$ foo
bar!
bash$ man foo

usage: foo
output: bar!

A simple program that just outputs "bar!" no matter what.


I'm bored.

 

[Praetor]

Originally posted by: QuixoticOne
IMHO -- Firefox + LINUX + lots of tabs = LOSE.

I've seen it speculated (I'm not SURE if it was a joke or not) that Microsoft secretly partners with Mozilla to make Windows look good by
making Firefox on LINUX work so poorly. If I baby it it'll last a couple of hours before crashing, otherwise MTBF = 20 minutes.
The same happens on UBUNTU and FEDORA with or without OEM GPU drivers, so I know it's not just issues on one PC.
Maybe it is a 64 bit thing, IDK, I don't see how it got out of QA being this bad ever since version 2.x though.
And it isn't due to 3rd party plug-ins (which DO cause a lot of flakiness), since I don't use any, and I even mostly keep scripts of any kind turned
off and ads / sound / animations / video blocked.

You'd be happier with OPERA or Konqueror or something if you are a heavy user.

Photoshop CS2 works well in WINE, and IIRC CS3 was getting to the "sort of working" stage. In fact I seem to remember Google even
doing some sponsorship to help Photoshop work better under LINUX according to some slashdot article several months ago; I forget
the rationale and consequences.

Photoshop CS3 might just work in a VirtualBox or QEMU/KVM running XP or Vista or Win2K under a LINUX host, so that's another option for
occasional use of Windows software under LINUX.

If you're into EE, LINUX is nice for running SPICE and other such things, many of which work better under LINUX than Windows.

Sounds like FUD to me.

 

[little elvis]

Originally posted by: Praetor

Originally posted by: QuixoticOne
IMHO -- Firefox + LINUX + lots of tabs = LOSE.

I've seen it speculated (I'm not SURE if it was a joke or not) that Microsoft secretly partners with Mozilla to make Windows look good by
making Firefox on LINUX work so poorly. If I baby it it'll last a couple of hours before crashing, otherwise MTBF = 20 minutes.
The same happens on UBUNTU and FEDORA with or without OEM GPU drivers, so I know it's not just issues on one PC.
Maybe it is a 64 bit thing, IDK, I don't see how it got out of QA being this bad ever since version 2.x though.
And it isn't due to 3rd party plug-ins (which DO cause a lot of flakiness), since I don't use any, and I even mostly keep scripts of any kind turned
off and ads / sound / animations / video blocked.

You'd be happier with OPERA or Konqueror or something if you are a heavy user.

Photoshop CS2 works well in WINE, and IIRC CS3 was getting to the "sort of working" stage. In fact I seem to remember Google even
doing some sponsorship to help Photoshop work better under LINUX according to some slashdot article several months ago; I forget
the rationale and consequences.

Photoshop CS3 might just work in a VirtualBox or QEMU/KVM running XP or Vista or Win2K under a LINUX host, so that's another option for
occasional use of Windows software under LINUX.

If you're into EE, LINUX is nice for running SPICE and other such things, many of which work better under LINUX than Windows.

Sounds like FUD to me.

Agreed. Right now I have 26 tabs open in firefox right now..... no crashes, no slowdowns, etc, on a 64bit Ubuntu install. My uptime on my Laptop as of this morning is almost 8 days, and NO firefox crashes during that time.

 

[soonerproud]

Originally posted by: QuixoticOne
I'd probably say *buy* a copy of the commercial SUSE version on DVD;
it comes bundled with a few more integrated media
capabilities than the fully open source version does, and it is easy to work with and a good general distribution.

UBUNTU is OK but I prefer a DVD based distribution like SUSE or Fedora because the chances are most
of the programs you'd want are already on the DVD so you can just "install everything" and be almost all set.

With a single-CD based distribution like UBUNTU you get a good basic desktop after installing from CD, but
there usually are hundreds of optional add-on packages I end up wanting to install which involves a somewhat
lengthy process of selection, downloading, et. al.

UBUNTU's got less good support built in for firewall and various server related things than Fedora or SUSE.

Flash 10 and I believe Flash 9 are recently out for LINUX and I believe they work pretty well in general on
the modern 32 bit distributions. IIRC there are still some rough edges with 64 bit LINUX OS + 32 bit flash plugins
on some distributions, but I believe that has been worked-around fairly effectively through various means on
various distributions.

If you prefer to use nearly 100% UNIX as a main OS, you can always just run UNIX/LINUX and then
even run IE6 in Wine or a VM, or you could just run XP in a KVM / VirtualBox VM to run internet explorer 6/7 or
the Windows version of Firefox or maybe iTunes(?) / MS office / or whatever in the VM.

If you do major video gaming, though, you might as well just dual boot to Vista or XP since that's not going
to work well just under UNIX or even with a VM or WINE.

There are also projects like GNASH that replace a lot of what flash can do for LINUX, but if you're talking about
youtube type video etc. just run flash 9 / flash 10 plugins with firefox.

http://labs.adobe.com/downloads/flashplayer10.html
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.p...ge=news_item&px=NjIzNA
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.p...ge=news_item&px=NjU2NQ

Ubuntu also has a installation DVD. The reason it is not popular is because most Linux users have broadband and just choose to install the base system contained on the cd's and just download the other parts they want after installation. Suse and FC are also going to this model on the desktop because it saves bandwidth and lowers cost.

If you have a broadband connection, there is no good reason to use the DVD over the CD.

 

[soonerproud]

Originally posted by: RESmonkey
I want apt-get. I've only once attempted to compile my own from some tar.gz and failed horribly. There was no guide on how to do it, though. There probably is on, by now.

Ubuntu is right up your alley as is PCLos, Linux Mint and even Debian if you are willing to get your hands dirty.

(I recommend Debian for those willing to get down and dirty simply because the developers don't include a lot of junk that the others have resulting in a much snappier and responsive system.)

 

[Gautama2]

I'd like to recommend Linux Mint. What Ubuntu should have been IMO.

 

[RalphTheCow]

Ubuntu has worked very well for me. Much better than the Red Hat I used years ago since you don't have to muck with ANY command lines, x windows, etc, it just WORKS. I was quite impressed.

 

[QuixoticOne]

Unless you're installing on multiple machines, or unless you have machines which it may not work quite
right on in which case multiple reinstalls may be needed to get it working properly.

There's no reason I want to download gigabytes of stuff more than once.
One may not always have an internet connection, for instance if one is on a business trip and might need
to install / reinstall.

It is also good to have a copy of the OS you've installed so you can if need be go back at some point in the
future and duplicate your original configuration if you have data loss / crash / virus / bugs to help resolve
or track down.

I've never in recent versions seen a UBUNTU DVD image from the main site or any of its mirrors.
I know they'll offer to send you a physical cd, but I've never heard of a DVD. Perhaps I didn't look
hard enough, but I did look for one more than once.

Originally posted by: soonerproud


Ubuntu also has a installation DVD. The reason it is not popular is because most Linux users have broadband and just choose to install the base system contained on the cd's and just download the other parts they want after installation. Suse and FC are also going to this model on the desktop because it saves bandwidth and lowers cost.

If you have a broadband connection, there is no good reason to use the DVD over the CD.

 

[soonerproud]

Originally posted by: QuixoticOne
Unless you're installing on multiple machines, or unless you have machines which it may not work quite
right on in which case multiple reinstalls may be needed to get it working properly.

There's no reason I want to download gigabytes of stuff more than once.
One may not always have an internet connection, for instance if one is on a business trip and might need
to install / reinstall.

It is also good to have a copy of the OS you've installed so you can if need be go back at some point in the
future and duplicate your original configuration if you have data loss / crash / virus / bugs to help resolve
or track down.

I've never in recent versions seen a UBUNTU DVD image from the main site or any of its mirrors.
I know they'll offer to send you a physical cd, but I've never heard of a DVD. Perhaps I didn't look
hard enough, but I did look for one more than once.

You have to purchase it but it does exist and it is directly linked to from Ubuntu.com under the buy section.

Ubuntu 8.04 DVD

 

[QuixoticOne]

I've got 59 *windows* open at the moment, each window probably has an average of 10-15 tabs.
It has crashed six times within the last hour or so, including just after I hit "reply" to the previous
post.

Perhaps it is worse on a quad core system, what little progress I've made with running a debugger on
the debuginfo build seemed to list something involving pthreads somewhere in the crash backtrace.

I've seen it crash with very few windows/tabs open, on multiple different systems with multiple different
LINUX distributions involved. It is nearly unusable due to its instability.

Originally posted by: little elvis

Agreed. Right now I have 26 tabs open in firefox right now..... no crashes, no slowdowns, etc, on a 64bit Ubuntu install. My uptime on my Laptop as of this morning is almost 8 days, and NO firefox crashes during that time.

 

[The Keeper]

Have you filed up proper bug reports to respective parties?

 

[QuixoticOne]

Not yet. I pursued it seriously for a day or two trying to load up all the debuginfo versions of FF and learning to run it in a debugger. It has some wrapper batch file that invokes the browser that has some obscure debug related options in it that I'll have to figure out or find the documentation on. The debugger wasn't quite working very informatively on it when I attempted to run it that way, I've been thinking there must be a better way to debug it as well as turn on some kind of debug logging / tracing / checked build, but I didn't discover that information by the time I got busy on other things.

I'd like to set up a VM and some kind of UI automation to be able to run some repeated or at least repeatable "torture tests" on it so that the complete set of replication infrastructure could be published but I don't quite have it figured out how to do that. I'm a bit amazed (given how horribly unstable it is) that there's not more prominent documentation and integration of testing / debugging features like that; maybe they exist but if so they seem to have removed it from easy view / utility / discoverability in main builds of the browser.

I'm guessing it is something that may relate to race conditions and heavy / simultaneous loads of events which, if true, makes generating useful bug reports a little difficult since one would end up reporting the symptom and not the cause.

At the same time it is a bit hard since one just wants to do one's normal internet stuff and not have to login to some test account and do only controlled debugging since that gets in the way of everything else one normally would do. A VM could help there, though it may not be exhibiting the same problems in that case.

Originally posted by: The Keeper
Have you filed up proper bug reports to respective parties?

 

[BlueAcolyte]

Zenwalk here. It's light, pretty, and fast. (Based on Slax, uses XFCE) They do have a package management tool, (netpkg) which is updated fairly frequently.

 

[zoiks]

Ubuntu 8.04 here. It's my primary OS and has been since the distribution was released. I never have to use Windows anymore except to play games. For my work stuff dealing with Windows builds, I just fire off a VirtualBox VM for XP in another desktop screen.
Ubuntu is rock solid for me. No crashes, nothing really is bad that would want me to move to Windows at all. All apps work perfectly fine.

Oh yah. I added Windows fonts to Ubuntu so it looks pretty clean and sharp on my lcd.

 

[accguy9009]

Mandriva 2008.1 works great.