Linus, The Man With...A Penguin

[RyuuNoSenshi]

Hmmm seems the Real Life forums have changed since I was here last. I guess I really should keep up with this stuff, but I'm so terribly easy to distract with shiny things, or source code.

At anyrate I noticed this little computer section and I decided to re-join the forums and write a few things. And since I noticed a few threads about Linux stuff I figured why not.

Now to the topic at hand. I've just recently made the complete conversion to linux. Not a dual boot mind you, but pure linux. In fact I'm running Mandrake 9.1 on a Journaling XFS filesystem(it's beautiful it really is! ). I've played around with Linux before, but only to a certain extent, because I'm a gamer and I need such things as Half-life, UT, and all the like. I finally stopped kidding myself after windows programs became more and more memory draining, and the ever so terrible release of XP. I refused to touch XP, hell I wouldn't wish XP on my worst enemy. So with 98 slowly becoming more of an issue to fix(registry cleaning, defraging, scan disking, virus worries) I got the mandrake ISOs and transfered my data to my other hard drive and got linux set up.

As a C++ programmer myself I have nothing, but respect for those who write these programs. Kernel modules, drivers, applications, and the whole bunch work so beautifully. And the fact that the way linux is set up nearly kills any chance a virus has of getting a foothold in your system(all executables should be only writable by root). And now with wine and alot of companies making dual releases of their games(UT 2003 and UT both have Linux counterparts) I have all the gaming ability as before, now without the terrible crashing(you can make almost any program crash mind you, it's just alot harder on linux).

I'm happy with linux And I'm getting others to make the switch(mwhahaha =D) No one so far has any complaints about it. Ohh and you have to love the penguin!

[EvilElf]

well since i haven't gotten the chance to try out any Linux OS yet (will be trying out Red Hat when i get back home) you might see anougher Linux user pop up on these forums
>_>
<_<

[MasteR]

/me is a linux user, just not pure.

Only reason I still use windows is because SO MUCH software is windows only. I'm a big gamer and the majority of games are Window only.

Like you said, UT and UT2k3 and others have linux counterparts, but thats only a few. It's a start though. Maybe one of these days game makers (and other software companies) will realize that linux is becoming a great "desktop" os and more of them will write for it too.

Here's hoping.

[Bruce]

Bioware have made a start, I've wasted all this week playing neverwinter night: shadows of undrentide under linux.

[spoon]

/me is an impure Linux junkie

I wish WINE were perfect, doncha know. It'd be nice if I could find cheap software to run windows stuff on Linux well. Then just about every truely computer-literate person would convert, methinks.

[Bruce]

Wine is not just a good thing. If it were perfect we would se hardly any native linux apps, which would be a bad thing.

[EvilElf]

also have to say the Linux Penguin is cute ;;

[Syberius]

Well, having been a windows user from 3.x I have been using the M$ OS right up to XP. I have had my problems but who hasnt right? except maybe Mr Gates himself!

Anyway, last year I dual booted Mandrake 8 with winXP and it worked great, excpet for the minor fact connecting to ISDN was a nightmare. I kinda gave up after ISDN refused to connect (it had all the drivers, just never let me on). A year later I am about to build up a simple Linux box to play with and act as a firewall and server for my network. I am only 16 and I like to learn as much as possible before I go to college in September.

I am a PHP Coder so learning to use apache and php on nix will be great but because my XP machine is still and allways will be the primary beast on the network I wont need wine.

Still Linux is a great OS and I cant wait to get my new Hub!

Syb,

[Martin Blank]

For people who would like to experiment with other OSes, I recommend picking up a copy of VMWare. Yes, it's a bit pricey ($299 for most, $120 for academic users, though I think the academic users have to order through CDW), but it's a lot less pricey than multiple computers. Assuming you have the hard drive space, you can load any number of operating systems. For example, I have Windows 2000 Server eval copies loaded for my MCSE studies, as well as Win98, Win98, WinME, Mandrake, and RH9, and soon to have FreeBSD, NetBSD, Debian, and OpenBSD loaded. All of them sit in files which are accessed as true drives through VMWare's partially virtualized hardware interface. It's quite a fun thing to be able to do this and still use my main system for IM, chat, browsing, and whatever while I have the OS running in VMWare.

VMWare is also available on Linux for those of you that use that as your primary, and there is a 30-day trial download available that is fully functional until you get to the 30-day point, when it will no longer load any OS. Try it out and see for yourself. It's a lot easier than digging up a new drive on which to load a new and untried OS.

[Syberius]

I have heard about VMWare, and have thought about it but I have decided that becuase I have all the parts I need I want to actually run the linux box!

But everyone to their own!

Syb,

[RyuuNoSenshi]

Wine is a great program, and I've gotten it to work beautifully. But native programs will always run better and faster. Although a simple fix to all the program compatabilty problems would be if alot more games were open source. Open source has done some beautiful things for games. PlaneShift for instance (http://www.planeshift.it/) is an open source game. It looks beautiful. And there are tons more open source games that are released for multiple platforms. Sadly though for now I can't play anything that uses OpenGL, err acursed i810 chipset! Errrr this probably means I gotta recompile the agpgart module. Blah, no matter what OS you have you always have to do something to make your computer l33t. Erg.

[Syberius]

As a late addition to this post...

I have now got my new network installed and the 3 computers (1 is a laptop) are working great. The linux box is running Mandrake 9.1 and is perfect. I have got samba configured so that box of the other machines can access certain areas of the server like my storage drive and when I get 512k Internet Access in october I will be using the nix box as my main Firewall and Server.

Linux rox!

Syberius!

[RyuuNoSenshi]

Yes, indeed! Linux r0xz0rz! ;
I mean as if the speed improvements on your system, the high reliablity, almost complete immunity to virii of any sort, and high security weren't enough. It's FREE too! And you don't have to worry about the microsoft people trying to make you buy more copys of the same thing just to install on mutilple systems. Ohh yeah and I can't forget about the army of rabid man eating ninja penguins, those are the best.

I'm not crazy, just caffeinated! ^__^ Bwhaha

[Elric2056]

Bah! I like linux and use it a fair bit, but seeing as I'm a computer engineering student and I have requirements to develop for Windows or use Windows only tools I've kept myself firmly running Win2k for a while now.... that said my machine dual boots Debian, I'm constantly using Cygwin tools (GCC/G++/GDB is a much better compiler and toolset then VC++) and I'm also constantly logged into several Solaris/*nix machines through SCP and SSH so I'm as close as you can get to a dual personality when it comes to computers...