30 days with Linux @ [H] Consumer

You're not crazy if you like lipstick on pigs!

I like that idea too. I can't code my way out of a paper bag, but I find the ideas endlessly fascinating. I think momentum is the problem. Linux has momentum, and as far is I know is the only non-Windows OS to have it. Could that momentum be changed to a new idea? Should it be changed?
 
Fantastic article, Brian and Jason. It was well written and in a unique style that touched the widest range of readers possible. I believe just about everyone that read it got something out of it.


I also think you guys have done a standup job in defending your article and accepting the "fault” or “blame” in the hairsplitting going on in this thread. However, I don't believe the word that should be thrown around is "fault" or “blame” but instead should be "credit". You can never make 100 percent of your readers happy, and given that your article reached so many people, it's surprising that only one or two had problems with it.


So, take the credit you deserve… you earned it. I thank you and I look forward to reading your upcoming articles. One request if I may: Please, please don’t change your style to cater to the vocal minority here. The majority of us are able to handle articles not written in our own mind’s eye.
 
First, THANK YOU for actually embracing the possibility of linux as a windows alternative (especially for gaming)

However, I have a bit of criticism for you to consider. At the end of your gaming page ( http://consumer.hardocp.com/article.html?art=MTI5OCw5LCxoY29uc3VtZXI= ) you state "Unless you're playing Quake 4, and only Quake 4 (possibly Unreal Tournament), gaming on Linux is a poor proposition.". Granted, from your examples and provided data this can be concluded. However, I have recently performed my own testing of linux as an alternative, and while I do agree with some parts, I do not agree with your claim that gaming on Linux is a poor proposition (at least mostly disagree).

I tried Vista for several weeks, then it complained to activate, and I concluded that my experience with gaming in vista was so bothersome I would consider actually doing a serious Linux test. So I suited up for SuSE 10.2 x64 (64-bit). Installed it and only had a few sound bugs (which are probably due to a lack of understanding of the Linux sound system).

In my testing, I actually played 3 games that were not designed for Linux originally, and I did not test any games that were (I eventually switched back to Windows XP). I tried Warcraft 3: The Frozen Throne, Counter-Strike: Source, and World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade.

My results were rather imrpessive for Warcraft 3 and CSS, however WoW was very disappointing, considering I had used Cedega in past installs and gotten better performance. In Warcraft 3 I had FPS exceeding 100, in the menus I had FPS exceeding 400. In CSS I had 60 FPS steady, I do not know if it exceeded this as it appeared to cap at 60, but I cant recall it dropping below 55, if ever. In WoW I got 15 FPS or so in the world (Area 52) and about 20 FPS indoors.

Warcraft 3 and Counter-Strike: Source required little to no effort to get going. However, I spent the entire time I was in Linux (about 15 days or so, I do not recall exactly) working with the Transgaming forums and various other sources in many attempts to improve my World of Warcraft performance. I tried copying my original install, reinstalling, and both times using D3D mode or forcing OGL, as well as many other tweaks Cedega offers. Unfortunately absolutely nothing improved my performance whatsoever.

While I conclude that my performance with World of Warcraft is very disappointing, my experience with Warcraft 3 and CSS would be more than enough to keep me in the OS if I was not addicted to the crack....

There are many rewarding benefits to the OS, such as the ability to absolutely overhaul your GUI (unlike litestep, which still is problematic (i tried, oh god i tried)). I especially appreciate the ability to force programs (even in fullscreen mode) to be on top, or below all other programs, such as kaffeine! (go TNG!).

I hope that you consider testing other games in Linux to provide a slightly broader approach to one of the biggest concerns placed with switching to Linux, and expose not only the benefits of gaming in Linux, but also the places for improvement (so we can cattle-prod Transgaming some more).

-Edit-

I must also add, that in Warcraft 3 I had no problems with any functionality whatsoever except for when beagle conflicted with a system-wide shortcut which happened to be a shortcut in Warcraft 3, I predict an easy fix. In Counter-Strike: Source the only problems I encountered was that I would have errors when I wanted to change the graphical settings. I would have to restart the application after changing them, otherwise it would malfunction (I cannot recall exactly how tho).


Jason_Wall said:
We came up with this project when we first started to hear the grumblings about Vista. People didn't want to pay the high price for a premium package, they didn't want to upgrade, and having to jump through hoops to activate it was starting to put scowls on the consumer's face before they even owned it. This raised the question of Linux - is it just a joke to throw around with your geek friends, or is this something that could actually work?

We were absolutely amazed at how Linux has changed over the years. "Compiling" and "decompiling" are almost completely removed from the language. The new generation of computer scientists have lent their talents to improving every facet of the only true "Made by the computer geek, for the computer geek" operating system.



We started this project a few months ago and Brian has put a hell of a lot of work into it. It's certainly the most comprehensive of its kind you'll find, and I hope that you all enjoyed reading it.

Thanks for reading!

Please Digg this article to share.
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Yep, looks like he pre-dated us by about a week. Damn the luck.

Actually not too bad for a blog. No gaming section and he only used one computer, though. He also hasn't updated it in about 6 weeks.
 
BloodyIron said:
...
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if you are serious about getting WoW working it will run fine with WINE (actually better then Cedega) as long as you pass it the -opengl flag to the exe

There is a quick bash-script that re-nices wine as well to make it run better but WoW is one game that runs extreamly well via WINE

it is just a shame they don't release a native client, I mean it is written in OGL so most of the work is done
 
So after 5 years of hating linux because everytime I would try and use it I could never get it to work I decide to try Ubuntu after reading this article.

So I download and burn the ISO. I'm all ready to install it.. BUT IT DOESNT WORK

guess what? Linux doesn't support my 3 monitors... (it doesn't even work with the 2 on the first video card)

the first screen is all pixelated and won't even display the OPTION to install ubuntu, then the second screen is blinking and flickering and freaking out.

Thats it. Never again will I try linux. I thought that after 5 years it would have worked out a lot of the problems but if I can't even INSTALL the damn OS, who knows the kinds of problems I will have even if I got it installed.

Bye bye linux. Your crappy OS just lost another potential convert.
 
cyr0n_k0r said:
So after 5 years of hating linux because everytime I would try and use it I could never get it to work I decide to try Ubuntu after reading this article.

So I download and burn the ISO. I'm all ready to install it.. BUT IT DOESNT WORK

guess what? Linux doesn't support my 3 monitors... (it doesn't even work with the 2 on the first video card)

the first screen is all pixelated and won't even display the OPTION to install ubuntu, then the second screen is blinking and flickering and freaking out.

Thats it. Never again will I try linux. I thought that after 5 years it would have worked out a lot of the problems but if I can't even INSTALL the damn OS, who knows the kinds of problems I will have even if I got it installed.

Bye bye linux. Your crappy OS just lost another potential convert.
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These sorts of posts just make me laugh. It's pretty obvious that there is some bug here, but it amuses me that you feel as though you've been singled out and targeted by "linux" for harassment.

I do find it rather odd that you're getting no desktop when you boot up ubuntu and try to install. It certainly doesn't sound like you want help making it work, though.

Have fun using windows...

-q
 
qfour20 said:
These sorts of posts just make me laugh. It's pretty obvious that there is some bug here, but it amuses me that you feel as though you've been singled out and targeted by "linux" for harassment.

I do find it rather odd that you're getting no desktop when you boot up ubuntu and try to install. It certainly doesn't sound like you want help making it work, though.

Have fun using windows...

-q
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I don't feel singled out. Why would I want help making it work? If I can't even get to the INSTALL screen then there is no point. With all of Window's flaws, bugs, holes, etc, it still manages to at the very least install itself without major problems.

Obviously linux STILL isn't ready for "power users" like the article claims.
A "power user" to me is not someone who just has a mid-range system like the editor.. but someone with advanced components. Take me for example, I run 2 7800GT's powering 3 monitors. I don't game or use SLI, but linux can't even make 1 graphic card work correctly let alone 2.

The point of my post is this, if I have to troubleshoot and "make work" before the software can even install itself, I can't even imagine the problems I would have even if it did install. I'd rather go and get Vista. It looks just as pretty as linux and at least Vista will install correctly.
 
Brian Boyko said:
I agree with many of your points, except this. If anything, I tried to contain my comparisons between Linux and Windows to the XP version except where such comparisons to Vista were inevitable - the Desklets vs. Gadgets vs. Widgets example, for example. Other than that, I tried not to make value judgments about Vista because I haven't evaluated Vista.
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The comment you've objected to there wasn't a criticism of your article. It was a reflection upon subsequent comments made after the article was published, and how those contributed to responses in the thread. I'm not claiming that such was the intent of your subsequent comments either. I simply reflected upon how they came across to me as a reader, and put forward a suggestion that they had contributed to some comment made by another member here.

None of my comments have been criticisms of you personally or of the article you have written. Any mention I've made which refers to you by name does so in the context of acknowledging you as a 'face' of [H]ard. I've responded to comments made by others in a manner which examines the article as an entity in the context of an environment. I'm pretty sure that Jason has picked up on that, and I sincerely hope that you do too.

Or in other words, I don't care if reading the article helped you come to the decision to try Linux or come to the decision to stay away from Linux, so long as the article helped you come to an informed decision. ...

If I have failed to do so, I still hope that the article contains value and presents what is a fair look at Linux, where the inevitable subjectivity has been kept to a minimum.
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Definitely provides informative value and its 'subjective' aspects are, as you say, unavoidable.

Expecting otherwise would be unreasonable. This ain't 'science'. We're talking about the personal preferences of people, and how people come to establish and hold those preferences. Anybody reading such content needs to do so both objectively and subjectively. If they don't then as a reader they are not doing themselves justice. Your conclusions are your own, and before any reader can reasonably adopt them some subjective asessments of the discourse need to be made. The reader necessarily needs to make a judgement about your motives and tolerance levels, and weigh those up against his or her own.


That's also the conundrum we face when trying to write to a target audience. Any assumption we make about our target audience is itself a subjective assessment. I've referred to that above, but a couple of anecdotal examples would be beneficial to somebody or other. These are experiences I've encountered today.

The first was a gamer type fellow who is into overclocking, tweaking and the full gamut of "get down and dirty" fiddlings with his system. The sort of fellow who you'd think of as falling well within the target audience of this website.

His concern? He'd just installed Vista and he was venting his outrage that there was no driver support for the TV card he uses in a HTPC. For goodness sake! Surely even the tamest of tweakers would realise that you need to check whether or not one of the most important components in a specialised system was supported BEFORE laying down the dollars? Apparently not :confused:

The second was what we've heard described as a "Joe Average" type of fellow. He doesn't normally do much in the way of "get down and dirty" because his focus on and purpose for his machine is productivity.

His concern? A bit of discipline extended toward a teenage daughter had resulted in the spoiled offspring fiddling with the household system in such a way that he was left with limited access which was time-limited to only allow him a few minutes of very restricted access before he was booted out! After seeking and obtaining advice he got busy learning about the necessary procedures for reclaiming his full access, and putting them into practice, before addressing what further measures he needs to adopt and implement from now on. The fact that it isn't work he'd normally take was no impediment when a practical reason for undertaking it presented to him.

Does that make the second fellow 'hardcore' and the first fellow not? Nope. Not at all. Those are simply examples of instances where stereotypes don't apply, and such examples are not by any means uncommon.



My own, personal reaction to the article? Thoroughly enjoyed reading it and was left in no doubt that I'd not need to install the thing and thus undergo the necessary learning curve anytime in the forseeable future. that was a subjective conclusion though, of course :D
 
After the LAN I am hosting this weekend I will give it another go, but can you expand on this bash-script you speak of?

eeyrjmr said:
if you are serious about getting WoW working it will run fine with WINE (actually better then Cedega) as long as you pass it the -opengl flag to the exe

There is a quick bash-script that re-nices wine as well to make it run better but WoW is one game that runs extreamly well via WINE

it is just a shame they don't release a native client, I mean it is written in OGL so most of the work is done
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cyr0n_k0r said:
I don't feel singled out. Why would I want help making it work? If I can't even get to the INSTALL screen then there is no point. With all of Window's flaws, bugs, holes, etc, it still manages to at the very least install itself without major problems.

Obviously linux STILL isn't ready for "power users" like the article claims.
A "power user" to me is not someone who just has a mid-range system like the editor.. but someone with advanced components. Take me for example, I run 2 7800GT's powering 3 monitors. I don't game or use SLI, but linux can't even make 1 graphic card work correctly let alone 2.

The point of my post is this, if I have to troubleshoot and "make work" before the software can even install itself, I can't even imagine the problems I would have even if it did install. I'd rather go and get Vista. It looks just as pretty as linux and at least Vista will install correctly.
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Just a couple quick notes. Linux with the binary nvidia drivers does SLI just fine. It also does multiple monitors just fine. Depending upon the distro and install method it usually just takes a little TLC to get working. Obviously you are not looking for help (like already mentioned) but I figured others should know this.

Ubuntu 6.10 picks up my two 215TW's just fine, although after an install I do have to change the resolution on the second monitor (which is usually set at 1024 x 768).
 
Not for power users heh.. Sounds to me like an id10t issue not a power user issue.

I can install with no problem fedora/ubuntu/arch
asus a8n32-sli "amd x2"
2x 7800gtx
3x 21 inch monitors
audigy 2
2 gigs of ram.
Raid 0 scsi drives

The install screen comes right up on every distro. I've installed every distro and run across all the screens no problem. One would think if you simply followed the directions thats listed for every distro on their wiki you would have 0 problems with an install.

As far as gaming is concerned WINE = WOW performance faster then windows. Wine also runs many many games and is much faster then cedega. Overall linux isn't for everyone. However I've taken people with simple computer skills like my mom and she has no problems using linux to the same abilities she used windows.
 
cyr0n_k0r said:
I don't feel singled out. Why would I want help making it work? If I can't even get to the INSTALL screen then there is no point. With all of Window's flaws, bugs, holes, etc, it still manages to at the very least install itself without major problems.

Obviously linux STILL isn't ready for "power users" like the article claims.
A "power user" to me is not someone who just has a mid-range system like the editor.. but someone with advanced components. Take me for example, I run 2 7800GT's powering 3 monitors. I don't game or use SLI, but linux can't even make 1 graphic card work correctly let alone 2.

The point of my post is this, if I have to troubleshoot and "make work" before the software can even install itself, I can't even imagine the problems I would have even if it did install. I'd rather go and get Vista. It looks just as pretty as linux and at least Vista will install correctly.
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I totally agree - Linux looks like it's going to be more of a hassle to set up in your setup than it's really worth. I think you may have better luck if you disconnect two monitors, install on one, then add the other two one at a time, but again - this may not be something worth it for you.

I can't talk about Vista, but I can tell you that XP gave me a devil of a hard time installing it. For some reason Windows XP would not detect my USB keyboard during install; and I'm not the only person to have this problem, and it wasn't solved by a bios update. I eventually broke down and bought a PS/2 keyboard.
 
Brian Boyko said:
I totally agree - Linux looks like it's going to be more of a hassle to set up in your setup than it's really worth. I think you may have better luck if you disconnect two monitors, install on one, then add the other two one at a time, but again - this may not be something worth it for you.

I can't talk about Vista, but I can tell you that XP gave me a devil of a hard time installing it. For some reason Windows XP would not detect my USB keyboard during install; and I'm not the only person to have this problem, and it wasn't solved by a bios update. I eventually broke down and bought a PS/2 keyboard.
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Doesn't matter how many monitors you have plugged in when doing a linux installation. It doesn't work like that.Xorg is a modular design you can have 5 monitors plugged in, however the installer is generally setup just for one using a hardware detect script that just gets you started with the basics. It doesn't start by trying to get you setup with 5 monitors before the os is even installed. I guess I shouldn't be surprised with "new things" people are always scared and bash before they really try. I always find allot of bs"I guess you can call computer legends" and people talking out of their behind"

As for your keyboard issue. Linux would probably fix that if its in fact just not a broken keyboard.
 
maveric7911 said:
As for your keyboard issue. Linux would probably fix that if its in fact just not a broken keyboard.
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Considering that the situation described is one in which a system BIOS is incapable of communictaing with a USB keyboard, thus rendering the keyboard inaccessible until after the OS (and USB drivers) are installed and consequently rendering the installation impossible, I highly doubt that it would ;)
 
The linux installers load up pretty much a full kernel set with the usb drivers already compiled in there. Any new distro cd should contain the proper drivers for a usb keyboard. Thats not to say all distros would, but the more newb ones ubuntu/mandriva/fedora ect should contain those from the get go. This is even more relevent on distros that do their installations off a live cd "which is a full working linux distro while your doing the actual installation" Not all that different then if you where installing windows from inside of a full windows installation.
 
OK. Cool.

It'sa not really a problem which exists any more unless people are using really, really old hardware but....

Cool nevertheless, even if only as a novelty.
 
maveric7911 said:
As for your keyboard issue. Linux would probably fix that if its in fact just not a broken keyboard.
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I think people may have misinterpereted me.

The keyboard detected perfectly in Linux, but it wouldn't detect during the Windows XP install.
 
Thats probably downto how XP handles USB (I do not know if it is fixed in Vista)

When logging into XP-Pro at work I have to wait for the mouse and keyboard (both USB) to actually become active and this is staring at the CTRL-ALT-DEL login screen, All because USB drivers are loaded at a different point

Linux loads them pretty early on (if module-based) or USB-access is avail straight away if in the kernel
 
Hey all.

There seems to be a little bit of confusion here about distributions and Linux itself. As an OS, linux is a loosely knit garment indeed -- it's core is the linux kernel, which is developed by one team, and modified by many more. On top of the kernel run many user-level programs that are provided by distinctly different groups of developers. The entire system as a whole is generally referred to as "Linux," but just what goes onto a particular linux system varies widely, and is inconsistent between and even within distributions. That is of course a major benefit of Linux, as there is almost always someone working on a free, open source improvement for a given component.

But it's also the reason things are generally so hard to do in linux compared to windows. In windows, cyr0n_k0r's many monitors would not have done anything during the install process and then could be configured through window's interfaces, from within the OS. That's a far cry better than what happened when cyr0n_k0r booted the Ubuntu CD, agreed.
cyr0n_k0r said:
Thats it. Never again will I try linux.
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But the Ubuntu boot CD has nothing to do with Linux -- it's just one medium for a convienient transferral of packages, usually already compiled, onto the hard drive.

Enter the role of the Distribution. cyr0n_k0r didn't realize before returning to his simple, virus-ridden windows world that various instances Ubuntu install process is not the first place all linux-anything developers check to make sure things work properly. Developers look at results while running on up-to-date linux systems that have been configured for the hardware. Then the Distribution takes their code, probably compiles it into executable programs and libraries, bundles it up in packages of some kind generally, and then releases them, usually by means of some package managing utility and a database that can be synced with a recent version online. Traditionally, this stuff then gets crammed onto a set of CDs, onto which also go a rather lacking linux system that the first CD boots into, and a simple installation utility. The CD images are usually also available for download, due to the wonders of the GNU Public License and the vision open source movement. Nowadays some distributions offer LiveCDs in addition to or instead of the traditional install cds, which provides a robust working linux system to use throughout the install process. They need to be configured for all possible hosts at once, and so are generally a bit fickle, and testy when paired with the newest or unusual hardware, because their systems are generally a bit out of date.

A distribution is not linux. made by a particular distribution is not representative of all LiveCDs, all installers, or all distributions, and certainly not linux in general.

cyr0n_k0r has already made his decision, but many others may be interested by the consideration of what a logical course of action would be if the windows XP (not familiar with vista's) installer should fail. Perhaps that's why you have to boot off the CD, then off the Hard drive as windows is installed, and as the installation programs are evidently copied from the CD to the hard drive. The windows installation process seems pretty convoluted. It does however run on all computers. If it didn't, what would a windows guru do to overcome the problem? I don't know -- I'm not sure there is such a thing as a windows guru at any rate ; ).

Anyone linux-savvy could have easily gotten around cyr0n_k0r's issue in Linux though. In fact, Gentoo's installation process is so transparent that you can do it from any linux-like OS. You could probably even install from windows if you wanted to pull lots of dependency strings. You certainly don't have to boot off of a particular installation CD to install Gentoo. To some degree, that's true of any installation -- you just need to put the right files in the right place. However, hacking your way through the problems that arise is actually generally feasible in linux, whereas in windows you'd probably just reach for the XP installation CD...

The topic of OS installation is a great example of how Linux is different from Windows -- it provides supreme configurability, at the expense of a need to configure ; )

People don't use Linux because the install process is so enjoyable -- but I bet a lot of people do enjoy not having to waste 36% of their system resources on protecting the operating system itself, one of the most complicated and expensive programs that they're likely to own, from malware. I bet they also are fond of their 64 bit hardware drivers. I personally like the high performance, stable and easy networking (since forever ago), reliability, and ease of fixing problems that do arise. Linux has much to offer, and windows deserves to loose it's stranglehold on the commodity PC market. However, there's nobody arguing that it's easier than windows .. just that it's better ; ) If you aren't up to the challenge, you can be one of the people keeping Norton afloat instead. Those people deserve their income too i guess.

PS - it's no surprise that games perform better with DirectX than openGL -- it's what the game developers tailor their games for. It's hard to get momentum for commercial support of linux gaming, given the incompatible current state of affairs in the gaming community and industry. Oh, and by the way, Cedega actually uses wine, and supports OpenGL too if done properly.
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Posted thanks to lack of variation on the part of, rather than on behalf of, Freaze_or_bUrN
 
Hey folks,

As an update, Brian was recently interviewed in the New York Times Tech Talk podcast, which you can find here. You'll have to register, but it's free and easy.
 
Also, I've found a video editing program that is much easier to use than Kino, though it's not yet fully developed. It's called KDenLive and I'm using it to marry some Rifftrax I bought with some movies I own.
 
I remember you stopping by on IRC when you were starting (in case you remember 'slavik' is my nick).

There’s ultimately no reason why Linux can’t be used as a platform for game development – Quake 4 proves that. But the problem is that people aren’t making games for Linux, and there’s a very limited native library.
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I have to strongly disagree with you there (about the point on native libraries). There is a project called MesaGL which works on providing an implementation of OpenGL for Linux/Unix and the only reason why it is not 'the official Linux implementation' is because the guy writing it never bothered to get the certificate from the OpenGL board. Besides OpenGL (which is for graphics only, like Direct3D), there is a general library available (for windows, too) called SDL (Simple Direct media Layer) which provides audio, controller input, its own graphics (OGL can be used with SDL). Reason I say this is because I have written apps that use SDL and OpenGL. Also, SDL is geared towards game development. :)

Another thing that I feel you should've mentioned in the article is that using Automatix is heavily discouraged by the community. When I say heavily, I'd rather walk someone through an hour long wiki page than a single click with Automatix (it leaves garbage around).

As for games, since you had limited time and limited list of games, here is a more extensive list of what will run antively.
UT2k4 and any mods that run on the engine (UT2k7 suppsoed also will run antively). I ahve the DVD edition, so all I did was insert CD and run the isntaller script on the DVD which installed to default location (gives ability to change) without problems. Lineage2 uses Unreal Engine.

Doom3and mods. I can't confirm this since I misplaced the 1CD from my box (will have to borrow it), Q4 uses the Doom3 engine, so no surprise. ;)

Quake3 is another game I don't have but many games are also based on this engine and the only thing that would be needed is a native compilation for Linux.

There are also lots of other fun games for Linux, like Armagetron (helps during boring classes), Planet Penguin Racer, Liquidwar, Globulation, Tetravex (unique puzzle game), Mines (^.^), and many others ...

As for Wine, there is one point in which you are somewhat mistaken. Wine does not provide code anymore to Cedega, here's the hsitory. :)
-Wine is developed and released under BSD license (allows you to do anythign with code)
-WineX (Cedega) is released based on Wine code with enhancements which were not given back to the community.
-new versions of Wine are released under GPL license that would force Transgaming (developer of WineX/Cedega) to release their modifications to Wine code under same license. Transgaming takes the last available Wine code under BSD and uses it as a base for Cedega (renamed at this time from WineX because of licensing issues).

This is the reason why I would discourage Cedega. Code Weaver's Crossover office though is not geared towards making games play (like Cedega), but is geared mroe towards getting office software running as flawlessly as possible (MS Office, Wordperfect Office, etc.). CodeWeavers (company behind Crossover Office) is the employer of one of the develoeprs of Wine (might be lead developer, but I'm not sure).

As for Wine, I have WoW working perfectly but with a performance penalty. WoW can be made to run in antive mode in Linux (OS X isn't too different), but Blizzard needs to wake up for that to happen.

Steam bawsed HL/HL2 engine based games work very well (although for some reason the sound doesn't work for me atm, will need to tinker).

Here is an interesting case where something doesn't work but you get to learn something.
At work, I am the only person using Linux on his workstation. Recently, I decided to re-partition my drive (single 160GB SATA drive) because I had 2 Ubuntu installations with 2 of everything (which isn't exactly clean, it's best to have a single /boot directory, a single /home, and multiple / for the diff installations). After installing the latest Edgy Eft (6.10), my system would not boot up. The kernel would start loading and at one point it would just stop. The reason for this is because it could not mount the root partition ("/") which contains all the scripts and programs.
What Linux does is in the /dev (the directory is not really on a hard drive) directory are all the device descriptors. IDE hard drives are listed as hd@# (where @ is a lower case letter a-z and # is a number 1-9), the letter tells you the order of the physical drives (primary master gets 'a') and the number is the number of the partition on the drive (although it is possible to skip numbers). When the kernel boots, it is given an option 'root=' with the path to the device descriptor which tells it which drive to read from as the master drive, which contains rules for mounting file systems (/etc/fstab) and start up scripts (/etc/init.d/, they are ran according to diff runlevels /etc/rcR.d/ where R represents the runlevel, directory for each runlevel contains links to the scripts in init.d). The isntaller when generating the argument to the option put /dev/hda1 as it should've ... on a regular system. My system has a SATA drive which is mapped as a SCSI drive which receive sd@# descriptors instead (this is only the naming that differs to allow you to tell the type of drive and such, there is no problem with a SATA drive having an hda named descriptor). The solution was simple, boot up with the LiveCD (I use Knoppix for such operations since it is designed to be a LiveCD distribution) and changed the argument in the proper file (/boot/grub/menu.lst), this allwoed my system to boot.

This is where I would like to point out a downfall of Windows, should something like this happen with Windows, 'fixmbr' is the only thing allowing you to fix the boot record, whereas with Linux, you can take the drive, mount it in another Linux system and fix it from there (without needing a LiveCD).

keep in mind:
/boot, /dev, /proc - even though they are under the root directory (name of which is an empty string) are not really on the hard drive under /. /boot is actually the MBR of the drive, /dev gets generated when the kernel loads (it scans for devices and assigns proper descriptors to them) and /proc is also generated.

/proc - contains plaintext files like cpuinfo, meminfo which together are the basics of WCPUID and CPU-Z.

Also note that Ubuntu installs memtest86 by default. memtest86 is actually based on Linux (this is why you can't read the memtest86 floppy after putting the image there, because the file system is different).
 
Hey Slavik. Glad to see you remember me :)

By "Native Library" I meant "There aren't a whole bunch of commercial games meant to be run natively in a Windows partition," not "There's are no programming libraries which Linux developers can use."

Sorry if the wording caused confusion.
 
first off, nice review, enjoyed it and it was quite coincedental that i missed this article just a few days ago when i decided to go with Ubuntu on a very old extremely budget machine i was piecing together for my wife to surf the web and do research on, all the parts were free, either closet dwelling hand-me-downs from relatives or friends combined with an old part or two from my closet

Socket 478 Celeron 2.0A CPU

384Mb PC2100 memory

Asus P4GE-V motherboard, Intel i845GE chipset (utilizing onboard sound, video, and NIC)

installed on a 6Gb partition on a old IDE HDD, 60Gb 7200rpm Barracuda to be exact. had initially installed on a 3.2Gb old 5400rpm HDD because the FAQ lists 2Gb free space as the requirement.....unfortunately, once it tried to download and install 278 updates, it ran out of disk space

what was nice was that every piece of hardware from the onboard NIC, audio, and video to the CD-rom and DVD-rom drives all worked right from the word go, no need to download ANY drivers

system runs a tad slower than i would like, but this particular CPU and mobo and memory set happened to be a set i was running some years ago, gave to my brother in law, who just handed it back to me recently, so i knew what it would do as far as a stable overclock, so it is running 2.6Ghz right now, will do 2.8Ghz, but not really necessary, the jump from 2.0 to 2.6Ghz made the machine snappy enough, quite pleased

two things directed me towards Ubuntu or Linux in general, FREE and ABLE TO RUN ON SLOW SYSTEMS, and it does both well

for anyone interested in reviving an old dinosaur of a PC like this one, and not going to be gaming (lets face it, one would never plan to game on a machine like this anyways), read up and jump on in

you just have to be willing to put up with a bit of a learning curve as the author mentioned, but the pay off was worth it so far

looking forward to 7.04 Feisty Fawn soon, the only thing i havent tried on Edgy Eft yet is a wireless network card, but Newegg has already shipped one to me, an RaLink RT61 chipset based card made by Gigabyte for $19.99 with free shipping and reportedly works on Linux; based on Ubuntu forum posts as well as Newegg product feedback.

If things keep getting better with time, I won't ever buy another Microsoft OS again, i have my 360 for gaming and HDDVD playback (gave up PC gaming a long time ago, seems to come with crossing that 30yr old mark and having a family to care for and a job that travels my butt more than anyone i know, although i do keep a copy of Guild Wars on the laptop for those long nights in the hotel), all i need a PC to do is be productive with Office apps, email, and web surfing and Linux fits the bill quite well!:D
 
nobody_here, you might consider trying out xubunutu on the older machine. It should be a bit easier on resources than ubuntu and still use the gtk toolset if you've become used to those apps primarily.
 
/boot is actually the MBR of the drive,
Click to expand...

Just to clarify. /boot is not part of the MBR. It is simply where most linux distributions mount the partition for the boot loader and kernel(s). /boot is just a partition on your hard drive. You can allocate as big a partition as you like. It really doesn't matter. Generally though, you want to use ext2.

The bootloader itself (a small program that tells the computer how to boot up a particular OS) lives on the MBR. There are two main boot loaders found in for linux based OSs. LILO and Grub. These two differ slightly in configuration and usability but in the end provide the same service. LILO, what in my opinion is the lesser of the two, has everything compiled into it (even the configuration). Once built LILO needs to be installed to the MBR. Every time you wish to alter your configuration, you must recompile LILO and reinstall it to the MBR. Annoying :)

Grub on the other hand installs its executable to the MBR once. When grub is run at boot time it reads configuration files found in /boot. This has the added benefit of being able to adjust the configuration files without having to reinstall Grub every time. Much easier to maintain, and much more elegant.

/boot is simply just a mount point for the boot partition (generally I use /dev/hda1) When you install grub to the MBR you tell it which partition is your boot partition. The only reason /boot exists is so you can edit the config files from the OS, and update the kernel.

I generally do not have /boot mounted ;)

Also another thing about the firefox page rendering slow. Firefox uses something called Pango to render font and antialiasing of font. Pango in older versions basically caused everything to render REALLY slowly. The solution is to disable pango. There are a few ways to do that. One) edit the environment variable before starting Firefox (MOZ_NOPANGO=1). Two) edit the firefox executable script to automatically do this for you. Three) Update pango to the latest version.

About the browser names. Firefox, the name, refers to the binary that Mozilla compiles and ships. Because of licensing anyone who compiles firefox on their own cannot use the name Firefox. Hence you see names like IceWeasle, Swiftfox, etc. This simply means that Mozilla did not compile your particular build of firefox.

And for cyr0n_k0r:
I run a 5 display system on Gentoo linux daily. In fact, the Gentoo system itself only has 4 displays, the 5th is a Windows machine that I hooked up via synergy. That means I can use the windows box and linux box with ONE keyboard, one mouse, and copy paste items from one to the other. Naturally I can't drag windows to from computer to computer, but hey I'm ok with that :) Mouse moves fluidly from display to display as if it was a single 5 display machine.

You may ask why I do this. The reason? None really I was bored and had 5 displays :p All it takes is a few additional lines in the xorg.conf file :p

Anyway, for anyone who wants to get to know linux, the Gentoo Forums are by far the best place to get help (through searching and seeing how others solved the problem). While you may use a different distribution, I find the general Gentoo community to be .. well smarter than others :p

IMO, if you use linux, you need to know all the "scary" things about it. You don't realize just how powerful an OS it is until you have the ability to unlock it.

As for Copy Paste, I've always prefered the Unix style copy/paste that Linux employs (Highlight/middle click = Copy/paste) Much faster. And if you still like you can do the ctrl+c and ctrl+v thing....

BTW: I despise ubuntu :) I'd use Debian instead. Might as well go with the real deal instead of the watered down one :)
 
i wonder if Jason has stuck w/linux and kept using it for the last 2-3 years =). would LOVE to hear what Linux usage is like after TWO years w/it instead of just 30 days =)
 
Wow... thread necromancy in action, and I was here to see it!!! :D

necromancer.png


Almost 2.5 years since the last post... that's gotta be a new record!!! hehe

Just kidding, just kidding, couldn't pass up the opportunity, and yes I realize the content of Jedi's post is relevant, actually. Now I'm curious myself to know how the long term usage, if Jason even uses Linux anymore.
 
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