My knowledge on Linux is fairly limited and I'd like to start using it. I'm considering making a Linux partition on my desktop hard drive.
I just have a few questions?
1. What advantages does Linux have over other operating systems. The easiest way to answer this question would be by saying "well, it's open source". Well how does that benefit the user?
2. There are so many versions of Linux, which one should I install and why?
3. Are there a lot of applications available for Linux or will I be making a sacrifice by using the OS?
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@Wolverine: You would probably be well-served by explaining how you use your current OS and what stuff do you want to be able to do.
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Sure, well I use Windows to rip and stream my movie collection (mkv packages), write Java programs, and play games on Steam. I use Macintosh manly for Adobe Create Suite.
@Wolverine: Where to start? I'd say, you should acquire a computer of some sort...
1. It's neither Windows nor Mac OS
2. Any "server" edition from any distribution, they're GUI-less, so you're gonna look like you're intelligent, until you'll want to do something, then it's gonna be a disaster.
3. Yeah, plenty, but how many work or can be use by someone else than it's programmer... that's an entire other problem.
Despite the humorous tone, there's still som (a lot?) of truth here. I don't really see any reason why someone would use Linux over Win/Mac other than it's free. Or to make a very specific device (router, server, media box...)
Despite the humorous tone, there's still som (a lot?) of truth here. I don't really see any reason why someone would use Linux over Win/Mac other than it's free. Or to make a very specific device (router, server, media box...)
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I just want to use it out of curiosity. Not necessarily as my main OS.
@Wolverine: Then I'd say just try a live version. You just create a dedicated thumb drive with persistence... and you're good to go! By the way, persistence would be creating a second partition that you can use to write on. I'd recommend Ubuntu, because I got it to work very easily, and if I got it to work, anybody can. Plus it's all explained step by step. pretty easy.
@Wolverine: You should start off with the fundamentals. Don't install a GUI, focus on learning the command shell. It will be a very rewarding experience. Which distribution you use will be a controversial topic, but for someone interested in learning, Arch and Gentoo are good picks.
There aren't really any usability benefits to using Linux (and when I say "Linux", I mean Linux+GNU+distro+etc) as a desktop OS over Windows or OS X. The main thing is that you can legally use it without having to pay any money for a license, and it's highly customizable. A major advantage over OS X is that Linux can be run on all sorts of different hardware, with fairly high compatibility (although that was not the case only a few years ago).
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@Wolverine: Then I'd say just try a live version. You just create a dedicated thumb drive with persistence... and you're good to go! By the way, persistence would be creating a second partition that you can use to write on. I'd recommend Ubuntu, because I got it to work very easily, and if I got it to work, anybody can. Plus it's all explained step by step. pretty easy.
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@CROM said:
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@Wolverine: You should start off with the fundamentals. Don't install a GUI, focus on learning the command shell. It will be a very rewarding experience. Which distribution you use will be a controversial topic, but for someone interested in learning, Arch and Gentoo are good picks.There aren't really any usability benefits to using Linux (and when I say "Linux", I mean Linux+GNU+distro+etc) as a desktop OS over Windows or OS X. The main thing is that you can legally use it without having to pay any money for a license, and it's highly customizable. A major advantage over OS X is that Linux can be run on all sorts of different hardware, with fairly high compatibility (although that was not the case only a few years ago).
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Thanks for the recommendations. Would you say that there are a variety of applications available? Also, how is the Java compatibility?
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@Wolverine: You should start off with the fundamentals. Don't install a GUI, focus on learning the command shell. It will be a very rewarding experience. Which distribution you use will be a controversial topic, but for someone interested in learning, Arch and Gentoo are good picks."
You're a hoot!
@Wolverine: I don't think there's anything to worry about...
1. The main advantage of a Linux box is that is very easy to customize for a specific singular kind of purpose. For instance as a mail server, a DHCP server, a streaming server. Of course you can do these in different operating systems, but usually that costs a lot more money. People like to claim that it's more customizable, but I haven't found that to be the case. Most of the time the extra "customization" that Linux offers are things that you shouldn't really want to change anyways (or only need to change in the most extreme circumstances) or are actually customizable on other systems but people just aren't aware that they are.
2. I would suggest either Ubuntu or Debian. Ubuntu is a good place to start because it is most similar to other OS such as Windows or OS. Debian because its very stable and forces you to deal with the more common Linux idioms that Ubuntu hides. I know some people suggest the "trial by fire" approach of just going in with a shell and no GUI, but I find that to not be effective a lot of the time. Turns out that a "trial by fire" isn't always the best way to learn things (in fact in most cases it's not).
3. As people have noted, it depends on what you are doing. You mentioned Steam games.... well that's probably a no go. Steam can be emulated through a Windows emulator on Linux, but it won't be a pretty picture. Other things such as playing video/music and Java programming are easy to do on Linux. (One of the selling points of Java is that it is cross-platform) Overall there are plenty of programs available for Linux to do most of the common things you may want to do on a PC, but expect to run into one or two programs that you just can't find an alternative to.
Normally I wouldn't suggest using Linux as your main OS, but it seems like you just want to use it to play around and learn more about tech concept.
If you aren't using it as your main system, you probably wont run into any problems. Like I said you may hit one or two things that you can't do on Linux, but overall you will be fine.
A good place to start is picking up Ubuntu or Debian and just go head first into it. I wouldn't start off with anything crazy like a console only distro, or a distro where you have to compile the kernel, or things like that.
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My knowledge on Linux is fairly limited and I'd like to start using it. I'm considering making a Linux partition on my desktop hard drive.
I just have a few questions? 1. What advantages does Linux have over other operating systems. The easiest way to answer this question would be by saying "well, it's open source". Well how does that benefit the user? 2. There are so many versions of Linux, which one should I install and why? 3. Are there a lot of applications available for Linux or will I be making a sacrifice by using the OS?
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1. There really aren't any advantages to using Linux until you're very familiar with it, learn how to set everything up properly with minimal bloat... After that, it will be the fastest and most stable OS you ever used, you also don't have to worry about viruses, malware, spyware or anything, not that Linux is immune to all that nasty stuff, but you have the advantage of "security through obscurity", meaning that it's not popular enough for people to be writing viruses, malware and spyware for it.
2. It depends what you want really, do you want something you can just set up and use, as in very user friendly? Or do you want to mess around and learn the fundamentals of Linux, how everything works, what makes it tick and so on?
For good, easy and extremely user friendly distros, I'd recommend any of the Ubuntu (Debian) derived distros, such as Linux Mint (my personal favorite for an extremely user friendly distro) or Ubuntu itself. Personally, I don't like Ubuntu due to how bloated it is, it's gotten to the point where its sluggish even on newer systems... Linux Mint is fairly lightweight (for a "pretty" GUI based distro with many UI customization options), that's the main reason I recommend it to new users...
If you actually want to learn the basics and even more advanced stuff but still want a GUI based distro, CROM pretty much read my mind with Arch Linux and Gentoo, there is also Slackware, CRUX, Debian, OpenSUSE... Any of those will help you learn, because in order to use them, you must learn how to set them up properly, no better way to learn than to dive right in. But out of all of those, the one that is going to teach you the most in the least time (but be warned, it can be frustrating for new users) is Slackware... It's not called "the learning distro" for nothing.
3. Yes, there are tons of applications available, you have an application manager where you can search or sort through a huge collection of free / open source applications on the easier distros... You can find almost everything that is available on Windows in there, or an alternative that may or may not be better than its Windows counterpart... For the more advanced distros, you must know what you're looking for first, then use the "apt-get install XXXXX" command in the terminal...
There is so much info out there that it's a fairly easy task to set up even the most advanced distros these days, and honestly, if you want to learn Linux, that's the best way to go, just dive right in... The best way would obviously be to have more than one PC while you're doing it, the one you're installing Linux on, and the other for research (Google is your best friend in this case). You could also use a VM to get you started, but I prefer doing it the old fashion way...
That's how I learned for the most part (trial and error, tons of research, pulling my hair out of frustration etc...), but it paid off... I'm no expert, far from it actually, but I've learned so much that Linux doesn't intimidate me like it did when I first started using it
I'd recommend downloading a small program called UNetBootin. This will allow download and format a USB drive to give you a live distobution with persistence (at least when choosing an Ubuntu distro) without having to deal with partitioning for a full install. U can see Ubuntu 11.04 and Unity on my blog, and another good source for newcomers to linux is in the Desktop Linux Reviews forum. They're pretty cool guys who both know their linux stuff and are willing to help the newbies as it were. I would recommend Ubuntu 11.04 despite the recent controversy over Unity if you're coming from Windows simply because of the large number of people that use Ubuntu that will be able to help if you run into problems. Linux Mint and Fedora in that order are my other go to distros. I can't speak to whether there is quality java IDEs as I've never been much of a programmer :P
@Wolverine: In theory, there should be full Java compatibility. The official JRE from Oracle (had to correct myself there) is usually the most compatible.
In terms of general purpose applications, you should be able to find software for most purposes. Don't expect much in terms of gaming; there are very few native Linux games, so you would have to run Windows games in an emulator which is a terrible experience, as LtSquigs mentioned.
When it comes to multimedia, you should be able to play videos and music just fine (after installing the right applications; I'll point you towards VLC media player), and you have most of the major web browsers available to you (Firefox, Chrome and Opera). When I last tried Adobe's Flash plugin, it was terrible. Not only was the performance atrocious, but it would often lock up my browser.
For office stuff, you have OpenOffice available.
For photo editing, you have GIMP. I'm not familiar with any decent video editing programs for Linux; there probably are some out there, but last time I checked they were all either really early in development, a bitch to compile (no binaries available and an assload of dependencies), or a bit of both. I haven't looked in a while though, so hopefully I'm wrong about that.
@Wolverine: Honestly, if you already have full access to both Windows and Apple OS machines, and you're getting gaming and video and other top-level things out of them, I really don't see the point in going with Linux anything. The only exceptions would be that you want to get a career tech-benefits out of it or just curiosity. I use Linux, but Linux ain't shit compared to the other two major OSs.
If you need an entry level Linux, that is friendly to use and will not give you too many headaches (because all variations of Linux engender headaches at some point) I would suggest Linux Mint. Go with either the XFCE edition or the GNOME edition and stay the fuck away from LXDE and KDE editions. There's also Ubuntu, but Ubuntu starting to fork off and is causing a lot of polarizing factions.
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@Wolverine: You should start off with the fundamentals. Don't install a GUI, focus on learning the command shell. It will be a very rewarding experience.
Might I recommend my 2 favorite resources on topics like these: here and here. If you need a Linux distro to tinker with, just install a bare-bones GUI-less install of Debian. Try setting up a mail server with Postfix. Install kvm and turn your computer into a hypervisor. Make 2 VMs, install Debian on them, then try a load-balanced Apache cluster. Get Tomcat running and host your own Java apps from there. Learn the intricacies of iptables and turn an old computer into a router/firewall. The possibilities are endless.
My advice, from my very limited experience, is don't ask for help. Or rather if you do be prepared to run into the most condescending self-important unhelpful people who will get pleasure from making you feel dumber than a baby still in the womb. I was driven away by the community and have no desire to try again.
@WolfOfOne I didn't mean to generalize, apologies for that, I guess personal issue got in the way. Tested is a great community and people here are indeed helpful, but of the several communities I attempted to participate in as a beginner (both live and online; even those targeted at beginners) I always ran into what I described.
@Wolverine: One of the main selling points of Java is that it runs on a lot of systems. At least that was the major design goal behind making it a byte code based language. Since everything is compiled into byte code and not into machine code, you need only to develop a virtual machine/JIT for your operating system for it to run. At a place I used to work we had a small little virtual machine that fit on a chip that was just a little larger than a watch battery.
@Tangeu: I'm a Linux user and even I have dealt and seen the a-hole behavior of the Linux user-base, esp. the know-it-alls. Linux is filled and made up a lot of decent good people and also a large percentage of asswipes, delusional blowhard fanbois, and mean-spirited techies with no social skills.
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That sounds about right, really. The Ubuntu forums aren't bad, but most other places are one big circlejerk of self-importance.
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Wow, if my memory recalls correctly, a few months ago you were saying how better off a user might be if he went with Fedora or Gentoo in some cases. Then again, maybe I'm only recalling select info. You just seemed to not like Ubuntu and Linux Mint so much a while back in a similar topic thread.
Sure, well I use Windows to rip and stream my movie collection (mkv packages), write Java programs, and play games on Steam. I use Macintosh manly for Adobe Create Suite.
I just want to use it out of curiosity. Not necessarily as my main OS.
There aren't really any usability benefits to using Linux (and when I say "Linux", I mean Linux+GNU+distro+etc) as a desktop OS over Windows or OS X. The main thing is that you can legally use it without having to pay any money for a license, and it's highly customizable. A major advantage over OS X is that Linux can be run on all sorts of different hardware, with fairly high compatibility (although that was not the case only a few years ago).
@CROM said:
Thanks for the recommendations. Would you say that there are a variety of applications available? Also, how is the Java compatibility?
You're a hoot!
1. There really aren't any advantages to using Linux until you're very familiar with it, learn how to set everything up properly with minimal bloat... After that, it will be the fastest and most stable OS you ever used, you also don't have to worry about viruses, malware, spyware or anything, not that Linux is immune to all that nasty stuff, but you have the advantage of "security through obscurity", meaning that it's not popular enough for people to be writing viruses, malware and spyware for it.
2. It depends what you want really, do you want something you can just set up and use, as in very user friendly? Or do you want to mess around and learn the fundamentals of Linux, how everything works, what makes it tick and so on?
For good, easy and extremely user friendly distros, I'd recommend any of the Ubuntu (Debian) derived distros, such as Linux Mint (my personal favorite for an extremely user friendly distro) or Ubuntu itself. Personally, I don't like Ubuntu due to how bloated it is, it's gotten to the point where its sluggish even on newer systems... Linux Mint is fairly lightweight (for a "pretty" GUI based distro with many UI customization options), that's the main reason I recommend it to new users...
If you actually want to learn the basics and even more advanced stuff but still want a GUI based distro, CROM pretty much read my mind with Arch Linux and Gentoo, there is also Slackware, CRUX, Debian, OpenSUSE... Any of those will help you learn, because in order to use them, you must learn how to set them up properly, no better way to learn than to dive right in. But out of all of those, the one that is going to teach you the most in the least time (but be warned, it can be frustrating for new users) is Slackware... It's not called "the learning distro" for nothing.
3. Yes, there are tons of applications available, you have an application manager where you can search or sort through a huge collection of free / open source applications on the easier distros... You can find almost everything that is available on Windows in there, or an alternative that may or may not be better than its Windows counterpart... For the more advanced distros, you must know what you're looking for first, then use the "apt-get install XXXXX" command in the terminal...
There is so much info out there that it's a fairly easy task to set up even the most advanced distros these days, and honestly, if you want to learn Linux, that's the best way to go, just dive right in... The best way would obviously be to have more than one PC while you're doing it, the one you're installing Linux on, and the other for research (Google is your best friend in this case). You could also use a VM to get you started, but I prefer doing it the old fashion way...
That's how I learned for the most part (trial and error, tons of research, pulling my hair out of frustration etc...), but it paid off... I'm no expert, far from it actually, but I've learned so much that Linux doesn't intimidate me like it did when I first started using it
Good luck!
In terms of general purpose applications, you should be able to find software for most purposes. Don't expect much in terms of gaming; there are very few native Linux games, so you would have to run Windows games in an emulator which is a terrible experience, as LtSquigs mentioned.
When it comes to multimedia, you should be able to play videos and music just fine (after installing the right applications; I'll point you towards VLC media player), and you have most of the major web browsers available to you (Firefox, Chrome and Opera). When I last tried Adobe's Flash plugin, it was terrible. Not only was the performance atrocious, but it would often lock up my browser.
For office stuff, you have OpenOffice available.
For photo editing, you have GIMP. I'm not familiar with any decent video editing programs for Linux; there probably are some out there, but last time I checked they were all either really early in development, a bitch to compile (no binaries available and an assload of dependencies), or a bit of both. I haven't looked in a while though, so hopefully I'm wrong about that.
Yeah, Oracle still has the JDK available for Unix even. It seems like Java runs on everything.
Might I recommend my 2 favorite resources on topics like these: here and here.
If you need a Linux distro to tinker with, just install a bare-bones GUI-less install of Debian. Try setting up a mail server with Postfix. Install kvm and turn your computer into a hypervisor. Make 2 VMs, install Debian on them, then try a load-balanced Apache cluster. Get Tomcat running and host your own Java apps from there. Learn the intricacies of iptables and turn an old computer into a router/firewall. The possibilities are endless.
Wow, if my memory recalls correctly, a few months ago you were saying how better off a user might be if he went with Fedora or Gentoo in some cases. Then again, maybe I'm only recalling select info. You just seemed to not like Ubuntu and Linux Mint so much a while back in a similar topic thread.
If you can find it I'll eat crow, but that doesn't sound like something i'd say.
e: Especially the Gentoo bit. I wouldn't wish Gentoo on my worst enemy.