Anyone here running Linux? (Ubuntu, Fedora, RedHat, etc.)

[Rudy]

I just downloaded the ISO image for Ubuntu 9.04, and tried it out on my computer. (With the LiveCD feature, you can boot into the Ubuntu OS and try it out without installing it, or doing anything to your hard disk.) I was quite impressed with it this time around, and wrote a little piece about it at Rudy's Corner. It's quite user friendly, especially the installation routine, which gives you the option for dual-booting with Windows XP. It's a solid alternate OS, and anyone who's familiar with WinXP or even OS-X would find themselves at home.

Anyone else here running any of the *nix variants out there?

 

[KentTeffeteller]

Rudy,

I am experimenting with BSD Free. Unix goodness. I am an old hand at Unix and it is working well. Will experiment with Ubuntu!

 

[Rudy]

Our web servers use FreeBSD. I had quite a crash course in using FreeBSD when I first got our hosting account way back in 1997...and now I'm actually not too bad at finding my way around. At the command line, *nix totally smokes anything DOS every came up with, especially with the hundreds of utilities installed in a typical *nix operating system.

Linux is similar enough that I can find my way around. I still have some hiccups with Ubuntu (as I have it installed as a secondary/backup OS on two computers), but it has come a long way since the first time I tried installing FreeBSD on an old spare computer about eight years ago.

 

[KentTeffeteller]

I am running Ubuntu presently. Version 12.something. And it is stable and working well. I like Ubuntu. I am running it on an Asus laptop currently.

 

[Vinylalbumcovers]

This is late but I run Ubuntu 12.10. For lighyweight stuff, it works great. For video anything, failure. FYI

Ed

 

[Rudy]

I keep Ubuntu around as a backup (I can run it from a "live" CD), but after a couple of mishaps on computers here at the house, I uninstalled it on both. It's no wonder the corporate world does not take it seriously as a desktop OS: I found I had to fiddle with settings more than I did actually using it, and you can't get anything but open source applications to run on it. (Using a Windows emulator is not acceptable--even that only works part of the time.)

As for lightweight versions of Linux on devices, though, I've had decent luck. My router is running it, as are the WDTV Live and WD MyBook Live devices. It opens up the door to a lot of customization.

 

[Vinylalbumcovers]

My brother is totally hooked on Linux in all of it's forms. He's running Mint and he loves it to death. He loves to tinker; I need to get stuff done. For his desires, it's great; for my needs, not so much. I wouldn't dare do any mastering projects on it and, as I mentioned earlier, video creation and editing was a totally headache. Check please...

Ed

 

[Rudy]

I'd have to agree--I have a lot of software on Windows I use, none of which has a competent Linux replacement. Example--any time I mention Photoshop, someone throws Gimp at me...and it's lame in comparison. Very lame. None of the office suites are much good either--fine for basic work, but missing the features and usability I'm used to. There are some attractive features to it, but it will never gain mass acceptance until they tackle the underlying problems with it being so "tweaky". Not that anyone should ever install any OS without tweaking it, but I still remember the dozen or so hours I spent trying to get one of the computers here to work with the wireless mouse and keyboard, the weeks (on and off) I spent trying to get another computer to display at the correct screen resolution, and the hurdles I had to jump through in order to even attempt to upgrade Chrome to a new version. Until simple things like this are made as easy as in other OSes, Linux will be a desktop failure for the masses.

As a server though (command line or SSH access, without the graphical interface), Linux is great! Our site here is run on Ubuntu, and our host tested it against FreeBSD and found some disk operations to be almost twice as fast, which is important in heavy database usage. Ubuntu seems to need more patches than FreeBSD, but I certainly can't knock the performance at all!

On the other hand, until I went for certification training on Windows networking, I never knew that there was a version of Server 2008 called "core" that is also only command-line based. With that or the full version, though, Server is a complex beast--very powerful, very flexible, but complex. Nothing a dumb-as-rocks admin such as myself could tackle without some schoolin'.

 

[Vinylalbumcovers]

I use LibreOffice on my Mac and I'm fine with it. I cannot work with graphics easily at all (try inserting a formatting a pic) but as an office program, it isn't bad at all. It certainly makes more sense than spending a million dollars on Microsoft Office.

Ed

 

[Rudy]

I can get Office for under $100, but that's an "academic" discount I get...

I wish Adobe's products were cheaper though. An entire Creative Suite is a bank buster, even with the discount!

 

[Vinylalbumcovers]

Adobe's pricing is criminal. I grabbed Audition and it wasn't cheap. I won't buy full Photoshop (I actually like Elements better and I only like Elements 6; the updates are awful). DreamWeaver wasn't cheap either and, in retrospect, I wish I hadn't bought it. I could do what I do in a cheaper program. Oh well; live and learn....

Oh yeah, and their tech support is lousy too...

Ed