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Linux

18:14 / 27.06.06

I have two or three old computers I really never use. I feel like they're going to waste.

Why should I change them to Linux machines? What could I do with them that I couldn't do with Windows?

Mon Oncle Ignatius

20:18 / 27.06.06

I'm sorry, I've just woken from dozing and wondered for a moment if you had posted the above question in this thread

Ahem.

It depends what you want to do with the old machines.

1) If you have no OS installed on them, then Linux is free. Depending on what the specs of the PCs are, you can also generally choose to install less rather than more if you prefer or need to. There are window managers in Linx such as IceWM which aim to be lighter and faster than the likes of KDE or Gnome. The latter are probably the two most popular choices for Linux front ends, but can fall into similar traps as Windows of being resource-hungry if you let them.

2) User interface aside, Linux is generally far more reliable than Windows, especially the older varietys such as 98 or the hideous ME,. Linux has very few viruses, partly as a reult of the inherent security features of UNIX and its true multi-user file system.

3) Most of the software available for Linux is also free. Pretty much everything you need these days is available, from highly-compatible (in both the sense of reading and writing M$-formats as well as less obvious features such as the ability to save PDFs without using Acrobat Distiller) office suites such as OpenOffice.org to versions of Firefox, Thunderbird etc..

It is also possible, though occasionally tricky, to install various Windows-based games (and other software if need be) and run them via Cedega, as well as Wine, with varying degrees of success.

4) To escape the clutches of Bill Gates.

Mon Oncle Ignatius

20:33 / 27.06.06

What could I do with them that I couldn't do with Windows?

Ah, I don't think I answered this exactly. The short reply is: run them for a year without crashing.

22:02 / 27.06.06

Ooh, and run the wonderful Grip, which is without doubt the best ever utility for CD ripping, which can cope with all those scratched CDs and never gives up, if you tell it to.
It's also very handy if you don't quite get how ftp and all the rest of that Unix-based stuff really works because to use it properly forces you to use the command line. It can also run really well as a stereo, using Xmms.
And it helps you get a handle on how newer Macs REALLY work, what with them basically being Linux-ish systems these days. Just get a copy of something and tinker around. The other neat thing is that most distros run happily with Windows systems these days.

Kiltartan Cross

22:53 / 27.06.06

Ah, I don't think I answered this exactly. The short reply is: run them for a year without crashing.
I have to say, that's not my experience of Linux machines. We use a Linux proxy server (and a couple of other Linux boxes) which are forever falling down and limping in peculiar and hard-to-repeat ways. Moreover I downloaded a whole bunch of Linux distributions a while back to see the differences; none of them installed cleanly on either of the machines I tried 'em on, and I am by no means inexperienced in the ways of recalcitrant software*.

Also, I maintain a bunch of Mac G5s using OS10; they are precisely as reliable as Windows machines, no more, no less. They are certainly not paragons of smooth-running efficiency, nor do they perform particularly better than an equivalent PC.

In my personal opinion, as a user of many different operating systems, Windows XP is slightly superior for general ease of use to OS10 and considerably superior to those Linux front ends I've seen. All the operating systems are about equally reliable in terms of how much you can do to them / how long you can run them before they complain. OS10 and Linux are considerably superior to Windows in terms of security, and considerably inferior in terms of general compatibility with hardware.

But, hell, Linux is free, and there is generally a freeware application for every need, except modern games. Suck it and see, it'll cost you nowt but time.

*(edit) That being said, I downloaded the Vista beta 4 fucking times and ended up with unusable DVDs each time. Wankers.

ONLY NICE THINGS

23:01 / 27.06.06

I have to say that my experience differs. My Tiger-running laptop is more stable than my winXP box, and when I had a Linux box it never fell over at all. However, WinXP is a huge amount more stable than previous Windows OSes, and my WinXP box is regularly asked to do things I would not expect of my Tiger laptop, and with the Linux box - Ubuntu, btw - I just used the bundled applications, so there isn't necessarily a straight comparison at all.

05:16 / 28.06.06

linux will fall over, and it's complete pain for drivers, particularly on laptops. it is fun if you have too much time or are technically minded. all OS's crash - windows has a bad rep but my xp laptop hasn't crashed in a year or so. I do run virus checkers/spyware checkers etc frequently though. My girlfriend has lost 2 harddrives worth of stuff from her powerbook, but that's a hardware problem, not software. osX will crash though - only slightly less than XP, in my experience.

Linux is free, which is good. And you can use a small distro for older machines, which will allow you to make the most of them - particularly if you're thinking of using them as web surfing/office machines, or even as router/server boxes.

18:17 / 28.06.06

The main things I seem to use computers for at home are:

1. Net surfing. Apparently not a problem.

2. Graphics doodling (in a minor way -- I don't even use Photoshop). I kinda doubt this would be an issue.

3. Making music -- both recording audio & managing mp3s/burning CDs.

4. Letting small children play 8-year-old Windows CD ROM games with muppets and reading in them.

It's numbers 3 & 4 that I'm mostly wondering about. Although if anyone knows of any Linux-equivalent to Final Draft (or other screenwriting application), I'd be very interested.

Related to those, how efficient or effective is it to run emulators inside Linux?

Mon Oncle Ignatius

19:50 / 28.06.06

3. Making music -- both recording audio & managing mp3s/burning CDs.

For this I use LMMS (Fruity Loops-style sequencer/sample player), AmaroK (media management system - has some pretty advanced features. It works well with media players like iPods as well) and K3B for burning. Audacity is a useful sound recording and editing programme, also available on Mac OS X.

4. Letting small children play 8-year-old Windows CD ROM games with muppets and reading in them.

I believe there are some but haven't yet looked into them.

Related to those, how efficient or effective is it to run emulators inside Linux?

See WINE above - it has variable results, though has done well with most Windows games I've thrown at it with the Loki installers. Technically (W)ine (I)s (N)ot an (E)mulator, but an API that allows x86 machines to run Windows software on Linux as if it were (semi)-native.

WINE might well do OK for running the sort of CDROM games you mention above, or possibly Cedega. The latter is subscription-based, but pretty cheap. I'd look at what it is known to run ont he list on the Transgaming website first before subscribing though.

ONLY NICE THINGS

20:00 / 28.06.06

I doubt that an 8-year old kids' game is going to need hardware acceleration, so I imagine WINE will do it. Cedega would be more useful for something like Half-Life 2. Speaking of which, could somebody possibly slide a crowbar through the hole this beastie has clawed in the crate I'm hiding in? If you could actually push it _through_ the beastie, that would actually be even better...

Oh God. I can hear another one.

Mon Oncle Ignatius

20:59 / 28.06.06

I doubt that an 8-year old kids' game is going to need hardware acceleration, so I imagine WINE will do it. Cedega would be more useful for something like Half-Life 2.

Very true. I was running HL2 for yonks via Cedega, but it seems to have stopped working with Source engine games for now. Maybe time for Cedega 5.2, actually...

Speaking of which, could somebody possibly slide a crowbar through the hole this beastie has clawed in the crate I'm hiding in? If you could actually push it _through_ the beastie, that would actually be even better...

Sure thing. Hold on a mo.... *greak* [wiggle=wiggle]: ker-plonk. (splatt!) Ok now? Er... hello? HELLO?

julius has no imagination

21:29 / 28.06.06

About the reliability thing: First of all, OSX has been my main system for a while and is absolutely rock solid in my experience. I've seen Linux fall over a fair few times, but given that I usually run it on machines cobbled together from old, dodgy hardware I can't really blame it. The same applies to Windows to some extend - my Windows machine is a badly-maintained homebrew, so I'm not surprised that XP occasionally fails in interesting ways. So yeah, I'll claim that Apple's OS is really stable - but they've got it easier because they control the hardware. And on solid hardware, Linux is incredibly solid as well. And XP is a huge improvement over previous Microsoft OSes...

22:46 / 28.06.06

What about this capacity I've heard about ages ago for networking Linux boxes together into multi-chip supercomputers?

Something way too complicated for the novice fiddler?

00:04 / 29.06.06

I've been in the bidness of 'puters for 10 years of day in and day out user support. Graphics, pre press, websites, data mining, data hoarding, etc etc.

Unix systems have the capacity to be tuned to a sweet mad running machine that purrs under load, does amazing tricks, and in some forms is free. I'm going to be a jerk and lump linux into this category.

Microsoft OS's do very well for some things, users are comfortable having been trained on the UI, and there is a lot of software out there just for them.

The new Mac OS's have a lovely UI that is very accessible and many high end graphic programs are tailored for them.
They are still considered the best graphic desktops.
(Moment of silence for SGI please)
The unixy under carriage of the Mac OS allows it do some very cool things while still having a much more friendly stylish UI.

A tuned maintained Unix server will kick the crap out of a Windows server on most trials. The benchmarks are out there if you need me to go get them. This is because for the most part you can strip a unix server much further down and tune the piss out of it in ways not readily available on a Windows server. More modular.

A non tuned unix desktop is not as user friendly as either a windows or a mac desktop. If you want to get your hands dirty try linux. Keep in mind you can mess it up in spectacular ways and have to start over at the drop of a hat.

An unloved poorily maintained desktop will shit the bed regardless of platform eventually. A server in unkept form will die just when your big break decides to review your website.

If you want to learn the different levels of how desktops work and you are intrigued by the idea of customizing your OS, linux is a great choice. If you want something that just runs and has low security issues Macs are great. If you have been born and breed to the Microsoft empire and like it, then stick to it.

13:47 / 29.06.06

What about this capacity I've heard about ages ago for networking Linux boxes together into multi-chip supercomputers?

Google for "Beowulf cluster". It's not exactly easy to do, and then you have to find something useful to do with it - it's not a way to make one computer out of eight so much as a way to make processing operations faster.

Most of the stuff you can usefully do with ancient machines (file serving, print serving, firewalls) is the more technical, fiddly stuff, alas (IMHO).

julius has no imagination

17:54 / 29.06.06

Most of the stuff you can usefully do with ancient machines (file serving, print serving, firewalls) is the more technical, fiddly stuff, alas (IMHO).

That's true. That said, setting up a fileserver is not too hard (if the machine is fast enough, just install something like Windows 2000 and share the files you want). And it's really nice to have in any multi-computer household (such as your typical student house).

Beowulf clusters are a fun concept, but not something for the faint of heart to attempt, I'd suspect. Especially as they won't just magically run existing software faster - you have to write software for them that can do its calculations in parallel distributed across the computers you've hooked together. Most of the existing software for that is likely scientific/engineering stuff or 3D rendering. Oooh - this is a good example of one.

Unconditional Love

18:15 / 29.06.06

You could dual boot from the same system, most modern linux installs have options for this in the install and the partitioning of the drive is also usually done for you as well, it gives you the option to play around with it for a while and then decide, i found it a good way to compare linux and windows xp.

MattShepherd: I WEDDED KALI!

19:30 / 29.06.06

I tried... real hard... with Linux and wound up abandoning it two years ago. Maybe things have improved substantially since then, but I'm not going back until I ... and this is key ... am willing to take on another time-consuming hobby. Windows may be bloated and evil, but 80% of the time things work right out of the box, and the only crashes I've ever had with XP Pro have been game-related. Mac would have been even more my speed, I suspect, but out of my price range then (and now).

I think Linux can be deeply rewarding if you have the time and wherewithal for Another Project. As somebody who leads a moderately complicated life, it wasn't a good fit for me.

MattShepherd: I WEDDED KALI!

19:33 / 29.06.06

Or, to quote (cough) myself from the link:

...if I buy a car, I want to get from point A to point B in reasonably decent shape. Linux is like having eight tons of raw iron ore dropped on your lawn with a welding torch and a diagram in Swedish, and a bunch of enthusiastic shop students telling you how wide the gap between your sparkplugs has to be.

Which can be SUPER COOL if you like that sort of thing. I don't.

Mon Oncle Ignatius

19:34 / 29.06.06

That said, setting up a fileserver is not too hard (if the machine is fast enough, just install something like Windows 2000 and share the files you want).

Or, um, Linux, maybe, given that's the topic of the thread?

Mon Oncle Ignatius

19:55 / 29.06.06

Windows may be bloated and evil, but 80% of the time things work right out of the box, and the only crashes I've ever had with XP Pro have been game-related. Mac would have been even more my speed, I suspect, but out of my price range then (and now).

This is undoubtedly true, but with most distros these days (I use Mandriva 2006 mostly) I've found a large number of well-supported programmes (eg Firefox) they do indeed install very easily - and in many cases (for hat it's worth) slightly quicker than a similar sort of programme might under XP. However, there is a tendency for RPMs (in Mandriva) to completely fail to install due to dependencies on other librabries, and on occasion you can spend the next few hours trying to get exactly the right version of libnotimmediatelyobviousname.so to install in order to get the damned thing to run OK.

Installing from source can be even more frustrating, though earning far more geek points, obviously.

I think Linux can be deeply rewarding if you have the time and wherewithal for Another Project.

Yes and no - see above for where I agree. If you can get what you want to do what you want, and it's not too demanding or unusual - and this can definitely include, say, WINE emulation or running Steam via Cedega* - then a well set up Linux desktop is as almost easy to just sit back and use as any other, upgrading included.

*(5.2 just crashes the system when I try to run Half-Life 2 now)

Happy Dave Has Left

20:36 / 29.06.06

Interesting news in that two major Macolytes are ditching Apple for Ubuntu Linux. I run this at home, it's pretty damn cool...

21:09 / 15.09.07

I've locked myself out of the administration on my own computer.
I've aranged it so the main profile can't access moderator priviledges.

I'm not sure how to undo that. And I need to get to the admin bit so I can put the sound back on.

Please help!

14:57 / 16.09.07

Bump! I need help from clever Linux people!

Happy Dave Has Left

16:02 / 16.09.07

Have you set up a root account yet?

http://ubuntuforums.org/archive/index.php/t-31053.html

Once you're logged in as root, you can change passwords on other accounts - be careful - root accounts can damage or destroy your install if you fiddle around with system files or anything.

16:11 / 16.09.07

Ah. I blocked my profiles access to the administrator-y bits. So I can't set up the root through users/profile box.

Mon Oncle Ignatius

19:08 / 16.09.07

have you completely lost your root password?

19:11 / 16.09.07

I know my root password, but I'm never given the option to enter it. When I click on anything administrative Ubuntu just doesn't respond.

Happy Dave Has Left

20:00 / 16.09.07

Hit Ctrl and F1, that'll take you to a terminal. From there, you should be able to log in as root.

Mon Oncle Ignatius

18:09 / 17.09.07

If you're using Ubuntu (for some reason I think you said you are?) then you can also do "sudo systemsettings", then enter your root password in a terminal and that should open the (you guessed) systems settings manager where you can modify your user account.