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Ubuntu Linux ... WOW!!!!

d3cryption

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Interesting. Not a single mention of Gentoo. Is it even still around anymore?

I think all the gentoo heads went to arch linux or debian......


toughmudderdave: I used fluxbox for a way... very simple...Not a resource hog...... I liked openbox better....
 
I've made the switch to Linux for good with Linux Mint 13 Cinnamon and couldn't be happier. Between WINE running a few games and VirtualBox running Adobe CS6 suite I do without absolutely nothing. But it took a long time for Linux to mature into a "total" replacement for Windows or Mac OS.

I first started messing with Linux in '97 or so with Yellow Dog Linux on a UMax Mac clone. I liked Mac OS for a long time and it's what I started with. But once OSX became overshadowed (and eventually became integrated) with iOS it's technological development stalled to a limp. OSX abandoning it's promised ZFS file system was the turning point for me. Disgusted with the direction OSX was going (a front for the iTunes store) I actually switched to Windows for a time while waiting for Linux to get where I felt it needed to be. I was very close to making the switch with Fedora 8 which was almost, but not quite there yet. With Linux Mint 13 I was finally able to make the switch to Linux once and for all.

I find it very telling that 90% of all Windows update descriptions begin with "this fixes a security vulnerability that could allow someone to gain complete control of your computer... ". If Windows were able to start over from scratch I think it could easily be reworked much more securely along the lines of Linux/Mac/BSD. A complete rework much like Mac did with the switch from OS9 to OSX. But unfortunately Windows needs that backwards compatibility with legacy software to insure widespread adoption which limits what can be done with it. This limitation brings along with it what I consider legacy security vulnerabilities and Internet Explorer is probably the weakest link in the chain.

It used to be that Linux was more "challenging" but these days I don't feel it's is any more difficult than any other OS. The knowledge needed to install, run and maintain Linux now is really no more than you should have to competently administer your own computer in the first place. It's widespread enough that if you need advice on getting your WiFi working or whatever the answers are readily found on the internet. I have a EMu 1212 sound card and getting this working on Linux was actually so much easier than using the crazy proprietary EMu Windows mixer software that it isn't even funny.

I may not stick with Linux Mint for life but I will be using Linux of some sort for the duration and will never go back to OSX or Windows ever again. ~The Prof
 

ScrubNinja

Grow like nobody is watching
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I know that feel, Pro. I started messing with it a decade ago, used it for a year or two & switched back to windows. It's come an awful long way and is a pretty slick beast these days.

If Windows were able to start over from scratch I think it could easily be reworked much more securely along the lines of Linux/Mac/BSD.

I haven't tried it yet, but ReactOS could be promising in the future.

ReactOS is an open source computer operating system intended to be binary compatible with application software and device drivers made for Microsoft Windows NT versions 5.x and up.

Hehe, Unity. I only switched to 12.04 recently but I absolutely LOVE it. I hated it at first, like everyone does. Not as much fun on a crappy netbook though.

If you're bored and want a new distro to check out, I have a great one - SliTaz. The ISO is <35MB!!! The stuff you can do is incredible. Even a newb could make their own custom live CD. Just as an example of how feature packed it is for such a small distro, it has like 4 web browsers included, lol. You can even go to part of the site and set up the ISO with whatever programs you want, before you download it. Damn Small Linux and other small distros just never had the same wow factor as I got from Slitaz.

In my search for tiny distros, I also came across KolibriOS which is 5MB. It's a little rough, and parts of the interface are in Russian, but damn, what do you expect for 5MB? :)
 

Hydro-Soil

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Veteran
Need to find some way to get this copy of CS4 to install under wine... :(
Should I be able to do that.... really no need to use windows other than to update some games periodically. :)

Wine has come a loooooooooooooooong way. LOL Then, so has linux. The first linux distro I downloaded was 5 floppies. :)

Stay Safe! :blowbubbles:
 
I wasn't able to get CS5 or 6 to install under Wine either. It would get to the point where you select the CS components to install but would error out when trying to continue. From what I understand it's the Adobe installer that is the problem, not that CS will not work properly under Wine. I've read if you install CS in VirtualBox then copy all of the installed components into their respective locations in Wine (including registry keys) it will work. I figured hell, as long as I have to install CS into VirtualBox I'd just run it in VirtualBox as well. Works for me, flawlessly I might add. ~The Prof
 

Hydro-Soil

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Veteran
Hehe... that was my last option. I already had the virtualbox container created... just haven't installed the os or CS4 into it.

Definitely going to copy it over and run it from wine after that. Virtualbox is nice... but a bit cumbersome for a 'work' solution when working with large graphic projects. :)

Thanks for the tip!

Stay Safe! :blowbubbles:
 
T

toughmudderdave

Wine has come a loooooooooooooooong way. LOL Then, so has linux. The first linux distro I downloaded was 5 floppies. :)

Stay Safe! :blowbubbles:

Indeed. My first was SCO Unix on ~20 floppies and then on to Mandrake. But then again, back when I was a CNE (Certified Netware Engineer), Netware came on ~35 floppies and every time one made a change to the kernel, one had to "feed" all the damn floppies again!! LOL! Today's distros are a far cry from where they were 10-15 years ago, yes? Remember having to resolve dependencies manually? LOL!
 

Hydro-Soil

Active member
Veteran
Indeed. My first was SCO Unix on ~20 floppies and then on to Mandrake. But then again, back when I was a CNE (Certified Netware Engineer), Netware came on ~35 floppies and every time one made a change to the kernel, one had to "feed" all the damn floppies again!! LOL! Today's distros are a far cry from where they were 10-15 years ago, yes? Remember having to resolve dependencies manually? LOL!

Slackware took approximately 45-50 floppies for the base and net packages. From there I could download the remaining files over a 28.8 connection to finish the installation. LOL

Yeah, dependencies are still a pain... greatly reduced, but still a pain.

Stay Safe! :blowbubbles:
 
Hydro: When you copy the files over to your Wine install don't forget to include the (normally hidden) folder C:\Users\YourUserName\AppData\Roaming\Adobe
 

Hydro-Soil

Active member
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Hydro: When you copy the files over to your Wine install don't forget to include the (normally hidden) folder C:\Users\YourUserName\AppData\Roaming\Adobe

Sweet! :) I appreciate that.

Apparently I need to 'use' the installed copy a bit first... registration still hasn't taken hold properly. Here's the list that I found elsewhere...

copy %windir%/WinSxS to ~/.wine/drive_c/windows/
copy %appdata%/Adobe to ~/.wine/drive_c/windows/profiles/All Users/Application Data/
copy %appdata%/FLEXnet to ~/.wine/drive_c/windows/profiles/All Users/Application Data/

copy c:/Program Files/Adobe to ~/.wine/drive_c/Program Files/
copy c:/Program Files/Common Files/Adobe to ~/.wine/drive_c/Program Files/Common Files/
copy c:/Program Files/Common Files/Macrovision Shared to ~/.wine/drive_c/Program Files/Common Files/

From windows registry backup HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Adobe and HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\FLEXnet Licensing Service and restore both to wine registry

Stay Safe! :blowbubbles:
 

dddaver

Active member
Veteran
I downloaded the latest (64 bit) version (12.04LT) last night. They have come a long way since I ran it a few years ago. The download requires you to burn it to disk first, then you can load it. I have been playing with it for a few only hours now. But fuck-it, my back hurts, I just have no desire to sit and play on the computer for hours like I did 20 years ago.

At first I had a hard time getting it to run. I burned the 694MB download two times onto a cdrw. Using cdrw instead of just cdr might have been the problem, I'm not sure. Might be this Hewlit Packard POS. Whatever, I finally forced it by telling the computer BIOS to load the CD-ROM first and then
it kept loading to this pinkish logo screen and sticking there. I finally figured out by pushing the ALT and CTRL keys together it would go past that and load. I was doing the 3 finger salute when I discovered that.

Now, when you experts can stop laughing enough at this clueless idiot fumbling around, I have a couple probably stupid questions. First, will going ahead and installing it overwrite my Win 7? Because there's still things the Winduhs OS does I want to keep. I just "Tried Without Installing" first. Second dumb question; I checked out Firefox and the version for Ubuntu has particular features on it that throw me. Like there is no options selection under the tools menu to do things like open to a blank screen or privacy or security selections. Are they all there somewhere? It does have a shitload of plugins and add-ons if you do like that shit. Me, not so much. But it is easy to just shut all that crap off. That "options" features might be somewhere, I'm just not ready to install it if it overwrites the Winduhs operating system though, until I can figure security out a little better. Just because they don't get attacks as much as Winduh's doesn't mean that can't. Today's user needs to be extra cautious. Tomorrows user even more so it looks like, if trends are any indication, especially with this cloud craziness coming.

I might find the answers to those questions on some Linux/Ubuntu forum, but I prefer the good folks here. Thanks for any help.
 
T

toughmudderdave

I downloaded the latest (64 bit) version (12.04LT) last night. They have come a long way since I ran it a few years ago. The download requires you to burn it to disk first, then you can load it. I have been playing with it for a few only hours now. But fuck-it, my back hurts, I just have no desire to sit and play on the computer for hours like I did 20 years ago.

At first I had a hard time getting it to run. I burned the 694MB download two times onto a cdrw. Using cdrw instead of just cdr might have been the problem, I'm not sure. Might be this Hewlit Packard POS. Whatever, I finally forced it by telling the computer BIOS to load the CD-ROM first and then
it kept loading to this pinkish logo screen and sticking there. I finally figured out by pushing the ALT and CTRL keys together it would go past that and load. I was doing the 3 finger salute when I discovered that.

Now, when you experts can stop laughing enough at this clueless idiot fumbling around, I have a couple probably stupid questions. First, will going ahead and installing it overwrite my Win 7? Because there's still things the Winduhs OS does I want to keep. I just "Tried Without Installing" first. Second dumb question; I checked out Firefox and the version for Ubuntu has particular features on it that throw me. Like there is no options selection under the tools menu to do things like open to a blank screen or privacy or security selections. Are they all there somewhere? It does have a shitload of plugins and add-ons if you do like that shit. Me, not so much. But it is easy to just shut all that crap off. That "options" features might be somewhere, I'm just not ready to install it if it overwrites the Winduhs operating system though, until I can figure security out a little better. Just because they don't get attacks as much as Winduh's doesn't mean that can't. Today's user needs to be extra cautious. Tomorrows user even more so it looks like, if trends are any indication, especially with this cloud craziness coming.

I might find the answers to those questions on some Linux/Ubuntu forum, but I prefer the good folks here. Thanks for any help.

Repartition your drive before you install Ubuntu. In Win7, use the Disk Manager to resize the partition and give you some free space because chances are, your Win7 installation has allocated the entire drive for itself. Once you've given yourself a "free partition", then go ahead with the Ubuntu installation and when it gets to the point of "where" it will install to, simply tell it to install in the free space of the drive.

Any reason why you're installing the 64-bit version if I may ask? 32-bit version is generally a bit more stable IMHO.
 

dddaver

Active member
Veteran
Any reason why you're installing the 64-bit version if I may ask? 32-bit version is generally a bit more stable IMHO.

Thanks. Both my laptops are 17" Win 7 64 bit computers. I thought I had too use 64 bit for compatibility. I had read that instability thing before but I'm not sure what that means? Is it that it just it stops working?
 

dddaver

Active member
Veteran
I tried to install Ubuntu. MS seems to block it now. Win7 seems to block partitioning THEIR hard drive on that Hewlett Packard POS computer anyway. WHOA!

First I tried just installing Ubuntu alongside Windows so that I would have the option at start-up of choosing which OS to run, just like the Ubunutu installation says it will. I did that a few years ago when running XP too, I think it was. That didn't work now, and Win 7 OS maybe is the reason it won't. I tried partitioning using Disk Manager first, that didn't work anyway. I think MS is adding new partions, maybe so you can't do things like add another (way better) OS, they don't let you partition the "free" area on the C drive unless their is a OS already on it, which of course there isn't. Their own OS is in another protected area on that disk. I tried letting Ubuntu ask for the partition. The error message told me "the kernel wouldn't answer back, so it couldn't". The only other option I didn't try is to overwrite the current OS. I don't want that, but I bet MS wouldn't allow that anyway.

So two hours later I said fuck that, I can try another day, my frustration level was pegged enough. Fuck MS. Fuck Hewlett Packard.

In one of my attempts to make the shit work I changed the "free" area c drive into
a DYNAMIC DISK, whatever that is, I need to try to change it back. I did that after trying everything else before that though, and all the programs and junk on the computer seem to still work fine, despite MS fucking scary warnings. Anyway, WTF. Maybe someday I'll find a way to load it on the hard-drive. I can use Ubuntu on cd anyway still. Just sucks I can't load it, so therefore it doesn't save anything.

Like I said, my frustration level trying to deal with that bullshit is pegged. Maybe someday when I'm really super bored I'll try to save it again to the hard-drive.
 
S

SeaMaiden

Uh oh... I wonder if MS is going to force you to wipe the drive and reinstall just so you can get your drive partitioned. Fucking bastards.

My sister used to date a guy who worked for MS. He was a douche. I don't use that term lightly, but vaginal wash is maybe the best thing this guy was good for. He took an old computer my mom had given me, was supposed to wipe it clean and reinstall everything. Do you think the douche did that? Of course not, and he charged my mother several hundred dollars to NOT do it. He did, however, install a shit-ton of spyware, Gator or something like that. This was quite a few years ago, but I still think he's probably a douche.
 
Both my laptops are 17" Win 7 64 bit computers. I thought I had too use 64 bit for compatibility. I had read that instability thing before but I'm not sure what that means? Is it that it just it stops working?

How much memory do your computers have? A 32-bit OS can only recognize 3.2GB of RAM. If your laptops came with Win7 64-bit they likely have more than 4GB or more of RAM installed or if not they are ready for the upgrade. You can certainly install a 32-bit OS if you like but I wouldn't as I can't think of a particularly good reason to do it.

As far as instability I think that perception is largely from the early days of 64-bit OS adoption/migration when not everything was yet available in both 32-bit and 64-bit versions. So for example an older video driver might only be available as 32-bit and people would try to install the thing on a 64-bit OS and yes there would be problems. Likewise with people installing 32-bit software into a 64-bit environment.

If you pay attention whether you're grabbing the 32-bit version or 64-bit version of drivers/software you should be just fine (32-bit is usually labeled "386" and 64-bit "x86" or "x64"). If the software doesn't specify it will typically work for both but drivers in particular should always specify one or the other. Support for anything remotely current should have both options available.

It used to be that 64-bit was the exception due to few machines with 4GB+ RAM but obviously that situation has changed over the years. Eventually 32-bit support will be the exception as older machines get phased out over time. Unless you have a specific reason otherwise, go with 64-bit. Hope this helps. ~The Prof
 

dddaver

Active member
Veteran
Kinda helped. Thanks. But pretty much just told me I'm actually doing nothing wrong, really, that I can see. But to answer your question, both my laptops have 4GB of RAM. Maybe the 32 bit version would work better though? I'll just hurry up and waste another few hours just trying that, someday.... I don't mean to sound like a dick, I'm just totally pissed at MS.

The shit they have done, the shit they do now, their predatory business practices, to not only competitors, but customers, is WAY beyond the pale. They might say, "Oh, that's ancient history". Fuck that. That wasn't THAT long ago so now people will just forget, creeps, they just learned they better hide their shit better. Or, "We don't do anything like that anymore" BULLSHT. They're worse now, just more devious and surreptitious in their practices. So, since their grubby fingers were caught in the cookie jar before, they just now are better at doing their slimy, screwy, business practices more under-handed and harder to detect. I have always thought of the 60 billion dollar man (Gates) as the equivalent, to a comic book super villain. Teflon and untouchable too. He knew what was wrong but saw the bucks and took that route. So the excuse now is that he's out, and we won't do that shit anymore? Absolute BULLSHIT. Group of terds, I think anyway. The one thing I am sure about with MS is, that what goes around comes around. And their bad karma WILL bite them in the ass, sooner or later. They have pissed off just one too many people. I'm not talking violence or anything, I just think all indicators are that MS willl be a sad point of American history in the not too distant future. Assuming that your customers are stupid is a BIG mistake....time for me to smoke a bowl and fuget-about-it. I apologize about the rant. I'm pissed, I just hate getting pissed on. I don't think could ever be a Golden Shower aficionado. :biggrin:
 

dddaver

Active member
Veteran
Uh oh... I wonder if MS is going to force you to wipe the drive and reinstall just so you can get your drive partitioned. Fucking bastards.

That appears to be the case. To get back to a "basic disk" after making the disk "dynamic" they say to back-up the existing partitions and then delete and reload everything. NO. Actually, just MAYBE that all MIGHT work too. Doing that all is just fraught with the possibilities that ANYTHING could go wrong too, from the an error read or writing from the backup DVD or some USB errors or to some other MS block they don't tell you about, besides we're talking a 300GB backup, I would need an external hard-drive (that I don't have) to do that through USB, and could well result in making the computer totally unusable and just an expensive paperweight. MY burner is DVD writable and I have burned DVD's, I'm just not at all comfortable doing all that just for jollies and to make something else work. Them BASTIDS! The strong possibilities of something like any errors happening also comes from their own "help" menu's, where their key by key directions very often DO NOT work. And that holds true throughout the MS OS "helpless" menus. Their "disk manager" help is a joke. Really stupid too when you consider the BILLIONS in profit them slugs make. I have dealt with that MS bullshit of their shit not working as advertized since the military first bought their shit almost 20 years ago. They SUCK!

I downloaded the Ubuntu 12.1 - 32 bit version last night. I'll burn that and try that just IMMEDIATELY, almost like nobody should have lives to lead, just do what THEY tell you to, and get REAL fucked over .

Anyway, for real, thanks for the lead. :tiphat: THIS rant over.
 

Hydro-Soil

Active member
Veteran
An easier option would be to pick up a cheap 80-100g drive and just install it on that instead. :D

Keep at it.

In a year or so you're going to really REALLY dislike MS... it's like having a power menu or super user options available in almost every program. :D

Oh... so you don't want to play nice, eh? Well -f to you too buddy. (Usually the 'force' option... causing a safety override. :))

Stay Safe! :blowbubbles:
 

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