The Linux Advocacy Thread

Agreed!
I like Macs.

 

Mac is too simple for me. I don't like the way the Dock works, nor do I find many of the ways the OS does things intuitive.

 

I've never used OS X...

 

I've had a tiny bit of use, and from my stint, I feel that Macs, as from a former Windows user myself, is trying to be different for the sake of being different. If you grew up with Macs, then, of course, Windows will feel odd to you, but Macs have this aura of 'just-trying-too-hard'. That's what I feel.

 

I've used Macs a little bit. Don't like it. Simple, yes. Pretty, yes. But, usable for me? Note completely. Sure... If all I was allowed to use was OS X, then I'd be using it (ridiculous idea, I know ). But, Windows and Linux for me at the moment. Mmm... Ubuntu at the moment and probably for a while.

 

That's too bad. I bought my first Mac just to play with something other than a Windows machine. At that time, I wasn't even aware of Linux. These days, I wouldn't even have a Windows machine were it not for the gf's need for one occasionally.

Which system a person uses just boils down to personal preference. Lots of posters here don't like Linux!

To each his own.

 

I like Linux. duhhhhhhhh LOL

 

OS X is pretty bad, you can't customize anything. It's basically a desecrated version of Unix.

 

Erm, I know I originally started the OSX bashing; but can we stick to Linux.

 

If that's the case, so be it. I've never even seen a Unix machine.

 

Do UNIX machines even have a GUI?

 

Beats me. If not, I'm not smart enough to bother looking at one. LOL

 

Imagine playing games on one.

"There is a hairpin approaching"
Zephyrus17: Take hairpin
"There is a chicane approaching"
Zephyrus17: Take chicane
"You spun out"
Zephyrus17: Return to track


...

 

I was running OpenSolaris on my old Dell for a while. It's not bad, and I've heard the newer versions are a great improvement.

Now, just don't get me started on Macs.

 

Ok, stay off your Mac. I love mine, have no problems, and the Apple folks have treated me well, which leaves me with no reason to complain. OTOH, I've owned Dells, and currently have a Velocity Micro (which is ancient) running XP and Ubuntu, all of which ran and, in the case of the VM, still run flawlessly at over four years old. I have no beefs with any builders or systems, really, though I don't really like Windows much. Were it not for the AV, andtispyware, anti this and anti that required, I really wouldn't even mind XP.

Maybe I just have better luck with computers than some of the other posters here. Now, if I could just get Gentoo or Arch up and running right . . . LOL

 

When I said Unix, I mean all Unix-like systems in general, including Linux.

The closest actual descendant of Unix that exists nowadays is Solaris/OpenSolaris: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solaris_(operating_system)#History. Here is its official GUI: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Java_Desktop_System, though it can also use any of the GUIs compatible with Unix-like OSs.

 

I heard that Java is pretty slow. So using that as a GUI would be slow as well.

 

Ohh really?
Solaris is far from unix, if you want to talk about unix, I'll give you some:
BSD(all)
OS X (yes, a lot of unix commands are the same, besides, you can install gnome on OS X )
Minix (linux's grandpa, linux isn't meant to be a unix clone, its a minix clone)

All of those are way closer to unix then Solaris is.

 

OS X isn't directly descended from Unix; and it has been very heavily modified and is a mish-mash of different components. Did you not watch the video about the OS X kernel that you provided?

 

Yes, but the commands are similar and the OS is, of course no OS is an exact copy of unix, but OS X is pretty close(what I mean by OS X is darwin, of course).
Actually, its more closer to BSD, so maybe it can be grouped with them.
Besides that, its closer the linux is in a lot of ways, and farther then linux is in a lot of ways.

EDIT: To clarify a little more, I mean the whole experience, the commands, way of doing things, structure, I'm talking everything.

 

Except BSD split from the original AT&T Unix codebase long before Solaris deviated from that same codebase, starting with the 1BSD release in 1977. Solaris is based on System V Release 4, which is a combination of BSD, System V, and Xenix released in 1987.

OS X uses a hybrid kernel called XNU, which is a combination of BSD and Mach, which was a BSD replacement used at Carnegie Mellon University, so it's even further from Unix than BSD.

MINIX is a Unix clone, which means its codebase is completely dissimilar from Unix's; it only functions the same. Since Linux is based off of MINIX, but not a fork, that puts it even further from the original Unix than MINIX.

Thus, Solaris is the closest thing we have today to a Unix descendant (along with SCO OpenServer: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCO_OpenServer). OpenServer is based on the last version of System V before the merge with BSD and Xenix, which is System V Release 3.

 

Hmm, I've always heard that BSD kept closer, but apparently I'm wrong, thanks for clearing that up.
Anyway, neither is full unix, there all very different.

 

Does this count as a Unix Flame war?

 

Just sounds like a discussion to me. Differences of opinions are ok; back and forth points are what make the discussions interesting. The linux forums are my favorite at NBR for that very reason - discussions which usually lead to learning something new, without the arguing and hard feelings found elsewhere.

For me, being new to Linux, reading these types of posts are especially interesting. Every time I visit the forum I pick up a little something new to me.

 

Of course, we Linux lads don't start flame wars. We're too mature for that. We start learning wars.

 

What's an 'advocacy' thread without a flame war lol. Seriously, I qualified my bottom feeders J6P remark with a "LOL", ok Rajesh?

What I don't like about windows is that it's not very configurable and therefore boring to me. Linux is a tinkerers OS for sure, not to mention very stable and fast, AND better looking than windows IMO.

 

No, most Linux and Unix machines (the latter of which are not very common) are usually run as headless computers, with the admin using a single workstation to connect to specific headless servers via remote connection. They get dumped to a CLI and the admin works his magic from there. Real men don't need GUIs!

 

Zoid, the sky's blue. There, we've both just stated something completely obvious.

 

Damn, I'm a wimp!

 

I second the wimp clause, i don't think i'd be able to hack my way out of a paper CLI...or something like that.

 

sudo killall paper

sudo dpkg -r paper

 

I was dared to run my notebook without a GUI for a week. I successfully did it, but let me tell you, wireless was freakin annoying.

 

How much money did you get?

 

No, Calvin, it's not about money... But respect.

 

No way 'rob! It takes a real man to try to triple boot slackware, gentoo and arch! LOL

 

No, i'm pretty sure it's about the money.

 

LOL (10 characters)

 

/drinks a beer, runs off to download (again), Slackware, Gentoo and Arch LOL

 

Doh! >_< The world *is* getting wimpy-er.

 

Better get a 12 pack in ya for that triple boot job (courage to hit the enter key).....LOL

 

Seriously, Zoid, I don't drink - not even beer. I'm not afraid to give a triple boot a try. I've done so (and failed LOL) several times. My problem(s) are with those particular distros. I actually had Arch installed, but then the gf decided she needed XP for a work project - so, so long Arch (though I did dual-boot Ubuntu with hopes that she'd give it a shot). She needed the machine in a hurry, so my options were to either install XP or buy another machine. Since this is supposed to be a temporary situation, the XP install seemed the best choice.

In the past few weeks I've been able to get both Arch and Gentoo installed, but I never really was able to do anything with either distro. Gentoo is just too much for me, at least for now. A trip to the hospital got in the way of making headway with Arch; I'll try again in a few weeks, though. I'll let you know when I'm ready to give it another go. Should be good for a few more laughs!

 

I catch your drift....one of these days I'm going to ditch windows altogether, cause the virtual machines will let me do it. Gaming though keeps at dual boot status.

I'm thinking now of going back to Xubuntu and resize my partitions while I'm at it....I went to Kubuntu during the 8.04 beta because Xubuntu wouldn't get my Bluetooth working. Now it will....hopping again....lol

EDIT: Wonder if I should just leave my /home partition and do a clean install of Xubuntu on / partition. hmmmm.....anyone?

 

Is that the only OS on that particular machine? If so, I'd just reinstall. If not, and whatever else you've got going is important, I'd probably still just reinstall. LOL

I have a machine set aside for nothing but Linux and probably go through 3 or 4 installs a week, minimum.

At the moment, Mandriva (thanks to your great post) and until I updated this morning, was OpenGEU (and with the update just became Ubuntu 8.04), are on that machine. Could try a triple-boot again, but I haven't yet gotten the GRUB thing sorted - that's what always kills the first two distros. I can't seem to figure out where to put GRUB in the latter distros. Damn, I am a dummy!

 

Oh yeah, I like that factor that few daemons are running....it basically sits there until I do something like a good OS should. Vista, like molasses with all the crap running in the background....not worth scaling down IMO...game launch, runs smooth, it's good....then I'm back in my 'home' OS (*buntu)