[boogalooper]

Maybe there has already been one of these, but searching for Ubuntu or Linux is breaking the search function for me, so here we go! OS Nerdlinger thread... engage

Vista totalled my computer for the second time in three months a few days ago. Just shutting-down-with-updates like normal, go to power it back on the next day and it BSoDs on me. BSoDs on me in safe mode, in recovery mode, in everything. Searching for a way to fix it without losing my 150gigs of unimportant data, I read that popping some ram out and getting it to under 4gigs of ram can solve the problem; it doesn't. However, now it not only BSoD's on startup, but it freezes up when attempting a fresh install of vista!

So, in a desperate attempt to get anything working on my 6 month old laptop, I whip out an Ubuntu 8.10 cd, and hey, look at that, it installs without a hitch after I killdisk my harddrive. I figure I will bum around on it for a few days while get a new Vista dvd downloaded.

But hell, after using it for a few days and getting over that initial terror of seeing a new OS in front of me, I actually really like it! It seems to alleviate my biggest problem of vista, in that it gets rid of a lot of the bloat; Skype for linux, for example, is a paired-down, non-flashy contact list, instead of the 8-tab monstrosity its become in windows. There are other examples too! Using the terminal for stuff brings me back to the old days. Installation of new programs is clean and easy and - best of all - uniform. The dual-desktop thing is getting used far more than I thought it was.

I haven't used it enough to really break the OS yet, but it seems to be holding up pretty well. I like what I am seeing, so far anyways. I also like that the online support community is incredibly vast. So far I haven't had a problem, driver or otherwise, that hasn't been solved exactly within minutes thanks to a google search. Their (perceived?) holier-than-thou attitude when it comes to Windows and Macs kind of bugs the shit out of me, though they make up for it with generally being extremely polite and helpful to newcomers.

I might still head back to windows eventually. It's only a laptop, so I wasn't really gaming on it at all, but sooner or later I am going to get the itch to play Sins of a Solar Empire or GalCiv2 again and then its only a few beers away from a fresh install of vista. Also it sucks because XP isn't really an option due to having an SATA harddrive.

Any other Linux-based OS users in here? Any decent sources of info a new Ubuntu user might like to see? Any horror stories? I'll admit I was bummed when using it wasn't exactly like Lex locking the doors in Jurrasic Park.

PS hey guys I'm not a bot its me luckystrike
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[spinach]

hey luckystrike what's up

I just got a dual-boot install of Ubuntu Studio up yesterday. It does not recognize my wireless out of the box the way my Ubuntu 8.10 livecd does, so I'm a little bummed there, and also I had to get all my editing shit and Cinepaint, which aren't included but used to be in old releases. Otherwise, hey it's pretty cool and just in time because I've got some work this week!

Before that, I was using Pure:Dyne for the same stuff, and I haven't booted into Win2k for about two months, so maybe it's time I go for a fresh install? Pure:Dyne, being a livecd, is really slow to boot and load apps, but once it's in RAM it's fast as fuck.

[secret character]

Hey, Ubuntu user here. I've been running it for about a year and a half now, dual-booting with a copy of Windows XP. Recently I've been almost exclusively using Ubuntu, though every once in a while there are things I need Windows for. I do have to fight with it a bit every once in a while (usually due to inexplicable changes in user rights to certain folders), but I like the fact that there's always something I can do about it if I look hard enough.

[boogalooper]

Dual-booting with a small xp partition for my minor computer gaming needs seems like it might be pretty decent. Is there any way to use Ubuntu to get around the sata-driver problem in installing xp? Also, is it possible to create a second partition through the xp install process without killing my current Ubuntu install or am I going to have to start the whole thing over from scratch? I imagine it would be possible.

Also, any popular abandonware/older games out there that you know have been ported to Linux? I wonder if anyone has gone through the trouble of porting, say, fallout or something similar.
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[kerobaros]

hey dude look into Wine (winehq.net or sudo apt-get install wine)

or maybe install Virtualbox and use it to run XP inside Ubuntu

or yeah just dualboot but that would require reformatting your disk


also for most old games you will have to use Wine or Dosbox, but a few things have been ported; Warzone 2100 is pretty decent.

[manmachine plays jazz]

i've installed XP SP2 onto this computer (which has a SATA drive) more times than i can remember and i've never had an issue.

if all else fails, you can always try using nLite to place SATA controller drivers onto your windows install

[Minarae]

Anyone try any of the other 'buntu flavors? I've been using Xubuntu exclusively after wiping XP over a year ago. It's less resource hungry and the default look is nice and clean.

I second the bit about wine. It's run almost everything I've thrown at it, but I guess I haven't tried anything too ambitious like recent games. I couldn't get steam to work right, though that was on an older version of wine.

doesn't gparted on a live cd let you resize existing partitions if you need to make room for a second os?

[Talbain]

I like Xubuntu as an operating system more than pretty much any other OS I've used. Just... I like playing videogames more than using an OS.
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[boogalooper]

I've used wine to run utorrent, but that's about it. Seems to work alright, but that is a pretty simple program to mess with. Does wine often suffer from any sort of lag or run things slower than they would run natively on Windows? There's no way it's going to run Sins of a Solar Empire, is there?

I've done the XP install on this very computer using nLite in the past, but at the time there werent any working sound drivers for it, so I attempted to jump ship back to Vista, but my cd drive was fried for some reason. It was the day after I bought the laptop so I took it back to Best Buy and got a new one. Haven't tried it again yet, but i might give it a shot. Or I might just do virtualbox. Or I'll stick with wine!

If I can get this beast to run old games/emulators, hell. I might never go back until I build a desktop and install XP or maybe Windows7 on it if its any good.
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[Talbain]

While I suspect Windows 7 will be better than Vista (doesn't take much effort), I still seem to understand that Windows 7 will be just as much of a resource hog as Vista is. So that's rather problematic, especially for laptops (which I use exclusively now).

There was talk of something that is like a Windows 7 "source" or something, which is something like a Windows 7 devkit, it's just that it has a basic embedded OS. Were it expanded to be something like a "lite" version of Windows 7, I think that would be most preferable. The problem with new OSes is that they try to add more shit, when they haven't needed to add new shit for years. They need to make the already established stuff simpler and easier to interact with. Thus reducing input lag, less resource intensive and more clean code.
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[kerobaros]

Emulators most definitely exist for Linux; in fact, I spent today at work building an Ubuntu box for MAME and other things on one of the big screens. it'll be great.

[Talbain]

I'd actually use ubuntu exclusively if it ever released a really good SNES emulator. Unfortunately, nothing like SNESGT exists for Linux (bsnes is really not good unless you're looking to test what your game would do on hardware). Maybe if/when ZSNES 2.0 is released in the next century there might be enough reason... but then, that hasn't been released now has it?
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[km]

I don't really understand all the hate that Vista gets. Yes, it uses a lot of RAM. Guess what? Wasted RAM is RAM that is sitting unused. It's a solid OS that I have seriously never had a problem with that fixes a lot of things you just accepted as broken in XP. It's not the same revolution that 2k/XP was, but an improvement is still an improvement.


Anyway, I'm a Gentoo user. (Actually, my CFLAGS are -O2 --march=native, but don't tell anyone)

When I was rebuilding my fileserver, I tried to use Ubuntu server at first but the installer was so awful that it was honestly far easier for me to just install Gentoo from scratch.


Kubuntu is installed on a second partition on my laptop but I might have booted into it, what, once? KDE4 just isn't polished at all. They've actually managed to remove basic features from basic components. For example, in KDE4, you can't remove the tab bar from Konsole. What if, uh, I don't use tabs? Everyone goes apeshit when Vista has the audacity to use RAM to cache stuff from disk, but let's just remove functionality from a flagship project trying to compete with the great multipaned devil.


If you asked me even two months ago I would never imagine I'd be saying this, but how good Vista is has scared linux off of my desktop.


Certain things are a lot easier in windows. Certain things are a lot easier in windows. Don't get stuck in a rut of trying to pick sides; any tool that makes getting the job done easier is a good tool. It may not be the best tool, but it's still a good one.
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vi) RPGs (Role-Playing Games)
For adolescents; half-formed personalities roaming (in packs) in search of identity.

[falsedan]

there is no 'all of the above' option

dess's games won't run in XP in VirtualBox
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[boogalooper]

[km]

oops, that last bit was supposed to be more like "certain things are easier in windows, certain things are easier in linux..."


i will say that installing software on windows sucks ass
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vi) RPGs (Role-Playing Games)
For adolescents; half-formed personalities roaming (in packs) in search of identity.

[spinach]

[spinach]

My laptop uses Vista and I don't mind it so much, but it's also not my work machine.

And for some reason I can't play FUCK SPACE!

[taidan]

Yeah, I use Ubuntu. It works damn well now, but I always had a habit of breaking it by fucking around with something. Not its fault, just meant I reinstalled a lot. For a couple of versions there I didn't touch it because they stopped recognizing my wireless card (older versions did), and now with a new one it works A-OK.

Last year I put Debian on my parents old P3-500 and they still use it daily with no issues. Glad I got so much mileage out of a 10 year old PC.

[kerobaros]

[Talbain]

Just being able to emulate games is really not what I'm looking for. Snes9X's sound core is utter shit. Not to mention that it still can't fully emulate all games thrown at it (as far as I know, only bsnes and SNESGT are made with this functionality baked in).

You can feel free to prove me wrong though. Try emulating Chrono Trigger on SNESGT and Snes9X and compare the two in terms of sound and sound effects. Pretty easy to tell which is superior. If it used blargg's sound core or something, I might reconsider, but I'm pretty sure the sound core for the port to Linux is untouched.
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[Gironika]

[km]

God aero makes windows such a hog I mean requiring a hardware 3D accelerator I mean jesus



OH GUYS LOOK COMPIZ ITS SO PRETTY



Not directed at anyone in this thread, but I need to vent my frustration with the linux community somewhere
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vi) RPGs (Role-Playing Games)
For adolescents; half-formed personalities roaming (in packs) in search of identity.

[Talbain]

The hell is Compiz?
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[boogalooper]

Here's a nickel kid, buy a better computer
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[spinach]

[Talbain]

Ugh, did a google search for Compiz... ugh. Seriously just ugh. I also concur with liking xfce. It's clean and simple. Also not a resource whore.
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[manmachine plays jazz]

compiz fusion's less, uh, absurd features are nice. very OS X.

[Laurel Soup]

I've been using Ubuntu for... wow probably over three years now on my main machine. I got a shiny new laptop running Vista not too long ago. I can't stand Windows anymore, but it actually runs games thanks to both the OS and the not being almost a decade old machine so I've slowly been using it more and more.

Ubuntu's nasty underbelly is starting to show, which isn't helping the situation. I'm not too happy with Ubuntu post PulseAudio. Half-Life suddenly runs like shit in WINE now; emulators need cajoling to run, yet not all of them are cajolable. The original Unreal Tournament, a game which proudly had an official Linux client, now has terribly scrambled sound.

To top it off in Intrepid they went and broke joystick support, and are still in denial about it being an issue in the 32-bit version.

[secret character]

Yeah, I did some reading up on the sound issue with Ubuntu (and Linux in general) a couple months ago. It really is just a total mess. I managed to install OSS4 and it's been serving me pretty well ever since.

[hyouko]

I was moving to Ubuntu pretty exclusively until this term, when all of my classes and projects started using Visual Studio. (no real option there - one's a Source engine mod, and the other involves working with code that uses GDI for rendering, of all things). Will happily move back once this is over. It runs better than XP on my ancient laptop, and having the app repository is wonderful (even if some of the apps are kind of half-baked).

(...does Visual Studio run in Wine?)

[manmachine plays jazz]

i've seen someone run it in parallels, albeit badly. dunno about wine. VS is a resource hog so i'm just assuming it won't run well.

dualboot?

[Laurel Soup]

[secret character]

[Laurel Soup]

Here's Cave Story. You'll still need wine to run the config program, but the game itself runs natively via SDL.

I think I know what thread you're talking about. Every couple weeks I check all the major ones dealing with sound to see if someone amazingly fixed everything.

[eskaibo]

Hey guys, I've got a friend who wants to try Linux on this computer whose Windows corrupted. My intuition and a guy I know who uses Ubuntu suggest that Ubuntu's a good choice. Is it? (relevant info: if any sort of big problems occur, I'm probably gonna be the best person to ask, and I've used two distros (Mandrake and Ubuntu) for maybe several minutes in total. I'm looking forward to learning, though.)

Also, this computer doesn't get much use, but she does drawing and stuff, so would Ubuntu Studio be better than Ubuntu?

Also also, she reckons she'd install Linux on her main computer if it had Flash (not something like Flash, since she's learned how to use Flash already). Does it run under Wine or anything? (This is hardly a necessity, but it'd be good to know.)

Prospective thanks, guys!
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♪ x x x ♫ x x x ♫ x ♫ ♫

[Tulpa]

Ubuntu Studio seems to me to just have like all of the media editing programs bundled on top of Ubuntu. I'd say it's not worth it unless she's going to be using all of the programs bundled.

RE: Flash, which version? 5.0 and 8 and MX all apparently work flawlessly. CS3 and 4 do not work.

Ubuntu is pretty great and it'll take a short adjusting period to get used to how ubuntu does things but I'd say it's worth it if you don't use your computer for modern videogames.
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[spinach]

studio uses a custom kernel

[eskaibo]

Wow, that's pretty helpful. Thanks Tulpa!

spinach, what's the lowdown on the Studio kernel?

(still open to suggestions too guys)
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♪ x x x ♫ x x x ♫ x ♫ ♫

[spinach]

they say it's better suited for realtime audio/video processing

i don't know what kind of payout this has

[eskaibo]

spinach, thank you!

I don't think either of those will be on the cards, though she's planning an animation that I can only imagine is going to include music.

Did it work well for you?
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♪ x x x ♫ x x x ♫ x ♫ ♫