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  • #2185320

    Linux in the real world

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    by raven2 ·

    Ok everyone. We talk about getting Linux into the mainstream. However,there are so many distributions and so many options the shear weight of all the decisions swamps all but the most dedicated techie. Most of the “average” users want to write a letter, use email, surf the web, do a spreadsheet, or handle their financial management.

    Which Linux distributons would be best?
    What are the hardware requirements?
    What applications are available?
    What are the compatabilty issues? (Will those MS doc and files sent from nonenlighted users be readable and usable?)
    What are the costs? Initial / Ongoing (No one wants to have to add a tech to their family just to keep the systems working.)

    With these questions answered then Linux becomes a solution for the “average” user, and not a techie/geek thing.

    We need develop solutions to users needs.

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    Replies
    • #3050956

      odd.. every main distro

      by jaqui ·

      In reply to Linux in the real world

      has all those criteria included.

      Xandros and linspire are the 2 that are tergeted at windows users.
      same monkey can do it installation.
      ( Xandros is better, it can build partitions and set up dual boot, linspire can’t, at leats the last version I saw couldn’t )

      any windows capable pc can run linux.
      freshmeat.net, theres way to many apps available to list.

      use open office and yes, you can read and write the ms orifice formats.

      free, free.
      community support is the standard model for linux, and is free.
      cost of downloading and burning to cdrom for getting the os.
      ( unless you want to just install off the internet, then it’s the cost of a floppy disk.

      • #3050886

        FOSS spreadsheet programs don’t work for me

        by stress junkie ·

        In reply to odd.. every main distro

        I get a spreadsheet from my stock brocker every week. I have not yet found an open source spreadsheet program that will display the spreadsheet properly. I’ve tried Kspread, gnumeric, and OOo Calc. They all display the spreadsheets differently and none of them display the spreadsheets correctly. In the cases of Kspread and gnumeric I simply tried to read the Excel file directly off of the disk. In the case of OOo Calc I tried both reading the Excel file off of the disk and I tried converting the Excel file into OOo Calc format. I’ve tried this as recently as today when I downloaded and installed the latest OOo v1.9.m122.

        When I look at the Excel file in a hex editor I find the following string near the bottom of the document.

        C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office\MSO97.DLL#Microsoft Office 8.0 Object Library

        There are no ASCII strings in the file above this entry that tells me anything about what software created the file. This suggests to me that the Excel file was created using Excel from MS Office ’97 or MS Office v8.0. (I don’t know if there is a difference.)

        This tells me that some spreadsheets created in Microsoft Office cannot be reliably read by FOSS spreadsheet software. Therefore FOSS office suite software may not be appropriate for people who exchange files with others that use MS Office. It also may not be appropriate for people who have already got a lot of MS Office documents.

        I’ve heard that MS Office works under Wine. I haven’t tried it. More accurately I haven’t gotten it to work yet. I just gave it a quick try one time to see what would happen. When it didn’t work right away I decided to put that subject on hold for later research.

        So my experience working with genuine MS Excel spreadsheets says that FOSS office software may have compatibility issues with documents created in MS Office.

        • #3050788

          wine and office..

          by jaqui ·

          In reply to FOSS spreadsheet programs don’t work for me

          use the specialised version called crossover office.
          it’s completely setup for running ms office in linux only.
          you can even pick which version of windows to have it tell office it is..95,98,98se,nt,2k,me or xp

        • #3052696

          Dont froget training

          by tr0man0 ·

          In reply to FOSS spreadsheet programs don’t work for me

          Don’t try to sugar coat it, changing from XP to linux is a revolutionary change.

          The biggest drawback to changing over linux on the desktop for users is the training issue. Most skilled users are good with MS office, (explorer) file manager, IE, Printer use and settings, CD burning, and so forth. Switching to Linux basicly means that all users are back to 0 on the clue meter. Open office is not the same as office and will confuse people who are used to office. Trainign is required! Furthemore, it is not totally compatible with MS office. For example tabs may be off, bullets shifter etc… These kinds of things make a difference in a buisness environment. People will make a big deal, especially in marketing / slaes. I still cannot get the OO spreadsheet to make a graph. (v1.4) there are issues, nagging issues. And the plethora of options for linux, including 10,000 text editors, dozens of web brosers and so forth creates an avalanch of options which are too confusing to any user who just wants to get soemthing done. It is also wise to consider that the admin assistants and so forth who are advanced users with XP will be the easiet to re-train, and bill at the lowest rate. It is the department heads and senior staff whose bill at the higest rates, and who will be most difficult to retrain. They who have the most clout stand to suffer the most from a software revolution. Think about what will happen to their productivity.

          From a tech standpoint as well, the lauded documentation of linux is often poor, incomplete, or inaccurate. On one dristro (knoppix based one) I was trying to install I could not partition manually since the manager in documentation (part) was removed and repalced with a differnt one (qtpart). all documentation refered to part, not QT. I think it goes with out saying that picking the distro is the most important part of this exercise. Only those distros that have proper version control, good documentation, and follow best software authoring practices should be considered.

        • #3052680

          Very good points

          by raven2 ·

          In reply to Dont froget training

          I am seeing the same issues. So, which distro do you like? Problems we have in buckets full, real solutions that have worked are what I am looking for.

          Regarding training, I had one upper echelon type who needed “training” almost every week on the same things. And he needed his desktop cleaned up on a regular basis. He thought he was a “power user”. 😉

        • #3052621

          Training, apps, distros, et al

          by jmgarvin ·

          In reply to Very good points

          Training: You can mitigate this by using Wine, WineX Cedega (www.transgaming.com) and/or Aclerex (www.aclerex.com) for porting Windows applicaitons to Linux.

          All the tools work pretty well and WineX/Cedega/Aclerex all work with the DirectX junk.

          Apps: See Training. You can using MS Office and Windows apps in Linux (for the most part) AND you can slowly (if ever) migrate to Linux apps.

          Distros: This is a sticky point. It depends on what you are looking for. Gentoo has top notch documentation, but you need to be a little experienced with Linux to install and “use” it. The Red Hatalikes are almost always documented very well and supported. I prefer FC3/FC4 for the desktop, but I know many that would say Ubuntu or Knoppix.

          What do you want out of a distro? What do you need? I can probably point you to two or three very well maintained and documented distros for your needs.

          As for the “power user” Linux does help mitigate the damage they can do to their computer. The nice thing is that clean up is (usually) a breeze with the “power user.” If you really want to get crazy, you can lock his box down so it looks like he has access to everything, but in reality he doesn’t! WOOOOO! 😉

        • #3052585

          Stupid, way off-topic question – Windows apps on Linux box

          by charliespencer ·

          In reply to Training, apps, distros, et al

          I’ve heard of these tools that allow Windows applications to run on a computer with Linux as the operating system. Here’s a really stupid question from an obvious newbie. How -exactly- do I install the Windows app? Do I just insert the CD and then start the SETUP.EXE like I would if I were installing on a Windows machine?

        • #3052541

          More or less…

          by jmgarvin ·

          In reply to Stupid, way off-topic question – Windows apps on Linux box

          Most of the time the hooks are created in the emulator software to “grab” that Windows autoplay and run with it.

          Sometimes you actually have to go to the CD and double click setup.exe though…

        • #3052482

          Run the interface software

          by hereinoz ·

          In reply to Stupid, way off-topic question – Windows apps on Linux box

          You usually have to run the interface software, such as crossover office, and that give you the facilities to access the CD, and run the installation – even simulates a Windows reboot.

          So once you have installed & run Wine or Crossover (my favourite), you then follow the bouncing ball to do the installation.

          Alan

        • #3061061

          But understand training

          by joeaaa22 ·

          In reply to Dont froget training

          With the current crop of Linux distributions aimed at the desktop (i.e. Xandros, Lycoris – now part of Mandriva, Linspire, etc) the training needed to move the “average” office worker over is maybe an afternoon or one day class. You don’t need to worry about your techies as they probably already have switched over anyway. It’s the “power users” that are going to be the problem children. These are the people who have worked out fairly intricate Excel scripts or Word macros. The ones who have tweaked their registry and installed their own preferred utilities to make them “more productive”. These are the ones who are going to resist change the most and be the loudest about how terrible Linux is because it can’t do XYZ. Understand these users, know what is going to trip them up and try to work out the best alternatives for them ahead of time. Also, some of them would be very useful in helping to define the standard that will be needed for the Linux desktops. A few of them, not most of them.

      • #3048782

        what about the monkeys …

        by steve_mckay ·

        In reply to odd.. every main distro

        … who use Visio?

        I’d love to use my …[checks over shoulder — no Desktop SOE Police]… Linux Partition for my daily work. But our security team (who are BSD freaks — what else!) won’t let the MS Exchange admin turn on OWC – so I have to use Outlook for my email. If I could get around that, the only reason I’m shackled to M$ is visio. Anyone know of a good linux app that can read visio diagrams?

        • #3065778

          Write Visio?

          by too old for it ·

          In reply to what about the monkeys …

          Anyone know of a good linux app that can WRITE visio diagrams?

        • #3062440

          Even better: Read/Write Visio and is Stable?

          by filker0 ·

          In reply to Write Visio?

          Not even Visio can do all of those — I use Visio on a fairly regular basis, and find that it will arbitrarily decide to reroute my connectors, ignore text label formatting (above/below/middle on connector labels), or move whole blocks of my diagram to odd places (sometimes out of the viewable area). It does this most often when I read a saved document in, but sometimes while I’m editing a diagram. Further, it sometimes decides that I’ve got a sharing violation when I try to save my file to another name, forcing me to update my original drawing. Other times, it just refuses to write the diagram to either the original file or to a new one, local or network drive might make a difference, but once it decides not to write on one, it doesn’t write on the other, either.

          Visio is a good tool, but it’s got more bugs than it ought to, and MS seems to be more interested in making it bigger (adding features) than making the existing features, and the program as a whole, work consistently and reliably.

    • #3050933

      More questions

      by wordworker ·

      In reply to Linux in the real world

      I attempted to decipher Jacqui’s reply. BTW Jacqui, you sound like a moron using “orifice.” Try to communicate above the 15 year old chat level, mmm-kay?

      Additional questions:
      Will the “monkey can do it” installer be able to recognize my cable modem?
      Will it recognize and be able to print to my LaserJet IIIP printer, still cranking out the B&W pages after 10+ years in service?
      Will it recognize the USB port so I can use my thumb drives?

      Or do I have to go churn the internet in search of drivers for those devices?

      • #3050928

        An idea

        by cactus pete ·

        In reply to More questions

        If you’re truly interested, set up another partition and test it out.

      • #3050906

        You don’t use Linux much do you?

        by jmgarvin ·

        In reply to More questions

        The “monkey installer” sees your cable modem as an ethernet connection and treats it as such. Linux is quite good at this and I’ve not seen any problems.

        It will recoginize your old LJ IIIP. However, you might actually have to go to HP to get the newer HP printer drivers. My HP CLJ 2550 works just fine in Linux.

        Yup. Most thumb driver are automountable. Some aren’t, but that is no biggie to overcome as there are plenty of support forums that explain EXACTLY how to mount a usb drive. (sure you MIGHT have to go to the command line and type mount /dev/sda0 /mnt/usbdrive or some such, but the reality is that it is quite easy to mount ANYTHING in Linux via the GUI now)

        Most USB devices don’t need drivers because you are only mounting the file system and not any special hardware.

        • #3052792

          I have a PPPoE question….

          by jrod86 ·

          In reply to You don’t use Linux much do you?

          I have Fedora Core 4 installed on a separate partition and did successfully setup the PPPoE connection, but how do I get it to launch at startup.

          I will admit I haven’t looked into it at all, haven’t booted into Linux lately, so it’s just a minor annoyance.

        • #3052618

          Start PPPoE on boot in Linux

          by jmgarvin ·

          In reply to I have a PPPoE question….

          (I don’t know the distro, but you might have to tweek the directories)

          Add this to /etc/defaults/rc.conf to make PPPoE run on boot (stolen from Paul Rice)
          ————–
          pppoed_enable=”YES” # Run the PPP over Ethernet daemon.
          pppoed_provider=”pppoe-in” # Provider and ppp(8) configfileentry.
          pppoed_flags=”-P /var/run/pppoed.pid” # Flags to pppoed (if enabled).
          pppoed_interface=”xl0″ # The interface that pppoed runs on.
          firewall_enable=”YES” # Set to YES to enable firewallfunctionality
          firewall_script=”/etc/rc.firewall” # Which script to run to set up thefirewall
          firewall_type=”OPEN” # Firewall type (see /etc/rc.firewall)
          firewall_quiet=”NO” # Set to YES to suppress rule display
          natd_program=”/sbin/natd” # path to natd, if you want a differentone.
          natd_enable=”YES” # Enable natd (if firewall_enable ==YES).
          natd_interface=”xl0″ # Public interface or IPaddress to use.
          natd_flags=”” # Additional flags for natd.
          defaultrouter=”YES” # Set to default gateway (or NO).
          static_routes=”” # Set to static route list (or leaveempty).
          gateway_enable=”YES” # Set to YES if this host will be agateway.
          router_enable=”YES” # Set to YES to enable a routing daemon.
          router=”routed” # Name of routing daemon to use ifenabled.
          ——————–

        • #3053083

          Thanks

          by jrod86 ·

          In reply to Start PPPoE on boot in Linux

          I’ll see what I can do with that.

        • #3048397

          No problem…Let me know if it works!

          by jmgarvin ·

          In reply to Thanks

          NT

      • #3048178

        This isn’t Usenet

        by crake ·

        In reply to More questions

        You should mind your manners here. This isn’t Google Groups or Usenet – trolls aren’t allowed and neither is abusive flaming.

        I suggest you read the Terms of Service for Tech Republic’s Discussions.

        • #3049105

          Strictly speaking…

          by wordworker ·

          In reply to This isn’t Usenet

          I don’t think saying “sounds like a moron” constitutes abusive flaming. (Calling him a moron directly would have been abusive, but maybe I’m splitting hairs.) Jacqui is very passionate about open source solutions but he is a poor writer. I believe if he spent less time making abusive / deragotory comments about Microsoft, he would have more credibility in these forums.

        • #3066333

          We all have our strengths

          by rahbm ·

          In reply to Strictly speaking…

          I understand your point, however please take into account that nobody these days can be an expert in everything. I may be a better writer, but Jaqui could wipe the floor with me in terms of software knowledge, My frustrations and grief with MS has lead me to completely agree with all of Jaqui’s assessments of MS and I fully agree with her putdowns, even if they are not strictly necessary. Anyone who understands operating systems, or who has had exposure to decent computing environments, is likely to hold MS products in contempt as a result. I think it is telling that Jaqui is always spot-on when criticising MS software. I bow to her (?) vast knowledge of both Linux and Windows (at least compared to me) and believe that the contempt of MS is fully justified and not just a matter of uninformed opinion, as in some cases.

    • #3050892

      Business or pleasure ?

      by tony hopkinson ·

      In reply to Linux in the real world

      At home
      Any one of the major distros promoted for desktop use will do the job.
      Hardware wise except for waiting for drivers for state of the art new technology linux is far more forgiving than windows. At the very least if the device in question won’t work the rest of your OS will.
      Open offfice will read all current ms formats.
      Games of course needs us to start using linux more so the vendors write for the OS, the other way round is not going to happen.
      As for adding a tech, managing a linux system for home use is different to windows but no harder.

      Business, whole new ball game.
      The first question to be asked is how much would it cost to re-rewrite all your current inhouse software investment to move platform, until you’ve got the go on that if it’s relevant none of the other issues are issues.

      • #3052790

        Interesting

        by jrod86 ·

        In reply to Business or pleasure ?

        I have wondered why we never moved to Linux here at work. We have about 5000 field associates with laptops with win XP (after a recent migration), and that’s a LOT of dough to be saved by switching to Linux. But, as you said, it would take a a lot of money initially to rewrite the large amount of proprietary software that we have on the platform. But, once the initial investment is done, let the savings commence!

        • #3052679

          Think beyond the laptop –

          by wordworker ·

          In reply to Interesting

          To what enterprise systems do those laptops connect? The L*x crowd loves to talk about Wintel emulators, but you can’t roll out a new laptop or desktop standard without proper testing to be sure your enterprise client apps will run properly and connect to the network properly. You may or may not save a lot of dough – depends on your testing results.

        • #3052539

          Huh?

          by jmgarvin ·

          In reply to Think beyond the laptop –

          Who wouldn’t roll out a product with out testing? Why would you assume the *nix crowd wouldn’t test and make sure things are running properly?

          On that note, it will save a ton of money in the long run, but you will have a tough time showing shortrun results.

        • #3052936

          Short Term Profits=Short Term Thinking

          by too old for it ·

          In reply to Huh?

          Which has been the problem since CFO’s got in the way and killed the dot-com bubble.

          Granted, there were a lot of “blue sky” projections in the dot-com world. However, this analysis of every decision relative to next Friday’s “earnings guidance” is very much like watching a heroin addict overdue for his fix.

        • #3052848

          Chuckle

          by tony hopkinson ·

          In reply to Short Term Profits=Short Term Thinking

          I’ll use that one next time some bean counter is about to shove a project out of the airlock

        • #3048778

          =short term career objectives

          by steve_mckay ·

          In reply to Short Term Profits=Short Term Thinking

          Most C*O’s and “top floor” exec’s in this part of the world have contracts around about 2 years. We don’t normally expect them to be around much longer than that before they “move on”.

          I think that has a lot to do with the short-term thinking that plagues business in general today.

          Then there’s the fast turnover of hardware technology. Due to the marvelous feature of ‘built-in obsolesence’ (which guarantees a cash flow for the manufacturer) software developers are kept endlessly entertained (not to mention – employed) with keeping pace with the latest advances in hardware.

          The bi/tri-enniel migration cycle (which usually triggers a minor to major upsurge in the desktop support job market) is the big opportunity for ‘alternate’ OSes, but the sheer scale of a major corporate desktop refresh and the potential a serious failure could have to totally sink a management career (which is probably headed for redundancy in the round of cost cutting to pay for the roll-on costs of the refresh, but don’t tell him that just yet) are simply to awful to contemplate for your run-of-the mill ITIL certified Service Delivery manager. And since he’s the likliest candidate for the title of “Subject Matter Expert” on the refresh project team, it’s a pretty safe bet they’re going to make a pretty safe bet and do what worked last time.

          Hollywod is like that too. When was the last time you saw a movie that DIDN’T have a lame sequel or three?

        • #3052633

          The amount of savings may easily pay for the re-write

          by tony hopkinson ·

          In reply to Interesting

          but costing the rewrite is going to be fuzzy. Such things are always fraught with potential potholes. Even if you came up with solid numbers the bean counters aren’t going to believe massive IT investment to save money without cutting jobs and where the improvement in service would have to be minimal. Only a half wit would switch platforms and change the functional nature of the software at the same time. You’d need some serious buy in at board level (read linux fanatic) to get it off the ground.
          This is the argument against any platform switch unless the one you are on is going to be obsolete.

        • #3048784

          only a half wit …

          by steve_mckay ·

          In reply to The amount of savings may easily pay for the re-write

          … or a Government Agency.

        • #3068500

          same thing

          by apotheon ·

          In reply to only a half wit …

          Half wit “or” government agency? What’s the difference?

        • #3052540

          Software

          by jmgarvin ·

          In reply to Interesting

          Most software can just be recomplied with a few library changes in Linux (if you aren’t using Windows API calls or crazy Windows libs). You can also emulate Windows or if you are using .Net, there is an emulator for that as well.

          I’m not saying it will run 100% of home grown stuff, but it does a pretty good job…

        • #3062426

          Back-end migration

          by filker0 ·

          In reply to Interesting

          If the IT infrastructure is based on Microsoft technology and if they’ve been trying to keep up with Microsoft’s tools, migration to non-Linux clients (or servers, for that matter) may be more difficult, as MS tends to lock you into their technology in subtle ways. Even something as simple as HTML pages that have been edited by FrontPage may contain mark-up that presents differently on MSIE vs. all other browsers even after you’ve turned off all of the browser-specific settings in FrontPage. Any application that depends on .NET, Active-X, XSLT, or MS specific JScript or SQL to perform client/server operations will have to be carefully clensed and tested.

          The best strategy for an enterprise wishing to migrate from MS to Open Source is to first migrate the back-end apps, one at a time where possible. Once the back-end is non-MS, the client ({desk,lap}top) can follow. Each application can be weaned from MS-specific technology, and only when all of them are weaned can the deployed enterprise client systems be switched over wholesale.

          In a large enterprise, this is expensive and may take a lot of time. In my opinion, it’s worth it. A CTO at a company, or the head of IT if that’s not the CTO, must always be aware that a decision to adopt a proprietary “innovation”, such as .net or some of the stuff being pushed for Longhorn may lock the enterprise into that vendors solution for the long haul.

          Disengaging from a proprietary technology that has insinuated itself througout your enterprise will always be costly and painful.

      • #3052944

        Business, the other ? of the question

        by too old for it ·

        In reply to Business or pleasure ?

        “The first question to be asked is how much would it cost to re-rewrite all your current inhouse software investment to move platform …”

        The second question is “What is the ROI on the re-write of all your current in-house software investment?” To translate CFO-speak to something the rest of us can understand: “Is there enough net profit to keep the investors happy, and keep the rest of the executive team in the manner to which they have become accustomed?”

        • #3052839

          Therein lies the rub

          by tony hopkinson ·

          In reply to Business, the other ? of the question

          The ROI is all in switching platform, the rewrite is a debit on those benefits.
          Given the differing ways and results people can use to prove ROI on either platform, coupled with the enormous risk factor, a job lot switch has very little chance of getting off the ground.
          You could argue that it costs less to develop on linux because of the price of the tools, but they are pathetic fraction of the cost of developing software in most business’s.
          This is not an argument against switch from windows to linux or vice versa, from anything to anything basically.
          Last time I did a major platform switch it ran to three man years, the big bonus was switching from 3rd party software and maintenance contract to inhouse, especially when the bulk of it would have to be messed with for Y2K anyway.

          You need some really good bottom line reasons on top of the purist techno-nonsense bibble babble that chaps such as ourselves come out with.

        • #3052837

          Mark Twain Updated

          by charliespencer ·

          In reply to Therein lies the rub

          There are FOUR kinds of lies:

          Lies
          Damn Lies
          Statistics
          Return on Investment

        • #3052828

          I will remember that one.

          by raven2 ·

          In reply to Mark Twain Updated

          It goes well with the other elderly adage:

          “Figures lie, and Liars figure.”

          Remember the only number that is really important is the boss’s bonus.

      • #3047342

        Web enabled applicatoins help us all play together.

        by royhayward ·

        In reply to Business or pleasure ?

        I feel like I am saying, “Can’t we all just get along?”

        For years we have been being encouraged to move all of our applications to web enabled, .NET and the like. We have moved away from the .NET and the stuff that only works with IE. Now we are looking at being able to serve customers and employee workstations running any java enabled web browser.

        We get to rap the ROI in with moving to a platform independent format so that what ever the future brings, linux, Windows, Sun workstations, we can serve them.

        And for those of you who have vended applications, many of those have or soon will have webclient interfaces as well. MS has been pushing for IE to be the universal front end. This is turning out to be good for both camps.

        • #3047173

          .Net is the bees knees, but it doesn’t play well with others

          by jmgarvin ·

          In reply to Web enabled applicatoins help us all play together.

          Mono still has problems with some of the stuff in .Net and to be honest, C# needs a little more maturity.

          Can you explain:
          “MS has been pushing for IE to be the universal front end. This is turning out to be good for both camps.”

          Why? IE doesn’t follow any standards, but MS standards.

        • #3055472

          Also there’s is a big difference

          by tony hopkinson ·

          In reply to .Net is the bees knees, but it doesn’t play well with others

          between a web client and using IE to execute foreign code on your machine.

        • #3055448

          I can explain.

          by royhayward ·

          In reply to .Net is the bees knees, but it doesn’t play well with others

          As an old command line hack, I pulled against push that MS was shoving. Namely, “Lose the client server app, and replace the client with a browser.”

          But now that I have lost that battle and the savings we were supposed to see from not having to develop and maintain clients have just become efforts to develop and maintain web tools. We are in the position to go platform independent.

          I expect that we are not alone. Yes, we have a few products left that are on .NET but we are converting them to PHP and Struts.

          But, if we had stayed client-server model, we would probably not be developing a client for Linux and one for Windows. Now however we just test our Web enabled Application with Firefox, IE and a few others and we are pretty much off to the races.

          I didn’t mean to leave the impression that I thought that .NET and DHTML would work with other browsers other than IE, but once you have made the leap away from client software, moving away from .NET and onto PHP is just a hop.

        • #3055682

          indeed

          by apotheon ·

          In reply to I can explain.

          . . . and if you’re willing to make that hop in the direction of a less-beaten path, Rails is awesome for exactly that.

        • #3065776

          All the other little browsers …

          by too old for it ·

          In reply to .Net is the bees knees, but it doesn’t play well with others

          … have to do is emulate what IE does, and they work.

          I have a theory on browser standards. You get a bunch of Bill Gates haters together in a room. They figure out what IE can’t or won’t do. They call this a “feature” They declare this “feature” to be a standard.

        • #3065532

          standards development

          by apotheon ·

          In reply to All the other little browsers …

          Actually, the way it has tended to work is this:

          A bunch of people that don’t work for MS or one of its “business partners” get together and discuss standards. They invite MS to send someone, but MS doesn’t bother. They look at what most people are doing and try to come up with something that is compatible with that without being hopelessly broken. One more time, they ask for input from MS. MS suggests they make “use IE” the standard. They tell MS where to stick it, and publish what they’ve got.

        • #3065428

          not quite,

          by jaqui ·

          In reply to standards development

          even ms business partners take part.
          it’s only ms itself that doesn’t.

        • #3065312

          yeah . . .

          by apotheon ·

          In reply to not quite,

          I guess you’re right about that. Precious few of them, though: for the most part, MS business partners aren’t really relevant to the process. They’re mostly looking for browser makers and the like in working on web standards.

    • #3050868

      Part of the Point

      by raven2 ·

      In reply to Linux in the real world

      I am going to build a system based on the suggestions from this thread. As soon as I grab a box to convert I will post the hardware config.

      So, at this point I have a couple of distributions to look at.

      Open Office will take care of some of the needs.

      Mozilla/ Firefox and Thunderbird are likely candidates for the web questions.

      The costs question is based on if there is any inhouse / propritary programs that are in the mix.

      The Hardware is a question of what is currently supported by which distrubution.

      I think cd / dvd — players / recorders might be an issue here.

      To clarify my inital point — we on the tech side can use another machine to find drivers and software to get a system set up and running. Many users, (this is not to imply they are dumb, ignorant, stupid, or lazy ) do not have the skills, patience, or aptitude to wrestle with setting up a system. How many of you want to deal with being able to put an IV needle into a cancer patient’s arm. They want confidence in their computer to be able to use it without fear of “breaking it” or being frustrated.

      I am looking to create simplicity in the face of complexity. Linux scares most folks, even many Windows wizards because it has more options.

      Thanks for the intial flurry of advice. Let’s see where this goes.

      • #3050782

        cd /dvd

        by jaqui ·

        In reply to Part of the Point

        players are fully supported with most distros.
        Xine, mplayer, totem are just 3 of the players that support playing both cdroms, vcds and dvds

        also supported are dvdrw and cdrw.
        ( k3b being a nice gui system with full support for both )

        • #3050776

          Info regarding Novell SuSE Professonal distro

          by stress junkie ·

          In reply to cd /dvd

          The one thing about Novell SuSE Professional that I don’t like for home use is that they don’t include the libdvdcss library. This means that out of the box it will not play commerical dvds. You can find and add the missing file(s) but home users shouldn’t have to do this. I don’t want to play dvd movies on my computer anyway so it is a philosophical issue for me, not a practical one.

          There are so many good things about Novell SuSE that it is a very good distro for the new home Linux user. The automatic configuration of the iptables filewall is probably the best thing about SuSE. The default is to not allow any unsolicited SYN requests through. The Novell SuSE software patch system is good. Other distros also have good software patch systems as well of course.

          I just think that it is important for anyone that is thinking about using Novell SuSE to know that they will not be able to play commerical movies on dvd without doing some monkeying around. This is not typical of Linux distros. It’s a hidden irritation that comes with Novell SuSE that might give a new Linux user the wrong impression about Linux capabilities.

          ===
          Edit:

          Here is an article describing how to fix the multimedia software for SuSE Linux:

          http://madpenguin.org/cms/?m=show&id=3601

        • #3052940

          Novell SuSE Professional Target Market

          by too old for it ·

          In reply to Info regarding Novell SuSE Professonal distro

          … is likely places like where I am now: 20,000 global users, all currently locked down through group policies,and for whom the two big questions are “wuffo do you want to watch DVDs at work?” and “wuffo do you want to attach a USB thumb drive with files of uncertain origin to the PC at work?”

        • #3048223

          Che? DVDs?

          by mark ·

          In reply to Info regarding Novell SuSE Professonal distro

          Thanks for the info — I had no idea I couldn’t play DVDs with SuSE, but then I’ve never tried. I’ve got an actual DVD player & TV for that.

          Seriously, after a lot of investigation, I plumped for SuSE as the best distro for home use on account of having a “no-brainer” installation (even for a dual-boot with MS 2K pro), choice of KDE or Gnome desktops, true multiuser (not like MS XP), security &c. I left Windows on my machine and told my wife to try and get used to SuSE with a view to dumping Windows, and after two weeks she isn’t using windows any more at all; she PREFERS Linux. She is definitely NOT a power user — limited commercial applications at work at a private hospital, all Windows.

          All my peripherals — printers, external drives, modems, other USB stuff were recognised by SuSE and up and running without a hitch. I highly recommend it for home use.

        • #3048168

          Good choice

          by stress junkie ·

          In reply to Che? DVDs?

          I’m very happy to hear that this is working out well for you and your wife.

          Just remember to run the online update once a week when you are logged in as root. You will probably only have to reboot when there is a kernel patch which isn’t very often.

          Welcome aboard the freedom train. 🙂

        • #3050354

          DVD’s

          by jcrobso ·

          In reply to Info regarding Novell SuSE Professonal distro

          No version of Windows will play DVDs out of the Box.
          Even with XP MCE 2005 you will have to install OEM DVD player software.

        • #3052758

          hmm.. strike 2 against suse then..

          by jaqui ·

          In reply to cd /dvd

          since suse’ use of the adaptec scsi adapter for loading kernel modules locks the system up, and I can’t boot suse at all.
          ( strike one )

          now, they don’t include a standard lib for playing dvds?
          ( strike two )

        • #3052734

          USB Drives- Strike three!

          by threv ·

          In reply to hmm.. strike 2 against suse then..

          SUSE Linux (and NLD) don’t reliably automount external USB Drives (thumb or Disk)

        • #3052705

          No trouble with my Seagate portable USB drive

          by stress junkie ·

          In reply to USB Drives- Strike three!

          I don’t have any trouble with my Seagate USB portable 100 GB drive on SuSE Pro. That’s just one drive model though. I hadn’t previously heard about SuSE having trouble with USB drives.

          ???

        • #3066326

          same for Ubuntu

          by rahbm ·

          In reply to hmm.. strike 2 against suse then..

          …which does not include the libdvcss2 library, or any other ‘closed’ software for that matter. I don’t have a problem with that, but simply telling me that I need the library, which I already guessed, is not sufficient. Now that I have downloaded it, what on earth am I supposed to do with it to get apps to use it? So far, this has been my only gripe with Ubuntu.

    • #3052519

      Reply To: Linux in the real world

      by lordshipmayhem ·

      In reply to Linux in the real world

      There are a number of distros out there that are good for first-timers, but the choice depends largely on your situation. Yes, there are a lot of choices, which can get intimidating, but that means you can opt for one that fits your situation. You can actually tailor it to your available hardware. In this message, I’m going to assume you’re talking about home computing or sole proprietorships.

      I’m running Mandrake 10.1 on a Pentium III. I’ve got a friend running the same distro on a Pentium II. In both cases, we’re dual-booting between Windows and Linux, although it’s been April since I last went into Windows (tax prep software issues, I’m thinking of trying Win4Lin next year if someone doesn’t come up with decent Linux tax software). Another friend, we took his PII/64 megs of RAM and got it successfully up and running with a Live CD of OpenMepis.

      For your typical Pentium III or IV, you should be able to get and work with most distros. I’d recommend something like Xandros or Mandrake, rather than going for Slackware.

      There are tons of applications available, including image manipulation (The GIMP), e-mail clients (Thunderbird, Kontact, Evolution, etc), office productivity (OpenOffice, K-Office, etc), games including clones of classics like Asteroids and Solitaire, file transfer protocol programs including Azureus for Bittorrents, CD-players, disk burners, IM programs that allow you to use ICQ and other networks, and so on.

      Compatibility issues: If you’re using a WinModem, you might have a problem – most don’t like to play with operating systems other than Windows. Because Linux is developed based on a network, it loves ethernet card connections, and will work fairly painlessly in that scenario. While some printers don’t like to play nice with Linux, most printers do, so check out yours on linuxprinter.org.

      Compatibility with existing files: OpenOffice is registering 99% or higher compatibility with Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint files. As the currently accepted estimate is that 80% of Microsoft Office users only use 20% of the product’s features, that should nicely cover most situations for you.

      The initial Linux cost: You could go out and buy a book for less than $30 (Linux for Dummies comes to mind). If you’re not willing to splurge that much, you can download an .iso of any one of the popular distributions for the cost of the CD’s you’re going to burn it to – I’ve yet to hear of one on more than 3, but it’s possible. The distro will come with far more than you’ll need to get started, as it’ll have additional software to turn your box into (for example) a mailserver or whatnot. While you can splurge on buying support if you want to, you’ll find that there are plenty of online places to go for help, like Linuxquestions.org.

      • #3052833

        Thanks for more good information.

        by raven2 ·

        In reply to Reply To: Linux in the real world

        Thanks again for the information. I will look over the Mandrake distro.

        I am being slow in evaluating the machines I will have to play with. As soon as I do that I will post and we all will see how it proceeds from there.

        I did look at Xandros and they specify 800 Htz or better chips; linspire specs 450 Htz or better. I think the machines I will be trying to use may be in the 300 Htz range. Actually, I am sure one is and I have 4 others that I need to see what is in them and if they are usable.

        I have an old version of Red Hat and a downloaded version of Ubuntu 5.04 in my current stable of distros. In addtion, I do have a couple of older books as well as my old Unix manuals.

        Are there any issues with graphics cards? I noted somewhere that video cards needed to be “linux friendly”. What is that about?

        • #3048386

          Graphics Cards

          by lordshipmayhem ·

          In reply to Thanks for more good information.

          To quote from this site:

          http://www.alphalinux.org/faq/FAQ-12.html

          “Linux boots in VGA mode, so pretty much any graphics card should do for Linux”

        • #3048313

          not quite..

          by jaqui ·

          In reply to Graphics Cards

          radeon cards can be a problem.
          the driver support is a hit or miss with a radeon card.

          I’ve had some that work fine, others where you have to battle to get them to work, others that have no support.

          ati cards are less problematical.
          built in video is usually safe as well.

        • #3049326

          nvidia is the way to go

          by jmgarvin ·

          In reply to not quite..

          ATI drivers are wonky to begin with. NVidia is more stable and they seem to be more “Linux friendly.”

          Also, ATI hardware doesn’t always follow convention…but that is a different story.

          Oh and PCI Express can have issues, but it depends on the card.

        • #3047654

          ATI cards

          by apotheon ·

          In reply to nvidia is the way to go

          I’ve had an ATI Radeon 9700 in my primary (Linux) workstation for about three years now, and haven’t had a lick of trouble with it.

          All that changed this morning. The card died on me, I think. I haven’t had a chance to check on whether it was the card that died, but that certainly seems to be the case (I’ve eliminated the monitor as the point of failure).

          Bah, humbug.

        • #3047649

          X series cards and the “new” XWindows drivers

          by jmgarvin ·

          In reply to ATI cards

          There are just problems on top of problems….Like I’ve said before, rpm.livna.org solves most of this with a simple yum update, but the newer ATI cards are problematic.

          While I do like ATI for their bleeding edge hardware, their drivers (Windows or Linux) need some help!

        • #3047635

          ATI drivers

          by apotheon ·

          In reply to ATI cards

          I’ve got to agree: ATI drivers are pretty hit-and-miss. I was actually using the open source drivers (automatic install with Debian) for my Radeon 9700. It worked fabulously. I won’t even try to vouch for the “official” ATI drivers for the same card. I’ve heard horror stories and, as long as the open source drivers worked, I wasn’t inclined to go screwing with it.

        • #3047481

          “powered by” ati cards..

          by jaqui ·

          In reply to ATI cards

          like the card I have in my primary workstation.
          it identifies itself as a rage 128 ultra xl.
          no such card from ati.

          yet the open source drivers ( default ) will give me 1280 by 1024 at 24 bit.

          if I change driver to be rage 128 xl,
          I can get that to 32 bit colour, at 1280 by 1024

          never had a problem with the card.

        • #3048269

          800MHz?

          by lastchip ·

          In reply to Thanks for more good information.

          I wouldn’t argue with what they specify, but I run Xandros on a 400MHz machine with no problems.

          It runs perfectly well in terms of speed, although clearly slower than a more up-to-date machine.

          It is a cracking system though! 🙂

          (see my post further down)

    • #3052492

      What I hate about the real world is…

      by steve_mckay ·

      In reply to Linux in the real world

      Well, a number of things. But RedHat HP are up there on my current “things I am enjoying least right now” list. I suspect other distro’s are providing a similar experience to other Systems Engineers.

      My “real world” is the high end server world. We have a solution we manage for a particular customer which is mult- tiered. Front end authentication and access to the solution has been built by one vendor who chose to go with Sun hardware, Solaris and Oracle for the database. All wise enough choices. This is the end of the solution that sees very little trouble.

      For some odd reason or other (probably political or penny-pinching) one of the backend sections – which sees a heck of a lot of database activity and file storage – was originally installed on a number of RedHat 7.3 servers using recycled Intel hardware from a previous project. Now, suddenly the user base has grown and the backend solution needs to be upgraded. So we moved to bigger hardware. This is where it got – um – interesting.

      We installed an 8-way intel server – upgrading from a 4-way box, and the the database got slower. It’s PostgreSQL, and the 8 cpu support is somewhat recent. In fact we couldn’t find anyone else using POstgreSQL on an 8 way box in a production environment. It seems we are now at the “bleeding edge” — oops!

      So in their infinite wisdom, the project managers (who consult with, but never actually listen to, the techies) decide to purchase a 4-way dual core 64-bit Athlon based machine. Introducing not one, not two but THREE new technologies in one Swell Foop!

      Now we can’t access one of the RAID arrays, because RedHat don’t support that driver on 64-bit kernels, and the manufacturer doesn’t either. We can’t import the data directlty from the old datbase to the new 64-bit database, so we have to compile a 32-bit version (on a 64-bit kernel) as in intermediate step to migrate it. More storage pleeeeez! And finally — the database is STILL SLOW anyway, so who cares?

      The whole process costs a ridiculous amount of money and time, and the users are ready to crucify the customer.

      The experience has told me that you will save money if you do it right the first time. But I knew that already. Also told me you really need to understand the technology when you spec your hardware. But I knew that already, too. On the Linux side, though, the message is a little more frustrating.

      Vendor support has been disappointing. When you find a solution crippled because you *have* to move up to new operating system (EL3 or 4) for new server hardware, but some of your peripherals (SAN cards, in particular) and some of the software you’ve been using won’t scale to the new environment you have to start questioning wether open source software was a wise choice.

      If it was Oracle rather than PostgreSQL, for instance, we could get vendor support – even to the extent of recoding or patching the database to make it work. I have seen Oracle, as one example, actually do this on previous projects. You can’t get that with PostgreSQL. If you haven’t got the skills in-house to contribute to coding an opensource project, you have to think very carefully about where you implement it, how you are going to support and maintain it, and what risks you are exposing yourself to where it is installed.

      Now, let’s be fair. If we had implemented this on Windows… well – you could forget getting past square one. It just would not have flown. The problem of scalability involved hardware, not just software. IO throughout, memory bandwith, FSB speed, and the whole hardware architecture all needed to be considered, but the people spec’ing the project hardware did not understand these concepts let alone how to quantify the needs of the application. We needed SPARC systems when we bought Intel/AMD, and that was and is the heart of the problem.

      Linux, right now is positioned very snugly between the midrange Unix market and the Wintel space. It does well there. But at the higher end of the Intel/AMD server market, it has teething issues. It’s moving into new territory, and developers haven’t caught up with the hardware yet. It’s expensive hardware, too, so unless hardware vendor s like HP start getting involved (Hmm. HP-LinX?) chances are open source developers are not going to able to afford to catch up in the short term. It’s fine if you are going with a brand new solution, as long as you understand what you are doing and why. But you should think carefully about migrating older solutions. You may not be able to do it as smoothly as you would expect.

      • #3053107

        slight mis-understanding…

        by jaqui ·

        In reply to What I hate about the real world is…

        since linux is used on high end hardware as the os, such as Cray’s x series “super computers”
        what hit you isn’t really the linux not being able to handle the system, it’s the version of linux that isn’t up to the task.
        ( clustering versions of linux are available, but not standard.. rhel is NOT a clustering solution )

        as for the postgresql issues, can’t argue that at all, postgresql is the closest to an enterprise class database engine in open source, but it’s not quite there.

        though, aparently there is a flight booking system wotking online ( airline specific, not cheap airfare site ) that is using mysql and database replication that is handling miollions of queries an hour just fine. maybe replicationg and load balancing between hardware instances of posgresql will improve the performance.
        ( use one of the old copies and update to be a current copy, then load balance giving slower system something like 20% of transactions.)
        if this works for mysql is should help with postgresql, as mysql isn’t even as close to being enterprise class database engine as postgresql is.

        • #3048789

          rhel & postgres

          by steve_mckay ·

          In reply to slight mis-understanding…

          You’re right about RedHat. In fact I wouldn’t be surprised if SuSE performs better – I guess we’ll find out.

          Postgres could probably perform better but I’m not sure it’s suited to the task either. We don’t see anything like millions of queries scenario you’re talking about – but it still runs like a dog. The complexity of the application is what’s killing it, (in combination with the fact the hardware was not spec’d properly to begin with.)

          Sure you could use Linux on a Cray, and the problems would (probably) go away. I think you could use Linux on a SPARC machine and it would go away, too. But why struggle with Linux when we could install Solaris? We already have an excellent relationship with Sun, and the support experience doesn’t compare with RedHat?

          In the end what’s going to kill this project is bad management, not Linux. But I can’t help thinking a Sun/Solaris solution wouldn’t have taken us to this point in the first place.

      • #3048150

        Dude that rocks..

        by stevef199 ·

        In reply to What I hate about the real world is…

        Hi Steve

        Thank you for posting your sysadmin experience.

        I sure wish I was in your part of the world,
        where I would have access to such expensive toys,
        and as interesting jobs! You (and your organization) rock dude.. keep it up!

        cheers,
        SteveF

        • #3048791

          toys

          by steve_mckay ·

          In reply to Dude that rocks..

          hey – servers are nice, but our laptops suck and the project management — nuff said…

    • #3048282

      Ultimate ease of installation and use,

      by lastchip ·

      In reply to Linux in the real world

      Xandros

      end of story!

      Oh, and if you want a trouble free Internet connection (Win modems are still a nightmare) invest in an Ethernet (RJ45) connected hardware modem and you’ll never look back.

      • #3048780

        my dogs bigger

        by steve_mckay ·

        In reply to Ultimate ease of installation and use,

        get wireless “broadband” – a ripwave with an external antenna.

        wooo hoooo!!

        That Big Flat thingy-on-pole sticking out of the side of your house? — ULTIMATE geek toy! (this month anyway)

    • #3048722

      Hardware update

      by raven2 ·

      In reply to Linux in the real world

      Thanks to everyone for the advice so far.

      Here is what I have to work with.

      Known good machine. 1 Emachine – 333 Htz with a 4 gb hd and CD and floppy.

      Parts — Franken-computer stuff.
      1 Good CPU -Intel 300htz Slot 1 with good Abit MB.
      1 flakey Pentium II with MB from Compact (sometimes it works ok)
      3 486s

      I have power supplies for the Compact and the 486s but not one that will fit the Abit.

      A varity of hard-drives up to 4 GB and various other, possibly useful, parts: 1 DVD, several CDs, and a couple of floppy drives. Other parts, an ok video card, two sound cards, USB-1 link card, ISA modems. No network cards or SCSI parts. Most of these things came out of incredibly dirty machines. Shesh

      On the software side; I looked through the pile and came up with the following 1)RedHat 1 – 2 disk set, 2)Corel Linux disk 3) someone just gave me disk labeled Redhat 4.5 Tool box. And 4) I do have a disk with Ubunto 5.04 downloaded from the net.

      I guess the first step is to get a box that will run things. My current plan is to pick up a sub 700 Htz Pentium III and a powersupply that will work with the Abit MB. Select a couple of the hard-drives and put a system together. I need to see if the DVD drive is still good, and which of the CD drives look the best. That will fill my IDE slots. A floppy drive should round out the whole thing.

      Now to questions.
      Can I set this up from formated hard drives? I know I need to format them with a different kind of partition than MS. Can I set this up so I can try different versions of Linux. Would starting the system from DOS be the place to start?

      I was thinking of wandering over to Distrowatch.com and picking up the Zandros version they have.

    • #3048719

      Update of Update

      by raven2 ·

      In reply to Linux in the real world

      Corporate policy change has dicated that I now will be responding from my non-corporate computer. My email address has changed too.

    • #3046780

      If anyone is still listening.

      by raven2 ·

      In reply to Linux in the real world

      From a newbie.

      Things you need to know.

      1 You need memory 128 min
      2 HD 10 to 20 GB
      3 Learn how to patition drives – rescue disks are important tools
      4 You can run Linux on slow Pentiums – See 1
      5 Hardware configuration is more critical than with M$
      6 Take time and RTFM

      • #3046773

        ~chuckle~

        by jaqui ·

        In reply to If anyone is still listening.

        #6.. is just too true.
        if you don’t read instructions you won’t get anywhere.

        #4 depending on distribution you can run it on fast 386. not that it would be real usefull but it can be done. 🙂

        #2 … um, I just finished doing a complete install.. on a 1.9 gig drive.

        you only need the 10 to 20 if you are installing a lot of duplicate items, like both gnome and kde.
        for newbies, this is a good thing, they can choose which gui they want by installing them all, and using them until they pick one to use all the time.

        #1 only if you are going to be running in a gui all the time. 64mb is fine for linux and will even run a gui, just slow in gui mode.

        • #3055477

          128MB?

          by apotheon ·

          In reply to ~chuckle~

          You don’t even need that much RAM if you’re running GUI all the time. What actually needs that much RAM is the Anaconda installer for Fedora/RHEL. I’m a Debianista at heart, and the debian-installer doesn’t need any more than about 32MB of RAM. There are ways to install with less RAM than that, but I wouldn’t recommend any installer using less than 32MB of RAM for a complete neophyte.

        • #3054997

          Memory??

          by raven2 ·

          In reply to 128MB?

          I just found a 32m stick in the back of a drawer.
          so I now have the following setup.

          Pentium 188 MMX, 64M of Ram (mixed), Toshiba CD, S3virge video card, a 4G HD and a floppy. This is running Award Bios, 1998 version.

          The HD is split into 3 primary partitions
          hda1 is 800m bootable as a Linux Native, hda2 is 1,200m Linux swap, and
          hda3 is 1,800m Linux Native.

          I think I need to reformat the drive and run e2fsck on the Linux native partitions.

          Slax Live CD will bring up the background image on the GUI but will not load any icons. The Morphix Live CD says it cannot load a GUI. I have a older RedHat, 4.1 I think, that installs but will not let me install a GUI.

          I think I am still having some hardware issues.

          This coming week I hope to have a PIII system put together with a bit more horsepower.

        • #3054979

          No GUI . . . ?

          by apotheon ·

          In reply to Memory??

          That sounds like a video card issue.

        • #3054212

          I was wondering

          by raven2 ·

          In reply to No GUI . . . ?

          I am using an old 3Svirge card, I have a “new” one in the mail. We will see if it all works.

        • #3064061

          So?

          by raven2 ·

          In reply to No GUI . . . ?

          I have an old S3 card, any suggestions or recommendations. Voodoo, ATI, Nvidia how much video RAM. What chipsets are supported, I guess I can look that up. What has been your experience?

        • #3063984

          my experience

          by apotheon ·

          In reply to So?

          Using Debian, ATI Radeon cards “just work”. When it asks what kind of video you have, tell it “ati” and let it go. That’s the “generic ATI driver”, though: if you want to get fancy, you can install the ATI vendor driver(s). The same should be true with NVIDIA cards: there’s an open source NVIDIA driver and vendor driver(s). The former should be pretty much automatically loaded by your distro, and the latter you can install if you feel like learning how proprietary drivers from vendors who aren’t really Linux-friendly, but play it well in the trade rags, install.

          Generally, the better motherboard chipsets get supported first. There have been known to be some issues from time to time with SiS and S3, and of course the Intel 815 chipset is crap no matter what OS you’re using, but aside from that you should be golden with common chipsets from major vendors (Intel, ASUS, et cetera). When a motherboard with a new chipset first hits the market, there may not be perfect support for it under Linux yet, but if it’s a motherboard anyone buys and uses for Linux, support will appear by the time the price stabilizes.

          In general, when buying midrange and cheap motherboards, onboard stuff has the greatest potential for problems: onboard sound, onboard video, et cetera. Of course, cheap motherboards are a potential problem anyway.

          With the exception of dealing with specialized drivers for high-end video cards and the like, it’s really the same game with Linux as it is with Windows: native support may or may not exist, and if it doesn’t you need drivers. Linux actually tends to have native support more often than Windows, but when you don’t have that it’s more difficult to get any kind of support for a given piece of hardware because the vendors don’t support Linux they way they do Windows.

          As you track backward from the present day, Linux support for hardware gets better for a while, then passes a point of diminishing returns, and starts getting worse again. This is because there was a time when Linux wasn’t as widely supported as it is now, and nobody’s busting their butts to produce drivers for obscure chipsets from 1995. At least, nobody I know is doing so, and you’re unlikely to see any such thing showing up in the kernel.

          What system specs you need depends, as always, on your operational needs. If you’re running Maya, you need top-end video cards with mountains of video RAM, and they need to support OpenGL. If you’re not doing anything like that, you should be able to get by with something older and cheaper. Your distribution will also make some difference in what your hardware requirements might be: the new debian-installer requires 32MB of RAM to run at full bore (there’s a text-based offshoot that’ll install with less), but Anaconda for Fedora Core 3 requires (I kid you not) 128MB of RAM. Even as a stripped-down text-based install, Red Hat indicates a need for 64MB of RAM to install Fedora Core 3, twice as much as the full-featured Debian install. Granted, the Debian install doesn’t have pretty icons like the 128-demanding (and 256-recommended) Anaconda installer, but if what you want is a quick and smooth install, icons probably aren’t a dire necessity. I hear that the Fedora Core 4 install requires even more RAM, by the way.

          What other information do you want?

        • #3063730

          Thanks apotheon

          by raven2 ·

          In reply to So?

          Great info, I will print off so I refer to this as I sort out the hardware.

          Linux seems to be fairly hardware sensitive.

          I have a Geforce MX4000 video card on the way, I am putting that with an ABIT BH6 MB, with P3 600 CPU, a 13G HD, 256 RAM and a generic ethernet card. Linux only box. I have Gentoo 2005.1 and Debian 3.1 to try.

          The other system was just not working. P 188, 256M RAM, 4G HD, S3 video card.

          I am looking over patitioning schemes and will try something other than what I had.

          hda1 2.1G bootable Linux
          hda2 1.0G Linux swap
          hda3 1.2G Linux

          It seems that the different distos have preference as to how they use patitions.

        • #3063686

          partitioning

          by apotheon ·

          In reply to So?

          I actually choose one of the default schemes for partitioning in Debian on almost every install, and modify it to suit my needs. You might think about doing the same. Here’s what I’d tend to recommend for creating a desktop Debian system:

          When you get to partitioning, choose “Desktop machine” rather than “All files in one partition (recommended for new users)”. This will create a partition scheme that makes a “best guess” for root, swap, and home partition sizes. I find that for desktop machines this is the “perfect” balance between simple partitioning and covering your arse in case you decide to wipe the OS partition and start over, especially when you’re first learning Linux and might want to nuke-and-pave several times.

          After doing that, if for some reason you feel the need to alter partition sizes, you can edit/modify from there.

          Of course, if you decide that’s not how you want to handle it, you can always do things differently.

          I’m not entirely sure what you meant to do with your suggested partitioning scheme, but at a guess I’d say you might have been trying to create two separate Linux installation partitions for a dual-boot system. That being the case, I’d say you’d probably want to create at least one more partition than I just described. For that, since I don’t know anything about how easy it is to set up a dual-boot system with Gentoo, I’d recommend partitioning first, then installing Gentoo, then installing Debian. You’d probably want a swap partition, two system partitions, and one or two home partitions (depending on whether you want to try using one home partition for both OS installs). Keep in mind that the home partition is the one that will likely hold all your saved data, as well as user interface configuration information, and the system partition is the one that’d hold all the programs, system configuration files, and logs.

          One way to do the partitioning for that is to do the partitioning exactly as I described above, but to then edit the three-partition setup by carving a chunk out of the home (listed as “/home”) partition of a size equal to what’s set up as the system (root, listed as “/”) partition so that you’ll have two identical system partitions. Let the system reboot and create the partitions during the Debian install process, but then abort the install (by using the Ctrl-Alt-Del “three finger salute”), put your Gentoo installation CD in there instead, and start installing it, using the existing partitions, but leaving one of those “system” partitions out.

          Once you get Gentoo installed, you can go back to installing Debian. Stick it in the drive, restart the computer, and when you get to partitioning tell it you want to manually edit the partition table. You’ll tell it to mount / at the open partition, and to mount your /home partition at (you guessed it) /home. You can also use the existing swap partition as swap space for Debian.

          The reason I recommend installing Debian second is that creating a dual-boot system with Debian as the second OS has always “just worked” for me. It should ask if you want to multi-boot between it and other OSes the installer detects and, of course, you’ll tell it you do. Meanwhile, I’ve run into problems trying to create multi-boot systems with other OSes as the second installed (especially Windows). For instance, not long ago I tried setting up a dual-boot between Mandrake and Debian: I already had Debian on the machine, and used the Mandrake 10.1 installation CD to try to create a dual-boot system. The end result was that Mandrake installed just fine, but the Debian install was hosed. I luckily still had my home directory intact, so I just wiped Mandrake and reinstalled Debian. I decided against screwing with making a dual-boot system with Mandrake at that point, having lost some patience with it, and I’m a much happier man for it.

        • #3065611

          The weekend so far

          by raven2 ·

          In reply to So?

          After reading my post here is the short answer: I want a Linux system to try out. I am not attached to any particular disto, I just want to see what I can do with the open source side of things.

          My original post with whining and complaining.

          What I am trying to do is get a couple of old machines to play nice with Linux. I have the P I with a cd rom 256 Ram and a 4G hd. This works with Live CDs for both Ubunto, and Morphics but I seem to be having a problem getting it installed to the HD. It would seem to be a relatively simple install for Gentoo but it dies at the last step; it sees the S3 card and seems to lose its settings for the framebuffer. Then it goes to the console. I guess I need to read up on the install, generate a check list and follow it. Gentoo seems to have an extensive tutorial / docs file.

          I have not tried the Debian 3.1 disk set I just got, would it work on this old a system? I am trying to get another system up and working that is a 300 Htz Celeron.

          I may just break down and install a dual boot on my AMD/64 3000 system, I have room.

          Oh by the way, I just downloaded Xandros open version. So I seem to have a plethora of distros, just none that seem to want to install on old machines.

      • #3046757

        RFTM No Never

        by tony hopkinson ·

        In reply to If anyone is still listening.

        BIFTL
        Bugger In & Find Out Later, learn from your mistakes not your manuals
        .
        Format C:\

        Put In CD again …

        Mandrake 9 was a two shot install, I must admit, forgot to read the paragraph headed getting rid of windows (W2k had been installed ny the vendor).

        • #3047293

          there is only one

          by jaqui ·

          In reply to RFTM No Never

          area where this can be a huge problem..
          firewalling.
          you can really lock your system up good if you setup a firewall and don’t rtfm first.

          like completely block traffic on the loopback device with a misconfigured firewall.

          try it sometime, close every port on 127.0.0.1

          complete lockup. 🙂

        • #3055476

          meanwhile . . .

          by apotheon ·

          In reply to there is only one

          Something as simple as disabling remote procedure calls can utterly screw a Windows system.

          I love the recoverability of Linux. Truly.

        • #3065772

          I usually get right to …

          by too old for it ·

          In reply to there is only one

          … the point where Apache is supposed to serve the web page, but it doesn’t.

          Most Apache literature is like trying to read sanskrit, IMHO.

        • #3065499

          really?

          by jaqui ·

          In reply to I usually get right to …

          apache is one of the easiest apps for me.

          one of the best resources, where I learned a lot about apache, is the mailing list.

          thier archives have an incredible number of different explanations for every tast, at least one of them will “click” for someone.

    • #3065159

      What is best depends on what you need

      by masinick ·

      In reply to Linux in the real world

      Which Linux distributons would be best?

      Which is best depends a great deal on what is most important to you, and that is the vey reason why there are so many Linux distributions out there.

      The commercial ones tend to be the most completely documented, although there are beginning to be some pretty well documented systems containing documentation that is accessible from the Internet.

      Red Hat and SUSE provide some of the most complete combinations of documentation and support, but there are exceptions. Xandros, with its Corel Linux lineage, has surprisingly good documentation. The Gentoo Linux project has really good online documentation.

      So it is really difficult to generalize and say “this is best, period.”

      What are the hardware requirements?

      Again, the hardware requirements vary considerably. Years ago, you could run Linux software on a system with 8 MB of RAM and several hundred MB of disk space. These days, there are few distributions (but there are some) that work with less than a GB of disk space and 128 MB of memory. I’d say that if you want to run a full featured system, reserve at least 256 MB of RAM and 4 GB of disk space. I can run many distributions fine in that amount of resources and only a few don’t work well with that much available resources.

      What applications are available?

      You can run Email clients, Web browsers, text editors, and common utilities on almost any distribution, with the exception of special purpose distros, such as firewall distros or multimedia distros, which are intended for specific purposes. Most general purpose distros run general purpose applications that provide equivalent functionality to what you may be used to using on some other system.

      What are the compatabilty issues? (Will those MS doc and files sent from nonenlighted users be readable and usable?)

      Generally speaking, I am able to access Word documents, which are the most common thing by far that I see, on most any general purpose Linux system, especially if it contains a recent version of Open Office, which gets better and better with each new release.

      Anything that is network centric works at least as well, if not better, on Linux desktop software than it does on other systems.

      What are the costs? Initial / Ongoing (No one wants to have to add a tech to their family just to keep the systems working.)

      There are most certainly geek centric systems that are really intended for geeks, but there are a surprising number of systems that most anyone who has ever installed any software on any system can manage. A great example is Simply MEPIS. The Simply MEPIS software can run by downloading the system as an ISO CD image, burning it to a CD, sticking the CD in a bootable drive, and starting it up. It is capable of running from Live CD with no installation at all! That said, it does run considerably faster by installing it to disk, which is also very easy. The software provides an “Install Me” desktop icon, which you can see from the bootable Live CD. There has never been software that is easier to install. I’ve seen more flexible software, but never anything easier.

      Xandros and Linspire also provide software that is extremely easy to install and use. All three of them provide many software packages that are preconfigured and ready to go. I do think that MEPIS wins this contest, though. Most stuff in MEPIS has really good defaults. I give Warren Woodford really high marks in software usability design, especially if we are talking about the consumer as the target audience.

      • #3064737

        documentation

        by apotheon ·

        In reply to What is best depends on what you need

        “The commercial ones tend to be the most completely documented,” you said.

        Depending on what you mean by “completely documented”, there are a couple of notable exceptions.

        1. Gentoo has a very good web-based knowledge base for beginners through intermediate users. It may well be the best distro-centric Linux knowledge base on the Web, or at least the easiest to use that is reasonably complete. I don’t even like Gentoo, and I’m definitely giving it props for this.

        2. Debian is by far the best-documented OS for the intermediate to expert user that I have ever seen. It has manpages for EVERYTHING. Nothing else even comes close.

        • #3064719

          Oh yes!

          by jmgarvin ·

          In reply to documentation

          You hate Gentoo? I’d have thought you’d like it.

          I must say that the Gentoo FAQs are designed and organized VERY well. Plus Gentoo has a wiki that makes life far easier.

          The debian knowledge base is HUGE and you can find an answer to virtually any question. The nicest thing is that there are various forums and websites that organize that debian knowledge pretty well.

        • #3064497

          Hate is a strong word.

          by apotheon ·

          In reply to Oh yes!

          I wouldn’t say that I “hate” Gentoo, but I have better things to do with my weekends than compiling software every time there’s a security update.

        • #3064372

          ROTFLMAO

          by jmgarvin ·

          In reply to Hate is a strong word.

          Ya, I can understand that.

          I think I’ve grown to like Gentoo because it is so much like Slack with the 2.6 kernel 😉

        • #3058310

          Only a weekend?

          by too old for it ·

          In reply to Hate is a strong word.

          I used to work for a retailer. We had retired a stack of HP Vectras that had been running Suse Linux and some POS software or the other.

          One of our server guys thought he’d try to load Gentoo-is-cool!! on a Vectra to use as an intranet server. Started compiling on a Monday afternoon, and I think it was serving web pages the following Saturday.

          I was sure impressed, let me tell you.

        • #3057505

          a weekend

          by apotheon ·

          In reply to Only a weekend?

          Yeah, only a weekend to, say, upgrade fetchmail for a security update. Considerably longer for setting up a webserver, and you may never finish if you’re upgrading KDE to a new major version number.

      • #3064078

        Score card 9/8

        by raven2 ·

        In reply to What is best depends on what you need

        System 1, Pentium 188 MMX – 256 RAM – 4.3G HD – S3(old) video card.

        Positives Live CD Morphix will run with KDE 3.3 The install to HD 2.1G root 1G swap & 1.2G home patition, will not boot from HD – grub booter. Or from a boot disk.

        Negatives: Slax Live CD will not bring up GUI, this may be because of video card / monior issue.

        Lunar Linux will sometimes get to a GUI with the Live CD but will not install in any configuration. It has a “safe” version which gets past a problem that is something about ibmhotplug version .6 that hangs the install / setup.

        Things not tried yet. I have a Ubunto Live CD, Gentoo 2 disk set, Debian 3.1 7 disk set “in the mail”, a Xandros (early version) disk, and a new Arch Live CD for i636.

        I have a new video card coming (Nvidia ) and the parts for another system. Pentium 3 600htz, 13G HD 256 RAM, and ethernet. I think I will be able to do better with that rig.

        I have an old version of Redhat 5.1 that might work with the Pentium.

        The hardware issues seem to be a major one with Linux. I was hoping to find some relatively easy to set up versions so old machines could be converted to basic email / browser / word processing machines without the M$ problems.

    • #3063876

      yup, 99%of the distros out there about covers that

      by rascal1981 ·

      In reply to Linux in the real world

      Today most, if not all linux distros cover every single item you named for the user requirements. Open office provides, for the most part, a very compatible set of tools to use old office files (xls, doc, ppt, etc…), up2date keeps the system patched and running and the Gnome (or KDE if you prefer) GUI is extremely friendly for the most part to even the most novice user. For the most part I would stick to Fedora or SuSe as they are the most user friendly (in my own opinion) and have the biggest corp. backing out there that I am aware of. I am not sure that its a issue of linux not being a user solution so much as linux has never been introduced as a user solution. Remember before Windows there was Dos and people seemed to get by with that until something easier came along and with the GUI’s the way they are today in linux I don’t see how it can’t be the same way with a windows–>linux transition. Bottom line; the solutions for user needs are there, we as the IT people need to simply introduce them.

      • #3065241

        Break down :-(

        by raven2 ·

        In reply to yup, 99%of the distros out there about covers that

        After a floppy drive shorted out and cooked a system!!! ??? I gave up on old hardware and am going to dual boot my Win XP machine.

        I got Live CD Ubunto to come up and work, with the exception of the DSL connection. I need to get that working and I will not look back.

        • #3058535

          DSL

          by apotheon ·

          In reply to Break down :-(

          Getting your system to work with DSL should be mostly a plug-and-play operation, unless you’re having to use some kind of PPP authentication with your service provider. What kind of network setup do you have? Does your ISP require authentication for DSL connections, or is it an “always-on” connection like most providers these days?

        • #3058315

          I cheat on DSL hookups.

          by too old for it ·

          In reply to DSL

          I always provide a router that can handle the DSL logon/authentication issues. Then it just becomes a DHCP matter at the client end. Works well, even if only one PC is involved. Has the added advantage of one less thing for the client CPU to be wasting cycles on.

          (And on Windows installs: NO SBC/Yahoo “content” or advertising on the browser.)

        • #3057503

          I like the Idea.

          by raven2 ·

          In reply to I cheat on DSL hookups.

          Any particular brand or model that you like?

        • #3057506

          LAN Layout

          by raven2 ·

          In reply to DSL

          I believe in the KISS principal.

          I have a dumb 4 port ethernet hub that two computers attach to. That in turn is attached to the vendor supplied DSL box. I will get the exact models and post those later today. I know the hub is basic, and I do not think the DSL box has much.

          The Ubunto Live CD was having some problem seeing the network. Ethr0 and 1 would not configure under the Systems tab in Gnome.

          I had a bit of a problem getting this machine to work with the DSL box under Windows XP; It has an builtin MB ethernet connection (Epox MB, AMD 64 3000 cpu) I think the builtin is running a Nvidia chip. That connection would never work right, so I added a ethernet card that works.

          I am going to repartition the HD to give me space to install the Linux system and then install Debian 3.1 if I have the correct version for AMD 64 cpu.

        • #3057500

          ah . . .

          by apotheon ·

          In reply to LAN Layout

          Hubs don’t tend to play well with DSL, and even switches are often less than fully functional, if there isn’t a local router involved. The problem is largely with the way the network is set up on the ISP’s side: they make things difficult for running multiple systems.

          The problem that arises is that you only have one DSL account (I assume), and as such they only give you one IP address. A hub or (basic) switch thus can’t help much because multiple systems plugged into a hub or switch will need multiple IP addresses.

          You need either a NAT device of some kind or a router/gateway, so that the ISP only sees one device at your locality. This is true no matter what OS you’re using.

        • #3056563

          A Hurdle Identified.

          by raven2 ·

          In reply to ah . . .

          I will try accessing the Web without the Hub and see if that works. Other things have impinged upon time to play with this system, so I am slow to try things out.

    • #3058693

      Progress

      by raven2 ·

      In reply to Linux in the real world

      I have sorted out the hardware issues on a 300htz Celeron 13GB system. Debian 3.1 Sarge is up to the console level. Now I get to learn how to install packages and get it all tidy.

      The network part is still a dark hole. I need to get the cable strung so I have a connection and then I get to see if it can find the network / internet.

      Wish me luck, I seem to be midway between 3 Lunix user groups. Maybe I can find a local wizard.

      • #3062535

        package management with apt

        by apotheon ·

        In reply to Progress

        To look for a package, do a search by what sort of software you’re seeking. For instance, if you want a text editor, you could try searching for “editor”. If you want a word processor, you could try “word processor”. If you’re looking for OpenOffice.org, you could search for it with something like “openoffice”. The quotes shouldn’t be necessary unless your have spaces in your search term.

        The command to perform the search is [b]apt-cache search[/b]. For instance, if you’re looking for a word processor, you might try this:

        $ [b]apt-cache search “word processor”[/b]

        If you’re looking for OOo in particular, you might try:

        $ [b]apt-cache search openoffice[/b]

        If you find something in a list of search results that catches your eye, but you want to know more about it, you can use apt-cache for that as well. For instance, in searching for a word processor, you might come across abiword (my personal favorite word processor at the moment, when I have to look at Word documents and the like). To see more about abiword without installing it or searching the web, you could use the [b]apt-cache show[/b] command, like so:

        $ [b]apt-cache show abiword[/b]

        The output of that command is as follows on Debian Sarge/stable 3.1:

        [i]Package: abiword
        Priority: optional
        Section: editors
        Installed-Size: 6620
        Maintainer: Masayuki Hatta (mhatta)
        Architecture: i386
        Version: 2.2.7-3
        Replaces: abiword-common (<< 2.0.14-1), abiword-gtk, abiword-gnome Depends: libatk1.0-0 (>= 1.7.2), libc6 (>= 2.3.2.ds1-4), libenchant1, libfontconfig1 (>= 2.3.0), libfreetype6 (>= 2.1.5-1), libfribidi0 (>= 0.10.4-5), libgcc1 (>= 1:3.4.1-3), libglade2-0 (>= 1:2.4.2-2), libglib2.0-0 (>= 2.6.0), libgtk2.0-0 (>= 2.6.0), libice6 | xlibs (>> 4.1.0), libpango1.0-0 (>= 1.8.1), libperl5.8 (>= 5.8.4), libpng12-0 (>= 1.2.8rel), libpopt0 (>= 1.7), libsm6 | xlibs (>> 4.1.0), libstdc++5 (>= 1:3.3.4-1), libx11-6 | xlibs (>> 4.1.0), libxft2 (>> 2.1.1), libxml2 (>= 2.6.16), libxrender1, zlib1g (>= 1:1.2.1), abiword-common (= 2.2.7-3)
        Conflicts: abiword-gtk, abiword-gnome
        Filename: pool/main/a/abiword/abiword_2.2.7-3_i386.deb
        Size: 2340758
        MD5sum: 27dd095ebe465f4b615483487c716f43
        Description: WYSIWYG word processor based on GTK2
        AbiWord is the first application of a complete, open source office
        suite. The upstream source includes cross-platform support for Win32,
        BeOS, and QNX as well as GTK+ on Unix.
        .
        This package contains the AbiWord binary built with GTK2.[/i]

        It uses GTK, which annoys me a little, but at least the interface doesn’t require Java like OOo’s does.

        The other apt command set, aside from apt-cache, that is likely to be of great use to you is apt-get. The apt-cache commands access a locally stored cache of data (thus the name) about available packages. The apt-get commands get data and packages from some other source, defined in your /etc/apt/sources.list file. These other sources might be a local apt archive mirror, a set of Debian install CDs, or an apt archive accessible through the Internet. I tend to use the hell out of the Internet-based archives, personally, though as I roll out more Debian systems at work (knock on wood) I’ll want/need to set up an apt archive mirror on the LAN. In any case, as I said, apt-get is used to get data and packages from your defined apt archives (thus the name).

        Finally, there’s apt-source, which is used to get and install source packages, but we’ll ignore that one for now: you can happily get along without that for a long time to come, most likely.

        Once you’ve used apt-cache to figure out what package you want to install, you can use apt-get to install it. For instance, if you want to install abiword, you’d use the following command:

        # [b]apt-get install abiword[/b]

        The hash mark “#” at the beginning of that line indicates a command prompt that ends with “#” (for most Linux systems, that’s the default end-character of a bash prompt when logged in as root), whereas the earlier use of the “$” character indicated that the dollar sign, instead, was the prompt ending character. This is to indicate that, for instance, apt-cache will run as pretty much any user, but apt-get requires administrative rights, and you must thus run it as root.

        The apt-get command has a lot more capability than that, however. For instance, if you’re [b]get[/b]ting from an Internet-based archive, you’ll want to udate your local cache regularly (perhaps daily). To do that, you would (unsurprisingly) use the [b]apt-get update[/b] command, like so:

        # [b]apt-get update[/b]

        Yes, it’s that easy.

        The next thing you’ll probably want to use is [b]apt-get autoclean[/b], to clear out any older package references in your local cache that are no longer relevant. Finally, there may be new versions available for packages you already have installed. If you’re using Debian stable (currently stable is v3.1, aka Sarge), you will almost never find that there are new versions aside from security patches and similarly critical updates, and as such it’s a very good idea indeed to check for new package versions with the stable release.

        To check for, and install, package updates, you’d use [b]apt-get upgrade[/b]. No additional arguments are needed. As with install, update, and autoclean, above, you have to be root to use the upgrade command.

        When you run [b]apt-get upgrade[/b], it will spit out a list of packages that can be upgraded to a newer version. It will then ask whether you want to continue with the upgrade. In general, you should probably just press the Enter key (the question will be followed by [Y/n], indicating that you can answer either with a “y” character or “n” character for “yes” or “no”, with the capitalized Y indicating that it’s the default so that simply pressing Enter will be the same as entering “y”). This allows it to install all the indicated package upgrades.

        You can also choose “n”, for “no”, of course. If you see some package in there that will upgrade something you don’t want upgraded (you’ll surely know when you need to choose a “no”: it’s like the old comment about products without pricetags, where if you have to ask, it’s too expensive). If you decide you want to upgrade some packages but not others, you can always learn how to “pin” certain packages, set them to not upgrade, and so on. This is a slightly more complex task than I intend to discuss right now, and is likely unnecessary for you. You can also simply refuse batch upgrades like that and, instead, upgrade one package at a time. Using [b]apt-get install[/b] on a given package can be used to upgrade it if there’s an upgrade version available.

        To remove packages (the opposite of installing them), you would use [b]apt-get remove[/b] (surprise, surprise), like so:

        # [b]apt-get remove openoffice.org[/b]

        If you want to get rid of all the configuration files used by that package, you’d use the –purge switch, like this:

        # [b]apt-get –purge remove openoffice.org[/b]

        I generally recommend doing that, unless you think you’ll be reinstalling the package later and will want the same configuration options to apply (after you’ve changed preferences for the application in question).

        That’s pretty much it. To search for a package, use apt-cache search. To get more information about it, use apt-cache show. To update your cache, use apt-get update. To install a package, use apt-get install. To remove one, use apt-get remove (or apt-get –purge remove). Et cetera.

        There’s another tool of immeasurable value, called debfoster, that you might want to install.

        # [b]apt-get install debfoster[/b]

        As you install packages over time, occasionally run debfoster at the command line (just enter [b]debfoster[/b]). This is used to present you, one at a time, with a list of installed packages that you may want to either keep or remove. This is one way you can avoid having to memorize every single package you have installed on your system in case you might some day want to remove one of them.

        It will give you information about each installed package that looks something like this:

        [i]bastille is keeping the following 7 packages installed:
        libbit-vector-perl libcarp-clan-perl libcurses-perl libdate-calc-perl libnetwork-ipv4addr-perl libunix-syslog-perl psad
        Keep bastille? [Ynpsiuqx?], [H]elp:[/i]

        To tell it to remove a package (as if you’d entered apt-get –purge remove), press the N key. To keep it, and cause debfoster to not ask you about it next time, either press the Y key or simply press Enter. To get more information about the package before you make a decision, use a question mark (hold down Shift and press the key with / and ? on it, just like you were typing a question mark in a word processor). If you want to skip this one, so that it’s not removed but you are asked about it again the next time (something you’d do if you’re not sure yet whether you want to keep it), press the S key. For help on how to use the debfoster options, you can use the H key.

        All of these options are available to you, as you might notice from the above-quoted output from debfoster. That “[Ynpsiuqx?], [H]elp:” bit gives you a string of letters, plus an H for help, as options. The Help key tells you very briefly what each of those letters does. If you want to quit debfoster without continuing, such as when you’ve told it to remove something you don’t want removed or to keep something you don’t want kept, you can use the Q key, then you can start over by running debfoster again.

        So, the most important stuff for a beginning Debian user:

        apt-cache search
        apt-cache show
        apt-get update
        apt-get upgrade
        apt-get install
        apt-get remove
        debfoster

        By the way, if you get results that are too damned long to read easily in your console window from [b]apt-cache search[/b], you might try piping it through a pager, such as less:

        [b]apt-cache search editor | less[/b]

        Between “editor” and “less” is the “pipe” character, also known as the “vertical bar” to Windows users. It’s typically on the same key as the backslash. In bash, the pipe character is used to “pipe” one command’s output through another command. Thus, if you want to send the output of a very long list of packages from an apt-cache search to a pager like less so you can scroll up and down through the list, you can use the pipe character to do that. I typed it with spaces between the pipe character and the words on either side, for clarity, but you don’t necessarily have to have those spaces there.

        I hope that helps.

        • #3062454

          I think you just earned your wings.

          by raven2 ·

          In reply to package management with apt

          Penguin wings of course,

          Thank you for your time and thought. I have printed out the post so I can keep it next to the box. I will get some time soon to work on the system, I am really looking forward to having a Linux internet connection and some exploring time.

        • #3062436

          Wheee! I can swim!

          by apotheon ·

          In reply to I think you just earned your wings.

          Ahem. Thanks, I think.

          I’m glad that was of use. I’m here if you need more help.

    • #3056912

      What Ever Happend to OS ” DEC”

      by wboyland1 ·

      In reply to Linux in the real world

      Many years ago (1986) there was a OS cross between UNIX & Microsoft DOS. It’s name was “DEC”, very nice.

      • #3056898

        DEC? An OS?

        by filker0 ·

        In reply to What Ever Happend to OS ” DEC”

        Shortly before 1986 (1981-1985) I worked for DEC (Digital Equipment Corp.), and they had a few Unix versions — Ultrix 32, and Ultrix 16. Later they had OSF/1 and True64, I believe. In any case, I can’t imagine that there was an OS that was a cross between Unix and DOS at that time named “dec”.

        DEC had a number of other operating systems that don’t really meet your description. What kind of hardware did this OS that you remember run on?

        • #3061579

          VMS?

          by charliespencer ·

          In reply to DEC? An OS?

          DEC also had an OS called VMS; could that be the one you’re thinking of?

          DEC was purchased by Compaq (late 90’s?), which merged with Hewlett-Packard last year. The VMS operating system was overhauled (during the Compaq years?) into OpenVMS. I believe most of the DEC product lines were allowed to die, living on only through third-party maintenance contracts.

        • #3061422

          VMS –> OpenVMS

          by filker0 ·

          In reply to VMS?

          OpenVMS was developed before the Compaq take-over; it was developed in the process of porting VMS to the DEC Alpha processor. Previous versions of VMS (or VAX-VMS) were VAX processor specific.

          Other DEC supported operating systems: RT-11, RSX-11 (S, M, M-Plus), IAS, POS, RSTS/E, Vax-Elan (embedded), Tops-20. I suppose I ought to include OS/8 and WPS/8 as well. They had CP/M / MS-DOS based systems as well.

          None of the above were particularly Unix like.

          The DECUS library contained a number of tools that let you create a Unix-like environment on various non-Unix PDP-11 and VAX operating systems, and there was a supported Unix-like environment that ran under VMS, giving a greater level of compatibility. I don’t recall the name of the product, but the Configure tool checks for it and comments favorably when it determines that you’re not using it.

    • #3063452

      Debian -Gnome – Hardware?

      by raven2 ·

      In reply to Linux in the real world

      And the winner is Hardware.

      The current state is a Debian Linux install that will take me to the console, but gives me a blank screen with gnome. I will try reinstall of gnome.

      gnome works with a Live CD of Ubunto.

      I may try clearing out gnome and going with kde.

      The video card I am using is a Mach 64, I have a S3Virge available to try. Do I need something with more video RAM? 16m 32m 64m what works?

      • #3063406

        clean installs . . .

        by apotheon ·

        In reply to Debian -Gnome – Hardware?

        You could always try a minimal install of Debian from the very beginning, without using tasksel, aptitude, or anything else to install anything more than the base system during OS install. Then, when you can boot to a console, use apt-get to start installing the software you want to use. It’s a little more advanced to do it that way than to let tasksel install whatever it thinks is appropriate for a “desktop” system (for instance), but it has always worked for me, and makes me much happier with the end product than I would be with some other schmuck’s wildest guesses as to what a common end-user might like.

        You should be able to run a Debian install, even with GNOME or KDE, on 8MB of RAM. If it’s not running properly, your problem is something else.

        • #3063046

          Debian Install

          by raven2 ·

          In reply to clean installs . . .

          I will clean off the partitions and try this. I am using old hardware, and am somewhat leary of hardware conflicts / issues.

          To put this on record. Celeron 300a, Abit BH6 MB, 128k RAM, 13GB HD, Mach64 video, generic ethernet card, Cl Soundblaster 16 audio card, floppy, and CD Rom.

          The video card appears to be ok on the Linux hardware lists, but some folks seem to have had couple of problems.

          I have parts for another system: either a Celeron 533 or a Pentium 3 600, Abit BE6 MB, 2 4GB HDS,up to 256 RAM, a Nvidia AGP 128 video card, other bits and pieces.

          I am not sure of any of the parts, most appear to be good, however . . . ?

        • #3063010

          off the top of my head

          by apotheon ·

          In reply to Debian Install

          I’m not sure about Abit or Mach64, but the rest of those parts should be well-supported without additional software confusion. The Abit boards are probably fine, but I haven’t looked into it. The NVIDIA video card should be very well supported (there are both “generic” open source drivers that allow native kernel support and vendor-supplied proprietary drivers if you want to make the leap to trying to configure that yourself for all, as far as I’m aware, of their cards from the last five years or so).

    • #3063412

      Never happen “as-is”

      by dmarston ·

      In reply to Linux in the real world

      This thread (and countless others like it) is a prime example of why Linux (any and all distros) will never become the dominate O.S. for everyday users.
      With all its power and configurability comes it’s weakness. Let’s face it, Aunt Betty and her quilt knitting friends will NEVER edit config files or compile source code. Nor do they want to! (The same can be said of most business users, the Accountants, Salesmen, H.R. folks, etc. etc.)
      Like you said, average users want to be able to turn it on, read email, print pictures, and create documents. M$ Windoze and Mac accomplish this flawlessly. RedHat is getting closer to this level of “newbie proof”, but even RH needs tweaking to get everything to work right. And unless you?re a geek, most Linux documentation might as well be written in Swahili. (Ironically, in some distros you have to be a geek even to find the documentation by using the CLI MAN commands)
      A while back I read a piece about some guy trying to print to a shared printer (on XP), it went on to describe his efforts digging through the documentation, setting up SAMBA, dealing with dependencies, etc. until he got it working.
      Super! He got it working!
      Unfortunately, he left Aunt Betty WAAYYY back there somewhere in the MAN pages; Way before he figured out he needed SAMBA, let alone figuring out dependency trees.
      If Little O?l Betty can?t just “point and click” and have it work, she WILL use something else.
      The same thing goes for installing applications. In Windoze, you put the disc in, double click ?setup.exe? and it auto-magically does its thing. Linux users have to deal with dependencies, Tar balls / RPMs /packages, kernel versions, compiling from source, etc. etc. etc.
      So herein lies the point; If (and only if) Linux programmers start thinking about Aunt Betty and her book club buddies, Linux will always be for “Geeks Only”.
      YES, Linux is better
      YES, Linux is more secure
      YES, Linux is cool
      YES, M$ Windoze sucks
      NO, Linux (as is) can not, and will not become mainstream.
      So, To all developers (and end users who influence developers);
      Just because some functionality can be added in, doesn?t mean that is should be added in.
      Get a picture of the most computer illiterate person you know, tape it on your monitor, and with every piece of your software ask yourself? would (insert name) understand this??
      Think about USEABILITY first! Then you can give the options for advanced functionality and tuning. Just because your printing software can support 14 different formats, doesn?t mean the end user should have to choose among them (Aunt Betty would be lost with such a choice, and would give up long before digging through documentation)! If the printer hooked to the computer can only use format # 3, then show (and default) to format # 3!
      Aunt Betty has no clue what any of these things mean or do, and she DOESN?T CARE! She wants to print this weeks quilt pattern. That?s it, Period. Whether or not this driver supports 47 different configurations or not, is absolutely irrelevant to her.
      (This applies to ALL software, I know I?m picking on printing, but only because it illustrates the point well)
      Once your software is ?Aunt Betty proof?, and accomplishes its primary goal (i.e. the printer auto-magically prints), then you can make the advanced features available through either config files or plug-ins or whatever.
      Secondly, make the documentation ?Aunt Betty proof? by using plain English and make it easy to find!
      Thirdly, Make installers that include everything your software needs to run!
      If you can?t grab it off the shelf, rip off the shrink-wrap, and install it, neither will Aunt Betty!

      Well, that?s my rant.. 😛

      • #3063391

        silly

        by apotheon ·

        In reply to Never happen “as-is”

        When you’ve supported as many end-users trying to install Windows from scratch, or trying to resolve issues when hardware gets replaced, as I have, then perhaps you’ll realize that Windows is at best no better than Linux for issues like this.

        “[i]Aunt Betty and her quilt knitting friends will NEVER edit config files or compile source code.[/i]”
        They’ll never hack the Windows Registry, flash BIOS, or resolve driver conflicts through the Device Manager, either. The real difference is in the fact that it’s harder to find vendors that sell complete systems with Linux pre-installed and pre-configured.

        “[i]in some distros you have to be a geek even to find the documentation by using the CLI MAN commands[/i]”
        Funny, I never realized you had to be a “geek” to type “man” and hit the Enter key. That’s news to me. In any case, I’d rather have obscure documentation than none at all.

        “[i]A while back I read a piece about some guy trying to print to a shared printer (on XP), it went on to describe his efforts digging through the documentation, setting up SAMBA, dealing with dependencies, etc.[/i]”
        Funny, with Red Hat using KDE (for instance), I just click Control Center > System > Printing Manager and use the GUI printing configuration tool; this is very like the way Windows handles it. On Mandrake with KDE it’s slightly more complex: I open the Mandrake menu and go to System > Configuration > Configure Your Computer > Hardware > Printers (which is made a little more obvious by the fact that the icon for Hardware shows a printer). It’s similarly easy in GNOME. While I wouldn’t throw a user who’d only used Windows previously into CLI printing configuration without waterwings, even it is not too difficult on distributions like Debian (my favorite).

        “[i]The same thing goes for installing applications. In Windoze, you put the disc in, double click ‘setup.exe’ and it auto-magically does its thing.[/i]”
        Jeez, that sounds pretty much like a pain in the arse. You have to have a CD? I just type “apt-get install [packagename]” in Debian, or “urpmi [packagename]” in Mandrake, or “yum install [packagename]” in Fedora Core, and it installs, dependencies and all. Even better, unlike with Windows applications, installing a new one using “apt-get install” doesn’t tend to break other applications that use some of the same libraries (DLLs in Windows-speak).

        “[i]Just because some functionality can be added in, doesn?t mean that is should be added in.[/i]”
        Gee, I’ve been saying that about Microsoft for years, and they’re still not listening to little old me. Next time you decide to say something like that, maybe you should have a look at the broken-ass mess of “features” that MS calls “Office” first.

        “[i]Once your software is ?Aunt Betty proof?, and accomplishes its primary goal (i.e. the printer auto-magically prints), then you can make the advanced features available through either config files or plug-ins or whatever.[/i]”
        Well, good. Then we’re done. See above, re: KDE and GNOME configuration of printing. By the way, “config files . . . or whatever” is what’s going on behind the scenes, just as Windows Registry settings, MIME type configuration, DLL dependencies, and so on are going on behind the scenes when you configure printers for Windows. This isn’t “extra functionality” that gets added on later. This is what makes it all work in the first place. The point of using plain text config files rather than a Windows Registry is to make it easier for an expert to troubleshoot when Aunt Betty completely screws something up.

        “[i]Make installers that include everything your software needs to run![/i]”
        Ooh, bloat. Good plan. More complexity. Less secure software is fun. More broken software is fun. Oh, yeah, and even Windows doesn’t do this as much as you think. Luckily, unlike Windows, major Linux distributions provide massive software package repositories that allow you to ignore things like dependencies and just say “install this thing”, and it installs and automagically works. I’m guessing you haven’t actually tried this stuff out, though.

        “[i]If you can?t grab it off the shelf, rip off the shrink-wrap, and install it,[/i]”
        Why would I want to do all that? I can just skip the “grab it off the shelf” and “rip off the shrink-wrap” steps and go straight to “install it”.

      • #3062961

        The Nature of the Beast

        by raven2 ·

        In reply to Never happen “as-is”

        The first automobiles were a hodgepodge of sometimes weird control systems. Aircraft were more complex and featured some tweaky ideas.

        Computers speak binary, and if you think about it there are at least 6 levels of translation between the average user and the place where things are really happening. Everything inbetween is “virtural”.

        We have focused on a concept of performance because what has driven the development is largely the visual interactive part of the pardigm. And not the, “Here is a very usable system that has a word processor and email functions that is secure, robust, and self repairing.” idea. If just 10% of the money and sweat that has been used to develop games was put into the second goal we would have an “Aunt Betty” system available for $9.99 at your local store.

        Linux is not for the mainstream for the same reasons that learning to fly is not for the mainstream. Is Aunt Betty a pilot? Would you trust her in a cockpit, shoot, do you trust her behind the wheel of a car?

        Linux is growing up. There will be wrong turns, incorrect decision, and problems. If you have the inclination join those who are trying it out. At least we do not have broken bones when our “follies” crash.

        The world is becoming more complex, partially because of computers. What we dream today becomes our reality.

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