Ubuntu vs. Everyone else

I can't stand it any longer! Where do you think people's computing experience should lead?

That's good to know.

Now if only I could figure out what's going on with the compass/minimap. . . .

I'll probably be posting about the joys of FreeBSD at [url=http://sob.apotheon.org][b]SOB[/b][/url] in the next few days. You may find it worthwhile to check that out when I get around to it, if you're really interested.

Actually, if you want to get into FLOSS programming and don't mind pretty much pretending you're a complete newbie to programming (which, in some respects, you are if you're only familiar with Visual C++ and Visual Basic, or something like that), I have a few ideas:

1. You can get started with programming quite easily, via a plain old text editor and the command line, by picking up a copy of the O'Reilly book [i]Learning Perl[/i], also known as the "Llama Book" because of the llama on the cover. Once you're done with the llama, you can pick up a copy of the alpaca, aka [i]Intermediate Perl[/i]. With [i]Learning Perl[/i], if you have the luxury, you may want to have a look at both the second edition and the fourth edition, and choose the one that you think will serve you best. In either case, sign up for a membership at [url=http://perlmonks.org][b]PerlMonks[/b][/url]. It'll be your best friend for Perl programming resources online.

2. You can also get started quite easily with a text editor, the command line, and an interactive programming shell (aka REPL: read eval print loop) called irb, via the language Ruby. This is better if you want more object-oriented programming, whereas Perl is better for more unixy system administration type stuff. Both are excellent for system administration and web development, and can be used for a number of other purposes with great success as well. Both have their strengths and weaknesses (mostly strengths, though). Someone bought me a copy of [i]Everyday Scripting with Ruby[/i] for my birthday this year, and it should be arriving today or tomorrow -- but I've already paged through it extensively at Barnes and Noble, and it looks like a beautiful, wonderful way to get introduced to programming with Ruby.

3. You could learn UCBLogo via the university level computer science textbooks -- available both as hardcopy books you can buy and as free online resources -- [url=http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~bh/v1-toc2.html][b]Computer Science Logo Style[/b][/url]. These are incredible books, and they get you used to programming via text file scripts and use of a REPL, working in an open source environment (though it's mostly working alone, of course, being textbooks), and provide the added benefit of giving you a good grounding in some important fundamentals of computer science. All of it is using a high-power open source implementation of the Logo language (don't think it's just a "toy language" because of the turtle -- UCBLogo is a real Lisp dialect, using m-expression syntax as God, McCarthy, and Russell intended rather than the s-expression syntax that is used for all the popular Lisp and Scheme dialects). The language itself is unlikely to get used much for "real world" programming when you're done with the books, but that doesn't mean it's not worth every minute you invest in learning it and learning the concepts in these books.

I already did as I recommend above with Perl. I started on Logo, as I describe, but set it aside to work with Ruby for a while, so I'm right now in the middle of what I'm suggesting for Ruby. I'm going to get back to Logo later on this year, probably right after I spend some time with Objective Caml (aka OCaml) -- which will probably be more challenging to learn, if only because there isn't as much of it out there as Perl and Ruby, and the documentation has huge holes in it.

ah, who am I kidding, I won't stop asking questions that easy. I'll be visiting SOB frequently like though won't be one of the "new visitors spouting gpl".

I've been through Turing, Basic, VB, VC++ and I'm still a newbie; I can accept that. When your at the bottom, there's so much room to grow.

Say, is that the same Logo that school kids play with on the old Icon computers?

That was just another implementation of the Logo language. I've never found an implementation I liked as much as UCBLogo, though.

1) ATI drivers do cause this. However, as I understand it, if you update the drivers it does fix it.

2) Use OpenGL mode.

Also, Cedega requires something called Moz Control which apparently has to do with ActiveX and if it isn't installed then some bugs (like the minimap bug) can happen with certain video cards.

Thanks,

Now what about Suspend Vs. Sleep???
And, what about Turning off the HDD vs suspend and sleep???

aaarrrggghh - enough already :p

The best way to hibernate any computer is with a twelve gauge shotgun and number four shot at close range, served hot and on target. This also serves to cool it down well with ultra heavy ventilation, solves all those hot battery problems too.

I had Ubuntu installed and it recognized most of my hardware on my old pc, but it would not automount my other 2 Fat32 drives, and running scripts i was given did not do it. Knoppix did however did auto mount them,as did other Linux distros i tried.

I recently tried the latest Ubuntu Live cd on this new Dell e520 but it will not recognize the Sata drives (2), but i cannot even install XP on that pc - on either drive (error 0x00...). As ftp nor fax nor recording thru my sound card (Sigmatel) works with this PC and Vista Basic, i pray i can get a Linux distro to do such, as well as allow me to copy/change my files on the Windows partition, which i have not yet found any Linux could do.

I've been using Ubuntu for about three weeks now (in a multi-boot environment) and I've seen the true 'WOW' factor. When I built my new PC (AMD 64 FX2 5200) about six months ago, It took about an hour to install XP with all the drivers and remove all the crap. It took TEN MINUTES from power on to first login as a user! Ten minutes and EVERYTHING worked!!

The only reason I still keep Windows around is my rather large investment in games and development tools. Does anyone have a solution for this?

Ralph

I won't use winmodems in Windows either; they are worthless! But as you said those models have been rock solid; and usually with on board DSP.

A member named cls (I believe) from ZDNet told me that Linux communicates with the old Hayes communication code. Perhaps this is a factor?

Hi I am using Ubuntu on a duel boot windows machine and think its great only prob I had was having to put a nic in wired to the router to get the net as I could not get it to pick up the wirelass conection and no driver for my printer out there but its getting real close to my dumping windows

To be honest. I'm not really happy with any Linux distro or Win XP/Vista. There's always a problem with each of these OS's. PCLinuxOS TR1 to TR4 seems better than the PCLinuxOS Final. I never can get 1280x1024x75Hz for some reason with PCLinuxOS. I have an ATI 8X AGP video card with 256MB memory on the card. AMD64 processor with 1GB of RAM. I'm still in search of the almost perfect OS. Vista loads too many un-needed services and some older applications won't even install. As I can remember, Linux Mint is OK, but always seems to be in the beta or RC stages. This maybe one that won't shutdown properly on my pc unless I modify a file in the grub folder. Always something with Linux...

Oh, I was just wondering if your girlfriend watched any DVD movies with Ubuntu.

I also have Ubuntu alongside Windows XP 32 and totally agree with its ease of use, especially being a newbie in the field of Linux.

However, with Kubuntu 7.0.4 it is a totally different story, even though that is suppose to be a newer distro of Ubuntu. I still have to figure out how to play DVD's on Kubuntu 7.0.4.

Nevertheless, I am multi booting, so I will switch back to Kubuntu when I have some time.

I still have to figure out how to get the Kaffeine Player to play a regular encrypted DVD movie on Kubuntu 7.04, while Ubuntu is a simple update, and Totem starts to play DVD movies (encrypted and unencrypted).

You here things like this all the time but are they actually better & faster?

I guess we would need a rig test to find out - could be true, could be false!

I can tell you that, at minimum, World of Warcraft is less laggy, and produces fewer graphics artifacts (read as "glitches") on the same machine in Debian GNU/Linux than in MS Windows. Since that's the only computer game I play these days, that's quite good enough for me.

in some cases it's easier to import than others, that's all.