Linux for desktop?

[Ethereal]

Thanks for the suggestions, and keep \'em coming...Linux distro CD\'s are cheap.

To clarify what I\'m hoping--maybe unreasonably--to find is a desktop experience somewhat akin to my Zaurus experience:  the Zaurus worked, without tinkering, from the first time I hit the power button.  All the \"basics\" just worked.  With a little learning, experience, and a desire to \"push the envelope,\" the internals could be made progressively more transparent and accessible--or not!

I\'m not uncomfortable with doing things from a command prompt.  In fact, the more I fight hopelessly with various broken GUI tools in Fedora, the more enthusiastic I am about just \"doing it the old-fashioned way.\"

However, what I\'m not just uncomfortable with, but both philosophically and practically unwilling to tolerate, is a system that is a perpetual \"work in progress.\"  I\'m sure we all remember that one kid in high school whose entire life revolved around his car:  tweaking it, installing new and better intake, carb, exhaust--all in the name of \"higher performance\"--and then pulling and rebuilding the engine when \"more performance\" blew the crankshaft out onto the pavement.  We might have occasionally envied him (on days when his \"baby\" was purring just right), but I think very few of us would have really wanted to be that guy--I didn\'t.  I needed a car that started each and every time I turned the key, without fiddling and tinkering--even if it wasn\'t the fastest thing on the road.

That\'s what I\'m looking for--if it\'s out there: a \"daily driver\" machine that handles the basics, and a bit of esoterica, mostly in the area of wireless connectivity.  I\'m all for endless flexibility and configurability as an option down the road, but not as an up-front requirement.

BTW, has anyone tried something called (not making this up) \"Evil Entity Linux?\"  In self-description, at least, it sounds promising: targeted at out-of-the-box functionality...

[nitup]

Evil Entity, what a name

http://distrowatch.org/table.php?distribut...tion=evilentity

Interesting goals, haven\'t heard of it before today.

[soycap]

extra typing for nothing, you can just use your favorite pager direct on a file.

- more filename
or
- less filename

that being said, I find less to be more...

I was trying to keep things simple, if someone not familiar with linux looks at this thread now they are going to get all confused:

\"no man, I heard you shouldn\'t use cat.  It\'s bad, I heard less and more are better\"

cat is a basic command users should be aware of don\'t you think?  It also helps as a basic example of piping... crap now I\'m making thing more complicated as well.

[clivel]

To clarify what I\'m hoping--maybe unreasonably--to find is a desktop experience somewhat akin to my Zaurus experience:  the Zaurus worked, without tinkering, from the first time I hit the power button.  All the \"basics\" just worked.  With a little learning, experience, and a desire to \"push the envelope,\" the internals could be made progressively more transparent and accessible--or not!

At the risk of sounding repititious, if that\'s your goal, then Suse or Mandrake are the main contenders.  Pop in the CD to run the installation, answer a few questions, and you will be up and running in no time.
Clive

[soycap]

However, what I\'m not just uncomfortable with, but both philosophically and practically unwilling to tolerate, is a system that is a perpetual \"work in progress.\" I\'m sure we all remember that one kid in high school whose entire life revolved around his car: tweaking it, installing new and better intake, carb, exhaust--all in the name of \"higher performance\"--and then pulling and rebuilding the engine when \"more performance\" blew the crankshaft out onto the pavement. We might have occasionally envied him (on days when his \"baby\" was purring just right), but I think very few of us would have really wanted to be that guy--I didn\'t. I needed a car that started each and every time I turned the key, without fiddling and tinkering--even if it wasn\'t the fastest thing on the road.

I totally agree, but with so much development going on at the same time, distros start to feel really old, really fast.  At the end of the day there would need to be one (maybe 2) accepted standard distribution(s) that everyone ran and were released only every 3 years or so.  I don\'t see that happening unless someone like Dell offered a single distro preinstalled on their computers - less the MS tax.  They can\'t afford to do this though, because phone support would kill their profits.

[ScottYelich]

My project at work for a bank in the financial district of manhattan is to investigate linux as a possible alternative desktop.
The main question is, though, what is your goal?  To save money? to be windows compat? to be windows data compat?

At home I run freebsd.  Why? -- it\'s unix.  I get source via ports, etc.  It works and works well, no RPM hell -- EVER.

Is that the best solution for the bank and for everyone? no, probably. not.

Freebsd doesn\'t cover as much hardware as other linuxes (it still doesn\'t support recording on my laptop from \'99...
5.2-CURRENT stopped supporting my pcmcia adaptect 1460 scsi!) ... does it run legato or veritas backups? how
about oracle certification? etc.

At work, 6 months ago, I installed redhat 9.x, ximian desktop 2, crossover plugin and office.  Is that good enough --
YUP.  does it work, yup.  does it have issues, well, yes...  others are looking at macos -- whatever... it\'s based on
open darwin (bsdish? freebsd descendant? who knows).

Now?  novell purchased suse.  novel purchaed ximian.  redhat jettisoned redhat desktop (now called fedora)...
does that mean fedora isn\'t a choice -- not at all... will IBM provide support for it? probably.  Does this
matter to a home user? probably not.

For a home user, sight unseen, I\'d recommend Suse desktop (I\'m going 100% suse at work this week).  Why?
because it is the \"other white meat\" -- has support, runs major apps (legato/oracle) ... *and* now seems
to be poised with desktop (ximian2 guts soon?) ... suse/novell backend (evolution and exchange server replacements).
Seems suse is the only full suite choice now.

It may not be the only, best or best choice for you -- but I\'d certainly give it a shot.
Me, I\'m sticking with freebsd on my laptop -- and I\'ll probably put suse 9.x on my new desktop that I purchase for home.

Scott

[padishah_emperor]

I\'d second that, that was why I suggested SuSE.

[ScottYelich]

<...snip...>

- cat filename | more (list the contents of a file)

<...snip...>

extra typing for nothing, you can just use your favorite pager direct on a file.

- more filename
or
- less filename

that being said, I find less to be more...

I strongly dislike the useless use of cat award.

cat file | more has a purpose.

cat file | more
cat file | awk
cat file | filter | filter

you can edit that faster than
more file
awk \'{adsfasdfasdfa sdfasdfasdf}\' < file
awk \'{asdfasdf }\' < file | sed \'asdfasdf\" | blah > file

change that last line with something before the awk.. and you have to forward and back
if you were
cat file | awk \'{asdfasdfasdf}\' | sed \'asdfasdfas\' | blah > file
you could change to
cat file | filter | awk \'{asdfasdfasdf}\' | sed \'asdfasdfasdf\' | blah | blah 2 > file

quickly... dare I say, quicker.

I Think newbies get blasted far more with < and >, let alone >> >& 2>&1 |& etc...

Scott

[Joshp]

Go with slackware.  My first linux install was redhat 6.1, hated it.  My seconed was Mandrake, ran that for about 6 mouths.  After that I found to many bugs.  And want to slackware.  Hvent looked back.  Slackware is not as user frindley as redhat or mandrake but I have found it more stable.  It boots up into console unless you tell it not to.  It works grite as a desktop or a hacking box.  My sl-5500 OZ rom and TKC rom both sync grite.  Qtopiadesktop works better than I thought it would.  And I tell you its so nice to be able to work on my Z form my linux desktop.  Hope this helps.

JP

[franktj2000]

I am also a slackware user.  I went through a stage of trying out several linux distros, and somehow found that slackware was for me.  Slackware does not hide anything behind gui\'s, so after the initial learning curve, at least you know whats going on in your system.  I feel it is a lean and mean distribution.  Other distros install way too much stuff than I need.  I know you can select only packages you need, but with slackware, I dont have to select, I just install everything, and I dont feel it is bloated.  This and the fact that it doesnt run a lot of services by default,   and the packages included are taken pretty much straight from the original source unmodified is what makes it more stable and faster than other distros.
from your original post, I know you dont want to hear about slackware, but I thought other people reading this thread might :-)

[jdf]

A long time ago I used SCO UNIX for several years, and knew a little, but I haven\'t touched any UNIX/LINUX for the past 15 years.  It\'s been a microsoft world for me.  OS\'s are a tool that let me use the applications I need for work.  (construction management)

2 weeks ago I got a used Zaurus and I want to try programming for it.  Get my feet wet again in Linux.   The whole experience points to the critical fact stated above that YOU NEED TO HAVE some command line skill to solve problems.

Equipment: Old sony F450 laptop , 6 GB hard drive, with no battery and a dead screen, connected to an old VGA monitor.   I pulled this out of the closet, found some memory on sale and upgraded the 64K to 256MB RAM.

This would be a second computer that would be connected to my cable router.  Main machine reamins WinXP also connected to router AND ZAURUS.

Distro: I bought at a local book store Fedora for Dummies book with DVD of Full Fedora Core.

It recognized all my hardware, including USB ethernet adapter, and in 3 hours I was browsing the internet.  In 1 more hour I had SAMBA running and the Linux Harddrive is accessible to WinXP machine.

I had a lot of problems with learning curve for the Zaurus/Qtopia SDk stiff, but it is all running fine now.

2 weeks. No crashes,  the network shares are always working.  

But still, It is easier for me to still do my testing of software on the WinXP box and then thansfer it to the Linux box for testing with the crosscompiler.

jdf

[Anonymous]

I would suggest trying Knoppix.  It runs as a live CD and there you can see if it recognizes your hardware.  I run Mandrake on the desktop but I have never seen any distribution that is so easy to install and does a great job of auto config.  I run it on hardware that just will not work without tons of tinkering.  Also Wine is already installed on knoppix and it is fun to see Microsoft stuff run on a linux box.  Also knoppix is built on Debian.  Try it.  It really does give you a feel for how far Linux has come.

two month z owner

[Ethereal]

from your original post, I know you dont want to hear about slackware, but I thought other people reading this thread might :-)

It wasn\'t really an opposition to Slack in particular, but more to the \"Slack paradigm,\" which, after perusing the Gentoo site, might be even more appropriately assigned to that distro.

I\'m happy for those of you who have the combination of raw intelligence, training, and experience (and free time :wink: ) that allows intimate familiarity with every package, file, symlink, daemon, byte, transistor, and electron--really, I am, and a little envious--but I don\'t.  Although I\'d like to get there one day, and perhaps will, I can\'t take a six-month sabbatical right now to get my computer working.

In fairness to M$, Win XP Pro does an acceptable job running my main desktop PC at home, but it\'s like a generally well-running car with the hood welded shut.  When little wierd things happen, I just have to accept them, \"let the engine cool off for an hour and try starting it again.\"  When big wierd things happen, drastic measures are often required, like restoring the entire hard drive with Acronis Image Backup.

In Linux, I\'d hoping for the opportunity to see, tune, and repair the underlying mechanism, but I\'m not quite prepared to build it from parts.

Suse, Evil Entity, and Lycoris are on order. While I\'m waiting, I\'m going to take another swing at Debian. :?

[revdjenk]

I am another newbie, getting to Linux slowly. Introduced by my 2 yr use of my Z and OpenOffice.org, but with my Win98 laptop.
I first  tried a Redhat 7.2 knock-off, but too many of my devices were never recognized, or could be configured.
However, Knoppix 3.2 surprised me and found it configured everything!  I may try to either install this eventually or go for suse (from all the good reviews.)
Another top-rated live cd distro is Slax, a brief form of Slackware. Runs from a 200meg 8cm cd!  Not as program full, or as device friendly as Knoppix (it couldn\'t set up my pccard modem), but it is real fast. In fact, it boots as fast from cd as my win98 on my laptop!

[sriley]

IMO, the thing about Slackware is that it\'s the perfect distro if your goal is to learn Linux.  It\'s basic, it\'s reliable and an \"Everything\" install will get you up and running easily with no Gentoo-like building from pieces.  Everything is configurable with the text editor of your choice using info obtained via a Google search.

I use Mandrake on my laptop and on my primary desktop because it has more eye-candy, but Slackware is what made me comfortable running Linux in general.  I recommend it.