To Linux or not to Linux

I have to tell you that I finally broke down and went out and bought the whole thing.

I mean I bought SuSe 9 right off the shelf at Best Buy. I am going to go through the book and try to do it right. I'll let you know how things are going ( and probably have more questions ) when I have time to get started on the actual install.

I did this because as I said I have been looking at it for some time and after I found the checksum prog you told me about, I ran it on the Lycoris disk and it showed things were perfect. I tried that disk again (after allowing RH to format the drive for Linux)(I thought that if it had a Linux disk already set up that it would work??!!) and still hangs at "setup disk for Linux".

Any way I'll try this with disks that should have no question about "did I copy them correctly" hanging over them.

Certainly getting a printed manual is a good idea. Due to the nature of their business model, a lot of the printed media you get with Linux distributions is excellent, not just as a guide to the OS but as a general and helpful introduction to UNIX overall.

i agree w/ a lot of what mictlantecuhtli says.

i'm a software developer and i can see why a lot of people like linux. obviously it's free and it's simply just easier to use in labs at school to connect to / run stuff from remote computers.

however, it also assumes that the user knows a lot about what they're doing and let's face it, for the most part they dont. speed, as mict said, is another issue. on my computer everything takes about twice as long under Mandrake 9.2 *their newest release* as it does under XP Pro.

another problem is the applications. while it's certainly true that you can do anything in linux that you can in windows it's usually not as nice. i cant give precise numbers but i am willing to bet that for every 1 linux program there are well over 100 windows ones. when i write a program i definately have windows users in mind.

i'm by no means a linux expert and i AM impressed by it as an alternative. but i cannot see anytime in the immediate future where it will be my main OS.

all that said, give it a try. it's worth learning even though i dont find it as nice or convienent as windows but maybe i'm biased =).

Linux is STILL an OS for computer geeks, either to install in their homes or to make work on some huge server at work. Its not for ordinary mortal users, nor is it going to be for some time.

Yes, there are problems with dependencies. Big problems. And bugs. And lots of other things.

But think about what it really is... its a FREE OPERATING SYSTEM, that can teach you ALL ABOUT UNIX.

I am now poised to go and become a well paid Solaris analysis, or something, and I would never have been able to get to this stage without Linux.

First notes on the SuSE install.

The machine I have for this test is a celeron 550 Mhz, 66mhz Bus, 64Mb Ram, 40GB HD, integrated video, ......

Started at 6:63 PM. The book showed really nice graphical screens for each step of the process. I got the less that graphical screens. No notice as to why. The screen would build and then set there as if it were hung. There was no messaging, and absolutely no opportunity to interact, even though the message line at the bottom said "to change your selections click on the header".
After 9:00 PM I restarted in Manual mode. The screens looked identical to what I was getting when I tried to do it in Graphical. But things seemed to run a little faster. And with some delay there was really the possibility to interact. But only using the keyboard, which is OK.
At 1:00+- AM the screen told me I was finally ready to log in.
With great anticipation I put in my UN & PW and .....
Then I found the Office icon. And I clicked it ..... and somewhere around 2:00AM after seeing the spreadsheet I used the "start" to stop.

As far as the first boot after install, I suppose it wasn't much slower than win 2000 pro. And I realize that it is recommended that you install w2p on no less than 64Mb Ram.
But unless it really kicks in with the addition or extra ram, I am going to be really disappointed with the speed issue. I, like probably the rest of you, DON'T need anything slower.

I do think that the idea of the GNU and all that is really nice and hope that someday I can come to understand how the thing is really supposed to work. I know that the thousands of people who use this every day to conduct real business can’t be setting on their duffs waiting ...... like I was last night.

So if any one has the key.. Please pass it around.

You can get a pretty functional graphical Linux install to run on such a machine, but obviously you can't get that with the latest version of window managers such as Gnome or KDE, it just won't work. It's not even worth trying.

You could use another window manager such as IceWM which is much more lighter.

Note on SuSE install: I added 128 MB more RAM (total 192 MB) and things picked up considerably.

It functions about at the level of the Win 2000 Pro install with the same RAM available.

I do have one thought for anyone thinking on the comment often heard that You can use older equipment to run Linux (in line with Didou's last comment above). That could be true when you run it in text mode only, but when you run Graphical and want to approximate the "Windows" look and feel, It will cost you for that luxury.

I was pleasantly surprised by the availability of numerous programs and capabilities supplied on the CDs from SuSE. I am sure that most major distributions supply a similar variety.

I think that switching from Windows to Linux is a lot like quitting coffee. You will probably have a headache for a few days, but then you start feeling better and more independant, and you don't have "coffee breath".

PS: I did download the iceWM but haven't gotten to the install yet.

Thanks

n00b here!

Just out of curiosity, have you tried the hdparm command yet? I did that and I got quite a significant gain in speed on my computer, simply by tweaking my hard drive. Linux on my machine (RH9) runs MUCH faster than WinXP runs.

Well yeah you can do stuff like turn DMA on, etc which would have an obvious improvement.

Maybe you could post what you did so what people can see it and discuss it?

I will....just as soon as I get home so that I can see what all I did

And of course I'm sure you know I didn't just turn DMA on...also tweaked all the other stuff that I could do. Takes a bit but it did have a noticeable effect.

by the way when i booted up with linux install cd it asked if i wanted to run disk check when i ran it it sad that there is a problem and its not gonna work , then i just rebooted and skipped the test and everything works fine