Linux users help me out.

[Okulossos]

So I had that a little wrong. Its not the lack of support, but the lack of ease in getting it working. I suppose that ease will make its way to stable releases in a few years, but the unstable releases will be that much easier to maintain.

That depends on the developer, I don't think that Debian will be any kind of userfriendly ever, since that is not the audience they are going for. If you want to use Debian, you know what you are doing and they rely on that, much like Gentoo and Arch and all the other advanced distros.

Why would any consumer/average user want to run a "stable" distro? An "Unstable" distro is just such a great balance between cutting edge, and stable.

That depends on what you want. If you want to run a secure server, such as an authentication server or a better webserver, then you will not be going for Ubuntu, but rather for Debian, Slackware or some of those... possibly even for Gentoo. If you want a simple desktop Linux, you might not want to go for such a distro. I myself like Fedora for being cutting endge and Orcale Linux for being extremely stable on my experimental server.

I've found that when Ubuntu fails, there is often a lot of good information in the Ubuntu Forums to help fix the issue. The Ubuntu Wiki Documentation, and the Ubuntu Forums are the main reason I recommend Ubuntu, not because of the polish of the distribution itself.

Yes, but not all. The userbase is extremely good with every-day questions, but not that good with advanced issues. If you, for example try to get Hubris running (Haskell Ruby Bridge), then you will fail. That is where Arch and Gentoo come in.

If you can point out a distribution that has more user friendly forums, documentation, and presentation than Canonical and their users provide, I will recommend that instead.

Arch Linux... not better but I guess equally good but don't recomend it, it is still for more advanced users.

I am aware that most distributions have multiple desktops. I was referring to the default DE. Most distributions use Gnome or KDE as their default desktop, aside from Ubuntu with its Unity desktop. My comment was that I seem to recall a lot of PCLinuxOS screenshots using LXDE, which is a DE I've never used before.

Most distributions let you choose from the download onwards, some even give you several completely different distros to download such as Ubuntu with Xubuntu, Kubuntu and Lubuntu... and Goobuntu . Today it's hard to tell which desktop the distro is meant for in some cases. in others it is obvious such as Suse, which is meant for KDE.
LXDE is nothing special. Very light weight, not as good as XFCE imo

I've never tried PCLinuxOS, to compare it to Ubuntu, nor have I tried LXDE. I'm a big fan of the KDE 3.x series desktops, but not too fond of KDE 4.x. Plasma just doesn't feel quite as solid as most other GUIs.

Try Trinity, its basically KDE 3.x

I feel that the desktop environment is a critical part of a distribution, or the OS entirely. If the distribution I am using does not have adequate native support for my preferred DE, I will look elsewhere. The desktop is the first thing I look for in a secondary operating system. After that the package management system (DEB/APT based preferred), and the variety of packages in the repos, and how current they are kept.

Uh, then you are missing out. Nowadays I mostly install commandline only if I don't need some kind of GUI, it's just a lot faster. So for me they are two completely seperate things... different View I guess .

Before Ubuntu, I actually recommended a little distro called "Xandros". This distribution modified KDE 3.x to fit the Windows 2000 paradigm, and it made the transition so much easier. I ended up using it as my primary OS for four years.

That still exists, but the easiest distro to switch is Zorin OS imo since you can make it look and feel just like any windows you like with the push of a button

I also have a question. A lot of games run on DirectX. Can DirectX be made to run in Linux?

Since DirectX ist from Micorsoft... yes and no. It won't run natively, but you can make it work under WINE which is the applicationlayer of Windows in Linux (it is not an emulator mind you... ).

/edit: BUT Linux is not a gaming OS, you will get some games to run and they are doing an awesome job at getting them to run but all in all, when you go for gaming Linux is not for you (although there are some awesome native games on Linux...). You can, however, dualboot both Linux and Windows.

 

[Monster_user]

Before Ubuntu, I actually recommended a little distro called "Xandros".

That still exists, but the easiest distro to switch is Zorin OS imo since you can make it look and feel just like any windows you like with the push of a button

What still exists?

Xandros, as a consumer distribution barely exists. We setup an "After Xandros" thread back in March of 2011, and still no further involvement from the staff. The last release was based on Debian Etch, before it went stable. As far as Xandros' Enterprise level workings, Bridgeways, Scalix, PrestoMyPC, or ASUS partnerships, I am out of the loop on those.

Xandros' KDE GUI was heavily modified to follow the Windows GUI Metaphor whenever possible. Xandros even provided an updated Corel Linux file manager to mimic/ape Windows Explorer. The names of programs in the Kicker's launcher were changed/genericized to be more recognizeable to Windows Users, like Ubuntu does these days. While many Linux users ranted about this characteristics, it made it easier to use the distribution while learning the differences between Linux and Windows. One didn't have to learn all of the differences at once.

I'll have to check out Zorin OS eventually, see what it is like, and see how far the changes extend beyond first glance.

 

[blackrave]

Guys are you still speaking in english here?
I installed WinXp and Fedora12 on separate hard drives few years ago, but even I can't understand half of things written here.

P.S.But I have suspicions that I might be an ork, so it could be just me :/

 

[Evil Smurf]

Guys are you still speaking in english here?
I installed WinXp and Fedora12 on separate hard drives few years ago, but even I can't understand half of things written here.

P.S.But I have suspicions that I might be an ork, so it could be just me :/

I understand the jargon

 

[Okulossos]

What still exists?

Xandros, as a consumer distribution barely exists. We setup an "After Xandros" thread back in March of 2011, and still no further involvement from the staff. The last release was based on Debian Etch, before it went stable. As far as Xandros' Enterprise level workings, Bridgeways, Scalix, PrestoMyPC, or ASUS partnerships, I am out of the loop on those.

Yes, Xandros is not for free anymore, it is now part of a larger business suite.

Xandros' KDE GUI was heavily modified to follow the Windows GUI Metaphor whenever possible. Xandros even provided an updated Corel Linux file manager to mimic/ape Windows Explorer. The names of programs in the Kicker's launcher were changed/genericized to be more recognizeable to Windows Users, like Ubuntu does these days. While many Linux users ranted about this characteristics, it made it easier to use the distribution while learning the differences between Linux and Windows. One didn't have to learn all of the differences at once.

I'll have to check out Zorin OS eventually, see what it is like, and see how far the changes extend beyond first glance.

I did not feel it was modified that much. It kinda reminds me of some elightenment desktops I have seen lately (such as the one coming with bodhi). Also if I remember correctly Aptosid, ROSA, Linux Lite had modified KDE in something along those lines... only less Windows-like. But I have just looked at the live cd once, so I could be wrong here.

As for Zorin:
http://www.zorin-os.com/
It is basically Gnome 2 with some Compiz mixed in for good measure. I like what they did, I dislike that they try to sell a "premium" package which just includes some more "looks"... I think they did a neat job in making a Linux-Windows. the bad part is the poor dokumentation, but you could just use the one for Ubuntu, since it is based on that...

Guys are you still speaking in english here?
I installed WinXp and Fedora12 on separate hard drives few years ago, but even I can't understand half of things written here.

Don't worry, if you start woring you way through fedora with just a bit of passion, you will soon understand the stuff we talk about here, it's all very basic and simple .

 

[Evil Smurf]

thanks guys keep helping though

 

[Okulossos]

So I can run TF2 through steam through wine? You may have solved my (future) gaming problems

Team Fortress 2 comes to Linux natively, so there won't be any performance hits and it'll integrate nicely without any further configuration of wine.

Valve is planning of putting a whole lot more steam games out for linux... nice Website: http://steamforlinux.com/

I'd do it like this:
1. Repartition it right away. That way you can easily install a second OS if necessarry. Also make yourself an "home-partition". One thing I love about Linux.

If its not a server Distro I shy away from using an extra /home-partition since it happened to me that that I made that partition a bit too small and ended up with not having to reinstall the system because i could not install any more updates or programs... not so funny. On the first Install I advise you to stick with the default that most user-friendly distros give you.

2. Test whether CS5 plays fine with Wine. If WineHq tells you it doesn't work, it *most likely* won't. If WineHq tells you it does, it *may* won't. Wine often is a pain in the ass, since problems may not be obvious. You could run and work with it perfectly only to find out that saving and specific functions don't work.

Exactly, but you must understand, that with Linux things are a bit different from Windows. If on Windows something does not work, it will never work period. If things don't work on Linux there is probably a way to somehow still get it work making you spend hours downloading and installing stuff, reading through forums and documentations and coming up ultimately with either giving up, or an unsatisfying conclusion. I would advise any gamer and anyone needing good software for cutting films etc to dual boot. Everything you need is available on Linux, but non of it is as good as the stuff you get on Windows. If you want to write programs, however you will find yourself in paradise with Linux.

3. If you have problems install Windows as second OS. I'd recommend you dualbooting since using heavy applications in a virtual machine is not a great experience.

IMO you should install Windows first if you want to dualboot. Else it just might happen that you end up having to configure Grub (which is not hard, but may be not so nice if you are new to Linux). there are tons of tutorials for this on the web, I suggest you read through more than one.

Fedora is the "out-of-the-box" distribution I like the most. While it is bleeding-edge, it's not even remotely as unstable as Okulossos said. In fact, I had far less problems than with Ubuntu which is the reason I switched to if. Besides that Fedora turned me from a person that's interested in Linux to a real Linux-user. Sometimes weeks have passed in which I didn't boot into Windows 7 even once. I never had something like this under Ubuntu. This was due to its desktop-environment, which I'll discuss later.

A friend of mine uses it and reports the same thing, when I tried it it worked altogether, but I had a few crashes which made switch back to Xubuntu which is what I use for most of my free-time activities today.

Unity comes with Ubuntu. When it was new it was a performance hog and rather unstable. Fortunately it's not new anymore, so now it's rather stable, but still a performance hog. Benchmarks show that Unity has a huge negative impact on performance. I *guess* this has to do with composition. Gnome-Shell is good and KDE is the best in this regard.

Unity has still not matured, I have it installed on one of my laptops and it still has some immaturity-bugs such as not wanting to remember hotkey settings and such.
I used KDE for over 2 years on open Suse, Kubuntu, Knoppix and Fedora and was not happy. Its bulky, its buggy and some of the designdecisions they made simply don't click with me (eg.: the activities, they were created by the system and just piled up and slowed down everything). But this is a matter of taste in the end. Yet I don't know anyone who uses KDE as a main desktop
I use Xfce, Xmonad and openbox mostly, because they are fast, plain, not in my way and do as I want and I can allocate all that CPU-Power that goes unused to processes I want to run. Plus, XFCE in Xubuntu has been modified really nicely, it looks very good, although I changed it up a bit to better suite my eyes. Same goes for openbox, which is even more lightweight. I had some issues with openbox and font-rendering which ultimately made me not use it for to much. Xmonad is something very different. I love it when I am programming on a large Screen, but it takes getting used to. If you get used to it you will see just how fast you can work with it. there are others like it that are a bit more "desktopy" like Awesome, ion (which is deprecated I think), wmii and dwm... used them all, loved them all but got stuck with Xmonad for being customizable with Haskell. But all those are meant for a very special kind of work. and I don't use them for everything.

A few friends of mine love Gnome3/Gnome shell. I think it is pretty, but it is way too mouse-driven for my taste. It feel "shovey" and just not right on a normal screen. for example: to open the "menu" you have to move the mouse in the upper left corner (there is also a hotkey, but since the desktop wants you to use a mouse, that is most probably where your hand is). If you have a screen-size somewhere above 27" than that can be quite a long way to go - especially if you are used to openbox, where the menu is right under the mouse. It is something you have to get accustomed to and which has to underline the way you work, else it is just not for you.
I tried Cinnamon and thought it was a bit better, but it felt a bit clumsy, like a Frankenstein monster of two desktop ideas forcefully merged into one strange hybrid.

 

[Okulossos]

I know. I was just pointing out that TF2 is comming.

Yea and it will be awesome!

Well, that must suck.
However, I recommend /home-partitions because your personal files are save whenever you reinstall your OS or want to try another distribution.

that is true, but on the other hand, if you don't leave enough space and/or have programs installed from way back you will be carrying around a lot of old trash that could potentially lead to an instable system.
I use the annual new distro-release to get rid of everything and start new. all the stuff I really need will be on an external HDD or my backupserver from which it can just be compied back into my home folder after I am done.

Yeah, I know that... :/
When it comes to "normal" usage it's not that clear. There are applications that work better under Linux than under Windows (Gimp, Inkscape, Hugin,...) and there are applications that I'd install under Windows right away if they were available (K3B for example).

Gimp runs a lot better under Windows, but you will likely only notice it if you have a graphic tablet. even after configuring the living c*** out of Gimp and the Wacom driver it still hat major issues that are simply not present under Windows.

Well, issues aren't always reproducable.

Yea, I too always think that I might have given up too early, but if things still crash after 2 month of use I simply do not have the time or patience to deal with that. Don't get me wrong, I think fedora is awesome, it will just never be my distro, that is all.

Unity got MUCH better. I remember the first days of Unity back then, when I was still using Ubuntu. If I would have to choose between the latest Unity and the initial Gnome 3 release, I'd take the latter one. Gnome 3.0 was lacking features, but at least it was working.

Oh, unity got better, the first release was completely broken, but it is still not quite there, where all the old veterans are.

[quotee]There are many, many KDE users, since it's among the most popular DEs.
I don't use it for exactly the same reasons. I do *consider* it for Netbooks though, since it has a netbook-mode that seems very nice.[/quote]
I know that there are many KDE users, I just don't know any myself .
The KDE is a nice touch, but is runs slow compared to other Netbook releases, even compared to the soon deprecated Unity 2D and that is saying something .

I never found XFCE/LXDE/ great. Sure, I installed them on my sisters Desktop which runs XP like a piece of crap thanks to modern software. I, however, don't need a lightweight one, since I have enough processing power (even on my notebook with an i3). I don't care for that extra-bit of performance, since it still runs 100x nicer than Windows 7.

I am at almost no CPU usage but I just love the "click-open" effect. I even concidered using tinycore, but it does not support some of the stuff I need. I love it fast and it can not be fast enough. Whenever I try to use something else i feel like I'm stuck in slowmotion. But its a matter of taste really. I also think that a lot of modern desktops are just so... stuffed.

I tried Cinnamon after I read what they wanted to change in Gnome 3.6. I needed an alternative that I could install on a running system without installing a million-billion dependencies. Since Cinnamon is based on Gnome, it was a small installation without any additional packages. I really wanted to like it, but I didn't. Maybe in future...

I hope that they start to go a different way with Cinnamon, because as it stands is simply a bad and sadly unstable Version of Gnome3 with some plugins preinstalled.

BUT that is also Linux: you have the choice, and having the choice means, that there is a lot of stuff out there that you might not like. If you don't like it, don't use it, I guess. That is perhaps something a Linux newbie might want to think about before deciding what he installes.
There are a lot of youtube videos displaying all kind of desktops.

 

[Okulossos]

I just delete all the config-files and folders whenever I reinstall. It's much faster than copying. I switched to a rolling release now. No new installs anymore.

I reinstall Arch periodically, because they change so much so often and it tends to leave dead configs and backups everywhere. There is simply nothing better than a fresh, clean install.

It's not that Gimp runs better under Windows, but that the tablet is better supported under Windows.
Starting Gimp under Windows takes forever with no plugins installed. Under Linux it runs fast and integrates perfectly (gtk).

Well... not quite true. It is not only the driver that is supported, but also the functionality inside of Gimp, and that is a Gimp-problem. Plus I don't have startup issues with Gimp under Windows, and it also integrates perfectly with Aero. In Linux you also sometimes had the problem with the old Gimp, that the two menu-windows did not stay above the canvas-window. this can all be fixed, but it just shows, that Gimp is just not that good under Linux.

Did you know that KDE is actually lighter than most other DEs in specific scenarios? Many think that KDE is slow.

KDE is not slow because it is heavy with graphics, it's slow because it is bulky as hell. Compared to Gnome 3 not so much, but compared to Xfce or open box... dear god .

Yeah. I installed KDE, Cinnamon, Gnome, Unity and whatnot at the same time and tested them. However, because of the dependencies you really want to reinstall the OS later, hence my recommendation for a /home-partition. You just delete any folder and file that starts with a . and you're good to go.

Ah... I would not do that. there are numerous configs and such that may depend of some of those folders, plus if you have some programs installed on home-level, you will be creating a hell for yourself. I have had that so many times over with friends of mine... especially for beginners I deeply recommend a clean install. /home partition itself is not wrong or bad, it just might cause a lot on unnecessary hassle for inexperienced users.

 

[Vorlayn]

If you're a total Linux beginner, I think it's best to try a distro that's as close to what you're used to as possible. You'll have more than enough to learn as is. My suggestion is the aforementioned Zorin: http://zorin-os.com/tour.html