Oh how far linux has evolved!

Back in the day of my old 486, I installed a quaint little operating system, text based as all were of that time, and like all others, it came with a whole different set of commands you had to use.
At the time it wasnt just DOS, MAC, and good old Unix... there were others, but in hindsight, they werent really worth mentioning.

Back then, everything had to be done manually. You want to load a program into ram... you actually had to load a program into RAM.
You wanted to save a document?... well, yeah, you had to specify the exact path name and file extension.
You wanted to copy files? Well, get out your cheat-sheets because you had to use commands for that too.

It's hard for most people to understand just how computers were used back then, especially for those of my sisters generation, who has never seen, nor even heard of a computer that didnt have a mouse, and an easy to use GUI.

Now, since Windows and Mac started their massive marketing campaigns, Linux has been quite unheard of to most people. When mentioned, the average person who knows something of linux from history, thinks back to the old text based operating system. Thats because they havent seen it since... it's been there, oh it's been there, and it's been evolving... ALOT.

In fact, most people I show linux to now, when they start copying files, opening documents, playing games, and generally just using it for fun tell me how it just simply makes sense. The operating system has had millions of programmers behind it... you dont have to hire these programmers, you dont have to pay them, they are the programmers who use linux for their own means, and modify it to meet those means. Those modifications are added to the original package and then labelled a 'flavor'. It is because of this process that Linux is alot easier to use than it's predecessor... about as easy to use as windows... the basic installation is so hard to screw up by accident, I feel confident letting a child use my computer... and the thing just wont die.

I can do anything, download anything, and I never have to worry about it harming my computer.
I dont have to worry about which files I want to delete, because you have to be pretty serious about destroying your linux operating system, to actually destroy it.


Now, Johnsky... why all of a sudden are you praising linux?

Just today, I was working on my computer, placing a custom metal face I machined onto the front of it.
I have an inherrant habit of working on the machine, while it's on...
for those of you who work on computers... metal part... attaching... ON?!

... yeah, well... my flaws set aside... it arc'd, bright blue flash went right from that metal part, into the hard disk drive. Uh oh... and yep, the computer started a bootup sequence.

Now I've done it. I've just ****ed my hard drive up and everything that was on it.
Now get this.
As it was booting, it couldnt load the linux kernel files, because they were fried. However... my version of linux keeps multiple copies of it's kernel files for just that case!
It loaded it's backup kernel files, and of course, detected a whole wack of corrupted parts of the hard drive... and salvaged everything it could!

Windows is completley incapable of that. If the windows kernel is screwed, its just simply screwed.
You can try using your recovery CD... but that doesnt allways work.
Even if you get windows back up, it will notice that your hard drive is corrupted, and instead of salvaging what it can... it gets rid of it... everything. All that hard work... gone.

I had no idea Linux was able to salvage data like that until today.
And I especially didnt expect that it could do it Automatically!
No wonder I never have to do data extraction on linux computers... chances are, they will do it themselves.


Some of you would look at this and say... yay... it salvages... So?!

For those of you who are not familiar with computers... this would be like your car hitting a brick wall... picking up it's peices, and then putting itself back together again.

Absolutely amazing.
Yet another day using linux, yet another reason I will continue to keep Linux as my primary operating system.

Amen! Though It's a bit confusing when you are using the word Linux in your text when you are referring to the operating system. Linux is just a kernel and without GNU which makes the rest of the operating system called GNU/Linux it wouldn't be able to do much. Personally I would just like to say GNU but some people get really mad at it . Don't worry, I used to say Linux all the time back in the days but when you understand how the OS works you realize that calling the whole software package Linux is just wrong. I would blame most of this on all the publicity Linus Torvalds has been getting. While the Gnu Foundation has been in the dark alot Linus has been making business contacts and making a big name of his kernel.

I haven't been using GNU/Linux from the start when the operating was born but the few years I've used it I must say that It's a masterpiece. You just can't compare it to Windows. Windows was created to make money. The slogan "Your Potential. Our Passion." is quite misleading. It's become pretty clear that Microsoft just want to fill their executives pockets and keep their stock owners happy. GNU/Linux was created by the people and for the people.

I think the flexibility, scalability and portability makes GNU/Linux so great. By being able to install it on almost any device I don't need to know a gazilion kinds of OS's. I just need to know one. It runs on my PS3, my Xbox, my router, my server, my three clients and a portable. Soon it will run on one of my PDA's if everything goes right.

It doesn't fit my main computer however. I'm running Fedora Core 6 now after trying a lot of distros that may be able to pair with my bluetooth virtual laser keyboard and keep the pair after boot, but so far only Windows has emerged victorious. I do also use a virtual reality glove instead of a mouse because mice don't get along with my arm :/. So it seems that I'm forced to use Windows XP for now. When I'm using GNU/Linux I know that the operating system isn't going through my stuff, phoning home or doing a secret backup and sending it to the NSA. If I notice any weird harddrive activity I just fire up "#dmesg | tail" in the terminal and that's it. If I have the time I may go through the code as it is freely available or if I don't have the time or knowledge ask any developer to check it out.

I feel sorry for the people that are not so interested in computers and have a hard time cleaning spyware, viruses, trojans, adware, malware, getting hacked... and you name it. It's great knowing that the structure of GNU/Linux makes it very hard for these thing to exist. Sure there are viruses, rootkits and security holes for GNU/Linux but It's often pretty hard to use these in a properly administered system.

If more games started supporting GNU/Linux, if more drivers were available, if web developers wrote their pages to be compatible with Mozilla Firefox, if the GNU/Linux myths would be killed, if bluetooth and wireless lan worked better, if nVidia and ATI open sources their drivers, If Linus started squashing serious bugs like the x86_64 hardlock, if Microsoft could just get along and stop using their dirty tricks like the SCO case and the Novell problem then the situation may have looked different today.

The reason why people are so afraid of GNU/Linux is because they typically know the local college "geek" who shows them a screen full of terminals with code opened in vi/vim or alike. Either that or they've had a glimpse at the most common use of GNU/Linux which is the server market which almost never uses a graphical interface, but instead a terminal.

I've never heard of that salvage thing before. It sounds pretty neat. May I ask what distribution you use?

I had a similar problem where I lossed quite a few files, I had no idea what I did I just booted up one day and the kernel told me that a crap load of files were corrupt so it fixed everything for me in a couple of minutes and I was back to my work with no side effects what so ever.

I think this year could be a great year for the GNU/Linux desktop all it needs is some time in the spot light GNU/Linux still relies to much on the users to spread. Although a lot of company's are changing to GNU/Linux for both there servers and desktops its your average user you need to get and that can only really be done through advertising and deals with computer manufacturers. But that said everything else is there. You have Ubuntu's ease of use and (dare i say it) almost out of the box experience and to top it off you have Beryl giving you the fully 3D desktop environment that beats anything else MS or Apple can come up with, chuck that in with the rock solid OS and the tens of thousands of programs ready for you at the type/click of a command and nothing else compares.

I have heard a lot of great things about Linux, but have been too scared to sacrifice my Windows machine to install it. I know you can install 2 OS's on one machine, but I would really like to dedicate one to Linux so I can become accustomed to it without sacrificing what I am already used to.

BTW, I hope in the future you don't decide to start machining your case while the computer is on. That would be the next logical step in being lazy, but maybe you learned your lesson!

I have a linux question...

I have sort of experimented with a couple of linux distros in the past.

Recently, I wanted to install one of those on my current computer. The initial install seemed to go okay, but to my chagrin when the mchine went to boot up all I got was a screen full of 1's.

Could this be due to the fact that I have a dual core processor??

AMD Athlon 64X2 Dual Core Processor 3800+ 2.00 Ghz

I tried a couple of distros that I had, albeit older ones...

xandros and I believe the other was ubuntu (I can't find that disc right now)






[edit on 2/21/2007 by Mechanic 32]

Originally posted by Mechanic 32
Could this be due to the fact that I have a dual core processor??

AMD Athlon 64X2 Dual Core Processor 3800+ 2.00 Ghz

No I have the 4400+ X2 and it works fine on all Distros i've tired, in fact windows is more likely not to work because of the processor than GNU/Linux.

When exactly do you get the problem? when the bios is loading, when grub is loading, when the kernel is loading?

I would also suggest getting the latest version of Ubuntu or whatever Distro you want to use, GNU/Linux is improving all the time and what may not have worked yesterday on an older version may work today on the latest version.

[edit on 21-2-2007 by Edn]

Originally posted by Edn
I would also suggest getting the latest version of Ubuntu or whatever Distro you want to use, GNU/Linux is improving all the time and what may not have worked yesterday on an older version may work today on the latest version.

Okay, that's what I thought.

Windows works okay, on this comp.

Must be I had very outdated distros.

thanks.

It was after the bios loaded, if I remember right. It has been a while.

Then no other activity, other than the stream of 1's, with my hard drive going kind of bonkers.

I have since reformatted the drive, and am using it for additional storage.

I will have to look at some of the more current distros out there, as I want to at least dual boot Gnu-Linux/Windows for now.

Then later on, switch to Gnu/Linux exclusively after I learn more about it.


[edit on 2/21/2007 by Mechanic 32]

It could be a problem with software fake raid incompability or maybe a bios setting. Are you using raid? Have you tried changing pci-e aperture size or whatever It's called? It could however be an old kernel problem which may be fixed by using a distro with a newer version of Linux. Latest is 2.6.20. Another tip is to try different patchsets like ck, beyond, viper, mm, black and so on.

If you are interested in trying distros I would try these:

Mepis
Fedora Core
Gentoo
Arch
Ubuntu
Debian

Originally posted by bracke
It could be a problem with software fake raid incompability or maybe a bios setting.

I have onboard sata on this computer, no raid setup.

I think it was an older kernel.

Also as I said, it seemed to install without any errors popping up, just didn't boot after install.

As far as the patchsets, I have no idea what you are talking about. I'm pretty much a linux noob.

As I said already I'll look into a more current distro, when the time permits.

I'll make a thread, if and when I try to install on this box again.

thanks.

I know, I'm arriving late to the party. And, being in the IT field, I should have had this done a long time ago, but does anyone know of the best version of Linux for a new user that is available for download? I'm installing it on a spare machine for the first time and would like to do some experimenting.

Thx

The best version of Linux for me was 2.6.14. Later editions make 32bit emulation crash on my 64bit box. If you're meaning GNU/Linux distribution then I would try Sabayon. Forgot to mention that one.

www.sabayonlinux.org...

It's rarely mentioned but It's great.

I ended up installing Ubuntu, but haven't done much with it. This n00b can't even get on his wireless network. I can't get an IP address assigned via DHCP either. I had to supply a static for my wired connection. More work with it tonight though.