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Journal FortKnox's Journal: Linux.... the ultimate question (for me) 32

Journal by FortKnox
I'm a supporter of open source (I even use it at work), and a supporter of linux, as its what runs my server.... But I've come to a point in my computing life...

I have played most of my games multiple times, and won't be buying any new ones anytime soon....
With development and standard 'day-to-day' things (web browsing, etc...) I am much more productive in a Linux environment....
So the question is, do I make my machine a Linux desktop or not?

I've used Linux as a server and always a backup machine... never for my main machine (cause I've always been a hardcore gamer in the past). Another question I have is what about portability? iTunes doesn't work for linux, yet, so what do you people use to sync up your podcasts?
Maybe I should just get another harddrive and dual boot? Any decent windows emulator to just do everything in linux with? Try to help someone familiar with linux in the server environment get adjusted to linux in the desktop environment....

For the record, my distro of choice is SuSE, though I'm leaning towards trying ubuntu...
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Linux.... the ultimate question (for me) More

Linux.... the ultimate question (for me)

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  • Buy a Mac!

    :-D

    ....Bethanie....
    • Uhm... I'm sorry to break this to you, but I think you might lack the plumbing to be a fan boi. Maybe after you go to plumber's school or something...
      • Well, I hate to break this to you, but I wasn't claiming that that was MY answer.

        Trust me, I'm well aware of my "plumbing." Bottom line? Shit flows downhill.

        Right?

        ....Bethanie....
    • The whole reason I'm not playing games is I can't afford them until I pay off the roof and furnace (the roof should be taken care of by april)...
      So buying a new machine is completely out... which is why I'm discussing just overhauling my main machine.
  • You've got Amarok [kde.org] part of KDE.
    Or Banshee [banshee-project.org] built on Mono (Open Source .NET).
    Or Rhythmbox [rhythmbox.org] part of Gnome.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Otter ( 3800 )
      Do those handle podcast syncing, though, like he wants? Alternatively, does iTunes work under Wine? I've never tried either.

      I'm also at a Linux juncture, having badly broken my Gentoo install and am deciding what to do next.

  • you could set up windows in vmware and use it when you needed to do that. just an idea.
  • I try just about every major distro release, and have been a desktop Linux user for seven years now. Ubuntu is definitely the way to go on the desktop. F-spot for photos, Banshee for Music, Evolution for mail, and Firefox for the web.
  • I no longer have any windows machines in my house at all. My wife ran windows until it died a horrible death. Now she uses an ibook. I've been working on a mythtv box in the living room, that until finished the kids play on. That runs ubuntu. I like ubuntu, thought the mythtv package leaves something to be desired. I'm gonna try mandriva again because I was closest to having it working correctly under that.

    I personally run 2 machine in my garage that I use most often. One is an openbsd box running on

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Talinom ( 243100 ) *
      I like ubuntu, thought the mythtv package leaves something to be desired. I'm gonna try mandriva again because I was closest to having it working correctly under that.

      Try Knoppix [mysettopbox.tv]. It has everything you need to get MythTV running, but none of it is configured. I did some journals [slashdot.org] on my pain^H^H^H^H experience. If I am ever going to upgrade that beast I'm buying a second hard drive and installing on that. I don't want to nuke my current install as at least it works.

      Once you have it up and running it kic
      • So you are running knoppix? or knoppmyth...or whatever?

        What tv card are you using? When I was testing under mandriva I actually got it do display about 10 seconds of channel 2 before core dumping all over the place (Strong Bads "...and the compy just pee'd my carpet" comes to mind).

        I vaguely remember those DNS troubles of yester year. Glad to hear it's still working.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Talinom ( 243100 ) *
          Knoppmyth. It is based on the Knoppix distro. Sorry for the confusion.

          I am using one WinTV-PVR-500 MCE [hauppage.com] that has two tuners on it and one WinTV-PVR-150 MCE [hauppage.com] with one tuner and a remote. More details can be found here [slashdot.org] and here [slashdot.org]. They made all the pain go away, except for the remote control. I think they finally have that one all worked out now.

          I've never had Knoppmyth dump on my carpet, but the remote does seize up sometimes and occasionally one of the tuners locks up and won't record anything until I col
          • ah ok thanks, I'm also running the pvr-500.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by Talinom ( 243100 ) *
              For testing purposes you may want to disable hardware decoding on your video card, check your recording preferences for Live TV and make sure you selected the right type of capture card in the mythtv-setup. Do not use the open-source nVidia driver. Use the binary one nVidia provides. It is on the KnoppMyth installl disc and is put in one of the directories for "easy" installation (easy meaning you know it is there).

              Best of luck and let me know if you have any questions.
  • (see my recent JE)

    Seriously, if you have nothing important to you that has to run on windows, why waste your time? Me, I still play my games, etc. Though I suspect my next *major* computer outlay (a while from now mind you) will likely be an x86 mac. I can dual boot it and have the best of a couple of worlds.

  • As far as Distros, I think many of them are very good now, and it ends up being very much a personal preference thing. Fedora, (K)Ubuntu, Mepis, Mandriva are all good and even Debian (which I use) is much better "out-of-the-box" with 4.0. SuSE is also very good, but for myself, it is not an option since the deal with Microsoft.

    Music players -- as OctaneZ said, Amarok, Banshee and Rhythmbox are the big ones. They all handle podcasts and I think they all have full ipod support now. I have found Amarok to be a

  • Well (Score:2)

    by Alioth ( 221270 )
    I use Fedora Core on my workstation (my main machines at home are a PC with FC6, and a PowerBook G4 running Mac OS X). I've not actually had Windows on even a dual boot partition on my main PC for probably about three years now. I've never looked back. Basically, my attitude to software is that if it's not available for Linux or Mac, well, sorry - I ain't buying it. It causes very few problems. Pretty much any software I need has a competing open source version for Linux.

    I still play games. Many of id softw
  • I'm not sure if I'm the best person to be offering advice, primarily because I've never made the transition from Windows to Linux. I've never had a Windows desktop. I went straight from an Amiga to Linux, and have been running it since 1992, and as my main machine for the last 15 years or so.

    So is it usable? Well demonstrably so, yes. That's not to say there aren't problems. The latest Flash plugin for Linux is 7, and some web sites require Flash 8[1]. You obviously will have a much smaller selection of g

    • [1] Flash 9 is not done yet, but there is a beta avalible (not that I am a fan of Flash or anything).

      [3] There is *finally* an open source project for 3D Nvidia drivers (Nouveau), but it is just getting started.

      [4] If FF is bloated, what do you use? Opera? Dillo?

  • I dual (actually, I multi-, but you don't really need to) boot. I have a WinXP partition just for playing WoW, and I have a couple of other partitions with Ubuntu, Gentoo, whatever installed on them. Install Windows first, or it will bork the MBR and you'll have hassles getting GRUB, your likely boot manager working again. Then install Ubuntu or some other distro you like on another partition. On my home machine, I seldom bother creating all of the traditional separate partitions I do on my servers. U

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Degrees ( 220395 )
      Seconded. I dual boot so that I can play games at full speed - my PC is decent but not blazing fast. For basic web browsing, email, and dinking around with stuff, I boot into Linux and stay there.

      At work, I've reformatted the lappy and run Windows within a VM. I don't need high speed there - just compatibility.

      SuSE Linux Enterprise Desktop is my choice at work, OpenSuSE at home.

  • That's what I use to sync my iPod to my Linux box. You just have to have your iPod set to enable disk access.

    I plugged the firewire cord in, set it up so it automounts when I plug it in, and then let YamiPod pull all my music. You do need to write a little shell script to unmount and unload the firewire drivers for the iPod before you unplug it or it will NOT mount again until you reboot, but I can send you my script if you want.

  • I haven't completed it yet, but I am currentling running a little trial at home because I can.

    I have three laptops, an IBM ThinkPad T22 running Debian sarge, an iBook G4 12" running the latest Mac OS X, and a Dell Inspiron 2650 running XP Pro. I just put them up side by side on my desk and without direction or intention, I'm just seeing which OS's I end up using for what, assuming that I will settle on the easiest one for each task.

    The results so far:

    Linux: e-mail, web browsing, Linux server admin (natural
  • I hate sun. JSE 6 has managed to completely break every single applet on our site, and plenty of others, due to a DNS problem that they've known about for over six months and insist isn't a problem, despite every single other program in Windows managing to cope with doing a DNS lookup.

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