Linux Geekery

[Christian Soldier]

Lots of Geeky(Or nerdy in my case) posts, so I thought I'd add my own. Who here uses Linux? Which UI? Which tools do you use and for what? ie What do you use to write with, edit, etc? Btw, if you are running windows XP, you might want to think of making the switch, and if you are on Windows Vista, well, there are counselors available.

I'll start: I'm running OpenSuse 12.2 on most of my machines, though some are running 12.3 now. I use LibreOffice for most of my heavy lifting and Scribus makes the PDF files I use for TC2. I'm running Gnome 3.x and, so far, loving it.

If you don't know about Linux, take a look at your phone. Android is based off of Linux. Mac is based off of BSD, which is a very close cousin to Linux. And Windows is based off of everything put together(I'll let you decide if poorly or not).

[Bainespal]

I set up a desktop PC that my father salvaged from being thrown away at his work place with Kubuntu Linux, version 12.10. My father had actually installed a free beta version of Windows 8 on it over the original XP, so it had no usable operating system when he gave it to me. My father and I were originally going to try to jump onboard the Windows 8 app bandwagon and make a fortune, but that never happened.

I had wanted to try Linux for a long time, and I did a lot of research before installing. I more or less picked Kubuntu because I liked the screenshots of the KDE desktop interface, but I want to try Linux Mint some day, too. I've had the Linux PC running since late November, I think, and now I use it slightly more often than my old, dependable-but-slow XP laptop.

I use Kubuntu for most of my gaming. I got several games to work on Kubuntu through WINE, including Lord of the Rings Online. Some old and simple games don't work at all, and some relatively recent and graphics-intensive games work seamlessly.

I want to use Kubuntu for media editing, since pretty much all of my favorite free software is also available on Linux (directly through the distribution, even). So far, the only media tool I've used extensively is GIMP, but I've also tried the digital painting program Krita, and I'm very impressed with it.

[Teskas]

I've been running Ubuntu on a crock of a PC in the basement. Recently the Vista powered laptop finally collapsed. (Yeah, I know. Vista. Okay. I'm in a 12 step program.)

Thought maybe I'd try something simple. Mint, probably.

[Christian Soldier]

Mint is amazing. The only reason I don't run it is that I have a Sony laptop. Sony has some weird laptop drivers and most Debian based Distros don't support it by default.

Bainespal, try Unity, too. I use Gnome 3 on my home PC and I love it. FOr older PC's, though, I highly recommend using XFCE for it's clean interface and good feature set.

[Bainespal]

Mar 26, 2013 12:57:13 GMT -5 Christian Soldier said:

Bainespal, try Unity, too. I use Gnome 3 on my home PC and I love it. FOr older PC's, though, I highly recommend using XFCE for it's clean interface and good feature set.

Thanks for the recommendations. I've been thinking of revamping my mother's painfully slow laptop with a light, intuitive, and traditional-type desktop Linux distribution. My mother can hardly get anything done with that computer, and it's impracticality has been a hindrance to some of her goals. She's not very comfortable with obscure computer tech stuff, though.

[yoda47]

I was tri-booting Suse, Win 98, and XP on a machine a while ago, then the hard drive crashed and I haven't got around to setting it up again.

[Christian Soldier]

Yoda, you'd probably like where OpenSuse has gone since, then. I had Suse way, waaay back in the day(Bought from Walmart ), and am glad that I missed the intervening years.

[Bainespal]

Wow, Linux for sale at Walmart!

[newburydave]

Microsoft is planning to stop support for XP this summer. I guess I'll have to go ahead and replace the OSs on my laptop and netbook with a Linux build.

What is the latest best build (best= ease of use and transparency) I don't want to have to learn all the command line stuff again.

Something with all the drivers already set up for plug and play.

There was a build out there called Lindows years ago. They had to change the name. Does anyone know if it's still out there and what they're calling it now?

<<<I hate computers and software>>>

Thanks for any help.

Write on siblings

SGD
dave

[Bainespal]

Apr 14, 2013 21:25:38 GMT -5 newburydave said:

There was a build out there called Lindows years ago. They had to change the name. Does anyone know if it's still out there and what they're calling it now?

I read about Lindows while I reasearching Linux distributions a while ago, before I set up my Kubuntu system. The new name it was re-released with is Linspire, and there was also a derivative version called Freespire. (Links to the Wikipedia articles.)

Wikipedia seems to suggest that Linspire and Freespire are no longer supported or updated. DistroWatch.com lists the status of both Linspire and Freespire as "discontinued," but it also shows that they were updated as recently as August 14, 2012.

Also, I'll note that I did not have any driver issues with Kubuntu. All my hardware (keyboard, mouse, monitor, USB network adapter, DVD drive, USB flash drives) just worked. I did not have to configure anything.

[Christian Soldier]

Dave, your best best would be to install Linux Mint. Most Mint users know nothing of the command line, and it is the most stable Distro I have ever worked with. The only laptop brand I'm aware of them having issues with are Sonys. But that's it, everything else works right out of the box, and Mint comes with Flash and most of the popular codecs. Feel free to contact me if you would like help getting started.

[newburydave]

Thanks CS;

If it's that mature I expect it'll be easy. I've done Linux distro installs before, back in the dark ages when you had to specifically load and configure all the drivers from the command line.

I'm just not up to relearning all the command line instructions again, for a new version .

If I get hung up I'll email you. I've got an older IBM Thinkpad from before it became Lenovo and an Asus eePad netbook. If Mint isn't a resource hog, a-la MS, I expect it will fly on them.

OBTW, do you know anything about Paranoid Linux?

I just read Cory Doctro's novels about geeks vs. DHS and it figured large in the stories. Surprise, surprise I find that it is a real Distro, recommended for business to avoid hackerdom and Gov't meddling/spying.

Write on bro

SGD
dave

[MattB]

I'm gonna say that Mint is probably the best one. They even have some writing software in their repos. I also find that it is the easiest to use Scrivener Beta for Linux on. It just works. I love Linux but recently got a Windows 8 computer so I could get the full support of Scrivener. I must say (sometimes feel ashamed) that if you are used to the dash in Ubuntu or any Gnome 3 Distro, it really isn't that bad. I just wish they would do the multiple workspaces without the third party software.

As far as other writing software I would use on a Linux machine, I would recommend Lyx. Bit of a learning curve but absolutely amazing for large documents.

[Christian Soldier]

Dave,

I haven't had the chance to check out Paranoid Linux, yet, but I can tell you that every flavor of Linux has paranoia built in. Especially the Fedora based distros.

[newburydave]

Thanks for the suggested direction CS.

BTW, I'm really sorry about bailing on the editing gig. I can suggest crits to other authors but when it came down to it I don't have the confidence in my own grammar and diction skills to lay down the law on another newbie author. I feel like John, I have need to be edited...etc.

Write on Bro

SGD
dave