Who's Given Linux A Shot?

[RBwhatever]

I hated it in the past, but I think the distro's lately have been getting up there.

I've done the Live CD and loaded a copy onto a 8g USB drive so I'm running Ubuntu 8.10 off that so I don't have to partition my laptops HD.

I'm actually impressed with the way it performs and the ease of use. It does have it differences from XP/Vista, but I think it has the potential to be a powerful OS. And the best part of it is it's all free. The different distro's are free and all the available programs are free......I'm not going to complain about that.

I know you don't get the same standard of program availability that you get with windows. But it's got most if not all bases covered with it's own software support.

I think the biggest thing that holds a lot of people back is its lack of computer games available for it.

I'm impressed to what the different Linux distro's have grown to, and even visually it's not boring, but I'm still not going to be removing my XP installation to put this one over it. The fact that I can run both is good enough.

So who else has used it? Thoughts of those that don't like it?

[Ronin]

i Dual boot vista X64 and Ubuntu 8.10 64bit. Ubuntu works great but i still use Vista 99% of the time due to software support.

[mr33gts4]

linux is the only system l use these days. Its vast range of shareware/freeware is a + and its security is amongst the top in the market.

I would never go back to windows again after l tried redhat out. But then again, id be missing out on PC games =p

[Mayuri Krab]

I used Linux back in 1st year Uni for my Engineering programming course.

If Linux had more games support, I would switch...

[RBwhatever]

I've found it to be a pretty stable OS. I think that the many people that have put their time and effort into it have done a pretty good job to create something that rivals windows and you don't even have to pay for it.

[dirty_30]

I used Mandriva for a brief while in a fit of rage after being fed up with Vista, but I couldn't find proper wireless drivers and gave in and went back to XP Professional, I will give it another shot but on a dedicated system whith all drivers etc prepared before hand. My media Server will definetly be running it but that kinda doesnt count considering its lack os screen and any direct user input really. What are peoples views on the different environments gNOME vs KDE etc etc?

[Bliksem]

I first tried it 6 or 7 years ago but got fed up with having to go into command line prompt to do anything, and then not knowing what to do when things went wrong. If I had the patience to learn more about it theres no doubt it would be very powerful compared to Windows. If the new versions are more user friendly I might consider trying it again. I dont play Games so that isnt an issue.

[TALBO]

Has anyone has a look over at insanelymac.com?

OSX rules

[HomeDawwg]

Ive been using linux at work (and at uni beforehand) and i like it a lot better than windows for most things.

I still dont use it at home simply for software/driver support. And cos i havnt been bothered putting it on.

But its 100% more stable for everything i do, considering doing dual boot for my normal internet wastage.

[MYRB30]

Ive been messing with liunx (mainly mandriva) for what for 6 or more years now.

It was bit hit and miss back then. Now its pretty darn good.

I built a new pc in October last year and some of the drivers werent out, like the network driver and video card. Thats what you get for buying cutting edge. I was able to get it working after googling for a few hours. I couldnt get my RAID array running. A few months later mandriva 2009 came out. I installed that and everything, EVERYTHING, was detected and worked.

So the improvements happen so fast with everyone from around the globe finding and repairing bugs.

I still have to spend hours googling to find ways to do stuff. I am a member of the Mandrivausers forum and those guys are great.

I still dual boot with XP, as some of my programs are windows based. But I'm sure i could get them to work under WINE.

Linux is so stable and so much faster that I use it for practically all my surfing and other pc duties.

As a normal home pc linux would be perfect. If your like me and mess with hard ware abit and like messing around it still takes a bit to find how to do stuff.

I love my linux installs. The 3d desktop effects are always impressive for my friends too!

[gfunkk]

If Linux had more games support, I would switch...

this.

im keen to try it anyway but never got round to it

[pitoui]

I have Yellow Dog Linux 6.1 installed on my PS3, it's pretty good. The only crap thing about it is that it doesn't detect my wifi for some reason. I've gone through a few tutorials but still cant get it to work.

I CBF moving the PS3 near my router to connect it to the net so I can download all the codecs + VLC player etc.

I only installed it cos I thought it would be cool to use bittorent and D/L movies straight to my PS3 and watch them on my bigscreen.

If anyone knows how to get wifi working via YDL 6.1, please let me know

[radix]

What programs exactly do you not find on linux? If you are going to list games I'll agree with you. I switched every PC (7 of them) in my house to some flavor of linux years ago (save 1 vista box for gaming) and have always found the programs I need, and guess what, they are all free with no risk of being caught for piracy.

[R32_R34]

Yeah I have used ubuntu Linux since the hoary hedgehog (5.04), It's very stable as long as you don't try to compile your own kernel . The progress that has been made over the past couple of years has been amazing, moving from being primarily a command line based system to GUI (with gnome of course or KDE with Kubuntu)

Jokes aside its been great using Linux, especially with the progress WINE has made, you might not need windows soon (that includes gaming), not to mention compiz fusion and avant-window-navigator or kiba-dock for desktop effects.

Edited March 17, 2009 by R32_R34

[PhilKenSebben]

I use nothing but ubuntu. I never really HATED windows but my brother is more nerdy and convinced me this is a million times better. I've had no complaints. It's just as user friendly as windows and I know nothing about computers. He loves free programs, millions of program options, the fact that you can stuff with EVERYTHING if you feel inclined. Especially the setup "MASTER OF THE KNOWN UNIVERSE" which allows you to kill the computer if you get it wrong but make it brilliant if you do things well. Like a power fc. Oh and I did try Vista and I did hate it (last one I had used was xp which was ok)

And by god is windows and it's related program EXPENSIVE these days! Really annoys you when Linux does it all for free. FREE!

[rtune]

ubuntu is increasingly good

and I plan to try the lightweight version, xubuntu, designed for notebooks.

there is too much bloat when mainly laptop use is about the browser..

games support is the downer but get a console and to a large extent forget about

the hassle of running games on a PC.

[RBwhatever]

I've now loaded Linux Mint 6 onto my laptop and am now dual booting with XP. I still have programs i use on XP, and I find myself choosing the XP option more often then letting it boot into Mint. I just need to play with mint a bit more and personalise it so I'm comfortable with everything.

Also to whoever said about gnome vs KDE. I tried Mandriva 2009 KDE and I can't get my head around it, so switched back to gnome Mint 6. Mint 6 for me has been the most complete out of the box for me anyway.

The only thing that sucks atm is I can't get the sound to work out of the laptop speakers, sound only works out of the headphone jack. I still haven't figured out why....??

[RBwhatever]

Does anyone use some kind of anti-virus and firewall for their linux OS?

If so, what do you use?

[rtune]

firewall is on by default,

you don't need anti-virus.

[RBwhatever]

my firewall seems to be off by default.....