Linux

[The Dark Side of Will]

Really going over to the dark side...

I've been looking at Linux for a while now...

What's the best place/way to get it? Is there 64 bit Linux yet?
How much do I have to worry about driver availability for hardware?
Tutorial?
Email programs (I currenlty use Eudora)?
IRC (currently Trillian)?
Office software (currently MS Word, Excel, Access)?
WYSIWYG HTML editor?
Would AutoCAD R14 have to run in Windows emulator program?
Where do I get one?

[derangedsheep]

Can't answer any of your questions except the office one. I would use OpenOffice. I used to have it installed on my PC and it is very similar to MS Office and quite easy to use. www.openoffice.org

EDIT: I too am thinking of going to Linux. I have a 120GB hard drive in my closet that isn't being used so I was going to do a dual-boot setup. I used to have Red Hat Linux installed on a computer in my basement and i played around with it, but that was about 4 years ago. I had heard that SUSE is a good beginners Linux.

EDIT #2: I did some more looking around and SUSE has a 64bit build available for download.

[Ultimate 85]

You could try http://www.linux.org/ there's a bunch of tutorials and info on there. I just started using Linspire 5.0 (Debian based) since I lost the recovery disk for my computer about a week ago. I don't know jack about linux, total newbie. Looks interesting though.

[zonyl]

Really going over to the dark side...

I've been looking at Linux for a while now...

What's the best place/way to get it? Is there 64 bit Linux yet?
How much do I have to worry about driver availability for hardware?
Tutorial?
Email programs (I currenlty use Eudora)?
IRC (currently Trillian)?
Office software (currently MS Word, Excel, Access)?
WYSIWYG HTML editor?
Would AutoCAD R14 have to run in Windows emulator program?
Where do I get one?

1. For beginners, www.mandriva.com (find a mirror for the free community distro isos) Mandriva comes with all of the software mentioned below.
1a. The linux kernel has been 64bit capable for almost a decade. Most popular distros are x86-64bit available now as well. (mandriva / redhat / suse / gentoo / debian) I am running Mandriva 2006LE -64 on an Athlon 64 right now. (on my MAME arcade cabinet)
2. If it is/was popular it is supported. Great thing about linux is that you generally dont need to hunt for drivers. Most distro's will include all of them.
3. ? Tutorial on setting it up or using it? Setting up is easier than windows (if your hw is supported). Using it is pretty much like windows. Note: Linux is a OS kernel, nothing more. The User Interface is just a program to linux (not integrated like windwows) and can take on many forms from text based to 2D traditional windows to 3D virtual desktops. The most common/popular UI program is Xorg (X-windows) running KDE and Gnome as window manager programs.
4. Evolution (looks like outlook)
5. Gaim
6. OpenOffice (clones of them all except access). There is a product called "Rekall" that looks like access. I generally use MySQL and write my own front ends using LAMP.
7. Quanta+, BlueCurve, some others that escape my memory (For all linux software check www.freshmeat.net )
8. I had R12 running under Wine in linux. I since switched to Qcad (which is free) and native for linux. Pro-E also has a native linux port if you want to spend the $$$ or hunt for the warez.

[eHoward]

Back in 2000, i had a ton of stability issues with 64 bit linux. Redhat's variety to be specific. I ended up going with FreeBSD for production. Worked much nicer.

I found that "last year's" hardware is often the best bet as far as support goes. New stuff often isn't supported.

As far as tutorials go, I learned everything I needed to learn from HOWTOs and man pages. http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/docs/H ... ml_single/

I used PINE for email. I'm sure there's a graphical email package out there. Last time I was at linux world, someone was selling an Outlook clone package that interfaced with MS products.

I'm sure there's IRC programs out there. I think BitchX is a popular one. I don't use IRC. I did like Hotline(Hx) in the 90s though.

For office software, there's Sun's Open Office. There's also a couple other open source projects going on. I use Open Office.

I use PICO for editing HTML. It's not graphical.

BOCHS is a windows emulator. You might want to also try WINE. http://www.winehq.com/ It's not an emulator but a set of API.

You m ight want to try going to http://freshmeat.net/ if you're looking for random software.

Really going over to the dark side...

I've been looking at Linux for a while now...

What's the best place/way to get it? Is there 64 bit Linux yet?
How much do I have to worry about driver availability for hardware?
Tutorial?
Email programs (I currenlty use Eudora)?
IRC (currently Trillian)?
Office software (currently MS Word, Excel, Access)?
WYSIWYG HTML editor?
Would AutoCAD R14 have to run in Windows emulator program?
Where do I get one?

[eHoward]

Damn, Zonyl beat me. :salute:

[zonyl]

Back in 2000, i had a ton of stability issues with 64 bit linux. Redhat's variety to be specific. I ended up going with FreeBSD for production. Worked much nicer.

I found that "last year's" hardware is often the best bet as far as support goes. New stuff often isn't supported.

As far as tutorials go, I learned everything I needed to learn from HOWTOs and man pages. http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/docs/H ... ml_single/

I used PINE for email. I'm sure there's a graphical email package out there. Last time I was at linux world, someone was selling an Outlook clone package that interfaced with MS products.

I'm sure there's IRC programs out there. I think BitchX is a popular one. I don't use IRC. I did like Hotline(Hx) in the 90s though.

For office software, there's Sun's Open Office. There's also a couple other open source projects going on. I use Open Office.

I use PICO for editing HTML. It's not graphical.

BOCHS is a windows emulator. You might want to also try WINE. http://www.winehq.com/ It's not an emulator but a set of API.

You m ight want to try going to http://freshmeat.net/ if you're looking for random software.

Really going over to the dark side...

I've been looking at Linux for a while now...

What's the best place/way to get it? Is there 64 bit Linux yet?
How much do I have to worry about driver availability for hardware?
Tutorial?
Email programs (I currenlty use Eudora)?
IRC (currently Trillian)?
Office software (currently MS Word, Excel, Access)?
WYSIWYG HTML editor?
Would AutoCAD R14 have to run in Windows emulator program?
Where do I get one?

I was running 64bit linux on a DEC Alpha back in '96 and the kernel was stable, however a lot of applications werent. This is usually the case, although it is less of a problem now as more people have 64bit machines and are finding/fixing these issues with applications. Most everything for linux is written by people who do it for themselves, and 64bit machines werent easy to come by back then. Now most linux application developers have 64bit machines and beyond, thus my Athlon 64 is running happily serving up arcade games. (The arcade emulator is an extremely complex application as well. I was shocked to have such good reliability on an Athlon 64.)

Even though both Linux and *BSD are unix based, they differ in two major ways:
1. Licensing: *BSD can be sold as a product, Linux can never be sold as a product.
2. Integration: *BSD approves and tests all applications that come with it (not a whole lot of choice on applications because of it). Most Linux distros are a total buffet of applications and has a few items on the table that are semi-spoiled, however, there are plenty of other good items to get instead. The Debian Linux distro is about as close as Linux comes to *BSD, sans licensing. (not a very user friendly distro though)

I am still using Pine for email as well Of course I am one of those old CLI (command line interface) people.

I use BitchX as well for IRC. I though Gaim would be a lot easier for a newcomer.

PICO is no longer available as GPL so it is hard to come by now. NANO is the GPL recplacement in most distros now.

BOCHS is a low level x86 emulator which would require you to run windows inside of it. If want to go that route, getting VMWare (or Xen 3.0) is a far better route. Wine does not require windows and provides windows compatibility natively to linux.

I have been Microsoft free at home since 99, so I have quite a bit of experience now with Linux/ *BSD in general (even contributed a few lines of code).

[eHoward]

My Digital Alpha, a 21164, was not stable on Linux. It wasn't like I was running undeveloped software either. I was running apache and that's it. Maybe "a ton" wasn't the best way to describe it, but the machine would not stay online for half an hour before crashing or seizing.

I'm sure it has to be better now that everyone has 64bit hardware. If he were to have problems, I would highly recommend the switch to FreeBSD.

I was wondering why I had to go find PICO source and compile everytime I'm on a new box.

Personally, I wouldn't use the emulator, but just run a dedicated windows box if I need to run windows software. That's actually what I do. For $500, it's just not worth the hastle not to.

I was thinking of suggesting looking into VMware, but figured he didn't want to spend money.

I suggested the emulator because half a dozen years ago before I wised up, I found WINE difficult to use when I tried to use it, but BOCHS and similar software (I ran Virtual PC) are just like running windows in a closed box.

I was running 64bit linux on a DEC Alpha back in '96 and the kernel was stable, however a lot of applications werent. This is usually the case, although it is less of a problem now as more people have 64bit machines and are finding/fixing these issues with applications.

PICO is no longer available as GPL so it is hard to come by now. NANO is the GPL recplacement in most distros now.

BOCHS is a low level x86 emulator which would require you to run windows inside of it. If want to go that route, getting VMWare (or Xen 3.0) is a far better route. Wine does not require windows and provides windows compatibility natively to linux.

I have been Microsoft free at home since 99, so I have quite a bit of experience now with Linux/ *BSD in general (even contributed a few lines of code).

[The Dark Side of Will]

Setting up Athlon 64 3700+ on Asus A8N-SLI. I'm not a gamer, but that board had the stuff I wanted. Will have 1G of RAM. Haven't settled on a video (err.... sorry, graphix) card yet, but I don't need anything world beating.

Upgrades I'm considering would be to 4G of ram (I assume that the address bus of 64 bit processors has expanded to 64 bits as well, giving them the capacity to address 1.6E19 bytes of memory?)

Looking at setting up a 4 drive SATA RAID with a TB of storage, just because I can. I guess I'll just have to pay attention to the specific board I get to be sure it has Linux drivers.

Been thinking about changing my laptop over to Linux. It's a PIII 800 and will be replaced in a few months, but I may leave that as the Windoze box on which to run Windoze software.

I know a guy who used to be into warez... Maybe I'll see if he can find me a thing or two...

[The Dark Side of Will]

Thinking about going dual-boot on my laptop. How do I set that up?

[eHoward]

http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/docs/H ... -LILO.html

Thinking about going dual-boot on my laptop. How do I set that up?

[zonyl]

Thinking about going dual-boot on my laptop. How do I set that up?

Mandrake's install will handle that all in a wizard if you like. Very easy. Mandrake will replace the windows bootloader with its own (lilo), and will give you a menu to boot either Mandrake Linux or Windows.

You can even install Mandrake Linux onto an existing Windows partition as well (in FAT32) so you dont have to mess with partition tables.

[The Dark Side of Will]

What about installing Linux then Windoze?

[zonyl]

windows will 0wn your bootloader and you will need to re-install the linux one again to boot back into linux after a windows install. (fairly difficult , however, you can use more rescue disks to restore it)

[Series8217]

You can add your linux installation to the windows bootloader.. the Win2k bootloader at least.

[The Dark Side of Will]

Mandriva = Mandrake, right?
I don't have easy access to a CD burner and just got a new hard drive for the laptop. I'm currently in the computer lab at NAS Fallon in Nevada. What's the best way to snag an installation CD? Just buy one?

Looking at "Discovery LX" on the Mandriva website. I could have sworn it was talking to me in dollars the other day, now it's talking to me in euros. WTF?

[zonyl]

Mandriva = Mandrake, right?
I don't have easy access to a CD burner and just got a new hard drive for the laptop. I'm currently in the computer lab at NAS Fallon in Nevada. What's the best way to snag an installation CD? Just buy one?

Looking at "Discovery LX" on the Mandriva website. I could have sworn it was talking to me in dollars the other day, now it's talking to me in euros. WTF?

Yes.

You can install "Mandriva Community Edition" from a USB flash drive (there is a bootable image for that) and it will install over the internet. Look for the file "all.img"

Mandrive Community Edition is 100% free. They bury the mirrors pretty good on their site, so you might be better off putting Mandriva Mirror into google or edonkey.

[The Dark Side of Will]

Apparently I suck at finding this stuff.
I got here: ftp://mandrake.mirrors.pair.com/Mandrak ... .0/x86_64/

But it's not readily apparent which one is USB bootable... is any image that is CD bootable also USB bootable?

What's a good place to find the appropriate image?

[zonyl]

ISO images are only bootable on CD media. Installing via USB isnt a very obvious way of doing it, so it isnt documented all that well unfortunately. CD installs are probably about 98% of the way most get linux, anything else is odd. I am one of the 2% that does it differently just because I know how and I never buy CDROMs for machines I use.

You need the usb image which is located here:
ftp://mandrake.mirrors.pair.com/Mandrak ... es/all.img

The steps to make the USB image are here:
ftp://mandrake.mirrors.pair.com/Mandrak ... .htm#other

Once you get the image onto the usb flash device, you boot, and then select ftp install from the menu and punch in the address to the mirror you are using:
ftp://mandrake.mirrors.pair.com/Mandrak ... .0/x86_64/

Sometimes a computers BIOS doesnt handle booting a USB flash device very well and you may run into issues. If that occurs, and you still have a floppy drive in the machine, you can use the network.img file instead and put it on a floppy using the same instructions above.

[The Dark Side of Will]

I presume I'll need a wired connection for "ftp install"?