Linux Users

[Ish]

I was just wandering if there were any other Linux users on here?

A couple of months ago I switched over to Linux as my primary OS (I still have an XP installation for games) and I've never looked back. Its stable, secure and does everything I need. I started off with gradually with a lot of my important files staying on my Windows partition but now I've completed the move over. I've only got the most minimal Windows installation with nothing but games installed.

There was no single thing that prompted me to move away from Windows - just a slowly growing dislike for it (not helped by the fact that as a .net developer I spend half my day cursing it).

Given I was already using Firefox, Thuderbird and OpenOffice and starting to do my home development in cross platform tools anyway it kind of made sense to try it out.

For those who are interested I'm currently running the Fedora Core 3 distribution. The only drawback with this is that until ATI release there next set of Linux drivers there's no 3d support for ATI cards so I can't play UT2004 at the mo. But that should change soon

I'm sat here at the moment writing my first Gnome application. Oooo I feel all geeky.

[Valken]

On the desktop I'm primarily an OSX user but my other systems all dual boot Linux and WinXP or Win2k...

Before getting a Mac is used Linux exclusively apart from the usual games stuff and never had any probs with it.

My distros of choice are Gentoo and Debian but I've also messed with installs of FreeBSD and x86 Darwin but I'm not one of those Windows haters... I like a lot of Microsoft's apps.

I've got pretty much nothing but Nvidia hardware which has a great set of drivers under Linux so no complaints there... my own personal projects, a small shooter and a 3rd person adventure title I develop under Linux although I've kept them as multiplatform as possible.

I'm currently tinkering with the x64 version of Gentoo on my new system...

I develop for Windows to pay the rent but it never makes me hate it. I find MS naming conventions for their APIs a little annoying but once you hide them away all is well!

I hate OpenOffice though! I just stick with nerdy authoring tools like LaTeX or MS Office on the Mac.

[gingerj]

I used to use Red Hat when i was about 16, but i really couldn't be bothered with the hassle of migrating everything over plus 3 years ago i wasn't the best at computing so i didn't have any real reason to keep it installed i just wanted to see what all the fuss was about but now i'm thinking about doing it al over again because windows os's just piss me off and since i mainly do php+sql linux will be ideal. Not sure what distro to look at though these days as i remember downloading them for free and now most of the big distro's seem to cost money which i'm confused about?

[Ish]

You can still download them. For example you can get Fedora Core that I'm using here:

http://fedora.redhat.com/

I downloaded the DVD ISO over BitTorrent - there's a link on the site to it.

I'm not a big MS hater either. I too like and use some of there products: I quite like Office for example. But its seriously over priced. And I quite like developing in .net - though the less said about the VS.net IDE the better. In fact I think that and having spent a couple of years as a web developer dealing with IE's "interpretation" of standards is what soured me a little.

I'm still a complete noob to developing on Linux / Unix and while I find the actual coding straightforward enough (been doing C++ for over 10 years) its all the autoconf stuff that I'm still having to learn. I've been a bit pampered on the Windows platform in that regard!

[Taurine]

I've been using Linux as my main OS since 1997, many of those years as my only OS. I was a Slackware user for most of that time but a year ago I moved over to Gentoo and haven't looked back. Only blemish is that I built a new PC recently and ended up getting XP as well so that I could join up with a friend with a Final Fantasy XI Online addiction.

[Valken]

Just set up an iTunes server on my Gentoo box using daapd and mDNSResponder!

It's quite nice to open iTunes on any system on my network and have my music show up without ****ing about with network shares. mDNSResponder (Apple call it Rendevous) makes sure that it all just "appears"

[Ish]

I've spent the day converting my old RetroJunkie website over to PHP. It was an asp.net site but I don't have an asp.net host anymore. And nor do I have a local IIS server. Its been surprisingly painless. I really quite like Quanta as an HTML / web site tool.

One other thing I've been finding.... eerie I suppose is the word.

Coding in C++ again. I've not done any C++ coding since .net came out (I started developing professionally with .net as soon as the first beta arrived - I'm not sure whether that makes me fortunate or not - man it was painful!!). And before that I was winding down the amount I did anyway - only really wheeling it out when services and the like were required. But coding client apps on Linux its all C++ all the way again. Its like coming back to an old friend. Though I couldn't remember the exact syntax of something straightforward this morning - so I dug out my Stroustrup and ahhhh the memories.

[Resonance]

Man I wish I could get into Linux but it seems kind of hard. All of the techie geek stuff I want to learn seems so esoteric like you are just supposed to understand it. One day when I get some time to really go for it I will have to ask you guys for some help!

Do any of the Linux distros support font smoothing like windows XP? I really like the cleartype look.

@Ish
What is the verdict on the .net platform???

[Ish]

I actually quite like the .net platform. For database apps and web services its absolutely superb. Only real downsides are some odd ommisions from the framework that force you to drop to the Win32 API (not really a big deal), it can be a bit slow, and, more seriously, on large projects both the compiler and IDE are buggy as hell.

For websites - asp.net is ok. Though there are some aspects of it I dislike and a lot of the time I prefer to use PHP.

But on the whole its made working on the kind of apps I work on at work a good deal more pleasant.

[ekucz123]

re: linux users

I've been using Linux as my primary OS for about 6 years now, always had a dual boot machine to use Windows for Gaming though and doing Direct X programming. Agree on the point of .NET being alright for DB Apps mind you C# is the biggest and most blatant piece of plagarism I have seen for years(Java with some of the lower cases changed to upper case etc...)

[Resonance]

Do you see C# replacing Java or C++? Which do you prefer out of the 3?

[Hohum]

Man I wish I could get into Linux but it seems kind of hard. All of the techie geek stuff I want to learn seems so esoteric like you are just supposed to understand it.

That's what put me off, not beginner friendly at all. I tried Mandrake, which was supposedly one of the easier ones to use... and after playing around with that for a couple of days I just came away confused and feeling somewhat dumb, lol.

You have to be able to use the command line interface with some competency to get anywhere, which I wasn't able to do. I'd just end up using command lines supplied in readmes with programs to compile/install/run as necessary, with no knowledge of what exactly was going on... which put me off more than anything. I wanted to know what that command line I typed actually did, perhaps a breakdown of what each parameter represented (so I can learn how things work :P), but was just left in the dark so to speak. All that stuff I typed worked, but at the same time was all meaningless to me. This just left me very frustrated, as I wasn't in control at all.. I tried searching through various help files and searching via google for more information, but didn't get very far at all.

Last straw came for me when I attempted to install Nvidia drivers from their website, this was too funny. Successfully installed them (Nvidia logo displayed when gui loaded), and I thought 'woo, getting somewhere finally'. Well, yes... of course there had to be a drawback, didn't there? Somehow the command line interface outside the gui got completely screwed up afterwards (couldn't fix it despite my efforts), and was just displayed as a load of garbage. So could no longer do anything outside the gui! Fantastic

Do any of the Linux distros support font smoothing like windows XP? I really like the cleartype look.

I'm pretty sure most do.. I've seen screenshots of Red Hat gui with cleartype style fonts, and Mandrake has them too...

http://images.mandrakesoft.com/img/s...dk100-scr4.jpg

That shows it off.

[Resonance]

Ha! Its not just me then!

[labrat]

I do all my gaming on consoles, so I don't have a need for Windows really. I did dual boot when I was addicted to SOF2, but that was a long time ago and I haven't touched Windows for over two years (been using BSD/Linux for over 5 years).

[Ish]

Regarding fonts in Linux and clarity. I took a couple of screenshots. One of some C++ in KDevelop and one of the forum running in Firefox on Linux. I think they look fine.....