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As editor for LinuxInsider for more than a year now, I figured the time was right to start walking the walk with my personal machine. So I took my Dell Inspiron 1150 to this year's LinuxWorld Conference & Expo with the intention of switching my operating system to one of the many Linux distros. I visited the booths of several distros, Ubuntu, Suse, Red Hat and even BSD, grabbing disks along the way. The plan was to give each a test drive, then choose one based on my experience.
This might or might not be a solution to your wifi issue. I had the same maddening trouble with wifi. Turns out there are a couple options to choose from for WEP, and while I chose WEP, I didnt choose the Right WEP. WEP 64/128bit ASCII is probably what you want, as it's the one where you type in your 7 or 13 character password as text. I tried Passphrase, as that's what almost everything I've seen calls it, but that's not it at all, that's simply a way to generate a compliant key from a longer phrase. But Passphrase and ASCII wont generate the same key from the same text! Give it a shot, at worst, it's a bit of knowledge to tuck away for later.
I'm not sure if I misunderstood or not, but you mention ClamAV and then that AVG doesn't require compiling. I thought I would clarify that ClamAV doesn't require compiling either, nor does almost any other Linux software for that matter as your Linux distributor/vendor/supplier does that for you.
The only time you need to compile software under Linux these days is when you want to use software that your distribution doesn't provide in it's software repositories which is pretty rare these days, when you want to run the latest bleeding edge version of something or when the existing version doesn't work in the way you need it to. In all three of these cases you will probably know how to compile software under Linux by the time you need to do any of these things.
Apologies if I misunderstood, but I thought I would clear it up for anyone who makes the same misunderstanding.
Also take a look at Home User Backup for backups and Uncomplicated Firewall (ufw) or Firestarter and firewall front ends on Linux.
The only time you need to compile software under Linux these days is when you want to use software that your distribution doesn't provide in it's software repositories which is pretty rare these days, when you want to run the latest bleeding edge version of something or when the existing version doesn't work in the way you need it to. In all three of these cases you will probably know how to compile software under Linux by the time you need to do any of these things.
Apologies if I misunderstood, but I thought I would clear it up for anyone who makes the same misunderstanding.
Also take a look at Home User Backup for backups and Uncomplicated Firewall (ufw) or Firestarter and firewall front ends on Linux.
Full backup to a livecd or dvd with REMASTERSYS
Posted by: nudepenguin 2008-08-28 07:39:04 In reply to: Jason Z. Cohen
I think that REMASTERSYS should take care of most anyones backup needs. With remastersys 2.0-5 supporting Ubuntu Hardy it's hard not to love this easy 2 click solution to backing up your whole system and compressing it to an livecd iso
http://loscompanion.com/forums/index.php?PHPSESSID=7c599c907c5c1c2845920613b5f92607&topic=3832.0
http://loscompanion.com/forums/index.php?PHPSESSID=7c599c907c5c1c2845920613b5f92607&topic=3832.0
Very good article.
I see a lot of the blind fanaticism of Ubuntu ("It just works") like the blind fanaticism of Windows or Mac.
I too had the same problem of Ubuntu not recognizing my b43 wireless chip out of the box. Sabayon Linux, on the other hand, sees and configures my b43 wireless on the initial install. ext4: Ubuntu doesn't deal with such strange things, but Sabayon on the other hand allows me to not only read and write to ext4 partitions it also allows me to run my root partition as ext4. lvm: Ubuntu requires an "alternate CD". Sabayon can deal with lvm from its main install/live CD. When I wanted to compile a custom kernel in Ubuntu, users in the Ubuntu community would say, "Why would you ever want to do that? Ubuntu knows what you want and provides the right kernels for you already." Sabayon has a nice tool provided from Gentoo (from which Sabayon is based) called genkernel which automates compiling a custom kernel very nicely.
So Ubuntu serves a lot of people's needs well. But it isn't for everyone. There are other distros out there.
My only questions is, why did you work for a year as the editor of Linux Insider before you tried Linux at home? I thought that Linux experience would have been a requirement for the job of editor of Linux Insider. I haven't had Windows installed on my machines for probably 4 or 5 years now. I tinkered with RedHat going back to Red Hat 6 and the 2.2 kernel. I find it strange that even the editor of a Linux magazine hasn't switched from Windows before now.
I see a lot of the blind fanaticism of Ubuntu ("It just works") like the blind fanaticism of Windows or Mac.
I too had the same problem of Ubuntu not recognizing my b43 wireless chip out of the box. Sabayon Linux, on the other hand, sees and configures my b43 wireless on the initial install. ext4: Ubuntu doesn't deal with such strange things, but Sabayon on the other hand allows me to not only read and write to ext4 partitions it also allows me to run my root partition as ext4. lvm: Ubuntu requires an "alternate CD". Sabayon can deal with lvm from its main install/live CD. When I wanted to compile a custom kernel in Ubuntu, users in the Ubuntu community would say, "Why would you ever want to do that? Ubuntu knows what you want and provides the right kernels for you already." Sabayon has a nice tool provided from Gentoo (from which Sabayon is based) called genkernel which automates compiling a custom kernel very nicely.
So Ubuntu serves a lot of people's needs well. But it isn't for everyone. There are other distros out there.
My only questions is, why did you work for a year as the editor of Linux Insider before you tried Linux at home? I thought that Linux experience would have been a requirement for the job of editor of Linux Insider. I haven't had Windows installed on my machines for probably 4 or 5 years now. I tinkered with RedHat going back to Red Hat 6 and the 2.2 kernel. I find it strange that even the editor of a Linux magazine hasn't switched from Windows before now.
Printing photos on Linux.....Use Google's Picasa. It may be a Windows App (running on Wine) and it is not 'open source' but on linux it is a treat to use, especially on Ubuntu. Edits and prints great photos on both HP and Canon (Selphy) printers as well as downloading images from your camera. Linux Journal's Readers voted this software a close second to DigiKam in the 2008 awards. Enjoy!
Two years ago, I became fed up with my 70 year old mother continuously asking paranoid questions every time the Windows-based firewall and anti-virus software wanted to update. So, I switched her to Ubuntu. Since then, she rarely calls me. Best decision I ever made.
dump the Ubuntu network manager for WICD.
http://wicd.sourceforge.net/
Solved a lot of issues with WPA encryption and my sleep and resume on my Laptop.
http://wicd.sourceforge.net/
Solved a lot of issues with WPA encryption and my sleep and resume on my Laptop.
First i am glad that people talking about linux, run linux on their PCs ;)
Have describe my own experience of adopting linux under http://opensource-br.blogspot.com/2008/08/gnulinux.html
It is a shame that you did not manage to test OpenSUSE, in my humble opinion the best distro (i have tested ubuntu, kubuntu, kurumin, debian, mandriva, OpenSUSE and fedora)
Rather than just trying the Live CD, I installed each distro on my machine, because i think the real deal is when you want to install all the applications you need in your machine...
I wish Linux would do a "mojave" experiment campaign as well ... making users use it, saying it was the new OS from Microsoft and after telling them it was Linux :) confident that it would be the same result as Vista :)
Have describe my own experience of adopting linux under http://opensource-br.blogspot.com/2008/08/gnulinux.html
It is a shame that you did not manage to test OpenSUSE, in my humble opinion the best distro (i have tested ubuntu, kubuntu, kurumin, debian, mandriva, OpenSUSE and fedora)
Rather than just trying the Live CD, I installed each distro on my machine, because i think the real deal is when you want to install all the applications you need in your machine...
I wish Linux would do a "mojave" experiment campaign as well ... making users use it, saying it was the new OS from Microsoft and after telling them it was Linux :) confident that it would be the same result as Vista :)
