albertlee Posted June 21, 2004 Posted June 21, 2004 I have currently tried Linspire and Knoppix....... And find them both tend slower performance and worse stability than Windows Xp........ Knoppix is a Live CD version of Linux... And Linspire is now as stable as Xp.... Any way, what's the point of Linux over Xp? ALbert
admiral_ju00 Posted June 21, 2004 Posted June 21, 2004 I'm assuming you mean for a PC platform, as opposed to a mac. The two that I use and love myself are: SuSE and Slackware. Other great flavor is(, in my opition anyway) Debian. Go here and pick a distro. http://linuxiso.org/ However, if you got an extra $100 bucks lying around, get FreeBSD. That is Unix, a very cheap, but excellent. Any way, what's the point of Linux over Xp? 1)Because it does not crash, or rather, it can crash, in most cases it'll be a user error, or user assist, but you can recover it very very easily. 2)Because it's open source, and as it seems you have an interest in software development, that is a definite plus. 3)It's Fast About the only thing I can't do in Linux/Unix is play games, at least not what I want to. The current selection of games for the _nix platform is very small. So no C&C4 or Battlefield 1942, for me in linux. Also, need to mention this: 'till just last year, I ran an FTP server on my, I kid you not, P1, 133MHz / 32MB ram Slackware system. This is the same computer that was dying back in 96 under Windows 95, but ran perfectly under linux from 98 - 2003 as a server and a gateway.
albertlee Posted June 21, 2004 Author Posted June 21, 2004 To admiral, thx for your respond.... I find it helpful but I dont think all Linux distros are fast, and stable. Esp the live-CD ones. On the other hand, I find Linspire is unstable too, but it does work like Windows, maybe that's the problem? Any way, Why I have to buy freeBSD for $100? in linuxiso, it is free How about Mandrake? I find very less information about it than Slackware and SuSe. Albert
admiral_ju00 Posted June 21, 2004 Posted June 21, 2004 You're right in the way that not ALL Linux distros are fast. Some are pure crap, some are in the beta stage, some have pretty unstable and or crappy kernel. For example, Fedora. That is a brand new kid on the block(it is derived from Red Hat) and the kernel is not very good yet. They promise with their next kernel version, these bugs will be fixed. Why do you want to buy FreeBSD? Because it's Unix, not Linux. Unix has been around for a long time and is very powerful and very good, especially for app development and network(ing) applications. Mandrake is also derived from Red Hat and I despise Red Hat. It was good to start out with(back in 95), but now I hate it with a passion. Mostly since their version 5, that filthyfied me and I will never again touch it, or it's close uhm, siblings.
Sayonara Posted June 21, 2004 Posted June 21, 2004 While there are certainly bad distros, there is no "best" version of Linux. There are only distros that are more or less suitable for the applications you have in mind for them. There are web sites dedicated entirely to this sort of question, and they'd be a much more appropriate place to find out about this subject rather than taking the opinions of a handful of people.
albertlee Posted June 21, 2004 Author Posted June 21, 2004 To admiral, Why do I have to buy FreeBSD in order to have it? I can download the iso files from LinuxIso, or maybe it is just an evaluation version? secondly, I find no difference between Unix and Linux....both have kernel of Unix, to me, just like Windows Xp and NT, both have NT kernel.... any way, any help on the software compability between Unix and Linux? Guys, Thx for sharing ur expiriences... Albert
admiral_ju00 Posted June 21, 2004 Posted June 21, 2004 Well, Unix was always a commercial application/system, so if you want to use it, you Have to buy it. No downloadable ISO. No eval versions exist of it either. Back in the day, especially for a soft. developer, under Unix, you had to buy not only the Unix, but also the libraries, binaries, and other such fun stuff. I guess this is very similar to what Microsoft is doing now. If you want to use their Visual C++, buy that, but if you need the other goodness for it, buy MSDN subscription (which is quite expensive, but not as expensive as the stuff for Unix was/is. I believe that was on the order of 10's of K.). As far as the compatibility, that would depend on the system of Unix and computer that you have. Which is why FreeBSD is: 1) So cheap as compared to other versions of Unix 2) Can be run on any PC. Now, take Sun's Solaris, for example, you can make it work on a regular PC(the usual means for it to run is on a Sparc), but most likely you will loose the functionality of half of your hardware, IF you can get it to run at all. Installing Solaris(or any other Unix) on a PC is a Biatch, trust me. You have to have the drivers for your devices, if not, you Have to be able to write them yourself, etc. The list of supported devices under Solaris is extremely limited, because of the fact that it is a Proprietary software(OS) and it requires the use of Proprietary gear. As far as the software, if it is done in C, or C++ **Not Visual C++**, then there's a good chance it'll recompile & execute w/o a problem.
Tesseract Posted June 21, 2004 Posted June 21, 2004 I have a 4 cd case of slackware from 96', and Im going to install it on my other computer that i want to format, just to see how it is, but Ill still have a windows partition on it.Anyway whats a good Linux distro for internet use and downloading and such? I used to be a Micrsoft fan, but they are really starting to p*ss me off, and im not to keen on Mac either.I need something fast, that has support for AOL internet.
Cohen Posted June 21, 2004 Posted June 21, 2004 I have a 4 cd case of slackware from 96', and Im going to install it on my other computer that i want to format, just to see how it is '96?! I don't think you'll get a very good impression by using a copy that's almost 8 years old. Why don't you just download the latest Slackware?
Dave Posted June 21, 2004 Posted June 21, 2004 I notice nobody's mentioned Gentoo on here. imo it's the best distro out there for those who want the best optimization/performance of their system.
Tesseract Posted June 21, 2004 Posted June 21, 2004 Hmm, that looks promisisng can anyone get me a download link, this computer im using is slow as hell. the thing freezes
Dave Posted June 21, 2004 Posted June 21, 2004 Gentoo comes in various stages, stage1 being "compile everything from scratch", stage2 being "compile the system stuff with compilers and glibc already built" and stage3 is a pre-built system. You need to read the documentation and stuff first, the install is a bit of a hog.
albertlee Posted June 21, 2004 Author Posted June 21, 2004 It seems no one answering my question Any way, How is Linux kernel different than Unix kernel on the stabibility and performance? Albert
Dave Posted June 21, 2004 Posted June 21, 2004 The Linux kernel was written by Linus Torvalds (sp) and is GNU. The UNIX kernel is a commercially written bit of code (as far as I'm aware). If you're talking about FreeBSD, the kernel was written by Berkeley but is open source. Basically it's all licensing issues.
albertlee Posted June 21, 2004 Author Posted June 21, 2004 So,.... Linux kernel does not relate to Unix kernel at all? Albert
Dave Posted June 21, 2004 Posted June 21, 2004 Perhaps I should've mentioned that this isn't for the linux n00b
Dave Posted June 21, 2004 Posted June 21, 2004 It'll take a while, you really need to understand some key stuff in Linux to be able to install gentoo.
albertlee Posted June 22, 2004 Author Posted June 22, 2004 Oh..........So the stabibility of Linux is because it is open-source..thx Dave Again, Can Linux softwares run on Unix? Albert
albertlee Posted June 22, 2004 Author Posted June 22, 2004 When I am trying to download a Linux, it has 2 version.. i586 and i386....what are they? albert
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