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Best Linux build for noobs?

Started by Davka, March 01, 2013, 05:08:34 PM

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_Xenu_

Quote from: "NitzWalsh"I would like to toss linux on a machine sooner or later, I'm not going to do that with this machine right now because I need it for school and if something goes wrong with a linux install I'd be pretty much screwed up the poop shooter.
Unless you're studying programming, it won't make much of a difference unless you're dependent on MS Office. I went through college using Linux and never had a problem except for my C++ class, which taught about the Windows API. Overall though, it will actually make things easier if you're studying computer science or something similar.
Click this link once a day to feed shelter animals. Its free.

http://www.theanimalrescuesite.com/clickToGive/ars/home

Johan

Quote from: "_Xenu_"
Quote from: "NitzWalsh"I would like to toss linux on a machine sooner or later, I'm not going to do that with this machine right now because I need it for school and if something goes wrong with a linux install I'd be pretty much screwed up the poop shooter.
Unless you're studying programming, it won't make much of a difference unless you're dependent on MS Office. I went through college using Linux and never had a problem except for my C++ class, which taught about the Windows API. Overall though, it will actually make things easier if you're studying computer science or something similar.
I think you're missing the point of Xenu was trying to say. Its not so much a concern for compatibility and productivity. Its a concern for what happens when shit breaks.

Windows and Mac are pretty tried and true and well known. If something breaks and machine will no longer boot or connect to the network, most people will either be able to fix it themselves or will know someone who is knowledgable enough to fix it if its running Windows or Mac. I myself am not knowledgable enough to fix my Linux install when it stops booting or connecting to the net on my own and I am the only one in my particular circle of friends who even knows what Linux is. So when my Linux stops working, I have to lookup the symptom or error code on google in order to figure out how to get it working again. Its hard to search google for how to fix a machine that won't connect to the net when your only machine won't connect to the net.

I never recommend Linux to people who only have one computer. If you're not a Linux expert, you should only try it if you can run it on a second non mission critical machine. For the uninitiated, doing otherwise would be suicide.
Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false and by the rulers as useful

moog

If you want to play around and try various versions without impacting on anything use VirtualBox.
http://www.virtualbox.org/

GalacticBusDriver

Quote from: "_Xenu_"
Quote from: "GalacticBusDriver"Ok, the file structure of Linux is going to take some serious getting used to. the DOS/Windows C: is certainly simpler.
Actually, the Windows way of dealing with that is horribly obsolete. It worked fine when you had a floppy drive, a hard drive, and maybe a cd-rom, but these days it barely works at all because the drive letters constantly change when you insert new media. Linux will automount USB sticks or whatever to your desktop, so you don't really need to worry about that sort of thing.
?? Seriously? I've got a usb flash reader that is persistantly A: on my 7 machine at work and U: on my (formerly and apparently soo to be again) XP system here at the house. CD/DVD/Blu-rays are always X: Y: and Z: respectively and never change. Don't know why yours are, but they sure don't have to.

Ok, so I'm really not loving Ubuntu much this morning. Dual monitor function is gone, drives still won't mount properly, unity won't do shit (running KDE right now). Seriously, I could probably track down the issues, but it seems likely that I'll spend as much time hacking at the OS as I do using it. As a secondary PC, maybe I'd keep it around but right now, probably not. Gonna give it the old college try, but it looks like M$ will be getting my business back. Linux just ain't ready for prime time.
"We should admire Prometheus, not Zues...Job, not Jehovah. Becoming a god, or godlike being, is selling out to the enemy. From the Greeks to the Norse to the Garden of Eden, gods are capricious assholes with impulse control problems. Joining their ranks would be a step down."

From "Radiant" by James Alan Gardner

_Xenu_

Good luck then. Try again in a few years.
Click this link once a day to feed shelter animals. Its free.

http://www.theanimalrescuesite.com/clickToGive/ars/home

Johan

Well you gave it a shot. That's more than most people would do. Sorry it didn't work out.
Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false and by the rulers as useful

GalacticBusDriver

Quote from: "Johan"Well you gave it a shot. That's more than most people would do. Sorry it didn't work out.
Yep, and I'm not giving up on it. I just don't know enough about Linux right now. Fortunately I do have another PC just begging for an OS install that I can drop it on as a learning environment. Then, after I've gotten better at trouble-shooting it, I can give it another go on the main PC.

One thing about the KDE desktop environment I absolutely loved was the ability to give each monitor the same background, different backgrounds or have them cycle through a slide show and each could be pointed at different directories. Doubt you ever see that in the Windows environment.

For now I'm stuck back in the world of Winblows, but I will not be here forever!
"We should admire Prometheus, not Zues...Job, not Jehovah. Becoming a god, or godlike being, is selling out to the enemy. From the Greeks to the Norse to the Garden of Eden, gods are capricious assholes with impulse control problems. Joining their ranks would be a step down."

From "Radiant" by James Alan Gardner

Johan

I was running ubuntu 10.???? on the shop computer. I had gotten it to the point where it did almost everything I needed it to do and was fairly reliable. But the clock was running out on support so I figured it was time to upgrade.

I downloaded 12.04 and installed it this morning. I think I made a huge mistake. It boots and connects to the net. I was able to install chrome on it. Then I tried to connect to the desktop in my office so I could grab some photos to use for the desktop wallpaper. It found the workgroup on the LAN. It saw my desktop and let me open the shared folders. I could see the photo I wanted and I could click on it and open it in a previewer. But when I tried to copy it, it said I didn't have permission and would not let me copy it no way no how. I did some googling to figure out how to allow file transfers over the LAN and found some references that told me to make some changes to a few line in one of the system files.

I found the system file, opened it, made the changes, then it would not let me save it. Same thing, you don't have permission. I looked up how to open the file so I would have permission to edit it, tried command I could find. Not one of them worked. Then I logged into my desktop remotely and emailed the photo to myself. I could open the email on the Linux machine and see the photo. But same problem. It absolutely would NOT allow me to save it to the local disk. No way no how.

So now I have a machine that boots and runs but will not allow me to transfer files nor will it allow me actual root access to edit any system files and make changes. And I can't find any references that can tell me how fix these problems.

I know the Linux heads get their panties in a bunch whenever someone says Ubuntu isn't ready for average users, it is absolutely true. I am a way above average user and I'm about to give up and put windows 7 on the machine. At least it will work and let me access my own damn files.
Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false and by the rulers as useful

GalacticBusDriver

Quote from: "Johan"I was running ubuntu 10.???? on the shop computer. I had gotten it to the point where it did almost everything I needed it to do and was fairly reliable. But the clock was running out on support so I figured it was time to upgrade.

I downloaded 12.04 and installed it this morning. I think I made a huge mistake. It boots and connects to the net. I was able to install chrome on it. Then I tried to connect to the desktop in my office so I could grab some photos to use for the desktop wallpaper. It found the workgroup on the LAN. It saw my desktop and let me open the shared folders. I could see the photo I wanted and I could click on it and open it in a previewer. But when I tried to copy it, it said I
didn't have permission and would not let me copy it no way no how. I did some googling to figure out how to allow file transfers over the LAN and found some references that told me to make some changes to a few line in one of the system files.

I found the system file, opened it, made the changes, then
it would not let me save it. Same thing, you don't have permission. I looked up how to open the file so I would have permission to edit it, tried command I could find. Not one of them worked. Then I logged into my desktop remotely and emailed the photo to myself. I could open the email on the Linux machine and see the photo. But same problem. It absolutely would NOT allow me to save it to the local disk. No way no how.

So now I have a machine that boots and runs but will not allow me to transfer files nor will it allow me actual root access to edit any system files and make changes. And I can't find any references that can tell me how fix these problems.

I know the Linux heads get their panties in a bunch whenever someone says Ubuntu isn't ready for average users, it is absolutely true. I am a way above average user and I'm about to give up and put windows 7 on the machine. At least it will work and let me access my own damn files.

So, it wasn't just me being a Linux newbie. Sounds like Ubuntu needs a little more work under the hood. Ironically, the only non-system drive I could write to was my one remaining NTFS volume and even that failed after a while.

Say what you want about Apple and Microsoft. I don't like 'em either, but their shit works and at the end of the day, that's what I need.

Now, if I can just talk our IS guy out of a Win7 install disc. *evil laugh*

Seriously, I like the Linux interface and I'm sure I could learn the files system but if I can't get the permissions to let me set the permissions so I can have permission to write my own data to my own drives then... :rolleyes: Frustrating, to say the least.
"We should admire Prometheus, not Zues...Job, not Jehovah. Becoming a god, or godlike being, is selling out to the enemy. From the Greeks to the Norse to the Garden of Eden, gods are capricious assholes with impulse control problems. Joining their ranks would be a step down."

From "Radiant" by James Alan Gardner

_Xenu_

Quote from: "Johan"I was running ubuntu 10.???? on the shop computer. I had gotten it to the point where it did almost everything I needed it to do and was fairly reliable. But the clock was running out on support so I figured it was time to upgrade.

I downloaded 12.04 and installed it this morning. I think I made a huge mistake. It boots and connects to the net. I was able to install chrome on it. Then I tried to connect to the desktop in my office so I could grab some photos to use for the desktop wallpaper. It found the workgroup on the LAN. It saw my desktop and let me open the shared folders. I could see the photo I wanted and I could click on it and open it in a previewer. But when I tried to copy it, it said I didn't have permission and would not let me copy it no way no how.
Did you try saving it as a different file on ext4? Or just copying the image to your clipboard?

Quote from: "Johan"I did some googling to figure out how to allow file transfers over the LAN and found some references that told me to make some changes to a few line in one of the system files.

I found the system file, opened it, made the changes, then it would not let me save it. Same thing, you don't have permission. I looked up how to open the file so I would have permission to edit it, tried command I could find. Not one of them worked. Then I logged into my desktop remotely and emailed the photo to myself. I could open the email on the Linux machine and see the photo. But same problem. It absolutely would NOT allow me to save it to the local disk. No way no how.
Did you try using sudo? You're not supposed to be able to alter system files without it. But there's really no reason you shouldn't be able to write to your home folder. No offense, but I think there's something you're not doing right here. Where exactly did you try to save the picture to?
Click this link once a day to feed shelter animals. Its free.

http://www.theanimalrescuesite.com/clickToGive/ars/home

Fluffhead

Best linux for noobs is Linux Mint based on ubuntu it has an large repository and it is super user friendly
http://www.linuxmint.com/


An Interesting site,that keeps track of most popular linux distros: http://distrowatch.com/

Some news about linux: http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/
http://www.linuxtoday.com/
[size=150]
?But I Sure Have Some Powerful Pills?
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Plu

QuoteDid you try using sudo? You're not supposed to be able to alter system files without it. But there's really no reason you shouldn't be able to write to your home folder. No offense, but I think there's something you're not doing right here. Where exactly did you try to save the picture to?

Of course he's doing something wrong. That's not the issue here, though. The issue is that he can't figure out what he's doing wrong, which means the program isn't user-friendly enough for him to use.

It's not just a problem with Linux, it also seems to be a problem with a lot of it's supporters :P Often, instead of saying "yeah, we could make this easier" they will just say "yeah, you'll have to memorize these 60 commands and do them on the command prompt. Oh, and memorize all the flags while you're at it"

(Not aimed at anyone here directly though; just something I observed with linux help forums and people using it)

Johan

Quote from: "_Xenu_"[Did you try saving it as a different file on ext4? Or just copying the image to your clipboard?
I did both. I first one, then other. Fail and fail. It would not let me move or copy the file because I didn't have permission. It seemed to allow me to copy the image to the clipboard but when I tried to paste, the clipboard was empty. Fail. Fail.

Quote from: "Johan"I did some googling to figure out how to allow file transfers over the LAN and found some references that told me to make some changes to a few line in one of the system files.

QuoteDid you try using sudo? You're not supposed to be able to alter system files without it. But there's really no reason you shouldn't be able to write to your home folder. No offense, but I think there's something you're not doing right here. Where exactly did you try to save the picture to?
I tried sudo. I tried gksudo. I also tried a couple of other commands I found that people claimed would fix this problem right up. I tried them in terminal and in the run command thingy in dashboard. Same result.  Fail. Fail. And fail.

Its great that Linux is so secure. Its unfortunate its so secure that its unusable. Win7 here I come.
Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false and by the rulers as useful

_Xenu_

Thats just strange man. Something wasn't right with your installation. Your ex4 got messed up somehow and needed to just be reinstalled. Believe me what you went through is not normal. Its not meant to be that hard. If have similar problems in Win 7, its time for a new hard drive.
Click this link once a day to feed shelter animals. Its free.

http://www.theanimalrescuesite.com/clickToGive/ars/home

Johan

Quote from: "_Xenu_"Thats just strange man. Something wasn't right with your installation. Your ex4 got messed up somehow and needed to just be reinstalled. Believe me what you went through is not normal. Its not meant to be that hard. If have similar problems in Win 7, its time for a new hard drive.
Well the install went without a single glitch as far as indications on the screen go. No lockups, no error messages, nothing out of the ordinary. But obviously something is wrong so you could very well be right. Its also possible that the hard drive is on the way out although it also had given no indications of that with the previous install. I only upgraded because I thought it was time.

I may throw spinright at the disk and see what it finds and then try a fresh install of 12.04 before I pull the trigger on win7.
Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false and by the rulers as useful