OS Questions

[iago]

I wonder what iago will say on the subject though.. *awaits his arrival*

Sorry, no strong opinion.

But, Ubuntu is the Windows of the Linux world. You learn very little, and it holds your hand all the way. If you're ever in a situation where you need to use a Linux machine, Ubuntu experience will help you very little. But it's easy. So it depends what you're going for.

If you get good and used to Slackware, and you're sat down behind any version of Linux or BSD or Solaris, you'll have a reasonable idea of how to use it. But, obviously, it takes more learning (and having to ask a lot of questions of 'pros').

Again, it's all about what you want

[Lead]

I wonder what iago will say on the subject though.. *awaits his arrival*

Sorry, no strong opinion.

But, Ubuntu is the Windows of the Linux world. You learn very little, and it holds your hand all the way. If you're ever in a situation where you need to use a Linux machine, Ubuntu experience will help you very little. But it's easy. So it depends what you're going for.

If you get good and used to Slackware, and you're sat down behind any version of Linux or BSD or Solaris, you'll have a reasonable idea of how to use it. But, obviously, it takes more learning (and having to ask a lot of questions of 'pros').

Again, it's all about what you want

Buy iago's IBM T42 and put Hannah Montana Linux on it. That way you get the best of Ubuntu, KDE, and of course, Hannah Montana in all her glorious action shots of singing and dancing.

[iago]

I wonder what iago will say on the subject though.. *awaits his arrival*

Sorry, no strong opinion.

But, Ubuntu is the Windows of the Linux world. You learn very little, and it holds your hand all the way. If you're ever in a situation where you need to use a Linux machine, Ubuntu experience will help you very little. But it's easy. So it depends what you're going for.

If you get good and used to Slackware, and you're sat down behind any version of Linux or BSD or Solaris, you'll have a reasonable idea of how to use it. But, obviously, it takes more learning (and having to ask a lot of questions of 'pros').

Again, it's all about what you want

Buy iago's IBM T42 and put Hannah Montana Linux on it. That way you get the best of Ubuntu, KDE, and of course, Hannah Montana in all her glorious action shots of singing and dancing.

It's not my laptop, it belongs to my work. Otherwise, I'd definitely sell it!

[Lead]

I wonder what iago will say on the subject though.. *awaits his arrival*

Sorry, no strong opinion.

But, Ubuntu is the Windows of the Linux world. You learn very little, and it holds your hand all the way. If you're ever in a situation where you need to use a Linux machine, Ubuntu experience will help you very little. But it's easy. So it depends what you're going for.

If you get good and used to Slackware, and you're sat down behind any version of Linux or BSD or Solaris, you'll have a reasonable idea of how to use it. But, obviously, it takes more learning (and having to ask a lot of questions of 'pros').

Again, it's all about what you want

Buy iago's IBM T42 and put Hannah Montana Linux on it. That way you get the best of Ubuntu, KDE, and of course, Hannah Montana in all her glorious action shots of singing and dancing.

It's not my laptop, it belongs to my work. Otherwise, I'd definitely sell it!

I feel your pain. I had a T42 to start but it just got to be such a pain in the ass with slowness and my drive failing I complained enough to my boss and he got me a T61. You should do the same!

[rabbit]

I'm on 9.10 and it definitely uses GRUB, and has since at least 8.

Deepthought has had the same install since 2004 (pretty sure it's version 10), and it's most definitely LILO.  Maybe grub is an option, but LILO was the default.

I was talking about Ubuntu, but whatever.

[iago]

I wonder what iago will say on the subject though.. *awaits his arrival*

Sorry, no strong opinion.

But, Ubuntu is the Windows of the Linux world. You learn very little, and it holds your hand all the way. If you're ever in a situation where you need to use a Linux machine, Ubuntu experience will help you very little. But it's easy. So it depends what you're going for.

If you get good and used to Slackware, and you're sat down behind any version of Linux or BSD or Solaris, you'll have a reasonable idea of how to use it. But, obviously, it takes more learning (and having to ask a lot of questions of 'pros').

Again, it's all about what you want

Buy iago's IBM T42 and put Hannah Montana Linux on it. That way you get the best of Ubuntu, KDE, and of course, Hannah Montana in all her glorious action shots of singing and dancing.

It's not my laptop, it belongs to my work. Otherwise, I'd definitely sell it!

I feel your pain. I had a T42 to start but it just got to be such a pain in the ass with slowness and my drive failing I complained enough to my boss and he got me a T61. You should do the same!

I've been complaining for two years, but this is government.. we just don't have the money.

We're on the list for a refresh, but we just have to wait.

[deadly7]

Sorry, no strong opinion.

But, Ubuntu is the Windows of the Linux world. You learn very little, and it holds your hand all the way. If you're ever in a situation where you need to use a Linux machine, Ubuntu experience will help you very little. But it's easy. So it depends what you're going for.

If you get good and used to Slackware, and you're sat down behind any version of Linux or BSD or Solaris, you'll have a reasonable idea of how to use it. But, obviously, it takes more learning (and having to ask a lot of questions of 'pros').

Again, it's all about what you want

That's kind of why I was resorting to Slackware. When I broke things I had to learn how to fix them, which I still remember how to fix the few things I changed. When I use Ubuntu at work I very rarely edit any conf files and instead just use the GUI interface. It's nice at times, until a couple things have broken and I have no idea how to fix it. :\

An issue I'm worried about with for *nix is driver support. I have no idea if there are drivers for my Intel onboard graphics card or not, and don't know if it's something I should be particularly worried about either.

[iago]

I'd be far more worried about Windows XP's driver support.

In the last couple years, I haven't had a single issue with common hardware on Linux (non-common hardware = thumb scanners, webcams, that kind of thing), whereas I've had tons of issues getting Windows XP/2003 to recognize semi-modern hardware.

Intel hardware, including graphics cards and wireless cards, are well supported on Linux. Modern slackware (and ubuntu) comes with drivers for a number of wireless cards, including Intel, if that's something you're worried about.

If you need to set up funky laptopy things (like wifi or cpu scaling) on Slackware, let me know.. I've been through that quite a few times, and I can give you tips.

[Krazed]

It's all in how the end user actually uses the OS, iago. Slackware and Ubuntu use the same linux kernels, and have the same CLI that can be used. Ubuntu offers a Linux distribution that's easy to use, easy to setup, and user friendly. Slackware offers a distribution that takes a lot of work to get many of the basic 'laptopy' things working.

My girlfriend [average (below??) user] has no problem starting my Ubuntu laptop, entering the passwords, and getting to the desktop. From there my laptop auto-connects to my wireless and she can browse away. On the other hand, if I want to use that same setup to do many of the things that Ubuntu *hides*, I can. Such as compiling from source, editing configurations, setting up apache, web, basically anything a Slackware user can do.

It's all in how you plan on using your setup. Ubuntu has a great community (#ubuntu,#ubuntu-offtopic @ freenode), forums, and plenty of people willing to help you.. even with those non-windows like tasks.

[iago]

It's all in how the end user actually uses the OS, iago. Slackware and Ubuntu use the same linux kernels, and have the same CLI that can be used. Ubuntu offers a Linux distribution that's easy to use, easy to setup, and user friendly. Slackware offers a distribution that takes a lot of work to get many of the basic 'laptopy' things working.

My girlfriend [average (below??) user] has no problem starting my Ubuntu laptop, entering the passwords, and getting to the desktop. From there my laptop auto-connects to my wireless and she can browse away. On the other hand, if I want to use that same setup to do many of the things that Ubuntu *hides*, I can. Such as compiling from source, editing configurations, setting up apache, web, basically anything a Slackware user can do.

It's all in how you plan on using your setup. Ubuntu has a great community (#ubuntu,#ubuntu-offtopic @ freenode), forums, and plenty of people willing to help you.. even with those non-windows like tasks.

I don't disagree with any of that. It doesn't change what I said.

[Krazed]

Man! I was all excited about my reply because I thought it was super awesome then I realized I kind of just made a statement not an argument. Shrug. 

[iago]

Well, you did call your girlfriend "below average".. I'm sure that'll lead to an argument

[warz]

Apparently there's some confusion as to what operating system we're talking about. 9.04 is an Ubuntu version and 11 is a Slackware version. Wtf

Ubuntu uses, and has used as long as I can recall, grub.

I just installed Ubuntu last night, at a friends, and it gives the user the option of grub or lilo.

edit: I just realized your comment was on the first page. I thought it was the last comment. Sorry if this has been repeated.

[Ergot]

Arch Linux. kthxbye.