Just out of curiosity, who is actually using Linux on their personal workstations? I'm currently running RedHat 6.2 (just switched from SuSE) on my machine without a Windows partition. :)

If you are using it, which desktop do you use? Or are you a real guru and don't even run X Windows? :)

I use RH6.1 with Helix Gnome. I don't have a windows partition. Hell, windows hasn't been on a machine of mine for over 14 months.

Hmmm.. Linux refuses to install on my box :( :(

Interesting. I think linux isn't getting as much publication as it should. Installing and getting SuSE up and running I personally think is easier to do than Windows. With yast, xconfig, etc, I think sooner or later it will appeal to normal users.

I've been using Linux for a little less than a year now on my home PC. It's really nice. I run KDE, and I leave it on all day and night connected to a DSL line. I've had uptimes as long as 25 days without any trouble. And the only reason I took it down was to change the kernel!

Linux is much more stable than Windows. As an experiment, I once tried to run a server on 98. I setup the personal web server (a pain in the butt!), FTP, and e-mail. It was tough, and took me about a week, and it didn't work to well ... it wasn't really stable. Yet with Linux, when I setup a test server on my machine I got it up and running in less than a day! I just think more people should give it a shot. It's too unfair to just say "Linux is for computer experts. I'll avoid it."

kunal,

What errors are you getting and what distro did you try to install? I could help you install it ...

I tried installing Red Hat 6.0, 6.1, 6.2. None of them installed. All gave me unable to mount errors, but the partioning completed properly. I want to Dual boot with my windows machine :)

I installed Suse on my other Hard Disk, but it refuses to recognize my Intelli Mouse :( So I dun feel like using Suse :)


Any ideas?

kunal,

Is your Intelli mouse PS2 or USB?

kunal,

Getting intellimouses to work aren't that easy. But, it is possible. If you are interested in trying again, I may be able to point you to a few sites which have help files on how to get them to work with programs like Netscape and staroffice.

I have a logitech wireless mouse with the intelli thing. I don't use it. :)

One great thing about Linux that I'd like to add is how the copy/paste works. I'm 90% sure this isn't possible in windows. When you select text, it automatically becomes the clipboard, and you just have to click with the middle button to paste it! It's so much easier than selecting the text, going up to edit, then copy, then back up to edit and hitting paste.

JTY --> The Intelli mouse is USB.

Vincent --> I know how linux works :) I use it at work :) But I like windows ctrl-C to copy and ctrl-v to paste ;)

Kunal, well there's your problem, Linux doesn't support USB very well, and what it does support are a pain in the butt to get working.

Vincent, I have a Logitech Wireless and I use it under Linux, with the scroll wheel.

Not fair!! :( :( :( :(

I use Red Hat Linux 6.2 on my old computer. Right now I use GNOME for that. Personally I prefer my laptop with win2k, just because the screen is so much better. Of course that 6 year old monitor does not help me too much in good quality :)

Tcoy~

Originally posted by Vincent Paglione
I have a logitech wireless mouse with the intelli thing. I don't use it. :)

Can I have it? :)

Has anyone tried RedHat 7.0? What is the diff. between it and 6.2?

From what I hear with RH 7 it is easy to get video and sound periphials working. It also have a new kernal in it. I get it in a few days and will put it on some test servers and workstations to see if there is any noticable difference.

Chicken,

LOL. I meant I don't use the intelli part. Although my mouse has a special button to activate the VPSF forces. :)

Originally posted by Vincent Paglione
I have a logitech wireless mouse with the intelli thing.

"Logitech" I know. "Wireless" I know too. But what exactly is this "intelli" thingy? :)

Learner

I believe he is referring to the scroll wheel.

Vincent, you can use the scroll if you install imwheel

Learner,

Yes, I am referring to the scroll "thingy" acting as the middle button where in windows it lets you scroll up and down, zoom, etc, etc.

JTY,

Thanks for the suggestion. I came across that program and I think I am going to install it along with getting my ttf fonts to work! :)

Although I just got my cd-roms burning. I spent quite a while trying to get xcdroast and gcombust to work and finally I just decided to do it from the commandline, and it worked perfectly. So there's additional proof that SCSI and EIDE cd-rom writers work in Linux. :)

LINUX - WOOHOO, now were talking.

I have two PC's and a laptop at home. My Linux box is:

P200
96 MEGS EDO RAM
3.4 GB Fujitsu HD
S3 Virge 2 MB PCI Video
17" Optiquest Q71

I personally never use the GUI in linux, but I have it installed because my fiance loves it. She uses Helix GNOME (got the Helix cd at the Ottawa Linux Symposium this summer)

My Linux box was up for as long as 120 days once, but since I don't have a UPS, power outages stop me from getting to that elusive 1 year mark.

I have it set up as my smtp server, pop server, ftp server, webserver (for personal stuff), firewall, and it also masquerades connection for my other computers. Since I have a cable modem with only one ip (dynamic, but since I never turn off my linux box it hasn't changed in 4 months :)).

It is very stable. Even more so if you never use the GUI.

No one believes me when I say that my internet connection is approximately 20-30% faster routed through my Linux box then if I have my cable modem connected directly to my Win2k workstation. Until they see it for themselves of course.

Ok, enough, I could go on forever..blah...blah....blah.


[Edited by tabernack on 10-02-2000 at 11:52 PM]

Oh yeah, I almost forgot. I'm running Linux Mandrake 7.1. You can check it out at:

http://linux-mandrake.com

Ahh, so you want to bust out the specs, eh. ;)

p2 300@450
128MB RAM
Matrox G200 AGP
6.4gb Quantum HD
14" Princeton EO400

Ohh, d'you wanna goa to warr ! hehe

Here is my win2k pc:

Celeron 566 @ 850
Abit BE6-II
Abit Slotket!!!
128 MB PC-100
2 x 13.6 GB Fujitsu 7200 rpm ata66
Yama[H]a 8x4x24 IDE burner
50x Asus CD-ROM
Voodoo3 2000 @ 185mhz + Celeron [H]eatsink and fan glued on with Metal Epoxy.
Golden Orb [H]SF
3 x Sunon 80mm 36 CFM case fans
Windows 2000 Pro
Optiquest Q71

S[H]e's loud, but s[H]e's fast! :)

[Edited by tabernack on 10-03-2000 at 01:05 AM]

I think you been visiting [H]ardOCP too much.... ;)

Tho, I bet it does Q3A nice.

BTW: Would have went with a 566@850 but my board(ASUS p2b-f) isn't the most overclocker friendly.

You wanna go to war, yea!! Cyber Combat! ;)

PIII 600
256MB SD RAM
20.5 gb Seagate 7200rpm Harddisk
3.2 gb Seagate 7200rpmHarddisk
View Sonic 17inch Flat screen Monitor
ASUS V6600 32mb Video Card
Creative Live !MP3 Sound Card
Cambridge sound words sub woofer system
Microst intelli-mouse
HP 8x cd writer
Creative 24x cd rom


Anything else? :)

I'm in on the war. :)

600 Mhz AMD
128 MB of RAM
20GB Hard Drive
608kbps Connection
15 inch Samsung Flat Panel Monitor
Misc. Speakers
Wireless Keyboard
Wireless Mouse
50x CD-ROM
12x8x32 CD-RW

:)

Oh yeah, I forgot to add

Soundblaster Live! sound card
Logitech TrackMan Marble FX
Palm V (Had to add it in since it really is part of my computer)

Hehe, I love computers!

I got a Palm Vx tooo :) with the keyboard offcourse ;)

I think we're computer gadget junkies. I know I am!

Yups, to some extent I am too :) I think :stickout

Originally posted by Vincent Paglione
Linux is much more stable than Windows. As an experiment, I once tried to run a server on 98. I setup the personal web server (a pain in the butt!), FTP, and e-mail. It was tough, and took me about a week, and it didn't work to well ... it wasn't really stable.

Windows 98 is a desktop, not a webhosting environment. Try your same test with Windows 2000 (server or advanced server edition) and IIS. You'll find it a lot more stable and scaleable and will match Linux/Unix systems of the same (decent) spec for performance.

You're partly right, inwks.

Windows 2000 is more stable than Windows 98. However, although closer, it does not match Linux/Unix systems for stability, not on a server or anywhere else.

Furthermore... the 'desktop' version of linux never crash either.

Did you know Apple will most likely drop MacOS and use a modified distribution of *BSD in the future? (that does tells a lot about the n*x family)

As Duster said, I was speaking more of Windows in general, comparing the stability of Windows versus Linux.

BTW, did you know Microsoft uses Solaris and FreeBSD for hotmail.com and bcentral.com? :)

Solaris is also used for several systems at MSN.

Sounds like a challenge to me. I guarantee that I can get a Win2000 solution running as stable and as productive, if not more productive, than a linux/unix solution. The problem with the windows family is that people expect it to work out of the box. Just like Linux, it doesn't, you have to tune it to your needs, it just arrives in a standard state of tune (comparable to a track prepared vehicle vs its road counterpart).

Check

http://www.netcraft.com/whats/?host=www.hotmail.com
http://www.netcraft.com/whats/?host=www.bcentral.com

to see what a host is running. You'll find that they are running IIS5 on Windows 2000. True, they used to be Unix based, but then again they did buy the sites off other parties.

Well some accounts run on Windows 2000, and some on FreeBSD. They are yet in the proccess of moving the accounts to Windows 2000. Which explains why some of them are really slow and some lightening fast! :)

Yes, the slow ones are currently running on the old, antiquated, UNIX based system.

Originally posted by inwks
Yes, the slow ones are currently running on the old, antiquated, UNIX based system.


I am sorry to say, but you missed the head of the nail :) The slow ones are on Windows 2000 :)

And you can prove this slur? Documented evidence? Otherwise, complete hear say.....

I'll tell you what inwks,

take a p200 with 64 megs of ram and I will personally bet you $100 that the Win2k Advanced Server will take a big %@*! and crash every 30 minutes. Yeah, advanced server is great if you can afford the hardware. You can run a simple mail server on a P100 that serves a few hundred clients using Linux or *BSD. That's the beauty of Linux, you don't need the ridiculous minimum requirements that win2k and IIS require.

I don't doubt that Win2k Advanced server is extremely reliable and fast. I use Win2k Pro at home for one of my workstations and I think it's amazing. But, I don't think you can even come close to the flexibility and reliability that Linux or *BSD offer if you take into consideration every situation and not some Lab Controlled Mega Computer Shootout.

I have a smtp, pop, ftp, and web server running on a P200 at home. It's also masqerading connections for my other 2 pc's, therefore acting as a router. Oh, yeah, I forgot, it's also my firewall which I use to forward specific ports to certain PC's. My fiance also uses it as her workstation, so I am running Gnome (one of the GUI's for Linux) on this machine as well.

Did I mention it was only a P200? Linux's flexibility is it's main advantage, and when you factor in it's reliability, well you'd be nuts to slam it. Unless of course you don't understand it, then that's a whole different story.

Oh, yeah, it's free too!!!

[Edited by tabernack on 10-04-2000 at 12:19 PM]

At last, reasoned arguement. Don't get me wrong, I'm not slamming Linux, your statements are by and large correct. I too run Linux, on a ****** old laptop that is so out of date that Windows 2000 won't even install (P75/40Mb). Why? Because its handy to test code against, instead of dumping everything on one desktop.

However, the biggotry that goes on between the Linux/Unix/MS camps is beyond religion. Every thing has its place. Unix and Windows 2000 are production level systems (see the TPC charts for proof http://www.tpc.org/new_result/ttperf.idc and http://www.tpc.org/new_result/ttpp.idc - bear in mind this is an independant council), i.e. mega bucks hardware handling millions of transactions. If someone wanted to build such a system, and didn't know which to go for, I would always recommend Windows 2000 as I know what you need to do it to get it right. However, if someone was dead set on using UNIX, I wouldn't try to talk them out of it, as it too is capable of handling the load.

Linux, on the other hand, is largely a UNIX clone that is developed and made better by peer pressure. I believe in the long run this is a good thing (Darwins theory and all that), but due to its nature I wouldn't trust it (as an OS) without decent testing, for both scalability and redundancy, on decent spec hardware for any full scale production system.

If you go to http://www.netcraft.com, it shows that Unix/Linux have the fast majority of the market share. But bear in mind that the fast majority of sites are not running heavy loads. I would hazard a guess that of the top 1000 sites (in terms of traffic), Unix leads the way (by a small margin), Windows 2000 is catching up and Linux isn't used (or a slim %age). Again, a matter of everything has its place. However, in the SME market, where traffic is not that great, I dare say that Linux is the king - basically for the fact that its free, and is very flexible.

For desktops, its a matter of choice. My choice is MS all the way, but thats my hangup. But then again, desktops are a completely different ballgame......

BTW, did you know that the minimum spec for Windows 2000 Server (Standard and Advanced) is 128Mb, 256Mb recommended. No wonder it doesn't work on 64Mb. If I remember correctly, it will refuse to install......

[Edited by inwks on 10-04-2000 at 12:45 PM]

Exactly inwks. That was my point. Every OS has it's advantages/disadvantages. It all depends on what you want to do.

Yeah, I knew the minimum specs for Win2k Server, that's why I bet you the $100... hehe :) I didn't know it wouldn't install though, haven't tried it.

The great thing about Linux is that is brings *nix to the masses, where previously that was impossible. I do think that your underestimating it's ability to perform in a high traffic environment, but if you have the cash, and there's millions of dollars on the line, then I want someone to be accountable for their software.

The more choice, the better, in my opinion.

[Edited by tabernack on 10-04-2000 at 01:02 PM]

I agree with you guys, but the only reason I work in windows is coz of its GUI. Linux is getting to it, but is not quiet there are yet. Also, the linux install is tuff! Very tuff :( It took me 8 formats, and yet I couldnt install it. On the 9th try, I finally did it, and then it dint support my mouse, so I had to reformat and install windows on my box. :( :(


Though I like the stability and opensource of linux, I like the GUI of and support for Windows. But then again, beggers cant be choosers :)

kunal, try Corel Linux... its ideal for a home user... almost as easy tos et up as windows.

I am sorry here, but we do have some servers hosted in our facilities that are p3 dual 700 mhz, igb of RAM, RAID of 40 GB SCSI, etc, etc.

They are all under linux and run, you can guess, a tremendously amount of process / traffic / etc. If you want to do the same as we are doing on a win2k box, you will need a dual 1.3 GHZ, which is... either $15,000 or not even buyable right now.

Linux is far better than unix now... sure it is open source and one could think it is not stable. False! It ws below the *BSD families, for a while, but while BSD grow slow, linux grow fast and does a better job at anything than unix was doing before.

Yah, I do have windows here, simply because all my design tools are all done to work under windows. Yes, I am a power user and yes my windows crash AT LEAST once a day. These dual 700 mhz with an incredible load are up for ...
35 days, 14h37
:)
See the difference? Try to have a win2k system run for that long under that pressure with the same lenght required to tweak the system.

One good thing I saw on a win2k system... was someone who disabled the graphical GUI. That reduced the CPU and RAM usage by 50% already and brought it near the power of a unix or linux system.

Else... bah windows is nice, it looks cute... but its not a server.

Originally posted by Félix C.Courtemanche
One good thing I saw on a win2k system... was someone who disabled the graphical GUI. That reduced the CPU and RAM usage by 50% already and brought it near the power of a unix or linux system.


Whaaaaaaaaaaat?????


I need to multi boot, coz my mom is new to the computer, and she tends to sneak in, and work on mine, when I aint around. :( So what would you advice? Format the full Harddisk, Install Linux and then windows or what??

Félix,

I've conducted tests (for a proof of concept) on the last beta of Win2K advanced server on some very nice kit lent to us from Compaq (dual PIII Xeons, 1Gb RAM, load balanced across 3 servers) running at approx. 80-90% use (courtesy of RadView) for about 30 days before I switched them off (had to return the servers, so unfortunately didn't find out how long for). I think thats pretty good performance. NT on the other hand was a different story.....

I heard the word XEON here... you just doubled the price :)

For the same hardware, linux does better.

Why put a fiesta engine in the chassis of a ferrari? Xeons don't double the price, sure they add to it, but not quite double. Xeons are optimised for the server environment, like the new PIII steppers (can't remember their real name) are optimised for laptops. Horses for courses....

Kunal,

I would personally recommend buying a second hard drive to install Linux on if you're going to dual boot. Hard Drives are so cheap right now and it's the best way to go.

I have installed Linux (RedHat and Mandrake) several times, and one time it wiped out my FAT (File Allocation Table) and I lost my windows partition.

For an easy install I would recommend Linux Mandrake 7.1 +. It's optimized (or compiled) for Pentium class processors and performs better (not much, but better) than RedHat and it's %99 RedHat compatible. If you were logged into a Mandrake system you'd swear it was RedHat. But the Mandrake install is very, very, very easy. It has a begginner feature where it will automatically make your partitions for you and autoconfigure almost everything.

Or, go find yourself an old computer for $100 bucks and use that to install Linux on.

Originally posted by inwks
Why put a fiesta engine in the chassis of a ferrari? Xeons don't double the price, sure they add to it, but not quite double. Xeons are optimised for the server environment, like the new PIII steppers (can't remember their real name) are optimised for laptops. Horses for courses....

Well, we just quoted the price of a PIII dual XEON 800 MHZ and it was not double but a lot more expensive than the equivalent PIII dual 800 MHZ

Of course the XEON does better, but my point here was not about the computer itself... but about the fact that on the same hardware configuration, Linux does better than Unix, which does better than win2k, which does better than win NT

The usage of linux's system is so low that on our servers, before they were installed, on the dual CPU, the load was:
0.02% and 0.00% (dual 700 mhz) with all the needed services opened but not serving content.

Start win2k and you aready have a 20% used on both.

Well something must be wrong with your config, I'm more than happy to run perfmon and post the results.

go ahead, I'm curious.
post your system specs and usage when the server has every neede service up but idle.

Pleasure, but you'll have to wait until I get to work tomorrow (I'm a consultant, don't run a hosting company)

one issue we didnt adressed... SECURITY.
Get your watch, and time the time it takes to MS to fix a bug and time the Linux gurus.

here is an example:
"A hacker found exploits in NASDAQ server, could have changed market info and admin passwds. Server: IIS. Hacker did ethical job of providing info to fix. Also, mentions BugTraq and how MS didn't fix the hole when it was posted July 17. "

July 17th and it is still not fixed??

now, see a bug one day on ANY distribution of linux and the day after you have a solution.

At my highschool we received sponsorship from MS. The network consists of well over 100 workstations. The entire network is firewalled/masqed/and proxied. By a single Linux box. Oh yeah and not too mention it also acts as a reverse cacheing proxy/firewall for our win2k servers.

Felix brought up another excellent point, and that's the ability of the Linux community to reponded quickly to bugs, security issues, etc...

You will never wait longer than 2 days for a fix. This is something that no Unix flavour or MS OS can offer.

Originally posted by tabernack
Kunal,

I would personally recommend buying a second hard drive to install Linux on if you're going to dual boot. Hard Drives are so cheap right now and it's the best way to go.


Wouldnt this make me remove one and insert the other one whenever I wanna switch between the OS? Or can I just go into the BIOS settings and not detect the other one? Also, wouldnt linux detect the system to be a raid by doing something like this???

No. Most cases have room for at least 2 hard drives. You would simply choose which one to boot from. There would likely be no need to continually have to tinker with your BIOS settings.

RAID is much more than multiple disks, so your answer to that question is no also.

Kunal,

you can have several hard drives with several different os's on one pc. But you can only have one Master Drive which has the boot loader (in the master boot record).

They key here is to have a boot loader (like Linux's boot loader LILO) that allows you to specify multiple OS's and where they are located.

So what happens is when I install Linux (on a dual boot machine) I also install LILO in the master boot record (this overwrites the NT Loader or the Win9x loader). The linux installation allows you to specify which other OS's you have and where they are located. This information is stored in a config file called lilo.conf on your Linux partition.

So when you turn on your computer, Lilo is started and you get to choose which OS you want to run.

The great thing about Lilo (like anything in Linux) is that it's completely under YOUR control.

At one point when I only had 1 PC, I had Win NT, Win98, and Linux on 2 hard drives (1 drive for the windows OS's) and 1 for Linux. I simply selected the OS I wanted to boot with using Lilo.

Very simple, once you've used it a couple of times.

Linux Mandrake uses a different bootloader than Lilo, but it's essentially the same.

Ah. Now I get it. Thanx

No Problem,

I ordered my Linux CD's from http://www.cheapbytes.com for only about $3/cd

The last order I got was the *BSD package which came with OpenBSD 2.6, NetBSD 1.4.2, and FreeBSD 4.0. It came to $15 plus shipping of $5.

Some people will tell you to just download it. I've tried several times and every time my download was corrupt. Not mention the fact that you need a burner and a blank CD. It's just easier to order them since they're so inexpensive.

Good luck!

Well, I am in India. :( I dun think they would ship here. Anyways, I can get the same for 200Rs. including shipping :)

Originally posted by tabernack

Some people will tell you to just download it. I've tried several times and every time my download was corrupt. Not mention the fact that you need a burner and a blank CD. It's just easier to order them since they're so inexpensive.

I burned Slackware 7, RH 6.2 and RH 6 on different occasions without any problems.

It downloaded nice and fast, took approximately 1 hour from the click to download to the CD burned.

No problems at all... you may want to check your ISO program maybe?

Felix,

That assumes you have decent bandwidth and/or you want to use up your customer's bandwidth to download. If you're on anything less than xDSL, its cheaper to buy the media (Amazon have RH7 for about 100GBP for professional server, 30GBP for bog standard), and you get the manuals as well!

PS. Results for idle is:

"(PDH-CSV 4.0)","\\CADWELL\Processor(_Total)\% Processor Time"
"10/09/2000 11:30:38.150","8.999914475850744"
"10/09/2000 11:30:39.151","6.9999999999999947"
"10/09/2000 11:30:40.153","4.0000000000000036"
"10/09/2000 11:30:41.154","4.000000000000002"
"10/09/2000 11:30:42.156","0"
"10/09/2000 11:30:43.157","0"
"10/09/2000 11:30:44.158","2.0000000000000018"
"10/09/2000 11:30:45.160","1.0000000000000009"
"10/09/2000 11:30:46.161","2"
"10/09/2000 11:30:47.163","0"
"10/09/2000 11:30:48.164","0"
"10/09/2000 11:30:49.166","5.000000000000002"
"10/09/2000 11:30:50.167","0"
"10/09/2000 11:30:51.168","1.0000000000000009"
"10/09/2000 11:30:52.170","0"
"10/09/2000 11:30:53.171","1"
"10/09/2000 11:30:54.173","6.0000000000000053"

However, doesn't really say much. On the other hand, under load..... any one fancy devising a standard test? i.e. Build scripts for both ASP and PHP. Load balance each, on identical hardware, and see which is fastest under light, moderate and heavy loads?