Who uses Linux?

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I am currently in a dual boot setup with Ubuntu and XP Media Center. I am a n00b with Linux, so I would apprecaye it if I can get a few pointers.

I use ubuntu linux, but have only been using it for a couple of weeks lol . I love it though.

A great place to start (I have found) is http://www.linuxforums.org/forum/. A great place in linux forums to start is http://www.linuxforums.org/forum/linux- ... first.html.

I've used 'nix for a while. My best advice is to learn how to use the command line.

In my household we're all using dual boot Linux/Windows systems, and have been for over a decade. That may finally change, though, as it's hard to find any reason to boot XP anymore.

Can't help with Ubuntu-specific questions, but would be happy to give whatever advice I can on general Linux issues.

i want to move over to linux but i don't have the boot disk for windows so if i mess up windows in the process of installing linux, i'm screwed......so i'm taking my time with research and studying the process of switching over.

get a spare harddrive.... 10gb plenty., do your testing on that...otherwise you may find to regret it.

option 2 --bootable cd,,it's slow, but great for learning.

good idea...except that i don't have any space for a 10gb drive...all my slots are currently taken up by my 4 hard drives......custom pc.

linux is the next step but i gotta keep windows because i have programs that i need to run that are windows-only....like audio editing programs.

I also use Debian Etch , as for eye candy... Beryl. But your graphics card must support 3D acceleration.

I wonder why anyone would run a dual system, unless they need linux as a dev tool. It was the only reason that I considered it - in order to write Asterisk modules.

I set up a dual boot on my home PC with XP-Home and Xubuntu, the XFCE desktop version of Ubuntu. I've had to set up alot of things on it that would have run on Windows right out of the box, but overall, I like it. Xubuntu runs faster than Ubuntu or Kubuntu because of the lightweight desktop environment.

I spend alot of time in the http://www.ubuntuforums.org trying to figure out how to do things. I also frequent the IRC channels for the various Ubuntu distos as I find alot of helpful people there.

In Xubuntu, I can surf the net, do email, IRC, instant messaging, do Office stuff, and so on with it. One thing I haven't found yet is a good CD/DVD authoring suite, so I still have to burn DVDs on the Windows side using Nero. However, I found a program called DeVeDe for Linux which allowed me to convert a downloaded MPEG4 file in PAL to a NTSC DVD, and it came out pretty clear. It didn't work well in Nero.

I haven't tried to get my scanner or webcam working yet, but I've read the webcam will work and the scanner will work, but support for it is limited under Linux. I still have to use my GPS unit under Windows because GPS/Geocaching software is scarce for Linux.

Can't say the system is 100% stable, as I have had some crashes from Firefox and MPlayer, the latter crashing usually due to some unsupported CODEC that hasn't been loaded into the system. Even with these crashes, once I kill the program the system keeps running the way it did before I started the program. Sometimes when a program crashes in Windows, it brings the whole system down with it or if I do get the program shut down, the Windows system still behaves erratically and I have to reboot. If I want to try and use the program after a crash, I still have to reboot. I haven't had to do that in Linux.

When I saw the requirements for Vista and found my 2 year old PC wouldn't run it, I decided to give Linux a shot just to see if it was a viable alternative, and I'm finding it is. I'm not sure when I'm getting a new PC and I want to use this one as long as possible. I also don't like what I read about DRM in Vista, so I'm not sure I want to try it.

My only real concern about Linux is hardware support. Although it appears most of my hardware has some support in Linux, my hardware isn't by any means new. In other words, what do I do if something quits on me tomorrow? Will the latest printer/scanner/video card/etc. work under Linux? I know Nvidia has started providing support for Linux, but what about other manufacturers? I wish more companies would support their hardware under Linux, so we could have options instead of waiting for the open source community to attempt to make a driver for something.

If anyone knows of any other hardware manufacturers who are actively supporting their hardwar under Linux, I'd like to hear about them.

Overall in spite of these things, I think Linux is a great alternative to Windows if you don't want to buy new hardware for when XP support finally goes away. It's stable, secure, and will probably work alot better on your existing hardware than Windows does.

Just my opinion.

The computers in my house are all historically dual boot because a lot of games were only available in Windows versions. Aside from games, Linux was a vastly better development platform, not to mention a lot more secure (unless configured terribly), and did everything else we needed at least adequately, without having to download or buy a ton of 3rd party software. Pop a DVD into a freshly installed Linux system, and you get to watch a movie. Do the same with XP, and... nothing.

That's still true now, Windows only gets used as a game platform, but improvements in Windows emulation under Linux means that XP is only required for a couple of games (usually ones with copy-protected CDs), so we may end up reformating our XP partitions one of these days.

I go back to Unix, before Linux was even a dream.
I've been through a bunch of distros. I even bought SuSE 6.4!
I happen to like Ubuntu+BerylSVN at the moment, but I might slip back to pure Debian.
I descend quite regularly to command shell. (How else to you find out what "date -d today-100days" is? (My birthday, as it happens - happy 99th unbirthday to me!)).

There's XP on here too, but I haven't felt the urge to boot it for a couple of months. Rephrase that - urge? I can't say I've ever really had the urge to boot XP, since shortly after it came up and I got it.

Same here, cut my teeth on AT&T SVR3.1 and Xenix, before quickly moving on to BSD (Tahoe) and SunOS.

And whatever one thinks about GUI wars, the Unix/Linux command line must be the standard by which all others are judged (and found wanting).

i used most disto's horrible (too buggy)! !!

but what if i go out and pay for it?

There are two distros I know of that are commercially produced, Linspire and Xandros. One advantage those have over alot of the freebies is they can do alot right out the box, while with the free ones, you have to download a bunch of stuff first.

Check them out at:

http://www.linspire.com
http://www.xandros.com

i will have a look thanks