Favorite OS?

[Feba]

Re: Favorite OS?

I bet if they released a client of FFXI to Linux, it would have little to no problems with people who knew what they were doing.

excepting the fact that the Windows port is bad enough.

[Firaeon]

Re: Favorite OS?

I also forgot to mention that the other day, on Windows, I was very low on memory, like 20 MB left on the HD. I went to remove something, but apparently I didn't have enough memory to remove the program so I could make more memory.

Fail.

[Mhurron]

Re: Favorite OS?

Unix and unix like OS's reserve 10% of disk space that can only be used by the superuser in order to clean up from things that go on a HDD gobbling spree. Once you reach 90% volume space used, depending on the filesystem, you begin courting file corruption.

As for automatic clean up, Unix and Linux do what some startup script tell it to do, the 'user friendly' distros have more involved scripts since it's assumed the user doesn't know what they're doing and can't intelligently manage the system. OS X has a daily, weekly and a monthly script that clean things up and create reports of off the process accounting systems. By default they run at 3am, and the machine has to be on to run them as they will not be scheduled to run when next possible if the machine is off.. Servers are usually fine, but users should probably look at rescheduling the scripts for a time they know their machine will be on.

[Feba]

Re: Favorite OS?

A pet peeve of mine is when people refer to hard drive space as memory.

I don't mind it so much, as long as they've already made it clear they're talking about. Saying "my hard drive only has 50MB of memory left" and "I only have 50MB of memory left" are very different things. I personally blame memory cards.

Windows gets really fickle the less space you have, especially when it's on a single drive and temp/cache files are scattered everywhere. Since it doesn't clean up after itself very well, after a long period of usage, installing/uninstalling, adding/deleting files it becomes a nightmare to access files.

one great thing about Linux- you pretty much never ever need to defrag it. The filesystem (ext3 in most cases) is managed differently, so you don't need to worry about it nearly as much. You can also take a look at this linux defragger's thread for some more info. Most people will tell you that you never need to format linux, and it's pretty much true, but there's still the option out there if you're into that sorta thing. Still, the filesystem is MUCH less likely to become fragmented to the point of causing you any real performance degradation. Also, about your comment with installs leaving unwanted crap behind, if you use a package manager like apt, they can install things and clean up after themselves very well, in my experience at least. It's what Windows Add/Remove programs should be: have a way to add them too You can take a look at getdeb.net if you want- you download ".deb" files (from trusted sources, of course), your package manager installs them, and they're ready to go. It's pretty much entirely automated, so you don't need to worry about specifying install paths and whatnot.

Let's show how to install something in apt

Ok, now let's say I want to install a new racing game.
I need to search to know what's out there, so I run:

feba@febuntu:~$ apt-cache search car racing game
//Searches your apt's cache for "car racing game". You'd normally update before you run this, but that takes a lot of space for almost complete waste of space here, so I skipped it//

junior-games-gl - Debian Jr. 3D Games (hardware acceleration required)
pyracerz - multiplayer top view 2D racing game
slune - 3D racing and car-crashing game
torcs - 3D racing cars simulator game using OpenGL
torcs-data - base data files for TORCS game
torcs-data-cars - data files for TORCS game - Cars set
torcs-data-tracks - data files for torcs game - Tracks set
trigger - free 3D rally racing car game
trigger-data - free 3D rally racing car game - data files
xracer - Futuristic racing game
xracer-tools - Futuristic racing game - developer tools

Now here, I've heard of torcs before, so I decide I want to download that. I run

feba@febuntu:~$ sudo aptitude install torcs

//sudo temporarily gives your account root permissions. This keeps you from running programs that work outside of your /home/user/ folder, kinda like the my documents folder in Windows, but for everything you run as user. This allows programs to read and write to '/' (root). Normally this would ask you for a password, however I used it recently, so the timestamp lets me use it again without hassle. Vista's UAC is basically an extremely annoying version of sudo. aptitude and apt-get are commands, to be honest i'm not entirely sure what they specify, but they are part of apt. install obviously says to install a package, and 'torcs' specifies which package//

Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
//detecting dependancies. this comes in handy later//
Reading state information... Done
Reading extended state information
Initializing package states... Done
Building tag database... Done
The following NEW packages will be automatically installed:
menu torcs-data torcs-data-cars torcs-data-tracks
//here we go. Torcs needs all these packages installed to run, so it will install them too, instead of having to do it by yourself//
The following packages have been kept back:
wine
The following NEW packages will be installed:
menu torcs torcs-data torcs-data-cars torcs-data-tracks
0 packages upgraded, 5 newly installed, 0 to remove and 1 not upgraded.
Need to get 84.0MB of archives. After unpacking 190MB will be used.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n/?] n
//I don't want to download this right now, so I decide n//
Abort.

Alternatively, if you're newer to linux and don't know the command line, assuming a fresh install of Ubuntu, you can simply click Applications, then Add/Remove programs, and search in them both by names and categories. When you want to remove it, it's just as simple. sudo apt-get autoremove torcs, or go into add/remove, uncheck it's box, and hit apply.

That said, I do vaguely recall a horror story about someone who had lower than 3/30/300MB (can't remember which) remaining on his hard drive, and had the GUI crash on him every ten seconds or so until he made more space (by deleting files I think. Knowing CLI is handy), I'd assume this is due to swap page (virtual memory) wanting more room to work with than the HDD had. I'd have to look more specifically into the cause of this, but if it was due to a swap page, it might not be a problem if you use a swap partition. Again though, this is a vague memory, so I'd have to look it up.

EDIT: HEY MHURRON, did you know that if you look at your posts like it was one of those 3D pictures, it looks like the guy from your avatar is chewing on the back of 2k-tan's head?

[Firaeon]

Re: Favorite OS?

Feba, what distro of Linux do you use? You may have said it before but I forget and I can't be arsed to look through the thread.

[Feba]

Re: Favorite OS?

Ubuntu. I'll probably switch to Kubuntu on my next install (which probably won't be until I get my new PC)

Interesting (to me, at least) timeline and "family tree" of linux distros. You see most distros are descended from Red Hat, Slackware, or Debian, with a few small time ones based on their own.

EDIT: forgot how big that image was, so here's a link:

56k USERS (SHOULD KILL THEMSELVES ALREADY) WARNING.

[Firaeon]

Re: Favorite OS?

Yeah I use Ubuntu too. I've tried Kubuntu, and it's really pretty good. I just like GNOME more than KDE. The one thing that bugs me about Kubuntu is the default image viewing program and the web browser, which is also the file browser (like nautilus on GNOME), Konquerer. It's a terrible program. If I remember correctly, images are loaded separately into some other viewer or something, and it just doesn't work.

I do like the customization options KDE has to offer though. It's got some nice apps too, but you can run most of them without problems on GNOME anyway.

[Edelweiss]

Re: Favorite OS?

To be honest I would have to say Vista, I am a Windows person. (yes I know boo me.) Not my falt! I grew up on Windows all the way back from windows 95 or before till now. I think they have come along way and really improving, I like how now you can make the tables ANY color u wish, or see through i think thats sooo cool! I also like the new start menu, its not sticking all the way out..and take forever to find everything, they are all in seperate folders in your name file wich I think is really cool as well. But yeah I am done

[Edelweiss]

Re: Favorite OS?

Mac OSX at work is the dogs, I ave never had any major problems with it like I have with windows. Its fast, secure (well more secure than windows) and the icons and layout is so good. also when I want to end task it does it imediately when asked not freeze, complain then freeze again like windows.

Ummm my windows like never freezes! Well it does kind of it asks if I want to open a certain page or file or somthing, but it doesnt freeze freeze because its slow....and its not slow. I have used a mac and to me its the slowest thing on earth.

[Edelweiss]

Re: Favorite OS?

Also Vista defraggs it self everyday and scans for viruses and deletes cookies etc...without me touching a thing, thats another great feature that Vista has!

[Yellow Mage]

Re: Favorite OS?

Resource hogging eye-candy to your first post.

Don't bash a system if you haven't familiarized yourself with it to your second post.

A big fat "Digital Restrictions Management" to your third post . . .

And, finally, why on Vana'diel did you need to make THREE posts for your unfounded Vista praise?!? There's a handy 'lil button called "Edit" for a reason, you know.

[Firaeon]

Re: Favorite OS?

I grew up on Windows all the way back from windows 95 or before till now.

So have I, and I hate Windows now because my knowledge of computers increased since when I was 3.

and take forever to find everything, they are all in seperate folders in your name file wich I think is really cool as well.

If I get what you're saying, that feature has been in Windows since like, 95.

I have used a mac and to me its the slowest thing on earth.

You're either full of crap, or you were using a very old version of Mac/a really bad Mac computer.

Also Vista defraggs it self everyday and scans for viruses and deletes cookies etc...without me touching a thing, thats another great feature that Vista has!

I wonder how much system resources that's taking up when you're working.

[Feba]

Re: Favorite OS?

So have I, and I hate Windows now because my knowledge of computers increased since when I was 3.

I was a bit older than 3, but yep.

I think they have come along way and really improving,

And you think this because...?

I like how now you can make the tables ANY color u wish, or see through i think thats sooo cool!

...By tables, I'm assuming you mean windows, and yes, I would suppose that might be cool if Vista wasn't a huge resources hog. Look at a linux box running Compiz sometime, or better yet, an OSX box pimping the shit out of aero. Vista's interface is a huge waste of resources for what it does.

You're either full of crap, or you were using a very old version of Mac/a really bad Mac computer.

Really... I have a mac that's nearly a decade old, and OSX 10.3 (INCLUDING EXPOSE, AN EXTREMELY USEFUL AND SHINY DESKTOP EFFECT!) STILL ran smoothly on it.

Also Vista defraggs it self everyday and scans for viruses and deletes cookies etc...without me touching a thing, thats another great feature that Vista has!

1- Linux doesn't get fragmented, 2- linux doesn't get viruses, 3- your OS should not screw with your cookies. That is for your web browser, which they've been doing that for... oh... I don't know, I'm going to assume as long as delicious cookies have been around, maybe a bit longer.

So I get the same effects- without wasting resources running a bunch of software to clean up after my OS. I win.

[Firaeon]

Re: Favorite OS?

So I get the same effects- without wasting resources running a bunch of software to clean up after my OS. I win.

Linux users, unite!

[Feba]

Re: Favorite OS?



GO GO LINUX USERS!
GO GO LINUX USERS!
GO GO LINUX USERS. CUSTOMIZING LINUX USEEEEERS!

edit: this type of post is why you shouldn't let your feba stay awake for 20 hours.