Is Linux ready for me yet?

[Adcadet]

In 3 short weeks I will largely get my life back from the moster that is Step 1 of the US Medical Licensing Exam. At that point I will occasionally have time to play with my computer, and won't need Windows for a few select, Windows-only programs. Is it time I give Linux another shot? I played around with Linux a little from about 2000-2003, so I know some basics but don't want to have to learn too much to start having fun (fun for me is not learning the command line). Here's what I would really like:

1. Easy setup for dual monitors, from my ATi 8500. I know there are drivers and whatnot, but I still don't have too much time to dink around with getting my monitors to work. There are other things I would rather spend my time doing.

2. Support for my chip (AMD 3000+ Newcastle, 64-bit). Not sure if this makes any difference performance-wise or compatibility-wise, but it would be nice if my 64-bit chip could finally run in 64-bit mode.

3. Off the CD/DVD support for my SATA HD controller (Via and Promise on my MSI Neo K8T board).

Would something like Suse be a good choice for me?

 

[Buck]

My take on matters by looking at Linux OSes from the Windows world is that I'm not ready for them yet . . . or I could arrogantly say they're not ready for me. One brand I have been keeping my eye on is Novell, which runs Suse. However, they have a very comprehensive package available for the corporate and office environment. Hence, my continued interest in their software. I also like the idea of spending some cash for the software and getting phone support; particularly since I would probably need the help.

 

[Handruin]

I've read several people over the past few months give praise to Novell's rendition of SuSe. I've installed their semi-recent version of SuSe Enterprise 9.0 at work and I wasn't that impressed with it. Now, keep in mind my exposure to linux distributions is limited. But in a comparison between Fedora Core 3 (or Redhat ES 3) and Suse 9, I prefer Fedora core's overall desktop environment experience. Only take that with a grain of salt, because I can't give you more specifics as to why I have this feeling.

More and more I'm moving away from using the GUI for any admin related tasks in linux. I feel the GUI slows me down.

Back on topic, you may want to try Linspire for a basic desktop environment.

 

[i]

The final version of Fedora Core 4 is scheduled to be released on June 6th.

 

[Handruin]

Nice! I'll have to give it a try when it becomes available. i, have you tried the test releases for FC4?

I really like how they offer a DVD ISO. The fedora core 3 DVD ISO worked well for me. I installed it on my cheapo dell in about 35 minutes with no problems. It was very easy.

 

[Mercutio]

SuSE 9.2 is a VAST improvement over 9.0. 9.3 is incrementally better still. I counselled my students to SuSE + GNOME + apt-get for updates and software installs. That configuration takes a bit of work to set up (mostly in installing apt) but is trivially simple to administer.

AFAIK, no Linux will work with nvidia NICs out of the box, which is presently a pretty big stumbling block for hardware enthusiasts.

Both my mother and my brother are using SuSE 9.2 at the moment, after the hundred billionth time I had to remove spyware or viruses from their respective PCs. I made sure that Flash, Java and Quicktime were working, configured email for them, showed them how to burn CDs and listen to MP3s and to be honest I haven't heard a complaint from either one of them.

 

[Bozo]

I recently tried Mandrake 10.1 and Novell. Niether impressed me either.
Unless you are a command line wizard, linux is not for you. I tried to install Flash on the Mandrake install and that was an hour of frustration. It never did get installed.
After two hours wrestling with Mandrake, the hard drive was formatted and Xp installed.

Maybe one of the other distros is better, but I doubt it.
Linux is not ready for prime time.

Bozo :mrgrn:

 

[Gilbo]

AFAIK, no Linux will work with nvidia NICs out of the box, which is presently a pretty big stumbling block for hardware enthusiasts.

There is actually an open source module included in the kernel source that works with NVidia NICs. It is the 'forcedeth' module and can be found in kernel configuration as "Device Drivers"/"Networking Support"/"Ethernet (10 or 100Mbit)"/"Reverse Engineered nForce Ethernet Support (EXPERIMENTAL)". Despite the fact that it is "experimental" its been around for ages (well 2.6.7 or 8 I think) and it is quite solid, so there is really no excuse for a lack of support --a distribution doesn't have to resort to NVidia's proprietary drivers to get the NIC running.

For what it's worth the Gentoo LiveCDs seem to have no problem with NVidia NICs, at least not with NForce2 or NForce4 chipsets --I've personally tried both. I haven't had a chance to see if GbE speeds work though, and I also haven't bothered trying NVidia's proprietary modules.

 

[time]

I'm with Merc. Suse is growing into the sort of environment that I'm prepared to tolerate. Although, given my interest is purely commercial, I haven't spent time trying to run desktop apps - only server. It's getting to the point that you can configre almost everything in YAST (GUI tool) - which is how it should be on all flavours of Linux.

I don't know why people get excited about something like Fedora, that by definition, will always have something broken. My time is too precious.

You can run nForce networking out of the box (with Suse anyway) by using the forcedeth driver. It just doesn't install automatically - you have to type in "forcedeth". Once you have networking, you can download the authentic nVidia package and install it instead (if you want to).

Adcadet, Suse 9.2+ automatically installs a 64-bit environment when it detects an Athlon 64. Very cool.

Doug, out of curiosity, what put you off Suse 9.0?

 

[Mercutio]

Er... the fact that you have to do ANYTHING to make nvidia's NIC driver work is my definition of "not working out of the box". The software is there, just not enabled for whatever stupid reason. Dumb, dumb, dumb.

I recently tried Mandrake 10.1 and Novell. Niether impressed me either.
Unless you are a command line wizard, linux is not for you. I tried to install Flash on the Mandrake install and that was an hour of frustration. It never did get installed.
After two hours wrestling with Mandrake, the hard drive was formatted and Xp installed.

Maybe one of the other distros is better, but I doubt it.
Linux is not ready for prime time.

I guess it's pointless to ask why FLASH of all things is a requirement for "prime time" status. But at any rate it's part of SuSE's default installation. Rather obnoxious if you ask me.

But let's be clear about something: You installed an operating system - one you're obviously not familiar with, used it for two hours, then dropped it. After just two hours.

Yes, learning to install software on a linux machine can be a pain in the ass. So can the occasional obnoxious (lack of) driver.

Balance that with zero viruses, zero spyware, and an OS that comes with viewers for every filetype you can think of, and just about every application.

Given the problems I deal with on people's windows PCs right now, maybe having an OS where it's hard to install software is not a bad thing, after all.

 

[Bozo]

Yes I only tried Mandrake for a couple of hours. A short comparison.....

Install XP Pro. That took about 15 minutes longer than Mandrake.
I have an ATI Radeon 9600 video card. XP loaded drivers. Mandrake informs me that they do not have drivers for ATI or NVidia but they are available on the net. Whatever drivers Mandrake did have seemed okay so I didn't pursue this. (in retrospect I'd hate to try to install video drivers in Linux. That has to be worse that NT)
In XP, connect to the net: Click on IE (or Firefox), about 20 seconds go by and I'm in. (Cable connection). In Mandrake, clicking on the web browser (Konquer???) get a box that says can't connect. Do some searching, find the network card is not installed. Search for the network setup routine and install NIC. Then connect to net. 30 minutes (Mandrake recomended re-starting the PC which I thought was strange for Linux)
XP- go to a web site that says it needs Flash. Click on 'Okay' two times, 2 minutes later Flash is installed. Don't even have to reboot. Same web site in Mandrake; never did get Flash installed after trying for almost an hour.
XP: Need to do some file management and create folders for some additions. Open Explorer and have at it. Mandrake: never did find a file management tool. Maybe because I was not logged in as Root. But I could not find a way to log on a Root either. This is not a Linux problem, but a Mandrake anomaly.
(I'm downloading SUSE 9.1 now)
The problem with Linux is that there are too many different ways of doing things, and no standards. At least with MS, every OS since Win95 is basically the same GUI. If you can get around in one, you can work in any of them.
Manbe Linux needs a standardized GUI.

Bozo :mrgrn:

 

[Mercutio]

SuSE 9.3 is the current version, and at the very least 9.1 is missing the graphical installer and some of the more recent refinements to YaST that make it so nifty.

The drivers Mandrake (and Suse) did not have are basically drivers to enable 3D. Only important if you're planning to play games. No idea why it wouldn't enable your NIC - in my recent experience the ONLY NIC Linux doesn't start automagically is the nforce-based one.

GNOME and KDE both have respectable file managers. Of course, I will cop to being a command-line person to begin with, and I pretty much use Windowmaker for my desktop anyway. I *like* the choice of GUIs, but I pretty much recommend newbs stick to one of KDE or GNOME (I like GNOME a little better, personally). Any competently arranged desktop should include at least ONE icon to start a file manager. IIRC SuSE's default desktop has an icon per disk partition.

 

[i]

Handruin, no I haven't tried any of the beta releases of FC 4. I was impressed with FC 3 though.

But I still prefer Debian, which coincidentally is going to try and release their next major version (Sarge) on May 30th.

 

[Handruin]

I'm with Merc. Suse is growing into the sort of environment that I'm prepared to tolerate. Although, given my interest is purely commercial, I haven't spent time trying to run desktop apps - only server. It's getting to the point that you can configre almost everything in YAST (GUI tool) - which is how it should be on all flavours of Linux.

I don't know why people get excited about something like Fedora, that by definition, will always have something broken. My time is too precious.

You can run nForce networking out of the box (with Suse anyway) by using the forcedeth driver. It just doesn't install automatically - you have to type in "forcedeth". Once you have networking, you can download the authentic nVidia package and install it instead (if you want to).

Adcadet, Suse 9.2+ automatically installs a 64-bit environment when it detects an Athlon 64. Very cool.

Doug, out of curiosity, what put you off Suse 9.0?

My primary frustration was the install. The graphic version was non-existent because SuSe didn't recognize the graphics card, so I worked through the text based version. Partitioning the drive in the non-graphical install was a tedious task to say the least.

Next, I found the GUI to be a bit slow in responsiveness. YaST is decent in comparison to red hat's management tools, so I do give that credit. Although, YaSt's way of changing the network configuration could be improved.

 

[Mercutio]

But I still prefer Debian, which coincidentally is going to try and release their next major version (Sarge) on May 30th.

Debian has one thing that recommends it - apt. It has several strikes against it, at least in my mind:
1. Hardcore GNU zealotry - woe be to the person who talks about Linux without mentioning the "GNU/" part that Stallman insists should come first!
2. VERY slow updates. Sarge will be out soon, and the next revision will probably be out around this time next year. Distros that use Debian as a base (e.g. Ubuntu) are generally FAR more up to date and polished, and take a more pragmatic view of non-free software.
3. As an entirely free product, Debian seems to wallowing in political morass. The 'distro by committee" approach doesn't seem particularly able to get things done, and it never has.

Handy, if you're interested in improving GUI responsiveness under Linux, keep in mind that 1. the x server isn't part of the linux kernel, like it is under windows (early versions of NT were like that, too) and 2. There are lighter/smaller window manager. Both GNOME and KDE are kind of bloated IMO. That's why I use Windowmaker for myself. 3. More RAM always helps. 4. There are a couple projects in the works that will use 3D acceleration features of your massively-overpowered graphics card to run your desktop (e.g. Enlightenment). I expect this will help a lot.

 

[i]

Debian has one thing that recommends it - apt. It has several strikes against it, at least in my mind:
1. Hardcore GNU zealotry - woe be to the person who talks about Linux without mentioning the "GNU/" part that Stallman insists should come first!
2. VERY slow updates. Sarge will be out soon, and the next revision will probably be out around this time next year. Distros that use Debian as a base (e.g. Ubuntu) are generally FAR more up to date and polished, and take a more pragmatic view of non-free software.
3. As an entirely free product, Debian seems to wallowing in political morass. The 'distro by committee" approach doesn't seem particularly able to get things done, and it never has.

Points #1 and #3 don't bother me much. Hey, these people are making my day everytime I sit down at my computer and find myself at a beautifully stable operating system that was a snap to install, that cost me absolutely nothing, has dead-easy access to virtually any software package I'd be interested in, all the hard stuff configuration-wise is taken care of for me, and all the updates too. For that, I'm perfectly willing to let them call it GNU/Linux until the end of time. And their political morass doesn't bother me either. From my perspective it must be working pretty well.

I switched my Debian install to the so-called "unstable" release immediately after getting the system up and running. I've never found anything particularly unstable about it, except in the sense that updates for existing packages are frequently available, and entirely new packages turn up often. They're not kidding when they say it's where the most active Debian development occurs. As it turns out that's exactly where I want to be.

Oh, and if you like apt, you might like aptitude. It's still text-based (I wouldn't have it any other way), but it offers a little more user-friendliness (a lot less typing, and less hunting for mystery packages).

 

[Mercutio]

Actually I bolt apt onto SuSE

But from everything I can see, even Debian unstable has nothing on Ubuntu. There's a much better organization for development with an only slightly weirder name.

 

[Adcadet]

Any thoughts on getting my ATi 8500 to drive two monitors? I'd prefer to be able to have them up and running from day 1. SuSE has had decent video card support in the past, no? Is this still true today? I wouldn't at all mind paying a few bucks for a polished distro if it actually did work well with my hardware.

 

[i]

But from everything I can see, even Debian unstable has nothing on Ubuntu. There's a much better organization for development with an only slightly weirder name.

Merc, do you happen to have access to a Ubuntu system? I'm wondering what the most up-to-date version of GhostScript they have available is.

 

[Mercutio]

Sorry, the version I have is a couple releases out of date. Distrowatch says they're still using 8.01 though.

 

[Handruin]

I installed SuSe 9.2 last night onto my cheapo dell. I have to say my opinion has changed so far for the better. The system feels responsive and the UI seems to be a bit better than 9.0, performance-wise. Now I need to hunt down a decent guide for samba. I was able to get it running, but I'm having trouble logging into the accounts through XP. I couldn't figure out if SuSe 9.3 was available for free download in a non-liveCD version. I can only find a network ISO download. Is that the normal install?

I'm also in the process of installing fedora core 4. I just got back from a vmware seminar for workstation 5. During this seminar they include a free, fully functional copy of workstation 5. I installed it and now I'm installing FC4 onto my system. Very slick product.

I also tried DamnSmallLinux the other day. For the 5 minutes I spent with it, the idea semed interesting for some future projects. It didn't recognize the broadcom NIC in my dell, so that was a small set-back.

I've also downloaded FreeBSD 5 to give that a try. I'm not expecting much, but since it's so easy to install new virtual instances...why the hell not.

 

[Mercutio]

I have a boxed set if you want 9.3, Handy.
I really like the default GNOME setup better than the KDE that is the install default.
Anyway, you should only need to use smbpasswd to set correct linkages between accounts on your Windows PCs and those on your Linux box. Not that hard, actually.

 

[Handruin]

Is there enough difference between 9.2 and 9.3 for a novice linux user such as myself will notice? How much would you want for it? SuSe has it for sale on their site for $99 I could just buy it from them unless you needed to get ride of it. Since I was experimenting, I'm kind of in the "find it free" mode for right now. I can just use their liveCD to test it out and decide if I want to buy it later.

I'll look into smbpasswd. I can get in with the root account, but I can write to the shares even though I set them to read/write. Basically I want three accounts with three different shares so that each account only has access to its own share. As it may already show, I've never even used samba before. So what comes natural to you is very foreign to me for right now.

Funny thing with SuSe 9.2...I sat Laura down to the machine and just said "use it"...right away she found everything she needed without me. Even setup an IM client that I didn't even know existed...and logged in to AOL IM. She was later playing solitare and minesweeper to kill some time, along with browsing the web...having never used any Linux desktop before in her life, she had no problems. Seems like a decent desktop so far, even if it was KDE (which I thought worked well so far). I haven't use gnome yet on this system.

 

[Handruin]

This is what I did to finally get samba working from my xp machine. I created three directories and set their permissions to 777 (is there a better way?). Without 777 I couldn't read/write to them through samba.

Does the following config look reasonable? Any suggestions to improve the usability of samba? Most of the options I've set are from reading bits and pieces of articles on the net.

# Global parameters
[global]
        workgroup = DCLAN
        server string = SuSe 9.2 workstation
        hosts allow = 192.168. 127.
        security = user
        encrypt passwords = yes
        smb passwd file = /etc/samba/smbpasswd
        username map = /etc/samba/smbusers
        preserve case = yes
        short preserve case = yes
        default case = lower
        map to guest = Bad User

[doug]
        comment = Dougs files
        path = /share/doug
        read only = no
        public = no
        valid users = doug laura
        writable = yes
        printable = no
        write list = doug laura backup
        guest ok = no

[laura]
        comment = Lauras files
        path = /share/laura
        public = yes
        valid users = laura doug
        writable = yes
        printable = no
        write list = doug laura backup
        guest ok = no
[backup]
        comment = system backup files
        path = /share/backup
        public = no
        valid users = laura doug backup
        writeable = yes
        printable = no
        write list = doug laura backup
        guest ok = no

 

[blakerwry]

# Global parameters
[global]
        workgroup = DCLAN
        server string = SuSe 9.2 workstation
        hosts allow = 192.168. 127.
        security = user
        encrypt passwords = yes
        smb passwd file = /etc/samba/smbpasswd
        username map = /etc/samba/smbusers
        local master = yes
        os level = 33

[doug]
        comment = Dougs files
        path = /share/doug
        public = no
        writable = yes
        valid users = doug laura

[laura]
        comment = Lauras files
        path = /share/laura
        public = yes
        writable = yes
        valid users = laura doug
        write list = doug laura backup

[backup]
        comment = system backup files
        path = /share/backup
        public = no
        writeable = yes
        valid users = laura doug backup

"public = yes" should work instead of "guest ok", also the default behavior for map to guest is probably what you want instead of bad user.

printable is off by default I believe, so no need to specify it.

The write list function should not be needed if you already specified your valid users and are including each of them the ability to write. I'd also recommend using fs permissions instead of share permissions on read/write abilities.


Also, on the laura share, is it public or not? you have it listed as public, then you specify only specific users....

you might also run into permission issues when trying to modify files created by another user, if you want the share to be freely accessible by all users you can force a create mode of 777 so that permissions do not become a hinderence. To do this, speficy the following per share:

   force create mode = 0777
   force directory mode = 0777

I also specified the OS level so your SAMBA machine will take care of being the master browser.

 

[Handruin]

Thanks blake. I made the changes you suggested and so far everything is working fine.

Like I mentioned, I took bits and pieces from various websites and I don't know which options are really meant to work together, so some of the things I had may have conflicted or made no sense. However, they seemed to make sense at the time I wrote them to the file.

The one thing I did changes was the public = yes to public = no for Laura's account. I don't need any of them being public, so I changed it. That was unintentional on my part, thanks for pointing it out.

I don't know what you mean by using fs (file share?) permissions instead of share permissions on read/write? Can you give me some more info on this? I also added the "force create" and "force directory" at your suggestion. That seems to be working well. All new files and directories are being added with a permission level of 777.

 

[blakerwry]

by fs, I meant file system permissions.

In the Windows world you have share permissions and file system permissions. The file system permissions are always in effect and can prevent access even if you have set the share access more lenient. The overall effect is that the share has the most restrictive combination of both the file system and share permissions.

The exact same thing exists in the Linux/Samba set.

To prevent one permission set causing unexpected problems it is usually recommended to leave the share read/write to everyone and use file system permissions alone to control access.

For samba, I have specified specific users, but have left the defualts w/ regards to write permissions so everything as read/write to all users allowed on the share. To control access properly, file system permissions are used to set read/write permissions on a per file/folder level.