Linux experience update...

[W1GUH]

Old news to Linux/Unix people...great discovery for this newbie.

Ubuntu Linux, at least (probably others, too) come standard, and for free with "Open Office". Open Office is a suite of applications including a Word Processor, Spread Sheet, and Presentation maker, very similar (so far, to me, practically identical) to Microsof Office, and they will write files in formats compatible with MS Office.

I just tested the compatibility and yep....a document generated in Linux is something that MS is very happy with, with no complaints.

Makes the chance of me ever buying software from MS (Except for the Flight Simulator*) again, ever! That warms my heart.

*I've found a flight simulator for Linux that I simply MUST try. I don't think it's ported for PS3 architecture yet, though, so I've got to try it on my PC/Linux setup. If it's all they say it is...Bye-Bye, MS!!!!

[ad4mg]

Old news to Linux/Unix people...great discovery for this newbie.

Ubuntu Linux, at least (probably others, too) come standard, and for free with "Open Office". Open Office is a suite of applications including a Word Processor, Spread Sheet, and Presentation maker, very similar (so far, to me, practically identical) to Microsof Office, and they will write files in formats compatible with MS Office.

I just tested the compatibility and yep....a document generated in Linux is something that MS is very happy with, with no complaints.

Makes the chance of me ever buying software from MS (Except for the Flight Simulator*) again, ever! That warms my heart.

*I've found a flight simulator for Linux that I simply MUST try. I don't think it's ported for PS3 architecture yet, though, so I've got to try it on my PC/Linux setup. If it's all they say it is...Bye-Bye, MS!!!!

Open Office also runs well on Windows boxes. I've been using it for quite a while. The last MS Office suite I bought was 2000. The only place I run into issues is creating Excel spreadsheets with Visual Basic code for stuff like custom formatting, controls, etc. I've never looked into anything similar offered by Calc, the Oo equivalent of Excel.

There is no visible difference running Oo on a Linux box as opposed to on a Windoze box. Most of my machines are still dual booting Ubuntu & some flavor of Windoze, and I have Oo 3 on all of them, both OS's.

I'm grabbing Ubuntu 9.10 via bit torrent right now in 3 flavors ... i386, i386 alternate, and amd64. When completed, I'll have GUI installers for 32 & 64 bit Ubuntu 9.10, plus the alternate CD, which will do an upgrade on a machine without an internet connection, or will do an installation in text mode.

I don't see myself shelling out any more $'s for MS bloatware for a very long time, if ever. Last night, I grabbed the Fedora 11 Live CD to have a look at that flavor of Linux.

For anyone willing to invest a little time, Linux offers software to do anything. Clonezilla, SystemRescueDisk, SuperGrubDisk, all live CD's that allow manipulation of partitions, boot loader repair, MBR repair, and data recovery, are free for download. Equivalent Windoze compatible software would cost a fortune.

Yep, I'm sold on Linux!

[W2NAP]

thing pissing me off is how slow the ubuntu repos are.

trying to upgrade my big box from kubuntu 904 to 910 4.5 hours into it. "getting new packages" 51% 553 of 1147 downloading at 13.1KB/s fucking pathedic when i can download everywhere else at 500KB/s to 1.2MB/s

ubuntu seriously has some repo issues as its telling me its gonna take another 6 hours to just finish the d/l so about 10/11hrs just to fucking download the packages and prob another hr to install.

i am rather pissed

[KC2UGV]

thing pissing me off is how slow the ubuntu repos are.

trying to upgrade my big box from kubuntu 904 to 910 4.5 hours into it. "getting new packages" 51% 553 of 1147 downloading at 13.1KB/s f*** pathedic when i can download everywhere else at 500KB/s to 1.2MB/s

ubuntu seriously has some repo issues as its telling me its gonna take another 6 hours to just finish the d/l so about 10/11hrs just to f*** download the packages and prob another hr to install.

i am rather pissed

Cancel the download/update, run apt-get -f, and change to a different set of repos (UK ones are rather fast).

[ad4mg]

thing pissing me off is how slow the ubuntu repos are.

trying to upgrade my big box from kubuntu 904 to 910 4.5 hours into it. "getting new packages" 51% 553 of 1147 downloading at 13.1KB/s f*** pathedic when i can download everywhere else at 500KB/s to 1.2MB/s

ubuntu seriously has some repo issues as its telling me its gonna take another 6 hours to just finish the d/l so about 10/11hrs just to f*** download the packages and prob another hr to install.

i am rather pissed

Cancel the download/update, run apt-get -f, and change to a different set of repos (UK ones are rather fast).

-or-

Use the torrent to download the image ... mount it:
(sudo mount -o loop ~/Desktop/ubuntu-9.10-alternate-i386.iso /media/cdrom0) <adjust the path accordingly for the location iso file on your machine>

then, if the dialog box doesn't pop up, run:
gksu "sh /cdrom/cdromupgrade"

I upgraded from 9.04 to 9.10 on this machine (1.8 GHz Intel w/ 2 GB RAM), it took about 90 minutes.

Note that this is the i386 (32 bit) alternate install cd image ... 64 bit alternate cd image is also available. The "Live" Desktop CD will not perform this type of upgrade.

[W2NAP]

i ended up letting it roll.

something is seriously wrong with the us repos.

anyway finally did complete the upgrade at 10:30pm. only thing that i didnt like with 9.10 is it removed wicd and installed the crappy ass network manager plasmoid.

good thing, sound works so far. 8.04,8.10,and 9.04 gave me huge issues with sound on this box which took about 2 months to get working properly.