ubuntu 7.04

[Jeff]

Complete Linux noobie here so take this for what it's worth...

I've been playing around with Ubuntu 7.04 - the Feisty Fawn over the past 2 or 3 days and I'm pretty happy. I put it on my main home PC and my main notebook PC and I'm making myself use it. So far things are going pretty good. I've installed BOINC and Majestic12 and actually got them running.

All drivers seem to have installed by themselves except for nVidia drivers on the home PC. That was an easy fix though. Both PCs have widescreen monitors and setting them up was very simple. I read a bunch about them being a PIA, but I didn't run into anything bad.

Installing and running programs is different than in M$ land, but I think I'm getting the hang of it... slowly.

Uh... I guess I just needed a micro-ramble... thanks for reading.

[Bok]

Good for you!

Always good to venture out and try something new.

For anyone else who wants to try linux, you can always install vmware server and install under that.

Bok

[Jeff]

The Ubuntu 7.04 "install" disk is very slick. You can actually boot into Ubuntu from it *without* installing. That way you can see what hardware it likes, what it doesn't, and get an overall feel for the os. You can even cruise around the internet and run all the basic Ubuntu 7.04 programs.

Like I said, pretty darn slick!

[Bok]

I think they've had a live disk like that for some time haven't they? A lot of the major distros are doing that these days. Knoppix probably started it all, but Gentoo also offers it.

Overall though, you are right, the linux install disks are very nice these days. I 've been most impressed with the CentOS 5 distro. It's installed on a couple of machines back home and I have it under vmware on my laptop here.

Bok

[Brucifer]

Is there a performance hit running under vmware?

[Bok]

sure, some. You need more memory for certain. I have 1Gb on my laptop and let my VM use 384 (I can run Gnome inside it mainly as I use it for X connections to other linux boxen)

VMware is free these days, though you have to register to get a license key. It's real nice for testing new distros though

Bok

[Digital Parasite]

I've been using CentOS 4 and have been really happy. Usually yum tells me there are a million RPMs to upgrade but hasn't yet so I figured they hadn't actually released 5.

Looks like they are recommending using upgrade from DVD/CD so I guess I will try that.

[Scoofy12]

I run Debian inside VMware on my home desktop, its a very nice setup. I run windows on the metal due to an unfortunate gaming addiction but i actually prefer linux as a general environment (and i do my work in linux). I would just run VMware full screen and use linux all the non-gaming time except that it's just a little too slow for me running the everything in the X server on the VM like that (even with the vmware X server display drivers). fortunately most of the important software I use is cross-platform (opera, thunderbird, gaim, etc). and for those linux things that wont run on windows (kdevelop, kile and a few others) I use a sort of hybrid setup: I run the cygwin X server natively on windows, and all the linux clients run in the VM. everything is quite fast and happy that way, and the windows themselves are integrated nicely with my, uh, Windows windows.

[Jeff]

In the name of battery life, I switched back to Win XP on the notebook. I looked into battery savings under ubuntu but the warnings kinda scared me.

Still liking it on my main homebox though.

[magnav0x]

In the name of battery life, I switched back to Win XP on the notebook. I looked into battery savings under ubuntu but the warnings kinda scared me.

Still liking it on my main homebox though.

You can make quite a few adjustments to power savings in Ubuntu to get it on par with Windows XP. It's quite a pain and I never do it though, because I'm always get bored with my OS no matter what it is and I end up reformatting once a month or so on my laptop. Wish I could just find something and stick with it, but I go through phases a lot when it comes to operating systems.

I especially love how easy it is to get XGL running under Ubuntu. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cz_2vKq5cZk

[vaughan]

Complete Linux noobie here so take this for what it's worth...

I've been playing around with Ubuntu 7.04 - the Feisty Fawn over the past 2 or 3 days and I'm pretty happy. I put it on my main home PC and my main notebook PC and I'm making myself use it. So far things are going pretty good. I've installed BOINC and Majestic12 and actually got them running.

All drivers seem to have installed by themselves except for nVidia drivers on the home PC. That was an easy fix though.

I'm a Linux newbie too but am happy to report I also installed Fiesty Fawn on a new PC I built recently. Like Jeff said have a problem with nVidia drivers but mine isn't solved yet. The resolution is maxed out at 1024 x 768 which looks poxy on my Dell 24 inch LCD screen. Jeff how did you fix the driver problem?

My son installed Ubuntu 7.04 on a virtual machine using VMware tonight on his C2D 6400. It all went very smoothly.

[Fozzie]

and am seriously considering going over on at least one of my boxen.

[magnav0x]

and am seriously considering going over on at least one of my boxen.

It's all I use on my laptop. Most laptop friendly linux distro ever. I didn't need to configure a damn thing. I take that back. I had to setup and configure CPU scaling, but that took about 5 minutes.