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Maybe it is time to cure your Microsoft addiction? Break your Windows!

1) Before doing anything else, back up your data, all of it, off of the computer. Seriously. Do it.

2) Check out:

http://www.ubuntulinux.org/
http://www.debian.org/
http://www.openbsd.org/

(Be sure to completely format the computer's hard drive before or during the installation process).

WARNING: if you do not know what you are doing, ask for help from someone who does.

(P.S. - forget Apple, which is just the new Microsoft.)

You may want to look at Landscape from Canonical (the driving force behind Ubuntu). For a direct comparison to Microsoft products it is a mix of features from Group Policy, SCOM, and SUS. It is decidedly not free with prices as high as $150 per client, but they offer volume discounts.

http://www.canonical.com/projects/landscape
http://www.ubuntulinux.org/news/landscape

The things that everyday user "joe-six-pack" uses on his computer are all available Free from Ubuntu, I have never paid Canonical or Ubuntu for anything. However, even if you pay them for something, you get a bargain price, For example "Ubuntu Landscape" http://www.ubuntulinux.org/news/landscape-system-management-tool would save the average IT department thousands of dollars even though its costs only $150 per node. Thats the beauty, for the average user everything is free. I just found out that I will be doing another Ubuntu install for my Grandparents, as it will do everything that they want and the learning curve is not steep. It's a no contest. They want Miscrosoft Office compatibility, email, web browsing, and a XMPP client to talk to the family with. Between the Windows OS cost, Microsoft office, the Ram upgrade its going to take, and the antivirus software, they are looking at about $500. They get all of that for no charge with Ubuntu, all on the install disk and can then spend time doing the important things in life, such as communicating with the family. They received DSL for 2 years as a gift, and now can use their old machine without extra cost to them to do everything that they need. It will take 2 hours between the install, and teaching them to use their new OS. I am proud to be helping older folks get into computing. They have been leery to learn under windows due to every new operating system working differently than the previous edition. Its a bigger learning curve with Windows, due to learning about MalWare, the lack of security, and the numerous programs that run under Windows always asking for more money to be able to do something that should be safe and free. Starting them on Linux will also save me countless hours of Phone calls and problems. Ubuntu now "just works" Windows is for people who don't know what they are missing.

If you want a high quality, consistent, graphically appealing operating system with desktop search, office suite, iPod integration, better Windows compatibility (including NTFS mounts and Windows codecs), and plenty of graphical glitz, download Ubuntu 7.10 at ubuntulinux.org.

The year of linux is every year since 1992, just for different people.

What a perfect time to go legal. Ditch that copy of Vists. It's broken by design. It's a feature, not a flaw.

On the other hand going legal works. Start here.
http://www.ubuntulinux.org/

apt works fine for the most part on its own - it just downloads and installs binaries. And it seems to keep its own internal dependency or tagging system. The problem is: these "dependencies" aren't compatible with anything I installed outside apt: source builds, rpm installation, even if I used debian apt packages they aren't compatible with Ubuntu apt packages.

man dpkg-buildpackage

The situation becomes a nightmare as soon as I install something from source - I can no longer use apt for anything that depends on it. Trying to set up a webserver was the biggest pain because for some reason php4 wasn't in the ubuntu apt packages, so I installed it separately, and then I couldn't install anything that required php4 because they all needed "php4-ubuntu".

This has to be fixed.

Maybe I should just go to Gentoo and compile everything myself!

There are several Linux distros for Mac hardware, just install one of those. I'd give regular Ubuntu a choice, and if that's too heavy-weight, try Xubuntu.

Ubuntu comes with a lot of software pre-installed, it feels a lot more responsive than OS X on the same hardware, and it has very much a Mac-like feel. I'm running it on an old iMac and have been quite happy with it.

RoR is currently available from the universe repository. Ruby itself is a part of the main repository. RoR 1.1.6 is the current latest version.

Although for Ruby they have not yet stepped up to 1.8.4, 1.8.2 is good 'nuff for now.

RoR is currently available from the universe repository. Ruby itself is a part of the main repository. RoR 1.1.6 is the current latest version.

Although for Ruby they have not yet stepped up to 1.8.4, 1.8.2 is good 'nuff for now.

There are many good resources on the web. The standard resource is The Linux Documentation Project, or http://www.tldp.org/. Another site, which is much better than it used to be, is http://www.linux.com/. http://www.linuxjournal.com/ has many great articles to guide you through a wide variety of small projects. A great newer site with helpful articles is http://www.howtoforge.com/. For help on the desktop side, http://www.desktoplinux.com/ has many articles you may find of use. Documentation and information about KDE is, of course, available at http://www.kde.org/ and it's affiliated sites (linked from their homepage). IBM is always putting up new articles at http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/ that can provide usefull information for development work under Linux. You may also find the articles on http://www.debian.org/, http://www.gentoo.org/, and http://www.ubuntulinux.org/ usefull even though the articles were written for other distros.

If you can't find what you're looking for there, you can always head over to irc.freenode.net. The #suse and #opensuse channels will be of particular interest to you. You may find #kde helpful for KDE applications. ##linux is basically a catch-all channel; we'll generally be able to field just about any question you throw at us there. If we can't, we will point you in the right direction.

Keeping up with the FOSS news can also teach you quite a bit. You already know about Slashdot. http://osnews.com/ is another very nice resource. http://www.kerneltrap.org/ is a less frequently updated site which can provide you with more advanced information. Keeping an eye on http://www.freshmeat.net/ can help you get a better feel for the various software available for Linux. And of course, with gmail you can setup alerts for Linux, KDE, etc.

If you really want to learn more about Linux, there's no better way than distro hopping. Go to http://www.vmware.com/ and download their free VMWare Server 1.0 to allow you to try out various distros without having to wipe your hard drive. This does, however, require you have a decent amount of RAM (I'd recommend at least 1 GB). Go to http://www.distrowatch.com/ for a fairly complete list of the available Linux distros, sorted by popularity.

If all these links really don't solve your problems, take yourself over to your best local bookstore and buy a book or two. The drawback of doing this, however, is that most of them will be pretty much out of date by the time they hit the shelves. On the other hand, they will give you a great foundation upon which you can build (update yourself) easily by utilizing the online resources.

Also, never forget about http://www.google.com/linux!

Just taking a shot in the dark (as I don't have an old nvidia), but is this the package you're looking for?

http://packages.ubuntulinux.org/dapper/misc/nvidia -glx-legacy

Ubuntu is not a company, it is a community-driven distribution. Canonical Ltd. is a major financial sponsor of Ubuntu, but (AFAIK) provides very little guidance of the project.

That's also why I am a little surprised that Ubuntu's source code isn't up on their download page, there isn't even a link to it.

Ubuntu is a Linux distribution. The source to the packages is available in the same place as the packages themselves. Because of the way APT works, it doesn't make sense to have a monolithic source download for that sort of thing. You can download the source via the package manager.

You clearly asked the wrong people. Much like Debian, Ubuntu's packages can be found quite easily on its website. A quick search here leads to the kernel image package; there you can find a link leading you to the kernel source package used to generate the image.

The APT package management system also provides commands that make it quite easy to download source automatically.

You clearly asked the wrong people. Much like Debian, Ubuntu's packages can be found quite easily on its website. A quick search here leads to the kernel image package; there you can find a link leading you to the kernel source package used to generate the image.

The APT package management system also provides commands that make it quite easy to download source automatically.

You clearly asked the wrong people. Much like Debian, Ubuntu's packages can be found quite easily on its website. A quick search here leads to the kernel image package; there you can find a link leading you to the kernel source package used to generate the image.

The APT package management system also provides commands that make it quite easy to download source automatically.

I know you say you still need IE for things but, seriously, if that's the trouble you go to to avoid malware, maybe it's time to download that Ubuntu ISO. Hell, even a Gentoo install would be a timesaver.

You can use Kickstart on Ubuntu, or you can use Ubuntu's automatic installation (preseeding debian-installer), which is much more powerful, and lets you configure pretty much anything you want at install time.

Actually you can get Flight 7 at ftp://cdimage.ubuntulinux.org/cdimage/releases/6.0 6/flight-7 G.

> As far as other choises go, the obvious one Ubuntu is way too much a software for hippies by hippies. I would prefer some German precision in my Linux.

Are you trying to say Ubuntu is easier?

Here is a typical example of me doing something under SuSE and one under Ubuntu.

SuSe: Choose ATi driver from driver list in YasT's graphic card settings

Ubuntu: https://wiki.ubuntulinux.org/BinaryDriverHowto/ATI

Original poster:
> Try a new full featured distribution (The kind you could expect a non-tech to use) on old hardware

Parent poster:
> Gentoo tweaked out properly will run fast as hell, as will Ubuntu.

You expect a non-tech to use Gentoo?

I don't know any non-tech who'd want to wait a day for everything to compile.

Ubuntu isn't that user friendly, compare https://wiki.ubuntulinux.org/BinaryDriverHowto/ATI to just typing "urpmi xorg-ati" on a friendlier distro.

> Go to the XFCE desktop and you get even more speed, and while not for the non-tech savy, Fluxbox flies.

Of course it doesn't help much if the person is running a bunch of K application and hasn't started a session manager.

> I run Ubuntu on an old P2 machine with 256 RAM and the thing works beautifully. Smoother than XP.

I could probably get XP to run smoother with tweaks too, and hell knows there is a lot of things you can do.

> Do a couple of tweaks with the useless programs that start on bootup (mainly in relation to laptops) and your boot and shutdown process is a bit faster and is the experience using it.

Sounds like "disabling services" under Windows, I still don't expect the non-tech todo this.

> I'm currently using a Firefox fork on my main machine (Flock) and i'm loading pages faster than Opera does on any OS and takes less memory.

Good for you. My personal expirences however are quite different, Opera has a smaller memory footprint and 'snappier'. Unfortunately my 1GB of ram does not appease Firefox.

> How much older do you want to go to breathe new life into it? 486?

If you can get a decent desktop system working on a 486, I'd like to know.

What? Are you comparing PXE and Kickstart like they're similar in any way? Lemme see if I can help clear up some of your confusion...

PXE is a standardized boot environment for network booting. Your network card and TFTP + DHCP servers work together to set that up. Most modern NICs support PXE as their netboot option. It's OS neutral.

Kickstart is a file format that describes what packages to install, where to get them, and what installer options to use. It's redHat's format, but Ubuntu supports Kickstart files. On Debian-based distros, though, better than that is FAI (Fully Automatic Installer). It not only specifies the installer options, package sources, and packages to install, it lets you pre-configure the packages in lots of cases, and it's easy to build from an installed system. Kickstart lets you run scripts at differnet times, sure, but so does FAI. The RHEL installer builds a kickstart file based on your install settings, but that doesn't packages installed later - you can build an FAI file from a running system's current configuration at any time.

Anyway, to network install a RedHat-based distro, you have to network boot the installer. Same thing as with Ubuntu or any other distro. Both support PXE, and AFAIK that's it for netboot. Unless you count EFI, which I'm sure Ubuntu supports, and I assume FC does since RHEL does. Both also support making bootable images for CDs that have setup options. But, like RPM, RedHat's option is "ok" but still lacking some nice features compared to other systems.

Also interesting to note about Ubuntu is the presence of http://packages.ubuntulinux.org/dapper/misc/initrd -netboot-tools and http://packages.ubuntulinux.org/dapper/misc/kernel -image-netbootable - as long as we're talking about network booting...

What? Are you comparing PXE and Kickstart like they're similar in any way? Lemme see if I can help clear up some of your confusion...

PXE is a standardized boot environment for network booting. Your network card and TFTP + DHCP servers work together to set that up. Most modern NICs support PXE as their netboot option. It's OS neutral.

Kickstart is a file format that describes what packages to install, where to get them, and what installer options to use. It's redHat's format, but Ubuntu supports Kickstart files. On Debian-based distros, though, better than that is FAI (Fully Automatic Installer). It not only specifies the installer options, package sources, and packages to install, it lets you pre-configure the packages in lots of cases, and it's easy to build from an installed system. Kickstart lets you run scripts at differnet times, sure, but so does FAI. The RHEL installer builds a kickstart file based on your install settings, but that doesn't packages installed later - you can build an FAI file from a running system's current configuration at any time.

Anyway, to network install a RedHat-based distro, you have to network boot the installer. Same thing as with Ubuntu or any other distro. Both support PXE, and AFAIK that's it for netboot. Unless you count EFI, which I'm sure Ubuntu supports, and I assume FC does since RHEL does. Both also support making bootable images for CDs that have setup options. But, like RPM, RedHat's option is "ok" but still lacking some nice features compared to other systems.

Also interesting to note about Ubuntu is the presence of http://packages.ubuntulinux.org/dapper/misc/initrd -netboot-tools and http://packages.ubuntulinux.org/dapper/misc/kernel -image-netbootable - as long as we're talking about network booting...

Oh and before you suggest installing the codec's, checkout the ununtu forum. The how-to goes forever... and I am yet to see synaptic work even once!!!

They can't include it by default due to licensing problems. Here's how to do it:

1. Enable multiverse & universe repos
2. use apt or synaptic to install the gstreamer0.8-mad* package.
3. listen to mp3s

Done deal. As far as synaptic "not working", I've never had a problem with it, and I am running 6.06 which is still unstable. Maybe you just didn't have all the repositories enabled?

*DISCLAIMER: I am not a lawyer, I don't know about licensing issues, etc involved with this package - use your own discretion in installing packages on your system in accordance with local laws, etc

TFA reviews Flight5. Ubuntu is now testing Flight6. You can find the daily build here.

Remember, it's still alpha.

BeOS was 90 percent hot air. To achieve any seriously noticable improvement you'd have to own a SMP system, which were incredibly rare for desktop machines. Yes, it meant you could decode DVDs while doing something else, back when computers of the day were ill prepared to accomplish the task.

As for Linux, and the improvements they can do, most have already been done. There are programs like readahead that do the same thing as OSX and XP's prefetching. That particular readahead was first packaged in late 04. Prelinking ("prebinding")is supported on gcc, but it can be dangerous so most distributions leave it as an option rather than a default. And obviously any of the other gcc supported "speedups" are available to linux.

About the only filesystem feature I'm aware of that Linux has is journalling. ext3, like HFS+, has journalling tacked on to it, with impressive results. ext3 also supports full data journalling, unlike HFS and ext3. I'm not sure hot file clustering is worth the troubles -- you've already got a cache in RAM of files, and it's much faster. The fact that header files find their way into the hot file cache suggests to me that it's not very useful. ext and HFS are both extent based which makes them fairly resistant to fragmentation on large drives. Someone more familiar with ext might chime in with a tool to measure this on ext3.

Kernel extension caches I'm not sure about. As far as I know, Linux modules load quickly; if you wanted them cached I presume you could compile them into the kernel ;). I don't think it would be impossible to accomplish but I doubt anyone's tried.

Aha, actual information as opposed chest beating. It seems almost scientific. Is this allowed ??!!

As far as the hardware limitations go there is this guideline to go by but you should probably try the live disk in some of the older machines to get an idea of how they actually feel running Ubuntu.

Finally you and your PC can be friends again! ;)

Sorry, but there *is* a patch available: here.

Get your install CD solution here.

I lready upgraded my OS from Windows XP 2 years ago...

I know Vista just keeps giving me more and more reason to overcome my difficulties with Linux.

Need to overcome difficulties with Linux? Try http://www.ubuntulinux.org/.

http://www.novell.com/linux/suse/
http://fedora.redhat.com/
http://www.ubuntulinux.org/
http://frontal1.mandriva.com/community/
https://www.scientificlinux.org/

http://ubuntulinux.org/

So you can sleep at night...

Try this bugfix instead.

The patch can be found here:

http://www.ubuntulinux.org/newsitems/release510/

Try Ubuntu (website), it's the most user friendly distro ive tried, and its the only one i can recommend to windows users who want to try linux

Gaim. Ubuntu. Merry Christmas!

Just as good as Debian, RedHat or SUSE. Why wouldn't it be?

And it's been certified for IBM DB2

http://www.ubuntulinux.org/newsitems/db2cert

My setup:

• A 6 year old IBM NetVista (cost 100 NZ dollars)
• Wordpress (free)
• Ubuntu(free)
• Dyndns(free)

Setting up taught me things I didn't know about MySQL, Apache and Ubuntu and I don't have to rely on a third party provider.

Profit???

One of the things that i think might have been a key to Ubuntu's success is the very fact that they didn't ship with the various multimedia libraries necessary. Yes it's all true that it installs easily on almost any hardware, and yes the chocolate coloured theme is quite pleasant. But i think there was a real magic trick to leaving out mp3's and avi's.

let me put it this way: you get a fresh clean install and there's nothing at all to configure or fuss with. seems great but you can't play mp3's. hunh? it's a small thing, you can figure it out. so you go and do a little search at Ubuntu and they explain that it's not free. you're a newbie to linux and you don't understand how it's different here than on your windows box. so you drift over to GNU and do a little reading. maybe you learn about free-as-in-beer vs free-as-in-speech.

then you go back to the friendly forums and find a nice step by step on how to add in extra repositories. wow, all this stuff is free, and hey look how much there is in the Universe, and then in the Multiverse. yoiks! this linux thing is amazing. and it's not so tough.

and i think that might be the whole point. someone waltzing into a full distro with everything in the world (even a program that will time how long your tea steeps) is a lot more intimidating than most of us really think. and of course the exact same goes for a distro that you're compiling from scratch. if there is any single thing i think Ubuntu has going for it, it is that it gives you everything a complete OS really needs to have (office, web, photos) but somehow sneaks in just a small lesson here and there about what the linux world is really about. if your parents can read a help menu (and the Breezy Badger help is one of the best i've ever read) they can figure out those little things that will eventually convert them to being true penguin lovers for life

Don't bother using Ubuntu, since Gnome will be your interface. Just throw out that entire distro.

how about a linux live cd that is configured to automaticly get on the net via DHCP and with a webbrowser? ...and no open ports
oh ...wait ...we already have that ..

It seems that nowadays no discussion of Debian is complete without mentioning Ubuntu. I'm very much impressed with what Ubuntu has accomplished. It really is a great distro. But Ubuntu would be nowhere without Debian. I would have liked to hear his thoughts on Ubuntu. Does it's existence help or hinder Debian? I have heard elsewhere that Ubuntu and Debian do work together on some issues, and that it has been positive for both distros. Still, I would have liked to hear whether he considers Ubuntu a good thing, and what his experiences have been in dealing with that team.

This article was posted a little while ago about a user who used Ubuntu in a completly MS environment without his boss noticing for a few months. (linked article from the story)

My experience with it is that it's one of the most mature Desktop distributions, coming complete with most of the tools one would need to perform most jobs. Easy install, and you can use Syntaptic/apt-get for upgrades and additional installation since it's Debian based. You should check it out.

From http://www.ubuntulinux.org/ubuntu/relationship/doc ument_view

As Ubuntu prepares for release, we "freeze" a snapshot of debian's development archive ('sid').

Ubuntu is built on debian.

If Debian folds, Ubuntu will either (a) have to start their own primary linux distribution or (b) start leeching off of someone else as they are a derivitive work which was my point. Look at Slackware, despite Patrick Volkerding's health problems the releases have been steady. However a derivitive work whose upstream decides to fold will find themselves in a very uncomfortable position.

-everphilski-

I'm sorry if I confused anybody, the problem is with Microsoft's Virtual PC 2003 and Ubuntu. I have no experience with VMware but from the posts I'm reading it sounds like it works fine with Ubuntu.

As for my problem, I think I found a fix: https://www.ubuntulinux.org/support/documentation/ faq/helpcenterfaq.2004-10-07.7629841254

If you are refering to the original post, which was me, It is "Microsoft's virtual PC 2003" that I'm having trouble installing Ubuntu on. I have the same problem wit h Debian and Fedora. I read somewhere that VirtualPC has a rather limited color depth or something. Although I haven't tried it, a quick google shows this fix:

https://www.ubuntulinux.org/support/documentation/ faq/helpcenterfaq.2004-10-07.7629841254

It seems, from the various posts, users of VMware do not have any trouble installing Ubuntu.

Canonical provides paid support for Ubuntu (http://www.ubuntulinux.org/support/supportoptions /paidsupport/)