Viable Linux Destop?

Originally posted by jaguar
Where do you live i'm stealing that box. Now.
GForce3+Dual800G4.....*drools*

fairfax, virginia. i type these words right now on the apple pro keyboard, watching them on a sony cpd-g400 19" flatscreen .24 aperture grille monitor, 1600x1200... it's very nice

i have some pictures up... you can check 'em out... it's my temporary setup on jenni's drafting table until i get a desk for it...

http://www.digipulse.org/images/pimpintosh/P0000705.jpg
http://www.digipulse.org/images/pimpintosh/P0000706.jpg
http://www.digipulse.org/images/pimpintosh/P0000707.jpg

what can i say... i'm a computer addict man... going to be building a dual athlon next...

this machine took me a while to get right with the order... but man... it's nice... 1.152 gigs of ram right now... gonna up that to 1.5 in a few weeks... ah...

you can see a picture of my main desk in my bedroom here:

http://www.gaveup.org/dave/images/desk/P0000575.JPG

[jaguar]

...............Bastard!!!!!!!!! :p
Jordia eh? Won't beat the Palm M505 i'm buying next week so HAH
Damn, talk about small victory. THe comptuer desk in my roon is a jungle coz i'm building boxen for others now, currantly there a 2U Rackmount that's going to be a webservre and an Athlon 1.3 without its case as well as my box + 2 17in, 1 15in, 3keyboards etc, hub, shit everywhere pretty much.

jag - i've got a palm vx. and my jornada 720 will rip up the palm m505 easily... but, since i'm giving jenni my vx (so she can keep her school schedule, numbers, work schedule, meetings, etc in it) and getting an m505, it's really a moot point... palm os 4 looks nice eh?

how much they going for down there? i haven't looked, but i think i can get 'em as low as like $400 here... that's usd, of course...

my desk used to be a mess, but i like to have a nice clean space... once i get bigger desks though, mmm boy... hehe...

you should take a picture. i like seeing desk setups...

i'll grab a picture of my router and shit... it's upstairs in the office... i have entirely too many computers

[jaguar]

NO dig camera (waste of money i always thought) but i wil sometime when its at its worst (4 boxen, 4 moniters etc..)
cable hell! I once blew the power fuse by loading it all on one power plug too hehehe.

yeah. i know what you mean about cables. my speakers (klipsch promedia 2.1's) have a fair amount of cables... along with all the twisted pair running behind the desk, the machine under the bed (486/33, debian box, running as a secure communications server - don't ask), my main box, laptop, etc... too many cables but i'm looking to get rid of the problem soon... i'd like to keep just my laptop in my bedroom and all the other computers somewhere else... and currently i only have 4 in the bedroom (an old mac, the 486 i just mentioned, the main machine and the laptop, plus the jornada if you count that, which i don't). i've got 2 others out in the den that i'd really like to put near my main box (the pimpintosh and the retro gaming box, which is a k6/2 450 running win2k so i can play worms2 and shit). jenni's imac can sit whereever. but yeah. not enough space. i've got it somewhat straightened up now. just need to clean under the desk and get rid of that old mac. might sell it or something. have a nice monitor for it too. anyway. back to "work"...

[jaguar]

I swear i wanna buy a rack if they wern't so loud/expensive, just so nice to put so many boxen with so little floorspace, have it next to me desk *perfect*. In the menatime ill lvie with the jungle, its not too bad, i know where everything is and mum won't touch it which is good coz theres 2 flasks of jim beam in one *lol*. I shoudl make use of it as cooling fluid for a while, alchol is aparantly very good. Only done one watercooling setup thoough, i just don't like so much water near so much expensive electronics.

[mbpark]

Hello,

I learned one great thing about Linux today .

It runs just fine on a 486DX2/50 with 28MB RAM as a little text box I can use for ssh, lynx, and other small things.

I got a 2.5GB (originally 4.1 with bad sectors), and put it right in my old Compaq LTE Elite laptop with mono screen. No X, since that's just BAD at 640*480 on a black and white screen, and with a weird chipset no less.

Now, when I have to ssh into servers and use all I need, I have a little linux box to do it all. I didn't need any more. I also use a P150MMX laptop with 48MB RAM as an Xterm for the Solaris boxes, since that has a better-supported chipset, even though it's a NeoMagic.

The only not-so-good thing was the fact that openssl and openssh take several hours to compile and run on a 486, but I can deal with that now that I have ssh and scp and it makes me happy to do so.

Plus, Linux was the only OS that could deal with the wacked PCMCIA setup, as well as the interesting other configuration niceties you get with a Compaq laptop. If you've ever used or owned one, you know exactly what I mean. FreeBSD hated this laptop with a passion.

Now, I've got a use for something that would be completely out of place running Windows 95. And it does the job better.

Originally posted by mbpark
Hello,

I learned one great thing about Linux today .

It runs just fine on a 486DX2/50 with 28MB RAM as a little text box I can use for ssh, lynx, and other small things.

I have a slackware box up in Maryland that's got an uptime of about 390 days (it was 384 some time last week, I just forget what day).

Nothing special about that really, 'cept that it's a 486dx/33 with 12 megs of ram...

runs great. Like you said, ssh, lynx, BitchX, etc. Although BitchX took a LONG time to compile

You can run linux on anything. You just need to have to will to take an hour to make it work.

[jaguar]

FreeBSD hated this laptop with a passion.
FreeBSd. On laptop? *gives you a wierd look*
Thats like True64UNIX on a palm pilot.

[juju]

I'm pretty sure you CAN play Counterstrike on Linux. Half-Life works through Wine. The opening menus are screwed-up looking and a little slow, but the game itself works flawlessly. Just fire it up through Wine and join a Counterstrike game. I used to play Team Fortress Classic on Linux all the time.

Oh, and by the way dhamsaic, none of your screenshot links worked for me. What's up?

For web browing in Linux, I love Konqueror. It loads so freaking fast! Another great thing about Konqueror -- you know how when you want to type in a new url into the address bar, you have to move your mouse to highlight the address that's already there, and delete it, then click in the little address space to change cursor focus, and then type your url? Well, with Konqueror, you just have this little 'X' icon next to the address bar. Click it, and the address field is automatically emptied and the cursor focus is switched to the address bar, complete with blinking cursor. One left mouse-click, and you've done all of the above. Okay, I know you're thinking, "So freaking what? Come on juju, are you really that lazy??" Well, quite frankly, yes! It's less mouse movements, less clicks, and less button-presses. Click one icon and start typing the url. I love that feature! :]

Another great Konqueror feature is that you can set allow or deny rules for java, javscript, and cookies for specific domains. So, you could turn java or javascript or cookies off for all sites, but allow them for your bank (or vice versa). Also, you can leave javascript on but turn javascript popups off. Really useful for porn or warez sites (not that i visit those). :]

For e-mail, I use kmail. A lot of people seem to be searching for the "perfect e-mail client". I don't really get this -- what exactly are people's exorbiant e-mail needs? It either receives your e-mail or it doesn't, right? Anyway, kmail loads fairly quickly as long as the kde libs are already loaded, and it's similar enough to Outlook that I can make my way around it pretty easily.

oh oh..and gaim is not only a good aim client..it's an awesome one. It has plugins for irc, icq, msn, yahoo, and several other im protocols that i have no clue about. The newest version even does aol buddy icons.

Anyway.. unless you're playing games or composing Word 2000 documents (staroffice reads Word 97 documents), there's no reason you can't be using Linux as your desktop. Other than the fact that it's hard to learn, of course. :]

[jaguar]

Pretty much. If it wasen't for two things. VB, Acess. While both those programs are truely vile to work with our microsoft-whore school requires we use them.
hm ill try CS under wine some time soon, soon as i finish installing/playing with mandrake 8.1 =)

[MaggieL]

I've been exclusively Linux at home and for running my amateur satellite station for a number of years now. Running Enlightenment as a window manager rocks hard.

Originally posted by jaguar
Interesting. People who said browsers were a problem have a point, while Konqueror (which i typing this from) its generally very good, some websites kill it (including randomly, the search on the linux tucows site!) and there is no version of flash for it.

Hmmm. I have no browser problems. I do run more than one browser, but then I did that on Windows too.

Maybe you need to upgrade your Konqueror. I'm on 2.1.1, and it supports all Netscape/Mozilla plug-ins, including Flash and Java. There's also a facility for having it lie to specific sites as to what browser it is, too. This can help where the web programmer did something braindead.

My "dogfood" browser (the one I use most of the time--comes from the expression among Netscape developers "We eat our own dogfood.") is Mozilla 0.9.2. I keep Netscape 4.76 around to work around occasional bugs in Mozilla. Moz Mail at the 0.9.2 level has a few annoying bugs in folder management, and I use folders extensively, so these days my default mail client is Kmail, which is quite usable. I'm planning to go back to Moz Mail, probably the next time I bother to upgrade Mozilla. But for now with Kmail when I click on a link in an email it calls in Konqueror, whioch works well enough that I haven't bothered to change it. No biggie.

A *surprising* number of Windows apps work right out of the box with WINE, by the way. And game addicts will be interested in the current project to port DirectX V7 to WINE. FOr now I have the Linux port of Descent 2, and Flight Gear Flight Sim....this satisfies my gaming needs for now.

[juju]

Originally posted by MaggieL
I've been exclusively Linux at home and for running my amateur satellite station for a number of years now. Running Enlightenment as a window manager rocks hard.

I use Enlightenment, too! I honestly don't know how I ever lived without Virtual Desktops. It's like ten times more addicting than that little wheel-doohickey on mice. Once you get used ot it, it just feels wrong without it.

I also have Enlightenment start up Kicker on bootup (KDE's taskbar). It's a very cool and customizable taskbar.

But anyway, I always hated taskbars because they take up space on the screen when you're not using them. Yeah, I that know you can hit that little arrow and have it retract into the side of the screen, but a portion of it is still sticking out. That little 3-4 centimeter portion that's sticking out just bugs the freaking crap outta me. I want a taskbar that I can get rid of when I don't want it. So my solution? Don't run KDE, run Enlighenment with Kicker. The taskbar only shows up in one of your virtual desktops. And if I really feel the need to not have it in a single desktop, I can always just kill the taskbar and start it back up later at my own whim.

[jaguar]

Yea ill have to set the browser so it cliams ot be netscape, might solve a few problems..
Moz 9.5 is out and the word is good, i'm downloading it as I type =)

Anyone else see that slashdot article about Mandrake bringing out a gamer edition? Comes with WineX and Simcity. Transgamer are working on a version of WIne with DirectX support which i cannot wait for!

Every major OS apart from Windows now is using a *nixy base making posting so mcuh asier ts not funny, its OSX and Linux between can get a reasonably market share mabye it will be finally commonplace to make nix ports and release then simultaniously. (i know OSX and Linux aren't exactly one and the same but its one hell of alot smaller than windows to Linux)

As soons as exams are over i'm gonna have another big crack at Linux all the time and relaly try to wean myself off with wine. If i can get Photoshop working that'll be a signifigant slice of my computer itme already. Not to mention DiabloII =)

little 3-4 centimeter portion that's sticking out just bugs the freaking crap outta me.
3-4 CM?
more like mm..

One thing that was a tad buggy about the last KDE build i used was the bug where if you deleted an icon the space remained then when you added a new one there was still a stupid space...

Ah well, Mandrake 8.1 rocks for anyone that wants a desktop linux system, all they need now is apt-get =)

man. people always be like "damn g, that mac os x is fine, i be lovin' that aqua shit"... o' like "mutha fuckin' apt-get be da bomb!"... well i'z be like "yo, mutha fucka, if you be wantin' that shit, then BUY A FUCKING MAC OR JUST INSTALL GODDAMN DEBIAN!"

yes, apt-get rules hard. there is absolutely no fucking doubt about it. so INSTALL IT. mandrake shmandrake, you're gonna wind up installing debian anyway, so do it now and save yourself the time. seriously. as soon as i get my 36 gig u160 cheetah repaired (drive is fine - electronics on it died), i'm installing debian. trust me, you want to do it. as soon as you really play with it, you'll want to stick with it.

i don't call myself an elitist, but there is seriously no reason for computer-savvy persons such as yourself to mess with mandrake. it's a weaker linux, period. and the funny thing? it's HARDER TO MAINTAIN! people always say "debian's hard" - bollocks. yes, i have been into linux since 1996. that doesn't mean i'm RETARDED. mac os - easy to use. debian - NOT HARD. i didn't lose my perspective. you can do it, jaggy. debian. debian. debian. you owe it to yourself. and DO NOT BACK DOWN after a month. man, it took me like probably 3 months to finally kill my windows partition. just keep at it. you have to want to make it work. yeah, gimp isn't as good as photoshop. just make some sacrifices. LET GO.

now i'm starting to sound like tyler durden. i'm going to go eat pizza now. but seriously man. if you want apt-get, install debian. i'll answer all your questions. i promise.

on a side note - my friend locked us out of our server earlier (stuffnet.org - where digipulse & gaveup & whitesquirrel.net and all that shit is hosted). killed ssh. no telnet. so we had no shell. i actually managed to get in without doing any big known exploits. i'll give you a hit - it involved ftp, a little email and an exported display. how did i do it? first one to guess correctly gets a dollar or something.