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**VeniHemealm** · 01-18-2007, 09:17 PM

Originally posted by Lorizael
The appeal of running a computer absent the constraints of licenses and DRM and other restrictive policies is also there. The ideal is there in linux, but you'll find in order to do quite a few things and for cross-compatibility purposes, you'll be using restrictive licenses and DRM here and there.

When I was much younger I used to dabble with computers, programming, and hardware a lot more than I do now, and I would like to get back to that. Stepping into a whole new OS is one way to do that. You'll find that with many Linux distributions "ready for the desktop", like Ubuntu, you won't be doing much with programming. Indeed, a lot of it's gotten to fairly decent plug-and-play levels.

So what is there to know about Ubuntu and Linux? What should I be warned of before jumping into this? What other distros might I want to try? Other potential "easy" distributions include Xandros, Fedora, SuSE. The first one is most similar to Ubuntu in its attempt to be as powerfully easy to learn as possible.

How easy or hard is it to get online, Wired? Not very hard. Wireless is a bit trickier.

set up a chat client, Easy. Gaim. Or, if you have access to KDE (for instance, with Xandros), Kopete.

find drivers for my devices, Depends on what they are. Removable/flash devices are easy as pie; mainstream sound cards are easy; wired networking cards are easy. Graphics cards are trickier, as none of them have OSS drivers; nVidia's closed-source drivers are superior to ATi's, but to be honest, unless you want to play games, you don't need the advanced functionality provided by those closed drivers.

plays games (*cough* Civ 4)? $15 for a few months ($15 buys you a subscription for a bit, during which you can download the program and any updates...) will get you Cedega, which will allow you to run many games; you could get it for free by downloading the source and compiling it yourself, but that would require a fair amount of learning investment and time on your part.

How customizable is Linux? I don't know about Ubuntu--I use Gentoo, which is insanely customizable. I'd wager Ubuntu is far less so.

How easy is it to **** my system so hard I need to format the hdd? As difficult or easy as you want to make it. Don't operate in the root account, and you won't **** anything up. Though you will need to access it occasionally to install things...

And monkeys? Spank 'em.

01-18-2007, 09:17 PM	#9
VeniHemealm Join Date Oct 2005 Posts 468 Senior Member	Originally posted by Lorizael The appeal of running a computer absent the constraints of licenses and DRM and other restrictive policies is also there. The ideal is there in linux, but you'll find in order to do quite a few things and for cross-compatibility purposes, you'll be using restrictive licenses and DRM here and there. When I was much younger I used to dabble with computers, programming, and hardware a lot more than I do now, and I would like to get back to that. Stepping into a whole new OS is one way to do that. You'll find that with many Linux distributions "ready for the desktop", like Ubuntu, you won't be doing much with programming. Indeed, a lot of it's gotten to fairly decent plug-and-play levels. So what is there to know about Ubuntu and Linux? What should I be warned of before jumping into this? What other distros might I want to try? Other potential "easy" distributions include Xandros, Fedora, SuSE. The first one is most similar to Ubuntu in its attempt to be as powerfully easy to learn as possible. How easy or hard is it to get online, Wired? Not very hard. Wireless is a bit trickier. set up a chat client, Easy. Gaim. Or, if you have access to KDE (for instance, with Xandros), Kopete. find drivers for my devices, Depends on what they are. Removable/flash devices are easy as pie; mainstream sound cards are easy; wired networking cards are easy. Graphics cards are trickier, as none of them have OSS drivers; nVidia's closed-source drivers are superior to ATi's, but to be honest, unless you want to play games, you don't need the advanced functionality provided by those closed drivers. plays games (cough Civ 4)? $15 for a few months ($15 buys you a subscription for a bit, during which you can download the program and any updates...) will get you Cedega, which will allow you to run many games; you could get it for free by downloading the source and compiling it yourself, but that would require a fair amount of learning investment and time on your part. How customizable is Linux? I don't know about Ubuntu--I use Gentoo, which is insanely customizable. I'd wager Ubuntu is far less so. How easy is it to ** my system so hard I need to format the hdd? As difficult or easy as you want to make it. Don't operate in the root account, and you won't ** anything up. Though you will need to access it occasionally to install things... And monkeys? Spank 'em.
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