My experience switching to Linux

[warpig]

Since I first came into contact with the tech enthusiast community, I've been constantly exposed to open source fanatics and FOSS enthusiasts, as well as less dedicated users, singing the praise of Linux over it's closed source competitors. While I've dabbled in Linux before, I've never made any attempt to use it as my daily driver OS, but the beginning of the Linux foundation's free introduction to Linux course, as well as the impending depreciation of Windows 7 have finally given me the push I've needed to switch over, at least for a couple of weeks. 

 

This thread will contain my thoughts and comments as I make the switch, while I expect most of it will be nonsensical rambling about my new OS, I would be eternally grateful if some benevolent gurus would take pity on this noob and teach me to tie my virtual shoes when I inevitably fowl up.   

[Vacsol]

There are several Linux power users on the forum.

Whish distro are you thinking of?

Debian based?

Ubuntu based?

[warpig]

Whelp, time to remove the HDD currently containing my windows installation and reformat the SSD that I'll be installing Linux on. I'll be using Opensuse 13.1 KDE, which I've chosen after much deliberation and many live USB sticks due to it's powerful but user friendly administration tools, as well as It's Aero-like interface. I've created a live USB using the universal USB installer tool from pendrivelinux.com, the hardware I'll be installing it on can be found in my profile. 

[Guest]

Nice to see some more people who are willing to switch to Linux on this forum. Have you decided on a distro yet? If you want a very windows-like experience I can recommend Zorin or Mint/Xubuntu. If you like OSX then definitely elementary OS. I hope that you'll have a decent experience with Linux. Many distros are actually very beginners friendly and easy to use nowadays.

[warpig]

Have you decided on a distro yet?

Opensuse 13.1. Just finished up installing, about to remove the liveusb and reboot.

[warpig]

Well, I'm up and running. Opensuse loaded up fairly quick once first-time configuration had finished. For some reason, my network card wasn't being detected when I first booted up, rebooting didn't fix this. I proceeded to upen up Yast and fiddle more or less randomely with any setting that looked like they might be related to my problem, this caused a message stating that I had unplugged my ethernet cable to appear. Rebooted and was rewarded with internet.

[warpig]

Apparently this distribution has options in its settings to adjust mouse acceleration, cursor threshold, and a few other esoteric settings, but has no sensitivity slider, nor an option to completely disable acceleration.

In other news, I find myself unable to install the packman repository. I'll post the error I'm getting later.

[SevagH]

I make my living on Linux. I actually work for an open-source engineering firm where everybody uses Linux and the preferred distro by a mile is Fedora. If you find yourself hating the distros you choose, I'd say give Fedora a shot.

 

Using Linux is a pain sometimes but the user experience has improved. For example, Flash used to be a nightmare but now it comes with Chrome. Linux still has a learning curve - to install Chrome on Fedora for example, it's not an official Fedora package so you have to add the repository manually. There's plenty of guides on how to do it but if one is unfamiliar with the command line and to just install the most popular web browser on the planet they need to mess around with the terminal, I can see where frustration can occur and where people say "screw this, I'm going back to Windows".

 

In any case, the tradeoff for the difficult initiation of Linux is that once you're comfortable with it, the sky's the limit for what you can accomplish.

[Speedbird]

There are several Linux power users on the forum.

Whish distro are you thinking of?

Debian based?

Ubuntu based?

Ubuntu is based on Debian

[warpig]

@SevagH

I've tried fedora and really like it. I would install it in a heartbeat were it not such a pain in the ass to get FGLRX installed.

[Vacsol]

Ubuntu is based on Debian

it is, but it's strayed fairly far concerning user experience to the point that I'd consider it different

[warpig]

Got FGLRX and Steam installed. Getting the proprietary drivers was a lot more difficult then it should have been, for a new user, going through the rigmarole of different sites and utilities is extremely confusing.

[Majinferno]

Never used OPENSUSE as a distro. I mainly stick with Ubuntu or Linux Mint. Hope you continue with this thread.

[warpig]

For some reason, opensuse is only recognizing 7.7 gb of my 8gb of ram.

[warpig]

Anyone know of a open source alternative to Fraps for framerate monitoring in games?

[bradscoolio]

Ubuntu is based on Debian

True to a certain extent though not for convenience factor. Debian is rolling, Ubuntu is not.

I made the mistake of going with Mint 16 instead of MintDeb, which would have saved me from having to reinstall for the latest stuff every 6 months

I'm likely going to have to make the switch at some point and redownload all my packages

 

Anyone know of a open source alternative to Fraps for framerate monitoring in games?

I've looked around but unfortunately nothing of use pops up, only really old and unsupported titles will work with it.

However, if the games you're playing have developer consoles then in the case of source games you can use "cl_drawfps 1" to get a fps counter.

Other games have this as well but you'll have to google to find those Unfortunately not all.

[warpig]

I've been having some trouble with video playback. Whenever I attempt to make a flash video fullscreen, it defaults to the 1080p monitor I have in portrait mode instead of the moniter I have the window open in. Youtube is an exception, while it will open on the monitor I had the window on, the video won't run in a letterbox if I have it on one of my 4:3 displays, instead putting black bars around both the video and the play/pause/options menu.

[warpig]

Well, I still can't find a solution to my problem with displays, and I find myself unable to install anything using playonlinux. I may end up moving to a different distro.

[warpig]

I find myself unable to figure out how to format a USB flash drive. There does not seem to be any GUI tool to do so, and when I attempt to do it using the command line I get the following:

 

bartosik@Linux-lamx:~> sudo mkfs.ext4 -n 'sbyn' -I /dev/sdc1
sudo: mkfs.ext4: command not found

[warpig]

Had to open up the partition editor and wait for it to load for 30 seconds, throw an error and crash, open it up again, wade through some cryptic menus, and fiddle with inscrutable options to do something that I do several times a day in windows with two clicks. This is nearly frustrating enough to prompt me to abandon Linux as my main OS outright.

[warpig]

double post

[Vacsol]

Had to open up the partition editor and wait for it to load for 30 seconds, throw an error and crash, open it up again, wade through some cryptic menus, and fiddle with inscrutable options to do something that I do several times a day in windows with two clicks. This is nearly frustrating enough to prompt me to abandon Linux as my main OS outright.

that's just SUSE. can't really judge every Linux distro based on SUSE.

it's far easier on "beginner" distros like Ubuntu

[SevagH]

fdisk should do the trick.

 

fdisk /dev/sdc

p (print the partitions)

n (make a new one, specify the appropriate options)

w (write your changes)

exit fdisk

 

Then: mkfs.partitiontype on the partition you created (if you created one, it would be /dev/sdc1). 

 

If you don't have mkfs, maybe you have to install the package. 

 

As a side note/hint, looking for GUI versions of things in Linux might bring more pain than benefit, because most of the standard, well-supported, well-documented, powerful and popular Linux programs (fdisk, ifconfig, netstat, tcpdump, grep, sed, whatever) are command-line.

 

Better would be to use Google to figure out how to do things. You could easily search "mkfs.ext4 package not found" error and learn A) how to fix it and B) how to diagnose and fix it next time. 

 

"How to partition usb stick linux" would probably give you a good result on Stackoverflow about how to use fdisk. That's how I recommend you learn Linux. Imitate answers given on forums online until you're comfortable enough to figure stuff out on your own (with manpages or --help/-h options or what have you). 

[madcow]

Those are some strange issues. I think you should try another distro. I recently had great success with the latest Fedora on a laptop. Recommended.

[7850OC]

on my weak machine (1 tiny core, at 1700 mhz) with 2GB of ram

 

i test many distros this days back (6 or 7) and at the end...

 

i stay with my Ubuntu GNOME 14.04 64 bits

 

 

my cpu need all the help he can get, and he feel the weight of normal distros like Ubuntu 14.04

 

(and easy test is just run a you tube video at 480p and try get 30 fps all the time)

 

 

and the GNOME 3 is the one that make that all work run well on my machine

 

yea, i know many don't like the big change

 

but "is the lightest environment test" of all

 

and she truly help a "lot" on a weak system

 

 

anyway, just to they give him a chance

 

i love gnome, from the first time i came to linux world

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNOME