The other Operating System (no, not OSX)

[99.vikram]

After much deliberation I decided that I had to alert the internets to the awesome experience I've had with Lunix. I mean Linux.

I installed PCLinuxOS a couple of months back, having read that it's a great newbie-friendly distro. The installation itself went quite smoothly (I used my trusty Norton Partition Magic). After logging in to my user account I discovered that I already had all the tools to start being productive. OpenOffice, Amarok, KDE, Beryl, it was all there. The first thing that I did was configure Beryl. The rest of the day was spent in admiring the stretchy, wobbly windows and the desktop switching effect.

The next time I logged in I installed Quake 3. This involved copying a file from my Windows installation of Q3A and then running a script. The game worked perfectly (better than on Windows, actually) and all was well. But when I tried to run it later the sound was missing. This was the first problem I had faced so far, so I was a little nervous. But id had thoughtfully provided the solution to this in the Readme file - go to the terminal and set the permissions for some file to Read/Write. This was my first experience with Linux terminal.

After spending some time learning the basic commands (ps, free, ls, chown etc.) the terminal had started growing on me. Within just a couple of weeks, I was writing scripts to do everything I wanted instead of using the GUI. I configured my hardware using text files, which felt a lot easier than searching through the massive Windows registry to do things. Another week later, I had compiled a small program myself! The largest program I had ever compiled on Window was like a 1000 lines.

Of course, there were many small problems here and there. After my PC crashed twice in one day I got rid of Beryl. It might be prettier than Vista, but it's not stable enough yet. I also found that I could get REAL work done on Linux. After getting Qucs and Octave, I haven't had to login to Windows for a while. I won't have to keep Matlab or PSpice now.

I might even move on to Gentoo soon! :bounce:

On a related note...

I installed Windows 3.11 using DOSBox today morning, just to reminisce about the first OS I ever used. I have many fond memories of Paintbrush, Powerpoint and a whole lot of 16 and 256 color games. I haven't installed the SoundBlaster and SVGA drivers yet, but it's still great to be able to play the games you grew up with.

Here's how I did it:

Installation
Windows 3.1 Stuff
The Games

Screenies:

Windows Explorer
Installed Games
Programs Window (Start menu work-alike)
MS Office 4.2 (I couldn't find the English version. )

Try it out! :thumbs:

EDIT: Oh, and it boots in under a second. Take that, Vista!

 

[Operational]

I've tried Linux and found it overrated, or at least it's strengths weren't useful to me. The four biggest uses of my PC are the Internet, Games, Media and Productivity.
When I tried Linux I was on dial-up and Linux didn't work with my WinModem.
Games, well the situation might have improved it's still a case of you play games you have Windows.
Media, I never tried video but the MP3 players left much to be desired, eg no playlist and would often not play the file. I'll get to my problems install other Linux software in a sec.
Linux did have OpenOffice and I think I got the printer working. I didn't have any problems programming under it for Uni (which is why it was installed in the first place).
I did have problems installing/compiling other Linux software, mostly because the programs were looking for libraries in the 'wrong' spot, I thought it might just be my distribution so I tried another with simular problems.

In short: call it a noob OS if you want but I get more done with less hassle using Windows than Linux, at least for the time being.

 

[99.vikram]

Oh, I'll keep Windows for when good games come along. But there's been a bit of a slump in the gaming department since December (I'm not big on multiplayer).

That's not to say that Linux doesn't have good games - I've installed and loved FreeCiv, FreeCol, Cube 2 and Bos Wars. There are some like LinCity-NG and Globulation which are interesting but not fully fleshed out. And if nothing else gets you hooked, there's still Quake 3 and Doom 1/2/3.

It's an interesting experience anyway, you learn a lot of stuff that you don't find out from running a Live CD for 10 minutes.
Windows is a ready-to-use solution, Linux is something of a learning experience.

 

[Operational]

Windows is a ready-to-use solution, Linux is something of a learning experience.

Absolutely, but I don't want my OS to be a learning experience I'd rather it just work.