Looking for reasons to switch from XP...

[kona0197]

To fedora. I have a copy of FC3. Any good reasons? I'm really not liking XP. :cool:

[james_in_denver]

Why not keep XP installed and install FC3 in parallel with a "dual-boot" system.

You get the best of both worlds while you learn linux.

Advantages.....

Linux free, similar apps to anything available on windows, (in some cases MORE), learn a "real operating" system. Get to use leading edge technologies designed and built on Linux (apache webserver, postgres and mysql databases, web programming languages like PHP, Perl, Python, Tomcat (JSP reference), C++ and GUI development, no viruses, no spyware, and did I mention, it's all free?

Oh yeah, and sourcecode for all of that stuff too.

Well those are the good things. One or two problems you might run into are "hardware compatability". This is mostly true if you run SATA, wireless network devices, and some video cards (default VESA will work for most of them typically). It's best to check out a Linux hardware compatability site before you jump into things, just for a heads up on what problems you might run into.

downside??? Windows games....... (though I have heard that a product called "cedega" will allow you to play windows games under Linux, I have no experience with it though, and it does cost $$$)

[kona0197]

Well I'm not exactly a Linux noob. I just don't like XP. Ben thinking of switching for awhile now. Thank you for your input.

I think the only thing I need to learn is how to compile and install new programs.

[ghaefb]

Not liking XP... that's a good reason :)

I can see only good reasons for installing FC3.
I can tell you what tou need to "fix" after install: multimedia(mp3 support, video player), graphics driver(for 3d accelerated support) can sometimes be a struggle to install, if you have onboard or unsupported soundcard you can experience problems maybe.

[james_in_denver]

LOL, that's easy.....

(for most programs they are already "pre-built"...the "yum install someprogramhere" command is all ya need.

For anything distributed in a "tarball source" (usually filename ending in ".tgz" or ".tar.gz" this is how to compile

download the file

"cd /where/did/you/save/it/to"
"tar -xvzf thetarballfile.tgz"
"cd thedirectorythatthetarcommandcreated"
"./configure" (sometimes as an uppercase "C" as in "./Configure")

then the actual compile part is:
"make ; make install"

That's all there is to it typically. (though you might want to read the README or INSTALL files if they are included with the sourcecode "tarball".

[kona0197]

"tar -xvzf thetarballfile.tgz"

that's the ONLY thing I don't understand!

Only reason I don't like XP is the constant spy/ad/malware scans, defagging the HDD, and the virus scans. I don't run games on my PC - I used to but it takes to much $$$ to keep up on the new games and the hardware to run them. :)

[james_in_denver]

"tar -xvzf thetarballfile.tgz" = "think windows "winzip" utility from a command prompt.

(and by the way, the filesystem browsers can typically open/extract those for you as well if you don't want to learn the command line stuff)

"tar" = "tape archiver" from way back when in unix days when software was shipped on magnetic tapes.

the "-xvzf"??, "x" = "extract", "v" - "verbose" (list files while extracting/creating). "z" means normal compression, "f" is always followed by the filename that you are working with....

That wasn't so painful was it?

[kona0197]

Glad I came here - you guys rock. Thank you. ;)

[james_in_denver]

A few things I forgot.......

You might want to keep the Windows partition alive until you have all the hardware issues in Linux figured out. There's nothing worse than needing to google something becuase your internet connection is down...but you can't configure the connection until you google it, but you can't google it because you can't get on the 'net....You get the picture I'm sure.

Also Linux doesn't play very nicely with some winmodems.

lastly, sometimes a "tarball source package" will end with a ".tar.bz2" or simply ".bz2" you need to substitute "j" for the "z" above for "bunzip2" compression/decompression, and don't ask me why they chose "j" for bzip2 files, I don't have a clue..

[kona0197]

What is better for a "sort of" noobie? Mandrake or Fedora? keep in mind I have installed Fedora a few months ago and was mighty impressed. I don't want anything as easy as windows though - I need to learn somewhere! :)

[james_in_denver]

Neither is hard in my opinion.....

One thing to keep in mind is that the "core" of the operating system, (in Linux terms the "kernel"), comes from http://www.kernel.org/

No matter WHAT distribution you use. Window managers? same thing (www.kde.org), the Apache webserver?, same thing (www.apache.org).

So in reality, the different distributions are probably something like 99% the same as far as basic similiraties go.

Just so happens "fedora" is kind of on the leading edge of most release packages, (way leading edge).

[kona0197]

Leading edge is good. But it's stable right? :cool:

[roolegion]

I have had Fedora up now for three days, letting the screensaver bounce molecules over my screen. I come in, brush the mouse and my screen is there - no waiting for the OS to stop hogging the resources, like Windows did. I am there and ready to go - and running at 40 degrees centigrade, on an Athlon XP chip, as well, during a tropical early autumn in no air-con ! I can't say anything else is more stable !! :)

[Lopov]

Why not keep XP installed and install FC3 in parallel with a "dual-boot" system.

You get the best of both worlds while you learn linux.



Although I would not use the words "best" and "winxp" together in the same sentence imho.

[james_in_denver]

Well, I have to disagree SLIGHTLY......

I have a wireless network card in my laptop that doesn't work under linux (yet :) ).....

and nobody will argue that some games are almost entirely dependant on Windows......

That's why I dual boot......work on linux, surf on linux, but for game play? it's Windows for now :(

[kona0197]

I think I'll keep my questions in one thread instead of satrting new threads!

I heard Fedora is a "Beta" OS - Is that true? Not sure I want to install a "Beta" OS on my machine as betas usually are a bit unpredictably and not quite stable.

Another question - is it hard to set up MP3 and MPEG and/or DVD playback on fedora? I love my Windows Media Player. Anything like that on fedora?

Sorry - I'm just a guy trying to take a small step into a bigger world by taking the road less traveled... :)

[Engmar]

I heard Fedora is a "Beta" OS - Is that true? Not sure I want to install a "Beta" OS on my machine as betas usually are a bit unpredictably and not quite stable.

Another question - is it hard to set up MP3 and MPEG and/or DVD playback on fedora? I love my Windows Media Player. Anything like that on fedora?

Fedora isn't any more beta than XP, or any other OS for that matter. Some wrinkles don't get ironed out until an OS hits general use on _lots_ of different configurations. There are beta releases, but they are clearly labelled as TEST (although some folks will load up TEST releases and wonder why they aren't stable :D )

Setting up a Fedora system is not that difficult, but just hard enough to be educational. Guides such as [this] (http://stanton-finley.net/fedora_core_3_installation_notes.html) one and [this] (http://www.fedorafaq.org/) one are very helpful.

[kona0197]

Thank you very much for the links. Quite helpful. ;)

[nephila]

To fedora. I have a copy of FC3. Any good reasons? I'm really not liking XP. :cool:

That seems like a rather rhetorical question, if you don't like XP shouldn't that be reason enough to switch?

[kona0197]

That seems like a rather rhetorical question, if you don't like XP shouldn't that be reason enough to switch?

Well not really. I grew up on MS products. I learned the in and outs throughly of 98/ME/2K/XP. I like the fact WMP can play MP3, MPEG, AVI,and DVD - all in one program. I love IE. The only reason I don't like XP? Spyware scans and defragging. Guess I was looking for something easier. I guess XP is easy enough. :)

[james_in_denver]

I think I'll keep my questions in one thread instead of satrting new threads!

I heard Fedora is a "Beta" OS - Is that true? Not sure I want to install a "Beta" OS on my machine as betas usually are a bit unpredictably and not quite stable.

Another question - is it hard to set up MP3 and MPEG and/or DVD playback on fedora? I love my Windows Media Player. Anything like that on fedora?

Sorry - I'm just a guy trying to take a small step into a bigger world by taking the road less traveled...


Fedora is "beta" in the sense that no other distribution combines all of the latest sofware packages into one "bundle". However my experience has been that Fedora offers the newest, leading edge, technologies from several different "software sources".

I have run RedHat/Fedora since the 7.x days (and slackware before that), and have never run into "show-stopping" problems.

xmms works fine for me on my "FC4-x86-64" install on a laptop, I will download and install the "xine" video player tomorrow, though I can't imagine that "xine" will be a problem, it's been very stable for a couple of years now. And while Fedora includes the latest "xorg"/"X-11" software, and the latest and greatest windows managers, these have all pretty much been independantly tested on their own, independant of the fedora project (FWIW, I'm running the 2.6.11.6 "pre" kernel, months ahead of the Fedora project, and no problems there).

It isn't that "Fedora" is untested, because each and every component is tested/released before Fedora packages them, it's just that it is most likely that not many people have installed so many new packages in one lump sum.

But, that being said, 3 days of FC4t1 on my laptop without a problem....and I am "testing" xine by watching a few back episodes of one of my favorite TV series, and look forward to watching "Oceans 12" in a few minutes.

[nephila]

I'm running Fedora Core 2 as an email and web server and its still a 100 times more stable than windows ever will be, and no Fedora isn't Beta software, its just not tested as stringently as red hat enterprise is, having said that, it's tested pretty thoroughly anyway.

[kona0197]

A few more questions if I may!!

1. Can Fedora run my Digimax 420 camera? This would be a big point in the debate of switching to linux. :)

2. Can I access a NTFS or FAT32 Hard Drive using Fedora so I can copy my pld digi cam pictures to my new Fedora OS system?

I'm almost ready to switch... :)

[james_in_denver]

Linux can read from NTFS, and Linux can read and write to Fat32.

If your camera uses USB and stores the images as "DOS FAT"(very common) or "DOS FAT32", then you are good to go.....

(there is also a Linux driver that purports to read and write NTFS, I've just never bothered to try it out....)

[nandowong]

i was scared at first so i dual booted. came in handy when i broke stuff, i could boot xp to post here and find an answer. but i learned a ton, now i deleted xp and use linux only. I dont regret it one bit

[kona0197]

I'm NOW using FC3 - but I have a question. I installed Nvidia drivers and I need to edit something. HOW?

FROM A DIFFERENT WEBSITE:

first of all i need to know where modprobe.conf is...

CODE

whereis modprobe.conf


and now i can edit it (yep, as root). i edited the alias lines to load nvnet and nvsound, and removed the options for the old snd8x0 drivers, leaving my config as follows:

alias eth0 nvnet
alias snd-card-0 nvsound
alias usb-controller ohci-hcd

after changing the audio device to threaded oss (in control center - sound and multimedia - sound system - hardware), its time for a reboot.

all was well, no errors, and the networks still up. though its worth checking nothing muted in kmix, its also worth noting nvidia have there own mixer. from a terminal launch nvmixer to use it.

[BandC]

You know how to open a terminal and enter commands?

Right click on desktop and select "Open Terminal". There is your command prompt.

Become root:

su -

Type in your root password.

Then type:

gedit filename

filename being the entire path to your file. Or you can cd your way into the directory and just type the filename instead. Edit the text file to make your changes.

[cardinal II]

To fedora. I have a copy of FC3. Any good reasons? I'm really not liking XP. :cool:

It sounds like you want us to 'sell' you Linux. Forget it. Use it or don't, do some research yourself and make the decision. :mad:

[kona0197]

cardinal II - maybe you should read the whole thread. I don't know but your post sounds almost down right mean. I am using Fedora now. :)

I was just looking for help and some good reasons to switch. I never wanted Fedora "sold" to me. :confused:

[nrune]

Well having made the switch from Xp to FC3 very recently. I can tell you that it works as well if not better than xp. I lost my rescue disk and Toshiba refused to send/sell me a new one. So loaded FC3 and found it to be great! There was tons of solutions that I found in these forums to solve my every issue. Now I run FC3 on my Toshiba a15 exclusively.

Word of advice, buy the driverloader drivers for the windows wireless card, works like a dream, no muss no fuss well worth it.

Thanks for all the info in the forums, you have made a difficult transition easy.

[Shadow Skill]

Well I use Linux almost exsclusively on my laptop [About 99% of the time sadly I still have to keep windows 2000 around because of school.] and I will say that FC works alot better than windows did for me anyway just in terms of not having to worry about adware etc. On my desktop I have been able to get Gentoo to behave mostly although I still can't get aac playback to work with anything using xine I find that I am able to leave it up without experiencing slowdown unlike with windows. It really depends on what you need to do, I still have real issues with multimedia but other than that one glaring thing everything works fine. [I don't even waste my time with ati drivers anymore :) so I won't count it as an issue for myself.]

[Vinneh]

"Fedora Core" sounds so much better than "windows XP" doesn't it?
If you look at it realistically, you're going to run into problems on both OS's.
Windows will do everything except what you want it to, but you may get frustrated from the lack of attention linux can get from developers such as Adobe (I still think photoshop kicks the crap out of gimp). Fedora may work better, but most likely it will work better with less things.
But, it sounds cooler, so why not?

[Alfred]

I have been running Fedora Core 3 since early February. This is my deepest dive into Linux so far. I have tried Linux before but never stuck with it. I installed it dual-boot with WinXP. I have managed to sort out accessing my documents on a shared FAT32 partition. I have set-up my browser and desktop they way I want it. I have decided to use KDE (and even upgraded to KDE 3.4). I installed my NVidia driver as well as installed Adobe Reader 7. However, in my limited experience I have to say that Linux is not quite yet for prime-time. A lot of the things that I can do in WinXP I still can't do in Linux (e.g. sync my Palm Zire 71, run Adobe Photoshop, play different audio and video formats effortlessly, install software effortlessly). Although FC3 does a lot of things well - getting it to do the things that are not available by default takes a great deal of effort. This includes using the terminal (archane unix syntax) as well as editing config files. However this is Linux! powerful, but you need to know your stuff. Fortunately there are good how-to's around as well as great forums like this one.

If you want to ensure that everything just works - use WinXP. Microsoft has every manufacturer in their pocket. Windows is easy, but much less configurable, and much less powerful under the hood. Usability is more intuative in Windows (I found -- but is that because we have been brought up in a Windows world?).

Anyway - multimedia was a bit of a headache - I wish I had a mediaplayer that played everything in Fedora. But stability is great. Right now Fedora is a hobby for me. I don't know enough about Linux to really call it my primary OS, so that's why I still have WinXP installed too. In a year we'll see where I'm at....

[kona0197]

I would like to thank everyone for their replies.

Sadly I have gone back to XP. It simply works. It has a easy to use do-it-all media player. Things are easy to install. Driver support is better.

Besides the girlfriend dosen't want to learn a new OS and I don't have the time to set up a dual boot system.

Not to mention I don't like Firefox (and never will) and I love IE.

After some more reading and maybe after Linux matures for a few more years I'll look into it again. After all - Linux has got better since '00 when I first used it.

Thanks again. :)

[Trendkill]

everybody has said all these things i would have already said, apart from one thing.

there is a good new way to install ap's onto your pc, if you have a net connection.
its called "yum"

what is yum? if they have it in their list, you can type into a command prompt (or alternatively use a program called yumex, which is a GUI for it) "yum install applicationnamegoeshere"

this downloads, installs and puts a shortcut to any program you want pretty much. also, if you need dependancies for a program, no worries, yum will install them prior to the main package you asked for.

pretty cool, ey?

that was one of the big reasons i switched over from windows to linux. plus, everythings free, slightly different, open source and as a help desk styled person i notice so many problems with xp security and malware.. why use windows, when you need to use 3rd party programs to protect it from dying in the ass, when there are O/S's, developed by hobbyists and users that are pretty much immune to virus' due to the community diversity

let me ask you this questions : microsoft employ people to design their operating systems, and have big security issues, malware, viruses, constant "fixes" released and never seem to get it right, and on the other side of the fence we have normal people developing O/S systems because they want to, getting it more right than microsoft, not getting paid for it and in the end developing a more secure product than microsoft could ever produce, no matter the $$$ they have... with no need to download or buy 3rd party programs to make sure the thing works.. so the questions is, why not switch?

edit: oh.. my.. god.. you LIKE IE?! if you hate firefox at least use opera and dont leave yourself open to attacks.. god!!!

[kona0197]

Yes I like IE. I'm protected very well and I rarely get any kind of spyware or malware. I have never been hacked. Things will get better when IE7 comes out this Summer.

As far as using windows... well when the Linux community gets its act together and decices to fight MS head on all together and make a distro as nice as windows then I'll switch.

Until then I need XP - Simply because it works. Better hardware support. More software tittles. Less boot-up time. easy to skin.

By the way Linux needs a Do-it-all media player...

[Alfred]

I am wondering whether a different distro would be better. I have a number of nagging problems that have prevented me from switching completely from WinXP. These include: not being able to sync my Palm Zire 71, problems with sound mixing in KDE etc. Has anyone tried SuSE or another distro that is very stable and things work without spending hours configuring it and googling for solutions?

[Trendkill]

debian is pretty good like that as its releases are far and few between, so when they do release stuff, its rock solid..

suse is a VERY good O/S, so good it can actually be bought as well, it supports quite a bit
mandrake is also a excellent O/S and has been voted the best linux O/S out there.

i guess its all upto you. fedora is probably not the distro for you if you want to setup a O/S and keep it forever, as it is is the ever updated o/s, as red hat use it to base the red hat O/S on it.

try suse or mandrake 10

edit:
and kona its no problem, i didnt mean to seem like a troll its just i read a few things on tweakxp.com about how internet explorer wasnt safe for 84% of the year while firefox wasnt safe for only 15% of the year.. thats a big significant difference imo, and a very good reason to scrap IE all together.

tweakxp also recon that a recent study showed a windows xp without some kind of firewall will be infected with spyware or virii within 20 minutes of being online to the internet (just connected, not browsing)

its all good though. ever tried linspire?