Linux is the crap

[Weave]

I am in Redhat 7.3 and I am enjoying it. It came with Mozilla 0.99 or somthing like that... I rolled my own and nailed Mozilla 1.3 and am digin everything.

I do wanna zap the fluff... who give a crap about how many miles my mouse goes while I surf? Waste of disk. A friend is going to hook me up with Redhat 9 soon, so I am waiting.

Killer!

[admin]

it has been so long since i booted to Linux, i too think it is the crap. One of these days I will get Red Hat 9. I cant wait to hear what you think of it.

[Weave]

Well... wiped my hard drive (had RedHat 7.3 on it before) and I put Redhat 9 on there. Installed on an HP N3210 laptop (433 mhz AMD K₂6 processor on a 100 mhz bus, cheezy graphics with 8 megs of video ram, 248 megs of ram, cdrom, floppy, optical scrolling wheelmouse cause I hate the touchpad thing).

Install was smooth... even easier than installing 7.3. Supposedly it even found and configured my built-in winmodem. Don't have a dialup account anymore, so can't really test it out. Maybe I'll try to fax or something just to see if the thing works.

RedHat 9 has definately evolved. Good looking, functional, easy to figure out. They have added something akin to the "add/remove" programs applet in Windows. Using Mozilla 1.2 - and the fonts are alot smoother than the old setup.

I have tried to jack into my windows network and hook up to my shared printer, but so far I haven't gotten Linux to send the info through. I did manage to hook into the file sharing deal and I nailed one of my MP3's from my windows and dragged it to my linux. I had to download a MP3 plugin for XMMS as RedHat, fearing legal entanglements over the propriety MP3 format, withdrew MP3 support.

If I ever get the sharing deal worked out this will be really cool.

[neuromancer]

RedHat 9 has definately evolved. Good looking, functional, easy to figure out.

Yes, `The Nine` (coined by Tim and I likes that monikor) is a step up. I upgraded my 8.0 install to `The Nine`. That was probably the only disappointment I had with the new version. For some reason it frigged BIG time. I had to wipe and do a fresh install. I haven't heard of many complaints about the upgrade option but perhaps it was because I upgraded alot of the packages in 8.0 outside of the Red Hat realm of things.

Easy to figure out? OK, I'll accept that statement. Especially since I have been able to get things going in this install that I was not able to in 8.0. One in particular is `Mutt`. I was never able to get `Sendmail` to mask envelope in 8.0 ... a bit of RTFM and some easy configuration and bamm I'm there. Not sure why I am enthralled with Mutt but I guess it is just my geek bow to `Unix`. Still working on the .muttrc but that's coming along.

Browsers are all upgraded in `The Nine` and that is a good thing. I just started playing with Galeon again. Renders faster AND I just found out I can get Flash to load in it .... that was not possible in my 8.0 install (not sure if it was a user thing). One thing that I did do in my 8.0 install was upgrade the Mozilla install (outside of the Red Hat realm) and that broke my Galeon.

One of these days I will get Red Hat 9.

If you want Sal I can burn you the RH9 set and mail them off to you. You have high speed so you may be able grab the ISO's fast but the offer is on the table. Let me know ...

David

[admin]

thanks David, but i will end up grabbing it one of these days.

I would like to see how Red Hat is improving the OS. When i delete a lot of the crap i got on here Ill download em...

--Sal-

[gnubie]

I left off using Red Hat after version 7.3, something about 8 irked me. Two things actually: (1) They made it difficult to get to the command line (bash shell) after a stock install.  (2) The os is prone to overwritting your hand editied config files even when you tell it not to.  

It's still a damn fine os, but I recentely installed Mandrake 9.1 and am kinda stuck on it, was easy to get the dvd player xine to work, even though I could probably get mplayer or ogle working if I wanted to spend some time on it.  

My favorite distribution of Free Software using the Linux kernel is Debian (debian.org)  If you are in to server aplications it's a great system since it is very easy to update and patch using apt-get.  Also they name their releases after Toy Story characters, which is a pretty good idea. Their development version is always called SID after the bad kid, it also means "Still In Development"
Using Debian Sid is about the same as using any current version of Red Hat or Mandrake, SUSE etc...

btw Think Red Hat is incorporating apt-get into their distro now.

[Rob]

This Topic is way way to advanced for me I have no clue what you guys are talking about................ All i can say is that I dont have a Red Hat .....i have a Black hat, and i use to wear it when I had America Online 5.0... Sorry to Ruin your posting with my ridiculous quote.

[admin]

I have been using Apt Get since the first week or so of having Red Hat 8 installed.

I now use it with Synaptic though, its a GUI interface for apt-get. Pretty kewl.

This week we going to be installing Red Hat 8 in one of my clarsees. The prof keeps saying  I know a lot about Linux to my clarsemates, but the truth is, i cant recall much. I do remember having a lot of fun with it, and i learned a thing or two about how an OS works.

I love to read articles on how Linux has replaced Windows in big businesses. I only wish I could explain how i think Linux is going to be kicking some real MS arse very soon. I believe it, but cant put it into words.

I wish i had the time to catch up with you guys on Linux...

[neuromancer]

Just wondering if you got Red Hat 8 loaded in clarse ...

Sure wish I had clarsees when I was in school that loaded cool geek stuff for clarse .... my clarsees were all about dissection though ... LOL.

David

[admin]

have not loaded it yet, i didnt realize we were at the end of the week already when i posted that.

Last semester i gave this prof my red hat 8 to install.

i am going to Down the nine this weekend to give it a go in clarse as well.

we install some geeky stuff, but also some played out stuff, like MSDOS 6.2.2. But its all good. I think we have to learn from the past, even with software.

[neuromancer]

Sometimes the old stuff is very "telling". For instance, my playing around with old Mac systems was cool. Try to bleed the last inch out of an old OS can open your eyes to what the true power of modern OS's can do (and I'm not just talking faster processors). There is a lot of capabilities in the older systems ... they may run slower than crap but tweeking the entire package to optimize the limitations is a geeky endeavor that leaves a lasting impression. At least for me ....

Someday I want to load 3.1 and play with it.

David

[Weave]

Talk about a lag in the thread... so to pick it up again...

Awhile ago Kenny, from ADWH back in the day,  and I used to chat a bunch and email a bunch and the like. He was always trying software and OS's... he had it down, and every week or so I'd chat with him and he'd tell me he was running something different. He was the first one I knew that was totally into the disk imaging deal - he'd drop partitions, rebuild them, install an os, tweak it how he liked it, and then disk image the thing. He said he could flip back and forth from Win 95, 98, ME, NT4 within 20 to 30 minutes whenever he took a hankering to do so. Kinda like a Swiss Army Computer.

Over the last few years I have sorta gotten like that, although I am needing to go ahead and nail an imaging program already - I do mine from scratch every time. This week alone I have had Windows 98SE, NT4 Workstation, and now RedHat 9 again. I guess if I had a clarse or something that would requre me to kinda keep a stable footing I would probably stop messing around. Then again, in this house there are plenty of computers to be had... three desktops, one IBM compatible laptop and one Apple laptop, a Palm... Gameboy, Gameboy Advance, Dreamcast, PS2, Sega Genesis, Super Nintendo... if you can't find something digital in this house to do it is because you don't want to. Most of this stuff can go online, too.  

I have also gotten quite a few beater systems in the past. Some are chronicled on my site... I had an old IBM 486 that had 16 megs of memory - man, I had a ball with that thing... and it was given to me for free. I managed to use it to get Windows for Workgroups 3.11 jacked into my network and on the net. Killer! I also managed to get Dragon Linux to run and hit the net from that thing... and I must stress that you can definately learn something from playing with an old beater. I guess I figure that I got it for free... if I blow the damn thing up I still will have the learning experience.

Want some fun? Next time you see an old 386 laptop at a yard sale, nail it. Snag an old Mac and play. Atari 2600's are still the crap. Nintendo, Colecovision, TRS 80's, Commodore 64's... man, that is some good, cheap digital fun!

[neuromancer]

Not really Linux related ... although a lot of geek type linux users are also into shortwave radio ... this is my next search and acquire job. Looking into flea markets big time and local ham users. I got a line on a guy who has one but he is hesitant to sell since his wife bought it for him as a gift ... ugh ... working on him though. ebay is selling some anywhere from $50.00 with working units in the $150 to $200 range. They are heavy f*kers so the shipping costs pretty much kill the deal for me.

I am wanting to get into listening to Pirate Radio. There are several pirate broadcasts by Linux users and 2600 does a weekly (?) pirate broadcast. In my attempt to continue playing with `old` but still highly viable systems I want the Heathkit. The SB301 is the goal but a 310 would work for me too. After I get started I am considering getting a broadcast license and exploring the realm of `Ham Radio`. I would of course need to acquire the SB401 unit which is the companion `transmitter` to the SB301 Receiver.

[Weave]

Looking good!

2600 does do a radio program... "Off The Wall", and you can download it:

http://www.2600.com/offthewall/archive.html

Since it is talk radio it is not cut at a very high bitrate, but suitable for talkshow recording and all. I think the whole hour long show is something like 6 to 8 megs...

Those transmitters are nice. The only AM radio's I have ever messed with were the old WWII AM radios they had in the Army. They would transmit something like 7000 miles, depending on antennae configuration and what the "skipzone" was up to. We used to do both voice and teletype from them... and they were called RAT Rigs.  

[Weave]

Here is the radio I was talking about:

AN-GRC 106

http://www.qsl.net/vk4czt/grc106.htm