Baumblog EST 1968 - A blog for the Baumbachs who originated in Syracuse, NY

Goodbye, Windows. I've grown wearly of the crappy OS that XP has become with all the "fixes" MS has supplied over the years, and have no intention of going to Vista. So, I'm acquiring a DVD with Ubuntu 7.04 and will be testing it on my gaming rig next week. Since we converted to OpenOffice two years ago, we've been weening ourselves off MS bit by bit. Yay! This will be my first non-MS os since Novell Dos 7 (which was still pretty much an MS product, hehe).

I'll let you know how it goes. One word for you: no more *^@@$%!! windows licensing! No more WGA!

Marc said about 1 hour later

You're almost there, one more OS jump (::cough:: Mac ::cough::) and you'll be in the right place! ;)

Ubuntu is clearly the best version of Linux I've seen though. But...it's still Linux. All the issues you deal with while dealing with Windows will be gone, but they will be replaced with likely endless driver "issues" and lack of good applications. Note I said good and I quoted issues. There's plenty of junk applications out there for Linux and although your drivers will likely install, they may act up. But that depends highly on the components in your machine. Feel free to contact me if you're looking for a specific application, I've most likely spent an unbelievable amount of time finding a good one for Linux.

I don't mean to get your hopes down, but don't get your hopes up. I'd honestly take XP or Vista over almost any version of Linux just because I don't have the time to install my video card drivers, configure them, debug them, reinstall them, configure them differently, debug them, repeat.

Also, how are you going to game in Linux, or are you an all console guy now (Understandable, I haven't played a game on the PC in like 2 years)?
GJ said about 10 hours later

Drivers: haha, using older hardware (read, 2002-2005 stuff), so I'm not expecting hideous driver issues. Still, I expect a few hiccups, especially with the more interesting hardware and of course, my printers. As for the video card driver issue that you describe--I am doing EXACTLY that with XP, so worst case I see no difference. If anything, I'm just so damn sick of the BSOD that I need a change of scenery.

Good apps:

Open Office: That's the primary app I'll be installing, and it works pretty darn good on XP, so I expect it to work the same over on Linux.
Wine: Supposed to be a pretty good win-compatibility app. We'll see just how good it is. :)

I will need a GUI compression interface (I can do gzip, tar, compress, etc., but I'm not the only one using this box), email and browser (plan to use Firefox and T-bird, like I do today).

I'll want a nice editor...right now, I'll likely use Edit Plus thru Wine till I find something decent that runs native in Linux. I'm not a vi snob by any means. :)

Obviously, I'll need some other cool tools--cd / dvd burning software, etc.

Gaming: I've spent most of the past year console bound because my machines have been very unstable, to say the least. I do plan to game on Linux, likely thru Wine for my existing Win games, and I'll see what's out there in terms of native Linux games. I assume, next to nothing beyond simple casual games.
Marc said about 10 hours later

Funny you should mention a GUI compression interface for Linux. To be honest, I don't know of a good one. If you were using KDE as a window manager, it comes with one called Ark, which is "ok", but get this: It doesn't work on any other Linux window manager. Since you're using Ubuntu, you'll be using Gnome as your window manager (Unless they've changed that, I know they're talking about switching back to KDE), so I don't have any good suggestions, maybe they've got one built in now.

Open Office and Wine should work well. Open Office was practically born on Linux, so it's gonna work just as well if not better than on Windows. Wine works really well for a lot of applications or not at all.

A good editor would probably be jEdit. I spend most of my time in Eclipse nowadays, but I still pull out EditPlus for doing some pretty sweet text editing on regular old files. From what I've read, EditPlus should run fine under Wine, but if not jEdit is probably your best choice.

CD/DVD burning software, hopefully Gnome comes with some, I know KDE does. If not, I've heard some good things about X-CD-Roast.
Marc said about 11 hours later

Oh and vi absolutely...100% completely sucks. Vim is no better. It is the most difficult to use editor ever, and even when you finally learn how to do simple text editing (It's like Ctrl + I + I + Esc - 4 mod 2 right?), the added features are not worth it. But I'm not bitter or anything. :)
GJ said about 12 hours later

I've used vi for uh, like almost 20 years...it's a necessary evil, but as a unix programmer I do all my real editing in Edit+. In regards to KDE / Gnome, I think the DVD I'm getting has both Ubuntu and kubuntu on it.
Geoff said about 19 hours later

To make a quick jump back to Mac's for a second, I would like to put my 2 cents in for a moment. If you should ever decide to buy a Mac...make sure it is Intel based, which if you're buying new, won't be a problem.

I abhor my PowerPC mac. The OS is super duper cool, but the computer is super duper slow at times. That and it plays Flash files horribly...which is more of a Flash issue than anything, but irritates the heck out of me!

I hear the new intels though have worked wonders...then again I heard after buying a mac, I'd never turn back....eh, jury is still out on that one.
Marc said about 22 hours later

I don't know what's wrong with your computer. Did you ever try taking out that extra ram chip to see if that may be causing the strange problems?

All I know is you have a cat and a dog and animals are deadly to computers. I've heard many unbelievable computer problems that turned out to be problems with cats/dogs sleeping and/or walking on computer keyboards.

As another benefit to the Intel macs, you can run Windows natively on it, as well as Windows applications natively in Mac OS X using Parallels. Kicks Wine's butt any day.
GJ said about 24 hours later

Also, I can't run OS X on my hardware....I run AMD chips, kids, no SSE2 support.
GJ said 1 day later

Hey Marc--ever use Cedega for games in Linux?
Marc said 2 days later

Nope, I never really tried gaming in Linux, mostly cause I never gamed much in Windows either. I have heard of it and heard it works quite well. From what I've heard, you're best bet is to try it in Wine, if you want it to work better (or work at all) try it in Cedega. The only reason people say that is because it costs money, but supposedly it supports better high quality graphics support in most games compared to Wine.

Marc said 29 minutes later

Is it me or would a feature to "Auto-play all players" button be really handy? Most of this week I don't have any overlap and have to make any position decisions, just play all of them! Maybe I'm just missing that feature, but I've always thought that would be nice to have and it never shows up. I will say the drag-and-drop feature is a nice addition to the fantasy leagues.

GJ said about 1 hour later

Part of the skill in this game is knowing who not to play and when. :)

Marc said about 3 hours later

Yea, but I'm not gonna bench guys when they could possibly play. I need all the points I can get! Even if it's a risk to my +/- :)

GJ said about 4 hours later

Or your GAA and SV%. The Not Play Factor is much bigger for goalies.

Steve said about 7 hours later

I figured I'd dump my worst guy to get Teemu. If it doesn't work out, I'm sure that crappy player will still be available.

GJ said about 24 hours later

:) There are still a few gems left, especially in the offensive core. Not so much in defense, and practically no one in goalie land.

GJ said 1 day later

First games start Wed...get your lines ready before then!