Lynux
- Thread starter stsoftltd
- Start date
Its not virus free. It however is more secure and less prone to attack due to the nature of the OS and the simple fact that its not as widely used.
I personally like Linux. Its faster, more responsive and once you get to grips with it youcan be a lot more productive due to its shortcuts and quick nature.
However, It will be a learning curve
You wont get any windows apps ( Outlook , Excel, Office etc ) but there are alternatives. some better than others.
Idealy what you should do is "dual boot" your pc / laptop. have it setup so when you power it on you get to choose if you want to use windows or linux until the next reboot.
This way, if you find you cant do something in linux simply because you dont know how to yet and NEED to get it done, you can simply reboot and load into windows as normal.
Id say, Go for it. Its great. ( id suggest using either Ubuntu or Fedora/Redhat Linux. ) but you are getting into a fairly large learning curve.
I personally like Linux. Its faster, more responsive and once you get to grips with it youcan be a lot more productive due to its shortcuts and quick nature.
However, It will be a learning curve
You wont get any windows apps ( Outlook , Excel, Office etc ) but there are alternatives. some better than others.
Idealy what you should do is "dual boot" your pc / laptop. have it setup so when you power it on you get to choose if you want to use windows or linux until the next reboot.
This way, if you find you cant do something in linux simply because you dont know how to yet and NEED to get it done, you can simply reboot and load into windows as normal.
Id say, Go for it. Its great. ( id suggest using either Ubuntu or Fedora/Redhat Linux. ) but you are getting into a fairly large learning curve.
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M
mcgb
It's incorrect to say Linux is "virus free" - it really isn't. It simply holds less of a market share than Windows and OS X, so it's not as targeted as the latter two operating systems. It's more than possible to write a virus for Linux, but because of the way the kernel has been written, its open source nature and other considerations, it's reasonably more secure "out of the box" than Windows is. That's not to say human error can't reduce this security down to nothing, though 
Another option is also using Virtual Box to run a local copy in a sandbox. You can go into full screen mode and get a feel of things in there. It won't be as fast as running the distribution on bare metal, but you'll get a feel for things without taking drastic measures like carving up your HDD partition table.
Eeeek! RedHat (RHEL) is an enterprise class distribution using an old (stable) kernel version (2.6) and is designed for server environments, not desktops. Fedora, however, is a good desktop experience, but not as wide spread or used as Ubuntu. I highly recommend Ubuntu 12 LTS or 13.10 if you're happy with potential issues.
Again, go for a Virtual Box VM if you don't fancy dual-booting; you won't gain anything or miss any features using a VM.
Another option is also using Virtual Box to run a local copy in a sandbox. You can go into full screen mode and get a feel of things in there. It won't be as fast as running the distribution on bare metal, but you'll get a feel for things without taking drastic measures like carving up your HDD partition table.
Eeeek! RedHat (RHEL) is an enterprise class distribution using an old (stable) kernel version (2.6) and is designed for server environments, not desktops. Fedora, however, is a good desktop experience, but not as wide spread or used as Ubuntu. I highly recommend Ubuntu 12 LTS or 13.10 if you're happy with potential issues.
Again, go for a Virtual Box VM if you don't fancy dual-booting; you won't gain anything or miss any features using a VM.
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M
mcgb
Yeah this is a big one. The second one to this is discrete graphics drivers (not to mention the choice of vendor in the first place): do you go binary/proprietary or open source? Choices, choices
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http://www.lynux.com/
Linux is great, for productivity and programming I wouldn't use anything else
Windows is for Netflix and games and thats only because I have to...
Linux is great, for productivity and programming I wouldn't use anything else
Windows is for Netflix and games and thats only because I have to...
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You can use Wubi to install Linux onto a PC with Windows already installed to get a taste of it.
http://www.ubuntu.com/download/desktop/windows-installer
Is also really handy for when windows breaks as you can then boot into Linux instead to fix it.
http://www.ubuntu.com/download/desktop/windows-installer
Is also really handy for when windows breaks as you can then boot into Linux instead to fix it.
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Sorry i wasnt clear.. by redhat i simply meant redhat derivitives.. ie fedora...
I agree. Use ubuntu. Virtualbox is a good option but you wont get the right feel unless you dual boot. So yes. Use a vm. But remember it may be sluggish.. this isnt normal and try to put that to the side.
I would highly suggest you get used to the command line (terminal) application and doing some things using it.. its daunting and may seem like a step back from the pretty gui but you will find with time that being a (power user) as such you will never go back. I cant wait to get back into a job that has a lot of linux stuff. Instead im stuck with cisco boooooo
I agree. Use ubuntu. Virtualbox is a good option but you wont get the right feel unless you dual boot. So yes. Use a vm. But remember it may be sluggish.. this isnt normal and try to put that to the side.
I would highly suggest you get used to the command line (terminal) application and doing some things using it.. its daunting and may seem like a step back from the pretty gui but you will find with time that being a (power user) as such you will never go back. I cant wait to get back into a job that has a lot of linux stuff. Instead im stuck with cisco boooooo
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You can, of course, but perhaps worth pointing out that Ubuntu now contains spyware. Probably no worse than being logged into a Google account, but it's there.
Depends on your attitude to such things as to whether it's an issue or not. More information here:
http://www.fsf.org/blogs/rms/ubuntu-spyware-what-to-do
Personally I've abandoned Ubuntu and now use Debian.
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I personally never use Ubuntu ( or any Debian based one ).
Im a Fedora and Centos kinda guy. Altho, I did quite like linuxmint albeit debian based.
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L
leemason
I'm using ROSA at the moment: http://www.rosalab.com/. Works very well on my Dell Vostro Laptop. It's a Russian distro based on Mandriva Linux (a French distribution)! Lot's of choice in the Linux world!
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I have been using linux for about 14 years, if you want to learn linux I would suggest using Ubuntu for desktop as its widely used and will most likely support your graphics card etc.
If you want to do any work on servers go for CentOS as it is a free version of Redhat, for servers Redhat is the most popular choice of distro, I would say 90% of the linux consulting work I do these days is for Redhat.
Try to get your head around using the command line and the differences between the the two operating systems and feel comfortable searching for the answers .e.g.
in ubuntu to upgrade your software the command is: apt-get upgrade
in centos to upgrade your software the command is: yum upgrade
Once your comfortable take a look at the other distros, I am a big fan of Suse and Linux mint, or if you want to have a little fun look at Kali Linux ;-)
If you want to do any work on servers go for CentOS as it is a free version of Redhat, for servers Redhat is the most popular choice of distro, I would say 90% of the linux consulting work I do these days is for Redhat.
Try to get your head around using the command line and the differences between the the two operating systems and feel comfortable searching for the answers .e.g.
in ubuntu to upgrade your software the command is: apt-get upgrade
in centos to upgrade your software the command is: yum upgrade
Once your comfortable take a look at the other distros, I am a big fan of Suse and Linux mint, or if you want to have a little fun look at Kali Linux ;-)
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M
mcgb
Just an additional here. Ubuntu is based on Debian, or at least it was, and uses a DEB based package management system. Redhat based systems, such as CentOS or Scientific Linux, use RPM based packages.
You could be worth reviewing the differences and the software used to manage them, such as apt and dpkg vs yum and rpm.
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Linux is just a Kernel not an OS! Bunch of software put around makes it a distro.
You should tell us a bit more .. what do you expect from distro to offer? Do you look to do certain tasks, etc. Out there are thousands of distros based on different versions of Kernel. Then again are you in for a rolling release or not? Most likely you look for a distro that is beginner easy. There are quite a few around but most of them come with bloatware, so it's smart to start with minimal Linux / distro install and built packages according to your needs - window manager, desktop environment, apps, etc.
You can start with distrowatch.com to learn more.
You should tell us a bit more .. what do you expect from distro to offer? Do you look to do certain tasks, etc. Out there are thousands of distros based on different versions of Kernel. Then again are you in for a rolling release or not? Most likely you look for a distro that is beginner easy. There are quite a few around but most of them come with bloatware, so it's smart to start with minimal Linux / distro install and built packages according to your needs - window manager, desktop environment, apps, etc.
You can start with distrowatch.com to learn more.
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0
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