I'm tired.......I need something new and invigorating!

B

bountyhunter

Gawd
Joined
Jun 4, 2004
Messages
777
I'm tired of Windows.....I just don't like the way it works. I find the open source ideal to be much more interesting, so I'm going to be making a switch.

I want something powerful, not basic. I don't know much about coding or anything, but I would realy like to learn, and I want it to be a challenge fromt the getgo. I've heard the mandrake is realy basic, so that's out. No other Mac-Like things either. I want something [H]ard. I here slackware and debain are powerful things, and that's what I'm looking for. Also, I'd like to go 64 from the beginning, so unless anybodys willing to sell me a Nacona for <$200:D

Anyways, recomended hardware would be nice, and recomendations on useful books for basic coding would be apreciated also.
 
FreeBSD. It's made to be easy if you know it, and not get in the way by being overly helpful. It's also quite logical and well documented. Most hardware is supported, but get a nVidia card. Sparc, IA64 and x86-64 (AMD-64, as they call it) are all 64-bit and well supported.

You can compile or download+install the same programs as for Linux, and if you really need it, linux binaries can be run with practically no speed loss. (I've seen claims that it's been faster for some things.)
The're is a system for managing software, the ports system, that works very much like portage in gentoo. You can compile everything, or download packages, mixed and matched as you want. An important difference from most linux distros is the concept of the "base system": If you remove all ports, you're left with a system that has everything you need to get somewhere. (openssh, gcc, a working shell etc.). It is developed as one unit, so "FreeBSD 5.2.1" is one specific kernel + gcc + userland + openSSH etc.

You can upgrade the base system (by compiling it from source) with two commands and without touching the ports, and you can do whatever you want with ports on top of any FreeBSD version. They're quite independent.

See http://www.freebsd.org , and ask if you wonder about anything.
 
Well, how does compiling everything from source sound? Gentoo is nice. It's fun because after you're done installing it, you feel like you built the OS exactly the way you wanted it, nothing more nothing less. It may seem daunting at first, but after you've done it a couple of times it's pretty simple.

I like Debian for servers. It lacks a little for desktops because packages can get outdated. Stability is your trade off here.

I like Gentoo for desktops/workstations because it's optimized for your hardware and it doesn't install all of the junk you don't want like some other distros. Documentation for Gentoo is pretty good. Some one with little Linux experience could probably set it up. The Gentoo forums are some of the best Linux forums around as well.

Hardware: Anything you feel like spending money on, except maybe an ATI graphics card. Might want to stick with NVidia and save the complaints for something else. If you're not trying to game, then this doesn't really matter.
 
IA64?? Isn't that the Itanium code? is there anything other then Itanium in that?

How's slackware?
 
I'm tired.......I need something new and invigorating!
Click to expand...

viagra!


Seriously though, if you just want to mess around and not totally trash your windows, try knoptix. Its kinda fun but not real serious.
 
bountyhunter said:
IA64?? Isn't that the Itanium code? is there anything other then Itanium in that?

How's slackware?
Click to expand...

IA64 is Itanium and Itanium2, yes. It's shouldn't be that much harder to get your hands on than a nice alpha[1] or sparc. :D
(Expensive, though.)
I guess AMD-64 is the easier way to get to 64-bit at a decent speed for a decent price. :)


[1] FreeBSD/alpha was downed to the second level of support not too long ago from lack of developers, but it's perfectly usable. I use it daily.
(I don't know if you notice that I'm a fan :) )
 
HHunt said:
IA64 is Itanium and Itanium2, yes. It's shouldn't be that much harder to get your hands on than a nice alpha[1] or sparc. :D
(Expensive, though.)

Alpha and Sparc have both gone through periods of popularity
though. Itanium hasn't. I have piles of spare Sparcs, SGIs,
and RS/6000s, and I've yet to see a single Itanium in person.
(I'd like to keep it that way actually - Itanium is more a
sick parody of good design than anything else.)
On the other hand, I would *kill* for a Multiflow Trace.
Click to expand...
 
Yeah. (I have an sgi O2 and a digital alpha workstation myself :D )

However, a new itanium2 is fast, and a comparable mips, alpha or POWER4/5 will not be cheap either.
(The difference is, as we agree, that you can easily get a slightly slower, used, and much cheaper alpha/sparc/etc, while secondhand itaniums are thin on the ground.)
 
computerpro3 said:
viagra!


Seriously though, if you just want to mess around and not totally trash your windows, try knoptix. Its kinda fun but not real serious.
Click to expand...

eh, I've heard some bad things about knopix(though I don't think you can truly say anything bad about something that's free), But I am wanting to take this seriously. I'm tired of jacking around with video cards and processors......it's just to damn expensive. I'm looking for something to realy get into.

.........and I think I'll just stick to x86............
 
Find something and use it. What's going to work for one person isn't going to work for you.

Operating systems are tools. It helps to have a task in mind before you pick a tool to use for the task. Do you want to run a webserver? A file server? What do you want to do?

I started playing with Linux cause I wanted a C compiler and I couldn't afford one for Windows. From there I started using Linux for basic file-sharing through Samba at home. I then got going on setting up a web server, etc.

Fast-forward eight or nine years...I now run FreeBSD, cause I got sick of a lot of the bullshit that comes along with Linux. I run my own domain, I'm a Unix/Linux sysadmin for a living, etc.

It really depends on what you want to do. You listed some pretty nebulous things that could be done with just about any Linux distribution or any of the *BSDs out there...If you really want to learn how things work, you should probably slant towards one of the more "traditional" Linux distributions (Slackware, Debian, etc.) or one of the *BSDs (I'm partial to FreeBSD), simply cause they don't alter software (very much) to get it integrated in to their "way" of doing things...You'll get basically as-distributed config files to start with, etc.

There's nothing wrong with Alphas. :)
 
Since your thread got hijkacked I'll just put my opinion in, Gentoo if you want to do a lot of work( can take days compiling sometimes), or Debian.

I'm sure once you figure Gentoo out it will be very grafitfying, but it is indeed a lot of work.
 
err.. i wouldnt exactly call
emerge kde
a lot of work. Try installing a large package with all of its dozens of dependancies and configure options by hand, from source. :( I got fed up with this on slackware, now i am moving to debian. The one and only reason is package managment.
/hijack

but seriously, if you are interested in learning, I would try a variety of things. Try a few linux distros, a BSD or two, even solaris is free (as in beer) for x86 non smp now. You will then have some varied knowladge and expirence, and can make your own choice on what you want to stick with for a given task.
 
Jerunk said:
Since your thread got hijkacked I'll just put my opinion in, Gentoo if you want to do a lot of work( can take days compiling sometimes), or Debian.

I'm sure once you figure Gentoo out it will be very grafitfying, but it is indeed a lot of work.
Click to expand...

gentoo isn't a lot of work. The install is very involved, but you learn a LOT about how linux works during the install. but afteer the initial install it's great and very simple.
 
I've done a little investigating, so basicly what I want is a noob friendly but powerful system. It's to hard to find something that fits my needs, only something that doesn't.....
 
Really, you should be able to pick up even one of the supposedly "hard" ones (FreeBSD, gentoo, slackware(?)) if you are prepared to do a bit of research. Ideally you should have another computer to read manuals etc. online while setting it up.

The trend is that the ones without the pretty tools make up for it by having powerful / clean / both command-line tools.
 
I'd think FreeBSD or Gentoo would be up your alley. Gentoo was my first real distro that I used (real in the sense that I actually used it for more than a few days/weeks). It's actually not hard to install, as long as you read the manual. Both FreeBSD and Gentoo have pretty good/great package management systems, and if you're as willing to learn as you say you are, you shouldn't really have (m)any problems (except maybe a few kernel panics here and there :D ).

Debian I've never tried, and never really bothered to install because I've been running Gentoo for most of my Linux time (been meaning to install Arch Linux someday, and I think I was a little put off by the #debian irc people). Slackware I've helped my roommate with, but there's just something about it I don't really like.

Others I've used are Red Hat on a DEC Alpha, but I don't like RPM based distros.

As for books:

Linux System Administration by Nemeth if you go the Linux route. I can't recall the other two authors off the top of my head, but you'll know the book by its absolutely atrocious cover art.

And what languages were you looking to program in? I'm a C/C++/C#/Perl/PHP guy myself (no Java please, but I'm forced to use Java for some school work), so I can recommend some books. I personally would recommend Python as a first language, but never really hesitate to recommend C++ (depending)

C++ Primer Plus by Stephen Prata - still one of the better intros to C++ I've seen and read

Programming Perl by Larry Wall - it's a Perl book
Learning Perl by Randall Phoenix and Tom Christiansen - might be better as an intro to Perl if you want to learn Perl

And I can't recite any others off the top of my head.
 
Another book that I've used over the years has been Essential System Administration by AEleen Frisch. It's taught me some useful tricks for doing more complex sysadmin things over the years and I'm better off for reading/keeping it around.
 
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I was thinking about programming in C#, but I'm not completely sure. Are there a bunch of BSD distros, or is it more of a singular thing? There's just so many options, it's staggering.......
 
The major BSD distros are FreeBSD, OpenBSD, and NetBSD, with FreeBSD being the most popular. I think FreeBSD is the one you'd probably most want to look into.

OpenBSD I don't know much about.

NetBSD is aimed towards compatibility, it's supposed to run on almost anything, but again, I haven't used it (only FreeBSD).

C# is a nice language, but it doesn't have full support under *nix yet. There's the Mono Project which aims to bring an open source C# compiler and runtime environment to Linux/Unix/*BSD/MacOS X/Windows, etc, but it doesn't fully support every feature as far as I know (I think the Windows.Forms is the major one missing). I still code in C# under Linux though.

If you want a C# book, the best one out there is probably Programming C# by Jesse Liberty. I'm currently using it for my C# projects, if you could call them that.
 
To get an idea of what kind of documentation you will face, take a look at the FreeBSD handbook. It's considered one of the nicer examples. (Obscure posts in equally obscure mailinglists dug up through google make up the other end of the spectrum.)

I think the gentoo handbook is comparable, for everything else I have no idea.
 
I think freeBSD is the way I'll go for now...........but one last question. I've heard that these operating systems are much more stable then xp, so how does overclocking go. I want to get a cheapo celeron D cpu and overclock it to hell, mainly because I have absolutely no money. Anybody know how well FreeBsd/linux does w/ OCing? I know it's different with every distro, but I'm planning on sticking to the high quality things.......
 
bountyhunter said:
I think freeBSD is the way I'll go for now...........but one last question. I've heard that these operating systems are much more stable then xp, so how does overclocking go. I want to get a cheapo celeron D cpu and overclock it to hell, mainly because I have absolutely no money. Anybody know how well FreeBsd/linux does w/ OCing? I know it's different with every distro, but I'm planning on sticking to the high quality things.......
Click to expand...

Debian by its self is a very stable distro. But, packages can be fairly outdated. Depending on what you're using it for, this may not matter.
 
bountyhunter said:
I think freeBSD is the way I'll go for now...........but one last question. I've heard that these operating systems are much more stable then xp, so how does overclocking go. I want to get a cheapo celeron D cpu and overclock it to hell, mainly because I have absolutely no money. Anybody know how well FreeBsd/linux does w/ OCing? I know it's different with every distro, but I'm planning on sticking to the high quality things.......
Click to expand...
I dont think I;ve ever seen any linux vs windows overclocking results. If you do do it, i would be very interested to see what you turned up. Just see how high you can get using the same chip, and making sure both are 100% stable.
 
BSD and Linux use about the same specs, they can be configured to run on just about anything.
 
I loaded FBSD 4.9 the other day on a P3 600 w/ 128MB of RAM and it runs great. From power on to login takes < 2 minutes after tweaking the kernel. The machine is not/will not be running X. No clue how well it would run on that but it probably would not be pretty lol. Compiling things takes awhile (started a build world and left it overnight ;) ) but day to day operation seems fine.
 
spectrum said:
I loaded FBSD 4.9 the other day on a P3 600 w/ 128MB of RAM and it runs great. From power on to login takes < 2 minutes after tweaking the kernel. The machine is not/will not be running X. No clue how well it would run on that but it probably would not be pretty lol. Compiling things takes awhile (started a build world and left it overnight ;) ) but day to day operation seems fine.
Click to expand...
It must ben the low amount of RAM...My domain lives on a Celeron 400. It doesn't run X, but it does run BIND, sendmail, imap-uw, apache and a bunch of other stuff. It only takes about thirty seconds from power-on to being visible to the rest of the world. The machine has 384M RAM. Throw some more RAM in the machine and it'll perform worlds better.
 
I use gnome 2.6 and assorted KDE programs on an alpha 433/256Mb and it's decent enough.
The server/assorted use computer, which I'm using right now, is an athlon XP1700+. It's definitely fast enough for normal use.
 
cloaked said:
I dont think I;ve ever seen any linux vs windows overclocking results. If you do do it, i would be very interested to see what you turned up. Just see how high you can get using the same chip, and making sure both are 100% stable.
Click to expand...

I am a pretty nutty overclocker these days, have been for the last year or so. I also happen to run linux and windows on most of my machines.

I don't think you would ever find much of a difference in stability between the two, as it's a hardware thing. If you push the limits, boot into windows, run prime95 and it craps out in 10 minutes, chances are you are going to crap oit in linux at some point as well. This is because the hardware is not stable.

I do notice a difference in performance on my overclocked video cards, depending upon the machine, but I chalk this up to a difference in drivers rather then anything else. On my OCed Geforce 4 (set with coolbits in windows, nvclock in linux) I can't get much higher then what I am at currently (see sig) without artifacts in either OS. So again, thats probably hardware limits not software.
 
Alright........I was looking for FreeBSD sound cards and I couldn't find any recomendations/ fully compatable things. What do you guys use(for BSD?)?
 
bountyhunter said:
Alright........I was looking for FreeBSD sound cards and I couldn't find any recomendations/ fully compatable things. What do you guys use(for BSD?)?
Click to expand...

An intel ICH4 integrated soundcard on two computers, some nForce chipset on this one, I've used a SB Live! and a SB16 Vibra, too. The only one I'm having problems with is the dodgy, old, ESS-based, soundblaster-Pro-ish one in the Alpha-workstation. The Audigy and Audigy2 are supposed to work, but I haven't tried them myself.

Note that I doubt you'll get anything more fancy than basic stereo, but I might be wrong.
edit: Some googling later, I've seen reports of standard Audigy cards supporting surround without any extra configuration, if surround is important for you.
reedit: But other posts say that nothing supports surround ATM, except the commercial OSS drivers.

You might want to look at the relevant handbook pages.
 
Don't go with FreeBSD, go with a linux distro. A lot of good applications for linux havn't been ported to BSD.

Slackware, Debian or Gentoo.
 
eh........here we go again.

Ok, I'm not to keen on all this crap, so can we be a bit more specific. I don't need a lot of software, I want to make software.......

Anyways, I was wandering, what offers better performance? A sempron @ 1.5GHz or a Tbird @ 1.3GHz? I'm trying to make this a budget project.........thanks.

"EDIT"

Also, I will not disgrace myself by throwing in a geforce 4mx video card in my rig. any other card is fine, other then the 5200. I'm looking for a potent video card capable of 3d acceleration(warcraft 3 capable will be more then enough) under $50, agp card is necessary because of low number of pci slots. I could find a card easily, but then there are the problems w/ ATi's drivers.............does omega/other 3rd party make good ati linux/bsd drivers?
 
Jerunk, care to provide some examples?

I was under the impression that FreeBSD, through the ports system and through Linux Binary Compatibility, was able to run pretty much any Linux program (or programs available for Linux).

Not quite sure though, haven't used FreeBSD that much. Any insight HHunt or Hemi?

And bountyhunter, whichever is cheaper for you. Linux/*BSD will run well even on lower end systems depending on what you're running. A 500 Mhz P3 runs Fedora Core 2 very well, so a 1.3 TBird should run things very well too (just remember that some stuff like KDE needs ample RAM for smooth operation).
 
Jerunk said:
Also, the linux community is much larger.
Click to expand...
Stop trolling. :rolleyes:

Your post about things not running on FreeBSD is pretty much entirely wrong. There's lots of stuff that runs under Linux that runs just fine under FreeBSD, plus the Linux binary support (through the Linux ABI) will run the vast majority of binary-only Linux stuff. 'Sides, I don't think he's going to be wanting to run anything Linux-only on FreeBSD very often...There's 10,000+ applications in the FreeBSD ports tree; chances are good what he wants is in there.

Just cause a community is bigger doesn't mean it's better. The Windows community is probably a hundred times the size of the Linux community; does that mean it's better? Consider the number of dumbass Linux questions that could be answered with a quick Google or a bit of research asked here vs. the number of similar FreeBSD questions...The FreeBSD user base tends to be pretty sharp; what we lack in quantity we more than make up for in quality.

bountyhunter: I ran a GeForce4MX440 in my XP1800+ FreeBSD box for a long time. It did very nicely for basic stuff (XScreenSaver, Quake II, etc.). If you've got one laying around I'd just use it. I managed to luck in to a GeForceFX5600 256M for $70 and it's working great, but the GeForce4MX did pretty nicely. In one of my FreeBSD boxes I have an ATI Radeon 9100Pro 128M that works pretty nicely using DRI (not ATI-provided drivers), but there's some odd stuff happening in a few spots in some screensavers. The next release of DRI should fix all of those, according to my DRI-committing friend.

As far as performance goes, the Sempron is probably going to do a bit better than the slower T-bird in most things.
 
alrighty, here's what it boils down to:

freeBSD bundle

~or~

the slackware combo pack

both will of course be purchased w/ their mascot and some sort of undergarment:D

I'm hoping to make the purchase(I know most of that stuff is free, but somebody had to go to a shit load of work to make it, so why not pay for it. If windows xp was available for free <legally> then I'd probably pay M$ something for it, as the opposite seems to be happening currently). so please, make your final arguments.......

I'll probably get both eventually, but I'm starting w/ one for now.........
 
I've held off on this for a while, but I'm going to post it again anyway. I wrote a little page about why I use FreeBSD. Give it a read if you're bored.

I don't generally buy packaged FreeBSD stuff. I generally just burn the .isos and donate some funds to the project. They get more cash directly in their pocket and I get what I want. There's nothing wrong with buying the boxed stuff, though.
 
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