Ongoing Adventures with Linux

C

Canadian in Berlin

Gawd
Joined
Sep 8, 2007
Messages
697
Some regulars here have helped me a lot with getting started with various Linux adventures.


My girlfriend is now a dedicated Linux user (often much to my suffering as my Saturday is spent troubleshooting software or trying to get something she needs installed.... the last fight was getting SPSS running).

I've got a Linux file/web server running now, thanks again to those who helped in that thread. That offer of beer is stil open.


I'm now breathng new life into my gaming desktop (I have a gaming laptop to replace it, all paid out of my overtime) by setting it up to run a Cisco CCIE Lab and a CCSP Lab for myself and my colleagues. (VmWare + GNS3).

I'm now having my first adventures with a multi-user environment... The solution to the SPSS problem was to install a Virtual machine, she then connects with No Machine to the Linux directly and access the Virtual Machine (which auto-starts on logon) in fullscreen mode.

She's currently working away while I'm trying to get various work related software running (Evolution = Outlook, Konsole/Rancid/Clogin = SecureCRT), and when I'm waiting for packages to install I'm searching for other everday tools....

As usual, linux provides an incredible amount of challenges, but as generally seems to be stated around here.... thats how you learn. There are many commands and steps and hidden cryptic config files that I now know where they are and what they do, and I discover new tool everday.

Why am I posting this? Because despite the constant frustration that Linux provides, I'm kinda starting to like it too.

I spent more time this weekend tinkering on Linux than playing games, which says something (even though I'm in a game burnout loop atm).


Thanks again to all the HardForum User's who have helped and advised. :)
 
Since I been primarily using Gentoo for the last 5 years, Linux problems seem to be a breeze to handle. With time comes ease of use.

As an odd side-effect of being primarily on Linux, I find dealing with Windows problems harder now. lol
 
Well, I'll never be 100% windows free, a combination of work requirements and the odd bit of gaming....

That said I just spent the morning writing a shell script to be launched once a week via crontab on my server.

The script connects via cisco vpn (vpnc), mounts a folder on the fileserver at work (windows share), then uses rsync to sychronize a local copy of a few folders that I'd like both a backup of and a local copy for when I work from home.

Once the script has finished the vpn is disconnected.

It took a bit, but it sure is convenient... and for my colleagues working from home, my fileserver is faster than the work fileserver over VPN. :)

All output of the script is logged to a text file which I can peruse at will, I still gotta get dns/email working sometime so I can have the logs emailed to myself....

I guess thats the next project.
 
Ion Silverbolt said:
Since I been primarily using Gentoo for the last 5 years, Linux problems seem to be a breeze to handle. With time comes ease of use.

As an odd side-effect of being primarily on Linux, I find dealing with Windows problems harder now. lol
Click to expand...

I have fallen into the same boat.....weird how that happens...!
 
Ion Silverbolt said:
Since I been primarily using Gentoo for the last 5 years, Linux problems seem to be a breeze to handle. With time comes ease of use.

As an odd side-effect of being primarily on Linux, I find dealing with Windows problems harder now. lol
Click to expand...

Sadly I don't feel the same way. Every time if have used linux there is always something that refuses to work and following a guide online doesn't yield results. For example right now I am trying to install xubuntu on an p4 laptop, it freezes loading the cd and the media check, yet I was able to load and install with same cd on another system, tried ubuntu no luck either (could be something they share together). It's never the same thing, like sound doesn't work on this system, wifi card doesn't work on another. Ubuntu by far is best distro for not having problems in my experience, it is usually the one that works out of the box for me. For me personally with linux it works or it doesn't not much middle ground, while with windows you can get a middle ground of where it works but not to the best of its capability.
 
munkle said:
For me personally with linux it works or it doesn't not much middle ground, while with windows you can get a middle ground of where it works but not to the best of its capability.
Click to expand...

You don't know it well enough. If you can't fix a problem in Linux it's because you don't know how. If you can't fix a problem in Windows it's often because the information on what is even going wrong is obscured to hell and Googling the useless error message and meaningless code doesn't get you anywhere.

I'm with the rest of the guys. Troubleshooting things on Windows is painful and frustrating in comparison.

But it's all about experience. If you're a hardcore Windows hacker I'm sure you'd feel the same way about Linux, I just feel that in general Linux is a lot more transparent, with much more useful logging and things generally very visible, whereas Windows tends to have very limited logging, configurations buried in the registry under random keys you could never guess and so on.
 
keenan said:
You don't know it well enough. If you can't fix a problem in Linux it's because you don't know how. If you can't fix a problem in Windows it's often because the information on what is even going wrong is obscured to hell and Googling the useless error message and meaningless code doesn't get you anywhere.

I'm with the rest of the guys. Troubleshooting things on Windows is painful and frustrating in comparison.
Click to expand...

You're right it is because I don't know how, but sometimes I shouldn't be required to know how. Another example I have another laptop that loads the ubuntu setup disk but I can't use the mouse or keyboard so I can't install it. Sure I guess there might be a way to fix it but seriously? That is something that should work straight off. I work on fixing windows pc's 98% (maybe exaggerated a bit) of the time when something is wrong it is user error, someone did something they shouldn't have. I don't know about linux much but im not sure how I can error in loading in a setup disk and it doesn't load on one pc, different pc it loads but mouse and keyboard doesn't work and works fine on third pc. This is why I say it either works or it doesn't.
 
Let's not turn this into a Linux vs. Windows thread please. What we're saying is that once you learn how to use it, it grows on you and you prefer it and find it easier to understand. Not that it works perfectly out of the box every time.
 
keenan said:
Let's not turn this into a Linux vs. Windows thread please. What we're saying is that once you learn how to use it, it grows on you and you prefer it and find it easier to understand. Not that it works perfectly out of the box every time.
Click to expand...

I'm not trying to do that at all, like I said before I like linux (I think I said I liked it? but I use it alot), I use a linux router among other stuff. It has grown on me which is why I continue to use it but this is why I also pointed out that I do not prefer it and I do not find it easier to understand for said reasons.
 
One thing I have found I really like about linux is the way you go about figuring out whats wrong. Messing around with various linux virtual machines I usually check log files, google errors, edit config files. I actually like using grep and vi now.
 
Linux grows on you like some sort of festering pestilence or flesh eating fungus. I've posted here before about my frustrations and hours of raging at linux because simple things like... sound won't work, etc.

I also find Linux seems to randomly and sporadically do strange things... My girlfriend's computer starts itself (no scheduled tasks/crontab though), it also won't always shutdown.... sometimes it hangs with messages ont he screen othertimes not. It often hangs while sleeping, waking, or wahtever.

But as a whole i love the flexibility.
 
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