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Hey guys-

I know...another thread on Linux, but I don't want to hijack the current threads and divert the attention from others' questions in their own threads, so here goes...

All of the Linux discussions here have caught my interest and after posting this, I'm going to download and burn the Linux Mint live CD to play around with on my laptop to see if this is something I want to persue further.

At this point, I don't have any questions as I haven't done anything yet, but I wanted to start the thread for when I do have questions and also to plant the seeds your heads in case you have some Linux Mint experience (or Ubuntu as Mint is based of the Ubuntu distro) and want throw your $0.02 in.

Thanks, and wish me luck!
 
Hi Cory. Glad you resurrected the Linux discussion. I did not want to bump my own rambling post about it. I too have the Linuxmint distro on live CD. Now remember, I am NOT very pc savvy. So take what I say with a grain of salt. I liked it from the minute I ran it. I have not spent hour upon hour using it but it grabbed my internet connection from Windows just like that and away I went. The included media players whipped up the music from factory CDs with no glitches either. I have not tried any that were burned at home. What I really liked about the mint distro is the menu. Yeah, I know, that hardly makes an OS. I just mean that the initial experience trying to find things was real easy. When you open the main menu, the different applications and tools were grouped under different headers. Controls, applications, etc. all had their own header in the lists that made it easy to navigate through the stuff. I had mentioned that the thing about these Linux distros that blew me away was the manner in which you get applications. You open this neat little download manager. I think it is called apt-get. You search a HUGE database for different applications and press install. I think about 99.9% of it is free. It will grab any necessary dependencies at the same time if they are required to make the app run correctly. This is so much better than anything I have dealt with in Windows. Other than freeware you get from certain sites, everything else in Windows usually involves plunking down your dough and THEN deciding if the non-returnable software you just payed $39 for is worth keeping. I know you can get trial versions of many applications but they are usually gutted. I now realise why I have been gravitating toward stuff like AVG anti virus, ffdshow, ffmpeg, Monkey's Audio, LAME, and others. It is not that they are free though that is a major consideration. It is that usually the guys who write them are as tired of the malware, adware, bloat, and costs as we are. They make lightweight packages that do what you want and not a whole lot more. Or less. One that I find invaluable is Media Player Classic. I think it works under Linux but I am not sure.

I am sorry to gab on about this stuff but just like when we all first "discovered" great shaving, this Linux stuff is like a breath of fresh air. Do not get me wrong. I don't hate windows and in fact, my copy of XP Media Center Edition has been about 99% trouble free. I just like the idea of entrepreneurs building up OS's that are low cost or free/share ware that work and are reliable. While I don't have Linuxmint installed for dual boot(yet) I am seriously considering it. I for one hope Linux gives Windows real stiff competition in the future. Just because choice is good and there should be something out there that leaves you real options. BTW, though it is usually looked upon as geeky(What? Any of us being called geeks? Unheard of.) I really am interested in learning more of the command line. Recent experience with stuff like ffmpeg made me realise how lightweight, powerful, and FAST applications are that do not have a GUI front end. Yeah, the command structure is bewildering to say the least but like many things, you can do 95% of what you want with 10% of the commands. At least it seemed so to me. Anyroad, good post and sorry for rambling on so much.

Regards, Todd
 
Todd, thanks for the post! It was very encouraging. I'm still burning the LiveCD...grrr...just a bit impatient. :biggrin:
 
Hey Cory, so which version will you be using? I think I want to try it out too!:biggrin:

Hi Erik, I downloaded and burned a live cd of Bianca 2.2, which I found out about from this article: http://linuxgazette.net/136/lazar.html

So far so good, but I'm still working on getting my wireless connection. Before I get to the hair pulling stage, I should ask. Is is possible to set up wireless (or internet for that matter) off of the live cd? I realize that all progress will be lost, but I want to cut my teeth on the live cd before installing and touching my hard disk.

Thanks!
 
When I used my Ubuntu and then the Mandriva live cd it hooked up the internet. I am wired, though, not wireless.
 
Todd,

I'd put few comments in your post, which you guys may find useful

I have not spent hour upon hour using it but it grabbed my internet connection from Windows just like that and away I went.

When you run it off CD (as opposed from inside an emulator, like vmware) is a separate OS and doesn't touch windows. What's happening is that linux automatically discovered and configured the internet connection (either cable, or wireless, not sure what you have). So yeah, that's what it should be and just shows that few linux distros have become very user friendly in the last year or two :)

The included media players whipped up the music from factory CDs with no glitches either. I have not tried any that were burned at home.


There's no difference in the audio format between commercial and home-burned CDs. The music is recorded in a very standard way ('red book') so any CD should play. It's the same thing as playing them on any CDplayer you buy in the store. DVD is different, because there is an encryption involved and that part has not been made public. However unencrypted DVD's are just like CDs and play just fine.


What I really liked about the mint distro is the menu. Yeah, I know, that hardly makes an OS.
Actually the user interface is one of the most important things in usability. That's why Apple has been always considered much easier - the user interface is more intuitive and simpler than the competition. Linux has never been very strong on UI, but recently it has improved a lot. Although every distribution decides on its own way to organize stuff, so it's not uniform across the board. I am surprised why microsoft has not improved theirs for so many years, I guess its a legacy thing - once you learn something that's hard, learning something that may be easier is still more learning. All it matters is that you like it, though.

I had mentioned that the thing about these Linux distros that blew me away was the manner in which you get applications. You open this neat little download manager. I think it is called apt-get. You search a HUGE database for different applications and press install. I think about 99.9% of it is free.
Enter the magic of debian's package manager :) I believe debian has almost 20,000 packages that know about each other's dependencies. Most debian based distros choose a smaller subset that's easier to maintain. And since they are governed by the same license it's very easy to have the whole process happen automatically. I don't know if apt-get is what you're using as it's a command line utility, but most distros write a GUI on top of apt-get so that you can do all by point&click.


BTW, though it is usually looked upon as geeky(What? Any of us being called geeks? Unheard of.) I really am interested in learning more of the command line. Recent experience with stuff like ffmpeg made me realise how lightweight, powerful, and FAST applications are that do not have a GUI front end. Yeah, the command structure is bewildering to say the least but like many things, you can do 95% of what you want with 10% of the commands.

I think the geeky rap comes from the bad user interfaces. *nix world had graphical user interface way before windows, and it was/is much nicer, but the *nix OS were very expensive (10,000USD) and windows was cheap ($100). Also command line is still the fastest way to do anything, but you do need to be in that mind set. To me the difference between command line and GUI is like sign language and spoken/written language. If you go to a foreign country that you don't speak the language, you can probably survive by making signs and the learning curve to these isn't much, but if you want to communicate effectively you've got to use the local language. When do work and not just playing around, I very rarely use the mouse.
 
So far so good, but I'm still working on getting my wireless connection. Before I get to the hair pulling stage, I should ask. Is is possible to set up wireless (or internet for that matter) off of the live cd? I realize that all progress will be lost, but I want to cut my teeth on the live cd before installing and touching my hard disk.

Absolutely - configuring the wireless should work from the CD as well. I haven't used linuxmint, so I don't know what's the network configuration tool.
However once you find it it should be straightforward.
If you give is some details of how far you are may be somebody will be able to help.
If you see your wireless network, but cannot connect to it, it may be an issue with the encryption that you're using.
It is also possible that your wireless adapter does not have linux support (the company that made it hasn't released neither linux driver, nor enough info for somebody else to write such driver). If you know what brand/model is your adapter you can look this up, or somebody here can tell you.
 
I just looked at Linux Mint a few minutes ago; from the screenshots I have to say it looks very... pretty.

Regarding the wireless support: http://linux-wless.passys.nl/index.php

To give you an idea, the complete listing will take about 2 minutes to load; it's a massive (and I mean massive) table. Anyway, this list gets updated regularly and I find it's really been beneficial. Hope you or someone else also gets good use out of it.
 
Todd,

I'd put few comments in your post, which you guys may find useful

Thanks Gugi. Great explanations. BTW, I am a cable modem customer behind a router. No problemo at. Popped the Firefox icon in mint and it loaded up straight away.

Regards, Todd
 
Hi Erik, I downloaded and burned a live cd of Bianca 2.2, which I found out about from this article: http://linuxgazette.net/136/lazar.html

So far so good, but I'm still working on getting my wireless connection. Before I get to the hair pulling stage, I should ask. Is is possible to set up wireless (or internet for that matter) off of the live cd? I realize that all progress will be lost, but I want to cut my teeth on the live cd before installing and touching my hard disk.

Thanks!

Is there a special reason you want an older version? Bianca, v 2.2 is not the latest.

If you have any trouble, you should download version 4.0. It's the latest. Bianca is version 2.2 and was released last February. The review you read was probably written then.

For sure, the latest version will be better at hardware recognition. IIRC, also, the early versions of Mint weren't so good at installation of new software. Look here under version 4.0, at the top.
 
Is there a special reason you want an older version? Bianca, v 2.2 is not the latest.

If you have any trouble, you should download version 4.0. It's the latest. Bianca is version 2.2 and was released last February. The review you read was probably written then.

For sure, the latest version will be better at hardware recognition. IIRC, also, the early versions of Mint weren't so good at installation of new software. Look here under version 4.0, at the top.

Exactly. After looking around, I did see several newer releases, but burned Binanca simply because that is what the article was written about. When it comes to the unknown, I like to have stuff like this spoonfed to me to minimize problems. After having done some looking around on the live cd and thinking about what I've taken in, I have decided to burn a cd of the newest release and go from there.

Last night I was not able to get my wireless connection established and still don't know why not. I'm using a LinkSys wireless router and card.

Rabid, I'm off to look at your link now.

Thanks for the help guys.
 
I just looked at Linux Mint a few minutes ago; from the screenshots I have to say it looks very... pretty.

Regarding the wireless support: http://linux-wless.passys.nl/index.php

To give you an idea, the complete listing will take about 2 minutes to load; it's a massive (and I mean massive) table. Anyway, this list gets updated regularly and I find it's really been beneficial. Hope you or someone else also gets good use out of it.

Just looked at this and discovered that I need the product ID for my wireless equipment (at work now, so...). Thanks again for the link, I think it will be helpful.
 
Is it safe to assume that since LinuxMint didn't automatically find my wireless device from the live cd, it won't find it on a real install?

Todd, did you experiment with a live cd first? And if so, do you recall any problems/successes with your wireless connection?

I'm away from my PC and can't do anything but read and research, so of course this is driving me nuts. :rolleyes:
 
Is it safe to assume that since LinuxMint didn't automatically find my wireless device from the live cd, it won't find it on a real install?

This depends on a few factors:

- The wireless card
- The linux distribution used
- The kernel version used in said linux distribution

Some wireless cards do not have official linux drivers for them since the hardware manufacturers do not release specs on the hardware for linux drivers to be written. When this happens, you have to rely on windows based drivers with a wrapper program that interprets the driver api function (ndiswrapper).

If you ever get a choice for a wireless card or nic, I would stick with intel and avoid broadcom chipsets. Some broadcom chipsets will work okay, but intel has great support under Linux. There are other vendors as well that have really good or poor support.

If you have new(er) hardware, that is where the newer distributions/kernel versions apply, as they will support the newer hardware.
 
Is it safe to assume that since LinuxMint didn't automatically find my wireless device from the live cd, it won't find it on a real install?

I'd say it's a safe assumption. Usually anything that's not auto-detected on the live CD won't be auto-detected in an install either. Back in the day I even had rare cases of things working on the live CD but not the install. Fear not, though, as biomesh mentioned you can probably use ndiswrapper to make it work. There are some great tutorials on it out there but they're on my home computer and I don't have time to harass Google for an answer.

Once you do get a chance to look at your adapter try punching it into Google with the words "Linux" and "solved" and you should be able to get a definitive answer as to whether it can or can't work, probably in the first page of results even. If you don't get anything take "solved" out of your query and pray you still get good news. :wink:
 
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