Should I bother with Linux?

Kernel_Sanders

spud17 wrote: »

I have Xubuntu on 1.3MHz laptop, maxed out with 512MB ram, runs ok, once booted.

What would a processor of that speed be doing with all that RAM?

spud17

Kernel_Sanders wrote: »

What would a processor of that speed be doing with all that RAM?

It was all I had available that would fit. 2x 256MB is max.

I was given the laptop with 128MB ram and well dodgy XP Pro SP1.

I just enjoy a challenge to get something up and running.

Kernel_Sanders

And still you don't get it! Maybe you were viewing on Android and couldn't see my smiley. I'll try again...

spud17 wrote: »

I just enjoy a challenge to get something up and running.

That's some challenge!

prowla

EchoLocation wrote: »

... I must admit I thought Linux had gained a decent market share; however, having looked at Wikipedia it's still, percentage wise at least, quite low. Surely though it's never likely to trouble the OS monopolies of the big players.

Well, you have to consider how the figures for the "market share" are obtained...

Since Linux is free and unlicensed, how can the actual numbers be measured?

I've got a lot of Linux installs (on VMs and physical machines), but I bet they don't appear in any numbers anywhere; there's no way for their use to be ascertained - you don't have to register, you don't buy anything, you can download once and install may times, with virtualization you can build one and then make as many copies of it as you like (I have two particular Linux VMs which I use on 5 different physical computers).

The commercial players (Red Hat, Oracle, etc.) sell support licences for their products, but they typically apply to datacentre servers.

In contrast, Windows requires a purchased licence to be installed and used legally; similarly Mac OS X is tied to the Apple hardware, and so the number of boxes shifted is the number of OS installs.

I've got many Windows licences which I may or may not be using at a given point in time and some which I have never used; I bet they do appear in the numbers regardless.

You also have to consider self-contained turnkey "appliances", many of which are built on Linux - are they included?

So I'd be wary of taking market share, etc. figures at face value; in the case of Linux there is a lot of guesswork.

EchoLocation

prowla wrote: »

Well, you have to consider how the figures for the "market share" are obtained...

So I'd be wary of taking market share, etc. figures at face value; in the case of Linux there is a lot of guesswork.

It was just an aside really, I took them as very 'rough' figures anyway. Market share makes no odds to me.

bluesnake

EchoLocation, you may as well get familiar with a boot live dvd version (think Mint the favourite flavour here, but will go with Kernel Sanders recommendation for Ubuntu instead), as there will be times with no network connection, times when a disk won't boot, and other times other hardware/software does not work. You can start to fault find, stop things replace drivers, repair tcp stack etc, but often a live DVD is far quicker and easier to determine the issue

There was a time when my drive died and for days was left with a cd of Puppy Linux did the job of paying bills and reading emails, Puppy will (used to??) only be able to read NTFS, and due to MS copyright not write, so could not transfer files to my usb disk.

EchoLocation

bluesnake wrote: »

EchoLocation, you may as well get familiar with a boot live dvd version...

Any install I do would be on a secondary HDD anyway. But yes, I think I will go the Live DVD route with Mint.

---

Has anyone used Elementary OS? I really like the clean look of it.

bluesnake

EchoLocation wrote: »

Any install I do would be on a secondary HDD anyway. But yes, I think I will go the Live DVD route with Mint.

I am a big fan of Mint, Mint is built on Ubuntu. While Mint is good, Kernel Sanders #68 recommendation could be better, as Ubuntu especially as it recognises extra hardware, and is also a live dvd. However the choice is yours

prowla

I've found the Live DVD offerings to be very slow to boot; they're OK for a quick look, but that's about it.

esuhl

prowla wrote: »

I've found the Live DVD offerings to be very slow to boot; they're OK for a quick look, but that's about it.

I agree -- by the time they've booted up you've forgotten what you wanted to do anyway!

One of my favourite live distros is Slax. It's only ~220MB so it boots up relatively quickly and has a clean look with useful desktop applications pre-installed.

http://www.slax.org/en/