# Linux?



## Bill Mattocks (Aug 23, 2010)

Omar B said:


> You know, when I saw the topic title my mind instantly went to Gimp!  guess only us Linux nerds love it huh.



Ubuntu, GIMP, imagemagick, exiftool, and f-spot and digikam. Rocks my world.


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## Omar B (Aug 23, 2010)

Ubuntu is nice but I use Mepis.


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## Bill Mattocks (Aug 24, 2010)

Omar B said:


> Ubuntu is nice but I use Mepis.



I keep trying other distros but keep coming back to Ubuntu. I started with Slackware '96, so I've been at this awhile.


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## dancingalone (Aug 24, 2010)

Bill Mattocks said:


> I keep trying other distros but keep coming back to Ubuntu. I started with Slackware '96, so I've been at this awhile.



Am I the only person that suffers from random desktop freezes with Ubuntu or its derivative LinuxMint?  It's bad enough to make me consider a switch to Debian or even one of the Slackware derivatives.


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## Bill Mattocks (Aug 24, 2010)

dancingalone said:


> Am I the only person that suffers from random desktop freezes with Ubuntu or its derivative LinuxMint?  It's bad enough to make me consider a switch to Debian or even one of the Slackware derivatives.



I don't have freeze problems with Ubuntu or Mint (I like Mint but haven't used it in awhile).  However, I finally, after quite a bit of testing back and forth, decided to keep using Ubuntu 32-bit instead of 64-bit.  I *did* have some lockup problems with 64-bit Ubuntu awhile back. There are a number of apps I run that simply don't like the 64-bit version, and I also run Sun's (now Oracle) VirtualBox to run Windows XP as a virtual OS (to keep my iPod synced) and it doesn't much care for 64-bit Ubuntu either.

I am told by the sneering Linux gurus (which I am not either sneering or a guru, OK maybe I sneer a little bit) that 64-bit Linux and Ubuntu in particular can be made to work with any of the 32-bit apps, but I'm not of the temperament to go compiling my own shims and so on as I once did in younger and stupider days when I have half-user, half-beta tester.  Now I see Linux as a tool and use it accordingly. If it was crap, I'd not use it.  So I stick to 32-bit Ubuntu and really, I've been quite pleased overall.

Shame, though, I'm running a quad-core CPU with gobs of RAM.  64-bit Linux should be a natural for me.  But I stick with what works for me.


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## dancingalone (Aug 24, 2010)

Bill Mattocks said:


> Shame, though, I'm running a quad-core CPU with gobs of RAM.  64-bit Linux should be a natural for me.  But I stick with what works for me.



I have a modest Athlon X2 with 2 gigs of ram.  I don't do much on my PC other than watch movies or use the Internet along with some light office document editing.  Ubuntu should be fine for my purposes but again the desktop freezes are a killer.  Reading the Ubuntu forums, I've seen some other people complain about it too, but there has been no real addressing or investigation from the Canonical developers since it's not a widespread issue.

I have no such desktop freezes with the same computer using Zenwalk (a Slackware derivative) but I don't really care for it.  Ideally, I would just use LinuxMint, but that's not possible on this PC.  I suppose I'll try to get Debian running when I have a free weekend.


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## wushuguy (Aug 24, 2010)

I've had random freezing with Ubuntu... even the 10.04 release still has random freezing on certain computer configurations... never really liked it. If going the linux route, nothing beats a good install of gentoo. but for technically challenged, i think sabayon gives a better out of box experience than ubuntu.

but for this thread, i think f-spot would work great for what the poster is looking for. free, simple edits like resize, color adjustment, red-eye removal, etc. http://f-spot.org/Features  it's only for linux afaik.


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## Bob Hubbard (Aug 24, 2010)

*Mod Note:*
Copied Linux discussion from Photo editing thread.


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## Omar B (Aug 24, 2010)

dancingalone said:


> I have a modest Athlon X2 with 2 gigs of ram.  I don't do much on my PC other than watch movies or use the Internet along with some light office document editing.  Ubuntu should be fine for my purposes but again the desktop freezes are a killer.  Reading the Ubuntu forums, I've seen some other people complain about it too, but there has been no real addressing or investigation from the Canonical developers since it's not a widespread issue.
> 
> I have no such desktop freezes with the same computer using Zenwalk (a Slackware derivative) but I don't really care for it.  Ideally, I would just use LinuxMint, but that's not possible on this PC.  I suppose I'll try to get Debian running when I have a free weekend.



Then what you are looking for is something like Mepis that's optimized for older/slower computers.  I'm a huge fan.
http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=mepis

Other great options are-
Lubuntu, since you are used to Ubuntu - http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=lubuntu
Or Vector which is pretty cool - http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=vector


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## Bob Hubbard (Aug 24, 2010)

I've been more of a fan of Centos.


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## Carol (Aug 24, 2010)

Use RedHat at work.  Haven't yet fired it up at home yet, but I have a 2 year old desktop that will likely be my guinea pig


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## Omar B (Aug 24, 2010)

Use something different Carol, you might find something you love even more.  I wish I had enough time and computers to try every single one on distrowatch!  Though I'm a big fan of the KDE builds more than others.


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## Bill Mattocks (Aug 25, 2010)

Bob Hubbard said:


> I've been more of a fan of Centos.



I'm interested in Centos since it is essentially Red Hat minus the proprietary stuff (as I understand), but it lacks enough of the drivers I need for my oddball hardware things that I haven't been able to use it so far.  Not to say I could not make it work, but these days if it isn't plug and play, I'm not going to mess with it.  If the x-windows settings are ugly, for example, I just install a different distro.  It works out of the box or I don't use it, for the most part.  Nothing against Centos, just haven't got the time to mess with drivers and such as I once did.


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## Bob Hubbard (Aug 25, 2010)

I run it in a server environment, so don't need some of the consumer-friendly stuff.  Centos is basically Red Hat Enterprise, with a few bits changed.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CentOS
It's the only distro I'd run in a production environment.  Desktop wise, I liked Storm but it wasn't maintained, liked Mandrake, didn't care for Slackware due to it being less polished than the rest. Been a few years though since I played with any of em.  Running OSX on the macs, which share a lot at the core with them though.


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## mmartist (Apr 4, 2012)

Ubuntu is slow. OpenSuSE is fast and comes with YaST.


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## Dansolo (Apr 4, 2012)

Anyone want to mention a good distro? 

Seriously though.

Arch Linux.


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## Carol (Apr 4, 2012)

Dansolo said:


> Anyone want to mention a good distro?
> 
> Seriously though.
> 
> Arch Linux.



Not familiar with that distro at all.  What do you like about it?


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## Dansolo (Apr 4, 2012)

Carol said:


> Not familiar with that distro at all.  What do you like about it?



This wouldn't necessarily be what you'd want on - say - a server, but it's a rolling release distribution which means it doesn't get out of date. With many distributions, you have specific versions and you can update your system to a point, but eventually you'll have to install a new version of the OS to continue to get further updates. With Arch Linux, you can update your system to the latest stuff at any time. Gentoo is another well known distribution that does this, and I love Gentoo as well. Most people would not want to use Gentoo in particular, though, because it's a source-based distribution which means every time you update your system, you'll spend anywhere from minutes to overnight compiling the stuff. I like that because it has a feature called "USE Flags" where to can enable or disable certain features of programs in order to keep your machine running as lean and mean as you want it to. Gentoo is for even fewer people than Arch. Arch is not source-based and would get along with most people better.

Also, they don't have the most annoying naming convention of all time, unlike Ubuntu. I'm sorry, but I will never take a product called Jaunty Jackalope or Natty Narwhal seriously. Ever.

 For those who want something as simple as possible to use and for whatever reason do not want a rolling release distro, I'd recommend Fedora over Ubuntu.

P.S. Yes, I have installed and used every single distro that I have mentioned and several more e.g. Slackware (even ZipSlack once upon a time), Debian, RedHat, CentOS, Linux Mint, gOS, Puppy Linux, Sabayon, and still more. Also FreeBSD, OpenSolaris, Nexenta, and currently Illumian on my home server (running atop VMWare ESXi). My opinions are still opinions, but I've used quite a lot of Linux and Arch is what I would recommend.


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## dancingalone (Apr 4, 2012)

Carol said:


> Not familiar with that distro at all.  What do you like about it?



I don't use it, but I understand it has rolling updates and everything is controlled through editing configuration text files.  Gives you total control over your system I guess if you're prepared to roll up your sleeves and learn.  There's also a decent library of software packages precompiled for Arch.  Nothing like Ubuntu, but arguably as extensive as Slackware's at least.  The ArchLinux documentation looks pretty good from my brief browsing of it.  I've often thought about trying it out.


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## Dansolo (Apr 4, 2012)

dancingalone said:


> I don't use it, but I understand it has rolling updates and everything is controlled through editing configuration text files.  Gives you total control over your system I guess if you're prepared to roll up your sleeves and learn.  There's also a decent library of software packages precompiled for Arch.  Nothing like Ubuntu, but arguably as extensive as Slackware's at least.  The ArchLinux documentation looks pretty good from my brief browsing of it.  I've often thought about trying it out.



That's a fair understanding of it, but for the most part, you don't need to edit text files unless you want to customize the system. It doesn't require text file editing to work for the most part. Some video cards are a bit of a pain to get working right on Linux, though, but that's not limited to Arch. There are various GUI programs you can grab that will help you configure stuff from a more user-friendly menu. Even the major X desktop environments (e.g. Gnome, KDE) include a lot of system configuration applets.


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