Ubuntu is FUCKING AWESOME

[Forboding Angel]

Nuff said. Ubuntu is the shit.

The sad part about it is that I would never be able to use it as a main OS. I need too many things that are windows only.

In this particular case... In my office an old old old client from the 90's called wanting a job from back then. That job was stored in an indesign file from an old ass g4 or g3 mac. Before throwing the boat anchor in the dumpster I had wisely removed the harddrive (which was a feat in and of itself), and stuck it on a shelf in the even that for whatever reason it contained something we might need in the future.

So client calls. Old job, we had the stuff for it way back then and it would save us a lot of time and money.

So I stuck it in an external drive enclosure, and as I suspected, vista would let me look around on it etc etc, but wouldn't let me do much with it.

So a while back I got the ubuntu install disc/live CD because of situations like this where linux seems to excel.

Popped the live cd in, booted up, ubuntu took care of everything for me and allowed me to access and copy the files to my local HD. Good shit. SO I restart, load up vista, and realize that because of file format incompatability which vista will let me look at the files and open them up etc, it's not gonna let me move them around. So no biggie, I make an archive of the entire HD in izarc as a zip, which happens to catch all the incompatabilities and not include them. Leaving me with a fully sanitized g3-g4 (whatever the hell it is) HD that I can stick on our network server and work with.

I'm awesome and ubuntu is total FUKWIN.

[Forboding Angel]

BTW I might point out that it take a long time to zip up 7gb worth of files.

Edit: Is there a multitracking program that works well with ubuntu? My band uses an old winme 766mhz comp for recording (a whole whopping 512 reg sdram with a 20 gb hdd), and it would be nice to use a more stable OS with it.

Any thoughts? None of us can really afford what we would need for an entire setup and what we have works, however in the interim I would like to see if it could be made better until we get the cash to blow 1000 bucks on a true recording setup.

[Relative]

Ubuntu is the shit.

+1

Like you, if it wasn't for the fact that I need to use a lot of windows applications I would dump my windows partitions and dual boot setups. On that note you might want to consider dual booting.

Is there a multitracking program that works well with ubuntu?

I don't know, maybe try Ardour? You might want to check out ubuntu studio. It uses the standard ubuntu repos, but is customized for audio, video, and image editing.

http://ardour.org/
http://ubuntustudio.org/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubuntu_Studio

[Gota]

Me too.I had ubuntu like a year ago and it rox,even though i had to spend a few hours to install my drivers for my unusual nvidia card(tweaking config files in the bowels of ubuntu).

[Muzic]

Always wanted to try it but I figured me still being a kid, I still want to play all my silly little games..Im not exactly sure if Wine would run everysingle game I've ever downloaded. Hell if that were the case Id be getting the hell off windows..

[Relative]

Always wanted to try it but I figured me still being a kid, I still want to play all my silly little games..Im not exactly sure if Wine would run everysingle game I've ever downloaded. Hell if that were the case Id be getting the hell off windows..

Wine can run a lot of games, but its support is far from complete. Most older games before 2000 are playable from my experience, and a lot of newer ones work as well (eg: source engine games like HL2, Portal, TF2), but its very very mixed.

[BrainDamage]

Is there a multitracking program that works well with ubuntu?

I don't know, maybe try Ardour?.

http://ardour.org/

I do and did use ardour+jack for recordings with my band, it's rather complicated to use and setup, if you want a simpler alternative look for jokosher (but i find it too much simple for my purposes in it's state, maybe it's enough for yours), otherwise install: jack, jack-rack, qjack, dssi, and ardour

if you want to apply realtime effects or post processing, you'll need "LADSPA plugins" (google the terms), while for encoding&decoding "Gstreamer" is the way to go.

to edit single tracks (like nenoising/dehissing, ecc) i prefer to use a separate editor called rezound

I hope I didn't forget anything

[TradeMark]

my ubuntu failed

[Dragon45]

yay ubuntu

Ahem.

[Acidd_UK]

I need too many things that are windows only.

Have you tried VirtualBox or VMWare? I'd recommend either...

[Forboding Angel]

Don't take me wrong here, but...

Isn't that essentially the same as pointing out that MAC's can run windows?

What I mean is... Why in the world would I want to run something through an emulator that has substandard support, when i could run it natively and garner the entire benefits of it's features?

I *wish* that linux in general could support windows apps. That would be super awesome, because atm linux isn't really useful to people like me.

For example, cs3. The last thing I would want to do is run it through an emulator.

I thank you for pointing it out and yes I did look into them, but the support is spotty at best and performance can get dragged through the dirt with them.

That said, i have a spare 80 gig drive from my other 2 320gb drives that I can run ubuntu on. I'mma do it and try to get familiar with ardour so maybe my band can make use of it. It's not like SX2 is uncomplicated, so I should be in good shape.

To quote a friend of mine: "Wish in one hand and shit in the other. See which one fills up faster."



Edit: Ack I see what you were getting at now. You mean for example putting ubuntu through a virtual process. The only problem I have with thtat is that it seems as though they can never communicate with the host os and performance goes down the tubes.

If I'm wrong here, please correct me. I would very much like to be wrong in this particular situation.

[Forboding Angel]

Pardon me for the double post here...

Is the main problem with binaries for linux the fact that there are so many different distributions?

I just noticed something. Firefox has a deb, virtualbox has a deb, and they work on all distributions...

Why can't other software developers do this? Spring for example. What keeps spring form being packaged like this?

I'm getting a lot of technical knowledge here about it, but nothing conclusive. It obviously can be done, so why isn't it?

[Peet]

I just noticed something. Firefox has a deb, virtualbox has a deb, and they work on all distributions...

Why can't other software developers do this? Spring for example. What keeps spring form being packaged like this?

I'm getting a lot of technical knowledge here about it, but nothing conclusive. It obviously can be done, so why isn't it?

I suggest you take a little trip to the linux forum and maybe glance at the threads there

[Forboding Angel]

I did, but apparently I'm not looking in the right place. Would you throw a couple links at me?

Edit: One thing I noticed was the fact that it seems that ubuntu was an offshoot of debian (hence .deb), and I've seen a lot of talk about RPM's which seem to be installers of some sort or another.

Would someone care to explain it to me in linux noobspeak? I understand that the kernels are rather different from one another, but don't they share enough commonality to work with each other?

[REVENGE]

Forb, have you looked into running Wine, or one of its derivatives such as Bordeaux or Crossover?

They aren't "emulating" windows per se, but rather implementing the apis in a way as to be compatible with Linux. People run games such as CS Source or SupCom using Wine and get decent performance and good compatibility. I tried their most recent release, and even Office 2007 worked ok.

And installation has become much more user friendly now than say, 1 or 2 years ago when running Wine was a pita.

[Forboding Angel]

I looked up wine some time back, but as far as I could tell, it was a giant pita to even get it running (that may fall into your aforementioned timeline).

An API layer is VERY attractive to me, emulators are something I am not fond of (exception being stuff like dosbox etc).

One thing tho. The majority of my games are purchased through steam. Now I haven't done any looking to see but I believe that steam does not work with linux based OS'.

IMO the basic problem is this: Hurdles

I don't want to have to jump over unnecessary hurdles to do something that is relatively simple on a windows box. I tried kinnopix (sp?) a long time ago as well as mandrake and was mostly unimpressed, but ubuntu definitely has my attention now. Here's the only thing I don't like about it.

Device manager: If there is one in ubuntu (and I'm sure there is) I have yet to find it. The reason I don't care for this is the fact that I basically have to trust that ubuntu has taken care of everything for me. I see a lot of similarities in it to OSX, and that disturbs me deeply. OSX is fine for people who don't have brains. I see M$ moving in this direction as well but instead of giving control the chop, they just make it tougher for the random dumbass to completely fuck over their machine.

Here is another troubling thing. Setting up wireless access in ubuntu is not clear at all. Big shocker, MAC is horrible in this area and windows isn't amazingly better than ubuntu at this, but it's pretty obvious what to do to connect a windows machine to a wireless network. There isn't a whole lot there to screw up. In ubuntu in the networking settings I could not find a list of networks. I did find that it detected the wireless card in my laptop perfectly (all the while complaining about non ubuntu standard drivers) and that it was working.

Another troubling thing is the fact that there seems to be no standard drivers for my sound card (SB 7.1 audigy). Now I'm sure there are drivers out there, but hell if I know how to install them. I assume it's done via command line or some other unsavory process (unsavory because I have absolutely no idea how command line in linux works (specific commands, parameters, etc, etc,)).

I'm also not super fond of the taskbar separation but on the other hand I can see the benefits there, btu I don't care for the fact that it cuts down on screen space (albiet only a tiny amount).

Keep in mind, my main motivation for this is to learn how to use ardour so my band can use it. It looks to be pretty damn well full featured (if not complicated ).

Also, how does ubuntu perform on crappy old PC's?

[aegis]

steam/wine:
http://appdb.winehq.org/appview.php?iVersionId=1554

google "wine appdb program name" before you say there's no support
i.e. "wine appdb steam" or "wine appdb crysis"

so many things run better without tweaking now (a bunch of google summer of code students decided to work on wine and they got from the 0.9.x version they had been sitting on for a long time to 1.13 in a couple months)

network
single click on the network manager (computer icon near the clock) to get a list of networks to connect to, and more options :)

sound card:
probably just need to plug it in, then go to system -> preferences -> sound and set it as the default card for playback in each section

crappy machines:
check out xubuntu for good performance on older machines (it also looks better than the default ubuntu theme imho)

[Acidd_UK]

Don't take me wrong here, but...

Isn't that essentially the same as pointing out that MAC's can run windows?

What I mean is... Why in the world would I want to run something through an emulator that has substandard support, when i could run it natively and garner the entire benefits of it's features?

Virtualisation isn't the same as emulation, nor is it the same as dual boot. Virtualisation provides access to the underlying hardware (processor etc) while making virtual network interfaces, graphics interfaces etc. With VMWare 6, there is a technology called Unity (I think) that allows virtualised OS windows to appear like native windows in e.g. X, so you don't even have to alt tab between the virtual windows desktop and the native OS desktop.

Now I'm not saying that you want to / could run Spring on a virtual machine but if the apps you want to use are things like Word, Powerpoint, or other non-3D things, then you might actually be surprised how well virtualisation works...

As for why you would want to do it - because as you say, Ubuntu rocks your boxx and so being able to use it all the time is cool - so if you can run your legacy apps in it too, then it's all tasty gravy.

[aegis]

yeah, I haven't used windows on this box since april or so

[REVENGE]

Forb, trust me. Ubuntu is the most user friendly distro in terms of locating and installing hardware drivers. No other distro even comes close to being as nub friendly as it is. If you have any trouble, go and google "ubuntu mypieceofhardware".

Also, I suggest you try and use Wine over its non-free derivatives. CrossOver Office may be easy to use, but it offers only marginally better compatibility, and costs too much money to be worth it, imo. Also, when you configure Wine, you have the choice to use the native dll files from any Windows XP+ installation. USE THEM. Nothing beats having the native apis files for Wine to work with (just don't replace them all, since Wine still needs some of its own custom ones; you can make the replacement in one of the config tabs).

Also, make sure you get the latest Wine version, not just the one that's in Ubuntu's default repos. Go and search for Wine's own repo, which has the latest version. If you have any troubles installing apps, go to WineDB and READ THE COMMENTS under the apps. That's how I got Office 2007 working.