Switching to Linux... tips?

[exodusprime1337]

I love customizing linux for different purposes. I have tried a linux router distro it was fun. I also tested a lean, mean home theater machine setup as well. Played videos really fast and good on only a P3 machine! (1.0GHz, 512MB RAM 200GB HD Geforce 5 GPU) Tried the same with xp MCE and it would chop a lot specially with HD. I was happy to bring new life into an older system.

Those are all awesome things to try... But if your new to linux, like i am.. i think the best possible thing you can do is do it on your own. I started with ubuntu server and LAMP... i knew nothing, by the end of the first day of tinkering i had ampache going(btw my flash player still doesn't work in the browser if anybody has a clue??), it's an awesome music streaming platform that easily hosts some 200000 of my songs at the moment. then it was the apache server, i created a basic joomla site that gave me access to all of my servers webmin/ssh/telnet/pix information so i didn't have to remember them all. i go to the site(can't show you cause i don't need it hacked) type in my credentials(.htacces ftw) and bam, access to all server tools(limited cause i'm still an IT nub).

The router i did from scratch as well. You could dl a prebuilt, but your not really learning all the nitty gritty. I moved 40 joomla sites.. it took 20 of them for me to learn about permissions and the difference between 777,644,755.. who would've knew what those meant just by looking, next was virtual hosts... i always thought a website had 1 server... how stupid of me lol, my linux server at work now has 40 sites on 1 BOX!!!! ZOMG!!!


I'm just saying, if you prebuild a distro, you basically won't learn much, i could've gotten some decent prebuilt stuff, even with ubuntu i could've just chosen lamp at the installer.. i chose not so i could learn how to install them, "apt-get" ftw and it's easier than windows lol, and also to learn where things go.. i was backing up all my mysql databases in phpmyadmin.. when i had an ftp link where i could just move the files directly and be done with it.

Sorry bout the long post, and i'm definately not bashing you, my new exposure to linux has gotten me seriously facinated in not just the linux community, but IT in general, i found myself asking my boss to let me do some of the active directory work because it's a good skill to have, and i'm learning some php which i find to be a friggon diesel language, just a beast for web.

my 2cents over
root@localhost: shutdown -time now -h

 

[remixedcat]

Those are all awesome things to try... But if your new to linux, like i am.. i think the best possible thing you can do is do it on your own. I started with ubuntu server and LAMP... i knew nothing, by the end of the first day of tinkering i had ampache going(btw my flash player still doesn't work in the browser if anybody has a clue??), it's an awesome music streaming platform that easily hosts some 200000 of my songs at the moment. then it was the apache server, i created a basic joomla site that gave me access to all of my servers webmin/ssh/telnet/pix information so i didn't have to remember them all. i go to the site(can't show you cause i don't need it hacked) type in my credentials(.htacces ftw) and bam, access to all server tools(limited cause i'm still an IT nub).

The router i did from scratch as well. You could dl a prebuilt, but your not really learning all the nitty gritty. I moved 40 joomla sites.. it took 20 of them for me to learn about permissions and the difference between 777,644,755.. who would've knew what those meant just by looking, next was virtual hosts... i always thought a website had 1 server... how stupid of me lol, my linux server at work now has 40 sites on 1 BOX!!!! ZOMG!!!


I'm just saying, if you prebuild a distro, you basically won't learn much, i could've gotten some decent prebuilt stuff, even with ubuntu i could've just chosen lamp at the installer.. i chose not so i could learn how to install them, "apt-get" ftw and it's easier than windows lol, and also to learn where things go.. i was backing up all my mysql databases in phpmyadmin.. when i had an ftp link where i could just move the files directly and be done with it.

Sorry bout the long post, and i'm definately not bashing you, my new exposure to linux has gotten me seriously facinated in not just the linux community, but IT in general, i found myself asking my boss to let me do some of the active directory work because it's a good skill to have, and i'm learning some php which i find to be a friggon diesel language, just a beast for web.

my 2cents over
root@localhost: shutdown -time now -h

I've done both methods actually.

 

[exodusprime1337]

I've done both methods actually.

gg, try ampache man.. probably one of the coolest programs next to beryl lol.

 

[remixedcat]

cool will do when I get a dedicated linux box again.

 

[exodusprime1337]

cool will do when I get a dedicated linux box again.

lemme know via pm or aim if you need help whenever you get around to it.. aside from setting up the flash player(broken in ubuntu 10.10) it's pretty easy, and fun as hell to use when it's all setup

 

[remixedcat]

thanks will do! what problems in flash player you havin??

 

[exodusprime1337]

cool will do when I get a dedicated linux box again.

to be honest i don't know.. it just doesn't work.. i'm off at 5:00 eastern time.. perhaps i could get you ssh'd into it and you could take a look at it with me..

 

[remixedcat]

I think it might be adobe at fault I googled for that issue and there were quite a few with it. adobe likes to break stuff.

 

[Peter1986C]

I'm finding a number of Linux apps i can work with, but have yet to find anything to
replace adobe fireworks, adobe acrobat for creating pdf forms, and adobe flash.

- Flash:

sudo apt-get install flashplugin-nonfree

- Adobe Acrobat: make the forms in OpenOffice and export them as PDF. Should work. If the process of making forms differs to much from the same in MS Office, the help in OO should be a good place to look in.
- Fireworks: I am not sure about this, because I just heard of Fireworks and only took a peek at the Wikipedia page about it, but I suggest testing whether OpenOffice.org Draw is meeting your requirements (as an exeption, you will find this under applications --> graphics, instead of ...-->Office).

BTW, it can be handy to install "ubuntu-restricted-extras" as well, for some codecs and fonts like Times New Roman and Arial. Best just add it to the line in the first line of my post with a space in between.

 

[Frick]

Meh,on linux some things are easier then windows to restore. Most really broken things in windows you gotta reformat, linux at least has fallbacks and more tricks to get things working.

windows seriously needs more recovery stuff.

I once trashed xfce's window manager (Xfwm) when trying to get some GTK libraries to work. If you would've done anything similiar in windows you'd been f**ked but I just used Lynx to surf the web in text format and I reinstalled xfce completely and it worked. Lovely.

 

[remixedcat]

this kinda awesome sauce is why linux leads the server market!

 

[Red_Machine]

Have you ever considered ReactOS? It's an open source OS that is binary compatible with Windows XP.

 

[remixedcat]

Heard of that one! Looks awesome so far. Hope they improve! Wishing them lots of luck.

 

[NinkobEi]

3 years without rebooting? even linux needs a reboot after an update, right? at least, ubuntu does

 

[remixedcat]

there's ways around it.

 

[Peter1986C]

3 years without rebooting? even linux needs a reboot after an update, right? at least, ubuntu does

Only for driver or kernel updates. So basicly you can continue using your Ubuntu install without rebooting, because all other updates are "done" once installed. You would only need to reboot if you immediately wish to load the newest kernel that Ubuntu comes with. And really, you don't need to.

 

[Easy Rhino]

i dont plan on rebooting my linux server anytime soon. and it is on a UPS for adding comfort

 

[digibucc]

i think i'm going to put my server on linux soon... it's just simple SMB sharing, and auto-backup(daily incremental) of specific folders on the network.

any suggestions for distro and software? thing is all of my stuff is currently on NTFS drives, will that cause a huge problem?
I can get files moved around to format a drive at a time, but that might take awhile and i'd like to have full access to files in the meantime.

 

[Easy Rhino]

hrm, i have always wanted to mess around with network backup software. you could always give FreeNAS a go.

 

[Peter1986C]

as long as ntfs-3g is installed, it is not a problem to have NTFS. However, in Linux there is no disk defrag tool available for NTFS so I suggest transition to ext3 or ext4.

 

[Frick]

I read an article about a software called Fog Server. It's for cloning over network and backup and stuff like that and appareantly it's pretty good. Don't know if it can clone Macs though, but supposedly it does anything Windows and some Linux. I have not tested it so I don't know.

 

[remixedcat]

Awesome! Many thanks for the link!

 

[bim27142]

guys! i just installed ubuntu 10.10 too on my acer travelmate 6291. so far i think it's good! im a total noob too with linux, and i think i'm already behind adopting but better late than never i guess?!

anyway, i will use it mostly for browsing, music, and some movies... so far i just used whatever was in it already... so a few items:

- what's the best music player and video player out there?
- is there an equalizer or sound enhancer i can use?
- i saw a screenshot earlier about the desktop looking transparent? how'd you do that?

by the way, a fresh 32bit install as i saw on the system monitor has a very small footprint (about 200mb RAM and almost 0% cpu activity when idle)... am i seeing it correctly or what?

 

[hellrazor]

A)I'm a fan of Audacious
B)I'm not aware of one. Audio on Linux kinda sucks
C)Probably used Compiz or some such crap
D)Yes

 

[bim27142]

thanks! noted...