Ubuntu 7.10?

[Angry_Games]

sweet, even more %$@@# awesome

 

I re-install Ubuntu 7.10, hook up to my wireless, and then go to install the restricted packages, but this time, gee how ironic, it tells me when I click on the restricted packages that the list is not available and I must have an active internet connection...funny thing since I'm TYPING HERE ON THE INTERNET FROM THE SAME DAMN MACHINE.

 

I think I'm already done with ubuntu. Time to move on to Archlinux and try that. I doubt I'll find any linux worthy of using though, so looks like another 12 months of Windows until some new-fangled linux comes out that claims to be the bestest mostest easiestest linux everest to use!

 

 

edit: well I googled and found VLC player for Linux and installed it (only after freaking MORE configuration to allow some . to be downloaded) and it seems to work. I'm familiar with VLC player so I can excuse this for the moment. Now on to ATI drivers that allow 3d acceleration...

[momoceio]

Like I said...it's not quite primetime material. Everyone will have to do some command line work at some point However, for the uber geeks it's not that big of a deal but for the everyday users it's a nightmare. I personally love poking around and figuring it out and had been using Ubuntu for about 6 months before I started messing with other Linux distros. ATI driver support has always been an issue with Linux but ATI/AMD is just about to release an updated driver for the 2000 series cards that also had updated support for the older Radeon cards (See link I posted earlier) It's a love hate relationship and you have to want to use it pretty bad to spend the time figuring everything out. However, to connect to your XP box all you have to do is go to Places and connect from the drop down....takes 5 seconds. Also, Ubuntu only downloads from a few select sources when it's initially setup. You have to edit your source.list file ( /etc/apt/sources.list ) to allow updates and repository downloads from less restrictive sources.

[Angry_Games]

However, to connect to your XP box all you have to do is go to Places and connect from the drop down....takes 5 seconds.

 

bzzzzt wrong

 

it doesn't see anything (yet I can load windows on ANY machine and instantly connect to the server) in Linux.

 

I've got it installed finally, using VLC for audio/video, got the restricted ATI drivers in, got Enemy Territory installed and working, got WINE installed and pretty mostly configured...I think it's time to wipe my main rig and my garage rig and start again with a 40GB partition with XP for gaming, and the rest for Linux.

 

If I start using it every single day then I'll have no choice but to fight on and learn the nonsense and hopefully make it easier for others in the future to want to pick it up and learn it.

[Angry_Games]

ok, got aMSN installed but it never would connect, so I tried Pigdin and it connected just fine. At least there's that (I got to have MSN Messenger, got over 200 contacts on it on just my main MSN).

 

Now I'm off to find out if anyone has been able to make Winamp work natively in Linux (instead of using WINE etc).

 

A very angry Angry is slowly turning to a very curious Angry (though still VERY xxxxING ANGRY AT LINUX lol).

 

As I stated a few times before, just installing it and getting pissed isn't enough, I got to just be using it every day and learning how the $#@#$ to do things that I just take for granted on Windows boxes.

 

It will be a long time before I'm a super-dork like some of you with Linux, but if I can figure out how to do the basics like mp3's, videos, messenger, etc, then it means I can move totally away from Windows for everything except gaming and certain bits of software that just won't work in Linux (or won't work without me murdering half the neighborhood in rage trying to get it working lol).

 

Don't mind my raging. I'm a very angry guy when it comes to learning new stuff that is NOT user-intuitive. The anger bleeds away as I find ways to do things easily (or easier than some of these damn websites/wikis say how to do things)

[KimTjik]

If I start using it every single day then I'll have no choice but to fight on and learn the nonsense and hopefully make it easier for others in the future to want to pick it up and learn it.

Yep, that's the spirit! As you've said in another thread learning (I now mean learn as of mastering it) Windows did take some time. I mean some things still need to be dealt with using the DOS-prompt in XP (I abandoned Vista to soon to be able to say what kind of creature it would be in an working environment), or even worse fiddling with the registry. Some claim you should not need that, but a look through MS documentation is a proof enough of the contrary.

 

Anyway, some annoying things might become routine, and hence we might not even notice it as time goes by. You'll become a Linux guru some day!

[momoceio]

bzzzzt wrong

 

it doesn't see anything (yet I can load windows on ANY machine and instantly connect to the server) in Linux.

 

Something must be configured wrong because it works great for me although there isn't really much to configure.

[Angry_Games]

ya I'm working my way up to being an everday linux user. It's a pretty crappy experience honestly, but then again, so was learning how to ice skate, and then worse, learning how to skate forwards, backwards, and stopping while wearing 25 pounds of hockey pads and helmets and then even MORE worse, learning how to skate with all this . on and a damn hockey stick in my hands (skating = straight hips/shoulders, but skating with a hockey stick = your upper body is rotated slightly so your hips and shoulders are no longer square, which completely throws your balance off badly and you sorta have to re-learn how to skate haha).

 

I thought I was going to die multiple times learning how to play hockey. Not because of the hits, but mostly because #1 i was a smoker for 15 years, #2 carrying a hockey stick while skating is extremely hard, and #3 because I couldn't stop unless I ran into a wall, another player, or worse, the goalie (opposing team did NOT like that too much haha).

 

I almost quit multiple times until one day I showed up at the rink and I just...GOT IT. Especially the skating backwards and stopping part. That day, I drove home as fast as I legally could and yelled out my joy to momma about how all the sudden I just got and I was going to end up skating 5 days a week to master it.

 

Well, we moved to a city that has no ice rink within 80 miles, so I never have mastered it completely yet, but I can damn sure skate forwards, backwards, sideways, turn circles, skate circles, hold a stick, make passes, shoot, slapshoot, stick-check, pin players to the boards, etc.

 

Pretty rudimentary (as can be witnessed here: http://www.angrygames.com/vids/5_month_hockey-1.wmv) but by god I can strap on skates and gear and go play anytime I want now instead of just wishing I could.

 

Motivation is the engine which drives humanity to discover/learn something new, and by golly I'm ultra-motivated after dealing with Vista for the past year.

 

I doubt I'll ever dev, compile, whatever. I just want my "windows" experience to be nearly complete on a linux box so I can begin showing others how to move away from Microsoft.

 

Plus trying to install XP or Vista on say an old HP Celeron 1.2Ghz + 256MB RAM is a nightmare, yet my best buddy here had Ubuntu 6-something installed on a Pentium3 600Mhz HP with 256MB RAM and used it as his server and it was pretty stout (compared to my laptop with 700Mhz P3 + 512MB RAM).

[Angry_Games]

Something must be configured wrong because it works great for me although there isn't really much to configure.

 

ya it's probably linux as I read for about 2 hours last night when I had this problem and the only thing that solved it was entering my server's IP address manually and connecting that way.

 

still can't figure out how to 'map' (i suppose it's called mounting in Linux) a drive so I can let VLC play music off the server. Right now I'm having to copy mp3's to my ubuntu box to get them to play as when I browse for files, none of the server's drives show up in the file browser.

 

Then there's a zillion threads at Ubuntu forums about how the windows shares etc are kinda broken for a very large number of people.

 

It's cool though. I'm calming down a little more as I learn this out on the garage rig, and I've spent the morning backing up my main rig (E6600, 2GB RAM, 8800GTS 320MB, 2x80GB RAID-0, Giga 965 mobo, etc) so I can drop XP on a single 40GB partition for modern/current games and the rest will go for Ubuntu as I plan to boot to it every single time UNLESS I'm playing a game that I don't feel like configuring WINE for (which, btw, 3dmark2001SE I finally got to work but it crashes during first test saying my video card doesn't have enough memory which is funny since it's an X1900XT 512MB haha)

[likewhoa]

A_G windows shares in Linux is easy, you can use cifs,smb,nfs and a few others. the way i mount a windows share is with cifs.

 

 

view available netbios share on the windows box

smbclient -L hostname -U%

 

mount netbios shares from a windows box

mount -t cifs //server/share /mnt/winshare -o username=username,password=password

 

if you don't have cifs, you can try using "smbmount //server/share /mnt/samba" instead, but cifs is the new way as smbmount is deprecated.

 

for a good guide on this and more, checkout http://gentoo-wiki.com/HOWTO_Setup_Samba as i contributed to it myself.

[momoceio]

If it's mapping by IP only then it sounds like a dns issue.

[Angry_Games]

If it's mapping by IP only then it sounds like a dns issue.

 

whatever

 

as I said many times before (and this is the most important part when it comes to getting people to try linux or anything other than windows) I can drop windows on any box, customer or test rig or my own, and hit the server and map the drives. Linux (all Linux) needs to get around to doing something this easy. Granted linux networking is a hell of a lot easier (with windows) than in the past, but I shouldn't have to fight for 2+ hours with my Linux box to connect to a drive that takes all of 1.3 seconds in Windows.

 

It isn't a DNS issue unless it's a Linux DNS issue. I don't have any issues when running any other OS's. I'm not opposed to doing a little work but I most definitely am opposed to spending 2+ hours just to connect to my server (even during that 2 hours I was able to ping the server's address repeatedly with no problems) and then who knows how many more hours I have to mess around with configs and scripts and commands to keep that drive mapped (mounted) to where it shows up in my file browser without having to access the server with a Go command first.

 

I also realize that some may never have this problem. But this is something that shouldn't be such an butt-whip. Trying to get my XP boxes to connect to my Linux box...that's another project for another day (my buddy and I spent almost 3 months trying to do it in old Ubuntu 6 and never could get it to work that way, but getting from the linux to the xp box was never this hard in previous Ubuntu).

 

This is mostly what you are going to hear from me for a long time as I stay on Linux more and more (I've been on the 7.10 Ubuntu side since I turned this comp on at noon, and haven't found need for Windows yet since I haven't wanted to game).

 

I'm going to try and stay away from the "THATS NOW HOW IT IS DONE IN WINDOWS!" nonsense, but I am going to harp on the "it needs to still be less of an butt-whip as this!" instead. Imagine me as everyday douchebag Joe Smith trying to fool around with this OS. If everyday douchebag Joe Smith can wrap his (my) tiny little brain around it and get BASIC functionality out of it like mapping a drive, playing an mp3, playing an xvid, playing a dvd, office stuff like word/excel whatever is in Open Office, web & email, and printing without any hassle, then we'll be in a time when Linux is finally evolving enough to be for everyday loser douchebags like Joe Smith

 

That's what I want. Not something as stupid and dumbed-down as Windows, but not something that still requires a shitload of command lines and conf files and editing lists and such. Smart people need smart things that make them think. Thinking is good. Makes more wrinkles in the brain. More wrinkles = more smarts = more chance to pass that on to your offspring .

 

Dumb people learn dumb things like how to watch Paris Hilton take drugs or show their crotch and that entertains them for weeks at a time. Smart people like us want to learn, we hunger for it. Nothing is easy. But nothing should be driving a man insane just to do something simple (the most frustrating aspect is the 100000000 different sites/forums that all say to do something different and that's probably just the nature of Linux because of the great amounts of different distros out there).

 

 

I'm sticking it out. My rants will grow hopefully less taxing and more to "WHY THE xxxx DOESN'T MICROSOFT AND WINDOWS DO THIS????"

[momoceio]

Hey, I think it's awesome that you're getting into the *nix world and are willing to wrestle with it. I definitely think it's worth it...even if you decide not to use it at least you'll learn a bunch along the way. Cheers.