Linux as a Desktop

[CF_GE]

I am very pleased with the results I have had from Linux as a server. I've tried using Linux as a desktop, but found it to be too slow to get it setup (especially the eth0), and too hard to find out what program does what. Is there a pre-packaged operating system that comes ready-to-use like Windows. I think I could change my office over to Linux, but I can't even explain to someone how to get their email!
thanks-
  :confused:

[choasforages]

what version of linux were you using, and there are many programs, like for an office suite, use openoffice, i found it better then ms office, for the email client, try ximian's evolution. and for seting everything up, if you set it up right the first time, you won't have to mess with it again. also, ximian has a client called redcarpet which can update things.

ximians homepage

[slave]

The version of Linux that most people who choose Linux as their desktop run on their computers is Mandrake.  However, Mandrake along with the other "mainstream" Linux distributions (redhat, suse, ELX, etc.) is quite slow, especially when using KDE.  I don't know how they get away with it; maybe the KDE developers all run supercomputers so they don't see a problem, (they should test and compile KDE on pentium 233's I say) but for me, and many people, KDE 2.0 or higher is dog slow combined with the already bloated and obsolete X window system.  Unfortunately, KDE seems to be the only usable desktop on Linux aside from GNOME, which is based on an inferior API in my opinion and has its fair share of problems (more crash-prone than KDE; ugly font support; underpowered interface; etc.) On my older machine, a pentium 600 /w 256 mb RAM(by no means completely obsolete; windows XP seems to run fine on it and it's as bloated as hell, right?) KDE frequently dives into swap space and consumes over 80 percent of system memory before I've even started anything!  Simple and frequently used KDE apps like Konqueror also take an annoying amount of time to load on "slower" machines.  The "fast" linux distributions, such as Debian and Gentoo, are more stable and robust, but are a pain in the ass to configure.  (Gentoo is a source based distribution, which is a good and bad thing at the same time)  It all boils down to how much time and knowledge you have.

[slave]

If someone could make an operating system that was as powerful as Windows XPee or Mac OS X but ran on a 486ghz, I would worship them as a programming god.  Desktop Linux needs at least a 33 mhz processor and about 512 kb RAM, which is quite sad. (unless you use Window Maker or TWM) (cringe)

[EDIT: I had to cover your lie's   ]

[ June 14, 2002: Message edited by: X11 / BOB ]

[TheQuirk]

i don't know what distro you're using. I have a 433mhz celeron with 192mb of ram layin' around running KDE 2.2 and Mandrake 8.2. Right now I am using it, just to see if what you said is actually true, and while  running IglooFTP-Pro, gAim, and Mozilla, my CPU is 97.8% idle, and I have 45mb of ram left.
I could supply a screenshot, if you want, showing that I am not lying.

[Master of Reality]

first of all, completely ignore mose of winXP users post, *most* of it is filled with blatant lies.

When i first started using linux i was the same way, i didnt know which of the programs did what.
When I installed Red Hat I went through each package that was available and checked out what most of them did and took only the ones I wanted. If your using Mandrake, I wouldnt suggest using the 'recommended' install. If your using Red Hat there is a couple different choices of prepackaged installation modes. I always use 'custom' so i can choose out of the thousands of free high quality software that comes with it. I'm not sure how good the red hat pre-selected installs are, but I would recommend using KDE 3.0 which is one of the many different GUIs that come with Linux.

[slave]

This was on Red Hat 7.2 with kde 2.2.  Red hat focuses on GNOME instead of KDE, so they may have had crappy KDE packages.  Whatever the case, KDE is slow regardless of the RAM usage.  Selecting text in Konqueror is slow and makes the computer choppy.  No KDE app starts up as fast as a Windows app, and Windows is supposedly "bloated."  Right now, I have IE, Kazaa, Photoshop 7, mirc, and MSN messenger running under Windows XP, and my CPU usage is about 4 percent and I have 380 out of 512 MB free.  Mandrake Linux 8.2, on the other hand, consumes over half my RAM with no programs loaded at all under KDE.  I looked on the KDE system guard (the KDE equivilant to the Windows task manager) and X alone was eating up over 270 MB of my memory!  What an outrage!  Equally outrageous was the fact that on this ultra-fast system (1.73 ghz athlon, geforce 4, half gig ram) KDE took over 15 seconds to start, (more than the whole Windows XP OS takes to start)resizing and moving windows in KDE was choppy, and frequently used programs like Konqueror took over 2 seconds to start, whereas IE, Office, etc load instantly under Windows.  You can interpret all this any way you want, but I see it as proof that KDE under Linux is just as bloated, if not more, than any version of Windows.

[Master of Reality]

*cough*crack*cough*

[slave]

quote: *cough*crack*cough*

Maybe that hacking cold of yours would go away if you got out of that dark UNIX dungeon and stopped pecking out perl scripts.

[choasforages]

actally, if you want a fast distro, go grab the redhat 7.3 installer that is xfs enabled. with xfs, i nolonger noticed bottlenecks in disk io as much. ext2 ext3 ntfs fat32 all those fs's are suck compared to xfs, and for the uninclined, it is a full featured journald filesystem that can fsck it self in less then 10 seconds. /*hint, it is was devoloped by sgi to run as fast as possible*/

ps, xpluser, did you use the nvidia glx drivers

[ June 13, 2002: Message edited by: choasforages ]

[slave]

quote: ps, xpluser, did you use the nvidia glx drivers

Why coitaintly, the first thing I did was install the drivers, in fact.  I didn't notice much improvement, except 3d apps worked (sometimes, anyway; a lot of them crashed with segfaults)

[choasforages]

o, and i kinda like my dark unix dungeon
, how do i post an image, like i don't have a website or anything, or anyhosting

[choasforages]

xp, did you configure the XFree86-4 *correctly*,
ok lets all just get back on topic, i have heard a few good things about peanut linux, that it is small and pretty fast and full featured. and what is wrong with window maker. i think it is a very nice interface and it runs nice on my pentium 60mhz system under debian

[slave]

Why are you acting like it's my fault?  Of course I configured X correctly!! I bet if someone said Windows was slow you would piss all over the OS, and certaintly wouldn't say "it's your fault, not windows's."  I spent weeks learning all about X and its config file while trying to solve a complex problem where Linux kept freezing every 5 minutes after starting an OpenGL program.

[choasforages]

actaully XFree86-4 is an easy file to screw up /*heheheheheheh i would know */ and windows is no where near as configurable as linux is, so it is easy to mess it up. and actually use error is the first thing i look for period. for some resaon do you think that i also followed the way of tux, you have to remeber that i was bill gates bitch for a few years too, im not in the dark about windows, i know how even to use xpiss thats were i figured out its smb problems, it wouldn't share to a win98 machine, on the pentium 60 i setup winnt 4.0, and was having it do work for me like run the ti-link software and crunch seti at home, hehe, during the entire 3 week period i was doing that it got out but one packet. under debian it gets a packet a week. and i thought this was a topic on helping someone figure out how to use linux to use it to replace windows on a network and the applications under linux that would help do so