I reciently installed the Ubuntu distro of Linux

Discussion in 'Technology' started by Joeslogic, Feb 25, 2007.

  1. Joeslogic

    Joeslogic Active Member

    Messages:
    8,426
    Ok I have to admit I'm surprised at how far Linux distro's seem to have come :-\

    There are a few little problems with power management and such but other then that it seems pretty damn stabile if you do not get crazy about downloading the bazillion pieces of software out there. And just to be constructively critical it seems you have to sort through the mire to find a few gems. Open office was quite impressive and also some of the networking features. I cannot yet play mp3 audio suppose I need the right codec for one of the bazillion players out there that work fairly well. As well as a decent Movie player that is hopefully as adaptable as WMP.

    I will work on figuring out the bugs and if I come up with some fantastic software to do what I need I'll let ya know. But for someone that has only tried one distro (Red Hat and BeOS from maybe I dunno 6 years ago does not count.) Ubuntu ....seems recommendable by me. I will not spend too much time with this power management issue before switching to Suse to see if it works better.

    In the mean time comments from the peanut gallery are welcome I'm all ears.
     
  2. phatboy

    phatboy New Member

    Messages:
    6,956
    Joe, I'm telling ya, if you want to play around with a lot of Linux options, download the VM Player, from www.vmware.com and you can download all kinds of free appliances. And they are unbeleivably easy to install and use.

    And it's all free!
     
  3. pimpchichi

    pimpchichi Active Member

    Messages:
    7,211
    is that same as windows virtual machine?... i used that before but it annoyed me that it used a software type bios and generic (one size fits all) drivers...
     
  4. phatboy

    phatboy New Member

    Messages:
    6,956
    No, windows virtual machine is a POS. I think they actually have gone out and purchased another company. VMWare is it's own entity. They have some really creative products.

    Test it out. I am running the vmserver on an older athlong box at home, it is using 2000 server, running all kinds of BS inside of virtual server, IIS and what not. blackberry server and all.
     
  5. Dwaine Scum

    Dwaine Scum New Member

    Messages:
    11,130
    I use Kubuntu live disk with school. I think it works really well
     
  6. Joeslogic

    Joeslogic Active Member

    Messages:
    8,426
    Some of the guys I work with use VMware to support their clients. I have zero experience with it and in what context they use it I'm not sure really. All I know is that the guys using it got their memory bumped up to a gig for it to run smooth.

    Is it a memory hog?

    No doubt I'm going to hate having to remove it for this power management issue and admittedly I may have ruined a perfectly good image running a shit load of updates. That was my noob mistake. Rather than select them and check them out test the apps one at a time I just uploaded a shit load of stuff cause I really did not care if I screwed it up just wanted to see what kind of stuff was out there. I can setup a clean reinstall in no time. But I would like to know if anyone has used Suse.
     
  7. Dwaine Scum

    Dwaine Scum New Member

    Messages:
    11,130
    look for live disk releases, you ca try a product wthout a full install
     
  8. phatboy

    phatboy New Member

    Messages:
    6,956
    It is a pretty reasonable resource hawg, however you can change the memory allocation used by the VM. I run a gig and a half in my crappy little HP laptop, with 512 assigned to the WinXP SP2 VM and they both run pretty good concurrently. I thought about going up to 2 gigs, but I would probably get a new laptop before doing that. My Dell at my last job had a DC pentium and a gig and they ran great. The pentium M in my HP is running at 1.6 and it is ok.

    here is a good how to, for installs of winxp,

    http://johnbokma.com/mexit/2005/10/26/vmware-player-windows-xp.html

    I also created one with Win98 for shits and giggles.

    Plus you can download a lot of Red Hat stuff from the vmware site. The ubuntu web appliance is pretty decent.
     
  9. Joeslogic

    Joeslogic Active Member

    Messages:
    8,426
    Ok my latest system I just finished building with last years tech has a Pentium D 805 and 2gig of 533MHz DDR2. I bet it might run well on it But I already just put Server 2003 Enterprise edition on it. Now I'm banging my head against the wall disgusted at the crap performance. At one time I had a nice little domain server running and everything was working in the middle of setting up a mail server when. Microsoft figured out about my bogus authentication on the xp box. I tried to hack the registry and had an annoying little setup where it would ask me to re-authenticate with each reboot then get on line. After the domain configuration I could not re-authenticate and since I could not do that hten of course I could not log into the DC ??? I was sooooo very pissed. The sad part is the only reason I used a bogus corporate key was because I could not find my legit key list. Anyway that is all behind me now and I just have a standard workgroup setup.
     
  10. Joeslogic

    Joeslogic Active Member

    Messages:
    8,426
    Ok Phat I tried the vmplayer and I am sold. This is a sweet tool to use if you want to test out or simply play with lots of available pre-configured Virtual Machine application files freely available. I thought about mentioning a few but I don't know where to start. This could be addictive.

    Check this out : http://www.vmware.com/vmtn/appliances/directory/

    A friend was telling me about smoothwall firewall he runs it as a dedicated network appliance on an older system purely as a firewall and I was interested in checking it out I guess I can here and its so easy a brain dead monkey could manage. Several other sweet little apps like linbox for instance I have herd about are easily within reach. I was a bit apathetic as to weather this would be worth my time but damn was I wrong. Thanks for the tip Phat.
     
  11. phatboy

    phatboy New Member

    Messages:
    6,956
    Yea, wait til you install vmserver(also free) and start using it live at work. It is a breeze to manage.
     
  12. Joeslogic

    Joeslogic Active Member

    Messages:
    8,426
    Ok now I'm beginning to get sick of computers, I built a new system and installed ms server 2k3 and specd. it to try to handle vmware with a Pentium D and 2 Gig of DD2 533 memory. I have played with SUSE and Ubunto and can say that while I'm not afraid of the command prompt in dos. I was totally lost being forced to use a UNIX Terminal to do things like make the Totem player actually play mpg and wmv files in Linux stuff like that.

    The vmplayer is a sweet tool as is the vmserver for experimentation and I would recommend it however it is memory intensive though and this is especially true if you are going to play with the server. Which I did. The available pre-configured virtual machines worked well except there is a bug prolly fixable by someone smarter than me in that the integrated software update utilities would not work in the virtual machines for either SUSE or Ubuntu both were getting errors authenticating to their respective servers.

    That being said someone could likely install the synaptic software manager for Linux and get by fine. Me I'm not going to bother cause the Ubunto release I have already dual booting on my box works great. As for running Linux inside a windows shell the one that makes sense to me is the pre-configured sedusec o/s which I will keep around to run from within Windows.
    Reason is it is a no frills stripped down SUSE version of Linux but with all the ..... "security" related utilities.

    On the back burner is the idea of installing "smoothwall" as a virtual appliance onto the server. It may actually work great. And my server performance issues may be related to this crap mother board I'm using ECS P4M800PRO-M (it was really cheap whole setup minus the hdd I already had, the case, and o/s was around 250.00)

    What I really want to do is keep watching Craig’s list for a small shuttle system maybe pre-P4 so the power supply would have to be replaced to upgrade that is not good for much performance wise and someone has given up to sell for a few measly bucks. I'd put a gigabit nick in it and install Smooth wall and have a dedicated firewall network appliance.

    And if you want to go Linux and have loads of easy to manage software at your finger tips on a stable platform I recommend you go Ubunto. For those interested in Linux check this link out.

    http://www.linuxrsp.ru/win-lin-soft/table-eng.html#2
     
  13. phatboy

    phatboy New Member

    Messages:
    6,956
    I am looking for a good firewall/bandwidth monitor, if you come across one let me know. I have been so busy at work with BS user issues, I havent had much time to look into it.......

    If your company is wanting to save some overhead cost on server upgrades and what not, get with Dell, a quad dual core server with at least a gig per, with InfrastructureIII from VMWARE will save you a yon of money on hardware overhead. Plus the primary box runs a linux 'vaporware' layer (Ive heard it called Visor layer) so it has minimal resource hogging and is quick to boot, as quick as servers can be, plus with a good RAID configuration (Hardware Controlled) you cn run 15 and up servers on one box. At my old job we had 13 running on one box, running the VMDKs from the SAN and it wasnt even taking up 8% of the available resources.

    Then get on the VMOTION bandwagon, imagine doing server maintenance during the day, with out the EUs even knowing it, it creates a second virtual server, runs cuncurrent with your production system, the users go to it, you can put one of the million Windows security fixes on the server, crank it back up and BAM the users are back on the origianal box, all data is current and the snap shot system goes away(when you tell it to).

    Those guys are freaking scarey smart. Or they smoked a lot of weed.

    Depending on your location they will send out a rep to talk with you and give you testimonials, and an idea of moneys you can save, which where Im at means more bonus for me.
     
  14. Joeslogic

    Joeslogic Active Member

    Messages:
    8,426
    I can relate I work around some pretty smart dudes also. I'm the master of no trades and not even going to try to be a poser and say I'm the Jack of all trades. I can play around with some stuff at the house though. But check your message I bet this one makes you laugh.
     

Share This Page