At 2/16/13 05:25 AM, Dean wrote:

In comparison to what? Windows I assume. It will depend entierly on which distribution you use and whether or not you're using a fancy GUI that has lots of bells and whistles.

In comparison to Windows 7. And it was more a question of 'When I boot windows back up will it still run just as fine as it did before?'

If your sole reason for switching to Linux is to get a TF2 hat, I wouldn't bother. Linux still isn't really a gaming platform to the extent Windows is. Been a few weeks since I checked but Valve didn't have many games that ran under Linux.

Actually if you go to valve right now they are having a Linux games sale, all Linux games are on sale but the main attraction for alot of people is that TF2 can run Linux, and if you run TF2 on Linux before the first of next month you get a complementary item exclusive to Linux users. You can only get the item prior, after the first nobody can get them anymore.

At 2/16/13 12:55 PM, sweet21 wrote: In comparison to Windows 7. And it was more a question of 'When I boot windows back up will it still run just as fine as it did before?'

Yes, it will be exactly like you left it. Just make sure you don't overwrite any of your files when installing Ubuntu. You'll need some additional space on your harddrive and unless you have an unused partition or harddisk space, you're gonna have to resize one or more of your existing partitions to make space for a new partition which you'll install Ubuntu on.

To clarify, Windows won't suffer performance loss in any way. Ubuntu and Windows are separate from each other and won't directly affect each other in any way.

The only bad thing about Ubuntu is that it didn't come pre-installed with your computer. Instaling an operating system requires some additional knowledge, and when you're installing 2 different operating systems for a dual-boot configuration, you're gonna have to know a little about partitions.

Also, the Windows bootloader doesn't support multiple operating systems, but since you're installing Ubuntu on a computer with Windows already installed, this won't be a problem. After installing Ubuntu, upon turning on your system you will be presented with a choice to boot into either your Windows or Ubuntu installation.

Actually if you go to valve right now they are having a Linux games sale, all Linux games are on sale but the main attraction for alot of people is that TF2 can run Linux, and if you run TF2 on Linux before the first of next month you get a complementary item exclusive to Linux users. You can only get the item prior, after the first nobody can get them anymore.

I've also noticed that. Sadly, it seems a great deal of them just install Ubuntu, get the hat, delete Ubuntu, and switch back to Windows. It's obviously gonna take some effort on the users part to adapt to a slightly different workflow that is present in an unfamiliar operating system.

Linux gensokyo 3.7.0-7-generic #15-Ubuntu SMP Sat Dec 15 14:13:08 UTC 2012 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

DISTRIB_ID=Ubuntu
DISTRIB_RELEASE=13.04
DISTRIB_CODENAME=raring
DISTRIB_DESCRIPTION="Ubuntu Raring Ringtail (development branch)"

Btw, I use Gnome-Shell.

Can't stand Unity and tiling WMs.

At 2/16/13 02:34 PM, KevinHR wrote: Sadly, it seems a great deal of them just install Ubuntu, get the hat, delete Ubuntu, and switch back to Windows.

Yea, it's a shame and I also find it a little odd that people would go to such bother for an in-game item that's probably of no real use. Is that one item really worth installing a new operating system to get? Seems like way too much hassle to me.

I do like that Valve are making the effort to get people to try out Ubuntu. I'm not one of these hardcore Windows haters or anything, but it is nice to see people become more willing to try alternatives. I prefer the idea of operating systems being developed by a community rather than a company. I also like operating systems that cost me nothing :)

At 2/16/13 04:09 PM, LLStarks wrote: Can't stand Unity and tiling WMs.

Unity was the reason I ended up changing from Ubuntu. I didn't have to change to another distro but I wanted to try others out and settled on Mint. I rather like Cinnamon. I like having menus to scroll through as oppose to the route Unity seemed to take where you just text-search for what you want. Maybe I'm just too old fashioned and reluctant to change.

Can't say I'm a fan of tiled window managers either but I can see why people might like them and I can see where they'd be useful. When I'm programming there are often times that I try to manually tile windows so that I can see various things at one, so in that case a tiled windows manager would be nice.

At 2/15/13 09:24 AM, Dean wrote: I'm not too fussy about what distro I use, I just thought going for something minimal like Arch might make me appreciate what's going on more. I'd like to get to the point where I can actually contribute too or develop some of my own software for a distro. I'm in my last year of a computer science degree but I don't contribute to any open source projects and I'd like to get into it. I feel like I'm a reasonably competent programmer, although far from being the best, but contributing to projects like that still feels a little above my skill level. I feel like I could potentially learn a lot if I were to try and get involved with that.

Try distro hopping. Linux distros tend to be very similar except for the package managers and the packages. Although that in itself is kinda of a big difference. And yeah getting involved in FOSS projects is great. I love that it's a awesome way to give back to the community.

Pretty nice looking set up you have there. Can't say I usually go to the effort of having nice coloured output in terminals and I've never made use of pixel art, but that does look pretty sweet.

Thanks man, I try.

It has been marked as dispatched using 24 hour express delivery, but since it's the weekend I doubt it will arrive until Monday. I've never actually used a ThinkPad before but I friend of mine had one and they did look like nice laptops.

Did you get it yet?

At 2/15/13 05:32 PM, Elitistinen wrote: That's a nice Flux setup. I use Compiz, and previously was Enlightenment. Zanthas you have really sweet skills in customization.

I love E17. It's really pretty. I use it sometimes. Compiz is great too.
And thanks man, I appreciate the compliment.

In other news Sabayon 11 (my second favourite distro) is out.

Get it while its hot!

At 2/16/13 04:00 PM, LLStarks wrote: Linux gensokyo 3.7.0-7-generic #15-Ubuntu SMP Sat Dec 15 14:13:08 UTC 2012 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

DISTRIB_ID=Ubuntu
DISTRIB_RELEASE=13.04
DISTRIB_CODENAME=raring
DISTRIB_DESCRIPTION="Ubuntu Raring Ringtail (development branch)"

Gensokyo, eh?

Which Touhou is your favourite?

At 2/16/13 04:09 PM, LLStarks wrote: Btw, I use Gnome-Shell.

Can't stand Unity and tiling WMs.

Not a fan of Unity, and I don't like Tiling WMs either. Although I've seen so pretty desktops using them.

At 2/18/13 04:18 AM, Zanthas wrote: Did you get it yet?

Not yet although the delivery companies tracking service has it listed as being "Out for delivery". Their depot is about an hour away in Edinburgh so I'm assuming it'll arrive mid-afternoon, so a few hours away.

As pleased as I am to hopefully be receiving it today it's also a little annoying because I have work to do but who can resist the urge to play around on a new laptop? Also eagerly awaiting to find out what kind of condition it's in.

Well, the ThinkPad arrived and it's in pretty decent condition. I could only see a few little things that I could be picky about. On the rear of the laptop there's a USB port that has had a little piece of the surrounding plastic chipped off but it's nothing terrible and not all that obvious. I didn't even notice at first glance. The only other thing that I've found was that there's a missing lock mechanism on the underside of the laptop that's used to lock the disc drive in. I'd have preferred if that was still there but the switch that's used to remove the disc drive requires some pressure so it seems unlikely that it'll accidentally be pressed.

Other than that there's nothing wrong with it really aside from a couple of minor scratches on the lid that are only noticable if you go looking for them. But yea, overall I'm very impressed with the condition of this laptop considering the price I paid for it.

Windows 7 boots and shuts down a lot faster than I'm used to as well. Unsure if that's to do with the hardware or because Lenovo claim that they've sped up the process themselves. The ThinkPad trackball thing feels strange to use at first but I'm getting the hang of it. I can see myself preferring this over the trackpad.

I'm not going to bother installing a Linux distro on this just yet. I think I'll get everything I need set up on Windows first since I pretty much have to use Windows for some coursework that I'll be doing soon. Plus I don't feel like I have the time to be faffing about with another new OS either because really I've got so much work that I should be doing right now.

Overall though I'm really impressed with this right now. I'll just have to use it for a little while to adjust to Windows (haven't really used Windows since XP) and make sure there isn't anything wrong with this laptop that I've missed at first glance.

At 2/18/13 10:11 AM, Dean wrote: Well, the ThinkPad arrived

Congratulations! I'm glad you're satisfied.

I hope you'll enjoy the trackpoint as much as I do, I can't imagine using a laptop without it.

It sucks that there aren't any mechanical keyboards with an original trackpoint. There's the Unicomp EnduraPro, but it doesn't have the middle mouse button which is godly for scrolling. Hell, this is probably what pushed me over to tiling WMs.

At 2/18/13 10:11 AM, Dean wrote: Well, the ThinkPad arrived

Sounds like your happy with your purchase. That's awesome. Thinkpads are nice laptops, good quality. I wish I had one haha.

Zanthas, I like Lunasa <___<

In other news, the 3.8 shipped with broken iwlwifi drivers. There seems to be a problem with link speed and rate control throttling.

Btw, does anyone have a good conky script?

At 2/19/13 01:40 AM, LLStarks wrote: Zanthas, I like Lunasa <___<

In other news, the 3.8 shipped with broken iwlwifi drivers. There seems to be a problem with link speed and rate control throttling.

Btw, does anyone have a good conky script?

Lunasa, eh?

Great taste. My favorite is Youmu

As for a conky script here's one I found on the Arch forums.

The guy who's using it says it sets on top of his xfce panel.

Looks pretty neat when combined.

I like conky's that blend into one's DE or WM

At 2/19/13 05:00 PM, Zanthas wrote: Great taste. My favorite is Youmu

As for a conky script here's one I found on the Arch forums.

The guy who's using it says it sets on top of his xfce panel.

Looks pretty neat when combined.

I like conky's that blend into one's DE or WM

God dammit, Zanthas. You stole her from me.

Also, it annoys me when people arrange their windows in such a way and continue to use floating WMs, and even more when they're terminal windows. Manual tiling WMs that use the horizontal/vertical-slicing concept are really simple and doesn't have the limitations you find in dynamic tiling WMs.

At 2/19/13 05:26 PM, KevinHR wrote:

God dammit, Zanthas. You stole her from me.

She is lovely, isn't she?

Also, it annoys me when people arrange their windows in such a way and continue to use floating WMs, and even more when they're terminal windows. Manual tiling WMs that use the horizontal/vertical-slicing concept are really simple and doesn't have the limitations you find in dynamic tiling WMs.

Most likely the reason they do that is just to look 1337. It is the Arch forums after all, its filled with ricer skiddies.

Anyone familiar with LVM partitioning?

I want to put root, /home, and swap in an LVM and then give 75% of the drive space to 1 or 2 giant ntfs partitions.

Good idea? Bad idea?

Here's what I'm thinking then... No LVM

20 GB Linux root
20 GB Linux /home
10 GB Swap
100 GB Windows OS (I hate how much space updates take up)
350 GB Shared NTFS

At 3/3/13 03:03 AM, MidoriKatsu wrote: I just want to point out that Linux makes my laptop over heat. It's fast, but Ubuntu just makes the fan run too fast and makes it overheat.

Ubuntu with Unity?

Probably a driver issue. Use a different DE.

Zanthas, do you use FreeBSD as a primary OS?

If so, how is the environment compared to Linux?

At 3/4/13 03:14 AM, LLStarks wrote: Zanthas, do you use FreeBSD as a primary OS?

If so, how is the environment compared to Linux?

When I can, I do use FreeBSD. I have it on my laptop along with OpenBSD and Win 7.I tried putting it on my desktop, but AMD Drivers lack support in FreeBSD sadly.

What do you mean environment? The core utils? It's similar to a GNU userland if that's what you're asking. Less of a memory print though. I like the userland a bit more, but the GNU one is fine too. FreeBSD has X server too so, you can use any X Window Manger you want, or even big DEs like Gnome or KDE, if you want too. The filesystem is similar to GNU/Linux as well, although not exactly the same. Your user home is in /usr/home instead of /home like it is in Linux. Lots of *BSDs put a symlink for /home though, to make it similar to what Linux users are used to.

*BSDs is a lot more tightly meshed together than most linux distros, since the kernel and the userland are developed by the same people. Also, the difference between the *BSDs is great than the differences between different Linux distro (most of the time, Linux distros main difference is how it boots, the package manager and any startup daemons and design philosophy). Almost always you can compile a program in Linux and have it work immediately across different distros without editing the source. Indeed many programs come labeled as "Software_name-Linux Generic (Architecture).tar.gz" when downloading them off the websites of the developers, (you should of course, install from your package manager first). This isn't the case with *BSD.

Another nice thing FreeBSD specifically has is jails and ZFS, that and added security. It's a great server OS. I use it for my server. It just suffers from lack of hardware support especially on the graphics cards side of things. Hopefully this week be fixed a bit more with FreeBSD 10

So dead in here.

So what do you folks think about MIR announcement Canonical made?

For those who don't know, Mir is Canonical's in house display server. It's going to be replacing X in Ubuntu. Originally was Wayland was going to replace X in Ubuntu and in other distros, but for reasons listed here, they decided to create there own.

This announcement has caused lots of people to worry. Especially those who fear even more fractalization for the GNU/Linux desktop since it seems Mir and Wayland will be competing standards (which means less driver/video support for one or the other, or the possibility of scaring of vendors) I'm not sure what to think.

At 3/14/13 04:02 AM, Zanthas wrote: So dead in here.

My activity in this thread declined because since getting that new ThinkPad (which had Windows 7 installed) I seem to have converted back to being a Windows user again. Right now I feel like I have no reason to switch back to using a Linux distro because I'm quite happy on Windows 7. It's a lot nicer than I imagined it to be. I've also been using the Visual C++ compiler so it's kinda useful to have a Windows system just now.

I think I'll be sticking with Windows until I get to the point where I need a new OS for whatever reason and I don't feel like buying a Windows key. I was tempted to install a Linux distro on my laptop too, but right now I literally have no use for Linux :(

At 3/14/13 06:55 AM, Dean wrote: My activity in this thread declined because since getting that new ThinkPad (which had Windows 7 installed) I seem to have converted back to being a Windows user again. Right now I feel like I have no reason to switch back to using a Linux distro because I'm quite happy on Windows 7. It's a lot nicer than I imagined it to be. I've also been using the Visual C++ compiler so it's kinda useful to have a Windows system just now.

I think I'll be sticking with Windows until I get to the point where I need a new OS for whatever reason and I don't feel like buying a Windows key. I was tempted to install a Linux distro on my laptop too, but right now I literally have no use for Linux :(

I imagine you had never tried Windows 7 before? Yeah, honestly, Windows 7 is the best Windows, ALOT better than vista and still better than 8. And as for me, I just always dual boot Windows and and a GNU/Linux distro just cause I feel safer having both (I know, I'm weird.)

I'm not happy about the Mir announcement.

It'll only cause fragmentation and the only good thing we have to look forward to is an EGL driver from Nvidia.

Btw, in case anyone likes exploratory Linux shit, I rooted my TV...

Linux (none) 2.6.30.9 #176 PREEMPT Wed Jul 20 11:22:31 KST 2011 mips GNU/Linux

system type : MStar Chip
processor : 0
cpu model : MIPS 34Kc V5.5 FPU V0.0
BogoMIPS : 334.84
wait instruction : yes
microsecond timers : yes
tlb_entries : 64
extra interrupt vector : yes
hardware watchpoint : yes, count: 4, address/irw mask: [0x0544, 0x0400, 0x06b0, 0x0ff8]
ASEs implemented : mips16 dsp mt
shadow register sets : 1
core : 0
VCED exceptions : not available
VCEI exceptions : not available

At 3/18/13 03:43 AM, LLStarks wrote: I'm not happy about the Mir announcement.

It'll only cause fragmentation and the only good thing we have to look forward to is an EGL driver from Nvidia.

That's exactly why I'm worried about it.

Btw, in case anyone likes exploratory Linux shit, I rooted my TV...

Linux (none) 2.6.30.9 #176 PREEMPT Wed Jul 20 11:22:31 KST 2011 mips GNU/Linux

Aww shit man that's pretty cool

I find Mir particularly bothersome because nobody saw it coming. I'm on the Ubuntu-X team and even I didn't know what RAOF and the others were doing in their free time.

At 3/25/13 09:58 PM, Elitistinen wrote:

At 3/25/13 01:08 AM, LLStarks wrote: I find Mir particularly bothersome because nobody saw it coming. I'm on the Ubuntu-X team and even I didn't know what RAOF and the others were doing in their free time.

I see the Canonical decision to go with Mir is not that controversy as the media hyped about. They have good reason though. Canonical is talking much about a next gen display server. Also X is old and has quite lot of legacy mess. KDE community just drop the weightball on Ubuntu legs that they stop supporting Mir. For sure, Ubuntu is gonna drive the Linux-Titanic in to a bad storm.

I think the bigger issue here is that Canonical is now strongarming the development process of open-source software. As demonstrated by this article, Shuttleworth has basically said his givadamn is busted when it comes to the Ubuntu community.

One of the many reasons I don't use Ubuntu. While the Ubuntu project has helped Linux overall in many ways, I believe it has hurt it equally, if not moreso.

I see you folks love Arch Linux. Any advice for a Debian user who wants to try out your lovely distro?

At 4/6/13 02:11 AM, Wurfel-Waffles wrote: I see you folks love Arch Linux. Any advice for a Debian user who wants to try out your lovely distro?

Install Debian Minimal and get a working desktop from there. Should give you a feel of Arch minus the install process.

It's not hard at all

At 5/7/13 01:55 AM, Zanthas wrote: Install Debian Minimal and get a working desktop from there. Should give you a feel of Arch minus the install process.

It's not hard at all

Awesome, thanks.