Ignatz Mouse
Banned
I find myself in no hurry at all to upgrade my OS. I just don't see the benefit-- the OS is pretty darned stable for me and does what I want already.
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Linux Distro Noob thread of Linux noobs
- Thread starter Flying_Phoenix
- Start date
Vanillalite
Ask me about the GAF Notebook
So I'm debating on if I'm gonna go to my closest Linux Festival. I've always wanted to go to one of these things, and mingle with the fellow Linux nerds. At the same point though I'm not a hardcore stringent FOSS guy, and my computer skills aren't that great. I feel like I'd be a fish out of water at one of these things. They are holding South East Linux Fest in Spartanburg SC in mid June, and I could drive there just for one of the 3 days. They also are supposedly holding an UbuCon there as well on Friday and Sunday which piqued my interest.
I'm probably gonna puss out and not go though. Sorry Linux GAF I just don't feel I meet the requirements to go to something like this. :/
I'm probably gonna puss out and not go though. Sorry Linux GAF I just don't feel I meet the requirements to go to something like this. :/
I've gone to Linux World, LinuxCon, LibrePlanet, and a few others along with local events like installfest and local LUG meetings. The crowd is always varied across the board (although not so much at LibrePlanet). You should definitely go if you can since they're always fun and most of the time you'll learn a lot from the talks. It's not like anyone is going to point at you and say "LOOK it's a newbie!" or tell you to "RTFM" for not knowing something. You'll find plenty of people there in the same position as you.
Vanillalite
Ask me about the GAF Notebook
angelfly said:
Yeah IDK.... LOL... I know they wouldn't scream "look the newb" but I'm not connected in anyway other than my curiosity and intrigue into GNU/Linux and such so I wouldn't feel like I'd have a reason to be there or know anyone else going...
Maybe I could convince a buddy to go I'd go hmmm....
Suitcase Test
Member
I agree, just go and have fun Brettison. 
All the open source peeps I've met have been amazingly friendly. Sure, the conversations will be geeky but either you'll know what they're talking about or you'll learn something new. It's great to talk with people who like the same things when most of your friends and family just aren't that interested. I'm not a super geek either (and far from an actual developer) but I never felt out of place.
(That isn't to say there aren't any bad apples, I'm sure there are some, especially since many geeks aren't social butterflies. But that's their problem, not yours. Again, I've never met anyone at a conference that wasn't welcoming and friendly to me.)
//Edit: also, the fact that not many people use Linux can be an advantage. Most people there will probably be excited you're into Linux at all. The hardest thing for me was talking to random people, because I'm generally quite shy. It may be helpful to meet up with someone else, even if you don't know them that well.
All the open source peeps I've met have been amazingly friendly. Sure, the conversations will be geeky but either you'll know what they're talking about or you'll learn something new. It's great to talk with people who like the same things when most of your friends and family just aren't that interested. I'm not a super geek either (and far from an actual developer) but I never felt out of place.
(That isn't to say there aren't any bad apples, I'm sure there are some, especially since many geeks aren't social butterflies. But that's their problem, not yours. Again, I've never met anyone at a conference that wasn't welcoming and friendly to me.)
//Edit: also, the fact that not many people use Linux can be an advantage. Most people there will probably be excited you're into Linux at all. The hardest thing for me was talking to random people, because I'm generally quite shy. It may be helpful to meet up with someone else, even if you don't know them that well.
Myke Greywolf
Ambassador of Goodwill
itxaka said:
The Unity debacle is bringing many Ubuntu users to try Mint, because of its large similarities with Ubuntu and focus on ease of use and general appeal for the "normal" desktop user.
Brettison said:
That's what I thought when I was going to attend a demoscene party for the first time. I'd never been to a demoparty before, didn't know anyone there and I didn't have a demo to show off. So I thought I would be an outcast there but I had a blast anyway and met a lot of new cool folks.
I was pretty nervous because there were a couple of "famous" chiptune musicians there, like Nullsleep and Random for example. But I asked them some questions about their NES Powerpak that they use to run their demos and after that it was cool
A good icebreaker is to just ask relevant questions and they'll mostly be happy to answer them, unless they're busy or something. Then you have a reason to keep talking and you can segway into other topics from there.
Suitcase Test
Member
Yeah, but that's distrowatch. It counts people who visit distrowatch, which is hardly representative.itxaka said:
(Nothing against Linux Mint btw, I wish those guys all the best.)
Flying_Phoenix
Banned
itxaka said:
As someone said that's distrowatch's poll. Doesn't Ubuntu compromise 50% of the Linux userbase?
Suitcase Test
Member
Not that I know of, no.itxaka said:
I know Fedora has some statistics here, but no idea how reliable those are. And Canonical has always been closelipped when it comes to Ubuntu numbers.
DeathGlobe
Member
I have a 1gb netbook that is slow running windows 7. What would be a good alternative os?
ghostofsparta
Member
Okay so for some reason I turned on my computer and and the panel at the top is different. My name and the power button are gone. The option to turn off the computer is now under System, which I have seen in other Linux Distros but I liked the way ubuntu 10.10 had it.
Did this happen to anybody else or did I just accidently change some option that made this happen?
I included a picture of how my setup used to look and how it looks now.
Did this happen to anybody else or did I just accidently change some option that made this happen?
I included a picture of how my setup used to look and how it looks now.
ghostofsparta
Member
Sew said:
It appears as of fast-user-switch-applet is no longer available. I tried to copy and paste it into run but it couldn't find the applet so I tried to get it through the terminal and got this message
sudo apt-get install fast-user-switch-applet
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
Package fast-user-switch-applet is not available, but is referred to by another package.
This may mean that the package is missing, has been obsoleted, or
is only available from another source
However the following packages replace it:
gdm indicator-applet-session
E: Package 'fast-user-switch-applet' has no installation candidate
So the next obvious thing to do is try and get indicator-applet-session. However it seems as if I already have that, so I tried to run it but it also can't find it.
I admit, I don't know what's going on
ghostofsparta
Member
benjipwns said:
Unfortunately that didn't work. :[ Thanks though.
Vanillalite
Ask me about the GAF Notebook
Vanillalite
Ask me about the GAF Notebook
BTW would you guys and gals like a Fedora 15 thread similar to my Ubuntu 11.04 thread at the end of this month?
AwesomeSauce
MagsMoonshine
Finally giving Linux a real chance, and I'm liking it. There are annoying quirks here and there, but so far Ubuntu has been not bad. Learning a lot of new stuff with using terminal and i think Unity isn't too bad so far. I might try other distros after getting used to this more.
ghostofsparta
Member
Massa said:
That worked!
Thank you!
Brettison said:
Yep.
|OT| Of Fedora 15 with Gnome 3. When developers become UI designers.
We can change themes also! It's a pain in the ass but oh well
http://www.webupd8.org/2011/05/orta-and-drakfire-caffe-amazing-new.html
IIRC correctly the session manager is available in Fallback mode, try booting into that and removing stuff there. Haven't tried this myself though.panda21 said:
Well in an OOTB GUI at leastitxaka said:We can change themes also! It's a pain in the ass but oh well
I've seen some great looking G3 skins available but I'm waiting a bit before trying them out.Suitcase Test
Member
I've finally managed to get my Fedora 15 beta back from the depths of software doom (it wouldn't boot, couldn't get to runlevel 1, SELinux nonsense, etc). I've been using a mix of Ubuntu and Fedora recently and it's time to switch to one or the other, because going back and forth with files, passwords and downloads has gotten very annoying (especially since I've got these two plus Windows 7 and Vista on this tiny 200GB laptop).
I think I'm going with Fedora and GNOME 3. It's not I don't like Unity (in fact there are certain things I like better on Ubuntu) but GNOME 3 is pretty damn nice and I like the GNOME developers.
I think I'm going with Fedora and GNOME 3. It's not I don't like Unity (in fact there are certain things I like better on Ubuntu) but GNOME 3 is pretty damn nice and I like the GNOME developers.
Vanillalite
Ask me about the GAF Notebook
itxaka said:
What's puzzled me about this is compared to Unity which was tied to Canonical having to push it with the set Ubuntu 6 month release schedule (in phases at least), Gnome could take as long as they wanted. So why the rush to push out Gnome 3 as is verses taking say another 6 months, and having it more polished for the fall?
Brettison said:
Ubuntu and GNOME both have a 6 month schedule. It's something Ubuntu kind of inhereted from GNOME, with the idea that each Ubuntu released would be synched to a new GNOME release.
GNOME 3.0 is far more polished than Unity anyway, at least imo. Unity feels like an amateur dock, like awn or cairo-dock.
Vanillalite
Ask me about the GAF Notebook
Massa said:
They didn't have to push out Gnome 3 though. They could have just kept on with bug fixing 2.3X until Gnome 3 was ready though.
hikarutilmitt
Member
So far GNOME 3 feels like when KDE4 came out: nice to look at, somewhat improved but in dire need of refinement before it's ready for prime time. Granted, it's more polished than KDE4 was for its time, but KDE4 was such a mess initially I couldn't stand to use it until around KDE4.3.
Vanillalite
Ask me about the GAF Notebook
hikarutilmitt said:
I sort of had the same logic, but didn't want to post that as I fell it's at least usable now unlike KDE 4.0. It's a solid base of ideas to build on though for sure.
PS: Unity isn't perfect either, but for me personally it's been less buggy.
Vanillalite
Ask me about the GAF Notebook
Philooch said:
Did you install it yet or not? If not I'd suggest either using one of the usb tools or burning the .iso to a disc and running it as a LIVE CD. This will just run the OS without an install so you can check things out as it may. It's not as fast or as nice as a real install, but you don't have to worry about hating it and having it already installed either.
AwesomeSauce
MagsMoonshine
Philooch said:
I just did that the other day and I'm actually enjoying the new Ubuntu release and Unity. Since we're new to Linux in general, there are annoying quirks here and there, but there should be fixes you can look up.
Gah, having such a bad run with Gnome 3. The first two machines I tried it on lacked proper GPU so it dumped me to fallback mode. Finally I tried Fedora 15 beta on my killer new laptop, and I couldn't get it to load/recognise ATI drivers. So I gave up and installed Xubuntu 11.04 (very nice).
From here I was able to install my ATI drivers along with Gnome 3. But starting a Gnome 3 session gives me a sparse, broken desktop. The top panel is there, I can access Applications, but it all seems empty and broken. And brown (?). I tried to take a screenshot but the gnome screenshot utility failed. Very funny.
From here I was able to install my ATI drivers along with Gnome 3. But starting a Gnome 3 session gives me a sparse, broken desktop. The top panel is there, I can access Applications, but it all seems empty and broken. And brown (?). I tried to take a screenshot but the gnome screenshot utility failed. Very funny.
Vanillalite
Ask me about the GAF Notebook
HOLY SHIT!!!
I'm trying out Xubuntu and ZOMG... this is FUCKING AMAZING!
IDK if it's because I haven't used Xubuntu in forever, XFCE in forever, or XFCE 4.8 is just THAT good. Shiiiitttt this is fucking A to the WESOME though. If you want an old school like interface that still feels modern and runs like a beast I'd highly recommend checking out Xubuntu!
This is the only big release distro that is running 4.8 though so I can't say if it's the release as a whole or XFCE 4.8. Still try out the live cd. I dare anyone to try and hate on this!
I'm trying out Xubuntu and ZOMG... this is FUCKING AMAZING!
IDK if it's because I haven't used Xubuntu in forever, XFCE in forever, or XFCE 4.8 is just THAT good. Shiiiitttt this is fucking A to the WESOME though. If you want an old school like interface that still feels modern and runs like a beast I'd highly recommend checking out Xubuntu!
This is the only big release distro that is running 4.8 though so I can't say if it's the release as a whole or XFCE 4.8. Still try out the live cd. I dare anyone to try and hate on this!
+1 Brettison
Xubuntu has always been a little nicer than a vanilla XFCE4 desktop, but the Xubuntu 11.04 + XFCE4.8 combo takes it to the next level. It's all the small things: New Thunar features (network browser and eject buttons to name two), better desktop customisation, the default greybird (*cough*osx) theme, it all flows together into something utterly lovely.
@kampspy - If he's comfortable with computers, I think he'll be fine.
Xubuntu has always been a little nicer than a vanilla XFCE4 desktop, but the Xubuntu 11.04 + XFCE4.8 combo takes it to the next level. It's all the small things: New Thunar features (network browser and eject buttons to name two), better desktop customisation, the default greybird (*cough*osx) theme, it all flows together into something utterly lovely.
@kampspy - If he's comfortable with computers, I think he'll be fine.
Elfforkusu
Member
Welcome to the dark side, my Xubuntu brother. *brofist*Brettison said:
Vanillalite
Ask me about the GAF Notebook
If Xubuntu had the notification system that regular Ubuntu does for stuff like say IMs and shit it would be virtually perfect IMO.
Brettison said:
Doesn't it? I remember testing it on xubuntu with notify-send
After all the time working on it, the delays, the need of other projects to have a stable gtk3 framework and the unity "confrontation" they had to do it. Sucks but hey, I can't remember the latest big version of any software in linux that didn't suck (well actually kernel 2.6 but that is a different story)