Hi Mark, First off, I agree with Oleg, had I the money to burn (I just bought a new motorcycle last July and crashed it 3 days later and fractured my right foot ... ehem good thing I took a comprehensive insurance) I would invest on a Mac. I actually bought a PowerBook before but my Mom wanted it and she asked nicely (won't take no for an answer ... hehehe) and she loves it.
If you haven't partitioned your computer and your machine has lots of RAM, I would suggest installing it on a virtual machine first. You can either use Microsoft Virtual PC and Sun's VirtualBox, both of these software's are FREE. Although I would suggest VirtualBox over the Virtual PC for a bunch of reasons. You see, most of my friends who tried out Linux end up destroying their windows partition or not being able to boot back into windows. Particularly if you have more that 1 internal hard drives and not familiar with Linux device naming convention. Also, depending on how powerful your PC, trying it out first in a Virtual Machine would let you use your computer on other tasks while installing, patching, or just plain mucking around with linux. Afterwards, when your really comfortable with the new OS, then that's the time you go the plunge and install it on physical partition. BTW, I've met a lot of people who doesn't like the Gnome desktop. You do have an alternative like KD E and XFE but I'm suggesting that you give Gnome a chance first ... there's a lot of customisation that you can do with it. Actually, my desktop right now looks pretty much like Aqua/Mac. Since your using Ubunutu, I would assume that you got the 64bit version (you have to select it at the option box in the Ubuntu download website otherwise you'll get the 32 bit version). Also, I would suggest that you visit this site and at least read up on some of its suggestions: http://ubuntuguide.org Good luck! r/Alex ________________________________________ From: [email protected] [[email protected]] On Behalf Of Mark Deardorff [[email protected]] Sent: Friday, October 02, 2009 9:10 PM To: Chat forum Subject: Re: [Jchat] [Jgeneral] J64 on OpenSUSE 11.1 64bit OS (WAS: RE: [Jbeta] 602 ebeta available for linux32 and linux64) Thanks everyone. Sorry Oleg, I have already invested in PC hardware and cannot afford the Mac iron. I have the Ubuntu disk and will boot from it to do some partition work before I install it. Mark On Fri, Oct 2, 2009 at 3:36 AM, David Mitchell <[email protected]>wrote: > Mark, I have tried a variety of variety of Linux distributions over the > years, > including OpenSUSE, Ubuntu and RedHat. I first settled on RedHat because > it was > the only one at the time that I could get to support Sharp APL for Unix, > SAX. > > Later, I switched to SUSE and then OpenSUSE as they were the only ones I > could > get to easily work on the hardware I was running. > > As Alex noted, I have discovered that the decision about which Linux to > install > is often driven by hardware support. The most iffy items I have found are > video > drivers, wireless support, audio cards and laptop support in general. > > Given the low cost of gigabytes these days, my suggestion would be to set > up a > multi-partition, multi-boot system with as many versions of Linux and IDE's > as > you are interested in evaluating. I have found that the installers for the > new > Linux distributions are much simpler and more bullet proof than in prior > years. > > You could even play around with X86 Solaris. > > I have had far better luck with Linux on desktops than with laptops. > > I regret to say it helps me appreciate one of Microsoft's major > achievements: > decent support out of the box for a vast assortment of hardware. By it's > nature, Linux will usually lag in its hardware support. I find Linux tends > to > run first time on systems that are older than a year or three. Running > Linux on > state of the art hardware often required that I get into beta drivers or > use odd > approaches like ndiswrappers. Often, I couldn't get one distribution or > another > to work satisfactorily at all on a particular hardware configuration due to > some > quirk of the hardware support. > > At the moment, I find OpenSUSE works for my needs. I am using it with SAX, > J > and an assortment of compilers. I have used it to work with the Fortran > routines from Netlib and other web libraries. As an old-timer, I am using > the > tools directly, rather than via an IDE. > > I was pleasantly surprised when OpenSUSE ran first time on my new notebook. > It > was a low-end notebook, with the most generic hardware. > > Good luck, > -- > David Mitchell > > Mark Deardorff wrote: > > Sorry for butting in here but I have a question you can probably answer > for > > me. What is a better installation of UNIX for software development and > > general scientific and math computing? OpenSUSE, Ubuntu, Redhat or some > > other? I am a Windows(ze) 7 user (well, as of 10/22/09) and want to learn > > Linux (used to be a Unix user). What will be better for me? I am running > an > > AMD Phenom 64 which is a quad core box. Thanks, somuch, in advance. (Alo > > what is a good IDE?) > > > > On Tue, Sep 29, 2009 at 3:38 AM, David Mitchell <[email protected] > >wrote: > > > >> I had a somewhat different experience with OpenSUSE 64 11.1. > >> > >> When the hard drive on my Gateway MT6456 notebook died a few months ago, > I > >> replaced it with one twice as large. I configured it as dual boot with > >> Vista 32 > >> on 1/2 of the drive and OpenSUSE 64 11.1 on the other 1/2. > >> > >> I used the the current NVIDIA support at the time via YAST and it worked > >> first > >> time for me after the download and install. > >> > >> I don't use the other three features that didn't work for you. > >> -- > >> David Mitchell > >> > >> Alex Rufon wrote: > >>> Well, although I got J to work with OpenSUSE on my Lenovo T61 ... I had > >> to give up on it after reinstalling the OS 3 times and switched to the > 64bit > >> Ubuntu 9. I should have done that in the first place instead of wasting > 2 > >> days. > >>> Here are some of the major problems which made me back away from > >> OpenSUSE. > >>> 1. NVIDIA driver installation - your system will refuse to boot > >>> 2. NTFS write mode support - you really have to jump through hoops just > >> to write to NTFS partitions > >>> 3. Support for Wireless USB network - just doesn't work. > >>> 4. Support for 3G Network - intermittent > >>> > >>> When I switch to Ubuntu this morining ... everything worked without > even > >> opening the console. Just relied on wizards for the configuration and no > >> more problems. > >>> r/Alex > >>> ________________________________________ > >>> From: [email protected] [[email protected]] On > >> Behalf Of bill lam [[email protected]] > >>> Sent: Monday, September 28, 2009 10:24 PM > >>> To: [email protected] > >>> Subject: Re: [Jgeneral] J64 on OpenSUSE 11.1 64bit OS (WAS: RE: [Jbeta] > >> 602 ebeta available for linux32 and linux64) > >>> nvidia driver is troublesome enough and I gave up. Now I just vesa > >>> driver. > >>> > >>> You are welcome to post a record of how to fix the nvidia driver (may > >>> be in jchat). > >>> > >>> On Mon, 28 Sep 2009, Alex Rufon wrote: > >>>> Thanks Bill. > >>>> > >>>> I'll just edit the jwd script. Unfortunately, I broke my system > >>>> after trying to install the NVIDIA driver (which for some reason > >>>> installed a new broken kernel ... why?). Now X won't start. > >>>> Grrrrrrrr. > >>>> > >>>> I'm going to reinstall and try it again ... if I don't comment on > >>>> this, everything is fine. ;) > >>> -- > >>> regards, > >>> ==================================================== > >>> GPG key 1024D/4434BAB3 2008-08-24 > >>> gpg --keyserver subkeys.pgp.net --recv-keys 4434BAB3 > >>> ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > >>> For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm > >>> ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > >>> For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm > >>> > >> ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > >> For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm > >> > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > > For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm > > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
