I started with SLS back in '93, my first real PC OS. OK I bought my first PC (a 16MB 486) from a friend, and he put a bootleg version of MSDOS on it, which I found to be pretty useless.
I migrated to Slackware around '95 or so, and have stayed with that distro ever since. I've run it on the original 486 machine, and on its replacement (a PIII Celeron) which is still running it today. I got my first laptop (Compaq 486) in '96, and immediately installed Slackware on it (took a while, as it had to be done via floppy disks). At this time, I switched from twm to fvwm as my window manager (and remained there). When that laptop finally bit the dust in 2003, I bought a new NEC laptop (P4 Celeron) at the time, and installed Slackware. Sound and graphics were supported natively by the distro, the WinModem was supported via a (nonfree) open source driver from the manufacturer. I missed the suspend to RAM feature of my old laptop, but was able to get Linux hibernation to work after following the relevant HOWTOs and patching the kernel. The only feature I was unable to get working was S-video out - which might have been handy for playing DVDs through a TV set. Buying a cheap DVD player solved that problem. Oh - and I couldn't play DVDs until I had first booted Windows, inserted a DVD and set the region code. After that, DVD playing worked like a charm. Since early this year, my work bought be a Dell laptop. Again most things just work, though again not video out. As I actually need to use Windows (occasionally) for work, I actually run the Linux under VMWare, so use Windows hibernation. Works quite well. The main defects are (and these are VMWare defects): 1) The hotspot in the mouse cursor is in the wrong place. 2) The virtual hardware clock is incorrectly initialised. I need to manually resync my clock to an ntp server everytime I wake up the computer (which is easy to forget to do) 3) No sound! So I have to copy my multimedia files to the windows partition, and use something like WMP 4) 3 button mouse emulation doesn't work under VMWare. Fortunately, the Windows trackpad driver has a 3 button emulation mode. 5) I usually run the network as a virtual NAT sharing the Windows IP no. The negative of this is that many XWindows apps will not work remotely (the ones that fail to tunnel through ssh). The alternative is to bridge the network (give the Linux machine its own IP no.), but this is less flexible in the networking environment I'm in. What I should do is set up an IP tunnel on the Windows machine to allow the X connections through. Cheers On Fri, Oct 20, 2006 at 10:27:51PM -0600, Owen Densmore wrote: > OK, Doug has brought up a point I've wondered about. > > Friamers .. another question .. well three actually .. for you all: > - Which Linux desktop distros have you used? > - Which distro do/did you like best? > - What hardware did you run it on? > > Years ago at Sun I was a RedHat + Gnome user .. indeed in 2000-2002, > it, on the Thinkpad hardware, had taken over SunLabs. We even put it > in our JavaCar and found it worked with most of the weird drivers we > needed. > > It was a bit hard to get going on laptops, however. Audio was quite > difficult, requiring rebuilding the kernel with new drivers, and > getting the Sleep function to work correctly was tough. But all in > all, RedHat + Gnome + Thinkpad was quite successful. Gnome was even > available on Solaris, so the interoperability was great between the > Sun servers and the laptops. > > So anyone else out there taken on the Linux desktop challenge? > > -- Owen > > Owen Densmore http://backspaces.net > > > Begin forwarded message: > > > From: "Douglas Roberts" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > > Date: October 20, 2006 6:26:33 AM MDT > > To: "The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group" > > <friam@redfish.com> > > Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Leopard vs. Vista > > Reply-To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group > > <friam@redfish.com> > > > > Mandriva 2007 'la Ora' with KDE 3.5.4 (and a slew of whatever other > > packages you prefer).. > > http://www.mandriva.com/en/linux/2007 > > > > On 10/20/06, fromm <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > What do you think is more impressive, > > advanced and useful, the new.. > > > > ..Mac OS X Leopard with "Time Machine", > > "Spotlight" and "Ruby on Rails".. > > http://www.apple.com/macosx/leopard/index.html > > > > ..or the new Windows Vista > > with Aero, WPF and WCF ? > > http://www.microsoft.com/windowsvista/ > > > > -J. > > > > > > ============================================================ > > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > > lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org > > > > > > > > -- > > Doug Roberts, RTI International > > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > 505-455-7333 - Office > > 505-670-8195 - Cell > > ============================================================ > > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > > lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org > > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org -- *PS: A number of people ask me about the attachment to my email, which is of type "application/pgp-signature". Don't worry, it is not a virus. It is an electronic signature, that may be used to verify this email came from me if you have PGP or GPG installed. Otherwise, you may safely ignore this attachment. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- A/Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) Mathematics UNSW SYDNEY 2052 [EMAIL PROTECTED] Australia http://parallel.hpc.unsw.edu.au/rks International prefix +612, Interstate prefix 02 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
