Linux

[ddt]

The hardware virtualisation settings involve a couple of checkboxes. When setting up a new virtual machine, VB itself determines whether or not these should be checked and does so if hardware virtualisation is available. They are set for my desktop PC, but I can't currently check an XPS13 as I don't have one. Neither do I (sad to say) have the money to get one at this point .

Oh, a new laptop will certainly have them. AFAIK, all processors now produced have the hardware virtualisation instructions. Just check the BIOS that they haven't disabled them there.

 

[megaresp]

Oh, a new laptop will certainly have them. AFAIK, all processors now produced have the hardware virtualisation instructions. Just check the BIOS that they haven't disabled them there.

Will do. I expect the XPS13 Developer Edition to be configured for exactly the sort of use I intend. Just wish I had the money to buy it now.

I've been trying Linux Distros like crazy thanks to the magic of VirtualBox. I can't find anything I like better than Unity on 13.04. The rest of the Linux world (so it seems) apparently hates it. Yet to me everything else feels like a backward step by comparison - especially cf 13.04.

There, that should liven up this thread a little

 

[ddt]

Will do. I expect the XPS13 Developer Edition to be configured for exactly the sort of use I intend. Just wish I had the money to buy it now.

Looks indeed like a very nice laptop. Maybe I should have shelled out a few more bucks when I bought my new laptop half a year ago.

I've been trying Linux Distros like crazy thanks to the magic of VirtualBox. I can't find anything I like better than Unity on 13.04. The rest of the Linux world (so it seems) apparently hates it. Yet to me everything else feels like a backward step by comparison - especially cf 13.04.

There, that should liven up this thread a little

Oh yeah! I hate it, at least, the current incantation. When I got my netbook (a Latitude 2110) it had Ubuntu 10.10 installed with the first version of Unity, and that was quite nice, and made sense. But that launcher in the current version is really obnoxious. I also hate Gnome 3, BTW, which comes standard with the newest Fedora, which I run on my desktop machine. I switched both to Mate, a fork of Gnome 2.

 

[xtifr]

I disliked the gnome shell (Gnome 3) when I first tried it, but after playing with it for a while, I found it worked just fine once you got used to it. Still haven't tried Unity, since that's Ubuntu-specific so far, and I'm not running Ubuntu.

For day-to-day use, though, I still use my own heavily customized version of the extremely old-school FVWM; a window manager so old that nobody even remembers what the acronym stands for any more.

 

[eerok]

Since I took Linux seriously in 1995, my favorite window managers or desktop environments at various times have been Gnome, KDE, Blackbox, Enlightenment, Fluxbox, Openbox, Xfce, various tiling WMs, and probably a few things that I can't remember just now. For the past few years, I've found Xfce to provide the best balance of lightness and functionality for me.

Choice is a good thing unless it scares and confuses you. That's kind of the anthem for Linux.

 

[roger]

Since I took Linux seriously in 1995, my favorite window managers or desktop environments at various times have been Gnome, KDE, Blackbox, Enlightenment, Fluxbox, Openbox, Xfce, various tiling WMs, and probably a few things that I can't remember just now. For the past few years, I've found Xfce to provide the best balance of lightness and functionality for me.

Choice is a good thing unless it scares and confuses you. That's kind of the anthem for Linux.

Ya, I've settled in on Xfce (in the form of xubuntu) as well. I do like choice - I would like to choose Gnome 2! I guess I should download Mate at some point and give it a try.

 

[megaresp]

I switched both to Mate, a fork of Gnome 2.

I've yet to try Mate so I'm downloading Mint with Mate right now. I hadn't realised Mint 15 was out, so perhaps I'll give it another go with Cinnamon as well.

I wonder how my system would cope with Ubuntu and Mint both running in their own virtual machines at the same time? This sounds like something I definitely need to try .

 

[xtifr]

Xfce gives me bad memories of the old commercial desktop, CDE. In fact, it's loosely based on CDE. I hated CDE with a passion, which makes me very reluctant to give Xfce another try.

While I'm not really interested in switching from FVWM (which is well-maintained, despite being old and quite minimal), if I did, I'd probably go with either Enlightenment or WindowMaker. Enlightenment, in particular, is more of a desktop than a mere window manager these days, and offers a really good tradeoff between power and size. And it's very pretty. There have been a few distributions that actually defaulted to using Enlightenment, and I really would like to see an Eubuntu come out!

(Before it morphed into a full desktop-enviroment on its own, Enlightenment was frequently used in combination with Gnome, and E+Gnome was one of the best versions of Gnome I ever tried.)

eta: Oh, and Cinnamon is now available in Debian/Testing. I'd probably give it a try if I were enough of a fan of Gnome2, but I'm not.

 

[Captain_Snort]

I've yet to try Mate so I'm downloading Mint with Mate right now. I hadn't realised Mint 15 was out, so perhaps I'll give it another go with Cinnamon as well.

I tried Mint 15 with the cinnamon desktop running on a VM and thought it was bloody excellent, so much so I went and put it on my secondary laptop (mainly used just for email and browsing by anyone who needs it). Quite impressed with how simple and clean it is.

 

[Ferguson]

I'm not really a "linux person" but I've been using Ubuntu on one of my computers and I like it quite a bit. It seems quite fast and stable. Also, coming from a Mac I love that all the commands are the same (cd, sudo, ifconfig, etc.), and compiling and installing packages seems to go without a hitch (more active dev community, I guess?).

 

[BazBear]

I have to say I wish I'd taken the Linux plunge years ago. I only boot Windows to use the very few apps that I like that won't work with WINE, and that I haven't found a functional (to my tastes and needs) Linux equivalent of. Well I try to remember to boot it now and then for the updates as well.

Of course my needs are pretty simple; a web browser, email client, basic photo editor, and basic word processor. I use Lubuntu, because I tried a bunch of distros on my underpowered netbook (Asus Eee PC 1.8 Ghz Intel Atom, 2 GB RAM), and found it to work the best and feel the best for my tastes; but now also use it on my Gateway Phenom quad4 AMD64 with 8 GB RAM. On the netbook it simply kicks the snot out of the performance of the Win7 side, but even on the desktop (slightly aging I'll admit) it's still faster and less "glitchy" than Win7.

 

[megaresp]

I tried Mint 15 with the cinnamon desktop running on a VM and thought it was bloody excellent, so much so I went and put it on my secondary laptop (mainly used just for email and browsing by anyone who needs it). Quite impressed with how simple and clean it is.

Mate turned out to be a bit of backwards step from my perspective, but like you I was getting along famously with Cinnamon under Mint 15. Unfortunately it (or perhaps something else) froze and required a hard boot. Time to give it another burst.

In my view Cinnamon isn't as polished as Unity from an interface perspective, but perhaps that's because I'm still new to Cinnamon. I don't think it has the graphical polish of Unity (e.g. compare workspace switchers, or Ubuntu's software centre vs the one in Cinnamon). But I do see the appeal, especially with respect to customising the desktop. And the desktop widgets are very interesting. The cupboard is bare at the moment, but as developers go to work these widget-like things might turn out to be a 'killer app' for Cinnamon.

 

[megaresp]

I'm not really a "linux person" but I've been using Ubuntu on one of my computers and I like it quite a bit. It seems quite fast and stable. Also, coming from a Mac I love that all the commands are the same (cd, sudo, ifconfig, etc.), and compiling and installing packages seems to go without a hitch (more active dev community, I guess?).

Ah yes, all those commands that Steve Jobs created while he was secretly inventing Unix with Al Gore .

 

[BazBear]

I have to admit I don't get the appeal of many of these widget type things. Maybe that's because I'm sort of my friends and some acquaintances "tech guy"...on Windows machines. I'm certainly not trying to dis all widgets/gadgets type things, as some of them are certainly useful. I guess my issue is that some users just seem to want to use all of their RAM and CPU cycles on frivolous ****, and then wonder why their Facebook game is running so slowwwww.

So I guess this is more about the users than the apps, but I still had to pitch my bitch

ETA-Please pardon me for going a bit off topic.

 

[megaresp]

I have to admit I don't get the appeal of many of these widget type things. Maybe that's because I'm sort of my friends and some acquaintances "tech guy"...on Windows machines. I'm certainly not trying to dis all widgets/gadgets type things, as some of them are certainly useful. I guess my issue is that some users just seem to want to use all of their RAM and CPU cycles on frivolous ****, and then wonder why their Facebook game is running so slowwwww.

Now there's a great idea for a widget. Let's call it the 'Dirty Harry' widget.

It sits there brooding in the top-right corner of the bar screen, and casts its steely-eyed gaze over all the other widgets. As they spout off about how cool they are, and skite about all the resources they're hogging, it simply bides its time and quietly takes notes. Then, when it's ready, it gets up and asks the loudest resource-hoggingest widget if it's feeling lucky.

So I guess this is more about the users than the apps, but I still had to pitch my bitch

 

[xtifr]

I have to admit I don't get the appeal of many of these widget type things.

So you're a command-line guy?

(In the world of *NIX, "widget" almost universally refers to a GUI widget^WP, a graphical interface element like a button or scrollbar or menu or whatnot.)

 

[AgeGap]

I am most likely wrong but I think of widgets as the same as KDE plasmoids. Stuff like clocks that sit on the desktop. I have never needed them so don't take much notice of what they are.

Mint 15 has just come out and with it a chance to use MATE 1.6 and/or Cinnamon 1.8. I am still using Mint 13 but hope to get some new upgrades for my computer soon. I may then upgrade to a newer version.

 

[xtifr]

I am most likely wrong but I think of widgets as the same as KDE plasmoids. Stuff like clocks that sit on the desktop. I have never needed them so don't take much notice of what they are.

Those are a type of widget, in the sense that they're an element of a GUI. They're much more complex than your typical widget, though. The usual term I hear for those is applet or dockapp.

I like them, but I prefer to keep them in a vertical bar along the right side of the screen. The modern trend seems to be to keep them in a bar along the bottom, but with modern wide screens, I find the top and bottom of the screen to be far more valuable real estate.

Of course, some are more useful than others. I have simple monitors that track things like CPU temperature and network traffic, which can be very handy. On the other hand, I have one that shows the phase of the moon. Now, it's a common superstition among programmers that some programs are affected by the phase of the moon. While I don't believe that, well, I have room in my dock for the applet, and it's cute, so I keep it there.

 

[BazBear]

So you're a command-line guy?

(In the world of *NIX, "widget" almost universally refers to a GUI widget^WP, a graphical interface element like a button or scrollbar or menu or whatnot.)

Umm, well I do use the command line quite bit , but I guess I'm a *nix widget guy after all

 

[BazBear]

Now there's a great idea for a widget. Let's call it the 'Dirty Harry' widget.

It sits there brooding in the top-right corner of the bar screen, and casts its steely-eyed gaze over all the other widgets. As they spout off about how cool they are, and skite about all the resources they're hogging, it simply bides its time and quietly takes notes. Then, when it's ready, it gets up and asks the loudest resource-hoggingest widget if it's feeling lucky.

Sounds like a plan!

Pitch my bitch = make a complaint