Thread: What is linux ? Its various types

try linux on virtualbox first and see if you like it, once you get used to it and select you distro of choice, you can try installing it onto your hard-disk.

google "install ubuntu on virtualbox", iam not allowed to post links here yet. you find lots of useful links.

this way you hardly have to bother with drivers etc

good luck

Originally Posted by KSR1989

Where as the Windows comes only with an GUI....

Windows has a command window --- and pretty much the same not-very-useful collection of commands as DOS always had! But true that Linux's relationship with its gui is different. It should work very well without it!

The Great Grand Daddy of Linux is Unix. Unix is, like Windows, a proprietary OS, and, if you want to use it, you have to pay for it. Linux follows the same design principles as Unix, without using any of Unix's proprietary code. The Free Software Foundation, and others, gave us the dozens and dozens of useful Unix commands, sometimes under slightly different names, in the same way. Linux, like Unix, is an operating system that comes with a heap of useful stuff. And a powerful shell scripting language to make it all work together.

Unix was going strong before Windows was even invented. Microsoft even sold a version called xenix. The joke is that, while Windows would grind to a halt trying to execute two copy commands, xenix, on the same hardware, would be supporting half a dozen or more users! This is going back to the time of the very earliest versions of Windows. Microsoft was already selling a multi-user, multi-tasking, stable operating system. How long did it take them to achieve even two of those three? Anyway, that's Microsoft... whatever...

Oh, and Linux is only a minority interest on office desktops: when it comes to supercomputers, you'll find lots of it!

Sadly, there is another side to the coin. If I was a real worker, still, behind a real office desk, doing anything else but administering servers and the data on them (which would be Unix/Linix)... I'd still be using Microsoft Office. That's in spite of the fact that I loathe Word for Windows!

As I'm not, I got over my inertia and moved from XP to Ubuntu earlier this year. There's still stuff I need Windows for, but I don't boot it up very often.

You could also try one of the free Unixes - FreeBSD, PC-BSD(which is derived from FreeBSD).

That's true.

The thing about Linux today (well, I'm talking about the Ubuntu I am looking at, so not all Linuxes, I guess) is that if you use a computer anything like I do, for browsing and email, Firefox is just the same, Thunderbird is just the same; my favoured media player, VLC, is just the same, Google Earth is just the same. The only difference in these, my 95%-of-the-time apps is that they start faster and run without glitches.

Particular personal Ubuntu upside for me: my obsolete but was-very-expensive soundcard has drivers: the company that made it don't support anything post XP.

Particular personal downside: my scanner (HP) won't work. I'm assured that most do, but that is not much comfort

I save electricity. Ununtu boots in a minute or so: my XP takes ten. Therefore I am happy to turn off the PC for an hour or two when I'm not using it, instead of leaving it on all day. When the desktop appears, Ubuntu is ready to go: Windows still has god-knows what to get on with for ages.

Linux is not complicated. Of course, the complication is there if wanted... but so is the debug command in DOS!

For a beginner:
LinuxMint==Ubuntu==PClinuxOS-Gnome==Granular>OpenSuse==Mandriva>Zenwalk==Vector >Debian==Fedora==CentOS>Sabayon==Gentoo>CaosNsa>Ar ch

For an intermediate:
LinuxMint==Ubuntu>OpenSuse==Mandriva>Sabayon==Gent oo>PCLinuxOS-Gnome==Granular>CentOS==CaosNsa>Debian==Fedora>Zen walk==Vector>Arch

(In case of PCLinuxOS, instead of Gnome version, installation of Kde version followed by software installation of Gnome Desktop is the better way out; same is for Granular; Once the Gnome is installed this way, the Kde can be safely uninstalled; moreover installation of postgres8.4 (unlike the default deprecated postgres) in pclinuxos and granular is like a puzzle which beginners usually fail to understand and which only experts can do better).

For an expert:
LinuxMint==Ubuntu==Sabayon==Gentoo==CentOS==CaosNs a>OpenSuse==Mandriva==Fedora==Debian>PCLinuxOS-Gnome==Granular>Zenwalk==Vector>Arch

(However Arch has been rated as No1 for experts, and in fact I also tried to install arch/firefly/float/chakra all -- only to find that their installation had always failed much earlier than even a gentoo-installation (both in i586 as well as i686) -- and among these types of os, I found sabayon to be far ahead of gentoo and any arch but this is only my opinion; things might change for Arch in the coming years, since it appears to be the future direction of linux.)

If you rate purely on installation experience comfort, then:

All Others>Zenwalk>CentOS==Fedora>Gentoo>Vector>Arch>C aosNsa

Vector has a huge repository support (of Slackware), a standard installer in slapt, etc but for most of the existing niches, others including its clone Zenwalk haved already fulfilled it; in general installing Gentoo is a better experience than Vector, but of course in any case it will be a better experience than trying out Arch; CaosNsa's default way of completely erasing and destroying the existing partitions of an entire disc before its installation had put it into the last place for desktop but first place for servers.
However CaosNsa is still a better home desktop than Fedora (though it can fulfill as a server too but not as a workstation; for workstations, Ubuntu and Fedora are very good; for servers, CaosNsa is best example of linux optimized for speed and designed to compete with major servers).

If you rate it together with its bootloader grub, then:

OpenSuse>LinuxMint==PCLinuxOS-Gnome==Granular>Mandriva==SimplyMepis>Sabayon>Caos Nsa==CentOS==Fedora>Zenwalk (Lilo)==Vector (Lilo)>Ubuntu==Debian (Lilo)==Arch (Grub/Lilo)

If you compare ability of grubs/lilos to chainload a MacOSX in an hfs+ partition, then:
All Others (including Ubuntu, Debian, and probably also Arch)>Fedora (and hence also CentOS and CaosNsa)>Zenwalk==Vector

(Arch is said to be equidistant between redhat and debian in some of the things)

If you are looking for a deb os with:

1) advantage of being ubuntu-based on one hand and
2) a good graphical grub matching those of the rpm based OS (such as PCLinuxOS-Gnome/Granular and behind OpenSuse but ahead of Mandriva),

then go for LinuxMint as it is the best one combining the advantages of both Ubuntu and PCLinuxOS-Gnome/Granular.

(However, I prefer the gnome-desktop to look more like Ubuntu than Windows (of LinuxMint) and so I merely install Grub of LinuxMint (/PCLinuxOS-Gnome/Granular), followed by the latest bleeding edge Ubuntu (minus its Grub), then modify the bootup commands of the LinuxMint Grub).

If you are looking for huge repository support, then Ubuntu (and LinuxMint), Mandriva, PCLinuxOS-Gnome (and Granular), Gentoo (and Sabayon) are all equally robust; in case of others, CentOS (and CaosNsa, but not Fedora) is another good one.

If you are looking for speed (gnome-only comparison), then:
Arch==Gentoo==Sabayon>recent versions (>=9.10) of (Ubuntu/LinuxMint)==CaosNsa>PCLinuxOS-Gnome==Granular>CentOS==Debian==9.04 version of (Ubuntu/LinuxMint)>OpenSuse==Mandriva==(old versions (<=8.10) of Ubuntu/LinuxMint)>Fedora>Zenwalk==Vector

As you see from the above picture that:
1) LinuxMint is the best deb based os (Ubuntu's grub2 puts it behind, but with other os' grub configuration it shouldn't be a problem at all);
2) OpenSuse/Mandriva are tied for the best rpm based os; and
3) Sabayon is undoubtedly not only the best tbz2 based os, but also the first tbz2 os to emerge out for competence to the likes of Ubuntu, Mandriva, etc -- and I find Sabayon to be better than Fedora.
4) you have a very old PC machine with a very low ram, then Zenwalk is the perfect choice.

You can also request Ubuntu CD from its website and thats completely FREE !! I generally order new versions from its site and receive within 30-40 days, they also send various version like 64bit,32bit, server edition or Kbuntu in a single package if you want so. Here's the website shipit.ubuntu.com

And ofcourse you can download it too...

I have heard of DSL(Damn Small Linux) which is about 50mb and has to be installed on a pendrive

Linux would not have been complicated had it been the first OS
(Nowadays we want everything readymade, and we dont want to do anything)

Depends what you mean by "first" and what you are comparing it to. And, of course, what you mean by "complicated"

Linux is modelled on Unix. Unix predated not only Windows but DOS too, so if by "first" you mean anything produced by MS, then it was first.

Unix was actually based on a design philosophy of simplicity.

Leaving aside history, I do not see a great difference in every-day useage between Windows and the Ubuntu in front of me know. It is a graphical interface that works in exactly the same way as the WinXP that I migrated from. I even chose a desktop style that puts the window buttons and the main menu in the same place, just to help out the memory built into my mouse hand. Of course, it was not difficult to do that.

Complicated means its UI is not user friendly so Windows users cannot adapt to it easily

Unix was 100% C based, old MacOSX was 100% Pascal based (Symantec Pascal; not the modern freepascal (fpc)), whereas Windows (and Dos) began as a mixture of Pascal, C and C++ (having more C and C++) and later added up C#. (Windows' Clone Reactos uses C and c++ only, no C#)
Linux was developed on Unix (but based of a mixture of C, C++ and Python), but Windows and MacOSX were not.
Unix and DarwinOS were developed from FreeBSD, and the DarwinOS developed into MacOSX. MacOSX upto version9 was Pascal+Java-Bean based OS, whereas after the Intel-Mac transisition series (v10.2-v10.5), currently the one after the series (i.e. v10.6) is now C (gcc), C++ (g++) and Python based like the Linux.
Windows was modelled on FreeBSD in such a way that the features which are common is not so easily obvious at all. People using it can easily mistake it to be DOS based (like Windows3x) parallel to Unix (instead of a binary one modelled in freebsd and extending an MSDos terminal window and a different shell known as Explorer) -- but Dos is a single-user-interface based os, whereas windows is multiuser based os like FreeBSD, DarwinOS and Unix.
This is especially when the bash shell is replaced with a graphical windows shell, and the terminal process (child process) is replaced with an msdos extension terminal, and now-a-days the windows7 also has a posix-subsystem too.
If the posix subsystem gets grown to as robust as cygwin, then one can also have a faster solution for applications supposedly dependent on the cygwin (e.g. cygnome, kde-cygwin, cygwin-xfce, etc).
So, to fully and correctly understand windows' internals w.r.t dos and unix is rather different than merely learning how to use windows (including the networking tasks) -- the latter is the simplest task whereas the former is a task tougher than any macosx and linux, and thus nullifying things especially if we were to consider only the average of the two aspects.

now that was complicated!

But I agree with your conclusion. The most frustrating thing about Windows has always been finding out what is wrong.

Actually, Unix preceded C, which was developed under Unix, and then used to re-write Unix... making it, I think, the first OS to be easily portable to any machine given a compiler for C on that machine. Writing the compiler might not be the easiest thing in the world, but it beats writing an en entire OS.

That, of course, is all history, and only developers and deeply curious really care what language their OS was written in. I think your history is a little twisted (or maybe a typo creapt in): Unix was and is the original Unix, developed at Bell Labs: BSD (my memory is dim here ...) is based on what Bell gave to Berkley.

For Gods sake don't ask who owns Unix now, or we might end up in court with SCO for the rest of our lives!

Complicated means its UI is not user friendly so Windows users cannot adapt to it easily

1. The Ubuntu I am looking at is almost identical to XP, so it is, in your definition, not complicated.

2. Since when did Windows define "not complicated". The most intuitive interface in the world, to me, is a book!

3. ... I admit: Windows is what people are used to and what they will judge by, so GOTO (not popular with C developers) "1."

Since,Windows is used in 96% of Computers and is undoubtedly the leader in OS (Hurts to praise Gates) I compared it with Linux

In ubuntu, unistallation is very complicated especially it making a separate new partition for itself and removing its MBR is really Painful

According to me Fedora 13 is the best Linux OS
and its very similar to windows
With the addition of WINE software it is just good as a Win OS

Since LINUX doesnt earn developers money they dont invest much of time in it;thats why
its distribution is bad

You'll find a different story on the world's big computers.

I don't mind the comparison with Windows: it is inevitable. It is also valid, as it is what most people use, especially in the commercial environment. Don't know about you, but I think it will stay that way for quite a while too. Yes, it hurts to praise Gates, but we can't deny him his victory ... for now, anyhow.

Windows' installer was more user friendly upto windowsxp, but right now in case of windows7 even its updates tends to be kind of destructive by overwriting the MBR, and as per the wikipedia this is true especially for 32bit systems because they do no follow the EFI standards.
Moreover the fact is that windows7 has a new posix subsystem and probably also ironpython, making things appear analogous to linux's python core scripts and macosx's macpython appscripts (a replacement for the previous applescript).
Now, ironpython is an OpenSource initiative of Microsoft itself; and with the success of ironpython and django.net it was considered to bring the changing general (post-vista) trend returning back to windows -- but the feature of updates with MBR-overwriting inclusion without choice-control provided to user is a thing which I think is a point not realized earlier (but in the present state, that would still not stop me or anyone from using windows7 especially if they know how to use the installed linux/macosx or the BerliOS MBR-recovery-tool, though). However, it would have been still better if the EFI standards (for MBR) for 32-bit systems were also fulfilled in the same way as do the Linuxes and some others.
But one must not forget that the future developments might bring some more things either for better or worse -- but not known to us yet (such as from the hardware itself).

Regarding the c and pascal compilers, I personally like the gcc (c) and fpc (pascal) more than the other known ones; and plus otherwise they are also said to be the latest and best c and pascal compilers known, with speedwise, gcc (fltk)>fpc (lptk)>g++ (fltk++), etc (gcc and fpc are still very close in speed). There is another gnu-pascal known as gpc (pascal written in gcc), but then this will take more time to develop; moreover the fpc already has the lptk (pascal equivalent of fltk), gtk, gtk2, wx, qt bindings for all linuxes;

The three different diversified gcc based os are Linux, MacOSX (and of course also OpenDarwin) and ReactOS, and similarly there are plans for three different fpc based os such as a Linux-fpos, GladiatorOS (an OpenDarwin-fpos) and another one based on ReactOS (fpntos with GreenGnome as the shell-cum-explorer and maybe hopefully also a freedos extension-terminal).

There are already some branches of fpos -- one is ToroOS (Linux) and the second is GliderOS (another Linux), and a third one as PetrOS (fpc based ArchLinux following the KISS principle), and a fourth one as Onix (fpc based DragonDoslinux), but otherwise fpos by default means fpos (common source code) only, unless specifically mentioned with another name.
The first two have been classified under Linux-fpos (and not Unix), PetrOS should be like tbz2 type linux, and Onix like the slackware; so the plan for three Linux-fpos, maybe either pc/netbook/palm like roadmap or other variations such as the deb, rpm, tbz2 variations or third way based on toolkits such as gtk2forpascal, gtkpas, wxfp, qtpas, lptk, carbon (objective), rad (delphi), etc.
Some of the developments offshooting from Onix might then open the doors for dosemu, wine and eventually indirectly into the foss based nt roadmaps.

For Linux type fpos1, the link for ToroOS is:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/toro/files/
For Linux type fpos2, the link for GliderOS is:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/glider-kernel/
For Linux type fpos3, the link for fpos is:
http://code.google.com/p/fpos/downloads/list

Then there is ClassiOS (delphi based PetrOS), Delphine (delphi based unix), etc but then delphi is outside the domain of fpc.
For Unix type delphi os, the link for Delphine is:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/delphine/

The fpos project may eventually fork two more such as those based on OpenDarwin, and ReactOS. But we will have to wait and see for other ones, since these are also very much in their roadmaps.

So, it appears that the first fpos likely to be done might be Linux-fpos (ToroOS, Glider-OS, fpos, PetrOS), then Unix-delphios (Delphine) then OpenDarwin-fpos, and only then the others such as ReactOS-fpos (GreenGnome-fpntos), etc.

However, since the old MacOSX was a pure pascal os based on the old symantec-pascal compiler with carbon toolkit widgets (before the gcc and gcc's cocoa replaced symantec-pascal and carbon respectively), probably the OpenDarwin-fpos can be done sooner but they appear to be moving away from the main MacOSX and towards the Linux type features (and rather fork out from the simple (Linux)-fpos (fpos-common-source-code) instead).

The works from Onix to GreenGnome-fpntos may be the last one requiring more time to accomplish.

Linux is an Operating system like windows and different distributions like fedora, ubuntu, Redhat are differs in their features.

Originally Posted by shaan7

Yep agreed, Windows 7 is certainly better than its predecessors (especially the resource hog Vista). Miss those days in Win98 where I could have more control over my system, now for everything windows assumes I'm an idiot.

he he
absolutely

Originally Posted by talktoanil

may be its what you think..give me an instance where it makes you feel that you are an idiot.....

Here are a few things I don't want the OS to do for me as the OS has "< 0.0001%" the reasoning power as mine.

1. Try changing IE security settings, try installing Adobe flash activex when you design and embed a cab file in HTML.I bet my PC if you change and keep them successfully. This is just for starters.
2. Try changing the theme or keeping an HTML or flash file as background
3. Try creating a custom partition layout as logical and primary etc
4. Try custom security settings in windows firewall and keep them and windows not keep me telling that my settings are not right
5. Try to configure IIS
6. Why the hell do I need to classify my network as home or work network , every time?
7. There is a never ending list but I'll conclude with my favorite:

The "blue screen of death" or "the black screen of death" (for windows 7) saying that "Your computer has been shutdown to prevent further damage as some recently installed hardware or software has malfunctioned" without the clue of what the f** exactly went wrong.

Well all these things won't affect me unless I have the same level of intelligence as my OS and we live happily ever after.

Linux is just another operating system invented by linus torvalds after which it is named as linux.There is no link between linux and unix.Redhat,ubuntu,fedora are just distributors of the operating system linux.Out of which comparing windows and linux,linux is more safer because linux is not prone to virus because every thing is of packages....hope you understood something about linux..

Linux is actually just the kernel, which was designed by said Mr Linus, in accordance with Unix philosophy. The rest of the "operating system" are the various packages and utilities which come from many sources, but the core is the Free Software Foundation. The core utilities all replicate Unix commands and ways of working. Without Unix there would be no Linux as we know it: that is the link between Unix and Linux.

Consider this question: Sitting in front of a Linux terminal window, apart from using commands that specifically identify the kernel and the operating system ... how would you tell it wasn't Unix?

According to the the philosophy of Unix, some measure of security was built in in the early designs, rather than wedged in later. It is also part of the same philosophy to protect running programs from each other, and to protect the kernel from user programs. That means that things like the Blue Screen of Death were never a normal part of this sort of computing. However, nothing is perfect and the message "Kernel Panic" is not entirely unknown! Some of this design philosophy may help to protect against viruses --- but the major protection against them remains the fact that Linux, on the desktop, is a minority interest, and the kids like to attack the majority!

The first ever worm attacked Unix systems. We (and Mac users) should not have a false sense of security.

Ubuntu Linux is an operating system can be used by any body. It's free and not illegal to be use to operate/work at your computer. Copy of Window operating system is illeage to be use. But everyone can intally copy of linux.