Edoropolis Emporium

It seems that Windows is the most used O. S. by members of this forums. Nevertheless, one can find few people, including me, whom uses Linux. For them I'm opening a topic to share some knowledges, hints and tips about Linux and other free softwares. Particularly infos concerning to our SPC/KNT works is welcome.
In the computer at my home, I use:
- distro: Debian GNU/Linux, testing ("etch") release;
- kernel: 2.6.8 (I can't compile Lucent Winmodem driver for newer kernels);
- desktop: Gnome 2.10.2.
For the tasks related to SPC/KNT I use regularly the following softwares:
- OpenOffice.org office suite (with support for Brazilian Portuguese and Japanese);
- Gedit (simple text editor, with support for Brazilian Portuguese and Japanese);
- Galeon (web browser based in Mozilla's Gecko HTML rendering engine);
- Gimp 2.2 (image editor, to work with screen caps, for example);
- Mplayer/Mencoder (player and encoder of several video/audio formats);
- Audacity (sound editor);
- VCDImager (VCD authoring program), cdrdao/cdrecord/xcdroast (CD burners).
I adopt two procedures to capture an episode screen, I use PrntScreen keypress on my desktop, or dump the video output of Mplayer as JPEG files.

hooray for Gimp! Gimp is the ultimate free photo editor... free by legal means  ::)
Mplayer is alright. BSplayer and ZoomPlayer I think are much better, but whatever floats your boat.

"¡Congratulacions shinji!" Evangelion

I still use windows 98SE, but I plan to use Linux if I buy a new PC next year, cause I really hate XP. This PC is 7 years old and had some upgrades, but next year is going to be retired from the active servive and jjoin the "MP3 player and OLD Games service".

I use a Debian based Linux on all my systems.(Libranet or Gentoo)  I dual boot windows-linux on my gaming/multimedia PC and laptop as well because they just don't release enough games for linux.  Libranet is a great free distro of debian and so is gentoo.  Gentoo has a steep learning curve and  I  only use it because I know my way around.  The "emerge --sync"  command is great.

I didn`t know about BSplayer and ZoomPlayer, I`ll try these player when find them. Have you their homepages? Thanks for this tip.
Besides, Mencoder (the encoder program of Mplayer) is a good program, although the lack of GUI. I use it to encode MPEG-1 video files which is suitable to VCD format (sadly I can`t afford a DVD burner).

Here's the link for zoom player: http://www.inmatrix.com/zplayer/ (http://www.inmatrix.com/zplayer/)
and bsplayer: http://bsplayer.com/ (http://bsplayer.com/)
though I don't think they do encoding, just playback.

I saw these links, but both programs is for Windows.  ?:| Perhaps you are thinking MPlayer as Micro$oft's Media Player. I am referring to the free software named MPlayer (not Media Player) used mainly in Linux and other Unix systems (there is a Windows version though). Here`s the link to the MPlayer: http://www.mplayerhq.hu/homepage/design7/news.html (http://www.mplayerhq.hu/homepage/design7/news.html).

Yeah, I know it wasn't msofts, but I forgot those 2 were no linux friendly.

Then I'll still be using Mplayer/Mencoder. Thank you anyway, Valkyrie.
Now I'll show how to encode a video file to VCD format using cited program (prepare yourself to do tedious typing  :) ). In you favorite shell (in the MS world it's known as DOS Prompt) type the following:

mencoder -quiet -oac lavc -ovc lavc -of mpeg -mpegopts format=xvcd -vf scale=352:240,harddup \
-srate 44100 -af lavcresample=44100 -lavcopts vcodec=mpeg1video:keyint=18:vrc_buf_size=327:\
vrc_minrate=1152:vbitrate=1152:vrc_maxrate=1152:acodec=mp2:abitrate=224 -ofps 30000/1001 \
-o PutYourOutputFileNameHere.mpg PutYourInputFileNameHere.avi

Phew!  :P

Ok, any player for Linux that supports *.ogm?

Or better, any program I can use to covert ogm to *.avi?

Yes, Mplayer.  :)
Yes, Mencoder.  :D
I'm not  kidding, when I googled "ogm linux player" the Mplayer homepage was showed. Check its supported input formats at this link (http://www.mplayerhq.hu/homepage/design7/info.html).
I also found some informations about OGM format in the Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OGM).
That's all, since I have no OGM files I never tried to play or encode in such format.

Has anyone tried Lindows? I think it is now known as Linspire, due to Bill Gates thinking the name was too close to windows. I read it is suppost to be based on Debian Linux with the capability to run windows software. Just curious about it, as I too still run Windows 98SE, and figure before too long Bill Gates will find a way to make it shut itself down due to non upgrade. And I don't think my pirated copies of photoshop 7, and DVD FAB will work on linux :P

http://www.linspire.com

well, all the computers at my school run an emulated version of windows from linux, so I'd guess that'd count. The best feature for them is that I can hit ctrl+alt+backspace and it reboots windows, even if it freezes, however anything saved on the C: drive is reverted to default

I think they gave up on most of that, instead trying for making Linux stuff easier to install. The WINE stuff is trying to make Win32 programs run in Linux. Hopefully in the future Direct3D will work better and some more games will be playable with WINE. I dream of the day I can play Uru in Linux.

I think emulating windows is lame, emulating DOS in the other hand…is cool.

Wow, debian wasn't that easy to install. Finally got it on my network though with a lot of help from a friend with the app-get stuff :P Will be using it as a circlemud server, so I dont have to pay other people so much anymore :P Once I get more used to using it, and setting up accounts...ssh....sftp.... If anyone is interested in making a spc circlemud...... www.circlemud.org if you want any info on what a circlemud is :P  of course you would have to know how to code in C programming.

Installing Debian with dpkg or apt/apt-get can be very hard indeed, but you can use dselect as it provides more user friendly interface and cope with all dependencies automagically.
I don't know C programming, but installing CircleMUD doesn't requires that. Knowledge of how to compile C programs seems to be sufficient, tipically you must type make clean and make install or something like this.

How about emulating DOS to run Windows 3.1?  :D

Lame, Windows 3.1 games suck    

Not all games suck, see solitaire!  :D Just kidding! The best solitaire game I've seen was Klondike De Luxe III, for Comodore Amiga computer. Very cool! You can try it with UAE, an Amiga emulator.
Serious now, what DOS programs are you using in the emulator? I'm just curious.

You can play Commander Keen or Wolfenstein 3D :)

I was browsing around my favorite Linux sites, then I found VLC Media Player, whose homepage is http://www.videolan.org/vlc/ (http://www.videolan.org/vlc/). I haven't tried it yet, but seems to have impressive specs. Its drawback is the lack for support of Real streams.  >:(

I have VLC, it works good.  It's basically the media player classic program with the k-lite codec pack on it.  Its great for playing strange and rare encodes like x-vid ogm's.  I used it to view the new Swat Kats X-vids I recieved last week and I'm impressed.

I like darn Small Linux, and Fedora.

darn Small Linux is nice for computers that are old, or newer computers which need fast requirements and have a decent amount of RAM.  It can store the OS in RAM, since it's only 50MB with all applications.  This includes Mozzilla, media and office programs,full GUI,  etc.

Edit: "darn" isn't the actual name.  It's the other word.

DSL is a good tool.  I run the OS on my old 250 mb flash drive.  It's neat how it can run inside windows as well, kinda like VM ware but a real full feature OS.

HELP ME IF YOU CAN!!!!

I really really need something to replace ffdshow, cause it great but it haven’t been updated in two years. Any idea? I don’t want to use codec packs again, they have more that you will ever use and cause problems.

Mplayer.  http://www.mplayerhq.hu/homepage/design7/news.html (http://www.mplayerhq.hu/homepage/design7/news.html)

"MPlayer is a movie player which runs on many systems (see the documentation). It plays most MPEG/VOB, AVI, Ogg/OGM, VIVO, ASF/WMA/WMV, QT/MOV/MP4, RealMedia, Matroska, NUT, NuppelVideo, FLI, YUV4MPEG, FILM, RoQ, PVA files, supported by many native, XAnim, and Win32 DLL codecs. You can watch VideoCD, SVCD, DVD, 3ivx, DivX 3/4/5 and even WMV movies..

Another great feature of MPlayer is the wide range of supported output drivers. It works with X11, Xv, DGA, OpenGL, SVGAlib, fbdev, AAlib, DirectFB, but you can use GGI, SDL (and this way all their drivers), VESA (on every VESA compatible card, even without X11!) and some low level card-specific drivers (for Matrox, 3Dfx and ATI), too! Most of them support software or hardware scaling, so you can enjoy movies in fullscreen. MPlayer supports displaying through some hardware MPEG decoder boards, such as the Siemens DVB, DXR2 and DXR3/Hollywood+.

MPlayer has an onscreen display (OSD) for status information, nice big antialiased shaded subtitles and visual feedback for keyboard controls. European/ISO 8859-1,2 (Hungarian, English, Czech, etc), Cyrillic and Korean fonts are supported along with 12 subtitle formats (MicroDVD, SubRip, OGM, SubViewer, Sami, VPlayer, RT, SSA, AQTitle, JACOsub, PJS and our own: MPsub). DVD subtitles (SPU streams, VOBsub and Closed Captions) are supported as well."

I guess you don’t want to give a detailed description of how to set the codecs default directory of Mplayer in windows…

See if this helps http://www1.mplayerhq.hu/homepage/design7/codecs.html (http://www1.mplayerhq.hu/homepage/design7/codecs.html)

or

If your just want a media player for windows and not Linux/cross-platform just get Winamp.
http://www.winamp.com/ (http://www.winamp.com/)

It doesnt, but dont worry, I installed Media player classic, real alternative and the cursed DivX codec. Is a pity they discontinued ffdshow(That "2005" version is fake).

Fffshow is a program that has a lot of free codecs in just a few megas…but it was discontinued.

I don´t know if this subject is off topic, but the later posts make me thinking of the need to encode SPC or KNT video files in some standard encodings, avoiding proprietary formats if possible. For example, Real Media format is very awkward to free software users. I'm not know well the goods and the bads of each format, so I'm waiting to someone more technically minded to clarify us.

To Linux user friends, a little gift from me. If you use Windows only, sorry but you'll find nothing interesting here. One of the most employed bootloader is Lilo. It has an option to choose between several booting configurations, that can be used for example to make dual boot system (Linux+Windows). Did you know that the Lilo boot screen can be configured to use any 640x480x4 BMP file you wish?
Follow the instructions below:
1- Save the attached file (rename it to otama.bmp) in /boot directory.
2- With your preferred text editor, add the following line to your /etc/lilo.conf file:
bitmap = /boot/otama.bmp
or, if you have a Lilo version prior to 22.3, must add the following:
bitmap = /boot/otama.bmp
bmp-table = 13,8;1,20,16,4
bmp-colors = 11,12,;12,11,
bmp-timer = 36,12;12,0,
3- Run at the shell the command:
lilo
4- Reboot the computer, and see the your new boot screen!  8)
The picture must be 640x480 size BMP file, with 16 colors, and can be compressed in RLE format.
More details you can find at /usr/doc/lilo or /usr/share/doc/lilo directory.

EDIT: a little improvement to the lilo.conf.

Well, as far as I know, all of EE's encodes are DivX or XviD. XviD is open source, and while DivX is proprietary, I don't think there's a single media player out there anymore that can't do it.

I finally got GNU/Linux and im looking for a mp3 player that is easy to install, I was two hours tryng to install Freeamp and nothing!

Could you provide some details on how you do that, please?

In the shell you must type:
mplayer -vo jpeg -ss XXX videofilename
where XXX is the time in seconds of animation to be skipped.

From MPLAYER man page:

VIDEO OUTPUT DRIVERS (MPLAYER ONLY)
       Video  output  drivers  are  interfaces to different video output facilities.  The
       syntax is:

       -vo <driver1[:suboption1[=value]:...],driver2,...[,]>
              Specify a priority list of video output drivers to be used.

       Available video output drivers are:

       jpeg
              Output each frame into a JPEG file in the  current  directory.   Each  file
              takes the frame number padded with leading zeros as name.
                 [no]progressive
                      Specify standard or progressive JPEG (default: noprogressive).
                 [no]baseline
                      Specify use of baseline or not (default: baseline).
                 optimize=<0-100>
                      optimization factor (default: 100)
                 smooth=<0-100>
                      smooth factor (default: 0)
                 quality=<0-100>
                      quality factor (default: 75)
                 outdir=<dirname>
                      Specify the directory to save the JPEG files to (default: ./).
                 subdirs=<prefix>
                      Create  numbered  subdirectories  with the specified prefix to save
                      the files in instead of the current directory.
                 maxfiles=<value>
                      Maximum number of files to be  saved  per  subdirectory.   Must  be
                      equal to or larger than 1 (default: 1000).

I got a small list for games and emulation for Linux.

ZSNES - Snes
VisualBoy - Gameboy, Gameboy Color, Gameboy Advance,
ESPXE - PS1
AdvanceMAME and xMAME and LASEREMU.NET - CPS CPS2 NeoGeo and s***
Mupen64 - N64
Mednafen - PC Engine, SuperGrafx, Nintendo
Nestra - Nintendo

And then there's media and chat

Gaim - AIM MSN Yahoo ICQ IRC etc
VLC - A Media Player
FireFox - everybody knows

There's a TV Decoder program for KDE Desktops but I can't remember it right now.

"MPlayer" is the best video player for Linux

http://www.mplayerhq.hu/design7/news.html

Ipod nano and Linux

Anyone could please tell me what programs I need to use the Ipod nano on Linux? And no, Im not going to buy a Mac, they are really expensive here!.

Don't use an I-Pod! :O

But if you must...
http://www.cavecanen.org/linux/ipod/ (http://www.cavecanen.org/linux/ipod/)

Thats the most in depth artice I've seen on the subject.  There are several programs listed within the article.
http://www.gtkpod.org/about.html (http://www.gtkpod.org/about.html) has a GUI and everything and claims to work with Nano as well.

Thanks, I will almost anything to avoid using Windows XP in one of my PCs.

I really don't understand compiling. Can any of you help me out.
There's really no point to Linux if you can't compile anything.

It depends on what you want to compile, but in general you must enter the main directory of the source code (cd [directory]), perform some configuration (may be a shell script, make configure command, or manually editing a Makefile), and finally compile the program (with cc or gcc command, make [target] command or a shell script). Most of the source code have a README file that explains how to do the proper compilation.

For example, I use the following steps to compile the mplayer program.

• 1) cd [root directory] (changes to source root directory)
• 2) export DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS="options" (configures the compiling options)
• 3) fakeroot debian/rules binary (compiles the program)
• 4) dpkg -i ../mplayer_1.0cvs_i386.deb (install the program compiled as .DEB - Debian package file)

In the example above, it was supposed that all the programs and libraries necessaries to perform the compilation are properly installed in your computer.

If you understood nothing that was said here, ask me a more specific question (what program? what Linux distro?) and I'll try to help.

Actually what always gets me is that I'll do the steps in the README correctly (or at least what I think is correct), but the computer always says that I have files missing. Why do you think that happens?
I'll try to get you an example some time.

(I'm sorry that I wasn't more specific with my question.)

I can think in the following reasons which cause the compile failure of that kind.

• The source code you have is broken, or missing some files. You must ask politely to the programmers or the publishers for a fixed source code; or wait for a new release of the program.
• Your system lacks some necessary program for compiling, like the compiler iteself, preprocessors, linkers, assemblers, make and so on. In such case you must install all the required files.
• The program which will be copiled uses some library that is absent. A library is a peace of code shared by many programs, so there is no need to repeat it inside all programs and this saves memory and programming labour. The command ldd <executable binary> shows all the libraries the executable are linked to. For example, libc6 is a library which almost all programs are linked to. When the program you are trying to compile requires some library, you must install it. However some distributions (e.g. Debian) split the library in two parts, one required for only running programs (e.g. libc6 package), and other to make programs that use it (e.g. libc6-dev package); both must be installed.
• Some file isn't being distributed with the source code, owing to legal issues, and must be got somewhere else. This is common in emulators, where ROM are required but which cannot be distributed by the programmers/publishers.

To figure out what is happening, it's useful to have the output of the shell recorded in a text file. This is possible with the command script <text file name>; after the end of all compilation process, typing logout will close the command and the text file remain in the HD.
When you have more specific question, you may ask back here or in private. Glad to help you. ;)

Thanks a lot!  :)

I need a sequential image viewer (like infaview, I mean...a program that lets you see the next image just pressing a key) for Linux, any suggestions please?.

http://www.xnview.com/ (http://www.xnview.com/)
xnView lets you do that and it can view over 400 different image file formats as well.

Thanks, so you know any video conversion utility for Linux?

http://www.thugsatbay.com/tab/?q=tab-video-converter-encoder (http://www.thugsatbay.com/tab/?q=tab-video-converter-encoder)
The T@b software people make a good one for free, their free video editor for linux is also pretty good.

Thanks, so any program to use Rar format on Linux? My Ubuntu doesn’t support it, since is not free.

That's tricky, but you have a few options, 1st you can use RAR for linux
http://fileforum.betanews.com/detail/1053350629/2 (http://fileforum.betanews.com/detail/1053350629/2)
It's shareware and should work for you.  Just use the unrar command.
 
or try the Xarchiver frontend if you want to go the GTK+2 route once you have command line rar support.
http://xarchiver.xfce.org/ (http://xarchiver.xfce.org/)

or try the 7zip for linux and see if that does it.
http://www.7-zip.org/download.html (http://www.7-zip.org/download.html)

So I tried a linux live CD for dreamcast and got bored after 20 minutes of my dreamcast tryng to boot it,  know one that works?

Where'd you get the keyboard, hard drive, etc. for that?
I had been looking.

Well if you really want a unix dreamcast (which would rock by the way), you could try installing NetBSD.
It's not live, but I think it'd work.

Try DSL (D*mn Small Linux) and see if that works. It has a live cd and is so small the whole OS can run within system RAM.
http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/   (http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/)

Does DSL have an X server installed and I just forgot to start it?

Yeah, DSL should have X server support built right in.

Yeah, the VMware image just didn't automatically load the GUI. The real boot CD does.
For people new to Unix-like OSes, I'd have to recommend PC-BSD (it's based off of FreeBSD) since it has some features that make it easier at first. It has something like the install shield, which uses PBI files you double-click on. It's a good learning OS for Unix I think. I'm not sure about drivers yet, I only tried it in a virtual machine not on real hardware. I'm thinking of trying it on an extra hard drive soon.

So, whats the best Linux distribution made for video editing? (I’m talking about one that includes everything, so I just install it and is ready to use, because I don’t have internet at home).

I use it on my Windows and yes it sucks it can't play Real yet but I can watch my French DVD set with it cuz it can play multiregion. So I can watch foreign DVDs with it no problem.

Google Ubuntu Studio (Sorry for double-post)

Have you seen manga girl representation of Linux distros (http://avi.alkalay.net/2007/10/linux-pin-ups-anime-manga.html)? They are know as OS-tan (http://www.jkhp.it/OS-tan/desktops.htm).
What distro are you using? Mine is Debian; see how cute is her.
(http://www.jkhp.it/OS-tan/desktops/ico_debian.gif)

Ubuntu

My laptop is going to have Ubuntu and XP, because of Sam&Max chapter one, im too stupid to find a way to play it in Linux-_-

Edit 1:

Go and use KolibriOS!

http://www.kolibrios.org/

KolibriOS (also known as KOS and Kolibri) is a free operating system with a monolithic preemptive, real-time kernel, video drivers, for 32-bit x86 architecture computers, developed and maintained by The KolibriOS Project Team. KolibriOS is a fork of MenuetOS, written entirely in FASM (assembly language). However, C, C++, Free Pascal, Forth, among other high-level languages and compilers, can also be used in user application development.
English, Russian and Dutch versions are available.

KolibriOS Features
Boots from several devices, NTFS is also supported. You can even start it from Windows (Windows will shutdown).
Graphical user interface based on VESA.
Development kit: code editor with a macro-assembler (FASM) integrated.
TCP/IP stack.
Fits on a single 1.44MB floppy (many applications are compressed).
Pre-emptive multitasking, streams, parallel execution of system calls.
Supported file systems are FAT12, FAT16, FAT32 (long names support), NTFS (read only).
AC'97 audio codec support for Intel, nForce, nForce2, nForce3, nForce4 and SIS7012 chipsets.
CD and DVD support.
User can change themes directly in the OS.

So, what are you waiting for? Dont be lazy and try it!

Anyone try out Sabayon Linux?  Looks pretty cool, I'm going to throw it on a spare laptop sometime soon to give it a test. 
http://www.sabayonlinux.org/ (http://www.sabayonlinux.org/)
screenshots here: http://www.sabayonlinux.org/mod/screenshots/ (http://www.sabayonlinux.org/mod/screenshots/)

Also as good as ubuntu and the debian distro's are I think OpenSUSE deserves an honorable mention too.

Nothing can beat Damn small linux

is damn small (50 m)

Is  Damn fast (If you load it into ram)

It has everything you can need in  pendrive of 100 m and you still have 50 m free for stuff!.

Damn Small Linux or DSL is a free distribution ('distro') of the Linux operating system (OS) for the X86 family of personal computers (PC's). It was designed to run graphical applications on older PC hardware - e.g. PC's with 386/486/early-Pentium processors and very little memory. DSL is a LiveCD with a size of 50MB. It can be installed on storage media with small capacities, like bootable business card, 64MB USB flash drive, CompactFlash card, and Zip drive.

DSL can also be run inside another operating system, using an emulator such as QEMU or Q.

DSL is not to be confused with DSLinux, which is a different Linux distribution for the Nintendo DS handheld game console.

DSL was already mentioned in page two and three of this thread! But i guess page four needs a DSL shout out too. 

... As far as using DSL, it's a cool and nifty tool and not as limiting as you might expect, but its' a waste to install by itself on newer hardware.  Especially when there are some swanky(er), fuller-featured Linux OS's to try. 

So, besides xmms, know any other good winamp 2.XX clones?

Winamp 5 is just fatware (Slow and big ware)

I've moved from XMMS to Audacious (its official web page is here (http://audacious-media-player.org/index.php?title=Main_Page)). Audacious looks like a very good player, you must give a try, Up to now I'm very satisfied.
I abandoned XMMS because it hasn't been developed actively lately, and XMMS2 showed many bugs in my machine; I removed both from my HD.

And whats bad with just "xmms"? it can play all the audio formats I use, like mp3(With extra codec) ogg and wav.

Talking about audio, I need a audio recorder/editor for linux, with stuff like noise reduction and that...

XMMS is buggy (in my computer, at least) and when I upgrade my O.S., many times it was broken.  This never happened with Audacity so far.  Perhaps this isn't really a XMMS' faulty though.

Have you tried Audacity (not Audacious)? I used this sound editor in the past, you could try it.

The old XMMS I use works fine... but it came with Ubuntu...

And I didnt know Audacity had a linux version, thats great!

You know, I've actually been having issues with playing midis. I run Ubuntu 7.10 and just can't find an application that will let me listen to them. This is particularly bad, because I absolutely love game music.
I was wondering if you guys could help me out.

VLC media player should do the trick

http://www.videolan.org/vlc/

Another program worthy to try is Timidity++ (http://timidity.sourceforge.net/ (http://timidity.sourceforge.net/)), it's a great command line MIDI synthesizer. Some players like XMMS or Audacity act as a frontend for this software.
I don't know if it's available in Ubuntu, but there is Debian package for it. Don't forget to install also a patch files like Debian freepats package, or the more complete timidiy-patches that can be grabbed from http://linux.maruhn.com/sec/timidity-patches.html (http://linux.maruhn.com/sec/timidity-patches.html).
By the way, if you have an older and slower CPU (mine is a 600 MHz Athlon) set up has to be done to not eat so much processing power (/etc/timidity/timidity.cfg file must be edited).

600 MHz? You really should upgrade, the cheap PC I bought for my uncle has more power than that...

Of course you could try to make freedos with Freedos 32 work in that thing, your PC would fly!.


 

My computer is old, but can do almost all thing I need (tipicaly my needs are word processor, spreadsheet and web browser) without problem. I don't work with 3D rendering, quantum chemistry calculation or something that are really CPU intensive.
I'm old too, I hope nobody wished to upgrade me. :gurulou:

Video editing also takes a lot of cpu power (Rendering mostly), and really a 700  MHz+ processor is cheap nowadays. Of course I do video editing like a “caveman” that means I extract all the frames to bmp or png files and convert the audio to wav, then I do the editing/merging. There must be a lot of better ways to do it, but who cares?.

Now back to linux, my Ubuntu PC is being upgraded, and Im going to use it for audio editing...

There seem to be three main types of GNU/Linux distributions (Linux is the kernel of the GNU's Not Unix Operating System, the free Unix replacement with the original Free Software philosophy being that the user has the freedom to view, modify and redistribute the source code of everything - that has somewhat been sidetracked and to make it more palatable to businesses it is called simply "Linux"). Source based means all software is usually compiled from source code to install it. Slackware and Gentoo fall in this first group. Berkeley Software Distribution Unix and kin are also source based. The other two use precompiled packages and manage library dependencies. Debian and Red Hat and the 'distros' based on them are examples of these two. Debian based distros use DPKG as the package manager and Red Hat based distros use RPM. With automated package management, software is usually installed by using a program which lets the user choose from packages in the repositories hosted online, downloads them and installs what is needed. The source based distros download source code of the programs users choose and compile them. Compiling can take much longer, but there are more programs available in source code form than have been made into DEB or RPM packages. The packages must fit the distro it is being installed into or there may be problems, which is why the specific repositories are kept. There seem to be more packages in the Debian based repositories. However, some very useful features are in the Red Hat based distros. Of course, there are other package formats (Pacman) but DEB and RPM have the most precompiled software. SUSE is also an RPM distro, but is more like a cousin to Red Hat, being originally based on Slackware but adopting the RPM. Mandrake 'forked' from Red Hat and and later became Mandriva. It is most known for the Mandriva Control Center which makes managing the system easier. SUSE also has something similar in the form of Yet another Setup Tool.

My first install to hard drive (I'd booted Knoppix live disc) was Fedora Core 3, back when Windows XP Professional 64-bit was coming out, in 2005. That was fun (sarcasm). Installing ATI driver was very difficult (manualy inputting monitor sync rates while in console script so no GUI) and my Japanese MP3s and videos were invisible because their filenames were in Shift_JIS. Yeeeah... I tried Ubuntu 5.10 next. Still no NTFS write support. No writing to Windows filesystems, which included my storage drive. I went back to Windows XP for a while.
Now with the latest distro releases there is easier graphics driver install, auto UTF-8 conversion, and ntfs-3g that allows NTFS writing. At last, usable. Before ntfs-3g I'd have had to pass on GNU/Linux as I needed to be able to actually save files to my storage drive without rebooting and going into Windows.

Reviving an almost forgotten topic...

I wonder if the Linux users of the board have registered themselves at Linux Counter (http://counter.li.org/) project. I'm registered as user #66569.

So, who has tried Free-BSD?

Hello, all! It's been FOREVER since I've posted at this forum. Just wanted to let you know in this topic that I've been using Ubuntu (Linux) 9.10 for about a month now because of a recent virus on my beautiful Windows PC D':

And it's pretty good!

I got my old wireless card to work, I can connect it to my scanner (wirelessly, even!), some of my Windows programs run great in WINE, I can word process school documents in OpenOffice.org AND I'm running a test LAMP server right now which works pretty well.

Linux might not do everything well. But it's good for free!

FK

Yeah because I just dreamed all those times Windows just crashed...

Anyway... I want to know programs for Linux that can re-place paint, GIMP is great but has a long learning curve...

I know that a few good video editors are KINO (for DV), KdenLive (for multi-purpose), Cinelerra (I hear the effects are pretty cool but the interface is icky), and I know people that use Blender as a video editor!

FK

I asked you for a easy to use paint clone, what did you give me?

You did not give me GNU Paint! Shame on you!

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_Paint for Gnome

edit2:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KolourPaint for KDE