Keep Linux or back to XP?

[Prisoner]

Well, I just noticed a problem with my laptop, with Dreamlinux installed.

Went to sleep one night with it running perfectly. Did not install or uninstall a single thing, didn't do any system-affecting operations. Just visited Sevenforums, played my usual online games, and checked my Deviantart before I went to sleep.

Woke up next morning, turned my laptop on, loaded normally, and compiz was gone. So was my dock. So was Conky. So were the window borders. I've tried re-installing compiz, and it still doesn't work. Compiz-check doesn't even work anymore.

It disturbs me a little that this sort of thing would happen randomly. I know that nobody else had access to the system, as I keep a pretty hard password on it. It seems to me that the install is getting a little unstable... after 2 weeks...


Anyway, I need some advise. Should I keep with Dreamlinux? It runs smooth, about the smoothest of all the OS's I've tried so far, on my 256 MB RAM system. The other option would be to use Windows XP (probably TinyXP), so I could have Wifi access back as well as being able to do work on here as well as my desktop.

Opinions? Thanks in advance.

 

[pparks1]

Whichever is more comfortable for you.

 

[Kari]

Just out of personal interest: how is your question related to Windows 7 and Seven Forums?

 

[Prisoner]

Kari, Chillout Room forum.

 

[fseal]

I've found that ALL my desktop linux installs over the years tend to eat themselves sooner or later. Usualy the GUI elements. Ooops, search crashes every time you run it now. Or Ooops, the task bar is gone... Especially if you religeously apply updates (which can come in daily sometimes).

I think that most Linux desktop users tend to reinstall a lot, if not for that reason then for the fact thay their chosen distro is updated every 6 months anyway.

If you want to stick with Desktop Linux, then a strategy is to make sure that all updating software it turned off. Keep all user data on a seperate drive or partition. Be ready to reinstall at any time.

I don't use my Linux wordstations to connect to the net so being up to date on security fixes is of no consequence for me. If it is for you then monitoring critical updates may be necessary, just don't have them auto installed (same as on windows).

 

[Prisoner]

Fair. Right now I'm transferring files over to my desktop so I can get another DL install ready.

 

[Kari]

Kari, Chillout Room forum.

My bad. Didn't notice where we are.

 

[Thorsen]

Why not Dual boot.....Maybe with 3 partitions.. 1 for XP, 1 for Linux and 1 for data

Edit: this way you could also backup-image linux and xp and have your data seperate. If linux fails on you, you can just re-image partition from backup without worrying about the data.

Another Edit: just looked at your specs. I dont know which you would put on SSD or 80GB HDD....I guess data on your 1.5TB...This might be a challenge....

And Note: I have not done this before, myself, but am about to (Ubuntu/2003server/data)

 

[johnwillyums]

+1 for that Thorsen.
I'm triple booting with Linux Mint at the moment and Mint is lovely

 

[fseal]

I guess I should say that my favorite setup is to run 7 all the time, use CS5, Blender and al lmy hard hitting apps on 7, then run my Linux distros for funand work in virtual machines which for the most part really kicks butt for ease and versatility.

Now there are some hardware speficic things you may not be able to so using a VM. But if your needs are not that hardware heavy, it's an incredibly simple/fast way to get to and use various linux distros for testing or develoment.

 

[Prisoner]

My plan for now is to dual boot Dreamlinux (as said, the only distro that both looks good and runs good :s) alongside TinyXP. This laptop only has access to the hard drive in it, which is 40Gb, so... could pose a problem, but I can deal with that later.

 

[Hannibal001]

Question: Is Dreamlinux any better than Ubuntu ? Have not run a linux system in a while and was concidering doing a dual boot.So I would like to use the better if possible.

 

[MilesAhead]

Have you tried Mandriva? If you have broadband via a popular ethernet interface it has an excellent one CD install. It initializes your ethernet, sets up your system, then brings up package selections. You select what you want and it downloads the packages right then. For most stuff when you do your first boot into X you have everything installed and available.

I haven't done Linux seriously in a few years. The "security update" paranoia must have destabalized things because when I was running Mandrake 9.1 (now they call it Mandriva instead of Mandrake) it was rock solid. Even if I ran a bunch of graphical programs and the system seemed hung, I could hotkey out to the console, kill X server, restart it, and just open my apps again. I never got a hard lock that made me cycle the power. I guess they are playing around with Window Managers that make it more like Windows. That and the updates must cause stability problems.

When I ran Mandrake it was like way more stable than XP. I had UPS plus I ran ext3 file system. It just did not blow up.

 

[fseal]

If you install a complete distro and do no updates or no outside program installs, you are ususaly pretty assured of getting a very stable install. At that time the distro as a complete package has had tons of testing on it.

The problem comes from doing the updates or installing outside packages. Then you are venturing into practically untested config territory.

After a while there will be a dependency screwup and you end up with functionality that just stops working, or causes random crashes, dissapearing resources etc. Tracking down /exactly/ what happened and hand fixing the dependency issues ususaly takes FAR longer than just updating to the latest complete stable image since they come out every 6 months.

But also you are right something has changed in the development of the Linux kernel. Breaking ABI changes USED to only take place in Odd numbered kernels wheich then solidified in the next even numbered release. But 2.6 has seen SEVERAL ABI breackages that break drivers and apps (VMs even) all inside the "stable" 2.6 kernel.

I don't know what the deal with that is, it never used to be that way. Removal of depretiated APIs or changed kernel structures used to be contained to the odd dev lines. No more

 

[MilesAhead]

Looks like they got trapped trying to be something they are not. Linux is a SysAdmin's type OS. Not really for the Joe sixpack User who knows how to use a spreadsheet and nothing about computer science. In a controlled environment maybe you could set up with user level programs for people to do work. But at home where the person can tinker with the system it requires someone willing to learn to tinker.

It's just a different ethos. If they want to make a dent in the Windows market then they would have to kidnap individuals before age 5 and make sure they only used vi editor. Then when they got their own machines they would feel fine about using Linux.

Once you use Windows style editors it's just too foreign to go Linux full time. I messed with it for several years but the main thing making me double think everything I did was the editor difference. The only time I felt really at home programming on it was using Kylix, not because the language was easier, but because I didn't have to think about how to delete lines, cut and paste etc.. I could think about the code.

Trying to make it Windows like is conceding the game right then. The saving grace of it is that it's not Windows like(e.g. it doesn't crash.)

 

[kucing13]

I also want to dual boot but i think i need to add the size of my hard drive first.500gb more

 

[bobtran]

I've found that ALL my desktop linux installs over the years tend to eat themselves sooner or later. Usualy the GUI elements. Ooops, search crashes every time you run it now. Or Ooops, the task bar is gone... Especially if you religeously apply updates (which can come in daily sometimes).

I think that most Linux desktop users tend to reinstall a lot, if not for that reason then for the fact thay their chosen distro is updated every 6 months anyway.

If you want to stick with Desktop Linux, then a strategy is to make sure that all updating software it turned off. Keep all user data on a seperate drive or partition. Be ready to reinstall at any time.

I don't use my Linux wordstations to connect to the net so being up to date on security fixes is of no consequence for me. If it is for you then monitoring critical updates may be necessary, just don't have them auto installed (same as on windows).

Funny, none of my Ubuntu, Red Hat, or Suse installs have suffered from this problem and I connect to the internet all the time. I have 3 Linux work stations and this has not been a problem for me. The only times I have had to re-install was due to my own efforts, you know......"your gun, your bullet, your foot".

 

[MilesAhead]

I also want to dual boot but i think i need to add the size of my hard drive first.500gb more

One nice thing about Linux, it's easier to set it up to boot from a 2nd HD. Also the swap command lets you use multiple swap partitions on different physical drives. You can even set it up to "round robin" allocate swap space to reduce thrashing on the primary drive.

If you really like to mess with the nuts and bolts see if the latest Slackware distro will support your hw. They used to say if you learned a Linux distro, you learned that distro, but if you learned Slackware you learned Linux. I think because I suffered through Slackware 3.0 is the reason I still remember a bit of this stuff even though I haven't run it in years. At least back then, Slackware made you edit the scripts in /etc subdirectories to do anything. Even dialing up your ISP you had to pretty much put the stuff in with a text editor. Not all little applets to do everything like the distros have now.

 

[Prisoner]

Well, I'm no longer concerned about this problem anymore. I've found the source of it, and I had forewarning. The hard drive simply messed up, killing random bits of my info. So, I've grabbed another hard drive and started dual-booting Dreamlinux with WinXP on it.

One thing I always wonder is why every Linux thread I've made contains posts completely unrelated to the topic at hand... maybe a Linux Discussion thread would be in order.

 

[MilesAhead]

Well, I'm no longer concerned about this problem anymore. I've found the source of it, and I had forewarning. The hard drive simply messed up, killing random bits of my info. So, I've grabbed another hard drive and started dual-booting Dreamlinux with WinXP on it.

One thing I always wonder is why every Linux thread I've made contains posts completely unrelated to the topic at hand... maybe a Linux Discussion thread would be in order.

Probably because it's not a Linux site. If it was, people wouldn't be compelled to get in their $.02. On Linux sites when Windows pops up you get similar action. It's human nature.