First Post - Gentoo vs Windows

Debug_This · Posted: Wed Feb 22, 2006 11:26 pm Post subject: First Post - Gentoo vs Windows

I should probably start off by saying I'm sorry if this is not in the right forum but I couldn't decide where it would fit better. I should also probably say that I'm not trying to get flamed here (I know all you *nixers hate Windows -- and rightfully so), I'm trying to get some useful information out of this thread so please don't get mad at me :lol:

That said, I should really probably start off by saying this is my first post, and wow have you really got some forums here. I've been interested in Linux (well, Unix actually) for quite some time now and have read a few books leant to me by friends and such about Unix and Linux and BSD and stuff (not so much the technical aspects of each, but the ideology and history behind them as well as very untechnically how they are designed to work).

Long story short, I am a hobbyiest programmer and I have always developed under the Windows platform. However I'm also an actual person who needs to do regular day to day things like surf the web, check email, play games, things outside of coding. The main thing (essentially the only thing) that turned me off from switching to Linux was the uncertainty that I could still easily do everything that I'm used to doing under Windows.

Not to make a list or anything, but a few of the things I would like to know (hopefully someone knows) if it works under Gentoo are:

1. A basic web browser -- I think Firefox might work under Linux but I'm not sure
2. A C/C++ compiler -- I'm currently using VC++ but I don't write any non-standard code (no .NET)
3. A development IDE would be nice but not essential, I haven't worked in a text editor in soooo long
4. My two favorite games, Counter-Strike and Morrowind (I know weird mix) -- once someone told me about a program called Wine or Wyne (sp?) that let's you run games under Linux but I'm not sure whether it works for all games, if someone can link me to their website that would be great
5. One of my very favorite apps in Windows is YPOPs! that lets you use a mail client like Thunderbird to check Yahoo mail -- I was wondering whether there was an equivilent in Linux
6. A media player for music and videos
7. DVD player -- preferably with free codec because I don't think the ATI one will work with Linux
8. LimeWire or other P2P application -- for the sharing of uncopyrighted mp3s and movies only

9. Oh yeah, I also need to get some work done so a MS Word-like word processor would be great -- also does anyone know if the HP Deskjet 5740 works under Linux?

This must sound like the noobiest post ever but I assure you will be extremely beneficial to me. Over the last few days I was reading up a little bit on the different distributions of Linux and variations of BSD. In the end I decided on Gentoo because of the enormous community. The BSD forums didn't look nearly as active as the Linux forums, and the Linux forums seemed even less active than these boards which are for just a single Linux distribution! In browsing different forums and Linux articles I have also heard of the infamous Gentoo documentation, which can, by the sound of them, guide even a noobie like me to becoming a Gentoo pro.

Anyway, I've already written more in this post than last year's English term paper. I appreciate anybody who takes the time to read this, even not entirely (I sure wouldn't), and am extremely grateful to anybody who takes the time to respond to it.

Thanks everyone!

BlackEdder · Posted: Wed Feb 22, 2006 11:47 pm Post subject:

First a word of warning. You are on the gentoo forums here. To install gentoo you will need to get your hands dirty. It will require reading the manual and probably take a couple of days to get it working. This has as the positive side that you get to know linux better and will cure you of any fear for the command line (tab completion is your friend), but if you are looking for a quick install you might wanna try another distro like ubuntu or fedora.

Now for your list:
1. Firefox and opera both work under linux.
2. Present in the form of gcc (and g++). At the moment the c++ compiler is quite slow, but the newest version is supposed to be much faster
3. Eclipse is one that I know, there are loads of others (search the forum for ide and you will get a lot of hits)
4. Might be a bit tricky. Cedega supports both, but will cost you a bit of money (5 dollar subscription). Wine will work (at least for counter-strike), but might require a bit more work. Take into account that you will have a performance hit. It also depends on your videocard. Nvidia videocard should give you close to the same performance as in windows. ATI's will be a lot worse due to crappy drivers.
5. Don't know, but would be very surprised if it isn't there. (Thunderbird is available for linux at least)
6. No problem.. We have xine, mplayer, videolan etc..
7. All of the above also play dvds
8. Don't know specific apps, but they are available
9. Openoffice (also available for windows) has close to the same functionaliuty and does a good job at importing and exporting to MS office doc format. If you want a standalone word processor you could also try abiword. HP deskjets work well under linux.
You could burn a knoppix livecd, put it in your computer and you can get a quick look at the capabilities of linux without having to install anything yet. This will also give you an idea if your hardware is supported (most desktop hardware is supported, laptops might be a bit harder).

Have fun!

PS a faily complet list of windows programs and their linux counterparts:
http://www.linuxrsp.ru/win-lin-soft/table-eng.html

brims · Guru Joined: 19 Apr 2004 Posts: 492 Location: Arizona

1. Firefox works under Linux.
2. C/C++ you have gcc/g++ compilers.
3. Eclipse works well, there are others, I'm not sure about all of them.
4. Not much of a gamer, can't help here.
5. Don't know what YPOP is, Thunderbird works under Linux
6. VLC, Mplayer, Xine, many others.
7. mplayer works well.
8. Limewire being Java, it works on any platform with a Java VM.
9. OpenOffice, for printing check out CUPS

EDIT: scary how close my post is to the above poster's

EDIT:

bigbaddumbdog · n00b Joined: 25 Jun 2004 Posts: 2

In order:

1. firefox
2. gcc
3. emacs
4. It's called wine and I don't know if your games will work.
5. I'm sure there's something...
6. mplayer (video), rhythmbox (music)
7. xine or mplayer
8. bittorrent, and many more....
9. openoffice, your printer works perfectly, see: http://www.linuxprinting.org/show_printer.cgi?recnum=HP-DeskJet_5740

think4urs11 · Posted: Wed Feb 22, 2006 11:52 pm Post subject:

Welcome within the community

Seems as if you are very well willing to learn so this is THE place to do so.

For your questions:
1) Firefox, Opera, Links, even IE6 (within wine) - choose whatever fits best
2) GCC of course
3) -
4) sorry i'm no gamer at all
5) either fetchyahoo or yosucker should do
6) mplayer, vlc, xmms
7) -

we have'em all :wink:

http://packages.gentoo.org/packages/?category=net-p2p
9) abiword or openoffice

BTW: We don't hate Windows. We just decided to move ahead and use something more advanced/more suited to our needs.
Plus we feel much better not longer have to use well ehmm *g* 'extended shareware'(tm) versions of windows applications.
_________________
Nothing is secure / Security is always a trade-off with usability / Do not assume anything / Trust no-one, nothing / Paranoia is your friend / Think for yourself

Kurt Steiner · Posted: Wed Feb 22, 2006 11:58 pm Post subject:

Debug_This · Posted: Thu Feb 23, 2006 12:27 am Post subject:

Wow, that was quick!

I appreciate everyone's responses, and I think brims said it best:

brims · Guru Joined: 19 Apr 2004 Posts: 492 Location: Arizona

broken_chaos · Posted: Thu Feb 23, 2006 6:47 am Post subject:

piwacet · Guru Joined: 30 Dec 2004 Posts: 486

If you're a programmer then the technical challenges will not overwhelm you, may just require persistance. Also, oddly, I found gentoo the easiest distro to work with. Basically when I tried other distros, it would mostly work 'out of the box,' but then something wouldn't work, and it was impossible to fix that one thing. For instance, when I first switched to linux, I tried several distros like suse and others I cann't remember which ones now, and I could not get the video player working, even after searching the forums and googling the entire internet, still wouldn't work. On Gentoo, because you need to read a manual to install stuff, when it didn't work, well, I'd already read the manual, so I was that much closer to knowing how to fix it. And the gentoo forums are incredibly active and helpful if problems arise.

It will take time, as you'll compile everything from source, but if you enjoy technical stuff, as some hobbiest programers do, you'll probably enjoy getting gentoo working. It does work, and the documentation overall is quite good.

Good luck.

Debug_This · Posted: Thu Feb 23, 2006 5:29 pm Post subject:

Well, this is it: my first post ever under Linux (Knoppix not Gentoo, but still....). I have been messing around with Knoppix for the last few hours and have decided to proceed forward with my plans to wipe the harddisk and attempt my first Linux installation. Once under Linux I was able to try out most of the apps you guys suggested, and I've got to say it's a lot more than I expected (I don't mean that offensively, just it never occurred to me that such great tools existed outside of Windows

).

Before I start the installation I have a question about video cards (I know this should probably be under hardware, but I didn't think it was appropriate to start a new thread for such a minor question). My computer originally came with a GeForce 4 MX integrated with the nForce2 motherboard. Less than a month ago (I'm kicking myself now) I bought a nice new ATI X700 for HL2 (which turned out to be amazing) and CS: Source (which turned out to suck

). Knoppix had no problem detected my ATI card and loading KDE and everything, but after checking out the Wine and Cedega websites I read that ATI cards don't work very well (something about old drivers).

Anyway -- yes, I realize I have a habit of turning a one-line question into a multi-paragraph question -- my question is would I be better to run the much faster ATI card with the older drivers or the slower, integrated (ugh) nVidia card with the newer drivers. If you think the nVidia card would be better I can take out the X700 and use Knoppix to make sure the GeForce 4 MX gets detected and works properly.

You all have been absolutely invaluable thus far. I feel I am so close to running a dedicated Gentoo box, I can almost taste it (well, not really, but it's just an expression :lol:

).

Thanks again for everybody's help!

BlackEdder · Posted: Thu Feb 23, 2006 7:16 pm Post subject:

That ati card is so much faster hardware wise that I think even with their crappy drivers it will be faster than your geforce card. As comparison I'm able to run cs1.6 quite well on my ati 9600 pro card under linux. Anyways if the geforce is integrated then it should be quite easy to install both

You might want to keep a windows partition around while you fiddle around with wine/cedega. You can quite easily dual boot and I still boot back to windows once a month for some counter-strike source.

Abraxa · Posted: Thu Feb 23, 2006 7:29 pm Post subject:

A warm welcome to the Gentoo community from me, too! Personally I didn't find installing as hard as people often say, so don't be afraid =)
As others pointed out, Gentoo gives you the most understanding of Linux you can have besides using LFS (Linux From Scratch). So since you're a programmer you'll quickly pick up the concepts and programs that do the work behind the scenes and will learn new ways of using your system as efficiently as it just isn't possible under Windows - though I gotta admit that the time spent to fix problems sometimes can even that out again ;)
Overall it's worth it, though! =)

Kurt Steiner · Posted: Thu Feb 23, 2006 7:44 pm Post subject:

Debug_This, I would recommend you not to wipe out your Windows - you may find it quite usefull sometimes. :wink:

For example when you do something bad with your Linux, you have a second OS ready. You may also need to use an application that doesn't have a Linux equivalent, or may just want to play a game that won't work with Cedega. You may also get so angry with linux, you will not want to see it for a few days

- trust me, it happens...

---EDIT:
Oh, and you may find VMWare quite helpful. For example I often use it to run my Windows (which is on a diiferent partition, and can be booted with lilo as the only OS) while working with Gentoo.

drwook · Veteran Joined: 30 Mar 2005 Posts: 1324 Location: London

Debug_This · Posted: Thu Feb 23, 2006 9:55 pm Post subject:

Thanks everyone for the great input and suggestions. As for the video card, I think I'm going to try it out with the ATI and if things don't go over so well, I can always reinstall with the nVidia (hey, I figure I can only learn more that way :wink:

). Despite what most (if not all -- EDIT: posted before drwook had his say

) of you guys suggested, I think I'm going to wipe the whole harddisk and take the full plunge -- if anything absolutely imperitive comes up, I still have my IBM T41 w/ WinXP, however I'm going to do my best to let her sleep for the next few days (and hopefully, if all goes well, eventually introduce her to Gentoo too).

drwook · Veteran Joined: 30 Mar 2005 Posts: 1324 Location: London

http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/altinstall.xml#doc_chap3

Here you go, have fun

Kurt Steiner · Posted: Thu Feb 23, 2006 10:33 pm Post subject:

drwook,
Yes, now I use only linux for personal use, too. What I ment is that a newbie may get quite frustrated when he or she can't work something out. When they have a second OS on the disk, they can go back to it for a while, get rid of frustration, and easily, full of energy, switch to linux for a next try. :wink:

I know this from my own experience. :lol:

Debug_This · Posted: Thu Feb 23, 2006 11:54 pm Post subject:

thasheep

sonicbhoc · Posted: Wed Mar 08, 2006 4:27 pm Post subject:

1. A basic web browser -- I think Firefox might work under Linux but I'm not sure.
ANSWER: Both Firefox and Opera work under Linux. Opera is kinda awesome.

2. A C/C++ compiler -- I'm currently using VC++ but I don't write any non-standard code (no .NET)
Use GCC.

3. A development IDE would be nice but not essential, I haven't worked in a text editor in soooo long
KDevelop is awesome. Although I have no idea how to program, I'm trying to learn, and that's an awesome IDE.

4. My two favorite games, Counter-Strike and Morrowind (I know weird mix) -- once someone told me about a program called Wine or Wyne (sp?) that let's you run games under Linux but I'm not sure whether it works for all games, if someone can link me to their website that would be great
There are 2 options: WINE, free, or Cedega ($5 a month.) The difference is better DirectX support under Cedega, but Wine can do it too.

5. One of my very favorite apps in Windows is YPOPs! that lets you use a mail client like Thunderbird to check Yahoo mail -- I was wondering whether there was an equivilent in Linux
Somebody else already said it.

6. A media player for music and videos
Oh boy... lots of options. KDE, one of the Desktop Environments, comes with 3 of them... Then you got MPlayer, Xine, XMMS, BMP... The list could span... something long... I mainly use Amarok, it is definetly the best (non-command line) media player in linux!

7. DVD player -- preferably with free codec because I don't think the ATI one will work with Linux
Mplayer or Xine should work.

8. LimeWire or other P2P application -- for the sharing of uncopyrighted mp3s and movies only
I can't remember the name, but there's a whole section in Portage for nothing but P2P programs. Check:
http://www.gentoo-portage.com
They have the complete software tree there.

9. Oh yeah, I also need to get some work done so a MS Word-like word processor would be great -- also does anyone know if the HP Deskjet 5740 works under Linux?
OpenOffice.org. It works in Windows and Linux, it's completely free and supports all kinds of Office stuff, aside from Publisher.

Good luck!

Also, under Linux, everything is open-source so you can reprogram software if you want. Once you get it, you actually own it, not a little software liscence that doesn't do anything.

GNUtoo · Veteran Joined: 05 May 2005 Posts: 1919

Gentoo can suit well for linux beguiners but it was not designed for this... so i'll advise you on how to cope with this:
-you'll need a livecd or a "consistent" linux installation(that means any non meta-distribution such as knoppix(livecd),fedora,mandravia,ubuntu...)...mabe you can manage to have both(gentoo and another distribution) running at the same time(with chroot or UML(usermode linux)) this is very important because if you don't have a consistent linux distribution you won't know about a lot of features and programs names becauses a lot of programs and features(pre-linking,kde add-on...) are present by default on theses consistent distribution and are not under gentoo...so if you want to use gentoo, get ALSO another distribution for discovering linux,and with livecd such as knoppix you will be able to try linux(livecd are so slow...lol) and discover not only the tools,features and programs names but also the desktop environement...(such as kde and gnome) remember that you can always install a kde program in gnome and a gnome program in kde in gentoo(and mabe in most of the distribution)

-you'll install gentoo easely(folowing the gentoo handbook) but...it will take some time,i don't have the new gentoo livecd(in reality it's designed only for insatlling gentoo) so i can't help you on this precise point: you'll need someone that can help you to run the kernel configuration in graphical mode if you want to configure yourself the kernel ("make gconfig") because you've never compiled the kernel and so you don't know by heart what all options means and the graphical configuration save you a lot of time(even if i know well all the options i still use the graphical configuration...that's faster):you can view the explanation of what does the option you are choosing... mabe you'll need some help at the forum...because it's the most complicated thing in linux(you can easely avoid it having a genericaly-configured kernel...it's in the installation manual)

-when you'll need to choose some flags,choose -02 -pipe and -march= because if you use too much experimental lags some packages can refuse to compile

-be carefull with your spelling with command and precisely with _ and ??? bacause all command you will type are case sensitive

-in order to know what a command do you have different options:
*type "man thecommand" in a terminal
*type "thecommand --help" in a terminal
sometimes only one of the above works

Gentoo have the folowing advantages over others linux distributions:
*easely upgradable,no need to reinstall anything
*very well documente(mabe some others distributions are well documented too)
*easely customisable(you can do somthing the way you want to and not the way that is imposed by the distribution(you can have problems if you don't folow this way in some others distribution))
*all packages are built from source and optimised for your cpu(some others distributions optimise only the base and not all packages you install (to be verified))
*some packages are avaliable quicker(the most well known) than others distributions,some not(the less well known)
*with all the documentation and packages avaliable you will be able to do certain thing easely than others distributions

Gentoo have the folowing disadvantages over others linux distributions:
*some QA problems but it's changing very rapidely(a QA team was born...there is now QA policy that can be enforced...) i don't know how well others distributions cope with QA(but some are realy realy stable...i heard than some have avalibility of 99,99% that means that they are unavaliable(crash,bugs) for only 5min per year!!!)...but you won't have a lot of problems...only some package that refuse to compile if you abuse of experimental compile flags(that's also changing in the gcc(the linux compiler) team) and windows QA is catastrofic and far behind any linux distribution...due to a lot of factors such as bad design choices,badly written drivers,api stability problems(for example there is a win32 program that use a bugged windows dll,and that they modified the program because of this,windows in order to keep the compatibility with this program won't fix the bug...that is also true in wine and in reactOS(a non-yet-usable windows gpl clone))
and even if you have problems you can post in the forum or bugreport of it's related to the compilation or it's a bug(read the bugreport documentation before bugreporting...yes there is documentation for evrything in gentoo)

*some packages are avaliable later(the less well known) than others distributions,others quickers(the most well known)
*it's a source distribution that means that if you have a recent computer that's ok but if you have an old computer(piii500) the compilation will take a long time but your computer will be a lot faster(if you configure your kernel for your machine that will also incrase the speed) and that render realy usable an old computer(but not for too much intensive task such as high-end games,video compression...but for web-surfing,dvd,divx...and mabe coding(if your code isn't too long to compile))

The documentation is avaliable
officialy at http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/index.xml
you have this forum where some users make some documentations
unofficialy at http://gentoo-wiki.com/Main_Page
you have tha man pages or the --help for the documentaton of a command or a program

for programing:
you have kdevelop but under gentoo you can't make windows programs by default(in knoppix i could)
so mabe you'll need
-minigw the gpl windows compiler (can compile C/C++ for windows)
-wine in otder to run the aplications
but i don't know how to eneable this inside kdevelop...(if i did not use knoppix i wouldn't even know this lol...that's what i was talking about at the beguining)
and you have also .net inside linux if you want (several project including dotgnu and mono) but you have others programming language that are cross platform such as perl python...

for migrating:
tomshardware have an article for migrating from windows to linux,that describe the aplications migration such asexplorer bookmark firefox-linux

And most important...welcome to open-source free-software and linux world...lol

redwing26 · Posted: Thu Mar 09, 2006 2:48 pm Post subject:

I here what you are saying about the windows linux switch ........gaming and some other stuff is what has stopped me doing a complete switch ........up until gentoo I found linux stability,ease of use and documentation to be pants to be honest ......anyway i know some may disagree but thats just my view . In regards to gentoo if you were considering making the switch this is the most sensible way to go .........1 of many reasons for this is that if your a person who wants to develop stuff and not have to spend about 4 months fixing bugs in the development enviroment prior to coding......then you can use emerge ........get your tools installed with minimum of hassle and concentrate solely on fixing bugs in your own source code.

In regards to morrowind ........well you have good taste :-)

.....I love that game also! ......It can be some hassle to get working though .....especially if you use an ati but I managed it with the use of cedega .......the only thing is you have to pay for cedega 3 monthly .....I believe its $10 every 3 months or something .........not expensive and the game runs quite wll when you have your config sorted .......I did have some problems to get it to work fully with opengl and all the eye bcandy that comes with it :-)

but with the help of these forums and the cedega forums i managed it .........One thing I must mention ......I had trouble with morrowind but that was like over 1 month ago and i still managed to run it .......so now i reckon things should be a bit easier ......On top of that when i bought cedega I didnt know as much as I do now and the problems i was having ws due to having to suss out a working config from 100s of diffrent posts .....my point is Im almost certain it will work with wine .....which is free ........when I initially tried it with wine ....i got unknown stencil mode error ....so I went out and bought cedega(thinking it was wine to blame) and had the same problem .....it turns out I just needed to run morrowind in full screen mode as opposed to windows mode.

From a person that thought linux had a long way to go and was hype(a few years back).........well I have changed .......gentoo is a GREAT choice for a distro ! the BEST choice IMHO ......because of:

The people that control the emerge tree are picky about what they let on the stable branch and dont let any old crap on

The forums although people speak there mind and dont always agree are a great source of info and I have yet to come across a situation where a newb asks for help and gets a response like RTFM or go search for it(I mean as if someone would come on a foum asking for help and not having done that) :-)

As a linux newb i bought lots of redhat books followed them word for word and found that I was having problems unrelated to what the book was saying owing to package bugs etc .......and as a newb at that time I couldnt get the problems fixed .......long and short of it is the books were no use because of this ........gentoo on the other hand has the gentoo handbooks which are written well with step by step instructions(THAT WORK) and relevant explanations that dont give you a huge irrelevant history lesson ........history and other stuff is brought in where its relevant to the task though

The wiki guides are also a great source of info ......and dont assume the user has a PhD like some other distros

You can install a live cd for quickness in regards to the install but you should probably go through the handbook a couple of times and install that way as it really helps in understanding linux which in urn means in the long run a better understanding enables the switch to linux to become more of a reality

Anyway there are many more reasons why gentoo is a good choice .......but what I would say is initially partition windows and gentoo that way you can experiment and learn on genoo and have windows as a fall back if anything goes wrong .......In saying what ive said gentoo still has a bit of ground to make but I think the devs no this and are improving it alot ......but still i would say gentoo is ahead of the pack at the momment

Good luck with gentoo! I changed and through some work it has been a very good choice for me!
regards
redwing
_________________
Never do today what you can put of until tommorow ..........unless its to do with a x86 :-)

brims · Guru Joined: 19 Apr 2004 Posts: 492 Location: Arizona

redwing26 · Posted: Thu Mar 09, 2006 7:30 pm Post subject:

yeah i hear what you are saying but i would not go so far as to say all phds dont mean crap as it really depends on what uni you go to ......for instance in reference to game programming some uni's excel where as some basically just teach people how to use a pre made engine from what ive read ......to be fair I see your point but at the same time I dont see how anyone can assume that phd's are in genral crap ........i mean courses for one; certain people study hard and want to get through on their own merit thus learning and understanding 100% of the course where as others for the most part just copy work and sail through on other peoples effort .........my point is that are are some very smart people out there both with and without phds and in general anyone ive met with those qualifications are bright people (and i dont mind giving others credit if they are good at something).......but there are some dumbasses as well I suppose you get good/bad smart/dumb people in all walks of life and there will ALWAYS be people SMARTER and DUMBER than you/me/us all

slight digression from me also

sorry .......
redwing
_________________
Never do today what you can put of until tommorow ..........unless its to do with a x86 :-)