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136 Comments
- Falldog, on 06/10/2008, -3/+67The title is a bit deceptive. I was expecting something like "Window's is slowing down your system, install Linux instead" but ended up pleasantly surprised.
- Iluvator, on 06/10/2008, -6/+44A surprisingly useful and fanboyism-free article. What is this doing on Digg? ! Bring back the Windows-hate and iPhone mongering!
Seriously, decent read. - dotCOMmie, on 06/10/2008, -1/+34htop is a worthy mention. Its quite a bit more user friendly than top. On the downside it's not as standard -- unfortunately.
- Sammi84, on 06/10/2008, -3/+26Yeah I was plesantly surprised too.
No bad idiot fanboy juju in this article. All good quality and useful info for any newcomer to Linux with an open mind and a will to learn. - MWeather, on 06/10/2008, -0/+17You're asking a bit much. Windows hasn't shipped with Flash in years and has never (except Media center, I think) shipped with a DVD codec.
Striking a deal with Adobe may be possible, but unlikely given their requirement that THEY must be the ones to distribute flash.
The DVD codec is never going to be included until the patent is up or the DMCA is repealed. DVD codecs are either paid for, or illegal. - TheMachine1, on 06/10/2008, -0/+15Well as a Vista user my biggest complaint is the latency between when I stop/start an application or read/write files.
Theres a painfully slow delay for an impulsive person like myself. - dtfinch, on 06/10/2008, -0/+13In the case of Vista, the developers had quad cores with 8gb ram and solid state hard drives, and you have a 1.8ghz celery with 512mb ram and a 40gb 7200rpm IDE. If the cpu usage goes to 100% for 20 minutes with heavy disk activity, it's just Microsoft Update (not actually installing anything, just checking for updates). If you're still seeing heavy disk activity after it finishes, that's just the indexing service, system restore, background defrag, superfetch, and explorer rebuilding its thumbnail cache all at the same time.
A default Ubuntu install has some similarly annoying tasks, like updating its slocate database once a day (updatedb), which can take minutes or hours depending on how many files you have. Then there was that separate tracker/scrollkeeper thing in Gutsy doing the same thing at the same time. Those are the first things I disable. They exist solely to disappoint new users.
What is it with developers acting as though hard disk speeds follow Moore's law, as though next year's technology will make their slow overly disk bound process a non-issue? They've been 7200rpm for a decade. Throughput increases, but seeks will always take forever until we stop using disks entirely. - MWeather, on 06/10/2008, -3/+12Next time, don't buy an OS in impulse.
- RetepNamenots, on 06/10/2008, -2/+11The only problem is that it costs money and/or these things aren't free to modify etc.. meaning that they would go against everything that Linux stands for..
- djbon2112, on 06/10/2008, -2/+10And once again I ask, how does this make it bad? CLI > bloated GUIs.
- inactive, on 06/10/2008, -0/+7making things more complicated is not the answer.
- mrsteveman1, on 06/10/2008, -1/+8Thats ok, i've been screwing OpenSuSE for months.
shhh don't tell anyone - inactive, on 06/10/2008, -3/+9Can anyone here run TF2 with directx 9 full settings? What's your specs? Thats the only thing keeping me on windows
- MWeather, on 06/10/2008, -1/+7Why reboot if you don't have to?
- Gavagai80, on 06/10/2008, -1/+7It's wonderful to get an update on what you're not doing, but it has nothing at all to do with the article. If there's an article on speeding up Solaris next, you're going to post again that you don't use Solaris either?
- mossblaser, on 06/10/2008, -0/+6Linux mint is probably the closes thing to an ubuntu with the things that you aren't technically allowed to distribute, still it is becoming so much easier to just let ubuntu install things as you need them.
If you like openSuSE they ship (or when i last used it did anyway) an addon-cd which contains all the propriatary stuff like nVIDIA drivers, flash and java (when it was closed source) and lots of other goodies (including a lot of fonts and things. - zwaldowski, on 06/10/2008, -2/+7Of course, in-built DVD compatibility breaks the idea of Linux BECAUSE IT'S ***** ILLEGAL TO DO WITHOUT PAYING FOR IT.
- stix213, on 06/10/2008, -3/+8I wouldn't use Windows as a general rule.
But thats me, and I'm even MCSE certified. - cubicledrone, on 06/10/2008, -2/+7Windows has 90% marketshare because most middle managers are assclowns.
- AlexBellisBrown, on 06/10/2008, -3/+8Ive changed from Windows XP to Ubuntu fully, and I love it. I just wish somebody could make a version "Ready to use". Im not saying its not already, but i mean, come installed with Flash and DVD compatibility. Granted, that stuff costs money, but most people would still pay €10 for the extras!
- tian2992, on 06/10/2008, -0/+5Well, illegal for USA ;)
- j3ff86, on 06/10/2008, -2/+6Perhaps the hackers have stolded your megahurtz?
http://i8.photobucket.com/albums/a1/wiretap25/Misc ... - stix213, on 06/10/2008, -1/+5CLI commands are better than GUI commands. For one, if any of these tips are something that you commonly end up doing for certain apps you can easily script them so you don't have to manually click around each time. You do it once and then never do it again when you can script it.
But if you prefer repetitive/redundant GUI clicking be my guest. - RetepNamenots, on 06/10/2008, -2/+6C2D E6750@3.2
XFX 8800GTX OC
2Gb DDR2 PC2-6400 CL4
Runs at 1680x1050 maxed out at 60+ fps in XP, about 35 in Ubuntu 7.10 with Compiz. - willfe, on 06/11/2008, -0/+4Agreed; the best kind of advocacy isn't to actually advocate -- it's showing off how to accomplish things or solve problems with the platform. And this information isn't just relevant to newcomers; I've been working with Linux for ten years (and other flavors of Unix longer than that) and this is the first I'd ever heard of ionice. That's just frickin' cool stuff :)
Practical example of usage: run rtorrent (or whatever bittorrent client you normally use) and set it to "idle" priority. Now when a 40GB torrent finishes your machine (with slow-ass SATA drives (under heavy load, anyway)) won't crawl as it checksums the whole set). - shadoweva09, on 06/10/2008, -6/+10All of your solutions have windows equivalents that don't involve going into a command line. like setting process priority from the task manager. (and linux also has a gui for this, so this is unnecessary.) I will say I do have ubuntu on dual boot since on vista robs to much performance from programs like blender (about 2x), and compiz fusion at least distracts me from looking at all of the shortcomings.
- traxen, on 06/10/2008, -0/+4Better to be mainstream than hard to understand and obscure. You can still use Linux the way you want to... problem is that your Mom and Dad can now sit beside you and start getting whats happening..
That example was not perfect since you can still use obscure applications and hide your activities that way... but they wont shy away from using your workstation anymore :) - FFXIfrohike, on 06/10/2008, -3/+7Gist of the article:
"
1. A program is monopolizing the cpu.
A program is using all of the cpu cycles, blocking access to the cpu to other programs. This may be intentional (programs that do heavy processing) or accidental (programs get stuck repeating something over and over).
2. You’re nearly out of physical memory.
You are either running too many programs, or programs that use too much memory. Your physical memory is almost entirely exhausted, and the running programs are using the harddisk as fallback memory, which is very slow.
3. A program is doing heavy I/O.
You may be copying a large file, for instance. The program that is doing the copying is requesting lots of data from the harddrive, but while it’s doing this the cpu is actually waiting for this data to be read from the harddrive, blocking access to other programs.
" - 3242130193, on 06/10/2008, -0/+4In any case, hopefully Gnash will be usable for end users at some point, so we may get our wish, just yet. Patience, my friends
- zwaldowski, on 06/10/2008, -1/+5Pay is a big issue. Fluendo charges ~$30 for use of their codecs in Linux. Otherwise, it's illegal in the United States to install DVD codecs and the like.
- 4321234, on 06/11/2008, -0/+4You've got it backwards. The bigger linux gets, the more developers will be working on it, keeping it's goodness level high. As Windows userbase shrinks, it's sucking level will get even worse. Linux is already gooder than Windows at only a few percent market share. Yeah baby! (Terrorist fist jab)
- mrsteveman1, on 06/10/2008, -0/+4The DMCA just attempts to prevent the breaking of CSS, but the codec itself is patented.
You can't even make a read only MPEG-2 video codec for use on non-dvd video without paying that patent license. - kevthecatslayer, on 06/10/2008, -1/+4Any good resource for wireless drivers? I have a HP pav zv6000 series that I dont use a whole lot due to lack of wireless.
Broadcom 802.11b/g WLAN - 4321234, on 06/11/2008, -1/+4Windows doesn't run games better than Linux. People write games for Windows rather than Linux because they want to sell their games and Windows is installed on most computers that are sold.
- inactive, on 06/10/2008, -2/+4im wondering where the "this would never happen on a mac" people are.
- kyletehgreat, on 06/10/2008, -1/+4Hahah i think digg is slowing down THEIR system.
- built2spill, on 06/10/2008, -0/+3Falldog: Yeah, I did, too. I had a snarky comment regarding Adobe products ready to go but, after reading the article I see that would be wrong...
- CrackyJSquirrel, on 06/10/2008, -1/+4There in lies the beauty of Linux. You can customize your distribution to your liking. Since I have been using linux for a while now, and used it before it was all fancy fancy with the user friendly X windows features, I am very partial to a minimal X windows and command line. My Linux does not look like something my Mom or Dad would end up using. Because of their knowledge being limited to MS Windows, they would most likely feel more comfortable with a X windows that provides all the graphical interfaces, desktop features and WYSIWYG programs.
- FFXIfrohike, on 06/10/2008, -0/+3There's a mac screenshot in the article...
- Silverjam, on 06/10/2008, -1/+4Nice article, which described some extra features that I didn't know about (like ionice).
Anyways: I'd love to see the same article for MS Windows, which would probably end up with a "tiny" list containing 587 things that should be checked before you can be sure your system is running nearly as neat as Linux. - stix213, on 06/10/2008, -1/+4Funny how Mac fanboyz always talk about "Time Machine" like it is some innovative, ground breaking feature that Apple came out with first, when it isn't all too different than any of the many GUI wrappers for Linux/Unix rsync that have been around for ages. Rsync has been around since 1996, so Linux users have been happily doing these types of backups for over a decade..... Nice of Apple to join the 20th century...
Next time you brag about people ripping off OSX, can you at least mention a feature that isn't a ripoff of a 12 year old Linux/Unix app?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rsync - atdigg, on 06/10/2008, -1/+4buried for promoting stereotypes
- MWeather, on 06/10/2008, -0/+3"The DMCA just attempts to prevent the breaking of CSS, but the codec itself is patented."
Yeah, that's why yo either need to pay the license fee, or break the DMCA by circumventing CSS with an illegal codec. So you either need to wait for the patent to run out, or until the DMCA is repealed. - BlackAdderIII, on 06/11/2008, -0/+2Your Premise:
Using a shell is bad, something you only "need" to do if there isn't a GUI.
...might apply to you, not necessarily to the rest of us. - HonoredMule, on 06/11/2008, -0/+2You cannot patent the software directly with complete generality. Only a method of implementation of the codec can be credibly patented. Patent law is ***** up enough without bringing in the idea that I'm not even permitted to develop my own method for accomplishing a common high-level task (translate video in encrypted DVD format into a usable format). The problem lies entirely with the DMCA making encrypted DVDs hallowed content, as any method other than the patented one is marked as illegal "hacking" because it's not the way the content-producer intended for the content to be accessed. Worse still, it is unlikely that even the patent's invalidation/expiry would allow the U.S. to legally program/distribute any implementation without purchasing legal blessing from an arbitrarily created virtual monopoly. Thanks, DMCA.
I can't help but wonder...why is a DVD format that is very easily read without access keys so much more clearly "encrypted content" than, say, strings translated by an arbitrarily-defined mapping (ASCII) into a series of ones and zeros? - zwaldowski, on 06/10/2008, -0/+2... Because its impossible to do that on Ubuntu? Dugg down.
- whereisian, on 06/11/2008, -0/+2which is why you're a crappy technician
- BlackAdderIII, on 06/11/2008, -0/+2No really, it doesn't fix 99 per cent of problems happening. You're welcome.
Not in any sense, and certainly not on anything that isn't windows (RTFA?). - danfive555, on 06/13/2008, -0/+2You can use Mepis for free (though some donation is encouraged).
And like I said it works upon install. - jpjandrade, on 06/10/2008, -0/+2Well, it's not time machine ripoff, it's Win+Tab with compiz, and, also, you only use "etc..." when you have more than two arguments.
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