The Linux thread

I started with Debian, but failed and didn't come back to Linux for a long time. Then I played around with SuSE, but I didn't really like it. Moved on to Mandrake, had a lot of hardware trouble there. Moved to Debian again, this time successfully. After a long time with Debian I was finally fed up with the old package versions, so I experimented with gentoo.

Now I'm running gentoo / win2k on my Dell laptop (hw except WiFi works), gentoo / win2k3 on my main machine (amd64 - gentoo is a pure 64bit build) and gentoo on a small audioserver (running the music player daemon (mpd)) serving music to my soundsystem.

I only need win for gaming and PSX emulation, coz there is no good emu for linux out there.

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The problem is that ePSXe was never open-source on Linux and so there exist only prebuild binaries of the 1.6.0 and 1.5.2 (?) version (the 1.6.0 version isn't capable of emulating FF9 for example, leads to glitches and lockups). But these precompiled binaries are only 32bit and running them in the emulation layer on a 64bit architecture is more than problematic.

PCSX is too old, it works for a few games but has no recompiler and it therefore very slow. PCSX is open-source but not developed actively anymore. Same goes for ePSXe - understandable after you lost the entire sourcecode (this is not official but the only explanation).

PSX emulators with (active - more or less) development:
SSSPSX (developer is nagisa, he's currently doing some recompiler work for the PCSX2 project - I spoke to him but he currently has no plans of open-sourcing the emulator nor porting him to UNIX world)
psX - windows only without PSEmu Pro plugin system. Everything based on DirectX framework so you will have a hard time porting this to UNIX.
Xebra - also seems no to be based on PSEmu Pro plugin system.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Indeed, it has. Portage can be quite confusing at first, but it's very robust in handling and solving dependencies. It works ok for me, so to speak.

I had a lot of trouble with dependencies on my Debian system, but maybe I was too much a newb back then.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

Then you're happy with windows, what's the problem? I have the impression that people just see a linux distribution as a better windows - windows without spyware and without viruses.

That's not linux. I want linux because it's free and opensource (i'm a coding freak myself) and because it works (for me). I had so much trouble with hardware (and not even hardware) on win - devices that stopped working with no noticeable reason, etc.

That's different with linux. You (sometimes) have a hard time to setup your entire system (I laugh when I hear that the windows guys setup their system within some hours, I need at least a day of compile time and a lot more for the fine-tuning) but after that it works. If I want it really reliable then I use FreeBSD/NetBSD/BSD-style-distribution

small example:
I operate a linux router (fli4l) at my parent's home, providing access to the net for all the machines inside the house. The router is a normal personal computer, running the fli4l distri. It had an uptime of a bit about 2 years when my mother accidentaly pulled the plug. Now it should have around 1 year of uptime. That's some reliable piece of hard- and software

EDIT:
It's an P100 with 48MB of memory, and is overkill for this type of operation (you could also use it as audio playing device))

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Originally Posted by Zuare

Hello,
I have an old crappy computer (using Windows ME) that is very slow

Processor speed isn't that important, most of the time the amount of RAM is a problem. I mean you can even use a 100MHz pentium for MP3 playback (according to mpg123 even for two streams and the mixing daemon).
Amount of RAM also dictates if you can run some 'fancy' GUI, like KDE or Gnome. Personally I don't like this windows-like GUIs and use xfce and fluxbox instead.

Originally Posted by Zuare

and freezes all the time.

If the freezes are symptoms of a hardware problem then installing linux won't make the problem go away. Better do some system check before installing a new OS.

Originally Posted by Zuare

I read somewhere that Linux would work well even on an old computer like mine, but I don't really know much about Linux, and I'm hoping someone could answer some questions for me.

I'm using an 100MHz pentium for routing functionality, CPU load is somewhere below 5% - so yes, you can put old hardware to use with linux.
An underclocked (from 1400Mhz to 550MHz, I can't underclock any further) Thunderbird is used for music playback (my so called audioserver). Does include a webserver (apache), running some web-interface to control the sounddaemon; does real-time mixing of different audiostreams; PulseAudio enables me to use the sound-devices on the machines remotely (so I can playback some music on my local laptop using the sound-device on the audioserver - very cool if you don't want to use your low-quality laptops speakers at home); can even playback DVDs (if a videocard was installed); does currently bridge two networks (audioserver has two NICs installed, one connected to our 8 port GBit-switch which is full), enables us to connect another switch to the audioserver expanding the network (useful when inviting friends for some quake-gaming)
Ah yes, MP3 playback uses around 2% of the CPU. And I know, this system is way overpowered for the tasks it does.

Originally Posted by Zuare

Would using Linux instead of Windows ME make my computer more reliable and faster?

Some specs please? At least what type of CPU and how much RAM?

Originally Posted by Zuare

I connect to the internet with a wireless Netgear USB device. Would this still work with Linux?

Wireless devices are always trouble when it comes to Linux. So I would check the web first or take a look in the linux kernel. I'm currently using the windows drivers with ndiswrapper for my Broadcom wireless card, the integrated NIC is supported by kernel-drivers. Native wireless drivers for the BCM-chipset of the WiFi are developed, but are in experimental stage - resulting in very low transmission power which leads to very short ranges I can move from the access point; something the device does not work at all. With the current ndiswrapper everything works like a charm, even the VPN tunneling at the university is stable (the first ndiswrapper versions always produces timeouts after 5 minutes of connection time).
What I want to say: ndiswrapper does work (sometimes really great), but if you can get some decent kernel-drivers, then stick with them.

I was speaking idiomatically.

@WiFi device:
The kernel devs are currently doing some major hacking concerning the linux WLAN stack (finally the Devicescape stack comes into use), so you may find a kernel-driver sooner or later.

What kind of stick is this Netgear one? Exact model number would be best, and if you already have a distribution installed then you can provide us with a lsusb output.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

Originally Posted by BurningRanger

I've been dual-booting K/ubuntu and WinXP for about a year and a half now. I think I may end up giving up on Linux for a while... my computer is too slow to run Kubuntu well, and I haaaaaate Gnome.

It's a shame. I'd really like to switch all the way over to Linux, but I can't do it until I have a new computer. Oh well.

Why don't you try some other desktop environments, like xfce, blackbox, fluxbox - all of them pretty lightweight but you can always install some gnome/kde stuff.

I'm currently in love with xfce4, but still using the gnome file-roller application for archive browsing (I also use the xfce application xarchiver, which is also cool).

The only things that won't work properly (on my system):
- getting info from hardware sensors (I'd really like to know how to do this - but it doesn't seem to be an ACPI nor a SMBIOS problem)
- suspend to RAM / suspend to disk (s2r sometimes works, but often it results in a kernel panic on bootup - gonna have to debug this...)

FELIPE NO