Best Linux Distro for a Laptop

[Urban Ranger]

Ubuntu is excellent - but the lack of a root account makes it a personal OS for now.

[Asher]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger
Ubuntu is excellent - but the lack of a root account makes it a personal OS for now.

I thought you knew Linux?

Of course ubuntu has root, and you can access it as well. System -> Login Screen Setup, then the security tab.

Check "Allow root to login with GDM".

Then...login as root...

Of course, "su root" also works just as well when you log in from a normal account anyway.

It took me all of a few seconds to figure this out on my own.

[Asher]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger
Ubuntu is excellent - but the lack of a root account makes it a personal OS for now.

[Asher]

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Asher
Of course ubuntu has root, and you can access it as well. System -> Login Screen Setup, then the security tab.

Check "Allow root to login with GDM".

Then...login as root...

That's amusing, because Ubuntu never creates a root account during installation.

You can create an account call "root" later I reckon. Of course that is not the same thing, because any user can sudo.

[Asher]

I sure as hell didn't create a "root" account...

You're out of your league in Linux as well, old man. Go home.

[Asher]

Why would this option exist if there is no "root" account...?

[Asher]

I got sleep and standby/suspend/hibernate working! All I had to do was uncomment one line in a config file, it even uses all of the ThinkPad shortcuts (ie, FN-F4 to sleep, FN-F12 to hibernate).

Huzzah!

This guide is perfect, Ubuntu on a ThinkPad T42: http://www.tuxme.com/node/544

I've also noticed that even the screen brightness hotkeys work (FN-HOME, FN-END).

I didn't even need to do anything.

This really is amazing, I've never seen any other distro come close to this.

[Atahualpa]

[Harovan]

Asher is happy with a Linux distribution? Quick, duck, because the sky is falling!

[Atahualpa]

Why did you use 2.6.10 instead of the actual 2.6.12?
What's the speed compared to Windows? e.g. start Firefox in Windows and in Linux and other apps, maybe openoffice

Unfortunately the biggest problem of dual boot systems is that you have to manage both. For example if you add a bookmark in Windows, you don't have it in Linux. Mailserver configuration is the same. Maybe you can avoid that by having a small FAT32 partition, where you can store the profiles. Because even when you are just using Linux for some special courses, you don't want to miss what you are used to in Windows.

Btw, someone should remove the "Always disallow TCP connection.." in the dialog. When everything else starts with "Allow", this should start with "Disallow" as well.

[aneeshm]

@ UR

Asher is right on the Ubuntu root thing ( I use Ubuntu myself ) . It does create a root account , but you have to

sudo passwd root

, and change the root password to what you want from your normal account to use it .

@ Asher

Good luck . I think you'll like Synaptic .

That's the funny thing about Free Sofware - it improves along an exponential curve . In the beginning , only the idealists/hackers adopt it . As it reaches a usability comparable to other software , there is usually a huge influx of new users and developers , so the rate of improvement increases - which brings in another wave of users . . . . . and so on . GNU/Linux today is exponentially better than it was three years ago .

[Asher]

Originally posted by Atahualpa
Why did you use 2.6.10 instead of the actual 2.6.12?

Because it's what came with ubuntu, with the next release (scheduled for October) it'll use the latest kernel available. I don't want to screw with upgrading it myself, because it all works fine for now.

What's the speed compared to Windows? e.g. start Firefox in Windows and in Linux and other apps, maybe openoffice

Haven't used openoffice, but as a whole I don't notice any speed differences.

The only complaint I have right now is the font rendering looks a bit funny in Firefox in Linux (FF 1.0.6). I don't know if this is a Firefox bug or if it's just how it is in Linux, but I was comparing it to Windows side by side (my desktop) and it looks horizontally stretched or something.

I'll take a screenshot when I get home.

[Asher]

Got the fonts fixed.

For whatever reason XWindows was using 75 dpi fonts instead of 96dpi. I also installed the MS fonts (copied them all over from my Windows partition). Looks much, much better now.

[Verto]

Originally posted by Straybow
Monday April 3 12:07 AM ET
Number of Linux Distributions Surpasses Number of Users
By Brian Briggs

Somewhere in California - At 8:30 PDT with the release of Snoopy Linux 2.1 and Goober Linux 1.0, the number of Linux distributions finally surpassed the number of actual Linux users.


(article continued at BBSpot)

It gets better

aking a bid for a piece of the emerging desktop Linux market, Mattel, Inc. announced the immediate availability of downloadable beta ISOs for BarbieOS 0.99, and said it hoped the final 1.0 retail version would be on store shelves in time for Christmas. The new OS was created by Mattel to power the upcoming revision of its popular B-Book line of laptops for girls between the ages of four and eleven. The original B-Book laptop, which ran a modified version of PalmOS, was a huge hit with consumers last holiday season, so much so that many stores had trouble keeping them in stock. This year, Mattel is upping the ante by making the B-Book into a full-fledged desktop replacement targeted specifically at toddler through preteen girls who are currently Windows users but may be seeking alternatives, possibly due to increasing licensing fees or out of a desire to break free of vendor lock-in.