Best linux distro for college? - Page 3

yes you can, you just need to mount that usb drive.

for a installed bottable linux you will need the standard bootable partition and a swap partition.

If you could point out where I said that BSD was 'harder', I'd be amazed. I said no such thing - in any way shape or form.

Oh, and I can hand configure X just fine, thanks very much. Now please stop telling me what operating system I am 'allowed' to use.

Im talking about the other guy above.

And writing the drivers yourself makes BSD better for the average user going to college HOW? The EXACT same holds true for linux, its just there are many more devices availiable with drivers already written for them. So in essence you are saying BSD is better because it makes it harder on folks than it needs to be. In as far as configuring xorg by hand, many of us that give help on these boards can and do when the need arises. Myself, I do, ABF has, BT I am fairly sure has, AaronJB has already commented he has.... Also several of us do a LOT of our configuring in various files by hand. But then again just because an automated process is there doesnt mean we wont use it. And in as far as the network stack is concerned, the POSIX standard for network IPC is based off the 4.4BSD socket interface. This is easily checkable in any number of programming articles on Linux network communication including the "Advanced Programming in the UNIX Environment" book. SO please learn what you are talking about before you post, wether it be technical details of your OS or if you are going to post someone cant do something, learn wether or not they can first. Seablade

By the way you are talking different realms. BSD gets used for servers and does that very well, for standard server tasks anyways. However it is not so good at doing the variety of things that linux can do. Audio Editing/Sequencing is one example I can come up with just because that is what I do. Why? Because many programs on linux I use for this and love wont run on BSD and there is no acceptable alternative on BSD. There are other issues as well, this is just an example. BSD is good at what it is known for, servers etc. But in the desktop market it is no better than linux IMO, and generally much worse for the average user. Neither are good for the average user yet, but linux is MUCH closer than BSD. Seablade

damn i remember when i first took c++ in highschool for college credit, i was staying in japan with my folks on a military base, and my teacher was in germany on another military base, and the damn time zones and delayed responses to questions was terrible enough, and like the tutorials online were for visual, and we had borland, it was hell, i stayed up the first semester then become a teachers aide for the IT department at school, so much easier, besides now i feel it wasn't that bad a decisions as i think c++is slowly dying off, and web based languages are gonna take over, or possible ajax?

Heh you overestimate web based languages.

C/C++ is still extremely popular for anytihng that is processor instensive, this means games, multimedia editing, webserver applications(Not client side, such as Apache, MySQL, etc). These are things that due to lag over the internet you wont see a web based version of for QUITE some time.

Aside from that the Web based applications are just now in their test phase, personally I avoid them, I find doing things like Word Processing, Email, etc easier on my own computer than over the internet thus far, especially as I am not always connected to the internet since I travel a fair amount.

Seablade

There's absolutely no money in web based languages in the UK these days - and I expect the rest of the world to follow, essentially because any monkey can hack together PHP code (no offence to any fellow PHP monkeys here )

There's still money in Java, largely because it has a fair userbase, and there's still money in Perl if you can find someone using it. Both are not easy languages to master properly.

C & C++ will be around for many many years I think, and the money is in those languages - increasingly in Embedded applications, however, which is quite a narrow market sector.

The above certainly holds true in the UK - I'm led to believe there is still money in webdev in the US, however.

awk FTW, I say..

HehHeh awk...

Now THAT is something i havent touched.

Its surprising web development is dead in the UK, then again a quick search online will show you that most of the cheapest web development comes from third world countries, for good or for bad. The US still has some, and in particular larger companies tend to hire on web developers to maintain their sites. But I left that field along with all of computers some time ago so I havent kept up with it, its very possible my outside view is completely off nowadays.

Seablade

Yep - it's all pretty much outsourced over here, and they'll work for $5/hr or so, which prices locals right out of the water really..

Incidentally - when you moved away from IT, what did you move into? Just being nosy

Sound

Specificly Theater Sound Design for the most part, though I also do concert engineering and some other assorted things. Hoping to break into video games of film sometime.

Talk about a step down in pay....

Seablade

Cool - and undoubtedly more fun than IT

The pay is the one thing that keeps me in IT, unfortunately

Oh I understand completely, I am currently working at Opera at a job that is kinda a hybrid betwene IT administration and Sound for the simple reason of, it is the first job in a while I havent had to wonder where I was paying the next bill from for myself and my wife....

Seablade

Aye - sadly I don't have the luxury (so to speak!) of taking a financial hit at the moment..

My own doing, though - I spent the past couple of years (up to October last year) working for myself.. mostly wondering where the next cheque was coming from, as you say.. which wiped out my savings and left me with a nice large chunk of debt (to the tune of, oh, $50k or so).

So now I'm back as a wage slave for the forseeable, until that gets worked off - five years from January just gone, is the plan. It's a hard road with a lot of extremely tight financial planning - fortunately still with enough wiggle room in the budget for the odd treat (like the laptop!) once in a while (yearly, I suspect).

Sorry, but I have to agree with him 10+ as unix SA for most flavor, I found that Linux talked alot but still have not get their crap together. there are ton of different linux distro, everyone try to be different, in the end it still going back the same kernel base. BSD keep thing simple and work

Thank you for at least explaning your opinion on it. Then again your opinion is exactly why I find linux so strong, is its flexibility and the fact that it is easily customizeable. I can see how that is not for everyone, but in which case that is why I tend to suggest Ubuntu as a 'standard' linux distro to most people as it does keep most things simple by handling hardware installs for you most of the time, and a variety of other things. Then again I still think Mac OS X for most people is probably the better *nix based desktop for most people switching from windows as it takes keeping it simple to the extreme, and writes its installers etc specificly for certain hardware it knows it will get, resulting in a very simple but working configuration with almost no work at all. Linux I find to be at its strongest when you know what you want it to do, configure it strictly for that purpose and go with it. So for example I have my audio workstation set up on linux for this very reason, it boots ready for realtime audio work, I am soon going to have it autolaunch Ardour most likely and have Jack running in the background from startup to even further simplify this process. Means that within a minute from pressing my power button I can start recording multitrack audio with no problem, or start editing an existing session, etc. Seablade

Yea know the feeling, I actually went back to school(Which I am currently in my 5th year of at this institution) at a school that actually doesnt have an audio program, go figure But it has one of the better regarded Theatrical programs, and they highly reccomend me for audio work wherever because of my previous knowledge of engineering, so it evens out in my case, most people it probably wouldnt so much. The college and the referrals I have gotten from Faculty there are the reason I could get the job I currently have.

The other reason was my now wife going to college to teach, went to that one Kinda narrows the possibilites.

But even working as much as I do while at college, I am expecting to be in a very similar situation when I get out, unfortuantly unlike you my wife will be making the more money between the two of us, and she is planning on teaching High School, if that gives you any clue how poor I am expecting to be

Thankfully the debt will be shared for both of us, not just on my side, so that will help some, most of my income will probably be going straight to paying off college loans.

Seablade

As in the web browser?

As in the live performance situation with a little acting, a fair amount of singing, and a LOT of vibrato.

Ok so to be honest where I am working now the vibrato isnt so bad, and there are some decent actors, just some really questionable ones at the same time as well

Seablade