Anyone here run Linux on their PC?

[Rob Valdez 79 R65]

I'm thinking about a change in my operating system.  I'm getting tired of this virus crap.

[Semper Gumby]

I thought about going to Red Hat some years ago but I fortunately I married well -- my wife was "tech support" in another life and can fix just about anything on a PC.

I'm using AVG on my PC and when its starts to slow down I have some shareware tuneup programs to help clean things up and make it run better again.

 8-)

[Justin B.]

I used to administer a couple database servers running Red Hat and the PC I am using as my CNC controller is running Ubuntu Linux...  That looks to be maybe a good version for those who are not Unix/Linux savvy...

[darrylri]

I've got a spare machine running Ubuntu server, so I can work on my websites locally.  

20 years ago I worked on Unix, and I dreaded having to relearn X server and whichever flavor of the month window manager was loaded.  I guess I should have paid more attention to things in the meanwhile, because everything has been hidden in closets and swept under the rug... installing and running it has been pretty easy.  Although nothing is *exactly* the same as Windows or Mac, it's all pretty similar.  

But remember, the world's first virus was written for Unix.  

[Rob Valdez 79 R65]

What happened was my address books in both my Hotmail and Yahoo mail accounts got hacked into.
Some of you may have received spam "from me".

So at 1am this morning I decided to reformat the hard drive.
I have XP and the two service packs reinstalled, and I bought a years worth of Norton.  I had been running the paid version of AVG for two years until it expired a few weeks ago.  Then this showed up.

I went to one of our help desk guys this afternoon at work (to find out about Linux) and he recommended giving each online application a unique and difficult password.  "Keep a book", he said.
He also recommended changing the passwords on a PC other than my own, like here at work.
So that is what I did.  Now I have a book...

And I'm not letting Firefox know my new passwords, either.

Computers might increase productivity, but being connected to the internet definitely slows it back down.

[nhmaf]

+1 on Ubuntu Linux - I haven't run Linux on a personal machine in about ~10 years, but am planning to resume so in a little while, and that is the flavor of *NIX I would choose these days - quite simple/painless without alot of rebuilding this&that required.   I'll still run a couple of M$oft Windows machines because so much software I need to use for client work only runs on Windows - or is only officially supported under Windows.

+1 on separate passwords and keeping a book.  Actually, I keep my web account/passwords in an encrypted text file on each of my PCs, and periodically, when I've updated/added/changed some of them, I print out a hardcopy to keep in a filing cabinet.   I have a couple "throwaway" passwords that I use for non critical things like saxophone  forums, etc. but any credit card, paypall, banking or other crucial accounts have unique , strong, alph-numeric passwords with mixed case, etc.

Norton 360 is a pretty good product for general PC protection.   I'd recommend Norton Ghost, or LapLink DiskImage, for doing periodic disk images onto an external hard drive every week or two, and then you could simply restore from a backup image instead of having to reformat and reinstall everything from scratch.   LapLink also has a product called PC Synch which might be of interest.

[Rob Valdez 79 R65]

I'm dumping Hotmail & Yahoo and moving to Gmail - with a long, difficult password!  

[bjamesw]

Since email is one of your primary frustrations with spam and hacking you might look into a few alternative emails for the majority of your use and save the gmail/hotmail for trusted use.  Amplimail.com is an excellent (if just a little slow) free email.   It's really easy to get an account, or half a dozen of them, and it rarely runs afoul of "you can only use legitimate email accounts" errors when using it online to access pages or sign up for forums and such.  

I'm already frustrated enough with the difficulty (non user-friendliness) in running/installing software and programs that I use.  I fear it would be worse using Linux.  I realize there are ways to run anything microsoft compatible in Linux, but ANY possiblity of further complicating things is not appealing to me.   I've never tried installing Linux, so I may be way off with this.

More importantly there's not enough motivating me to try linux yet. Viruses don't seem to be an issue.   I use a less common browser 100 percent of the time.  It's called Kmeleon.  "Gecko" based.  It's the second most common layout engine on the internet, after Trident, so there is certainly SOME motivation for malware/virus writers to exploit it, but for the moment that is FAR FAR less than is the case for Internet Explorer.    I've even gotten to the point of saving a copy on CD so that i can install it fresh when I reinstall the system.  I've actually gotten slammed with crapware in the 5 minutes it took Internet Explorer to  google and then download Kmeleon.   I wouldn't go near IE with a damn hazmat suit on anymore.  Once in Kmeleon I open the "privacy toolbar" and am able to toggle JavaScript on or off using the f7 key.  So I leave JavaScript off about 95 percent of the time I'm online.  Occasionally I'm promted to toggle it on, in order to view some flash content or youtube for instance, but otherwise it enables most pages to load MUCH faster by allowing just the essentials to load.   Uncommon brower platform plus no Java pretty much eliminates 99 percent of the malicious crap out there from getting a read on me.

This has enabled me to run pretty virus/crapware  free.   I also keep a minimum of extra stuff like MS streets/trips,   alternative programs, etc, on the computer that I use online.  This allows me to use the recovery discs for a fresh install every three months or so.  It only takes half an hour.    I've never used anti virus software.  

[plc]

Hi All,

Yes I use Ubuntu Linux on my home PC, my work PC and on my netbook. I have been playing around with Linux since 2001, and deserted Windows back but it was a hard run back then.

I have played with lots of different Linux distributions but when Ubuntu came online I jumped at it. I kept trying different versions of Ubuntu until this year I decided to go over for good, partly as my home XP installation was chugging and I refused to go over to a new version of Windows.

Ubuntu is great as it is based on the Debian distribution and hence uses the apt package system which is the best IMHO. The other thing with Linux is if you choose a  small distribution, lots of 3rd party software is not packaged for you. If you go Ubuntu life is easier as most Linux available software is packaged for Ubuntu.

Ubuntu does a Live CD install so you can test the hardware setup you have works. To state the bleeding obvious make sure you backup as it is easy to make a mistake and wipe a Windows partition.

Lastly if you share your computer with someone (such as a wife) make sure she is on-board. Mine was dragged somewhat into the Linux world. Not entirely happy but she knows I am head of IT in the house. (only dept I head  ).

Good luck, feel free to ask for help.

Paul

[Darwin_R65]

I downloaded a copy of Puppy linux. You burn it to a CD and run what they call a live CD. If you wish you can then install it on a USB stick.
I have found it excellent, you can run on any computer as long as it boots from CD/USB.
It is a way of testing linux without actually installing it onto the computer. Its a portable linux.
I use it also for fault finding other peoples computers, and for retrieving lost data from crashed hard drives. Of course this depends on why the hard drive crashed.

John

[Rob Valdez 79 R65]

Thanks John.  That sounds interesting!

[Semper Gumby]

THis last month has been really trying what with all the virus crap going around.  

I suspect the live cd version of linix will end up running my old laptop.  Gee maybe it will run faster instead of bloated software running your resources into the ground requiring you to buy a new %$#@ computer....

[John M]

I have had Ubuntu on my laptop for several years. My younger son set us up with a partitioned hard drive with both xp and ubuntu .on start up you choose which operating system you want to use. The ubuntu is fast and trouble free . I am fortunate in having an in house computer savvy son .
everything is working well .

[Barry]

Whatever you use I can recommend what nhmaf mentioned a few post back - just re-image the machine when it gets messed up.

Keep all your data on a  separate partition or better still if you have a pc rather than a laptop a separate drive. The image could be kept on the 2nd drive then you can restore it with no fuss. We do this at school for all the PC's and re-image them just to speed them up. For a home PC it's a 10 min job with the right software. We use Macrium Reflect and there is a free version which works well.  Avast is another good free antivirus.

[Rob Valdez 79 R65]

Good stuff.  I've been wanting a 2nd drive (for imaging) ever since I built mine.
If my HD crashed, I would be really depressed.  My only external drive is a mere 60GB, not nearly big enough for everything I have on the internal drive.