HFX Forum

Operating Systems => Linux => Topic started by: Zerored on February 22, 2002, 05:17:29 PM

Title: Linux in the office..
Post by: Zerored on February 22, 2002, 05:17:29 PM
Question. What is the most widely used linux flav used in most businesses and offices (excluding the BSDz)?
Title: Re:Linux in the office..
Post by: Metgod on February 22, 2002, 05:43:07 PM
I don't know but you *must* remember that Linux is *NOT* UNIX.
BSD (BSDi, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD) are UNIX; NOT LINUX !!!
Unix is more developed because it's been around longer. I'd also say that *BSD
is more secure and powerful than Linux. I'm sure Uneek and madwill would agree.
:)

Anyways, enough preaching......

- Metty
Title: Re:Linux in the office..
Post by: Cobra on February 22, 2002, 06:02:03 PM
Here in Ireland, for client systems Mandrake is the most widely used. Just as it is so user friendly. And I have to admitt it is a good choice for any company to do that. For the arse end of the network I have also seen Mandrake used, also SuSe. Mail, WWW etc. tend to lean more towards BSD.

Now that is going on the work my company has done. Now the largest contract we have done is a 2,000 unit office block with close to 1,000 systems. Large companys you will find go more up market with there selections.
Title: Re:Linux in the office..
Post by: Uneek on February 25, 2002, 01:52:18 PM
Around here you'll find a TON of people use RedHat in an office environment, mostly for servers though. People are still pretty much Win-bound on the desktops. Most of the time though, if I'm going to use Linux I'll go with SuSE. I have a few SuSE boxes here at work and a dual boot workstation at home with SuSE on it. As Metty stated though, I do prefer BSD. Can't beat it for stability, other than VMS... hehe.

What I want to get my hands on though is a G4 lappy running OSX.  ;D
Title: Re:Linux in the office..
Post by: Cobra on February 25, 2002, 09:33:25 PM
*farts on both Uneeks laptop and also at RedHat*
I have used every release of Redhat known to man, and i still HATE it. Never liked it, never will like it. REDHAT Certification??? REDHAT CERTIFA- Feckin - CATION!!??..
HAHAHA.. err.. HAHAH.. ermm.. AHAHA.. err.. <silent> I dont think so </silent>

As far as your laptop goes uneek.. *shudder* Thats all i got to say about that.

But.. On the plus side, Uneek does have alot still going for him, and thats his keen interest in BSD.

Title: Re:Linux in the office..
Post by: CBK on February 26, 2002, 03:23:48 AM
Any kind of Linux will be great!!!!!  I have to put up with the CRAP at work every day!  Today, I couldn't print, check my email, or make a back up of my StaffNCO's data cuz network problems, and miss configs.  It's like this every other day. one or more servers down.  I have bash scripts that ping exhange servers (3 of them) login servers and DNS?WINS Servers cuz fellow workers are always asking me whats going on with the network!! The ISC's (I'll be one for my shop here pertty soon) have been installing software upgrades and SP's on all of the Win NT/2000 systems the last few days every time they do this something gets @%cked up!  This afternoon the admin uninstalled office 2k just so they can apply the SP2 in order or some shit like that. NOW it's going down to the shop for a full install cuz' it SegFaulted and didn't come back on after reboot.  we tryed everything but a full install.  I wrote down the file I think is causing the problem but I can't find it now, maybe I'll post it tomarrow and someone can sherch for it and give me some kind of clue as to what it is.  (I think it is to be found in the Office2k dir)  So i'll be doing my work here at home on MY SYSTEM.  I could use *INUX on my desktop at work!!!!!!!!

Sorry I have to go back to work now....
Title: Re:Linux in the office..
Post by: Metgod on February 26, 2002, 06:38:38 PM
Okay CBK,

did you miss the point too ?
UNIX != Linux
I repeat UNIX is ***NOT*** Linux .... UNIX ***IS*** UNIX and Linux ***IS* Linux.
EOF


Why must people jump to Linux (bandwagon) ? ughh... Thankfully most the staff
here (myself included) prefer UNIX
*phew*

*begins chanting... UNIX UNIX UNIX UNIX UNIX !!!!@#$#^(%^%_(#... mwuahahah
we will unite and take over the world.... !!!!*

heheheh
Title: Re:Linux in the office..
Post by: CBK on February 26, 2002, 06:51:55 PM
Ok, but as i understand it, and untill i get my hands on a copy of BSD or something Linus made a open sorce ver. of UNIX.  I'm thinking now, if you mirror your open source OS after something it should be called by the same name.  Just different title?  I can't say that i have seen any differences cuz' I havent' used any "Unix" Please help and explain  ::)
Title: Re:Linux in the office..
Post by: Metgod on February 26, 2002, 09:30:14 PM
Alright, I'll do my best to explain...

Back in 1969 is when the ArpaNET started. At this point everything (this is all
from memory and I will provide a link to an article I did at the end...) was
done in Asm. So UNIX was written in asm. So Richard Kerninghan (sp....)
and another guy whom I can't think of wrote C, and then rewrote UNIX in C.
So here we had this awesome OS and it lasts for many years and the Internet
gradually grew. But then comes Linus Torvalds in 1991 who wrote Linux.

Linux is not the same as UNIX, never has been and never will be.
Linux has a COMPLTELY DIFFERENT KERNEL, FEEL, LOOK, FILES, and to some degree --
SOME COMMANDS (i.e., snoop becomes tcpdump and different output) and
DIFFERENT OPTIONS. Sure, SunOS/Solaris does this with FreeBSD but it's not the
same...

Does that explain it ?
If not, tell me via the board and I'll try again...
Title: Re:Linux in the office..
Post by: CBK on February 27, 2002, 08:26:11 AM
Oh by the way that file that I think is causing my computer at work to lock up at boot is el90xnd4.sys  Any ideas??
Title: Re:Linux in the office..
Post by: Uneek on March 01, 2002, 01:04:50 PM
As far as why I want the G4 lappy is simply for OSX. Very fast, powerful, and quite nice! I wouldn't be caught dead on a regular Macintrash, but if it's running OSX... well, that's a different story... BSD Kernel baybeeee!!!

On the Linux thing... all I can say is that at least it isn't Windows. And actually I don't really mind it too much. Sure it's not BSD, but it's much more stable and powerful than Windows. I agree about RedHat. I don't really like that distro much. Although Mandrake itself is pretty much RedHat revamped with KDE...
Title: Re:Linux in the office..
Post by: godaigo on March 04, 2002, 01:47:53 AM
Please correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't Linux enough like BSD and Unix that if you're familiar with one of
them, the learning curve is significantly cut when jumping to the others? And I agree, at least it isn't Winblows!
Title: Re:Linux in the office..
Post by: wilnix on March 04, 2002, 05:21:17 PM
No way in hell you going to convince me or anyone else that any linux kernel even comes close to *BSD. FreeBSD, OpenBSD, BSDi, and NetBSD all are alike in certain ways. Red Hat, Mandrake, SuSE, and anything with that kernel get no respect from me. And anything using LILO gets thrown in the trash. The only similarity between the two is the mount point. They dont use the same kernel, they dont have the same proggies for administration, and Linux will never be as stable as BSD. Many people will tell you the Mandrake "out-of-box" is very secure....Compared to what? Windows? Red Hat? Whatever.

You get the freebsd iso for 4.5 and install it. Then come back and tell me what YOU think...

Wilnix
Title: Re:Linux in the office..
Post by: Uneek on March 05, 2002, 03:31:39 AM
Actually, even the mount points aren't the same. With new versions of SuSE, all you really need is one mount point! That being /

I will however play devils advocate however and say that I bet I can make a SuSE box about as secure as a BSD box. It all comes down to administration in my opinion! And I'm not going to get into yet another "My OS is better than your OS!" arguements. (Especially since I myself believe BSD to be superior! hehe) But I've always said... use the tools that's going to get the job done! (Even if that tool is Windows!) I'm willing to bet that there isn't a single person on this board that doesn't use Windows, whether it's because they have to or need to... it's the same difference in my opinion...

Anyhoo, enough of my rant... My $0.025...
Title: Re:Linux in the office..
Post by: wilnix on March 05, 2002, 12:38:46 PM
I can agree to that. I myself would take a well bastanized windows box over an out-the-box *nix install. And I would also say that the security (no matter what os) comes down to the administrator. SImple rule: If you're not using it, shut it off.

How hard is that? Crazy, but that will fix most of the troubles most admins face these days with security...

Wilnix
Title: Re:Linux in the office..
Post by: Metgod on March 05, 2002, 04:22:04 PM
Oh how true that is !!!
BSD is far more stable and secure than Linux.
Hehe.

Linux kernel is no where near to BSD kernel, and everything that's been said
by Will and Neek are true:

BSD is more stable/secure
It's the admin's responsibility
etc.

blah blah... too tired to worry about this.. truth is, BSD is better than linux for being more
developed, secure, and stable....
This is a good argument to play with people on IRC who think Linux is everything... haha
EOD for now...


Title: Re:Linux in the office..
Post by: wilnix on March 05, 2002, 05:24:45 PM
And then there's system390, os/400, OpenVMS...etc...
Title: Re:Linux in the office..
Post by: ^Sol on March 12, 2002, 02:28:45 AM
Where I work we have a Redhat box on each desk mostly acting as Xwin clients for our Network Monitoring Systems.

Must say the one thing I do like about Linuxes is the nice WMs. CDE is a bit poo.
Title: Re:Linux in the office..
Post by: wilnix on March 12, 2002, 10:02:25 PM
Yeah, I just got a Sun Blade 100 w/ PCi card (Win2k installed) and although it sounds REALLY great, I still prefer a FreeBSD / KDE2 desktop sitting around for all the cool stuff  ;)

Wilnix
Title: Re:Linux in the office..
Post by: Trusz on March 14, 2002, 06:07:43 PM
woha, phjear the BSD pimpin' on this thread ;D

Metgod: Linux is everthing!@#!$! (j/k) but that argument we had on irc a few weeks ago was so funny  :P

All I've used is windies and linux up until now, oh and an old version of SCO Open server in collage that i'm learning c++ on in computing class. Shame its only dumb character terminals running off a 5 year old p150 compaq server  :'(

My computing teacher has been trying to convince the head peoples to allow him to teach some kids to use linux on a few of the computers around the collage but they wont let him. They nearly threw his holy compaq server in the trash but he went mad so they let him keep it, haha.

Been running slackware for about 6 months now and its one of the best linux distros i've used and learnt the most from. (I still don't know fook all though...yet). I'm learning slowly and its fun. I did "install" fBSD 4.5 on the server about 3 weeks ago but i fucked up the package installations so there's only about half of what i needed on there at the moment so i've had slackware back up for 39 days now. When i get some time i'll give it another try, this time on the workstation and see how i like it compared to slackware.
Title: Re:Linux in the office..
Post by: wilnix on March 15, 2002, 12:51:28 AM
OR you could do one of two things:

1) Goto /usr/ports/somedir/portdir and type make && make install
OR if you need a lot of them installed
2) login as root or su to root then type /stand/sysinstall, goto configure, goto packages and pick them all out from there.

#1 will look for the pkg locally and if it isn't there, it will go fetch it for you AND install all pkgs required to run the proggy.
#2 will also let you chose FTP as a media type...

Good luck,

Wilnix
Title: Re:Linux in the office..
Post by: Trusz on March 15, 2002, 10:47:39 AM
thanks wilnix i'll give that a try soon enough. I sooooo need another hard drive for this workstation! MP3s, movies and ISOs soon fill it all up and i want to keep my slackware install as its running smooth as a baby's rear  ;) Maybe when i get off my lazy ass and get a job i'll by another hdd, this time a BIG one like 100GB+
Title: Re:Linux in the office..
Post by: wilnix on March 15, 2002, 12:02:16 PM
Have fun with that.

Wilnix
Title: Re:Linux in the office..
Post by: Uneek on March 15, 2002, 05:41:05 PM
Yah... Wil's #1 option is nice. I always make sure to install the ports directory when I setup a BSD box.
Title: Re:Linux in the office..
Post by: wilnix on March 15, 2002, 07:51:33 PM
That shoulds take care of that slackerware stuff...


;) Wilnix
Title: Re:Linux in the office..
Post by: godaigo on March 18, 2002, 11:26:02 PM
Well, I'm taking the big plunge and getting FreeBSD. I've been running Mandrake, but after all the plugging for BSD I figure I've got to see what this is all about. Any succinct on-line beginners guides? I should look BEFORE I ask that, but shit I'm at work and I'm out of coffee money. It's a cruel, cruel world!
Title: Re:Linux in the office..
Post by: godaigo on March 19, 2002, 12:15:00 AM
Never mind, I found about a bizillion sources on BSD. All it took was going to FreeBSD.net, Hey! I said I didn't have money for coffee :'( !   ;D
Title: Re:Linux in the office..
Post by: wilnix on March 19, 2002, 01:40:43 AM
or freebsd.org...
Title: Re:Linux in the office..
Post by: Uneek on March 19, 2002, 01:53:25 PM
Well... this being the linux board... and me stating that I don't really mind SuSE... and since Godiago is already using Mandrake, I figured this link might be of interest to some people... I plan on buying SuSE 8 when it comes out to check it out...  :P

http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104-862168.html (http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104-862168.html)
Title: Re:Linux in the office..
Post by: godaigo on March 20, 2002, 01:40:08 AM
That looks pretty interesting. I was suprised that the latest X-server release (at least in Mandrake) didn't really support 3D graphics, I think OpenGL, but I'm not sure. It was quite a surprise when I had to use an earlier version to get alot my games to work, or at least run faster than a drunk snail. Should be interesting to see how far the ease of use progresses. Has anyone taken a look at the National Security Agency's Linux distro???
Title: Re:Linux in the office..
Post by: wilnix on March 20, 2002, 10:10:08 AM
I'm putting KDE on Solaris... ;D Some people say it's a waste, others say it's the best. I don't care what any of them think.

I like it better then CDE. So FSCK THEM.

::) Wilnix
Title: Re:Linux in the office..
Post by: Metgod on March 31, 2002, 12:51:35 AM
yes, KDE 0wns !
and uh.. truszy.. I thought I told you about /stand/sysinstall ?
heh, oh well.. guess not...
but Will helped out so no worries..
Title: Re:Linux in the office..
Post by: Zerored on March 31, 2002, 11:41:26 PM
yeah, all the good hype on bsd, ive been thinking of checking it out myself. bye the way, ive been playing with redhat, its a requirement to graduate from lil itt, good, maybe. but hows mandrake. Ive heard good stuff. Seen some sween wmz.
Title: Re:Linux in the office..
Post by: Metgod on April 02, 2002, 09:20:04 PM
*yuck*....
why must everyone jump on the bandwagon (*cough*Linux-bullshit*cough*cough*) ?
RH blows goats, always has, always will. It's a req. ? damn....
Title: Re:Linux in the office..
Post by: wilnix on April 03, 2002, 05:09:01 PM
Zero,

Uneek uses SuSe Linux and likes it. I've used Mandrake's Firewall edition amongst other things. I am very *BSD biased and probably always be, but if you insist on using Linux there are many flavors out there. To check all of them out, goto:

www.fuckmicrosoft.com

You'll find everything you need there.

Wilnix
Title: Re:Linux in the office..
Post by: Zerored on May 27, 2002, 05:14:56 PM
Okay. KDE iz cool. I like it much better that gnome don-cha-know...but who the hell carez? Heh. Well, to mettys dismay, i have a nother RedHat question. How do you get the sound on red hat working. Im annoyed at this point. I gotz a dual boot 98/RH 7.1 on one box and cant seem to configure my sound card. Now, the sound works fine in windows, but not in linux. the cd is read and runs but ive got no sound. All connections are fine. But, when i type in sndconfig, i get a blue screen that says "segmentation fault" (core dumped). And it doesnt run at all. So, its very irritating. Any ideas OTHER than dump redhat...like i said, its for mi escuela.
Title: Re:Linux in the office..
Post by: Uneek on May 28, 2002, 02:01:18 AM
Well, if it's SegFaulting, it can be a number of things... but the first thing you SHOULD have checked off the bat is if your sound card is compatible in linux. Many aren't. What are your hardware specs like?
Title: Re:Linux in the office..
Post by: Zerored on May 30, 2002, 05:39:51 PM
A standard sound blaster live w/ digital audio. the linux ver is RedHat 7.1. I ran sound config on my removeable hdd and it ran fine. I may have to reinstall(which i dont want to do). Or, i can trouble shoot this one. Strange, i also have to install linuxconf...cause it wasnt installed either. Lastly, how do you get rid of linux on a dual boot sys? -i know how to get rid of the boot menu, but the individual linux partitions is my questions. I tried using the "linux expert" and boot: aka "boot: linux expert" and it didnt work. So, any other suggestions?
Title: Re:Linux in the office..
Post by: wilnix on May 31, 2002, 07:20:31 PM
I don't know which question to answer first. You need to check out Red Hat's website for compatility issues. Then if it is compatible (which I think it is), then you need to make sure that the hardware is working correctly and that it is in the slot okay. If that isnt it, then you probably need to start searching through google to find out if anyone else has had the same issues.
As far as linuxconf...well, sounds like you may have had issues with the prior installation.
And lastly, if you want to drop the rh partitions, you should (first) know what you are going to do with them. IF you are installing another *nix OS into it, then just use whatever tool the install will have for you when you go to install it. FreeBSD will let you keep the win partition safe, delete the rh stuff, and install fbsd on the newly formatted partition right off the install. If you aren't, then get something like partition magic to handle them mess and reorganize your data.


Wilnix
Title: Re:Linux in the office..
Post by: Metgod on May 31, 2002, 11:13:28 PM
Believe it or not I once had a Linux partition long ago (though not for very long)..
i removed it with no prob... I forget exactly what I did but I do know that to recreate
the bootloader I just used fdisk (using the /mbr switch).. -- which will get rid of the menu ...
possibly remove your partition and re-write the bootloader by what I said... However,
I seriously advise you to look it up as it was ages ago... and I don't want you to lose
data, I just can say it is EASILY done :)

There are actually FAQs on it if I'm not mistaken..

Title: Re:Linux in the office..
Post by: Uneek on June 02, 2002, 03:55:27 PM
you should be able to just use fdisk with the /mbr switch as metty pointed out to recreate the master boot record and get rid of the menu. from there you should also be able to use fdisk to delete the non DOS partition and recreate it as a FAT partition, reformat that partition, and viola!
Title: Re:Linux in the office..
Post by: Metgod on June 03, 2002, 04:17:46 PM
Yep, like Neek said, just delete the partition, and fdisk /mbr

Simple as that..

Last year and before that I could have explained it a lot more in detail because
I had experience in coding boot sectors (*evil grin*) ... It was a learning experience
and I learned a lot.. how it all works, how the boot sector and mbr are related, etc..
makes me almost want to relearn it heh.. and ASM too.. cause last time I was coding in
asm I came up with a lot of different techniques to do the same task, and they were unique..
and I knew a damn lot.. it's sad though cause I lost some good code before.. some from
just not writing down the what hte most updated file is.. actually I did end up destroying my disk
once HEH.. but that was long ago... I could find some of my demos I wrote that I destroyed
on floppy but I'm not about to do that I think.. I suggest if you are interested it do it on a 486
running DOS..  

Title: Re:Linux in the office..
Post by: wilnix on June 08, 2002, 04:51:27 PM
Just throw the disk out and get a new one  ;)

Wilnix
Title: Re:Linux in the office..
Post by: Zerored on June 10, 2002, 08:36:31 PM
Nother question. In many job ads, there are requirements for UNIX experience. Do they mean BSD/free/open. If one wanted experience in these areas, how would you get your hands on the software?
Title: Re:Linux in the office..
Post by: wilnix on June 11, 2002, 01:12:32 AM
Most companies who ask for unix experience speak of Sun Solaris or Red Hat Linux (they don't know better). Unix experience (generally speaking) can be obtained by downloading any number of free (open source) software off your choice of websites.
Some of my favorites are *BSD:
www.freebsd.org
www.openbsd.org
www.netbsd.org
For a complete list of ALL that is out there, try the best unix website ever:
www.fuckmicrosoft.com
They have them all, or close enough.
Some site offer ISOs to burn straight to a CDROMs, other just offer ftp|cvs|etc...
Check them out, try them, learn them...

Wilnix
Title: Re:Linux in the office..
Post by: Zerored on March 01, 2003, 11:40:30 PM
haz anybody ever had to unzip a file with the extention of .sh? its a game ive got for mandrake, but the extention different, therefore, i cant intstall my package.
Title: Re:Linux in the office..
Post by: Metgod on March 02, 2003, 12:36:31 PM
only .sh extension I know of is a shell script that would run in the bourne shell (sh).

Never heard of a compression format with that name. Care to tell more, and explain what you've tried ?

BTW: try cat <file> and what does it show ? if it is all just text it is just a script, else it is something else. If it is a script, a simple execution of the script will work wonders.

Let me know and maybe I can help.. because I have no clue atm..

Met
Title: Re:Linux in the office..
Post by: Cobra on March 02, 2003, 01:45:05 PM
Never heard of a compression extension of .sh either.
Title: Re:Linux in the office..
Post by: wilnix on March 03, 2003, 02:23:05 PM
Compressed files don't end in .sh...

Something like .Z .gz .tar .zip etc...those are compressed. Metgod gave you the right idea, but before you ./ it or sh it make damn sure you know what you are running. In essence, read through the script first.

Good Luck

Wilnix