Off topic but, any Linux users out there? Just curious

[burmjohn]

Off topic but, any Linux users out there? Just curious...

[ELMER J. FUDD]

Tell me more about this...Linux.

[mbucks27]

Ive played around with it a bit in a virtual machine but not enough to really know what im doing lol.

John

[burmjohn]

I love it.. Use it mainly for servers but the Linux desktop experience has really improved over the last few years. If you have an old crap desktop or laptop its grat to toss Linux on there. I have an old laptop, I tossed "Mint Linux" on there, and use it in the garage for looking up crap when I'm working on garage projects.

Whats nice its like Mac OSX - really no viruses and all that other crap that comes with a windows machine. And its inherently more secure from the ground up.

[JJBat150]

Funny you mentioned Linux.. I'm currently in Arlington TX attending a week long intro class for work.

More of a Microsoft guy, with limited Linux experience in the enterprise world. I've run a few favors of desktop Linux over the years on test boxes. This Christmas I got a new laptop and set up dual boot with Ubuntu, but now after a few days of class thinking about reloading with Fedora.

[burmjohn]

I'm not a fan of Fedora, but a lot of people love it. Ubuntu is nice, debian based (my fav!), but not a fan of "Unity". You should try Mint Linux, its debian based as well, and its really polished. You have all the benefits of the large repository of debian. You could also go straight to debian as well, which is what I run on all of my servers.

[burmjohn]

BTW if you want to learn server based admin, I suggest a VM with debian and CentOS to get started (No GUI).

And if your interested, this site is running Debian (apache, mysql, php)

[JJBat150]

Debian is what I cut my teeth on... a co-worker had a hosting business that was running a couple of debian servers in a lights out datacenter somewhere near Rochester. I was intrested in purchasing the business, so loaded up a VM and starting teaching myself... as fate would have it, I didn't purchase the business, but I did keep playing with the server I created.

We got a few systems at work that I manage, but it's a cookbook installation, and a custom webmin interface. We're migrating these systems away from the local sites and to a remote data center where another team manages them, so I've lost touch with the production systems; the one at my site is there just in case any legacy clients try to connect.

Unity.. I'm still on the fence with it. I've been a windows guy since "Windows for workgroups 3.11"... I've figured out the new Windows 7 interface, so Unity wasn't that bad.

[bubba]

I have not used linux since the days of red hat. I messed with that a lot

[burmjohn]

Red hat is solid, there are a bunch of variations of red had now too since they went more commercial... There is Fedora and CentOS both based off Red hat...

[bubba]

I will have to get a copy of one and give it a whirl. I love the no viruses and so much quicker than microsoft of much less resources