listen to this

The_Dark_Avenger · Post by **The_Dark_Avenger** » Thu Jun 19, 2008 9:59 pm

it's unusual... fascinating, i would say... just input this command in linux:
cat /dev/urandom >> /dev/dsp
idk, it seems to me that i hear some voices... also, i couldn't concentrate on learning programming... just started listening to this, and managed to concentrate just perfectly, remember everything i've read and so on...
now writing /dev/random to file for more randomness...

Allosentient · Post by **Allosentient** » Thu Jun 19, 2008 10:06 pm

sounds like a very basic form of what this program does. At one time I had to use things like that but eventually learned to do complicated programming even in a loud office, it can change with time

Allosentient · Post by **Allosentient** » Thu Jun 19, 2008 10:11 pm

by the way, if you could recommend one book or document for learning the real gritty technical side of linux, what would it be?

The_Dark_Avenger · Post by **The_Dark_Avenger** » Sun Jun 22, 2008 10:06 pm

Allosentient wrote:by the way, if you could recommend one book or document for learning the real gritty technical side of linux, what would it be?

try this:
http://www.mediafire.com/?mwgj3mx2y9s

therethinker · Post by **therethinker** » Sun Jun 22, 2008 10:59 pm

I think he actually wanted to buy a book ;p

But what do you mean, gritty side? Bash? The kernel?
Bash is well worth knowing, its extremely powerful. For example, pi hates nines from the challenges is doable w/ one "line" of bash (4 commands) and it gets done in seconds.

It has much more practical apps too

Allosentient · Post by **Allosentient** » Mon Jun 23, 2008 3:53 am

Bash isn't too difficult to use, but I was trying to learn about how to actually get many parts of linux to work. The structure of a linux installation is a bit of a mess in my opinion, you have thousands of programs made by thousands of different people, and getting certain things to work can be a pain. I have better things to do than chase down answers to random glitches in the various programs. However if I were to learn how to easily fix problems like these it wouldn't be that big of a deal. The kernel is one thing I wanted to know about (not for any practical reason). Thank you for the info.

therethinker · Post by **therethinker** » Mon Jun 23, 2008 3:16 pm

I'd recommend starting off with Ubuntu because its stable, up-to-date, and has excellent software repos. I use it for these reasons, and there's not any other distro that I've found that can match this. Debian gets pretty close, but there's something that I can't quite put my finger on.
The point is, I'm not recommending it because it doesn't require computer skills. Its a good, solid distro.

To explain how thousands of programs by thousands of people work:
The key, I believe, is that very few programs actually work together, rather its a one-way dependency. When these libraries change, if they add things, the older program will not be ffected. If they want to remove something, it's generally depreciated and removed a few versions down the line, allotting plenty of time for the programs depending on the specific function to change.

I'm trying to figure out what experience you've had w/ GNU/Linux, but if you haven't tried using a package manager, they make life a ton easier.

The_Dark_Avenger · Post by **The_Dark_Avenger** » Mon Jun 23, 2008 4:32 pm

therethinker wrote:I'd recommend starting off with Ubuntu because its stable, up-to-date, and has excellent software repos. I use it for these reasons, and there's not any other distro that I've found that can match this. Debian gets pretty close, but there's something that I can't quite put my finger on.
The point is, I'm not recommending it because it doesn't require computer skills. Its a good, solid distro.

Ubuntu requires computer skills??

It's a clicking distro for absolute beginners, extremely easy to use... I don't think that it's easy to learn with this stuff... You can't even compile here some basic C program as there will be no libraries...
Slackware, Arch, Gentoo... these are distros that "require computer skills".

Allosentient · Post by **Allosentient** » Mon Jun 23, 2008 5:24 pm

I've actually had an easier time using OLD versions of freebsd and smaller versions of linux, than trying to use Ubuntu. Getting ubuntu up and running in a basic form is extremely easy, but adding all of those bells and whistles like beryl (which doesn't seem to work on ATI cards?) is a pain.

And Monodevelop doesn't even have a debugger (but lets you insert debug breakpoints). No documentation either about it, but I did manage to find a website that said "Debugger currently not working".

The shell/text mode is pretty solid, but once you start getting to the big graphics and newer software, you get problems

sky · Post by **sky** » Mon Jun 23, 2008 6:11 pm

I used to run a slack, now i use ubuntu, mainly because of synaptic and the frequent (automated) updates.

The only reason i can think of for somebody to use slack, gentoo, etc. nowadays, other then looking cool of course, is to force himself to learn the mechanics behind the configuration files that let linux run... but if you actually need to use your computer for other tasks, gui configuration tools can save loads of time, and if you want you can always do it by hand (the gui conf tools are just front ends).

Lets say you want to understand how the kernel works and you dont know a heck about the internal structure of an operating system... you take up Modern Operating Systems by Tanenbaum or the dinosaur and while you are reading the book you look at the linux kernel source code to see how things are implemented in there... you can do it in ubuntu as well as you can do it in slack...

About gentoo... i would say it's like writing an "Hello World" in assembly just for the sake of it...

The_Dark_Avenger · Post by **The_Dark_Avenger** » Mon Jun 23, 2008 10:55 pm

well, i, actually, use Slackware... the main reason for that isn't because it's advanced, stable or whatever, but because it's easy to modify... it's easy to "play" with that... and it brings knowledge of a system, skills in programming (modifying a code is useful imho... it's reading code written by programmers, and then writing your own code... best way to become a programmer) and so on...
anyway, different people would prefer different distros, and holy wars, imho, might affect only newbies