Question About linux in genral

[victorz]

Hey Guys,
Im a linux newbie
Ive got some questions about Linux. But first some background info on my system
2.5 Ghz quad q8300
4GB 800 Mhz Ram
ati radeon 3870
Sata 500gb WinXP/Leopard
15GB ide drive Backtrack 4 installed from Backtrack 4 pre prerelease iso. i686 using gnome instead of kde
Now on to my questions:
Why is it that linux is not as responsive as mac os x, for instance im installing updates and twice so far through out me typing this the text has frozen, another thing sometimes when im playing music in the jukebox it skips, is this because the jukebox app is written poorly or is it the system itself. I have never had a song skip on itunes in leopard, i ran cpu tests that max out 4 cores yet the system is still stable, it is defently slower but it doesn't lag out and get stuck at processes with the CPU test working apps will still run. I think its the distro im using maybe its just not the most efficient, also im using it on an old harddrive that might be a part of it. im not trying to start a flame war or anything like that i want the technical details of how come, this is happening, I always thought that linux was superior in multitasking.

Thanks guys

[purehate]

There are a few reason that are likely.

#1 You are using gnome but backtrack is designed to use KDE so you actually have twice as many programs as you need (2 complete Desktops)

#2 ATI support is extremely poor. Most likely the freeze probelms are due to the Xserver crashing.

#3 You are using a old IDE hard drive. You make a comparision to mac on sata vs. Backtrack on IDE.


Backtrack and Linux in general is very efficient . I would put my Gentoo linux box up against any Lepard OS any day ( and win)

[petabyte]

In my opinion Linux, have the right tools to explode all the performance of your pc, but you dont' know the right way to use this tools. You need to learn how to use it. It's not a technical problem. It's a skills problem.

[prowl3r]

No problem, however this is not a distribution for linux novices. It's a specialized one for infosec pros.

I always thought that linux was superior in multitasking.

It's true, if you know what you're doing. Your issues seem to be caused by PEBCAK.

[victorz]

There are a few reason that are likely.

#1 You are using gnome but backtrack is designed to use KDE so you actually have twice as many programs as you need (2 complete Desktops)

#2 ATI support is extremely poor. Most likely the freeze probelms are due to the Xserver crashing.

#3 You are using a old IDE hard drive. You make a comparision to mac on sata vs. Backtrack on IDE.


Backtrack and Linux in general is very efficient . I would put my Gentoo linux box up against any Lepard OS any day ( and win)

Well thanks for the replies your all right it is a skills problem, i did a lot of ghetto rigging to the OS so i probably broke crap anyways. (i didnt really know what i was doing but went off of instinct) but i completely broke my installation yesterday so i need to reinstall it. Anyways thanks for the responses.
What is PEBCAK anyways?
and pureh@te you sound pretty confident that linux is more stable and faster then osx maybe 1 day i will do some benchmarks for you after i reinstall it on a sata drive.
Is backtrack 4 a 64bit system and is there a good chance that there are 64bit drivers for my nic, graphics card and sound card.
If it is how do i install the 64bit version

[prowl3r]

What is PEBCAK anyways?

Problem Exists Between Chair And Keyboard.

and pureh@te you sound pretty confident that linux is more stable and faster then osx maybe 1 day i will do some benchmarks for you after i reinstall it on a sata drive.

Don't waste your time. Gentoo is source based, so it's extremely fast because it is compiled entirely from scratch. Everything is optimized for your specific HW.

[Virchanza]

Linux is superior than MSWindows and Leopard.... IF it's configured properly and you have suitable drivers for your hardware.

For instance, for an entire 2 years of using Backtrack, my DVD drive could only read data at about 4 MB per second, and my computer would freeze after half an hour of use. It turns out that the firmware for my DVD drive had bugs, and that these bugs were causing the poor read speed and the crashing. It turned out not to be Linux's fault at all. I changed the firmware and now it works fine.

Even though I'm a Linux advocate, and I use Linux as my main operating system, I'm going to concede something: On a lot of computers, MSWindows and Leopard work better than Linux because these other operating systems work better "out of the box", meaning stuff just works as soon as you turn on your computer.

Some things in Linux can be a right pain to get working... you wouldn't believe how long it took me to get Skype working in Backtrack (I finally did get it working though).

Anyway let me get to the point. If Linux is configured properly and has the right drivers, then it can play movies fine, play DVD's fine, play music fine, run a web browser fine, play flash video in web browsers fine. I think a lot of it is to do with hardware. On some machines, you can boot up a Ubuntu DVD and everything will work fine, playing videos or whatever, watch Flash video in Mozilla, it's great. On other computers though the Flash video will be slugish, the video playback will chunky or whatever, and I'm pretty sure this is to do with having unsuitable drivers.

Of course it's a pain in the ass when you can't find a solution to a problem you're having with Linux, but I'm pretty sure you'll get things how you need them eventually. It can help a lot to sign up to sites like "linuxquestions.org" so that you can ask questions, you might find that a thousand other people have had the same problem as you in the past.

Here's what I suggest: Make a finite list of all the things wrong with your Linux installation. Search for the solution to each of these problems individually on the web. For every solution you find, make a record of it in a text file so that you can do the same things again if you ever re-install Linux.

If you get all your drivers right and so forth, Linux can be perfect.

[Barry]

I still don't understand why people insist on installing OSX on a nonmac. It's not designed for that.

Backtrack and Linux in general is very efficient . I would put my Gentoo linux box up against any Lepard OS any day ( and win)

Dude, you box could run DOS and still beat most Macs....

[purehate]

dude, you box could run dos and still beat most macs....

hahahahaha