How many linux users on Tek Syndicate?

I have just begun to use Linux. But, I have always been curious about it. Now I can't go with anything else, I use Mint 16 KDE

Have been using Linux on my laptop for nearly a year now. It was originally Ubuntu but then i switched over to fedora 19. I would use Linux on my desktop but for now i will have to stick with windows for gaming.

I'm running arch on my PC and on my Pi-book

LinuxMint Debian 64

I have Arch linux on an Atom netbook.

I'm running Arch on my desktop and Antergos on my laptop.

Arch linux with BSPWM

I use to dual boot windows 7 and Mint. I just recently moved completely over to Linux and I'm using Ubuntu now.

I've used linux since the mid-late nineties, I remember running 1.x kernels and getting a very welcome performance increase when 2.0 was released (or was that 2.2? can't remember). I ran a business with a bunch of friends that was linux exclusive, we had our own deployment system for remote install of windows, way before there were any such products on the market. We were terrible at actually getting any sales and getting paid though, so go figure..

Anyway, I still use windows, if not at work so much. I play games a lot, and windows is still pretty much required for that. I have been seriously thinking about only running win in VMs though. Just haven't had the energy to actually do the work. I have had a linux server at home running pretty much 24/7 since the nineties though. My main beef with linux is not really gaming. It is video content really. I have never gotten it to work properly, flash based web content is just terrible, I can get it to work, but it consumes a stupid amount of CPU. I think it is a disgrace how bad it is really. And much of that is 'cause many purists just hates Adobe and Flash. Sure, I don't like them either, but flash etc is a de facto standard. It just has to work, dammit. Sure, I use XBMC, but you know, I want to be able to just fire up a browser and not have to do a lot of work just to have it work properly. Just flash based ads can bog down any machine if you have a couple of tabs open (I have more than a couple, hundreds really). Sure there is adblock, proxies, other addons etc etc, but you know....

Sorry for the rant. I love linux. But sometimes I just wish that crap would work without hours and hours of research to make it work. Sure, it is way better today than it used to be, but you get my point I hope.

I use to run a lot of Redhats stuff, I ran Fedora when it was first released. Then used Mandrake (now Mageia) a lot, and lately I have used debian and ubuntu derivatives like Mint etc. Gentoo is something I've been wanting to get into but just haven't had the time. I'm kinda worried about Redhat, the choices they have made lately. I don't know about RHEL 7, much there that I don't really appreciate. Maybe I'm just getting old.

im using ubuntu13.10+gnome 3 and i am very happy with it but im thinking about switch to arch+gnome 3

ive been using ubuntu since 2010 when i got my first laptop(a netbook). and i asked my cousin and he installed it for me. haven't used windows since(except for in school but im going to get that changed at some point)

youtube.com/html5 can help, but if your getting flash ads its the advertisers fault for not using html5

In my experience, youtube with html5 is even a bigger pile of crap than ordinary flash. Hardware acceleration when? Never, it seem like. Probably the same problem as always, the big roadblock in form of X Windows. I remember like 10+ years ago when it was debated that X should be replaced with something better. The best the community could come up with was a fork, Xorg, and even that was a huge controversy. That says something about how big of a problem it is. Eventually the X Windows fundamentalists will grow old an die, maybe we will get something better then.

 

Arch, with Bspwm, and Wayland/Weston.

I don't want to hijack the thread, and a lot of answers to your questions have already been discussed, but maybe you can make a separate thread on productivity in linux and I'll answer there.

I think you got the flash problem backwards. It's not the purists that don't want to run flash (or the gnu alternative), it's Adobe who doesn't want linux to have proper support for flash.

Richard Stallman talks about this problem specifically in one of his videos, he says that Adobe has been doing everything they can to stop people from developing an open source flash alternative. They sometimes even completely rewrite the code from one release to the other, so users will be forced to use Adobe's version of flash, which is such a resource hog.

Well, that is if you think Richard Stallman is credible, I've noticed Linus doesn't think very highly of him. I have watched a few of his videos and he does make a lot of sense most of the time.

Gentoo Linux/Arch Linux and often Debian&Ubuntu. 

On my Laptop its Arch, for my Workstation it's Gentoo. For the normal working server it's Ubuntu. 

Nah, I just expressed myself badly. I know what kind of company Adobe is, and I have had a special place in Hell prepared for them for years. But I'm also very tired of fighting windmills, I want stuff to work. The performance difference between linux and windows is just silly. Flash beside, many default video players in various linux distros stutters in full screen. mplayer still works great, the great unclean one, don't mention it. It has been like this for like 15 years..... bah. Just forget I even mentioned it.

I like Stallman and I like Linus. They both have their pros and cons. Linus is a complete jerk half of the time, and he gets away with it because he is Linus. Any other guy would have been taken out behind the Sauna by now. Stallman have some communication problems that are borderline autistic, with all that implies. He means well, but yeah, some people skills would have helped him and FSF a lot.

I agree with some things you say, Although I have not had the stuttering issues. Adobe has pissed me off, fair enough chrome has a version of flash you can use, the fact is Linux is too modern for people like adobe, and they believe there is no money to be made here, there is easily, but they are stupid and stopping the support with Linux will come back to bite them some day.

I think Adobe is pretty much done as a company, but it may take a long time for them to die. Lots of people who have learnt their products and don't want to change.

And I want to clarify about the video issues, not so much stuttering as tearing. Vblank/Vsync seems to be a problem in linux. Some people seem to not mind tearing, playing without Vsync or trible buffering. I am not one of those people, tearing is very visible to me. On the other hand, I have a hard time to notice the difference between 60 and 120 Hz. I guess everybody's different.

I just installed flashplugin from the AUR, and I dont have any tearing or Vsync issues on chrome. And I'm running Arch on a C720 Chromebook..