New at ubuntu, wanna get to know sths!!!

Wow, what a lot of questions :)

> Is it possible to use it as a live CD?

Yes.

>I mean, without having to install it?

Yes. A limited but useful set of applications are installed and run off the CD. There is a graphical installer which can be used to then install to your hard disk.

> How does it work?

Magic :)

> specifically my dial-up modem, it's a Motorolla SM56, it is famous but commonly doesn't work immediately with Linux

http://www.motorola.com/softmodem/driver.htm

> How's it with Ubuntu?

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/DialupModemHowto

Have fun!

Thank you man for the answer! Unfortunately I've got to wait 'till the CD I ordered arrives, while that I'll keep studying and trying to decide whether or not I'll install it on my PC. Actually, what makes me want to change is just the looking of the OS and the fact that it' free, I'm running after trying and disgusting Linux a legal WinXP, I won it... Appearantly, I see no more advantages... You know some good reason to live the XP and start using Ubuntu??? Tell me! Sorry for my English! Hehehe!

anyone ,what to do to order the linux system Ubuntu

https://shipit.ubuntu.com/

Try here :)

Paulo-

There are many reasons, both philosophical and technical to move from Windows XP to Linux (and specifically Ubuntu).

From a philosophical standpoint, Linux is built on open standards and the open nature of the source code assures that no one company can lock you into applications that you may not need or be able to afford. For instance, Microsoft's main hold on people is the fact that the Office document files aren't compatible with anything else. Microsoft keeps shifting the format so its customers are forced to upgrade in order to stay current with the formats whether or not there is any real technical reason to change the formats.

Technically *nix based systems are far more powerful than Windows. Consistently *nix systems have longer uptimes and due to not being susceptible to the same vulnerabilities as Windows, Linux is currently NOT susceptible to the spyware, viruses, and malware that plagues the Windows world. Once you become comfortable with the powerful command line shells available under Linux, you can do amazing things without having to move to more advanced programming languages. Just today I wrote to shell scripts that completed a task in minutes that was handed to me by my boss and was expected to take hours. While this takes time to learn and effort, it is well worth the time investment.

I recommend reading Classic Shell Programming and Wicked Cool Shell Scripts to get an idea of what can be done in the default shells in Linux. This is nearly impossible to do in Windows.

If these comments solved your problem, please consider closing this request as answered. You can find useful information on managing your support requests here: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/SupportRequests

If you are still having problems, let us know and we'll keep working on them.

Thanks-

Jim Jones

Thank you guys for dedicating time to give me the answers I needed. I'll tell you something before I close this... forum, I don't know how to say. Well, when I bought my PC, I chose a CCE (if you don't know it, CCE is a great company that used to manufacture only electronic things, like VCRs, TVs, now DVDs, etc.., recently it has begun manufacturing PCs and other I.T. components, its products seem to be very good, at least I had no problems 'till now; if you want to, take a look at "www.cceinformatica.com.br", it is in Brazilian Portuguese, but if I ain't wrong, you can choose among Spanish, Portuguese (my native language) and English). Well, once this PC is included in a... plan, program, I don't know how to say... once it is included on that, you have a good quality product by a really small price, I bought my PC for about R$ 1.199,00 (US$ 499,00). Once Windows makes the total price of the PC increase a lot, here the Home Edition costs about US$ 125,00, they install on it a Linux OS, so we pay much less or nothing for it. My PC came with Insigne GNU/Linux Einstein 4.0 (www.insignesoftware.com.br).
'Till here, it's ok. But now see: first: it didn't meet all my hardware immediately, I bought a HP PSC 1410 All-In-One, and it could only print (terribly!) - my Windows Pro SP2 recognized it as soon as I connected the USB cable - of course that for me to use it perfectly I had to install the drivers, but it was just to insert the CD that came with the HP and it was done. In Linux, I had to exaustivaly look for the driver and I had the terrifying work of typing billions of words I didn't understand to have it installed.
Then, after I had a SUPPORT from Insigne, I had my HP working, but it took about 1h to be done, while in Win it took only 15min to have it all plus many softwares for edition of photos, and many other stuff.
After that, I had to also exaustively look up in the Net for softwares that I needed, as a P2P - I like Shareaza -, MSN, codecs, wine, Play Station emulator, MP3 converter, and infinite more things. I found plurality of them, but who can tell you I managed to install it?
Hey guys! Don't you see? Linux came with my PC to be easy, EASY to be used, I don't have to spend HOURS and HOURS to learn an MS-DOS looking software! It is PRIMITIVE! Texts! They're damn! It's not only Win that uses a grafical interface to install things, every other OS - the best and main ones - do it, look at the Mac OS X! It's even easier! Text interface is only for peolpe who need to build new softwares! I think Linux lovers don't realize that at least Brazilian people badly know how to speak, and they sale PC's with such a SHIT like that! Linux is made for people who understand deeply the Information Technology, not for common people, like me, who love using a PC, who love playing games, who need a PC with personal software that meets all your necessities, and who want a PC to do their basic assigments, like school stuff. How'd I understand something like that? It's impossible! Grafical looking is much easier and gives you an incompareble pleasure on dealing with it! Why would peolpe change to something so obsolet, if they have access to such a wonderfull world?
Ok, you can't afford a genuine Win? There are many other options, if they can buy a new PC, that's just to give more US$ 80,00 and they have a simpler version of Windows! You don't like Windows? Buy a Mac, that's also wonderful and even better, although much more expansive. But Linux....? Or you become a Cientist of the I.T. by making a course like that at the University, or you suffer a lot and always depend on help of people you don't know whether you can trust or not, from even all around the world, I ain't saying I can't trust you, please, don't misuderstand me or have this comment as offensive, it's just what I concluded from the analize I made of Linux since I bought my PC at the beggining of this year 'till now. As I said, I don't know much of IT, but I ain't that ignorant, I well know Win and Mac, and that reality is: Linux is not an opensource OS, it is a OS limited to a group of almighty people, those who hate Microsoft and love the classical style of working with a PC, the text mode. I'm sorry, but that's the truth.
Anyway, thank you very much for the help, and do not misunderstand me for what I said, I still want to listen more from you! Thank you!

I read this 'thread' and your last 'post' made me reopen it, Paulo. It was a shoot on the foot, man. I've been working with Microsoft, Unix and Unix-like operating systems during the last almost fifteen years. I know these Apple Macintosh OS's very well too. The latest is an Unix-like OS. You're using the wrong OS for you. Go buy and install MS Windows XP Professional with Service Pack 2 and be happy. But, put two things in mind:
1. The only OS I know without a command line interface was the 'classic' Apple Mac OS. If the CLI is so obsolete, why MS is to launch a new, more powerful CLI for its Win Vista OS? Because the graphical user interface isn't perfect. Of course, it's user-friendly. And it helps the user to do a lot of tasks in less time due to its own nature and the nature of these tasks. Everything you can do with the CLI you can do with the GUI. But the CLI rewards the user's effort with productivity. Repetitive tasks can be done in less time using the CLI. In MS Win XP, Apple Mac OS X, Sun Solaris 10 or Canonical Ubuntu 6 GNU/Linux. The CLI asks the user to learn more and a lot of users don't want to. So, these people say the CLI is a... bad thing. I use the CLI when I need productivity in some tasks, and the GUI in the day-by-day.
2. You're clueless about Open Source.

Yes, Paulo, you can bet I read your newest post. It's good to know you changed your mind. I ranted Microsoft Windows 95 a lot until the day I started using it. Then, I saw MS Win 95 was the real base of all 32-bit MS OS's. Today I use MS Win XP Professional with Service Pack 2 in my computer. In our company, we've computers running MS Win 98 Second Edition, MS Win 2000 Professional and MS Win XP Pro SP2, and all of them do their work very well. We've two MS Win 2000 Server and two GNU/Linux servers (database and proxy/firewall). Both GNU/Linux servers run Red Hat distros. I must say it's the GNU/Linux territory, where it shines. Both servers are 24x7 stable, secure machines thanks to the OS. My backup jobs runs on shell scripts. Simple and powerful. It works like a swiss clock.
About Unix (and GNU/Linux) software size, I agree. Unix developers chose Unix software not to have shared libraries. There's no DLL hell in GNU/Linux, but each software carries its own libraries, therefore it bloats the computer faster than MS Win software. I read MS solved the DLL hell problem in its Win Vista OS storing separately the diferent versions of the same libraries. Can't wait to see it working.
Yes, common users don't use CLI. It's a pity... let CLI to us power users and network administrators.
GNU/Linux has a somewhat long path to reach MS Win and Apple Macintosh OS X GUI's.
Pleased to meet you, Paulo. I wish to have more conversation with you. We can swap a lot of information.
PS: Look for an OS called Contiki ;-)

God! I was searching the Web for things related to me and I was eventually taken to a forum (this) created by me YEARS ago! Unbelievable! I must say it is embarrassing to me to see how bad my English used to be. I can’t say it is perfectly fluent now, but I’m sure, anyway, it has been minimally improved.
I want to add a post to this thread just to make clear how much I have (again) changed my mind concerning “open” software, Windows and OS X.

First, it’s important to say I never managed to get that f***** dial-up modem working on Linux. In spite of been officially supported by Motorola on Linux platforms, SM56 definitely doesn’t work on any Unix-like operating systems, unless you have an OEM system – in that case your computer’s manufacturer would probably add out of the box support to that hardware.

I eventually had to switch to a broadband Internet connection, one thing I would never regret. After that, all Linux distributions became “usable” to me, in spite of one little thing: Integrated VGA support. P4M800 chipset (my motherboard’s one) doesn’t have Linux support, actually it does, but no driver seems to work. Few months ago, I switched to an off-board VGA, a GeForce 6200.

With a working Internet and a nice video acceleration, Linux became totally “usable” system for me.

I tried it for few months, though never abandoning Windows, until I decided not to use it as operating system on my PC anymore.

Linux lacks support for multimedia stuff, like many video decoders due to licensing issues, it lacks support for great 3D games (I know it is possible to have nice 3D stuff for Linux, but it is not of any one’s concern because of the number of people who use Linux), it lacks support for intuitive, nice looking, user-friendly applications, like Windows Media Center, Windows Media Player, Windows Live Messenger, iChat, iWork, GarageBand, iTunes, etc.. I can’t say this for sure, but all of those missing things on Linux platform have to do with the non-flexible development libraries, the inexistence of a standard framework on which Linux community would focus and improve, as well as Apple improves Cocoa, Carbon, OpenGL and its customizations for OS X, as well as Microsoft improves .NET Framework, DirectX, etc.

Now I understand the importance of CLI, but still think it shouldn’t be the only way that one would have to deal, to interact with their operating system’s environment. I have seen Linux getting better day after day in what concerns new software installation and library dependencies, but it would still miss that special taste that you have when using Apple’s system or Microsoft’s system. The difference, in my opinion, is all about the GUI to be a part of system’s core. Aqua, standard Windows Shell and Aero, are highly optimized GUI’s, completely integrated to their OS’s. It makes it much easier for developers to design their applications, which benefits both developers themselves and users at the same time!

Now, with Vista, we have one more alternative – a wonderful operating system, more secure, stable, and flexible in what concerns programming frameworks. With the right hardware support, Vista becomes an advance on the operating systems shield, as well as Apple’s Mac OS X Leopard. The most Linux has done is KDE 4 / GNOME 2 with Compiz and Beryl... a try to compete with Aqua / CoreGraphics and Aero / Windows Display Driver Model (WDDM).
Don’t think I’m saying Linux is not good; it will assist you if what you require from your computer is nothing more than office applications, web surfing and “open media” stuff.

Thanks for reading, see you around!

Paulo Henrique de Medeiros

Paulo, MacOS X has the GUI every Unix-based OS should have. Apple developers did an awesome work. But you cannot write its GUI is integrated in its kernel. MacOS X is BSD Unix-based, therefore a modular OS: it has the kernel and everything else OS-related are modules. Like Ubuntu Linux. So, why MacOS X has the best Unix-based OS GUI? Because Apple developed a top-quality GUI for its BSD Unix-based kernel. Ubuntu Linux already has this quality standard to reach and I believe they can make it with hard work. There are many GUI-related patents -- some Apple property -- that must be dealt with new GNU licensed technology. Then Ubuntu Linux brings software developers attention and software. Ubuntu Linux is in this way. I hope to see it as one of the real desktop OS choices.
GNU/Linux is an almost entirely work OS today and it's where it shines.
KDE and GNOME can't stand a competition against Mac OS X still.

Ok, Leonardo, thank you for your reply to my post.
It is important to understand one thing: Unix (and all of Unix-based OS’s) is not necessarily a CLI operating system. Unix is a software and, as a software, you cannot see it, you cannot interact with it as it is. A CLI is added to that software so that a human may deal with it, CLI is called a SHELL. If, in spite of using a CLI you want to natively use a GUI, that would not be a problem, although in reality nobody has ever done that (I think). Your system will not have to firstly run a CLI so that it runs a GUI then.
In case of Mac OS X, Darwin is its core, and Darwin is a CLI based system, thus, you have a CLI running before Aqua is loaded (I do not know which graphics server Darwin uses as default). Aqua is, indeed, a module, added to the system’s kernel, but it is even more: it is an OS X graphics server! After loaded, Aqua becomes system’s main UI and CLI (Terminal) becomes just an alternative to Aqua. You can also have another graphics server running on OS X, like X11.
On Linux, at boot time, you have a graphics server firstly loaded (like X11, X.Org…), a plain text UI (like BASH, for example) and, then, you have a graphical interface loaded (like KDE, Gnome, XFace…). Any time you want, you may quit GUI and switch to CLI, for it keeps running on the background anyway. In that case, CLI is Linux main user interface and GUI is just an alternative.
Windows is also just a software, you cannot see it, you cannot interact with it as it is, but you have a GUI loaded right at boot-time (except 9x series) with which you are going to deal further on. If you need to interact with Windows operating system through a command line, you may use Command Prompt, just as an alternative, but Windows GUI, a.k.a. Windows Shell, will keep running on background anyway.
You probably know all of that, but other people who occasionally get to this thread could be in doubt, that is why I added this comment. If you see there is something in lack here it is probably because of the difficulty that I find on writing in English rather than in Brazilian Portuguese, sorry for that.

Carefully,

Paulo Henrique de Medeiros.