Is the Linux Desktop "On Par" With Mac and Windows? No Way!

Linux.com ^ | 14 August 2011 | Carla Schroder

[papasmurf]

That’s the thing about having so many distros. They can be very much alike, and yet completely unique. On my Ubuntu based Ultimate Edition you’d be root for ten minutes everywhere.
Why don’t you open a terminal and authenticate as root (su), and then try to do something else that requires root, say in a graphical window?

[kevao]

I think I’m good to go. I fired up gtkPod as su in the terminal, then tried to get into both my package and computer configuration managers. Both required my root password again.

Thanks for all your help with this. I guess we can mark this thread “SOLVED”. LOL.

What’s funny is I could have just gone down to Best Buy and picked up a newer mp3 player for under $40. But that would have been too easy.

And then I spent a few hours last night trying to get a Linux distro going on a *really* old laptop I had lying around: Dell Inspiron 3000 (from 1997!), 233 Mhz CPU, 80 MB RAM, 4 GB HD. Tried several of those minimal distros, like Pupply Linux and Damn Small Linux. The first was too much for the hardware, and the second wouldn’t recognize the wireless card. Then I installed one called VectorLinux Light. Sure enough, it worked! Pretty well, too. Would be a decent Web browse/email machine.

Of course, I don’t know how much I’ll use it; I have a couple newer, much faster laptops. So why did I even bother? As with my obsession to get my old iPod Shuffle working, I think there is just something wrong with me. :)