[ARCHIVED THREAD] - Finally left MS Windows behind (Page 1 of 2)
Posted: 2/1/2010 2:32:38 PM EDT
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About a year ago I toyed with the idea of switching to a Linux based OS, but never followed through with the download/setup, etc.
Over this last weekend, I finally committed to the installation of Linux/Ubuntu for the switch from Windows Vista, and can't believe I didn't do this sooner. The computer is a laptop I picked up about a year ago to serve primarily as a media machine (no gaming, no heavy processing/rendering) 120G HDD 4G RAM EVERYTHING is faster. The OS loads quicker, shuts down quicker, and applications open quicker while they also seem to operate much more smoothly. For all of the horror stories about the Linux based OS - just take your time, READ, and walk through the steps of install/set up. For any software not included with the install, or not available open source I am working on setting up the Wine interface, which, again, seems to be fairly straightforward. The system is a little different than what we have become accustomed to under the various MS Windows platforms, but it really doesn't take long to learn your way around the new layout. Anyone on the fence considering the move to open source OS - go for it, it is worth the minor effort required. And lastly: Obungo is an idiot, and I wish he would stop trying to prove it. |
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I got both. Main box is Vista with dual monitors, mainly for gaming. Other box is running Slackware 12.2, and it's mainly a box for screen (BitchX, CS:S server). Thinking about swapping to Fedora. The version I chose is Karmic Koala - the latest version of Ubuntu, which works well for me. I also think it's pretty cool that you receive the updates to a new OS as they are released. |
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I had a Gateway notebook that had the shitty assed vista crap on it....
anyways I put it away for a while and was going to swap to a non SATA HD so I could put 2000 Server on it..... NAH.....I installed Ubuntu 9.10. You are correct...it runs like a Mac now 
Have you tried to play a DVD yet? You will have some tinkerin' to do there sonny. Also if you have sound issues, ditch Pulse......it caused me a few days of melon sores. OH and before I hear "update the bios for the SATA drivers to work....'.......FUCK WINBLOWS 
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No thanks.
I no longer have any flavor of 'nix in my house at all. I do still technically have a 'nix box... that which runs my SVN server, which I have always just kept at my parent's place instead of moving it around (no need, as all I have used it for for years is SVN). I prefer Windows development over 'nix development; both in terms of the target platform and the development environment. |
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Have fun with that. I'm a geek but my Win7 box I just built boots in about 8 seconds, and has never had a blue screen or any other problem. Keep on keeping on. Eventually you'll take your evangelistic side to the Apple tards, they'll lap it up. Thanks for the words of motivation - but no worries on moving to the dark side of the Apple Tards. I have seen reviews of Win 7 across the spectrum - I suppose it's working for you? How is it on resources in comparison to Vista? |
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Have fun with that. I'm a geek but my Win7 box I just built boots in about 8 seconds, and has never had a blue screen or any other problem. Keep on keeping on. Eventually you'll take your evangelistic side to the Apple tards, they'll lap it up. From power-on to login prompt in 8 seconds? I call major bullshit. |
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I have seen reviews of Win 7 across the spectrum - I suppose it's working for you? How is it on resources in comparison to Vista? Win 7 is pretty sweet on my wife's desktop. Nice eyecandy and pretty good performance. I skipped vista 
Of course, I'm typing this on Ubuntu that I installed on an 8GB flash drive. I run my work laptop with it when I get home. Try that with Windows! |
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Quoted: Quoted: Have fun with that. I'm a geek but my Win7 box I just built boots in about 8 seconds, and has never had a blue screen or any other problem. Keep on keeping on. Eventually you'll take your evangelistic side to the Apple tards, they'll lap it up. Thanks for the words of motivation - but no worries on moving to the dark side of the Apple Tards. I have seen reviews of Win 7 across the spectrum - I suppose it's working for you? How is it on resources in comparison to Vista? There was nothing wrong with Vista either, if you had hardware to support it. I did, and it ran fine for the last 3 years or so. Win7 is much quicker to boot, less of a resource hog, and just as stable as vista (it's the same core after all). Just as WinXP was a great OS compared to Win2K, Win7 is a great refinement of Vista. For the tards doubting my boot speeds, one of these days I'll take a video with my stopwatch. I have a quad core i7 processor massively overclocked, with 8GB of DDR3 RAM, and an SSD boot drive. Believe it or not, I'll post the results.  |
I've got both apple and pc running on the desk at work and they are both great. If I hit both power buttons at the same time they both hit the login screen at the same time. If it weren't for work needing Photoshop, Office and SQL server. I'd switch to Ubuntu. I started using Linux with Redhat back in '97. Liked it then, still like it. |
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http://i48.tinypic.com/73frb5.jpg I've got both apple and pc running on the desk at work and they are both great. If I hit both power buttons at the same time they both hit the login screen at the same time. If it weren't for work needing Photoshop, Office and SQL server. I'd switch to Ubuntu. I started using Linux with Redhat back in '97. Liked it then, still like it. Open Office should address most all of your Office issues (been using that for some time), and Wine should allow you to use PS under Ubuntu - I'll check on that in a while. |
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I switched both of my PC's and my Netbook over to Ubuntu 2 or 3 years ago.
Windows was a PITA especially being so crippled with having to worry about all the crap that goes along with having Microsoft products. My Server PC at home runs Ubuntu 8.04 with an old Celeron processor, 512M ram and a 60gb HD. It is many times faster than the NEWER boxes at work with 4gb ram and Duel Core super Whammodyne processors. I dont have the overhead of a virus program that cripples the operating system. Ubuntu is FREE and it works. Open Office runs just like MS Office and you can move files between the two with no problem. Open Office is FREE and it works. The operating system AND Open Office easily fit on ONE CD. You can have MS and all of its headaches. I'll take an OS that actually works |
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ya but can you play WoW on it? Yes, you can with certain programs. Linux is a great OS if all you want to do is surf the internet and general office work. I'll stick with Win7 64-bit though for games. WoW via wine sucked ass in teh past.. is it any better now? |
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Have fun with that. I'm a geek but my Win7 box I just built boots in about 8 seconds, and has never had a blue screen or any other problem. Keep on keeping on. Eventually you'll take your evangelistic side to the Apple tards, they'll lap it up. From power-on to login prompt in 8 seconds? I call major bullshit. Mine does about that, maybe 10 seconds. Solid State drives kick ass |
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Ubuntu here as well. I do have windows XP running on Virtualbox
when I need a windows app like netflix or camtasia. Last month I rebooted when I saw the uptime at 140 days. I couldnt imagine what would happen to a daily driver windows pc not rebooted for 4 months. |
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Ubuntu is ok and probably the most popular right now, but IMO the Linux Mint distro is nicer and more Windows-like. I really liked the PC Linux OS also, but the network manager it includes doesn't support mobile phone internet connectivity, which Ubuntu, Mint and some other distros do.
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I couldnt imagine what would happen to a daily driver windows pc not rebooted for 4 months. Actually my main daily use work computer is an old machine running Windows 2000 and frequently goes multiple months without rebooting. |
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Running Ubuntu on my personal laptop. Love it, but as great as openoffice is, I don't think it loads/runs/integrates as well as MS Office on the MS platform. So, I am glad I still have the WinXPPro downgrade on my work laptop... but I could survive on either.
Really, I think if you want to play games or do general office tasks without too much thought or distraction, windows still has it. In fact, if you need to do a lot of quick code development in a variety of languages, I'd still take windows. If you have basic office requirements (internet, email, occassional spreadsheet) or you develop very in-depth in a small number of environments, I think Linux is better. That may seem counter-intuitive, but whatever is written for windows tends to install so quickly and cleanly that you spend a minimum of time getting the environment up and running and a maximum of time figuring out what you need to do. Some of you may know Linux well enough that it is not an issue, but for me, the slight extra overhead in getting things working makes it a hassle that is only worth if if I have a few in-depth things to work on. The only Macs I have experience with are pretty old, so I've never personally identified a reason to use one. |
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... Open Office runs just like MS Office and you can move files between the two with no problem. ... I use a MacBook Pro as my primary, but also run Linux and Windows. I have used OpenOffice.org for years, since it was Star Office. Unfortunately, OO.o oftentimes has problems interchanging files with MS Office if there's much formatting in the docs. I wish it wasn't so but it is, in my experience. This is why I mostly use MS Office 2008 on the Mac. I've found OS X since v10.4 to be very stable. I hated Vista but like Windows 7 A LOT. I replaced XP with W7 on my MSI Wind netbook, and the little box runs W7 better. IMO it's the best OS Microsoft has put out. (My first MS OS was DOS 5.0 with Windows 3.1.) My current Linux box is a server running Debian Lenny. It's built on an Intel motherboard with a 1.6 GHz Atom CPU with 2 GB of RAM and a 320 GB hard disk. I'm using it to host my list of pro-gun attorneys, The Shooters' Bar and some other stuff. My first Linux install was Slackware 3.4 back in 1997. |
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I think of all the windows platforms, I liked 2K professional the best.
Again, my opinion, but a no frills, ready to work OS that wasn't bogged down with a lot of catch-all unproductive eye candy, easily partitioned, and secure. So far, Ubuntu seems to be what I will continue to run for the foreseeable future, and when I'm completely convinced I have everything that I need worked out, I will completely remove Vista from the partitioned drive, and turn the machine over to Ubuntu entirely. Again, my opinion for my uses - YMMV |
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Quoted: But I don't want to read!For all of the horror stories about the Linux based OS - just take your time, READ, and walk through the steps of install/set up. I'm not interested in monkey fucking with a free system. I want a pay-for turn key product that is like a tv/microwave.  |
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I'll switch the day I can run Excel 2007 on it. Today is the day! OpenOffice will not only open but save to Excel Oh Seven.....
And the functionality isn't even close, sadly. 
I need certain formulas and other functionality that Open Office can't touch. I wish it could. |
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But I don't want to read!
For all of the horror stories about the Linux based OS - just take your time, READ, and walk through the steps of install/set up. I'm not interested in monkey fucking with a free system. I want a pay-for turn key product that is like a tv/microwave.
can you do this.....? Install? Yes/No please answer. damn thats farkin' hard
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Have you tried to play a DVD yet? You will have some tinkerin' to do there sonny. I never had any trouble. Popped a DVD in and it fired right up the first time. I'm doing fine with Ubuntu 9.1 so far. I've got my ink jet hanging of the desktop and shared to the Windows machine. Also have my new network laser running fine. No major gripes. Still need to figure out my USB/serial adapter but so far so good. Even getting my old Memorex scanner working last night was a snap. Quoted:
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I'll switch the day I can run Excel 2007 on it. Today is the day! OpenOffice will not only open but save to Excel Oh Seven.....
And the functionality isn't even close, sadly.
I need certain formulas and other functionality that Open Office can't touch. I wish it could. Have you looked for plugins? Linux Journal just did a comparison between MS and OO and they came out pretty comparable. One thing it mentioned about the spreadsheet app is that some features have to be downloaded. |
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I couldnt imagine what would happen to a daily driver windows pc not rebooted for 4 months. Actually my main daily use work computer is an old machine running Windows 2000 and frequently goes multiple months without rebooting. I kinda miss my old 2k box... it would run for months on end without any need for a reboot. It wasn't until that box physically started dying (hardware failures; lost a HDD and a power supply) that I retired it, built a fresh new computer (as the 2k box was getting pretty dated), and got a copy of XP. |
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Quoted: +1 waiting on the video proofQuoted: Have fun with that. I'm a geek but my Win7 box I just built boots in about 8 seconds, and has never had a blue screen or any other problem. Keep on keeping on. Eventually you'll take your evangelistic side to the Apple tards, they'll lap it up. From power-on to login prompt in 8 seconds? I call major bullshit. |
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Installing Linux is easier than installing windows This, I'll definitely agree with. Zero phone calls made to India for customer service, actually zero calls made at all. Got it loaded, started it up, it found my wireless, and all I had to do was enter the security info for the router, and was actually online before I was even able to look over the the various system/program/peripheral accesses available from the menu(s). |
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Quoted: Quoted: +1 waiting on the video proofQuoted: Have fun with that. I'm a geek but my Win7 box I just built boots in about 8 seconds, and has never had a blue screen or any other problem. Keep on keeping on. Eventually you'll take your evangelistic side to the Apple tards, they'll lap it up. From power-on to login prompt in 8 seconds? I call major bullshit. Even if he sees a desktop in 8 seconds, Windows still loads all kinds of shit in the background making it nearly unusable until some of it loads..... If you have never noticed this you have never used the Windows OS. Linux does NOT do that, when you see your desktop, you are ready to rock and roll... Mine is about 18 seconds to desktop, and the system is freakin 6 years old... AMD Athlon 64 1GB ram blah blah blah it's old! |
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Quoted: Quoted: +1 waiting on the video proofQuoted: Have fun with that. I'm a geek but my Win7 box I just built boots in about 8 seconds, and has never had a blue screen or any other problem. Keep on keeping on. Eventually you'll take your evangelistic side to the Apple tards, they'll lap it up. From power-on to login prompt in 8 seconds? I call major bullshit. Oh it can be done with a really fast CPU and with a fast solid state drive... very very expensive. |
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Quoted: YO! HEY! Tell me about this..... can you spin and click on the appz? http://omploader.org/vM2Y3NA It's Compiz Fusion, which is technically a window manager (manages the desktop space, what you see) check out some of these videos to get an Idea what it is, and what it can do. http://video.google.com/videosearch?q=compiz%20fusion&oe=utf-8&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&hl=en&tab=wv# |
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Quoted: Quoted: Quoted: I just wish someone would package Linux with underarm deodorant.Apple fanboys have their faults but at least you can stay in the room with em. Sorry man, but you have no Idea who I am, or what I'm about...... None the less I will stay upwind.  |
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I use both. I like Mint 8 64 bit for when I'm only running the laptop monitor. Mint is fast and stable. Pretty good OS. It uses less battery power than Windows 7 so I get 15-20 minutes more battery time. I run Windows 7 64 bit when I need both monitors and a couple of streaming programs that there are no Linux equivalent. Frankly Windows 7 is just about as perfect as an OS can get. Mint is good but it still lags behind in a few areas. Having both operating systems available just makes my computer better. |
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YO! HEY! Tell me about this..... can you spin and click on the appz? http://omploader.org/vM2Y3NA It's Compiz Fusion, which is technically a window manager (manages the desktop space, what you see) check out some of these videos to get an Idea what it is, and what it can do. http://video.google.com/videosearch?q=compiz%20fusion&oe=utf-8&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&hl=en&tab=wv# Now this has my interests, though it is a bit more flashy than useful, it definitely is cool. |
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YO! HEY! Tell me about this..... can you spin and click on the appz? http://omploader.org/vM2Y3NA It's Compiz Fusion, which is technically a window manager (manages the desktop space, what you see) check out some of these videos to get an Idea what it is, and what it can do. http://video.google.com/videosearch?q=compiz%20fusion&oe=utf-8&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&hl=en&tab=wv# Now this has my interests, though it is a bit more flashy than useful, it definitely is cool. cool is an UNDERSTATEMENT.... That is the badest shit I have seen since FuseBox hit big
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