Tips on moving to Linux?

[polyp2000]

@commodorejohn have you forgotten what happened last time you started bashing Linux in a thread like this. I think you are entitled to your own opinions but your ugly head seems to rear itself at the very mention of Linux.

Quite frankly I don't know how you managed to have such bad experiences! Your comments may have had some merit 10 years ago. We have heard them all before. Please can you try and tone it down or bite your lips?

The original post has made a decision to try a new OS and was asking for tips. Not to hear the bitter ramblings from the king of Linux hate "commodorejohn"

[polyp2000]

@commodorejohn have you forgotten what happened last time you started bashing Linux in a thread like this. I think you are entitled to your own opinions but your ugly head seems to rear itself at the very mention of Linux.

Quite frankly I don't know how you managed to have such bad experiences! Your comments may have had some merit 10 years ago. We have heard them all before. Please can you try and tone it down or bite your lips?

The original post has made a decision to try a new OS and was asking for tips. Not to hear the bitter ramblings from the king of Linux hate "commodorejohn"

[polyp2000]

Heres a few tips from me regarding Linux.

Firstly I am making the assumption that you dont have any special requirements other than general usage.

1) Web Browsing - Just like Windows and OSX you have Chrome and Firefox available. Despite the fact that these pieces of software are open source the interfaces are great and are pretty much identical on all three platforms.

2) Office Software - Open Office, and Libre Office are available and for general usage are very capable. These are also free and available on Windows an OSX. The interface is pretty much the same across all three major operating systems. If you absolutely must have MSOffice . you have 3 choices
     a) use the online version of office through the browser - your experience will be the same in any browser.

     b) use the open source Virtual Box software and use windows & office that way. Virtual Box is a really awesome piece of software!

     c) use wine - you wont be able to use the latest and greatest version of  office but older versions will work just fine. You might want to consider using codeweavers / crossover office to make installation a breeze. Although distributions such as ubuntu include wine and it is possible to double click "setup.exe" just like in Windows you will probably get a more reliable experience using a wizard (like crossover or playonlinux)

In addition to these options which may be familiar to you there is also Caligra suite - this has a really sumptiuos look and feel!

4) Music Composition - Bitwig Studio (A brand new Ableton Live killer) , Renoise (Octamed Soundstudio on steroids , and then some!) . There are a ton of other interesting music compostion packages out there too . LMMS (like fruity loops), Traktion , EnergyXT , Rosegarden the list goes on.

5) Photo Manipulation - If you want to run photoshop your options are the same as 2) above! Commercial offerings include "Aftershot Pro" , "Pixel" , VueScan. There is also the free GIMP (interface can take time to get used to - there are plenty of online tutorials and is very powerful), Krita plus the multitude of online image editors.

6) 3D modeling - Many of the industry standard 3D modelling software is also available on linux such as Maya , Autodesk , Houdini , Realsoft 3D . There is also the free Blender (previously commercial software) which again has a tricky interface but after following a few of the online tutorials and learning the hot keys you will get to grips with it.

7) Vector editing -(Previously Commercial) Xara Extreme , Inkscape , Karbon14 - there are a ton more but these are the top 3

Watching Video - VLC you are probably already using this on windows or Mac but this software can play pretty much anything you can throw at it! In fact Linux has pretty much the most comprehensive set of tools for playing media than any other platform. from XBMC to Boxee (with home theatre interfaces) .

9) Listening to Music - Again there are many music players for linux ranging from the winamp like "Audacious" , to some really great offerings such as "Banshee" and "Amarok" . There is no iTunes, but lets face it iTunes has a terrible interface and there are much better alternatives on all 3 platforms.

10) Hardware support - While you will probably have more luck installing Ubuntu on a 5 year old PC , than Windows 8 its still a good idea to check hardware compatibility with linux before you purchase a PC or new components. You cant just assume that cheap inkjet from the store will work with linux , just the same as you couldnt make that assumption for OSX or Windows. As a general rule i tend to stick with all intel chipsets as these pretty much work out of the box. If I was building a desktop PC i would almost certainly go for NVidia over AMD for the GPU, although both now provide open source drivers and should work out of the box , the NVidia proprietary drivers are tops!

11) Gaming - No doubt about it this is Linux achillies heel. Windows is still trumps as far as this is concerned. However things are changing - unless you have been hiding somewhere you might already be aware that Valve have recently brought out the Linux based SteamOS  , and vowed to port many of their games to Linux. They have really changed the playing field as a result . CryTek announced CRYENGINE is available for Linux and this looks like a trend set to continue.

12) Retro Gaming - UAE  , MAME  - most of the open source emulators you may already be using started out here so you can continue using them as you see fit!

So - its not all doom and gloom Linux has an exciting ecosystem and while its been a long time coming its gathering momentum as a commercial platform as well as a community one.

[polyp2000]

@TheMagicM,

Remember, to install Linux today you have to know how to download an ISO, burn it  to a DVD, then turn  off your  computer put the DVD in the computer, turn it on and then you have to type in your name when asked and think up a password, know  your timezone and then Linux pretty much install itself....

smerf

You dont even need to do that nowadays if you use the "Windows Installer"  ...

http://www.ubuntu.com/download/desktop/windows-installer

N...

[polyp2000]

I've not used Linux recently, but back when I did you had to relink the kernel depending on the hardware in the machine.

Thats probably a while back now and probably a throwback to the days when you might have needed to recompile a kernel or patch it to get some obscure hardware to work. Most distributions use kernel modules loaded at boot time. Im not entirely sure how the hardware detection part works. But the chances are if you swap your hard drives over two machines and the architecture isnt radically different (eg different CPU Arch) itll just load a different bunch of kernel modules.

Special cases would be using binary drivers for graphics cards - that said you would probably drop back to a framebuffer mode. And nowadays there are open source versions of the NVidia and AMD GPU's (performance not as good as the binary ones though).

The other situation that would cause this is if you were rolling your own distro ala Gentoo or Slackware and compiled your modules into the kernel binary. (Unlikely in this case!)

Sometimes i forget what a faff it used to be! Stuff just works (tm) nowadays!

Nick

[polyp2000]

Can we please get back on Topic? or just close this thread?

Once again someone starts a thread regarding Linux , @commodorejohn  predictably pipes up and the thread degenerates into a slanging match.

I am really surprised that lessons havent been learned from last time.

Nick

[polyp2000]

Number 2 is an utter falsehood.  I have several systems at home that have Windows 7 installed along side Linux.  In fact, the Toshiba laptop I'm using to post this message is triple boot.  It boots Windows 7, Ubuntu 13, and OSX 10.8.5

The easiest way to install Linux alongside Windows without all the partitioning and @ss pain of losing or accidentally formatting your non-Linux partitions is to use WUBI.  See:  http://www.ubuntu.com/download/desktop/windows-installer

Officially WUBI only supports Ubuntu 12.04 but I've used it on later versions of Linux without any issues.

WUBI leaves your Windows partition intact and put the linux filesystem into a loop-file on your NTFS drive/partition so there's no need to re-partition and risk losing your other operating systems.

I concur , I have done this several times in the past both with and without using Wubi. Usually the "alongside" windows thing just works (tm) its only if you have a multi-drive configuration that it can get a bit confusing.

2 points

1) If not using "wubi" the order is important. If you install Linux alongside windows and windows is the thing you install after Linux - it will rewrite the boot sector and you wont be able to get to your linux partition. (This can be fixed be re-installing GRUB)

2) Wubi works really well - I've read that I/O performance is degraded by doing it this way, although in practice i cant say i've noticed it!

These days i keep a windows install on a separate hardrive for the express purpose of updating TomTom every now and again. Other than that my machines are all running dedicated Ubuntu.

[polyp2000]

So what?  Barely 1% of computers *connected* to the internet run Linux.

Im not sure where you get that statistic from but market share does not a good operating system make!

Linux is a good server OS.  What does it do? Negotiate connections, allow other computers to access and facilitate the transfer of data from the servers.  

Very true thats why server market penetration for linux is high. In fact linux is not just great for servers its also great for lightweight embedded devices such as home routers, industrial equipment as well as very popular devices like the Raspberry Pi.

But the demands of a server OS are very different to those of a desktop OS.  

Thats why , just like windows there are different flavours of Linux , eg Red-Hat and Centos for the server and Ubuntu or Mint on the desktop.

As an amateur, free to acquire but not free in time OS Linux is a decent.    

Amateur is a very loaded term, it suggests that you are not aware that Linux is a multi-billion dollar industry. It suggests that its not built by paid professionals such as those employed by IBM, RedHat, Canonical and Cisco plus many others. Or perhaps Google who use the Linux kernel as the basis for its operating systems Android and their Desktop ChromeOS. Android has the lions share of the mobile operating system market , greater than iOS and others combined. Thats pretty impressive for what you describe as an "Amateur" os.

 But most users would rather just pay for a Mac or Windows PC and not waste their valuable time fartsing around in the terminal to do simple things.

Most users are not aware that they have Linux as a choice. That is because Microsoft actively penalize OEM manufacturers for offering it as an option. Finally any new version of a desktop oriented version of Linux running on supported hardware eg: Ubuntu , is every bit as capable for every day simple things* without going anywhere near a command line.

* Web browsing, email, word processing, image processing

But linux can run non-simple stuff too! Many of the industry standard 3D modelling packages run on linux such as Maya. There are also some great DAW's such as Renoise and Bitwig studio.

The ONLY thing thats really holding it back is gaming and thats taking a big turn because Valve have chosen it as the backbone for SteamOS.

There is actually one other thing thats holding it back , and thats people like you propogating the myth that people seem to think that an operating system that can do all the things above and more is no good for the desktop.

This guy has some great video's

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sYTOavWs6Aw&list=TLRaDy3dFjCDwahACdqauwexl5Rf2T5j5D

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LuTv92LOy1U&list=TLVqbQzmooAQzKMcl7rxuN3n-CtARVBCCR