Windows or Ubuntu

[smerf]

Hi,

I just removed my Win2000 TV card from my old computer system using winblows 2000, put it in my tri boot Linux, Windows XP and Vista system, Linux had it up and running in about 10 minutes, Windows XP needed to have new drivers downloaded for XP and then still took 2 hours to figure out how to get the sound up and running. Windows Vista crashed and burned, then after a week got a windows XP update. you know the 1-6 updates, don't know what they were because windows didn't tell me what they were but it was updating, Linux is nice it tells you first then lets you update. The worst part was that the updates in windows stopped my sound from working on my TV card. So I went back to Linux.

The only thing I keep windows XP for is for games, I wouldn't trust it as far as I could try to throw MS corp.

smerf

I make my living by MS, every body at work needs help at least once a week, if they used Ubuntu, I would be in the bread line.

They ought to change MicroSofts name to microsh_t but that wouldn't work because everybody knows they aren't micro they are one big Sh_t.



smerf

[amigadave]

Can anyone confirm the file size for Ubuntu 8.04 iso?

I will download again, but would like to know so I can check the next downloaded iso file.

Thanks in advance.

[smerf]

Hi,

I see 699.1 mb on my download screen in Ubuntu, just started downloading, will see if there is a mistake on it.

smerf

[amigadave]

I am downloading from a site in Germany and the file size is 697.3.  It is coming over at 344kb/sec which is much faster than the first attempt from a site in Australia.  I usually try to use a site from a country where most of the population is asleep at the time I am downloading in an attempt to get the fastest download speed.

[thanos]

@stefcep2

You may find your ATI graphics card not as easy to get working as your nvidia.

Hmmm...

Should I consider a different distro?  Will I have trouble in with an ATI card in general?

The desktop effects, though unnecessary, are very slick.

Anybody else have any suggestions, or comments?

[HopperJF]

cv643d wrote:
Im running Ubuntu on my fileserver at the moment, it was a pleasure to install. On my workstation I am going to run XP and Ubuntu, dual boot (XP for Word, Photoshop, Flash and Dreamweaver). Currently on Vista and I am not going to miss it.

Choice is good but I think it is positive to have one big mainstream Linux and not call it Linux in the name. I hate that f"n penguin  :-)

Oi, that is my new avatar you are talking about  ;-)

Yep after 2 days, I have decided Linux is for me. Unfortuately there is the odd-time I need to boot into Windows (at the moment my printer is unsupported) and for my video editing software, but for 95% of the time I am now on Ubuntu and it is a great fast operating system. :-)

The last time I booted into XP I was irritated at how slow it was after being used to the responsiveness of Ubuntu.

[DBAlex]

Funnily enough, I'm posting this from my brand new Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron install, I've got to say i'm actually pretty impressed with how the install went... (Hardy Heron was only released yesterday, and is a release that has a 5 year support scheme from Canonical)

I installed it using the new option of installing inside windows, it uses wubi(http://wubi-installer.org/) to do this, and it works pretty damn well (I set a 6GB partition, as my laptop HD is only 40gb) when I boot up now I get two options, I can boot into XP or Ubuntu, and the best thing of all is that it didn't install Grub or any bootmanager... :-) Another key feature of installing ubuntu with wubi is that you can literally un-install whenever you want... it puts an entry in Add/Remove Programs so you can remove ubuntu whenever you want - and as there is no extra bootmanager installed its all easy and works well.

Its found all my hardware (WLan needed a couple of re-boots and then propietary driver install) and i'm just pretty much liking the new release... I tried the previous 7.10 release but it caused nothing but havoc with my laptop, sound didn't work fully, wlan required voodoo to get it working, and graphics weren't that much easier... So the 8.04 release has been a breath of fresh air.

The only complaints I have atm are that there aren't many development tools installed... Python is installed but specifically Ruby isn't, but its a pretty easy install using the brilliant apt-get anyway...

Well yeah, I'm just pretty blown away by the new release... I've been trying ubuntu off and on since the 5.10 Breezy Badger release but 8.04 is just amazing  :-D ... So yeah, as you can probably tell, i'd go with Ubuntu. And if you really still need windows apps, you can allways use VirtualBox to virtualise XP/2000 on-top of Linux, or of course you could use Wine to run your Windows apps.

[Speelgoedmannetje]

stefcep2 wrote:
Over the past 12-18 months I've been playing with Linux: Ubuntu, Fedora, PCLInuxOS and PCUserOS ( A distro created by PCUser magazine based on ubuntu but using xfce).

No Linux distro I have tried has quite the ease-of-use, hardware support or reliability that my XPPro machine does (18 months and not one blue screen).

All Linux distro's I have used have exhibited some quirky behavior eg screen settings change on their own every time I boot, dial-up not working, selecting the firewall to start on boot but it never does and has to be manually started every time, install a 300 k emulator and have a non bootable system...

I appreciate that this may just be my system but go on the forums and have a look at the number and type of support questions:  many problems are serious and a novice would never fix them, some are simple but require you to jump through hoops to get right.

I thought PCLinuxOS was the best distro I tried, until I realized they use a "rolling upgrade": as soon as anything in the repos has a new version, you can install it.  Great except that that new thing may need to install several or even hundreds of megabytes of other updates to other things, some of which haven't been tested to work with each other.  You could, like I did, end up with a non-usable system because you just installed a 300k emulator, which installed 100 meg of "updates" that forgot to install a 55 k library that meant your GUI wouldn't come up. Try then finding the problem as to why your computer no longer starts..

Media center funtionality is another Linux no-go zone:  I did the mythTV thing and it took me nearly 6 weeks of searching, trial and error, reading copious documentation to set up.  In XPPro,I downloaded mediaportal,installed some add-ons, rebooted. I can schedule, watch, record HD TV, burn to DVD, playback DVD's from a great GUI, play NES, SNES, N64, PSone, Megadrive, Amiga games, launch PC games, all via HDMI on 42" plasma.  Total set-up time: under 3 hours.

Windows gets bagged for all the spyware and viruses, as if their existence is Microsoft's fault.  These things exist because 98% of computers use windows, and therefore the  writers of malware have a huge incentive to write malware for windows as opposed to Linux Or MacOS, both of which are not immune to malware either.  

Don't get me wrong:  Linux is very good for a free OS, but its not a Windows replacement for the average user, yet.

Yes, it's very crude on many accounts, but the command line linux is rock-solid. Firewalls in Linux are AFAIK IP-Tables (script) configurators, so once set-up, you won't notice it's there.
Linux, as is, (like Ubuntu) is either for noobs or for advanced users. NOT for someone in-between.
To me, it's really a productive, as well as 'sandbox' OS.

[amigadave]

@DBAlex,

I take it the sound for your laptop is now working with 8.04?

I ran it on my Dell tower from the CD last night after downloading and burning the CD, and the sound did not work.  I have 7.10 on my wife's HP laptop and she has been complaining ever since I installed it that there is no sound and the plug-ins for websites are missing.

Should I uninstall 7.10 and install 8.04, or install 8.04 over 7.10?  I am a newbie at Linux and expect it to be easy like Mac OS 10.5

[Speelgoedmannetje]

DBAlex wrote:
I've been trying ubuntu off and on since the 5.10 Breezy Badger release but 8.04 is just amazing  :-D .

I haven't encountered anything amazing as for yet. I hoped for UDF cd handling, and proper OpenGL support for my video card. I'm *QUITE* disappointed in that. :-(

[HopperJF]

Give it time, Linux has came a long long way since the first time I used SuSe 7.3 PPC in 2002.

As a noob, I take it that downloading and installing 8.04 automatically overwrites 7.10, and does NOT create another partition?

[DBAlex]

amigadave wrote:
@DBAlex,

I take it the sound for your laptop is now working with 8.04?

I ran it on my Dell tower from the CD last night after downloading and burning the CD, and the sound did not work.  I have 7.10 on my wife's HP laptop and she has been complaining ever since I installed it that there is no sound and the plug-ins for websites are missing.

Should I uninstall 7.10 and install 8.04, or install 8.04 over 7.10?  I am a newbie at Linux and expect it to be easy like Mac OS 10.5

Just do a plain install of 8.04, and when you have installed it, go to Applications -> Add/Remove... (In Ubuntu) and click Show -> All Available Applications. From their you can install all the "restricted" (non-free) packages... As in Video drivers, Flash plugins, MP3, MP4. etc etc

And yes, sound works fine here, although it did *not* on 7.10 for some reason. One thing to try though is going to Applications -> Accessories -> Terminal and when in the terminal typing alsamixer and by using the arrow keys <- and -> move along the audio inputs/outputs... and if you find one that says MM at the bottom press M on the keyboard to un-mute it and press up until the bar is at the maximum (Basically - Un-muting all alsa channels) (don't do it for any that you get audio "feedback" [As in a loud screech] on (just press M again for those)) once you have done that for all of them press Escape twice to exit and save. Now try sound again, it should hopefully work.

If it doesn't then you can allways try the Ubuntu forums (http://ubuntuforums.org/) and if they don't help then you can allways try the Ubuntu IRC channel too (http://www.ubuntu.com/support/community/chatirc) they are usually both friendly and people will you help you in either.

Hope that helps a bit... One other thing that might help you is this: http://fosswire.com/2008/04/22/ubuntu-cheat-sheet/ [I downloaded and printed myself a copy] its a cheatsheet for commands in the Terminal... It can save you a lot of hassle and GUI work.  :-)

Cheers, Alex.  :-D

[DBAlex]

Speelgoedmannetje wrote:

DBAlex wrote:
I've been trying ubuntu off and on since the 5.10 Breezy Badger release but 8.04 is just amazing  :-D .

I haven't encountered anything amazing as for yet. I hoped for UDF cd handling, and proper OpenGL support for my video card. I'm *QUITE* disappointed in that. :-(

Which video card do you have?

[adolescent]

thanos wrote:
@stefcep2

You may find your ATI graphics card not as easy to get working as your nvidia.

Hmmm...

Should I consider a different distro?  Will I have trouble in with an ATI card in general?

The desktop effects, though unnecessary, are very slick.

Anybody else have any suggestions, or comments?

No problem with my ATI Radeon Mobility HD 2600 here.  Just download the drivers from ATI and install.  They're not included with the distribution because they are closed source.

I'm using Fedora Linux 8 (Werewolf) x86_64 on a HP Compaq 8510P business laptop.  It installed okay, but still doesn't have the power management, driver support, and ease of use that Windows XP has on the same laptop.  (For instance, I still can't use DVI out (on dock) only DVI.)  I'll stick with Windows until Linux becomes less of a pain in the ass, or until Windows becomes more of one.  I will be upgrading to F9 when it comes out in a couple of days though.

[DBAlex]

Btw, Heres a quick screenshot of my setup:
Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron Screenshot

[Sorry, couldn't imbed, image was too big]

[Terse]

DBAlex wrote:

Only Amiga makes it impossible to get a computer.

Love that!


I checked out Ubutnu a while back, it was a hassle to get the pen gesture and accelerometer funcitons of my tablet to work right.  I went back to XP and am very happy.  Have not tried Vista, would have to hack it too much to get aero to work.