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Linux Switching Status - keep me posted | 355 comments | Create New Account
Comments belong to whoever posts them. Please notify us of inappropriate comments.
Linux Switching Status
Authored by: Wol on Wednesday, April 03 2013 @ 06:15 PM EDT
And if you've got an older system to play with (or a spare disk, or something)
and want to learn a lot more about the bowels of a system, try installing
gentoo.

You have to do a lot more setting up and administration and digging into config
files, but equally, you learn a lot more.

And "emerge" is actually very simple to use :-)

Cheers,
Wol

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

Linux Switching Status
Authored by: BJ on Wednesday, April 03 2013 @ 07:51 PM EDT
Congratulations.

If you make a webpage out of it, I might
shove that under my brother-in-law's nose.


bjd



[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

Upgrade hell
Authored by: Ian Al on Thursday, April 04 2013 @ 02:32 AM EDT
I only use Windows for some creative and development stuff (e.g. software
oscilloscope).

That means it does not get booted-up very often. With both XP and Windows 7, I
sometimes go through hours of upgrade hell, especially when Microsoft want to
update one of its .NET versions. Then there is Adobe Reader, Adobe Flash, AVG
virusware update, Oracle Java (don't ask!), Opera, Firefox... and the list goes
on.

Linux (I like APT, as well) upgrades are so convenient that the constant stream
is no problem, at all. On the other hand, I hate AVG and Windows asking if I
want to restart now or later, especially when it is going to prejudice a
parallel upgrade, and my heart sinks when something else prompts a restart and
Windows warns me not to turn off the computer while it updates .NET V3.5.

You might find running a game in Windows not worth the associated upgrade hell
unless you do it on a regular basis.

---
Regards
Ian Al
Software Patents: It's the disclosed functions in the patent, stupid!

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

Xubuntu is nice - But use Virtualbox VM for Win7
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, April 04 2013 @ 05:31 AM EDT
Much easier.

And you learn Linux much faster.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

Linux Switching Status
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, April 04 2013 @ 08:22 AM EDT
Good for you!

I went 100% Linux many years ago and haven't looked back
since. I have come to the conclusion that if some program,
or some program that does something similar, isn't available
on Linux, I probably do not need it. My wants and needs
tend to be more technical than entertainment related.

I have pretty much switched all my computers to Debian.
I use Debian amd64 squeeze on the computer I use the most
which is a HP Pavillion g6 laptop.

I think that you will find freedom to be very, very
refreshing as well as extremely rewarding!

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

Still need those critical Windows apps, Quickbooks etc (Unless Intuit does Linux version)?
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, April 04 2013 @ 02:35 PM EDT
Still need those critical Windows apps, Quickbooks etc (Unless Intuit does Linux
version)?

Remember, the Quickbooks app and all like it, that "Business" Windows
users depend on... with built-in payroll, acounting etc in the full package?
Well, FOSS has not anything to compare to that, where you can switch over the
FULL DATA SET on Friday to a FOSS replacement, and have it all work without much
training for the staff come MONDAY AM.

Can't put that back data in, would cost years of payroll dollars, so cheaper to
just upgrade to another version of Windows/Quickbooks.

If anyone wins the lottery, a mirror FOSS effort for Quickbooks would be a big
winner (and you could start a company and support the tax tables for payroll for
a fee, so there would be money to be made on the SUPPORT).

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

Linux Switching Status
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, April 04 2013 @ 05:34 PM EDT

I won't try to change your mind on which distro you use, but I would like to say that I've been using Linux for more than 10 years now for both home and professional work and I have never regretted it. I used Mandrake/Mandriva for about half of that, but switched to Ubuntu about 5 or so years ago when Mandriva ran into trouble and couldn't seem to keep certain packages I needed updated.

When I first started using Linux people worried about things like whether your bank would let you do online banking with Linux. There were lots of horror stories about banks demanding Active-X plug-ins, or rejecting user agents that weren't Windows, etc. People published lists of which banks would let you do banking with Linux and which wouldn't, and people were switching banks over the issue. I found that the banks in Canada didn't care in the slightest what operating system you used, so long as your browser had strong enough encryption. This was before Firefox existed by the way. Distros included Netscape (which was barely hanging on), and almost everybody on Windows seemed to use MS IE.

E-mail was another big issue if you had a large e-mail archive you didn't want to abandon. There were lots of e-mail clients which used proprietary mailbox formats, but there were conversion utilities to convert the formats. However, there was no such utility for the one I was using (which is now long defunct) on Windows. However, after much digging and research I found that there were such things as "standards", and it happened that the client I was using on Windows 98 used a standard format, so I didn't have to do anything other than copy the files.

People reported lots of issues with ISPs "not supporting Linux", by which I mean that some ISPs required special Windows-only software to activate an account or to log-in. Like banks, that seemed to be primarily an American problem and I never ran into an ISP in Canada that cared what you used. I never told my ISPs what OS I used, and they never asked.

There were certain Windows programs that I thought I couldn't do without. I worked on trying to get them to work with WINE, but never succeeded. I eventually found out there was loads of software available in Linux, and it was easier to just learn to use a new program than it was to get anything working with WINE. That was probably the best solution in the long run anyway.

I'm currently using Ubuntu 12.04 with Unity 2D, and I'm very pleased with it. Unity has fixed a lot of the UI design problems with Gnome 2, particularly the annoying "find the window" one which Gnome 2 never had a solution to. I have a lot of windows open simultaneously, particularly lots of terminals spread over multiple work spaces, and Unity handles that sort of thing very, very well. If you only have a few things open at a time and don't use multiple work spaces that might not be such a big advantage for you.

I also like the fact that the launcher icons in Unity are a lot bigger than they are in Gnome 2. I'm getting older and my eyesight isn't as good as it used to be, and I was finding the Gnome 2 launcher icons to be so small they were hard to distinguish without leaning in close to the screen so the large Unity icons are a big help. The same is true for the "dash" menu system - everything is designed to be bigger and easier to read by default, which I have come to really appreciate.

I'll add that you may have read a lot of negative views about Linux, Ubuntu, Unity, LibreOffice, Gimp, Python, X, Wayland, etc. on places like Slashdot. I can say with confidence that 95% or more of the negative things you see were written by people who have no idea of what they are talking about. In many cases, an experienced user can see that the person writing the comment has never even tried the software themselves because it just doesn't work the way those people are claiming. Generally, the more loudly and confidently someone "shouts" how horrible something is, the less likely they are to actually know anything. If you see someone using words like "broken" or "insane" as the basis of their argument, you can be sure that they have no idea what they are talking about and are like a squid spewing ink to cover their escape from an argument they have lost.

What has happened is that on many Internet forums being strongly "negative" about something has come to be associated with being "clever", and the more you slate something, the more "clever" you must be to have seen the true essence of the software. What really happens is that people will repeat negative comments they heard elsewhere, or at most look at some screen shots, and then paste those comments on places like Slashdot. If they "shout" loudly and with confidence, other people who know even less will be impressed and agree with them because they are afraid of admitting they don't know anything either.

In the end, it's just a computer and it lets you get things done. I find Linux a lot easier to use than Windows, particularly as unlike Windows, Mandrake/Mandriva or Ubuntu never threw barriers in my way to prevent me from "stealing" it. You can copy it, update it, re-install it, etc., and nobody will be asking you to prove you didn't "pirate" it.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

Linux Switching Status - keep me posted
Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, April 07 2013 @ 08:37 PM EDT
Thanks for your report update.
If I may ask, what file system are you using? and/or does that matter much? (Do
you differentiate between small files and video? Are there tools to recover
chrashed systems/deleted data?)

And do you use default or propriate drivers?


I myself have tried trying Linux a few times, but my first experiences did not
encourage me to go on. Also I'll have to abandone those few hard-earned windows
tweaks for new and hard-to-earn Linux tweaks)
I really did like the integrated download of applications thouhg

However, my situation is changeing and your posts may reconsider me to try
again.
Not much tying me to windows anymore:
- no difficult hardware (I think) as TV-or audiocards
- stopped playing games,
- already moving to FOSS/free software applications
- lost nessesary propriate programs on the move from XP to WIn7, and am just
fine
- moving data to the Fog (my NAS, a local low-orbit cloudlet)
- a strong enough hardware system to try out on that I need to clean out anyway

MBB

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

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