Why use linux? This sums it up.

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Linux today is much different than it was in the late 90s. Back then, you had to be pretty technical to use Linux. Today, Ubuntu is easier to set up and use than Windows is.


Ubuntu has access to most of the packages available in the massive Debian repositories, so yes. For any given function you need, there will probably be at least three or four programs that fulfill that function. I've found that I have better access to software in Ubuntu than I ever had in OS X, and most everything I use in Windows is open-source stuff that's available for Linux.

Why don't you just use your current version of windows in virtualbox? I'm assuming you still have the cd/dvd


You know, instead of trying to get all your windows apps to run in wine, you could just use an alternative app. It's much easier then sitting around trying to get some windows app to work in linux. I personally don't even see the point of using wine. I don't have it installed on either of my computers. Though I do have windows in a virtualbox, but that is for one video game I like to play.

It seems like a lot of people who start using Ubuntu or another distro are expecting linux to be just like windows. It seems they expect their crappy windows app to just work in linux or under wine. If it doesn't, they don't bother to seek an alternative or anything.

Master_Shake, you ask a great question. Here is a fairly good answer!

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Windo ... quivalents

Note that even if you choose something other than Ubuntu, most, all or even more titles will be available on other linux distributions.

Hope to see you in the linux world soon. Its a great adventure.

I agree with this. I don't have wine installed, but I keep it on my brothers because he is a gamer, but on my machines, it is absent. If one of us had a 64 bit copy of windows xp, I would virtual-box it instead.

I came to a point where I said enough of dual boots, I want to see if i can switch over entirely. So I went a month(so far) without logging into windows. Never been happier.

Other than a brief log in to test a 32/64 bit issue, I've stayed away. It turned out that I didn't need to do that even. The problem was resolved by a test on another ubuntu machine.

Yes, you don't really need Wine unless you're into playing video games. I don't really get the point of installing some linux distro and then just using windows programs under wine, or trying to use windows only apps.

I'm not big into dual booting. I've always found it to be too much of a hassle

Fuzzy, maybe you'll make another month without needing to use windows

Here's another site that shows a lot of alternatives to windows and OSX apps. http://linuxappfinder.com/alternatives

Easily!

Dual booting is so 2007. I'm multi-booting with 6 OS's including Windows Seven

why are you multi-booting 6 different operating systems? and what OS's are you using? I cannot see a reason to have 6 OS's installed on one computer.

2 of each system. One serves to test ideas which make break the install. The other serves as a functional system.

I like multi-booting, it gives some flexibility. I have Windows, OS X, and Linux, so I know I can run any piece of software out there, and run it natively instead of virtualized. But I ended up using Linux pretty exclusively (I just finished my freshman year of college and never needed anything other than Linux) and since I didn't jump through the hoops of setting up a really clever partition scheme where all three OS's would share a storage partition of my data, I ended up with occasional bits and pieces of my data strewn about OS X or Vista. I'm probably going to stick with dual-booting OS X and Linux for a while.

I cannot even boot Ubuntu from disk on this piece of crap machine, maybe I am under-specs, that was the problem with my old computer that I tried to install Ubuntu on.

Then what are you running on it? Ubuntu should work fine on anything XP runs on.

If Ubuntu is too heavy, though, you could try VectorLinux Light.

I use:
Windows XP x64 Professional - only for games and 64bit gaming potential
Windows Vista Ultimate x64 - trying it out.
Windows Seven x64 - Beta testing, seeing what is so special about it
Ubuntu 9.04 x64
openSuSE 11.0 x64 currently upgrading to 11.1. It was the first version I bought from a store was the SuSE version
Fedora Core 10 x64

I am planning on installing Solaris and FreeBSD. To have so many may seem pointless, but I am contemplating installing Windows 98 for my boot manager and ability to run older games that use DOS. As I use BootMagic 8, my install of Windows XP x64 resides on a FAT32 partition.

When you have enough RAM, Vista runs well. Even when I had 2GB. I am still playing with Linux versions at the moment, so I will continue to use these until I find one that suits me. But I need to have a look at those eBooks someone posted on here recently.....

The older computer that I know was too low in specs (I had someone else help me compare the minimum specs with my computer to be certain) was running Windows 98.

I tried the same disk on this computer with no luck, but got sent the (then) current version (on disks) because I found some information suggesting the (then) current release was more compatible with lap-tops, but I cannot get that to load from disk either. I suppose I could re-try the new release, but they send ten disks at a time (free of charge) and I feel bad about not actually using them once they get here.


Can I try that from a disk-boot before I do anything drastic to my computer? I am not particularly adept at getting computers to do what I want.

I don't think VL has a livecd, but I could be wrong on that. Last I tried it, it was a simple text-based installation (took maybe 10 minutes or so, and you can pretty much leave the defaults on everything). The other "lightweight" Linux distros I know of are mostly more technically involved, like Arch or Slackware, but maybe Puppy or DSL could work better.

Graphically, in my opinion, Linux has nothing going for it. I know I'm going to get flamed so much for that statement, but I'm probably not going to with-draw it. Compiz fusion is very glitchy, and in my opinion, extremely gimmicky, the WM are okay, but I can only stand GNOME and even then it's no where near as stable as Aqua or Aero imho. This is of course, from the perspective of someone who wants an out-of-the-box GUI. I know you can mess around in command line to eventually get a non-glitchy GUI.
However, command line wise and customization(inc. graphical), Linux distributions don't even have any competition(well, they obviously do, but I think that's more a matter of PR rather than quality, tbh). I love configuring Linux the way I want it, not the way some business decided I'd want, or is what I want for my budget. There's also so many other configuration options you simply don't have access too, legally, on Windows, which are available on Linux, etc.
I don't run Linux any more on either of the two machines I own(I used to dual-boot Ubuntu and Mac OS X on one and Debian on another[I need a new avatar ]), but I plan on installing Debian on a command line interface on my older machine(it's no where near old enough to not be capable of running a GUI) and maybe dual-boot DOS, because I love command line though.
I honestly think I've just completely contradicted my self in this post... but yeah, most of my posts I don't really know what I'm going to write, I just ramble on and type what ever comes into my head- this is no exception .
EMZ=]