Ubuntu?

[JacktheHomeless]

Ok after reading a bit on several different forums and places, I've decided i might be making the switch from windows to linux. I'm sick of windows and everything in general about them, and vista just makes me want to puke.

So heres the deal, I'm gonna go with Ubuntu. Even though I am not familiar with Linux, from what I've read Ubuntu is extremely simple and intuitive to use.

But heres the question. Is there a way to find out what software will and not work with Ubuntu? As I back up all of my software regularly, will this software even work with Ubuntu or Linux in general?

www.ubuntu.com

[John Doe]

Well, generally windows apps dont run under Linux, you can get a emulator like Wine and some work but they will be slower than on windows.

Or you can try to find linux versions of many apps to do what you want to do, things like GIMP instead of Photoshop, etc.

My advice would be to try it on a separate drive and leave windows there for you to fall back on. Or convert to a dual boot system and have the best of both worlds.

[Dog]

Will you be dual-booting with Windows?

[Dog]

Oops posted at same time as JD...hehe....

[JacktheHomeless]

i was gonna dual boot for a while till i get linux all squared away, maybe a month or two.

I kinda wanted to be done with windows as a whole though, as in, getting rid of windows completely after i get familiar with linux.

[regis]

I would definately keep Windows until for are fully confident with Linux. Some distros of Linux aren't good for laptops cause the wifi drivers aren't supported.

Ubuntu is nice, they'll ship the CDs to you free of charge. A few other good Linux solutions are (Red Hat's) Fedora Core and PC Linux OS.

For Fedora Core there's this website that I found a while back (http://freshrpms.net/) where there are programs for the OS that are replacements for Windows programs.

To add to what JD was saying... OpenOffice is a good, free alterrnative to MS Office.

Here's another site (http://tldp.org/guides.html) where there are some eBooks about Linux. I think you can DL them as PDFs, but I don't recall exactly.

Hope I could help!

[Gen.Ben]

I would defiantly go for a dual boot.

On my last computer I was dual booting with XP Home and SuSE 10.1, Sometimes you NEED some apps that ONLY run on windows and you have no other options.

I would reccomend:

SuSE 10.1
Fedora Core 5
or Yellow Dog (I have it on my PS3 xD)

Thats all I have used, thats all I can say about them.

All very easy to use and if you are a former windows user linux is very similar to windows. But DEFIANTLY go for the dual boot.

[llama_beans]

Do the dual boot thing first, keep xp around for games, it will save you some trouble.

I had some issues with opensuse 10.1, but don't see them in 10.2..

I haven't tried it yet but I hear you can do some cools stuff with parallels for mac, if the linux one does the same thing you can run windows apps like they are native.

wine and couple others work fine. I ran eq and wow with wine with zero issues. It can be a pain to set up.

[ROOFCUTTER]

I have only been using Ubuntu on my home machines for about 2 months now.
The learning curve has been steep. Even though most things are easy to install there is a real difference on how to do everything.

Just imagine going from not knowing windows to suddenly doing what you do now with it.
You would most likely have troubles with what to do. I do mean the basic stuff!

But with everything that you do in Ubuntu you learn a little more so that the basics are slowly learned making the more complicated instructions easier to understand and implement.

It also returns a bit of fun to computing. Windows is boring and mater of fact. It is fun to have a operating system that is full of mystery.
Also there is a living community of people that change things daily to improve it.

Every day there is more and more things done for and in support of open source. It is amazing to just follow it.

I am at a point where I do not believe I will ever go back. There is nothing that I cant do and do for free that the windows machine provided. I have Vista, XP and windows 2000 available legally...so money is not a concern about which one I run.

My work is not ready to switch so Ill still be using windows at work for now. but I think that it wont be to long before there is a tipping point where windows will not be the only truly supported operating system.

I am writing this on a Linux box

[JacktheHomeless]

Myself and my brother took the ubuntu plunge a few days ago.

And honestly, I'm loving every minute of it.

I did a dual-boot system, just to have windows around to fall back on. Honestly, im kinda mad i put as much of my hard drive space towards windows as i did. I have been spending every minute in linux, only switching to windows when i absolutely have to.

Its been a complete and utter blast. Its fresh, new and a ton of fun. Beryl is absolutely amazing and whips Aero's ass. I really enjoy the ultimate control that linux has given me. Hell, i can even browse my windows partition and read/write to it at will. Windows has no clue the other partition is there. Talk about a stupid OS.

Also, another thing i like, is its all free and open source. Thats the way information should be.

My only complaint is that there arent enough games for it. However, Wine and a few other emulation programs out there have been keeping me company. I'm sure as time goes on and people begin to accept Linux as something other than a nerd's toolbox that will change.

Oh, one more thing, I have only had to restart my system once or twice in the past 4 days, despite all of the installing/uninstalling i have done. Also, even though some programs have froze up on me, the OS as a whole never has, just the singular program, and mostly due to my own fault.

[Gen.Ben]

I'm glad you like it.

Now you are 73h 1337