Desktop Linux For The Windows Power User

[matt_b]

[citation][nom]ap90033[/nom]No applicationos worky good in linuxo go fix make good then we use u c?[/citation]

Go pop in an xbox360 disc in an original xbox console and tell me it doesn't work well either while you are at it. If a program is written to be used by Windows code, it is therefore 100% compatible with windows. It is NOT 100% compatible with Linux or Mac and therefore will incur problems. This is where WINE steps in to help as a emulator of sorts for Linux (don't go on about Wine Is Not an Emulator (WINE)- I know what it stands for). It helps to use native instruction sets to run Windows programming. At this point you are not running a program natively and so it should still not run perfect. If you take a game such as Unreal from example, this is not written in DirectX instructions and none else, it also has OpenGL coding as well. Linux handles OpenGL because it is code that had intentions of being as widely compatible as possible - so it works. Take Crysis, which is nothing but DirectX, and yeah, it doesn't run very well at all using WINE. Again, take MS Office, a program obviously written for Windows, and you will find it doesn't run perfect using WINE under Linux - common sense here. When you get down to it, drivers cannot be blamed either for things like this because the program you are using is officially incompatible because it was designed around a different operating system altogether!

 

[ap90033]

[citation][nom]royuncg[/nom]Contrary to popular belief, computers can be use for more things than playing games. I have a Xbox360 and PS3 for playing games. I've been using Linux for 3 years now, and there is nothing that I could do in Windows that I cannot do in Linux, there are a few things that I can even do better in Linux. I think it is pretty ridiculous to try to determine an OS's worth by its ability to play games....[/citation]
Good for you!
More people play games on PC than XBox btw but to each his own. You are right in your statement, I use my pc for watching Blu Ray movies, Email, Internet, Chat, IM, etc. But after work, I really just want to play a game or two of some BF2 or COD5. Oh and I hate consoles, I cant stand the controllers. So for guys like me, I guess it would make more sense to get a console and put linux on it lol

 

[thearm]

I like reading the comments from Linux fanboys. Makes me realize Windows is still the way to go. I am a gamer though. But even if I wasn't, it looks like Windows will do it all and Linux will do most. This article is good though. It makes me want to switch or build a Ubuntu box. Or maybe I'll put it on my laptop. As long as I can run VNC Viewer on it, I'll use it.

 

[caribman]

[citation][nom]ram1009[/nom]The author refers to himself as an "ex gamer". I can't help wondering how that catagory qualifies him to write this article on this forum.[/citation]

There's a huge amount of stuff one can do that requires decent performance and does not involve gaming. Some of us who read this website are interested in high performance computing for reasons other than gaming.

I have used Ubuntu on this laptop since I bought it last January. I had prepared myself by avoiding proprietary software as much as possible, trying open source or cross platform apps instead. The feeling of independence that comes with that has to be felt to be believed.

@Adam
I agree that, especially when it comes to legacy (old) hardware, linux hardware support can actually be better than Windows.

Read/write NTFS support (ntfs-3g) is fully implemented since 8.10 AFAIK.

I use grub4dos( https://gna.org/projects/grub4dos/ ) for booting linux after a windows re-install wiped the grub boot loader one time too many. It allows you to use the NT/2000, XP or Vista boot loader to boot linux by finding the Grub menu file and launching Grub. The instructions are in the readme that's include with the download. During your linux installation you have to used the advanced option to tell it to install grub to the root of the same partition as your linux installation.

Finally how did you get that OS X theme shown on the opening page, I'd love to try out some themes like that. I'd love a Vista/Windows 7 theme that I could use to trick people into thinking that they're using windows!

 

[theBoosh]

anyone know which themes those are in the screenshots? I'd like to get the one with the mac-like quick launches at the bottom.

 

[Guest]

I think it's funny how many people say linux is useless just because gaming on it sucks. Tell that to the server market. Obviously it isn't useless. Obviously it has real potential if people keep trying it. Ubuntu is amazing for web development. Nautilus file manager handles ssh/sftp and smb out of the box, meaning you don't have to worry about using 5 different programs just to edit files. You ONLY need gedit or some other editor, cause it will plug right into the virtual file system. Do that as seamlessly in windows...I'm waiting... You can also have your own test LAMP system up and running in less than 10 mins. It's a bit of a different beast to do that in windows. And honestly, for lots of regular office-type work, it has amazing potential to be on par or better than your windows based installation. All this on top of the ease of managing multiple workstations running ubuntu should make it a real contender in the business world. No, maybe you can't currently have as much FUN with games or whatever as you might in windows, but since when does being useless have anything to do with games. Games are unproductive in the first place. Linux has always focused on getting work done, and I bet until it gets more popular, it will definitely stay that way.

 

[Guest]

great article, I skimmed through it, and it's what the average user needs to know to get Linux starting on their home PC's.

I've figured most of this out myself a few years ago, but for someone starting out this is a great resource to start with.

The comment about Linux supporting more hardware than MAC, that might be true for Ubuntu with it's largest driver support. But for many other linux versions you'll have to do with generic drivers taking down performance. Some ATI or NVidia cards have drivers, but they generally are not the latest.
Relying on generic drivers might result in bad framerates in playback of movies, or bad framerates in playing Linux games.

 

[warezme]

Ubuntu Install sucks.

I tried both the 9.04 gui version which promptly caused my Alienware m15x to shut down hard and would not revive without unplugging and pulling out the battery. I went to the ubuntu forums and they recommended I try the text based install which was much more friendly to a wider variety of "name brand" computers. After spending a long time stressing over what options to choose since I have never installed ubuntu before, it was complete and I needed to reboot. After reboot...., boom, my laptop died a hard death again.

I guess ubuntu is not designed for high end rigs and something I don't need.

 

[adamovera]

Whoa, sorry for not being available to post or reply for most of the day, bunch or errands to run today. First things first:

To ap90033:
"Also, this Article is wrong, I dont care what hassle you go through getting current games like Crysis working fully is basically impossible. Gaming in linux is useless."

I'm not sure if you read the article (maybe another article on another site?) or just skimmed it and read the posts, because this is what's printed:

The question is not “can Linux run it?” That has never been the question with regard to Linux. Instead, you can make it do just about anything that you want it to do. The more pointed question is: “just how much of a hassle is this going to be?”

and

If you are a hardcore PC gamer, I'm afraid that due to DirectX 10, you're stuck with Vista (or waiting for Windows 7) for the time being.

Again, not sure we're seeing the same words that you are.


To: ram1009
"The author refers to himself as an "ex gamer". I can't help wondering how that catagory qualifies him to write this article on this forum."

As mentioned above, I've never said that Linux is for gamers because IT IS NOT. While there are many Linux enthusiasts that will tell you that you can play Crysis, COD5, GTA4, etc, these people are either 1) Not really hardcore PC gamers, 2) So far down the 'nix rabbit hole that they can no longer relate to or communicate with us mere humans. Anybody that packages Linux as a gaming OS simply has no idea what it is to be a hardcore PC gamer, I do. I used to preorder games, buy a new graphics card every few months, and so on and so forth. I don't anymore due to time and money (or lack thereof) but I understand what it means. You don't spend the money on the latest games and hardware to have to wait until the community hacks it into semi-functionality. Today I do all of my new gaming on the XBox 360, NOT LINUX - so I guess little Billy Gates got $400 out of me anyway!


There are more replies coming, it's taking awhile to just read these threads, much less address everyone. Currently I'm working on finding the links to my theme options and to a good bootloader conf guide.

 

[Guest]

Adam, at the Login Screen step you said that if you forget your password the only way to recover your system is to reinstall. That's incorrect.
You could boot in recovery mode, where you are automatically logged as root and simply change the password of your user.

 

[adamovera]

[citation][nom]Ventsy[/nom]Adam, at the Login Screen step you said that if you forget your password the only way to recover your system is to reinstall. That's incorrect.You could boot in recovery mode, where you are automatically logged as root and simply change the password of your user.[/citation]

Good call, I had to leave TONS of info out. With Linux it's pretty easy to start an article and wind up with a book. But honestly, that didn't occur to me. Slick and simple solutions, gotta love em.

 

[caribman]

[citation][nom]knickle[/nom]Linux in the home is best suited for the hobbyist with lots of time on their hands. It's not for people that have a busy lifestyle, or have little interest in living on their PC for more than 15 minutes per day.I haven't tried Ubuntu myself. I have used Mandrake (and later Mandriva) in the past. The installation was not complex, and I was able to get it running fairly easily. But overall I found it too tedious to use over the long term as a dialy operating systen. Now that Windows has many of the same open source apps available for it, there is less of a reason to go Linux.The reason people prefer "how Windows does it" is because Windows put a lot of thought into how things are presented to the user. ...snip[/citation]

Actually, it's trying to restore a windows installation that has been infected by something like av360.exe or one of it's variants,that "is best suited for the hobbyist with lots of time on their hands. It's not for people that have a busy lifestyle, or have little interest in living on their PC for more than 15 minutes per day."

I have tried, sometimes unsuccesfully, to do this without doing a format and re-install. It takes a GREAT DEAL of patience and a considerable knowledge of the inner workings of windows. When I contrast that experience with the absolute absence of linux viruses so far, it's OK, you can keep your windows. I have spent all of zero minutes dealing with virus issues on my linux installation. Oh, I had to do a recovery of the Vista installation (return to "out of the box state") after somebody got tricked into installing a variant of av360.exe by a website they visted using my laptop.

 

[caribman]

Adam, you might also want to look at the "USB Startup Disk Creator" option under the System>Administration menu. I prefer it to burning an installation CD nowadays as long as the target system can boot from a usb flash drive reliably. If I remember correctly I have managed to boot, install complete with repartitioning and install grub4dos in a little over half an hour using this method. I did it from the live install so I was able to surf the web (over a wired connection) while the install was happening to boot!

 

[adamovera]

[citation][nom]caribman[/nom]Adam, you might also want to look at the "USB Startup Disk Creator" option under the System>Administration menu. I prefer it to burning an installation CD nowadays as long as the target system can boot from a usb flash drive reliably. If I remember correctly I have managed to boot, install complete with repartitioning and install grub4dos in a little over half an hour using this method. I did it from the live install so I was able to surf the web (over a wired connection) while the install was happening to boot![/citation]

I did LOL, I did the actual writing of the article with oo.org Writer on a persistent Live! USB, LOL! Making one of those things persistent used to be a PITA, now it's no sweat.

 

[Guest]

Just got a new Dell XPS M1530 laptop.
Formatted it out of the box. Reinstalled Windows Vista. Network card didn't work. Video card didn't work at all resolutions. Webcam didn't work. Wireless network card didn't work. Fingerprint scanner didn't work. media card readers didn't work., audio didn't work.
Had to install drivers for all of them.

Formatted again and installed ubuntu 9.04. video card didn't work at all resolutions. fingerprint scanner wasn't turned on. Everything else worked.

The winner this round is Ubuntu.

 

[mastadisasta_31]

I just tried it here at work on an duel core 2. And I don't like it. Runs really choppy, and video drivers are loaded for an intel g31. I don't think it should be that slow. Had Win7 on it and it ran smoothly. I will stick with Microsoft, may cost me some $. But I'm willing to fork out some $ for an easy to use OS, with simplicity and great eye candy. Would rather pay for less frustration than get a freebee for lots of frustration.

 

[Guest]

I run Linux on most of my servers at work. You configure it once, then mostly forget about it. That part is great. DNS, DHCP, SAMBA, everything works and I can justify that part because it only took slightly longer than Server 2003 would. Plus, someone else is paying for that extra config time. HOWEVER... I tried the newest Ubuntu on my laptop at home, and it didn't like my wireless card. It didn't like to emulate the windows driver for my wireless card either. That's now 1 hour of my time wasted. I will now install XP on my laptop because it will actually run everything after it's loaded. I never have virus problems or crashing problems with XP because I don't use my machine like a retard, so XP it is. If I have to spend 1 minute more on an alternative that doesn't do anything different, I'm not going to spend that minute just so I can massage my ego after I get it working. If you need to work and you don't want to screw around reading "L33t" documentation or writing drivers, use just about anything other than Linux. XP doesn't cost anything if you're willing to bend the rules. For me Time=Money , and Linux=Less Time, ergo, less money. Decision made. I couldn't give one bit of a sh|t about the political, programmatic, or development issues revolving around Linux if it wastes my time @ home. That's probably why you're average Windows user still uses Windows. Peace.

 

[ik242]

the only reason i still use WinXP is that it runs things i need. Vista doesn't. why the argument over which OS is better? each OS has followers so let's see what they can do. what are your favorite applications under linux (or Ubuntu in this case)? what do they do?

 

[theBoosh]

@oldmacintosh
No, sadly most average Windows users still use Windows because it costs more. That seems backwards, but from my experience and from what I hear on the forums, people spend as much time screwing around with Windows as they do with Ubuntu.

The problem is that windows costs money, therefore they have money, and they spend that money on marketing. Marketing = advertising and paying computer people to carry/pre-install their products. With linux there is no 'they' and there is no money, so no marketing, no ads, no pre-installs(not much anyway).

honestly ubuntu does everything most users need with a pc, the reason most of the people I know dont use it? they've never heard of it.

 

[adamovera]

To caribman and theboosh:

The dock at the bottom of the screen is called Avant Window Navigator and it should be in Add/Remove, if not try synaptic (perhaps under AWN). The wallpapers were all gathered from gnome-look.org in the wallpapers section (beware: there are TONS of them). The window decorations are the new "Dust Sand" theme available in 9.04. Right-click on desktop then choose "change desktop background" and go to the themes tab.

 

[deltatux]

I don't think "Power Users" would even want to try Ubuntu as Ubuntu is going after the same market as Windows is. For Power Users who don't want to be overwhelmed I'd suggest going OpenSUSE. I've been using OpenSUSE since 2004 and it's the best distribution because it balances power and ease-of-use.

Ubuntu focuses too much on ease-of-use and less on power which is unfavourable. Fedora is a close second on my list in terms of the best balance of power and ease-of-use.

 

[adamovera]

To: psten
I've never actually owned a Mac, but have used them. I like it, it's got polish by the boatload. "You get what you pay for" holds true with Apple. If you have any type of problem, call Apple and there's no "call the hardware vendor" phone tag going on. Again, this is a guide for Windows lifers - some of them are the same people that dog Mac for it's closed-platform and simplicity relentlessly, yet complain that Linux isn't user friendly. "If you need your hand held, then go buy a Mac." is kind of like a "Shit or get off the pot" statement for those people. Also, keep in mind that just by being a user of multiple operating systems you have a step up from the hordes of users who only know MS products. This guide may be below your knowledge level because you have already separated what can be used as general computer knowledge and what is OS specific. I apologize if I offended you or Mac users. The "mac-tax" is levied for a reason - support. In that respect what is the purpose of the "vista-tax", $400 c'mon, and where are my Vista Ultimate Extras?! At least with Apple you receive services for your "taxes".

 

[adamovera]

[citation][nom]tipoo[/nom]Can you change the boot-up to automaticaly boot into windows instead? And can you change the time delay? Dont want to confuse the folks, you see ;-)[/citation]

Try this, I did this before on 8.04 and it worked. I'm putting this feature up for the wish list for 9.10. Last time I checked Mandriva had the ability to configure GRUB during installation.

 

[adamovera]

[citation][nom]tipoo[/nom]Can you change the boot-up to automaticaly boot into windows instead? And can you change the time delay? Dont want to confuse the folks, you see ;-)[/citation]

Check this for the time delay, ditto in regard to Mandriva.

 

[alizard]

The basic machine isn't an issue with Linux, I run Kubuntu-Jaunty on my 900MHz Eee PC/1G DRAM just fine. The issue is driver compatibility. The OS runs out of the box just fine on my netbook... but I'd want to research before running it on any other netbook.

The question is ... will one's video card, printer, scanner, and whatever other hardware one has run with Linux?