Alternatives to Windows

[rtbcomp]

Following on from the Ransom-ware thread.....

I'm interested in ditching Windows, to me it takes too much disk space and is over-complicated for a single user. ( I cut my PC teeth on C/PM)

Changing to another platform concerns me though, as I wouldn't want to lose my windows applications. I've chosen them carefully and am happy with them, and I quite like the Win7 interface.

So what are the implications of switching to the likes of Linux, and what are the alternatives out there?

 

[tigler]

I'm in the same situation and will be interested to see advice and recommendations.
My inclination is towards Unbuntu.

 

[Sean]

none!
in degrees of commitment

1
download one of the "distros" on to a cd/dvd or pen drive - boot the computer and try it, if you dont like it take the cd/whatever out and re-boot. ( it is slow this way because its using your temporary drive as the hard disk)

2
from your cd/whatever choose "install ####" it will install alongside windows and you can choose when you boot up, your files and folders are still available while your in linux just that the M$ programmes etc dont work.

3
from the cd or pen format the HD and install a linux system and never look back ( but try various distros and make the mistakes with 1&2 above before comitting full on)

Ubuntu was the best for new users. BUT the new 11.04 11.10 versions with "Unity" are a bit erm......marmite, 10.4 10.10 were superb.

Xbuntu Kubuntu and Lubuntu ( as well as various "paranoid hacker" and "religeous fundimentalist" distributions are available) are all the same but you get differing ways the desktop environment works and looks, and as this is the stuff you interact with its worth a look round before nailing it to your HD

Mint looks really nice and clean and works well on the other pooters in the house

some of the newer ones using the newest version of linux don't sit well on some laptops where video is taken care of by the cpu rather than a dedicated video card. so try before you buy .....well y'know.

check youtube and wikkipedia
"distro watch" usually has them all easily to hand

if you have applications and programmes you need in M$ check there is an equvalent for linux ( many were made open source before they were gobbled up by one of the big 3, chromium browser being an example) there is the virtual windows environment "WINE" available to run M$ only programmes but its not always easy or fast.


Sean

 

[rtbcomp]

Start at the beginning!

What are Xbuntu Kubuntu and Lubuntu?

I have an old XP machine with a Win98 partition on it, sound like that's the place to experiment.

programs you need in M$ Basically Lotus 1-2-3 and my Epson camera driver (needs XP or earlier)

 

[Ed.]

Following on from the Ransom-ware thread.....

I'm interested in ditching Windows, to me it takes too much disk space and is over-complicated for a single user. ( I cut my PC teeth on C/PM)

Changing to another platform concerns me though, as I wouldn't want to lose my windows applications. I've chosen them carefully and am happy with them, and I quite like the Win7 interface.

So what are the implications of switching to the likes of Linux, and what are the alternatives out there?

Try Virtual machines like VMware, it sets up an artificial PC including it's own virtual hard disk within your PC and you basically surf the net through it, after you set it up and your happy that everything is running well including anti-viruses, anti-spamware, latest updates,ect., you make a snapshot of it, and if you do get a bug you just reset it to the snapshot. Simple, and it puts your Virtual PC back the way it was before the bug took hold. Your real physical PC software and hardware is untouched as you can also isolate your real PC's drives from the virtual drives so the bug can't cross over, and you can also run different OS in them including Mac OS, XP, ect.

 

[mangocrazy]

I'd second Ubuntu as an excellent choice. I'm running 10.04 on my PC, dual-booted with Windows XP. In fact it's triple-booted with Ubuntu 10.04, Win XP and an older (8.04) version of Ubuntu.

Ubuntu comes with a bootloader; i.e. a small program that allows you to choose between various operating systems at startup, called GRUB (GRand Unified Bootloader). Silly names come as standard/free with Linux...

If you want to dual-boot, it's best to set aside some disk space specifically for the new OS. At a minimum you'll need about 5Gb (which is nothing by today's standards). I leave about 50Gb free at the 'end' of my disk and partition it up into 1 x 2Gb and 2 x 24GB partitions. The 2Gb partition is for Swap space, the 24GB partitions are for the OS. That allows you to use one version of Ubuntu as your main one, and try out later versions. When you decide to switch to a later version, the space used by the 'old' version can be re-used to try out later versions, and so on.

It all depends on the applications you use really, as to whether you can make the switch full time to Ubuntu or similar. For most Win apps there is a credible open-source alternative. The only Win app that really can't be replicated on Ubuntu is something like Photoshop. Ubuntu/Linux has The Gimp (really...) and it's very good, but can't compete with Photoshop's complex functions.

The plus side is that apps you would need to buy on Windows have free alternatives on Linux. I've been trying to find a good free music file converter, one that converts between .m4a and .wav files. All the ones I've found for Windows are crippled in some way until you buy the full version. Ubuntu has one (FAAD) that works straight out of the box.

 

[Sean]

Start at the beginning!

What are Xbuntu Kubuntu and Lubuntu?

I have an old XP machine with a Win98 partition on it, sound like that's the place to experiment.

programs you need in M$ Basically Lotus 1-2-3 and my Epson camera driver (needs XP or earlier)

They are Ubuntu in a different wrapper its the way the stuff on the screen looks "snap on" or "cebora" sort of thing .

camera will be fine usually just plug the memory in and "shotwell" will do the rest everyone uses my ubuntu laptop for photos as its so much faster and less buggy than any of the windows stuff.

dont know about Lotus is that accounts and billing? you may find that Open office or Libra office can handle it. It sometimes goes a bit wonky when first opening spreadsheets created in other applications - its usually a formatting text thing and when you use their own fonts it settles down.

id recomend Ubuntu 10.4 (32 bit) if you liked Win98.
http://www.ubuntu.com/download/ubuntu/download
or Mint if you like XP
http://www.linuxmint.com/download.php

 

[mangocrazy]

Ubuntu Linux comes pre-loaded with the OpenOffice suite of programs, which have remarkably good alternatives to all the programs in MS Office. On the plus side, they aren't as insanely complicated and don't have the feature overkill that the latest versions of MS Office have. I wouldn't know about the camera driver; it might be an idea to Google "your camera model" and "Ubuntu driver" or similar.

Xubuntu etc. are just flavours of Ubuntu. Personally I'd start with vanilla Ubuntu and see if you get on with it or not. The Open Source community is notorious for going off and doing their own thing, using a base distribution as the starting point. It's called 'forking', I believe...

One other thing - not being afraid of the Command Line is a Good Thing in Linux...

 

[mangocrazy]

id recomend Ubuntu 10.4 (32 bit) if you liked Win98.
http://www.ubuntu.com/download/ubuntu/download
or Mint if you like XP
http://www.linuxmint.com/download.php

+1 on Ubuntu 10.04. It's the LTS version (Long Term Support), which means it gets updates for 3 years (on Desktop, as opposed to Server versions) after date of release. 10.04 means it was released in 2010, month 04 (i.e. April) and will be supported until April 2013.

The next LTS release will be 12.04, due out in April 2012.

 

[awemawson]

Following on from the Ransom-ware thread.....

I'm interested in ditching Windows, to me it takes too much disk space and is over-complicated for a single user. ( I cut my PC teeth on C/PM)

Changing to another platform concerns me though, as I wouldn't want to lose my windows applications. I've chosen them carefully and am happy with them, and I quite like the Win7 interface.

So what are the implications of switching to the likes of Linux, and what are the alternatives out there?

You are not alone starting with CP/M! Windows has gone through so many itterations each trying to preserve backwards compatibility that it is very bloated, but amusingly enough one of the earliest issues was i/o and ram mapping to maintain compatibility with CP/M !!!!!

 

[Sean]

It's called 'forking', I believe...
.

Its "Forking confising!"

 

[Chickenjohn]

You can run all the same applications (or equivalents) on Mac OS and if you have to, modern Macs can run windows.

This is trouble free computing at it's finest, no viruses, secure, easy to use and very stable, and without all the annoyances of Windows.

Yes, pricier, but then a decent tool always will cost more than a cheap one.

 

[mangocrazy]

This is trouble free computing at it's finest, no viruses, secure, easy to use and very stable, and without all the annoyances of Windows.

The same can equally be said of Linux.

Yes, pricier, but then a decent tool always will cost more than a cheap one.

Undoubtedly pricier, I'd say. Hardware costs are 50 - 100% more than for Windows or Linux, and you are further constrained on the type of hardware you can run it on; i.e. Intel processors only - AMD not allowed. Apple's DRM and Software lock-in is at least as onerous as Windows, if not more.

If you want low cost, high performance, zero lock-in and minimal DRM, along with "trouble free computing at it's finest, no viruses, secure, easy to use and very stable, and without all the annoyances of Windows", then Linux is the only game in town.

This is especially true if you build your own computers and prefer to use AMD processors, as I do. Why jump from one locked-in environment (Windows) straight into another (Apple)?

 

[robwizard]

UBUNTU! Totally down with what mangocrazy is saying ^^

I have used Ubuntu now for like five years and I would never use anything else. Mac Os is alright.. but Ubuntu is (in my opinion) easier to use and also.. free? FREE!

 

[Chickenjohn]

The same can equally be said of Linux.

Undoubtedly pricier, I'd say. Hardware costs are 50 - 100% more than for Windows or Linux, and you are further constrained on the type of hardware you can run it on; i.e. Intel processors only - AMD not allowed. Apple's DRM and Software lock-in is at least as onerous as Windows, if not more.

If you want low cost, high performance, zero lock-in and minimal DRM, along with "trouble free computing at it's finest, no viruses, secure, easy to use and very stable, and without all the annoyances of Windows", then Linux is the only game in town.

This is especially true if you build your own computers and prefer to use AMD processors, as I do. Why jump from one locked-in environment (Windows) straight into another (Apple)?

Only trouble free if you are happy to use the software that comes with that distro, installing anything in Linux seems to be quite involved and I lost patience (the will to live!) working out how to do it. A Mac is a breeze to install software on. Yes, pricey, but Macs use the very best quality components. Plus try and get a web cam or anything slightly out of the ordinary going on Linux and you will be on a mission. Linus is great if you are a computer geek, but if you just want to use the damn thing to do useful stuff then Apple is streets ahead.

I understand there are now viruses for Linux but none yet in the wild for OS-X

i've never had any problems with DRM! That is a bit of a myth Apple and DRM.

 

[Sean]

But the OP was about an alternative to Windows to put on his system - rather than throw everything in a skip and buy overpriced hardware with locked in OS even if it is supposedly virus free.

 

[mangocrazy]

I agree that Linux used to be pretty 'user-hostile' for beginners a few years ago, but they are making great strides in that area. Installing new software in Ubuntu now is as simple as picking it off a list and clicking 'install'. All the dependencies are sorted out for you, and it's pretty foolproof in my experience. I'd also agree that certain components are simply a 'no-no' to try and get drivers for in Linux, but that is also (thankfully) becoming a thing of the past.

If I was able to install the Apple OS on my (AMD-powered) computer, I'd probably go for it. In fact I'd even pay for it... But I'm simply not allowed to because Apple want to maximise profit on both hardware and software.

And this business about Apple using 'the best quality components' is just smoke and mirrors designed to make the Apple faithful feel better about shelling out top dollar. The design is unique and very stylish, but the components (memory, processor, hard disk, video card etc.) are exactly the same as Joe Bloggs can buy over the counter.

Interestingly, the current Apple OS's are Unix-based, just like Linux. So they share a degree of common DNA.

 

[Iain Westland]

installing is far different now CP, its a doddle in most cases. The only real bug bear is printing, some printers are not supported. Its only as my son needs to print stuff for school and this printer is refusing to break (wife says no to unneeded new one) that I stay on windows, but after this its straight back to Linux.
~
It also runs on older machines and tends to go straight out of the boxx.

Ubuntu, SuSe, are both good and very well supported. Remember all those sad geeks at school who wrote programs for no reason except to show that they could... they all do the Linux work for nothing more than a pat on the back and a 'good boy' acknowledgement.

 

[julianthegypsy]

These days Linux is actually well ahead of windows in hardware recognition. You are far more likely to have a printer problem on win 7 than any of the linux distros. I currently run mandriva and am looking at Mint. I don't like the new ubuntu although the old one was great, but its got big and hungry. I run old hardware and want a nice simple os to run it.
Incidentally, if you like ******ing about with CNC, linux is definitely the way to go, EMC is a linux project and seems to be the business. The old days of learning endless commands are well and truly over, unless you actually want to type them of course, and there is so much software out there its breathtaking. Feel like making some music? Swathes of synths, drum machines, samplers, the whole lot. Stargazing? No probs, click on an app and download it. All free and available at a mouseclick. I Love it.

 

[keith19]

Rtbcomp, hope you have taken all this in. (If you're still there!).
It can get very confusing when starting in Linux, because there are so many different distro's - distributions - and each distribution has several, sometime many, variations. And each distro and each variation has its followers.

As said, Ubuntu 10.04 is a reasonable one to start with, and it will run from the CD drive as well as install alongside your Windows, so you can play with it to see how you get on.

Mint Linux is a smart, cleaned-up variation of Ubuntu, and is very good.

Another easy to run Linux distro is PCLinuxOS. from Texas. This is a great one to install alongside Windows, because it just works out of the box. It doesn't have the paranoid frenzy of some distros in downloading updates every couple of days. It just works as it is. They bring a new one out every year, so you can always upgrade to the latest if you want to, but often there's no need.

We have older PCs running the 2007 version of PCLOS, and they are perfectly happy doing so. We have another running 2009, and another on 2011. Some are Linux only PCs, some run in tandem with Windows. The Linux-only ones are not run by geeks, they are run by people who often don't know they are using Linux, and kids who cannot (despite many tries) wreck the operating system like they can wreck Windows.

Most any Linux distro is downloadable from the Internet free, or usually obtainable for the cost of a CD and postage (£3-£4) from the creators.

Most come in a form that will work off the RAM memory in your PC from the CD/DVD drive, and simply boot onto your desktop ready to play with. As already said, try three or four or so of these 'boot-CDs' to check out which is easiest to get along with. If you decide to co-install Linux alongside Windows your Windows will still be there, but like mine, will not get used so much.

Don't want to upset the Mac people, but the present and immediate past operating systems on Macs are a privatised form of Linux, too. That's why they are also virus-free. Macs are usually very reliable, and very good for what they do best, but very expensive to have repaired.
A bit like Inverter Mig technology in that respect.