Im well aware this is the microsoft forum... I just downloaded and copied linux Ubuntu onto cd and did a test boot... I think i like it.. i thought linux Ubuntu was for nerds but it seems clean, only heard ood things about it.. Why am i posting here... well before i move further into installing onto my hdd will i still be able to design .. game.. movies .. all the norm ? i have stayed away from linux because i new if i tried it i would probabbly like it, and well today i am bored and needed to spark my brain into gear, and well that i have done lol... Your thoughts please from moving from XP to Ubuntu.. im not a fan of vista.. so please prevent me from making a mistake if i am about to make one.. Thanks
If I were you, I would install Linux as a either a dual boot setup or on a separate HDD.. This way you will still have access to an XP OS application.. There are a few 3rd party apps that only run good on Windows, things like photoshop, dreamweaver, certain games, etc. Therefore with a dual boot set up this gives you the option to run Linux when you want and still run Windows when you want or need. You can decide which OS to start up during the boot up cycle. I have run as a desktop, Red Hat Fedora core, SuSE, Ubuntu, and Kubuntu and do enjoy running Linux frequently myself.. However I still do use XP to do a lot of my site building and web development stuff. It is mostly because some of those 3rd party application makers do not make Linux drivers for their applications. You can use an app called Wine inside Linux to run some windows applications, but probably not all of them. To do a dual boot setup you will set this up at install time! At linux install time it should give you a choice to partition the drive. So you would make half or part of the drive NTFS for windows and another partition as ext type for the linux install. You should also make a swap partition too, of about 900-1500 MB. This will be used as virtual memory. Depending on drive size you have it may be a good idea too to make a FAT32 partition of about 5-10 GB.. This makes it nice to share files from one system to the other, as both Linux and Windows can read and write to FAT32... So this way you could save files to a common drive from either OS install and access them too from either OS install. Have a lot of fun! Boulder
"Boulder" Rep'd you for that, thanks mate exactly what i needed to hear. I currently have 320gb hdd partitioned into 2 parts 80 g for c: & the rest on d: ... now d: has critical files, movies, apps, work, music blah blah blah.. So i think i might hold of for until next week and buy myself a new cheap hdd so i can play around with it. Ive heard mixed things about it, i dont see why so many people swear by it if nothing works on it.. i just thought i ask here before i go and spend 3 days researching it to find out its not for my.. im still interested in it and wish to learn it provided it will somehow come in handy somewhere along the lines. Your post above was great info tho.. so i thank you for that
Okay cougarxs, Yea there are some really good things about Nix too.. I was more just giving you a heads up that not everything that works on XP is going to work on Nix. Some of the good things with Linux are, no viruses, not having to reboot every time get and update or install a new program. The fact that there are 1000's upon 1000's of open source applications and software available that will install and run perfect in Linux and would not run well on XP. Another point is this, can customize the kernal or flavor of Linux using to suit your personal needs better, if you wanted to get into some real geek stuff, you can essentially make up your own flavor of nix, because all the source code is open and accessible to your own doings or kernal compiling. Another thing is if you wanted, you could install the linux as dual boot on that same large HD and it would not erase your files nor your running XP install! When you install it if careful, in the partitioning stage, it will allow you to set up the partitions and it will move all good stuff and the Windows OS to the NTFS saved partition. Than it will install its self on a new partition, size determined by you. It does not erase the running files unless you tell it to... LOL It sets up the grub dual boot, so you can select what install to run, Windows or Linux when it boots. So therefore what I am saying is you do not need another hard drive to have the best of both worlds.. It can be done easy on the one HD.. However if you do have millions of files on that drive and want to keep those, it would be a little safer to go with the separate drive. Just in case you did not install it correct and told it to nuke the whole drive.. LOL Boulder
Um, I've been Windows free for about two years now, and I never ran Linux until a few months ago having always been a FreeBSD user. The only issues I have ever had are the occasional video that won't play and Netflix online movies which are IE only. Other than that, I do everything in FreeBSD and, now, Ubuntu. For Photoshop, I use Gimp and it does everything I ever used Photoshop for. I never used Dreamweaver when I was on Windows but there are similar IDEs on Linux. I have a very successful web development business and the only Windows box I have is an old clunker for testing sites in IE. Unless you use your Windows box as an XBox (and I'd venture to say most people do) then games are your only real problem. (Linux does have some excellent free games, though). Other than that, no one has any need for Windows.
Dual boot definitely. If photoshop was available for Linux, you'd see plenty of users flocking to it. But, unfortunately, software/hardware vendors just don't care about it.
i really liked linux ubuntu, it is alot lighter than its microsoft counterparts and has plenty of free stuff... also probably one of the swaying points for me is that you dont need anti virus software =D. I would recomend you dual boot as one of the main faults with any linux OS is that its incompatible wth most things you take for granted, although linux provides many free equivelants such as openoffice.org replaceing MS works and wine, which you can use to run some windows programs it still isnt 100%, unless u are a dedicated fan or like me you and "accidently" remove windows xp i would go for a dual boot
Make your HD into sectors so that Ubuntu is used as backup if you cannot enter your XP. Thats better plus you need Windows to play cool games.
Go for dual boot, and when you want to play games boot into windows. Or install wine, some windows games can be played on linux with wine.