Ubuntu

Headshot

i was always a xp man

but im looking at getting Ubuntu

iv a few questions

how good is it compared to xp

whats it like for games and internet

any known faults ???

the good and the bad please

iv never went near unix before

Orion

You can't compare it to XP directly. It's a totally different OS - but you can make it look and feel like XP if you really want to *shudder*

Internet - same as Windows (assuming network port connected broadband). If wireless it can sometimes be tricky to set up but afaik Hardy has solved a lot of wireless problems.
Firefox is the default browser in Ubuntu.
Games - depends on the game. Very few developers provide Linux ports (this is starting to change very slowly). But A lot of games work well in Wine. Steam games, UT2004, WoW are currently installed on my box.

Known faults - yes. Plenty - any OS has faults. The main difference between Windows and Linux in this regard is that faults are fixed quickly in the main.

Good and bad: The ethos is good. Applications are free (as in speech) mostly, some are free (as in beer). Very few have to be paid for. You don't need to go find something, download it, install it. One command from the terminal or tick a box in the package manager will do it all for you. And there is software there for anything you need.
Bad: Driver support. It's not the fault of the OS but a lot of manufacturers don't/won't provide Linux drivers. An example of this is printing - some printers just won't work in Linux. For others there are workarounds. ATI used to be very poor for driver support but I believe this has changed - too late for me - I've gone nVidia now and I've no intention of switching back to ATI.

Best advice I can give you is to get a LiveCD. This runs from the CD without touching your currently installed OS. You can play with it and see how you get on. Don't let the speed fool you - it will run slow from CD. But I assure you it's a hell of a lot faster than Windows when installed.

PogMoThoin

+1, couldn't have put it better myself

The best thing is that all extra software downloaded comes from a reputable source, no hidden software, toolbars etc

Maybe look in2 Wubi to install it as a windows program (after you've ran the live cd to make sure all your devices work), this way you can uninstall it in Windows control panel if it isn't to your liking

stereo_steve

Macros42 wrote: »

Bad: Driver support. It's not the fault of the OS but a lot of manufacturers don't/won't provide Linux drivers. An example of this is printing - some printers just won't work in Linux. .

I was in a new office a couple of weeks ago and needed to print something from my work laptop ( windows 2000) The local guy started looking for the driver disk for the printer. Not a problem I thought, rebooted in ubuntu and just clicked print! I had a great sense of satisfaction! Driver support is really coming on. Especially with the new 2.6.27 kernel ready soon. Intrepid is gonna be great.

Headshot , I'd imagine that if you are completely new to linux you are gonna be very frustrated with linux initially. It is user friendly these days but it does things very differently to windows. Stick with it and post questions up here if you have any. If you start with ubuntu I recommend changing the theme as soon as possible!!!

gnome-look.org will help you out with that.

EKRIUQ

I'm thinking of installing Ubuntu on a old computer I have It's running window's XP at the moment. Is it possible to to be able to switch from one to another. I've looked at a lot of You Tube clips and Ubuntu looks good for a second computer.

This computer is about 6 years old if I install Ubuntu will it wipe windows clean?

stereo_steve

Can you post up the spec of your 6 yr old computer?

You might be better off with something more lightweight like xubuntu. You have the option to write over windows or install it so that you get prompted for which operating system you would like to boot into on start up.

/Steve

EKRIUQ

Windows XP Home Edition Service Pack 2 (build 2600)

Processor
2.40 gigahertz Intel Pentium 4
8 kilobyte primary memory cache
512 kilobyte secondary memory cache

Main Circuit Board
BIOS: American Megatrends Inc. 2.0Z 09/10/2002
Board: NEC COMPUTERS INTERNATIONAL SiS650 1.0
Bus Clock: 100 megahertz
BIOS: American Megatrends Inc. 2.0Z 09/10/2002

Memory
192 Megabytes Installed Memory

Local Drive Volumes
c: (NTFS on drive 0) 59.39 GB 45.79 GB free

Is it a candidate?

MarkR

That should be fine for ubuntu. Memory is cheap though, any chance of maxing it? Oh, and not that we're unhelpful here, but you may want to have a look at http://ubuntuforums.org/

pljudge321

ram would be the only potential problem there, everything else is fine.

I had ubuntu running perfectly well with 240mb of ram and 1.2ghz processor on a laptop with desktop effects and it was mostly fine, bottled down occasionally with video. Got a gig of ram installed on the laptop now and everything is running very smoothly.

You could always upgrade your ram to 512mb or a gig, would probably only cost around 30 squid.

PogMoThoin

MarkR wrote: »

That should be fine for ubuntu. Memory is cheap though, any chance of maxing it?

Not without adding memory, 384MB recommended Ubuntu System Requirements

charlesD

whats it like for games

As Macros42 said, game developers rarely produce a linux port, so you will probably have to do a little work if you want to play any games. In terms of driver support, I have never had any problems using it across many different types of desktops.

This article (http://www.linux.com/feature/118497) has a lot of good information about hardware that works with Linux and links out to sites that can help you determine whether or not your hardware is compatible, but as I said, I have never had a major issue.

Orion

charlesD wrote: »

As Macros42 said, game developers rarely produce a linux port, so you will probably have to do a little work if you want to play any games. In terms of driver support, I have never had any problems using it across many different types of desktops.

That depends on the game. Some games work out of the box in Wine. The Orange Box was a piece of piss to set up - only problem I had was because of my non-standard video setup - Twinview with two different size monitors. WoW was easy enough as well - not out of the box because it defaults to DirectX. You have to change it to OpenGL in an ini file and then it's grand.

Have a look at Wine's AppDB. CSS is Platinum - as in straightforward install. It says Steam is Gold i.e. some special configuration but if I'd had 1 screen it would have been perfect straight away. COD4 is Silver which means that it has some issues and iirc it's with updates but playability is fine.

As for driver support it is getting better. But make sure you check CharlesD's link and the Ubuntu forums for any potential issues.

Dartz

http://www.xubuntu.org

Have this installed on similar specs. Runs perfectly fine.

Khannie

Dartz wrote: »

http://www.xubuntu.org

Have this installed on similar specs. Runs perfectly fine.

Not the best for a first foray into linux IMO. I'm back to Gnome and lovin' it.

Capt'n Midnight

PogMoThoin wrote: »

Not without adding memory, 384MB recommended Ubuntu System Requirements

384 is needed if you run the live CD and install it at the same time

You can install on 256 , possibly 192 if you use the alternative install CD
the big downside here is that openoffice will be very slow to use on a machine with that little RAM, then again RAM is a lot cheaper than a lot of software licenses. 8.04.1 is a little sexier than 6.06 but if you are totally stuck for ram then look at 6.06 - then again there is always puppylinux

wubi is the way to go if you can put up with a 4GB or so file on C:

Dartz

It was my first foray into a *nix, and I've stuck with it. I needed something lightweight. I've installed on the following:

7.10 on 1.6Ghz Pentium M, 256Mb RAM, 40 Gb HDD --Toshiba Sattellite.
8.04 on 2.5Ghz Core 2 Duo T9300, 4GB RAM, 320 GB HDD-- Dell XPS,
8.04 on 600Mhz Pentium 3, 192 MB RAM, 60 GB HDD -- IBM X20.

The X20 and the Satellite required the alternate install disk, but provided you follow the instructions, it works just as well. It doesnt include OpenOffice by default, but this doesnt mean you cant install it. Abiword and Gnumeric handle office jobs admireably for much less resources. On the X20, I have Firefox 3, Pidgin, Xchat and Abiword going at once and the thing chugs along quite happily.

Not exactly lightning to boot up... it sits on the splash screen for a while... but once it gets going, it goes along well. Especially for 8 year old hardware.

jaqian

{(-_-)}HeadShoT** wrote: »

i was always a xp man

but im looking at getting Ubuntu

iv a few questions

how good is it compared to xp

whats it like for games and internet

any known faults ???

the good and the bad please

iv never went near unix before

As someone who switched from XP to Freespire (based on Ubuntu) two months ago, I don't really miss it.

I had been using OpenOffice, Firefox and GIMP on windows so they are pretty familar to me already. Still haven't firgured out the black art of compiling but using apt-get in the terminal (command line) I don't need to. The only problem I have is that my scanner (HP Scanjet 5530) isn't supported in Linux (and yes I've checked) but am looking to install XP in a virtual environment, which will get me around that. You should check to see if there is support for your hardware, most likely there is.

I would suggest that initially you install Ubuntu alongside XP so you can dual boot, I did that for awhile before I was comfortable with Linux.

One of the good things about Ubuntu, Freespire, etc is that they are based on Debian Linux, which has something in the range of 28,000 packages/programs at its disposal so you should always be able to find a program you need.

You will need to learn some basic commands for installing programs and updating your system but you can get by on a very few commands. Just imagine this... you can actuaslly UPGRADE your system without having to fork out hundreds of euro for the latest OS using the command line.

If you are an advanced windows user, I'm sure you have used windows command line at sometime or other as I have so using the odd command in Ubuntu shouldn't be a problem for you.

All the best,
Rob

andrew

IMO Linux is great if you're a fairly advanced Windows user looking for something more customisable/interesting. There is a learning curve, and it can be quite annoying at times so you have to actually want to learn new things. That said, from what you mentioned you shouldn't have many (if any) problems getting it to do what you want it to do. Keep Windows in a dual boot setup if you have any problems with games and you'll be sorted. If you can force yourself to use Linux exclusively for a while then I can almost guarentee that you won't want to go back to windows ever again. My XP partition broke at the start of this summer and left me with no choice but Ubuntu, and i'm now very happy that it did

MooseJam

I installed Ubunto there last week and wasn't impressed AT ALL, it didn't boot after install, gave some crappy error, it also broke my Vista install, so there was me thinking I'd have a couple of interesting hours playing around with a new OS and instead got a big kick in the balls lol, luckily enough I had ghosted vista beforehand just to be safe. Maybe it needs newly formatted disk to work, beats me, I might give it another go with a different distribution, whats a good working alternative ?

andrew

MooseJam wrote: »

I installed Ubunto there last week and wasn't impressed AT ALL, it didn't boot after install, gave some crappy error, it also broke my Vista install, so there was me thinking I'd have a couple of interesting hours playing around with a new OS and instead got a big kick in the balls lol, luckily enough I had ghosted vista beforehand just to be safe. Maybe it needs newly formatted disk to work, beats me, I might give it another go with a different distribution, whats a good working alternative ?

www.ubuntuforums.org might be able to help with your installation problem. Sorry to hear you couldn't get it working, though that doesn't mean it won't ever work.

Capt'n Midnight

MooseJam wrote: »

I installed Ubunto there last week and wasn't impressed AT ALL, it didn't boot after install, gave some crappy error, it also broke my Vista install, so there was me thinking I'd have a couple of interesting hours playing around with a new OS and instead got a big kick in the balls lol, luckily enough I had ghosted vista beforehand just to be safe. Maybe it needs newly formatted disk to work, beats me, I might give it another go with a different distribution, whats a good working alternative ?

Did the live CD recognise all your hardware ?
What HDD controller does your PC have / RAID ?

If you have Vista then you probably have a newer PC, and with any install of an OS on a newer PC it's worth checking the interweb to see if there are newer drivers needed or any known issues.

PogMoThoin

MooseJam wrote: »

I installed Ubunto there last week and wasn't impressed AT ALL, it didn't boot after install, gave some crappy error, it also broke my Vista install, so there was me thinking I'd have a couple of interesting hours playing around with a new OS and instead got a big kick in the balls lol, luckily enough I had ghosted vista beforehand just to be safe. Maybe it needs newly formatted disk to work, beats me, I might give it another go with a different distribution, whats a good working alternative ?

You've got Raid haven't you, there's your problem, see what I posted here

MooseJam

no I've got an SSD now

PogMoThoin

There ya go then, You should've checked whether the ssd was compatible before u risked breaking your Vista install. I'd doubt an ssd has great support in linux yet, not linux's fault, its down to the manufacturer. There are also problems installing Windows on ssd's as they're a fairly new tech

MooseJam

ah sure I had it ghosted, was back up and running in 5 minutes, it's a great program is Norton Ghost, I highly recommend it !

PogMoThoin

MooseJam wrote: »

ah sure I had it ghosted, was back up and running in 5 minutes, it's a great program is Norton Ghost, I highly recommend it !

:rolleyes: I use Acronis to do the same job

BTW, You should virtualbox Ubuntu to try it out. Its how i get round my Raid problem

MooseJam

cool I'll give that a go tonight

RectalWareZ

Have the ubuntu bout a month now, No serious problems, pity cant play games on it. download a program to get it to work but it failed. Mind u its great for the web, so much faster and can have up to 16 different desktops mind u only use 4.

An Fear Aniar

RectalWareZ wrote: »

Have the ubuntu bout a month now, No serious problems, pity cant play games on it. download a program to get it to work but it failed. Mind u its great for the web, so much faster and can have up to 16 different desktops mind u only use 4.

There are some games, not many good ones but some. Take a look here:

http://gaming.gwos.org/doku.php/games:start

My favourite game at the moment is Nexuiz, which is an online Quake-type tournament, terrific fun.


.

Epic Tissue

Internet
Connecting is usually fine. It would be handy for you to have another internet-connected PC while you install in case you run into any trouble.

You won't be able to use IE, Safari, Chrome natively.

Gaming
Don't bother changing if you're into gaming. You won't be able to play most games. You won't be able to play any "Games for Windows" games and they seem to be increasing in numbers.

WINE
Wine is a program to let you run applications that don't run on Linux. Generally, any time I have used it, I HAVE noticed that it's running on WINE and it's not a nice experience tbh.

Good points
Multiple desktops. This is something that XP doesn't have. (You can download a program to have it but it doesn't work as well). It's handy if you are the type of person who has loads of programs open at once, but after while I didn't even use it. Seems like a novelty. Haven't missed it now that I am back using Vista.

Better animations. Again, it's a novelty but the window animations do look pretty good. You have to install Compiz and have a compatible graphic card for them to work.

Free. It's the only reason I would use Ubuntu as my only OS. If I didn't want to pay for Windows I would use it. Also to note, there are a lot of free programs which are an alternative to the Windows-based program that costs money. A good example is GIMP vs Photoshop.

My opinion
If you have a paid copy of XP there really is no need to switch. If your XP computer is running slow or anything, just do a fresh install (after you backup what you need). You could always dual boot which is what I do. (Haven't booted into Ubuntu in quite a while).

An Fear Aniar

Epic Tissue wrote: »

Good points
Multiple desktops. This is something that XP doesn't have. (You can download a program to have it but it doesn't work as well). It's handy if you are the type of person who has loads of programs open at once, but after while I didn't even use it. Seems like a novelty. Haven't missed it now that I am back using Vista.

Better animations. Again, it's a novelty but the window animations do look pretty good. You have to install Compiz and have a compatible graphic card for them to work.

Free. It's the only reason I would use Ubuntu as my only OS. If I didn't want to pay for Windows I would use it. Also to note, there are a lot of free programs which are an alternative to the Windows-based program that costs money. A good example is GIMP vs Photoshop.

Dude, you completely left out the #1 reason why people switch to Linux - it's waaaaay more secure, you don't even have to run anti-virus.

There's lots of good reasons here for switching to Linux:

http://www.whylinuxisbetter.net/


.

ve

TBH OP in my experience (and I'm a huge fan of Ubuntu) "users" not computer engineers who come exclusively from a Microsoft Windows world tend to be very dissapointed with Linux when they give it a try. I can't think of another example of a case like this, but this is the truth in my opinion...

Most of us if we bought (not built) a computer it came shipped with Windows and although it's a terrible operating system it is still massively popular based purely on a business success story. So we are left with a situation whereby things that are better are considered worse because they simply don't "look like" or "operate like" Windows.

Ubuntu (or any Windows alternative) is going to be different than Windows and by different we're absolutely not just talking about how you interact with it. A lot of users would simply make a u-turn if they couldn't get a driver for a piece of hardware or couldn't play a particular game, etc. I think in order to move away from Windows one has to at least appreciate the qualities of a good operating system. If you fail to do so you will be doomed and limited to Windows. Linux (especially Ubuntu) makes it easier for Windows users to make the transition by offering a similar experience to Windows but on top of a much better platform.

Nearly everyday I meet people who either don't know that alternatives to Windows exist or can even see why they should change. I do my best to show them, but some are stuck in their ways and thats fine. Microsoft have done so much damage in that they have severely limited people's ability to not only think outside the box, but simply look and see!.

But things are changing, and if you don't switch to something else today, you will in the not too distant future.

RealistSpy

I love Ubuntu but I fill like a noob using it!

BopNiblets

Try Linux Mint! It's Ubuntu but with codecs and a few other extras.
http://www.linuxmint.com/

An Fear Aniar

BopNiblets wrote: »

Try Linux Mint! It's Ubuntu but with codecs and a few other extras.
http://www.linuxmint.com/

Yeah, Mint is good and saves newcomers a bit of toil.



.

Capt'n Midnight

BopNiblets wrote: »

Try Linux Mint! It's Ubuntu but with codecs and a few other extras.
http://www.linuxmint.com/

It's not ubuntu's fault that many codecs are non-free , that's an issue for the copyright owners

you could legally buy them from here, the prices show why they aren't part of the original build
https://shop.canonical.com/index.php?cPath=19

ultramatix is one way to install them not the prettiest though - but have a look at the apps on the list as ones you may want to install yourself later on
http://www.ubuntugeek.com/ultamatix-install-101-applications-in-one-click-including-gamescodecsapplications.html

Important Note:- After installing this application it might break your system so be careful about this application

for codecs simpliest/cleanest option is to start by getting VLC and see how far you get with it

Grudaire

Hey,

I've installed Ubuntu on my laptop using wubi, so far so good, one problem though is that the screen resolution choice of 800x600 at most (or so it appears in system > preferences > screen resolution), so I was just wondering if it can be stretched to normal levels?

thanks

Webmonkey

Cliste wrote: »

Hey,

I've installed Ubuntu on my laptop using wubi, so far so good, one problem though is that the screen resolution choice of 800x600 at most (or so it appears in system > preferences > screen resolution), so I was just wondering if it can be stretched to normal levels?

thanks

Probably need the graphics drivers installed

Grudaire

Webmonkey wrote: »

Probably need the graphics drivers installed

That was easier then I thought!

Sorry + thanks!:D

Grudaire

Right so I'm trying to sort out the wireless on the laptop (running wubi ubuntu). Now I think I have the solution, the problem is that I started installing madwifi, but I had to stop the install. Anyway here is the page I found the instructions on: http://madwifi-project.org/wiki/UserDocs/FirstTimeHowTo

I'm trying to uninstall the madwifi components so that I can re-try the install. However using the instructions on the above page :

cd scripts
./madwifi-unload
./find-madwifi-modules.sh $(uname -r)
cd ..

I find the following:

ciaran@ubuntu:~/Deasc/madwifi-0.9.4/scripts$ ./madwifi-unload
bash: ./madwifi-unload: No such file or directory
ciaran@ubuntu:~/Deasc/madwifi-0.9.4/scripts$ dir
find-madwifi-modules.sh  get_arch.mk  madwifi-unload.bash  make-release.bash
ciaran@ubuntu:~/Deasc/madwifi-0.9.4/scripts$ madwifi-unload.bash
bash: madwifi-unload.bash: command not found
ciaran@ubuntu:~/Deasc/madwifi-0.9.4/scripts$ cd madwifi-unload
bash: cd: madwifi-unload: No such file or directory
ciaran@ubuntu:~/Deasc/madwifi-0.9.4/scripts$ madwifi-unload.bash
bash: madwifi-unload.bash: command not found
ciaran@ubuntu:~/Deasc/madwifi-0.9.4/scripts$ ./madwifi-unload
bash: ./madwifi-unload: No such file or directory
ciaran@ubuntu:~/Deasc/madwifi-0.9.4/scripts$ ./madwifi-unload.bash
ciaran@ubuntu:~/Deasc/madwifi-0.9.4/scripts$ ./madwifi-unload.bash
ciaran@ubuntu:~/Deasc/madwifi-0.9.4/scripts$ ./find-madwifi-unload-modules.sh $(uname -r)
bash: ./find-madwifi-unload-modules.sh: No such file or directory
ciaran@ubuntu:~/Deasc/madwifi-0.9.4/scripts$ ./find-madwifi-unload-modules.sh $(uname -r)
bash: ./find-madwifi-unload-modules.sh: No such file or directory
ciaran@ubuntu:~/Deasc/madwifi-0.9.4/scripts$ ./find-madwifi-unload-modules.sh $(ciaran -r)
bash: ciaran: command not found
bash: ./find-madwifi-unload-modules.sh: No such file or directory

Anyway to summarise the above I think the problem is with the
./find-madwifi-modules.sh $(uname -r) command, have I misunderstood what uname -r means?

Otherwise I'm in the wrong directory? Maybe?

Any help is appreciated

Orion

uname -r shows you your kernel revision. But the problem looks like madwifi isn't fully installed or that you're in the wrong directory.

Try this:

sudo updatedb
locate madwifi-unload.bash

That'll show you where the script is on your system. If it can't find it then it ain't there which means it's not the problem. What exactly is the problem with your wifi? You may just need to install a firmware - that's what I had to do. In Terminal run 'dmesg' and see if it mentions a firmware. I can't find the details atm but dmesg gave me the download link for it.

FruitLover

You're typing the wrong command. You typed:

./find-madwifi-unload-modules.sh $(uname -r)

it should be:

./find-madwifi-modules.sh $(uname -r)