Comments on: From Vista to Linux (It was a lot easier than I thought)

By: donna

donna — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 17:08:19 +0000

Linux talibans, what a prick! Get a life you facist moron. Linux is open source, look it up. It’s the way forward, even Microsoft is going open source. 10 years to late mind but hey ho, nothing changes…

By: links for 2009-02-25 « My place

links for 2009-02-25 « My place — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 05:15:58 +0000

[...] Chris Wiegman – From Vista to Linux (It was a lot easier than I thought) Like many I had been looking for a way to get my office computer off of Windows for some time. I had played around with various Linux distros and even Mac for about 5 years, but I always had some excuse as to why I couldn’t just make the switch. Usually this amounted to “but what would I do without [insert app here].” For the most part I use my computers for web development as well as a little software development as well as networking with friends and colleagues. I don’t play games and I don’t have to work with many proprietary applications so the idea that I couldn’t replace the apps I use with those available on Linux was a little less founded. (tags: linux ubuntu windows reference tools vista migrate) [...]

By: paul

paul — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 20:39:27 +0000

You do know Bill and Steve will not like this!! They will not like this at all!!

All your computers belong to us!! Resistance is FUTILE!! (Microsoft, aka the Borg).

By: sgtrock

sgtrock — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 18:38:59 +0000

One note on Web development. Check out KDE’s web development tools, especially Quanta Plus. It’s a great WYSIWYG tool for quickly banging out pages. As far as potential stability of KDE 4 goes, I’d recommend 3.5 right now anyhow.

P.S. You don’t have to abandon Gnome to use any KDE apps, btw. Synaptic will just load the dependent libraries just for the kdewebdev metapackage for KDE 3.5.

More detail on the apps in and their capabilities at http://www.kdewebdv.org

By: BobbyC

BobbyC — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 17:58:07 +0000

I have been using Linux since Fedora Core 2 back in 2004. I ran a dual boot with Windows up until about 2007. After that it didn’t make any sense for me to have Windows installed on my machines. Ubuntu is ok and it is popular. I really like the package manager. The repositories are huge. But I run my own remasterd version of PCLinuxOS which is lightning fast, extremely stable and I can run MS office or Photoshop from my desktop in either wine or in the virtualbox. On my machines windows runs faster in the virtualbox than it does installed to a hard drive. If a peron has the ram to support optimal windows performance in the box it should run very fast.

By: Toby Haynes

Toby Haynes — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 16:13:49 +0000

You have more options in the Graphic space than you mention.

If you need something that can cope with more colourspaces/depths than GIMP 2.6, you can try one of

Krita (GPL, http://www.koffice.org/krita/)
Cinepaint (GPL, http://www.cinepaint.org/)
Pixel (Commercial ~ $40, http://www.kanzelsberger.com/pixel/)

One of the nice things about Linux is the amount of choice.

By: Roy

Roy — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 16:12:22 +0000

I heart all of you fuddy wintrolls. Reading your comments always brightens up my day. Sure, your scare-mongering may stop a few gullible users from making the switch in the first place, but you know only too keenly that none of what you say will ever make anyone switch back. The only things that will are software/hardware incompatibilities users experience for themselves, and they are becoming less of a problem every day. Take a moment to think about that.

Seeing as wintrolls love to post spurious anecdotal evidence without any evidence to back it up, here’s mine. My girlfriend made the switch a while back. Things she loved:

the general speediness of the whole system, regardless of the amount of software installed;
never having to defrag;
more music software than you can shake a stick at;
regular, simple, bundled updates for every programme installed;
the joy of not having to bother with anti-virus: sane permissions, strong firewall;
the customisation options to make everything look pretty;
compiz and virtual desktops, natch.

Things she hated:
getting her mp3 player to work was a pain (uses the crappy Micrsoft system);
getting her phone to sync properly was also a pain;
getting her graphics tablet to work was a pain (but now works out of the box in Ubuntu 8.10).

Note that none of these issues were enough to make her switch back. And when you think about it, those are pretty huge issues. And yet still she stuck it out, learnt a few tricks, and got it all to work, largely thanks to the folks over at the ubuntu help forums.

Does the fact that free and open source software does nothing but gain marketshare scare you wintrolls? I suppose it ought to. Once people taste chocolate, who the hell wants crackers?

By: Chris

Chris — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 15:51:36 +0000

I’m glad that you found happiness with ubuntu 8.10. I’ve dual booted it at least four times and uninstalled it too before I pulled my hair out. I don’t understand why it took you so long to boot windows. Mine boots in seconds. As for ubuntu, did your printer immediately work? I know I had to go to about 10 forums before I could find something to install that would make my printer work. After all, what good is a computer without a printer and ubuntu does not make it easy. Then there were the games. If you want to play a game, you have to reboot back to windows. Eye candy? Vista provides that without driving you crazy. If I want a headache, I can pound my head against the wall, that’s what ubuntu did for me. I didn’t give up easily as I said but gosh, who wants to have to go crazy making their computer work. Enjoy, you must be working for ubuntu people.

By: Fapper

Fapper — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 15:41:48 +0000

I couldn’t live without Windows…no seriously. I’m in IT and Microsoft keeps me employed.

By: Multi-Platform User

Multi-Platform User — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 15:24:26 +0000

I find it interesting that all these people that have negative comments about Linux seem to be scared of change. I have a news flash for you guys. Windows is on its way out. If you are in the industry I would suggest you get familiar and use all other platforms or you will be out of a job as the world switches to open-source or Macintosh. Both of these are better options to get things done than windows. Before I get flamed. I use all of the stated operating system and if I have my choice I would take Linux, Mac, BSD, Solaris, Windows in that order.

By: Norlick

Norlick — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 05:31:38 +0000

I’m in a similar position man.
I installed Ubuntu through Wubi as a kinda plaything, two weeks later and I no longer use Windows. That’s pretty impressive considering I’d never even considered linux before then.
I kept it for gaming, but got bored of that too and deleted Windows completely.

Web Development was actually much better for me on Ubuntu.
I use Geany(I’m too paranoid for WYSIWYG), Photoshop CS2(through WINE, works flawlessly), XAMPP and VirtualBox(Running Windows 7 very nicely).
For one, I was shocked at how quickly VirtualBox runs — its as if I’m running the OS on an actual dedicated PC, and had no performance impact on Ubuntu.

Ubuntu is like Windows though — it does alot of things right, but also has some headfucks over certain things.
I’d say Ubuntu has much less headfucks than Windows though

By: Don Sild

Don Sild — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 22:22:42 +0000

Hello Everyone, don’t listen to M$ sales persons flaming here, they get paid for this kind of behavior.
I too used windows from 3.11 to XP, and never had a problem with it. Windows is not bad, but there is a better OS and it is called Ubuntu. Why is it better?
* File system is faster
* Memory usage is a lot better (uses less) and it uses no page file unless all physical memory runs out.
* Very powerful comman line, you can automate everything, fix everything
* OS itself and the directory structure is much easier to understand
* Logs everything, whatever causes problems you can look it up and usually there is a solution
* When there is a hang-up, then no restart is needed, just Alt-Ctrl-Backspace for 2 sec window system restart
* Multiple desktops – productivity grows to the roof with some tasks, believe me, you need to try Alt-Ctrl + arrow keys when you need to use a doc or something. It is actually better that 2 monitors (don’t have to drag windows).
* USB key “turns on” a lot faster
* Boot-up time is a lot faster when replacing enterprise windows (SMS, startup security scripts, anti-virus etc). In lot of firms even hard-core developers need to use antivirus, because when you don’t admins will kick you out of the domain, but not with linux
- There are some games, but i prefer to use a console for gaming. Some windows games work also – like GTA San Andreas, Warcraft 3, but most don’t work.
- Some forum posts teaching something can be hazardous, don’t ever use a command line command if you don’t understand what it does. Linux is made to be a slave for it’s user (yes you can call user a master). There isn’t a thing user (admin of the system) can’t do, but you have to know what you are doing in order to be successful at it.

Last word: Don’t be afraid, use it, think about peace of mind and time you save using the system, it’s priceless.

By: BiffSocko

BiffSocko — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 15:37:06 +0000

My parents use Linux as well. My dad is in his 70’s and has never used a computer for anything. He’s had no problems learning how to surf the web, print pictures, use email or write documents/spreadsheets under Linux. Linux is not difficult to use, its simply a matter of changing your expectations.

By: BiffSocko

BiffSocko — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 15:30:22 +0000

The problem I see that everyone is having is that they want LInux to be like windows and to perform some tasks exactly the way that windows performs them. That itself is the fundemental problem. They are different, they shouldn’t be the same. I personally experience quite the opposite .. I’m a long time Linux user, when I’m forced to use windows, I try to adapt it to my Linux tastes by installing cygwin. Unfortunatly that too is frustrating.

If you want a seamless transisition to either environment, start using only tools that are available in both places. For development, start using something like Eclipse. For office apps, use Openoffice when you can. Start using GIMP.

Now as a Linux guy, when I’m stuck in Windows hell, I can just download the apps that I’m used to and can become productive right away. I can work in either environment effectivly. The same goes for you Windows folks. When you decide to migrate or have to do work on a linux desktop, you’ll be able to use the tools that you have experience with.

As for you Windows guys balking about making the transition to Linux; thats fine, stay with Windows. We Linux users don’t care what you use. Frankly, we own the server space, and we don’t want our OS being dumbed down for everone.

With the GNU project, most if not all NEW OS’s will be UNIX/Linux like. You simply need to write a kernel and then import all the programs from GNU into your OS distribution. By sticking with Windows, you are making yourself a dinosaur.

By: Sue

Sue — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 15:17:04 +0000

Off of is not good British English. You get off a horse not off of a horse.

By: Darren

Darren — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 11:10:29 +0000

One thing I couldn’t do without now is the symlink
No not a shortcut, but a proper filesystem level symlink. I use these all over the place.

By: Dissapointed with you people

Dissapointed with you people — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 06:46:36 +0000

I hate the anti-Linux comments that posts like this always draw. They clearly think so highly of themselves that they feel they can speak for “the average user”. It saddens me to know that they are scaring people away from their options just because they themselves can’t cope with a change of scenery. It’s not the fault of the product, guys, it’s your own inability to use the product.

Saying you tried something “for kicks” shows just how little your opinion is worth – it’s when the crunch hit and you put some ass into it that things matter.. that’s how most of us got into Windows, after all. We didn’t just try it “for kicks”, it was what we were dragged into, sometimes kicking and screaming. It just seems that some of us are too terrified of repeating that to genuinely put some effort into learning another OS. No matter how much like Windows the Linux world tries to be, you’ll always find a nit to pick. Your opinions are therefore pointless – stay where you are, no one wants you to change.

I’ve “converted” dozens of people to Linux, OS X and others. You know what? They couldn’t be happier. Sure, they have problems. But this mythical “everything will blow up in your face” attitude is a complete farce. In fact, I’ve followed up on several people who have told me that they were more willing to put up with all of the niggling little issues in OS X/Linux than go back to Windows again. Don’t put words in their mouth and pretend that they rely on the same stuff you do – they just don’t. Not everyone needs Photoshop.

Also, I’m confused by Underdog.. what do you think Ubuntu is all about? Shuttleworth certainly hasn’t invested $0 in the effort. Many people will tell you that Ubuntu has forced the Linux landscape to a new tier of quality, pulling a lot of other common distributions up with it. It certainly is imperfect, but then neither is OS X. What exactly are you looking for? Steve Jobs and Bill Gates converting to Linux?

By: GoblinX Project » GoblinX Newsletter, Issue 188 (02/22/2009)

GoblinX Project » GoblinX Newsletter, Issue 188 (02/22/2009) — Sun, 22 Feb 2009 11:47:43 +0000

[...] http://www.chriswiegman.com/2009/02/ [...]

By: underdog

underdog — Sat, 21 Feb 2009 17:44:00 +0000

Linux fans have been saying that very same thing for many, many years now.

Truth is, Linux is not designed for that, and never will be… unless someone with piles of money comes and pull something like OS X. Not very likely to happen.

By: axel

axel — Sat, 21 Feb 2009 15:39:10 +0000

Michael surely it isn’t for the casual computer user but I believe it has made a great progress towards this direction the last years.