Tips on moving to Linux?

[Vic20-Ian]

I have upgraded? to a new laptop with Win8.1 - I am very pleased with 8.1 apart from the config and updates - it takes hours / days. All the fuss about Start button was rubbish. You don't need it.

I have tried Mint, Suse and a few other distributions including Ubuntu some time ago on both live and installations. They were ok and a viable choice. I even ran OS/2 trial some years ago

I have an Open Pandora which runs Linux and can also boot to Android.

The main reason I don't use Linux on a daily basis is the need for specific apps like Vic2000 but that is true only for work.

I could switch my home PCs to Linux but there is no burning platform to do so for me...yet

Windows comes pre installed included in the cost of the Laptop - so that is inertia.

I am not so confident to dig into all the system stuff as quickly as I can in Windows or to find the help. I am more confident in DOS. Searching the forums previously was unfriendly.

I like tinkering and solving problems so will try it out again at some point, especially as I have a 2-3 year old Win 7 laptop available to play around with soon - I will see if I can build an emulator box.

In summary I think:

1. I think a lot of people use Windows due to Inertia from Mainstream availability and retail support

2. Key Programs are Windows only.

3. Linux is still not mainstream enough and there is no Killer App (for the masses)

[Boray]

And that's because Windows has so much bigger user base. Most creators don't even bother to make a Linux or even OS-X version of their great app.

Here is the web stats for desktops and laptops for Feb-Mars 2014:
http://gs.statcounter.com/#desktop-os-w ... 201403-bar

Linux has a 1.15% market share. Windows has 89.3% or maybe more as "other" could include older windows versions. Also consider that among those 1.15% there are a bunch of different linuxes and an application could need to be installed in a different way with different package systems in different distributions or depending on what desktop system you are using. And if you install through the included package manager, you will most likely not get the latest version of the program you want to install either.

[groepaz]

Really? This page: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/openness/licenses.aspx Is on Microsoft website and says Microsoft open source licenses are OSI approved.

no, it doesnt say that - try not reading only what you wish to read. what it says is "Microsoft maintains two licenses that have been certified by the Open Source Initiative (OSI).". it does however in no way imply that everything they released as open source uses one of these two licenses (look at the recently released msdos sources for example here. the windows NT sources have been available for eg universities and paying customers under a similar license).

2. Key Programs are Windows only.

i can only partially agree to that.... because the "key programs" for like 99% of private users are "browse web", "read email", "play music", "watch videos" - and linux can do all of that fine, sometimes even more versatile than windows.

[English Invader]

Here is the web stats for desktops and laptops for Feb-Mars 2014:
http://gs.statcounter.com/#desktop-os-w ... 201403-bar

I looked at some of the stats for individual countries and there is a lot of variation in the amount of people that still use XP. In the UK, it's around 8% but in other countries that figure can range from 25% to almost 50%.

Most of the public computers in my local area still use XP and a few years ago I visited a travel agent (Thomas Cook) that was still using Windows 98.

[English Invader]

Anyone here heard of Q4 OS?
http://www.q4os.org/

It's a low spec version of Debian that's been designed to look and operate more or less the same as old school Windows (only infinitely faster and more secure).

Here's a YouTube review for those who want to know more:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_aNuTX4TapE

[rhurst]

And the OT trolling here continues: Linux lack of hardware, add-ons, etc. support, Linux lack of apps, Linux is hard to install and run.

Perhaps for you it is, and I suggest you ask for specific help as ral-clan has. I can't apologize for your issues, frustrations, bigotry based on pointless OT remarks. My posts here are not part of the problem; like Linux, I'm here to be part of the solution.

Start with a Linux distribution: distros. I suggest actually running a LIVE distro, before choosing to install. It doesn't get any easier than that, folks.

What to look for in a Linux distro:

• Understand its application packaging, what's included, what's available, and what works on your platform too, i.e., don't expect Blender to just run well on old hardware, because it's Linux
• plethora of desktop choices to match your platform (particularly the age of the system) and personal tastes
• Hardware: Phoronix, need I list any more?

What to expect from Linux in general with its use of your hardware:

• Audio: ALSA sound card matrix
• Video: start here with Mesa 3D, also graphics hardware
• Productivity: office and content management
• Games: idk, if not a bunch of emulators then perhaps Steam?

My personal Linux choice: I endorse Red Hat's community edition, Fedora. I've used it since Red Hat acquired it in 2003 as Fedora Core. Since I am in the business of IT systems engineering, using Fedora to me is also practical in the educational sense. I get to wade through the "futures" that are coming in Red Hat's enterprise offerings. It helps to keep me ahead on the curve. I was a KDE desktop fan in its early years, but switched over to Gnome, going 9-years back. I also leverage RPM repositories, such as RPM Fusion and the others listed, because they integrate nicely for those free (emulators) and non-free (A/V codecs) packages with Fedora.

I've used Puppy Linux for older systems that were made for Windows '98 through XP era, because it integrates (with smart scripting in its startup) recent Linux releases with lighter-weighted apps to run on older hardware chipsets.

Finally, this older but short video (appropriate for this audience) may help you understand just the OS, Linux:
[youtube]yVpbFMhOAwE[/youtube]

For those few here in need of more Linux propaganda or "stats", see more videos from The Linux Foundation:

• over 1.3M Android smart phones activated daily
• (most of) the 700,000 TVs sold every day
• 8 out of 10 of the world's financial transactions
• 98% of the super computers around the world
• servers powering Google, Facebook and Amazon

[Boray]

• over 1.3M Android smart phones activated daily
• (most of) the 700,000 TVs sold every day
• 8 out of 10 of the world's financial transactions
• 98% of the super computers around the world
• servers powering Google, Facebook and Amazon

Linux is free and therefor very cost effective. It's also suitable for specialized embedded systems. That doesn't mean it's the best choice for a music making home computer user (which ral-clan is). OT Trolling? I guess you need to have linux as some kind of religion to se it like that. It's all about opinions and experiences. Even when you post benchmark results or stuff like that, die-hard linux fans always have objections. Windows being faster and more stable is my experience. For die-hard-linux users, suggesting Windows is better in any aspect is more or less blasphemy. I would actually love if there was a free alternative that is more usable to me than Windows Vista, but unfortunately there isn't.

[Vic 2000]

I would actually love if there was a free alternative that is more usable to me than Windows Vista, but unfortunately there isn't.

Same thing for me. I really whish that more Linux users could understand that. And it's not because i can't browse the web, sending mails or visit Facebook without Windows 7.

[rhurst]

Vic 2000, you are trolling again, plain and simple, stay on topic, enough said.

Boray, I am certainly no audiophile, so none of my replies to help ral-clan addressed any of that, except for resource pointers to Linux hardware drivers, since he mentioned something about using a professional audio card and was hoping he might find some use for it under Linux (not a requirement for dual-booting, eh?). I'd like to think there have been advancements in the audio space, considering the machine / add-on used here is "an XP-era machine".

So the point here is about longevity with software support. Dual-booting an XP machine with Linux is a viable option to do just that, especially after next week. Else, buy a new machine, right? Don't pay $200 for a newer OS to run badly (and it will run badly, bud, Microsoft OS trends have only had increasing machine requirements) on an older machine worth less than $100.

How did you help your credibility here by mentioning you're a Vista user? Just poking fun by the negative press it received, although I myself did personally invest in Vista64 (and every Microsoft Windows OS, including Me) and have no issue with that OS -- except for anyone choosing to running it on bare-metal. But it was a long wait for the Windows 7 upgrade option!

That said, if audio were the thread's topic, aren't there better and more usable audio apps on Apple machines? Why did you choose Windows (and Vista) to do that? Besides, aren't any of these featured worth exploring (below) on Linux? Point being there are plenty of usable Linux apps and software support, and will continue to run on an XP era machine. You don't need a workstation built like mine to run Linux apps, but you do when you run multiple OSes on it, including my personal Windows XP (32-bit) and Windows 7 desktops, and of course RHEL servers.

[Vic 2000]

Most people in the Ubuntu forum was dealing with tasks as programming, networking and such stuff. Then Linux is fine. But if you're dealing a lot with audio and graphics, the support isn't good anymore.

Just to make things very clear.

Please. Give me a sensible alternative to these Windows apps.

Samplitude
http://www.samplitude.com/en/
Waves (the best vst plugins money can buy and industri standard)
http://www.waves.com/specials?gclid=CKj ... cgodJQkALw
Cubase
http://www.steinberg.net/en/home.html

And please, don't suggest apps as Rosegarden or Ubuntu Studio.

In fact, you can't even give me one sensible alternative to this small app.
http://www.ghisler.com/

Belive me, i have tried them all, not even one comes close to the excellence of Total Commander.

Why?

Because of this...

Please, browse the huge base of packer, listing, FS and content plugins and suggest ONE commander for Linux that supports the same.
http://www.totalcmd.net/

And that's just two of the reasons that i can't use Linux as my main OS, because i wouldn't last one day without the apps i just mentioned.

And if you call my postings for "trolling", go ahead and show me things that replaces my listed apps, else don't even suggest that i would switch to Linux and stop calling people for trolls.

[joshuadenmark]

Let us try to keep our forum as friendly as our vic

Nice evening to you all

[Boray]

How did you help your credibility here by mentioning you're a Vista user?

Well, at least it shows I don't just take people's word for things but try them out myself and make my own judgment. Vista is just fine if you have enough hardware to run it and don't use the default cpu throttling settings. I will answer your questions about audio tomorrow. I have to sleep now.

[rhurst]

go ahead and show me things that replaces my listed apps, else don't even suggest that i would switch to Linux and stop calling people for trolls.

Dude, just answering the poster's LISTED questions like I did. You went all OT and TILT on everyone of your replies. Not all of it was bad or wrong-doing, mind you, but if there was any part of your responses that were for the original issue at hand, it got lost quickly by your other "stuff", eh?

BTW, you can stuff your 16-bit shareware file commander app with a noted feature of "long names (>259 characters)" support. Everything I need from Gnome's file browser "just works" out of the box, thank you.

I'm not an audiophile (amateur or professional) and it wasn't part of the thread's discussion. And if I were, I would probably use an Apple or Sony product, the giants in the multimedia industry, not Linux nor Windows. My development work with audio is usually limited to the command-line, using ffmpeg and sox. I listed the "featured" audio group only from Fedora to point out that there are apps (tons of them). What's wrong with Ardour, and there are a few more, some focused on MIDI, some on samples, some on composing, some on actually rendering and writing sheet music too. I'm not just going to toss out something special, and say give me something to counter that. We'd be here all day and accomplish nothing, and that's called trolling. Can't you see and agree to that?

[rhurst]

5-minute walkthru Fedora 20 minimal desktop on an old laptop that used to run XP issued from work. Press Ctrl-Alt-Shift-R to toggle recording, built-in feature. ffmpeg used to convert open codec to MPEG in about 3-minutes. Drag and drop onto Youtube for upload.
[youtube]ukkesPPjlNE[/youtube]

[rhurst]

Same deal with the desktop done with this capture to browse just the Fedora software repository, just a click & run operation.
[youtube]Oy7vF2VxR6E[/youtube]