4 posters

I have a new laptop and am thinking of getting linux. Help me choose.

Psalter: River-God

Post n°1

I have a new laptop and am thinking of getting linux. Help me choose.

Psalter Sun May 10, 2009 4:00 pm

Okay, I have new laptop with only 2 Gig ram and a 2.61 Ghz (intel) processor.

Now, it has linux installed, and I don't mind the interface at all... it is almost a natural progression from XP... but it is very heavy on the Ram and power.

So, I thought linux would be a good option as I hear some will run well on only 256 ram.

But there is so many forms of linux, what do I choose?

I want an interface similar to XP except prettier. I want something safe and tested, and I want something that doesn't require a lot of memory to run.

Help.
Help me master5o1 kenobi, you're my only hope.

master5o1

master5o1: Cyclopes

Post n°2

Re: I have a new laptop and am thinking of getting linux. Help me choose.

master5o1 Sun May 10, 2009 9:25 pm

Go Go Ubuntu!

It's the simplest and easiest to use. Requires no more than 500mb ram (although might use more depending on wtf is with your system)

And...free cds man...free cds Razz

http://shipit.ubuntu.com Wink

Psalter

Psalter: River-God

Post n°3

Re: I have a new laptop and am thinking of getting linux. Help me choose.

Psalter Sun May 10, 2009 9:48 pm

master5o1 wrote:Go Go Ubuntu!

It's the simplest and easiest to use. Requires no more than 500mb ram (although might use more depending on wtf is with your system)

And...free cds man...free cds

http://shipit.ubuntu.com

Okay, sell ubuntu to me better than that. Videos of it in action are recommended. Also, inb4 no virii, I am pretty damn safe.

Psalter

Psalter: River-God

Post n°4

Re: I have a new laptop and am thinking of getting linux. Help me choose.

Psalter Sun May 10, 2009 9:56 pm

Also, I have a few microsoft products that I am comfortable with and don't wish to switch back to open office. Is MS office compatible? Can you install games on ubuntu?

If I install ubuntu, could I go back to vista from back-up disks?

superarmy

superarmy: Nymph

Post n°5

Re: I have a new laptop and am thinking of getting linux. Help me choose.

superarmy Sun May 10, 2009 10:16 pm

Psalter wrote:Also, I have a few microsoft products that I am comfortable with and don't wish to switch back to open office. Is MS office compatible? Can you install games on ubuntu?

If I install ubuntu, could I go back to vista from back-up disks?

You could always use a split partition to have both vista and ubuntu. I honestly have no idea if Word works on ubuntu because everyone uses open office as it appears to be identical. You can install games on ubuntu through a programme called Wine but it's some what schizophrenic in it's compatibility.

And heres a video

master5o1

master5o1: Cyclopes

Post n°6

Re: I have a new laptop and am thinking of getting linux. Help me choose.

master5o1 Sun May 10, 2009 11:49 pm

I do not have Jedi mind control.

Psalter

Psalter: River-God

Post n°7

Re: I have a new laptop and am thinking of getting linux. Help me choose.

Psalter Mon May 11, 2009 4:22 pm

I have ordered it... can you get skins for open office that make it look like word (latest)?

I think I am sold on snazzy cube thing... though I don't really see the point yet.

SA, you are new to ubuntu right? How easy was it to pick up?

superarmy

superarmy: Nymph

Post n°8

Re: I have a new laptop and am thinking of getting linux. Help me choose.

superarmy Mon May 11, 2009 5:18 pm

Psalter wrote:I have ordered it... can you get skins for open office that make it look like word (latest)?

I think I am sold on snazzy cube thing... though I don't really see the point yet.

SA, you are new to ubuntu right? How easy was it to pick up?

Um I'm not sure if you can get skins to do that.

And people use the cude because it looks cool, and then make fun of your windows using friends by saying, "So what can you OS do?". Some people who are very clever can utilize the cube very well, but one desktop suits me fine.

I started using ubuntu late 2007, essentially I came in with no clue of what I was doing and to be quiet honest it was hell. If you want I could write up a list of stuff that doesn't seem to click coming straight from Windows, every time I install it on a friend computer I do have to give them a general run down of "how to linux", once you get used to it it's bliss.

Psalter

Psalter: River-God

Post n°9

Re: I have a new laptop and am thinking of getting linux. Help me choose.

Psalter Mon May 11, 2009 7:48 pm

It will be while before I get linux but if you don't mind typing up a "how to" that would be fantastic. If it works well, I will get a 500 gig HDD for the PS3 and install yellow dog.

master5o1

master5o1: Cyclopes

Post n°10

Re: I have a new laptop and am thinking of getting linux. Help me choose.

master5o1 Tue May 12, 2009 1:08 am

Regarding multiple desktops,

I tend to have my torrent client in one desktop and my media in another...(where the first desktop is general ++ firefox ++ etc)

It's really handy having the desktop wall and expo when you have a virtual machine running. Having XP/Vista/Seven full screened in one desktop, then just switch into the other 3 (or theoretical infinite) desktops for other things. One could even run three virtual machines and have 4 firefox browsers open (all being different OS versions).

master5o1

master5o1: Cyclopes

Post n°11

Re: I have a new laptop and am thinking of getting linux. Help me choose.

master5o1 Tue May 12, 2009 12:42 pm

http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/05/11/160254

OpenOffice UI Design Proposals Published

An anonymous reader writes "Various members of the OpenOffice.org community have been submitting their first revisions of proposals to the OpenOffice.org Call for Design Proposals to redesign the user interface of Open Office. As part of Project Renaissance, attention is being drawn to the OpenOffice user interface, and it's 'user-friendliness.' Among the designs, is FLUX UI, which won an award at the Sun Microsystems Community Innovation Awards Program. Anyone can, and is encouraged, to check out the proposals (scroll to bottom of page) and leave your comments so that the designers can improve their designs for the final deadline for proposal submissions to the community."

Psalter

Psalter: River-God

Post n°12

Re: I have a new laptop and am thinking of getting linux. Help me choose.

Psalter Thu May 28, 2009 8:49 pm

I have started using ubuntu from the disc... it seems simple enough except (pause for emphasis)... I can't get on to my wireless network. There seems to be no way to scan for wireless networks.

Help me master 5o1 kenobi, you're my only hope.

master5o1

master5o1: Cyclopes

Post n°13

Re: I have a new laptop and am thinking of getting linux. Help me choose.

master5o1 Thu May 28, 2009 9:28 pm

Psalter wrote:I have started using ubuntu from the disc... it seems simple enough except (pause for emphasis)... I can't get on to my wireless network. There seems to be no way to scan for wireless networks.

Help me master 5o1 kenobi, you're my only hope.

Wait...which disc? 9.04?

It should be as simple as in the top right corner and clicking through to find Network Manager Wink

However, you may have a shitty* wifi card....

simple (command line) way of scanning for networks (which affects what Network Manager sees in its menu) is running the command
`iwlist scanning`

If you run it as `sudo iwlist scanning` then you may have greater chance of seeing all the networks available. Strangely, I find iwlist scanning flawed compared to a true wireless sniffer such as the one provided in the aircrack-ng suite of wifi software (wifi cracking, etc).

Psalter

Psalter: River-God

Post n°14

Re: I have a new laptop and am thinking of getting linux. Help me choose.

Psalter Thu May 28, 2009 11:57 pm

Okay, I am on linux... and it is fine.

Now I just need to know how to access my windows documents... can I?

Also, since I will now be using FF instead of chrome, what are the essential add ons?

Lastly, how do I find my HDD info... also wtf does "The upgrade needs a total of 110M free space on disk '/'. Please free at least an additional 75.2M of disk space on '/'. Empty your trash and remove temporary packages of former installations using 'sudo apt-get clean'." Mean?

I haven't got anything on the computer as far as I can tell.