Ubuntu

[Apech]

Hi,

 

Having moved from Windoze 98 and then XP to an iBook and then a MacBook a few years ago ... and sworn never to return ... I find that I am now resenting the 2X or 3X mark up in price from a reasonable lap-top to a MacBook pro ... Apple stuff is way over priced there is no doubt and I think its a bubble that will burst in the next few years.

 

SO ... I am thinking of buying a decent mid range Windows Lap-top and putting Ubuntu on it. I've used Ubuntu at the local library and it seems ok. I've looked at 12.10 and 12.04 ... does anyone use this now? What's it like? Good to use ... any probs. Compare to OSX??? Which version should I go for ... is Unity OK?

 

Thanks in advance to anyone who knows!

 

Apech.

[thelerner]

A bit off off topic.

The mac mini starts at $599, got mine as a refurbished model from Apple for $529 and added memory for $40 to get it up to 8mb. Still expensive but .. quiet reliable, virus free and part of the Apple connectivity group.

 

Looking forward to answers about Linux though.

Edited November 14, 2012 by thelerner

[Apech]

Yes I've thought about a mini but I still think I want the portability of a lap top.

[Apech]

Thanks ... do you have any general opinions about it ... would you use it yourself?

[Apech]

No I don't do gaming ... just internet and word processing really and I use Neooffice (which is Openoffice) which I think is bundled with Ubuntu.

 

I saw there were some criticisms of Unity which is the GUI but I'm not sure if that's just fussing really and also that 12.10 runs very much slower than 12.04 (which I think is the previous stable release). So I was thinking of getting 12.04.

[GrandmasterP]

Very wise staying away from Apple. This new iPad is less than versatile. It won't even word process unless I buy something called an App. I am hearing good things about the Kindle Fire at just £159-00.

[GreytoWhite]

I hear wonderful things about an Ubuntu side project called Mint. It has the Cinnamon and the MATE GUI which are both much closer to the Gnome 2 desktop environment. Gnome 2 was very close to Mac OS X in appearance but there seems to be a movement within the Linux community to further differentiate their GUI from the competition of Mac OS and Windoze. Mint is also considered to be the easiest Linux distribution to use.

 

Pinguy looks to be an Ubuntu variation that may be of interest to you. It is very easy to use, by default the GUI is very similar to Mac OS X in appearance and has all of the normal Ubuntu support.

 

Another good choice may be Fedora Core or OpenSUSE. Both of these have great productivity features and support available as well as being very stable. Although Linus Torvalds himself apparently HATES OpenSUSE which is like saying Lao Zi is unhappy with a certain lineage's take on his philosophy.

 

Remember with Linux you may have to install certain things that are against the philosophy of open source such as Adobe Flash just to use the Internet how you are accustomed but this is a rarity now. Most normal user oriented distributions include this material by default.

[Apech]

@Mithshrike

 

Thanks! I am a bit dazzled by all this ... have watched a couple of youtube vids on mint and pinguy. I like the look of pinguy ... but I wonder ... which one is best if you are switching from OSX?? Any ideas?

[ralis]

@Mithshrike

 

Thanks! I am a bit dazzled by all this ... have watched a couple of youtube vids on mint and pinguy. I like the look of pinguy ... but I wonder ... which one is best if you are switching from OSX?? Any ideas?

 

There is a problem with drivers on any open source Linux. I know some that have written driver software which led to many problems. I finally broke down and upgraded from Vista to Windows 7 which is a much better OS.

[GreytoWhite]

@ralis

 

The drivers issues typically effect odd OEM hardware of the newer or cheaper models. Typically if you buy a decent laptop that is 2 years old or less Linux will not have much trouble with the drivers so long as you are willing to stray from open source occasionally. I personally don't care about the philosophy, I just want it to work and it usually does so quite well once I've done my tinkering. My old Ubuntu machine circa 2009 ran very solid. I didn't restart it for over 270 days once. It took me a while but once I got things working properly it was great.

 

@Apech

 

There is a distribution called Zorin OS that is based on Ubuntu. If you donate to their project you can then get a GUI that is almost identical to Mac OS X from what I understand. Their free version looks almost like Windows 7 from what I've seen. Still, I don't like that they make you donate just to get a different GUI appearance that is close to something else.

 

Between Mint and Pinguy I would personally go with Pinguy. It has a lot of software pre-installed and you don't have to go digging through the software repository. Since both are based on Ubuntu the main difference is in the GUI which are both somewhat similar. They should be equally easy to install and configure. You may want to have an alternate computer available during initial setup so you can look up fixes to your issues if any arise. Typically Ubuntu based installs are SUPER easy.

 

Unlike Daoist arts you CAN learn Linux from a book and many of the more hardcore Linux communities will tell you repeatedly to RTFM or read the fucking manual. For the most part you can find what you need on the Ubuntu community which is fairly welcoming in comparison the tl;dr rtfm crowd. The funny thing is that both Linux and Mac OS X are based on UNIX and there have been some interesting parallel developments.

 

If you're looking for a decently priced WIntel machine I could not recommend the Dell Outlet more. Sign up for an account and be sure to subscribe to their newsletter via e-mail. About once or twice a month they e-mail coupons of 15-25% off of their already low prices. I always recommend getting a graphics card other than Intel's HD option if available simply because you can use that graphics card to help the overall speed of your computer even if you don't game. Flash and Web videos in H.264 will be processed by the graphics card instead of the CPU. H.265 is coming up quickly, I wouldn't trust Intel's crap graphics hardware to do well at all. Another thing is distributed computing if you're into that sort of thing, you can contribute quite a bit more with a decent graphics card that also does computational function.

[GreytoWhite]

Apech and other Mac users: this might be a bit out of your comfort zone technically speaking, I couldn't say, but it would be a great option to see how you like Linux.

 

http://lifehacker.com/5934942/how-to-dual-boot-linux-on-your-mac-and-take-back-your-powerhouse-apple-hardware

[Apech]

Apech and other Mac users: this might be a bit out of your comfort zone technically speaking, I couldn't say, but it would be a great option to see how you like Linux.

 

http://lifehacker.co...-apple-hardware

 

That's an interesting idea but I'm quite happy with OSX 10.6 and I want to buy a second machine and keep this one as it is. The hard drive is only 76 GB and I know I could easily upgrade (I have upgraded the RAM) but again its getting old this machine and the fan is making a constant buzzing ... so I thats why I was thinking a Windows machine with Ubuntu ... but some people say Windows 7 is good enough ... ah well choices choices ...

[三江源]

Just stop mucking about and get more Apple. Just because you like the word UBUNTU is no reason to do anything more than wander round the house saying it a lot.

[Apech]

Just stop mucking about and get more Apple. Just because you like the word UBUNTU is no reason to do anything more than wander round the house saying it a lot.

 

You are clearly psychic ... I love saying Ubuntu and also Linux Mint ...

[三江源]

Linux Mint smokes turkish cigarettes and carries a battered copy of "Vile Bodies" in his briefcase. He's an Iris Murdoch character. And lives in West Hampstead.

[Apech]

Linux Mint smokes turkish cigarettes and carries a battered copy of "Vile Bodies" in his briefcase. He's an Iris Murdoch character. And lives in West Hampstead.

 

Ubuntu listens to Bebop, drinks rum and has dreadlocks. He wears shades at night and does his own thang. Obviously he can play a mean tenor sax.

[Apech]

 

Were you not aware of these facts?

[Apech]

Apparently I have not been getting to know my operating systems well enough...

 

Try a night on the tiles with the Windows Eight.

[Thunder_Gooch]

My vote is for linux mint 14 32bit cinnamon

 

http://torrents.linuxmint.com/torrents/linuxmint-14-cinnamon-dvd-32bit-rc.iso.torrent

[GreytoWhite]

MPG is there a specific reason you recommend the 32-bit over the 64-bit? I know Flash finally updated late last year for a 64-bit release on Linux and that was the main detractor I knew of against 64-bit but that has been addressed.

[Thunder_Gooch]

MPG is there a specific reason you recommend the 32-bit over the 64-bit? I know Flash finally updated late last year for a 64-bit release on Linux and that was the main detractor I knew of against 64-bit but that has been addressed.

 

I've run into many issues with multiarch support issues trying to run some 32-bit packages along with 64-bit ones. I think in the future this will be worked out, but I just always stick with the 32bit as my machine isn't that amazing anyway.

Edited November 18, 2012 by More_Pie_Guy

[johndoe2012]

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Edited August 18, 2013 by chris d

[Thunder_Gooch]

I like xubuntu as well

 

We use iOS, Debian and Windows at home for different needs.

 

Multi arch support is supposed to be fixed in Debian wheezy. Debian has higher quality packages than Ubuntu.

 

Ubuntu syncs their packages from Debian unstable and inherits the Debian tools.

 

Personally I just use xfce as my desktop environment. It is fast and stays out of the way.

 

I started using Linux in the old mandrake / red hat days - a long time ago :-)

[Videodrome]

I have a Netbook and used Wubi to make it a dual boot. So I have both Windows XP and ubuntu desktop. I like the flexibility of having both.

 

IMO Ubuntu is great for using a Netbook just to browse the web. My GUI install came with Firefox.

 

However, there can be media compatability licensing issues. I don't think it's possible to stream Netflix in Ubuntu(because it requires Microsoft Silverlight). MP3 also seemed to have licensing issues but I think there are work arounds for it. So if you're managing music files it could be a minor annoyance.

[GreytoWhite]

You might be able to get Silverlight to work through Wine.