Linux, anyone?

[BlackStar]

I've been playing around with Linux since 1997 or so. I haven't made the jump from Windows mostly for compatibility with children's games. Games are just about the only reason I have left for sticking with Windows.

Has anyone switched to Linux on the desktop at home?

[werty316]

No games and no..... games make me crazy. I could live without games so I would never consider Linux. I grew up using windows and so windows it is. I prefer to stick with the norm for compatibility reasons and the games of course.

[BlackStar]

That's the same here. I'm using Open Office instead of MS office, FireFox instead of Explorer, but I just can't make myself get rid of Windows!

[werty316]

Same here with Firefox but I use Microsoft Office. I got it free and it works so why not.

[Bryan]

I had a dual boot with Red Hat until a HD crash took it away. I'm about to give Ubuntu a try. Looks pretty promising. I am so sick of spyware, malware, and bugs that I could easily convert to Linux if I can find good apps for DVD authoring, Usenet retrieval, and disc burning. Not that those three activities are related, of course. :roll:

[werty316]

I have never gotten a virus or spyware in a very long time. Probably years. You just gotta avoid those warez site and pron, yes pron too tehe.

[Bryan]

I have never gotten a virus or spyware in a very long time. Probably years. You just gotta avoid those warez site and pron, yes pron too tehe.
You may want to check the scanner you're using. One of our PC's is only used for webmail, homework, and g-rated farting around. I am 100% certain it never sees pr0n or warez. But the ZoneAlarm spyware scanner, SpyBot, and AdAware find crap on it every time they run.

[werty316]

I use Ad-Aware and NOD32 and run them once a week. Ad-Aware more so aobut 3 times a week and they find nothing. I think if you don't clear your cookies cache Ad-Aware will find some stuff but not bad stuff just cookies. After a days use try cleaning the cache of IE and FireFox and see if Ad-Aware finds anything. It should unless you do have stuff on there that is bad. My brother recently got his internet cut off because he had a trojan. We both use the same ISP. Others on the same ISP got it too but not me. Using a 4rd party firewall helps and not using th build in firewall.

[NuclearRampage]

I had a dual boot with Red Hat until a HD crash took it away. I'm about to give Ubuntu a try. Looks pretty promising. I am so sick of spyware, malware, and bugs that I could easily convert to Linux if I can find good apps for DVD authoring, Usenet retrieval, and disc burning. Not that those three activities are related, of course. :roll:

DVD burning and CD burning is built in. Usenet is used by many of the die hard coders so I'm sure there are some good clients out there for it.

Any more I use windows when I have to, which is to do windows programming and play games. Other than it just sits there. Amazing how well it runs when you don't do anything on it :lol:

[BlackStar]

When my company announced a new product that shipped with NT, then Win Server 2000, we all joked about the stability. But you're right. Since these servers were only running one application (ours) they were pretty stable.

Now we run Red Hat on everything.

[liqnit]

i tried linux sevral times but - i do love games so it can't be my main OS .
but still Linux has a great feature which is liveCD that way you can do anything check evrerything you on the OS before doing the leap
http://www.frozentech.com/content/livecd.php

select what you like and try it.
i even worked several time with the HD disconnected so i will not make any mistake .
but this is unneccsery because liveCD don't damge the dat on your drive.

[wrathchild_67]

I had my girlfriend try out the Ubuntu distribution when it's first major release was out. She actually didn't have much trouble using it. I would say Ubuntu really has something going for it, and the internet seems abuzz about it as well. I'd probably consider Ubuntu for a machine for someone who hasn't used computers before (and is thus the most dangerous type to use a new Windows machine). There's little chance he/she would be able to screw the machine up.

[liqnit]

you should not underestimate the power of unknoledged user
i people that had no computer knoledge whatsoever that maged to crash a system totaly beyond any repair....

[Reyawn]

My girlfriend is primarily a Max OSX user but I gave her my old IBM 600X laptop (P3-650) with a copy of SuSe 10.0 on it.

She loves it, it has cute little games like Frozen Bubble and Pingus (lemmings clone) and since she hasn't had much introduction to computer games, there isn't much draw for her there.


I have two computers myself (3, but I let my mom use one). My main desktop has winXP Pro on it, and SuSe 10. I rarely use it for anything other than gaming, though, so SuSe is hardly touched.

My laptop, however, is a different story. While it has a dual boot setup the same as my desktop, I heavily prefer Linux for all of my development and most purposes. I only use Windows for an occasional game (gotta love the Geforce4 440 go graphics!) of Counter Strike or something of the sort, or for MS Office compatibility (MS Access usually). Linux works very well with everything else that I do, which is 95% of the time, and I use my laptop far more than my desktop lately.

[liqnit]

is it hard to intall linux on an old lapatop?
i have one like 4 yrs old barely runs win95.
i don't have drivers for it.
you think linux could make it work better?

[Scott]

Don't know about the laptop, you have to have drivers for the display if you want to run the graphical interface.

I myself am waiting for 64bit Vista.

[liqnit]

this laptop is so old
i guess if just stick the Vista DVD inside it will explode....
no dvd drive ofcourse :D

[Reyawn]

it isn't hard, in my opinion. What is old? 4 years isn't bad, my girlfriend's laptop is at least 4 years old with its PIII 600. You should be fine, I'd say download the cd versions of a linux install and go for it.

[Bryan]

I'm trying to install Ubuntu on a fairly generic system, but it's proving problematic. I have a few more things to try before I give it up for good, but so far it's more trouble than it's worth.

[zachig]

is it hard to intall linux on an old lapatop?
i have one like 4 yrs old barely runs win95.
i don't have drivers for it.
you think linux could make it work better?

If it's 4yrs old, I would trust on that. :lol:
Anyway, you can always try and tell us. :wink:

[Bryan]

Bah, I give up. Spent too much time dicking around with the Ubuntu installer to think it would be a smooth transition. I couldn't even get it to the disk partitioner!

Maybe I'll try a different distro. Or maybe not.