Geeze what a resource hog, bloatware P.O.S. of an operating system, do any of you linux gurus have any suggestions for a distro that isnt completely techie related like Gentoo was and is? Laptop specs are. 1.73 celeron 1 gig of ram 252 intel graphics card
Not a linux guy.... If you can somehow find a copy somewhere, I think the ultimate OS is WinXP "Borg Edition". I think you could torrent it from Pirate Bay..... try googling "xp borg edition"
I know everyone like to moan and groan about windows, but simply swapping operating systems isn't that easy. Here is a quote from a mod on a PC related forum: Its worth considering before you ditch windows altogether... "Have you actually used ubuntu or any other linux distro yet? I have for the last year tried linux distros every chance I got and here are common issues(hardware): Wireless on linux is still pretty bad. I have a "supported" wireless card yet I get crappy wifi reception, linux doesn't support WPA wireless encryption very well, and the connection would often drop. The card is made by atheros and I've tried it on ubuntu (all flavors), suse, and a couple of slackware based distros like vector and slax. I also got very bad audio support. I literally spent 6 hours getting my audio to work because I had to piece together various tutuorials to get any sound at all. When I did get it to work it sounded noticably worse than on windows. I have an intel sound card since its internal in my laptop. Graphics card drivers were crap and did a terrible job. I have an ati card in this laptop and I couldn't play the same games I could on windows. I tried cube I think because it was available on linux and windows and I wanted to compare. Then you get into power management. For whatever reason I got about/barely an hour of battery life on linux where I get almost 2 on windows. I think its because linux doesn't automatically scale back things for power saving like windows will. Then there is other hardware like mp3 players (didnt support them), printers (only could print, not scan), etc. Oh and dont think its easy to install drivers on linux. Nope bet used to the command line and following tutorials by people who do not go step by step. They just assume you know what they are talking about. On top of all of this you would get other bugs like things randomly not showing in gnome panels after reboot (the equivelent of the start bar) and the fact that I couldn't close my laptop lid to go into hibernation. It just went to a black screen and when I opened the lid it crashed."
I bought a 179.00 Great value computer almost three years ago, with Linspire 5.0 on it and it has performed alot better than the wife's 1200.00 XP Pro machine. [ three clean outs ] Bill left too many Gates open so people can hack you. Ubuntu has a new version out which is more music friendly. Mozilla browser rocks, Try the ubunta website, it's free. There are printers and cameras that are compatible. Don't know about Wi Fi ,as I don't want to be vulnerable.
I'm running Ubuntu 7.10 at the moment, I change from time to time, for a out of the box Distro that someone from Windows is checking out this is one I would recommend. The video/MP3 thing is always an issues with Linux, getting playback can at times be tricky. But there is plenty of help on the Interweb to walk you through it. Nice thing with Linux, no anti-virus running, don't worry about email attachments all that crap
WinDoz 2k PRO here. Yeah I run a firewall (set it and forget it) AVG Virus (updates and runs in background0 and some easy to do tweeks and welcome all to try to hack, have at it. 2k it the best OS ever from MS. I have a oem disk and all the service paks on CD. It does all I need from it, even stick either of my wireless cards in it and poof, connected. Have no experience with XP, but I gather it is a stripped down 2k. And BTW, I haven't had a blue screen in almost two years, and I believe even then it was my fault. AE
I'm running XP (one each Pro and Home) with problems only of my creation. Will be sticking with it until the 'puters die, then (one hopes) Vista will be sorted out. A guy that works for me is running Vista, and drools with pleasure over it. Another friend sacked Vista and reloaded XP. The jury is still out on M$ as far as I'm concerned, but linux is off the board until support gets a bit more available for running M$ tuned hardware (scanners, printers, photog stuff.)
Scanners have been an issue, however, the last version of Ubuntu my HP worked without any funky changes to the system. The support is not 100% on scanners but getting better all the time. As far as printers, I have not had a printing problem in some time, my printer is hooked up to my WinXP machine and my Ubuntu on my laptop was able to connect with no more than walking through the setup screens just as any windows machine. All my cameras work plug and play and the GIMP is just as good as photoshop, and it's free. OpenOffice (they have a window version) other than some Exel formulas not translating correctly works with any MS document, can even save in MS format. May not be true on all formulas, I have some spreadsheets that were set up that pull data from one page to another for tracking my Scouts but there is a OpenOffice version so I didn't bother messing with it. If you use MS Office you will feel right at home with OpenOffice. I can view any file on my windows machine from Ubuntu, can't write to NTFS but that's OK by me. I just set up a partition on my external drive that I can save to from Linux. WI-FI no problem, prior distros had issues with saving WEP/WPA keys unless you knew the secret it was a real bitch having to enter the keys all the time, this has been corrected and worked right away, have not had issues moving between my corporate network at work and home. Many distros are throwing in the windows codecs for DVD & MP3 playback, you may have to download and install them, again as easy as windows go to add/remove program and find it in the list, select it and you are done. Most now have a eval CD that you can download/burn and boot off of, this give you a chance to play around with it until you know what works and what doesn't or if you like it or not. I keep the windows machine (my desktop) more or less for the kids crap, but I have run linux on it before and they really didn't notice the difference. Plus they can't mess up my system, like they can in Window XP, one of these days I'll just pull the plug 100% on Windows and run all Linux. Kids and wife will just have to adapt, you know there is always that one program they love that won't work.
Blkpwdernut, look into any of the version that run completely from a USB or CD drive and use them for everything and I mean everything: web surfing, multimedia sites (MSNBC type videos), etc. If you have it mostly figured out and aren't ready to rip your hair out by then you may be ready to make the move. You'll usually see the CD runnable version referred to as a 'Live CD' or something similar. Nice thing is you can leave your current OS installed and untouched on your hard drive until you're sure that is the decision you want to make. Here are the 'major' distros. http://distrowatch.com/dwres.php?resource=major Based on what you've outlined about your machine there might be some things you can do to speed it up without throwing out the OS. Here are just a few things: http://articles.techrepublic.com.com/2415-10877_11-91600.html
I appreciate everyones comments and suggestions. I was running Gentoo on my desktop as a dual boot with xp, would use linux to surf and all that stuff and only booted to xp to game. About a month ago my desktop went south on me and I was forced to make a decision about rebuilding it or getting this laptop, price was about the same so I went with convenience. but now I HATE vista.
I use Ubuntu on my laptop. Part of my requirements when I bought the laptop was to have an Intel wireless card. That was about it. Most other wireless cards don't work as well in Linux. I've been using Linux for about 2 years now and there is about 1 time every 3 months or so that I have to boot into XP and that is always because I haven't gotten around to installing MS Office to use Crossover Office. I have found that Ubuntu is much faster than XP on my system. From powering up until I have a usable system takes twice as long for the XP than Ubuntu. All that other crap that you have to use in Windows really hogs the resources.
I have traded in my Ubuntu for Linux-mint. It's built off of ubuntu, (Just like ubuntu is built off of Debian), but has a few extras added. Hardware support if perfect so long as it's not too exotic. If/when thinking of purchasing a new printer take a look at linuxprinting.org first and buy one that is recommended. I have very little problems with my Intel Pro bg 2200 wifi card and in fact have a spare if any laptop users are wanting one. (mini-pci) I'd say try the live CD of ubuntu or Mint and you will see right away if your stuff is supported. Live CD means the entire OS boots /runs from the CD drive without altering that precious MS HD. Pop it out and reboot back into XP or Vista like and Windows won't even notice the lipstick on your collar
Wow, slots? I have scored 100% on every item that quote listed. Wifi is perfect. (All I use on this 4 yr old Lappy) Graphics are great even running some of the higher end 'eye candy' My desktop blows Vista away. Sound is flawless out of the speakers or headset jack. MP3 and DVD codecs are included in Mint, a simple DL in ubuntu. Power management? I get more battery life out of this old battery than XP. You also don't have to 'ditch' your OS to try the newer Linux versions. You can live boot first, then try dual boot until you are comfortable.
I have been a linux user for years, the only things I use windows for now is A: games B: work makes me (still have a linux box at work too) C: autocad inventor Wifi can be painful with newer stuff.
Well done I haven't tried actually Linux, but talking to folk who are more technically minded than myself kinda put me off. Maybe the latest versions are more user friendly now. I just have visions of totally trashing my PC trying to install and run an OS I know F*** all about... A PC I can not really afford to replace. Maybe one day...
I would suggest you to go with Ubuntu. There is a learning curve, true, some things to get used to. But you don't have to be a guru to use it. In the last two weeks I have had the misfortune of having to install windows 2000 Professional, Windows XP, and Ubuntu on two different machines, and installing some simple peripherals on those two, plus a third computer running VISTA. Ubuntu and XP were by far the most trouble free installations. Both Ubuntu and XP had no trouble recognizing hardware on either machine. and as expected with XP anyway, neither had trouble with my flash drive. Installing a new printer with Ubuntu consisted of plugging in the printer and printing a test page, done, with XP I spent 10 minutes putting in the cd, saying no to all the spyware and extra garbage on the cd then waiting for everything to install. done, printer works fine, though if I had gone with the automatic installation from the printer's CD, as many do, then when I rebooted there would be at least 3 different services sucking up resources. Installed Windows 2000 professional, for old times sake. I can't for the life of me remember why I preferred it to XP at one point. Obviously Win 2K was not known for it's plug n Play ability, but man I forgot what a drag it was. I won't go into everything it didn't recognize. I know that there are drivers out there, and it would have worked, but since it didn't recognize the modem or the network card I would have been reduced to sneakernet in order to make it operational, forget it. Windows VISTA... Oh my god what complete garbage, I tried just pulling some pictures off a USB flash drive with VISTA, well, every 45 seconds it re recognized that I had a flash drive, it would pop up asking me to install it, then reload everything on it, over and over, over and over. I couldn't even click START -> RUN -> MSCONFIG without filling out forms for homeland security. basically every time you do everything on VISTA you have to do it two or three times or at least confirm that you want to two or three times, and then you just have to hope that whoever installed VISTA for you gave you the requisite permissions. Installing every plugin to IE was a nightmare, most of your old software won't work, etc... DO NOT BUY VISTA EVER!!!! Why pay for something that doesn't work??? --Ubuntu downsides Learning curve; some things are going to be different. Shockwave Player won't run on Ubuntu. Flash works but for some reason the package manager couldn't install them. (The package manager is the Ubuntu equivalent of windows update manager) I had to go into Terminal and add them by hand, Flash worked worked fine after that, but something like that could be a real drag for the average PC user. On the Upside, If you watch videos, and are tired of watching a screen that is too dark to see anything with Windoze Media Plaguer, then you'll like the fact that you can change the brightness, contrast, hue and saturation much easier with the Totem Video Player that comes with Ubuntu. Personally I am glad I finally got to watch Threads from google video and actually see whats going on, instead of just hearing it. And, I might know someone, who knows someone, who may have mentioned, that they heard, that watching those bootlegged first three episodes of Jericho season 2 on Totem was SOOO much better then watching them on Windows media player... Anyway, that's my take on it.
