To Ubuntu or not to Ubuntu; that is the question.

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BaronJ:

--- Quote from: CrazyModder on April 22, 2014, 02:49:53 PM ---
--- Quote from: John Stevenson on April 22, 2014, 11:35:16 AM ---
--- Quote from: Baron on April 22, 2014, 10:11:24 AM ---
Go and download yourself a live CD/DVD image and burn it to a disc. Stick it into the drive and boot from it. There are plenty of distributions to choose from. Over 300 at last count.

--- End quote ---

So that's immediately put most Windows users off who have been brought up on 3 operating systems.

Which one do you choose out of the 300 ? stick a pin in ?

--- End quote ---

Someone who is interested in the system will, with a quick google search, immediately find the beginner friendly distributions that have been mentioned here. That's not 300, but 2 or 3 big ones - which one the beginner picks is totally unimportant and more of a flavour decision. If the person balks at that first step, regarding that first decision as chore instead of a joyful experience, then indeed Linux is most probably not for him. And that's not an attack against anyone - I know bright and experienced people who simply do not want such choices.

People who have zero interest in how the PC works, what it does "behind the curtain" and just want to browse the 'net, do some email, maybe Skype, some office work etc. have little incentive to look for Linux indeed.

If someone wants the features offered by Linux, differenciating it from Windows, then it's there, free to grab at anytime. One of those features is that every single piece of the OS can be influenced, and obviously this power puts some responsibility on the user. Needless to say, that's exactly what the Linux folks want.

I myself develop and run software on Linux servers at work, using a windows PC (no choice, I would prefer a Linux workstation as it would integrate more seamless with the Linux servers). At home, I have small Linux servers for my networking needs (and for fun), but the PC I write this on is Windows, again. Simply because I am totally happy with Windows 7 and play the occasional game - that's not the forte of Linux.

I may convert my main PC to Linux in many years if Windows 7 should become unusable (why would it?) and the current Windows flavour at that moment (Win 9? Win 10?) will not deviate massively from Windows 8, which I tried and found unacceptable.

--- End quote ---

I'm with you 110% on this one !

Pete.:
I've been meaning to have a go at Linux for a while and this might be a timely thread to spur me on. I have a Atom-powered micro Pc that I plan to put in the workshop to replace my aging desktop. It's a 1.8Ghz 64 bit cpu with 2GB of ram. Trouble is it has no hard drive or dvdrom. I've recently tried loading a portable copy of XP onto a 8GB flash drive with very little success. Seems that Linux might take to the USB stick a bit easier but like people above have said, it's difficult to know which build to go for. So far I have always only used Microsoft operating systems.

dsquire:

Hi

Sorry to be slow in answering but the Easter Bunny kept getting in the way. :med:

CrazyModder

Thankyou for your explanation of the Unix system. Using the world as an example helps to show the bigger picture and make it easier to understand. :thumbup:

Ade

Thanks for your help as well. Giving meaning to the individual terms and/or words answers a lot of questions. Now maybe I can ask some questions that are not quite as stupid. :clap:

Matthew

Thanks for the link and the tip as well. :thumbup:

DavidA

I think a special thanks should go out to David for starting this thread. By the number and variety of responses to it I think it has been very well received and I am hoping that it will continue to grow with more tips and questions/answers. :med:

To all the others that responded a big thank you as well. You have certainly helped me to understand what some of the terminalogy stands for. It may take me a while but I will be putting some flavour of Unix on one of my machines in the future. :D :)

Cheers :beer:

Don

garym:
Same here, Pete. From the mid nineties when I was definitely a Microsoft fan and knew Win 3.1 and 95 inside out I've gradually come to dislike Windows even though I still use it. I had a look at Linux quite a while ago (probably ten years) and the interface was so different I decided it was not worth the hassle of learning it. Since the demise of support for XP I've been having another look and tried the Live CD version of Linux Mint Mate which a couple of people had recommended as one of the easiest to move to from Windows. I was surprised how much the interface had improved and will have a go at installing it properly when I've backed up the stuff on my desktop PC. Since buying an Android tablet I also realised that my use of computers has changed over the years to the point where I wasn't using much software at all other than a web browser. I still prefer keeping most files on local hard disks rather than on the net otherwise a Chromebook might be a good choice. I'll still probably have to buy a Win 8 laptop to replace the one I'm writing this on though.

Gary

clivel:
For those who don't want to take the leap to Linux, but are interested in saving some money or just interested in exploring open source software, then I suggest that instead of spending a small fortune on MS Office, one could try one of the free office suites - either LibreOffice or OpenOffice.

Both offer similar functionality to MS Office and can import and export MS Office compatible documents. It seems a shame that they are not more popular given just how expensive the equivalent MS offering is.

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