Linux Anyone?


Mike
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I've used Ubuntu.  It was useful for what it could do.  But it was severely limited on what it could do.  And it was painfully slow compared to modern OS.  I'm sure that at one time, it was fantastically fast.  But what is available today makes Ubuntu seem like a snail by comparison.

Now, I forgot which drive I installed it on.  So, it's taking up about 100 GB of space that I can't open up because I'm afraid of destroying the factory restore image.  I don't know which drive that was on either.

Edited by Guest
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Basic stuff.  Web browser.  Microsoft Office.  Audio/video players, Etc.

The primary reason I wanted to try it was that I was told that it could run some older games that I really like.  These games won't work on anything past Windows 7.  As a Windows 8 computer (now upgraded to W10) it won't play those games.

Well, it turned out that they won't play on Ubuntu either.

The basic stuff worked ok.  But it was just really slow to get anything to happen.  And forget about multi-tasking.  It allows it, but it just takes that much longer.  It was like using a 1st gen Android.

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4 minutes ago, Carborendum said:

The basic stuff worked ok.  But it was just really slow to get anything to happen. 

Hmmm, disappointing. What little I've read on the internet made me imagine something that wouldn't be bogged down with the problems most PCs and Laptops seem to labor under. 

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1 minute ago, Mike said:

Hmmm, disappointing. What little I've read on the internet made me imagine something that wouldn't be bogged down with the problems most PCs and Laptops seem to labor under. 

Technically speaking, it isn't the "same problem".  Other OS lag a lot because they have SO many processes going at the same time.  With Ubuntu, it appears that it isn't running much at all.  The best guess I have is that it just doesn't know how to process the commands very quickly.

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28 minutes ago, Carborendum said:

Technically speaking, it isn't the "same problem".  Other OS lag a lot because they have SO many processes going at the same time.  With Ubuntu, it appears that it isn't running much at all.  The best guess I have is that it just doesn't know how to process the commands very quickly.

I was toying with the fantasy of buying a new inexpensive laptop with Linux pre-installed to explore the possibilities. 

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50 minutes ago, Carborendum said:

The primary reason I wanted to try it was that I was told that it could run some older games that I really like.  These games won't work on anything past Windows 7.

Why not just run Win7 on a VM?

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32 minutes ago, Vort said:

Why not just run Win7 on a VM?

No one ever mentioned that was an option.  How does one do such a thing?  While I'm more computer literate than the average electronics abuser, I am not as versed as I'd like to be.

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54 minutes ago, Carborendum said:

No one ever mentioned that was an option.  How does one do such a thing?  While I'm more computer literate than the average electronics abuser, I am not as versed as I'd like to be.

  1. Download and install a VM manager, e.g. VirtualBox
  2. Open the newly installed VM manager and install an instance of Win7 to run as a VM.
Edited by Vort
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1 hour ago, Vort said:
  1. Download and install a VM manager, e.g. VirtualBox
  2. Open the newly installed VM manager and install an instance of Win7 to run as a VM.

I did to a virtual box.  I didn't know that's what you meant by VM.  (see that's how little I knew).  Anyway.  I set it up.  It didn't really have any instructions with it.  So, I called up a few people I knew.  It wouldn't do anything that they said it would do.  The tabs/menus, etc. simply weren't there.  And no one was able to guide me on how to bring them up.

Anyway.  I'm done with it.  I bought some $50 computers that still had W7 on them.  I play on those computers.

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13 minutes ago, Carborendum said:

Anyway.  I'm done with it.  I bought some $50 computers that still had W7 on them.  I play on those computers.

That works, too. Doubtful you could have gotten a Win7 license for less than $50, anyway.

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VM is a Virtual Machine I think.  You can run windows on the side if one wants.

I use an Android Phone, that's a deriviative of Linux.  I believe apple OS is also a deriviative of Linux, though that's more of what my wife uses.  I recently got an Android Tablet.

Other than that, I am not using Linux right now.  I've used it in the past.  I used Linux Mint at that time and booted it up via a separate drive from the computer.

I've also run a Linux machine for a desktop.  For games, you can utilizing Wine, though you have to know how to trouble shoot a tad bit.  I am about as non-techy as you can get though, so I'm not the one to ask that much about how to get it tinkered with enough to get it running (Linux can run really fast and smoothly, boots faster than windows and takes less resources, but takes a little bit more love.  You have to know how to configure it in some cases in order to get it to do what you want).  I know GOG games supposedly has games that you can just download and run on Linux, but you have to make sure it's from their Linux section first (you don't want to get a Windows game that only runs on windows because that may be difficult for Linux without Wine.

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I worked as a tech Support that run solely on Ubuntu, and installed Ubuntu on one of my laptops to practice terminal (SSH). There are great things about Ubuntu and there are things that aren't so great.

The writing documents (i.e. word, excel, powerpoint) aren't as strong as the other OS options. Ubuntu is simple. I prefer Mac over any other OS. For what I was using Ubuntu for it was great. I didn't need any power house application to accomplish tasks. In some ways, if you just need a computer with a working OS, Ubuntu is a great way to go.

I have friends who will only use Ubuntu and have convinced their immediate family members to do the same.

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Here's a question that is somewhat tangent to this thread.

Now that I have W10 installed on my computer, does the factory restore image of W8 even matter?  Was it replaced with a factory restore image of W10?  Can I ghost my machine (or equivalent function) and restore all my hard drive into one or two major partitions and delete all other partitions?  What is the danger here?

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4 minutes ago, Carborendum said:

Here's a question that is somewhat tangent to this thread.

Now that I have W10 installed on my computer, does the factory restore image of W8 even matter?  Was it replaced with a factory restore image of W10?  Can I ghost my machine (or equivalent function) and restore all my hard drive into one or two major partitions and delete all other partitions?  What is the danger here?

In your situation, I would personally remove the factory restore image.  It was not updated or replaced.  If you want a restore image then create your own from within W10.  Now that you are on W10, Microsoft has a special algorithm to determine, pc's and hard drives that have a valid W10 copy so even if you reformat and reinstall W10 from scratch on the same pc, it will be activated.  Windows 10 also has a function to 'manage hard disk partitions', although I personally prefer using Linux tools (GParted), you should be able to type that in from the Start menu and remove the unessential partition and have it merged with your existing partition from within W10.  Do not delete any of the small system partitions as those are used by the EUFI/BIOS and Windows for other important functions.  If you need more info or step by step I would be happy to oblige but here is a link that might be helpful.

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@Mike You can install Linux on a chrome book to get more functionality out of it. Google "how to geek chromebook Linux crouton" and read the article referenced by the first result. I installed ubuntu on my chromebook using that method so I could play a game (warsow) with my sons on the LAN. The really neat thing is that both chromeOS and ubuntu run at the same time. So you don't have to reboot to switch. Switching OS is as easy as a keyboard combination. 

Note: for best results use a chromebook that has a regular CPU (x86). In other words you will have worse luck with an ARM CPU. 

Edited by eddified
clarified CPU type
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@JohnsonJones Mac OS X's underbelly is darwin and XNU. Technically it is not based on Linux, (Darwin is based on FreeBSD). Yet Darwin is considered part of the *nix family so Linux users feel at home with Darwin. Source : https://www.quora.com/Whats-the-difference-between-Mac-OS-X-Darwin-OS-and-a-popular-Linux-distribution-like-Ubuntu-What-can-be-done-on-Darwin

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On 4/10/2017 at 0:13 PM, Mike said:

If anyone uses (not as a developer) Linux Ubuntu, Mint, or other distributions I'm interested in first-hand testimonials. 

I built a FreeNAS server at home. It runs on FreeBSD.  It's nice and zippy.

Slow ubuntu usually is caused by slow disk and or not enough memory.... configure swap space is always the first thing to do. 

Edited by Blueskye2
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Hmmm, I've Used Ubuntu for a very, very long time. I also use a Linux (openelec) on a raspberry Pi 3 ( a credit card sized computer) and my sons computer has Ubuntu with a lightweight environment (lxde).

The major cons with a Linux is something like 98% of desktops are Windows and that's what software is written for. Usually there are great alternatives that work great on Linux, sometimes they aren't as great as the Windows version, sometimes they are better.

Another initial major con is true for all operating systems, there's a learning curve. You do things differently in the Linux world. But I find the online communities are absolutely fantastic for Ubuntu and you can usually figure things out over at askubuntu or ubuntuforums. I also find it's easy for me to find my way around on a mac since they are both *nices.

My main desktop dual boots, 99% of my time is spent on Ubuntu. I boot to Windows 10 exclusively for one game that I'll be rid of soon.

It's hard for me to put a finger precisely why I like Ubuntu. But I do. I'm currently running 16.04.2 LTS, the latest LTS release using Gnome-shell as my interface (I switched since the announcement that Unity is officially dead).

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4 minutes ago, eddified said:

I'm not a huge desktop Linux user. So I missed the memo that unity is dead. What happened?

It sucked :lol: . . . and everyone kept using gnome or switched to LinuxMint, etc, cause they like the gnome or Mate interface better.  Also, they realized that making a mobile/desktop/tablet interface wasn't really worth it in the end (just like how Microsoft learned with Modern UI).

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