Installing Linux

[Riz]

Re: Installing Linux

Just having a look at OpenSuse for the first time in a while. Must say I quite like the upcoming 12.3 release under KDE.



ubuntu don't seem to be paying a much care to their derivatives now. i.e. KDE, xfce4 etc, and I want to use those as I can't stand Unity.

I may switch an older laptop over to OpenSuse and see how it goes.

[mystery1]

Re: Installing Linux

Yes wireless. However i just unplugged my usb wireless adapter and put it in another usb and i'm online now.

Cheers.

M1

[evilcartman]

Re: Installing Linux

Oh, Transmission is very good for torrent downloads. Not that anyone here would use such a thing for anything that upsets the music and film companies' business model, of course.

@mystery1: wired or wireless connection? If it's wireless, have you tried setting up a wired connection (just so that you can download stuff to fix your wireless connection if need be)?

[mystery1]

Re: Installing Linux

Installed mate 14 on a new pc. Today downloaded some stuff then went out and now it won't connect to the net

Thought i'd try here again, searching google on a laptop using same net service and still being stuck with an expensive music player !

Thanks to anyone who can help.

M1

[ScabHunter]

Re: Installing Linux

Just out of interest, SH, why do you prefer Clementine over Banshee?

Aah! Now you've got me! I must admit I hadn't tested that one. I was only comparing it with Audacious and Movie Player (and, of course, VLC. We must never forget quite how versatile that program is). I'll do some tests on that one and tell you how I find it.

There is one strange phenomenon I can't explain – on one of the PCs, the bar in the bottom right hand corner of Clementine is grayed out. This means I can't see how long the track is, and I can't move the pointer if I wanted to move to the middle of a long track. It can't be incompatibility with Mint 14, because the other PC running that doesn't have the same problem.

It's not serious, because most tracks and playlists are played from start to finish, and if I wanted to start at the middle of a track I can just open it in Movie Player instead. It is strange, though.

The extremely good news, from my point of view at least, is that I've downloaded RX2, and it works almost perfectly in Wine. I say almost perfectly, because the display cuts the end character off some words. The “Declick”, for example, just appears as “Declic”. The functionality of the software, which is what matters, is perfect. I cleaned the extreme surface noise off a track recorded from 78rpm and it works just as well as in Windows. I'll now have to run some speed tests to see how it compares, but I didn't notice any difference.

That means that the goal I set myself a month ago has been achieved. I would now be able to manage perfectly well without Windows if I had to lose it completely.

I have obviously been extremely lucky with hardware, as I've had none of the problems which evilcartman and many others have experienced. I'm glad to hear you've recovered your cell phone, and I hope you finally get that dual-boot sorted. It does give you the best of both worlds.

SH

[evilcartman]

Re: Installing Linux

Just out of interest, SH, why do you prefer Clementine over Banshee? I've not really tried the former, so I'm just asking out of curiosity.

I'll start building the separate Linux box soon. I still want to dual-boot my main machine with the Radeon card that isn't at all Linux-friendly but I'm too busy using Windoze stuff on it to have another go at the moment. In the meantime, I've recovered my Android (Linux-based) phone after almost bricking it with a firmware update that went wrong.

[diddlydee]

Re: Installing Linux

Please consider doing a "Gimp for thicko's" guide please when you master it. I have it as I understood it to be a fabulous piece of free software and have never managed much more than a bit of cropping, pasting and resizing!

I so wish I was better at getting my head around this stuff, but instead I was blessed with cooking skills!

[ScabHunter]

Re: Installing Linux

I thought I'd just make an update post on my Linux installations, and on what I still need to do.

I've reached a position that I'm contented with. I've got three PCs which run usable versions of Windows (XP and 7), and also Linux Mint. Adjusting to different software has been relatively easy, as many of the programs are the same -

Browser

Firefox on both Windows and Linux. No change.

Email client

Thunderbird on both.

Office Software

LibreOffice on both.

Music Player

foobar2000 is Windows only. It does run in Wine on Linux, although not perfectly.
Clementine is the best Linux player, and that would also work on Windows.
The only issue I've had with playing music files is with playlists. The .fpl files which foobar2000 uses are not compatible with any of the Linux players, so I've had to go through my entire 1TB+ music collection, creating new playlists in the .pls format. The irony is that if I'd been psychic 7 years ago, I could have just used .pls files to start with, as they play in foobar2000! As it is, there is no reason to delete the .fpl files, so each folder now has identical playlists for both foobar2000 (Windows) and Clementine/Audacious/Movie Player (Linux).

Clementine actually has a better set up for streaming audio. Just copy the URL for the WCPE (radio station) Ogg Vorbis stream into the field, and it actually keeps it in the menu. Useful.

Music editing

Audacity runs in Windows and Linux with no problems.
Izotope RX2 is Windows only, and there is no alternative for Linux or Mac. I have read one report of someone getting it to work perfectly in Wine, and that is now my greatest challenge. As there is no alternative to this software which can produce anything like the same result, this has to work for me to be independent from Microbug.

Video Player

VLC is cross platform. No problems.

Graphics/Images

I have always used Paint.NET in Windows. It will not run in Wine.
There is no doubt about it – I am going to have to bite the bullet and learn GIMP. I've always found this program impossible to understand, but graphics is my weak spot. There are tutorials, and everyone rates it a superb piece of open source software, so I'll just have to rise to the challenge. If I can do so, I'll be better for it.

Other software

Cheese - for your webcam
Shutter - for still shots of the screen

Still to come -

HTML editor

I use Alleycode in Windows – not Linux compatible. Any alternatives?

FTP Client

No problems – Filezilla is cross platform.

Screen capture video

CamStudio is open source, but only works in Windows. Any alternatives?

Video editing

I was pleased to see my favourite video editor, Avidemux, in the list of Linux software, so no problems there.

As you can see, I'm not quite there yet. It it still less than a month since I installed Linux for the first time, so it would be wrong to expect me to be. I've made a lot of progress, but you can't expect to match eight years of learning Windows in a month on Linux. In two or three months, possibly.

I'll keep updating as I discover something new.

SH

[Riz]

Re: Installing Linux

sudo apt-get install fortune
fortune linux

[evilcartman]

Re: Installing Linux

A little Linux joke for all the forum geeks.

[Enforcer]

Re: Installing Linux

Totally agree with you. I now have 2 computers and my laptop running windows 8. All of my business programs, including QuickBooks Pro work. I have also installed my XP Plus pack into win8 and it works. Used to love Ubuntu, however latest versions gave me grief with wireless connectivity,and graphics cards. Win 8 does not like to dual boot with Ubuntu, Ubuntu takes over boot manager. Unfortunately, ditched Ubuntu. Windows 8 does everything that I need! Will not look back.

[evilcartman]

Re: Installing Linux

It does amuse me that my recent experience of Linux and Windows 8 has been polar opposites to ScabHunter's.

I find Windows 8 to be a beautiful OS 'under the bonnet', where it really counts. They seem to have finally nailed the memory management problems that has dogged Windows throughout most of its life and I'm finding this aspect of the OS to be approaching Linux levels of efficiency now. I know that's a bold statement but I'm finding my present setup to be blindingly fast - significantly quicker than either Ubuntu or Mint when I've had them running on the same hardware (I've had to use an older graphics card to do so, as Linux just does not get on with my more recent one).

As you might see in other threads, I have had no end of problems getting Linux to accept my Radeon graphics card. I can still construct a Linux box from spare desktop parts and will do so once I've obtained a new PSU to replace the current faulty one. But I still want to be able to dual-boot Linux on my newer desktop and want to retain this Radeon card in it because I use it for gaming in Windows. I will get there in the end but have been too busy on other stuff, so that project is on a backburner for the moment. But anyway, my point is that Linux distros such as Ubuntu and Mint do make installations far easier than they used to - but you can still come a cropper when you have hardware that the installer doesn't like.

[SA Gold]

Re: Installing Linux

The only negatives are potential hardware conflicts, and the fact that many proprietary software programs are Windows only. Some of these will work on Linux under Wine, and some will not. Only in rare cases are there no alternatives, and if you are keeping Windows on your system there is no real disadvantage anyway.

The only negative i would add to that is the user! The amount of desk/laptops i've looked at for people with a screwed up OS with no recovery media/partition who only really need web based stuff anyway still would rather go to Currys and hand over £3-400 for a new Windows machine when installing Ubuntu would save them all that money!

If we are talking business, then that's a totally different argument

[ScabHunter]

Re: Installing Linux

Could you explain why someone would benefit from having another OS on their PC?

A lot depends on your personal preferences. I used Windows XP Pro for seven years without any trouble, and the PC I bought last March has Windows 7. I found that relatively easy to adjust to. When I bought a laptop in November, it was running Windows Hate (8), which was a total disaster. After many hours of trying to get it to work, I had to give up and return it while it was still under the Amazon return policy. I suspect the hardware was defective also, but Windows Hate is a nightmare.

There is no guarantee where Microbug will go with their next OS. Even though the overwhelming reaction to Hate has been negative, there are reporters who suggest that they have made their choice and are going to stick to it. Even though refurbished PCs running XP or 7 are likely to be available for the next ten years, where does that leave the PC user?

It was at this point that I decided to research Linux for an alternative. I did a crude Mint4Win install of Linux Mint 13 on an old netbook just for experimentation – and have used it for virtually everything ever since. Linux is faster, the design of the desktop (MATE) and the start menu leave Windows for dead, and there is a reduced risk of infection from viruses and trojans. I can get more work done in the same time using a Linux operating system.

The only negatives are potential hardware conflicts, and the fact that many proprietary software programs are Windows only. Some of these will work on Linux under Wine, and some will not. Only in rare cases are there no alternatives, and if you are keeping Windows on your system there is no real disadvantage anyway.

Would another OS be completely separate, ie, would your saved documents, programs etc be kept in Windows 7 and therefore not openable on a new OS?

Your saved documents on Windows are accessible to the Linux operating system. On the PC I am using now, I just select 'Computer > 76GB File System (that will be different depending on your capacity) > Documents And Settings > [my name] > Desktop. That is the Windows desktop, as opposed to the Linux one which displays under 'Computer'. That is why I allocate very little space to Linux, because files stored there cannot be accessed by Windows.

It is also possible to create an extra partition purely for data storage, accessible by both systems. I haven't created that because it doesn't fit in with the way I operate, but someone who stores a lot more data on the actual PC would probably benefit from doing so. Nearly all of my files are on external hard drives.

SH

[diddlydee]

Re: Installing Linux

SH, I am completely ignorant of all things techie so only know that I use Windows 7 on my pc, Windows XP on my laptop and Android on my phone - that's about all I can tell you.

Could you explain why someone would benefit from having another OS on their PC. Would another OS be completely separate, ie, would your saved documents, programs etc be kept in Windows 7 and therefore not openable on a new OS?

I am intreagued...