Comments on: Blown Away by Ubuntu!

By: charon

charon — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 16:42:12 +0000

Ubuntu is good choice for office user, easy to install,fast and it’s free. some hardware may not support this os as windows does,they work hard to do this. but for gamers windows is right choice.

By: Barb

Barb — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 19:32:18 +0000

cool, this almost seems to good to be true! who’s hiding this secret?

By: Fast PC Guide

Fast PC Guide — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 19:14:40 +0000

Hello!!! The info which you are providing about Linux and windows is good.I like your attitude. You are willing to take risks and to see the good, even though your past history would dictate that you would be partial to Windows. Most Windows users miss opportunities because they are not willing to take a risk. Congratulations on your positive review and your success!

By: Jameson Burt

Jameson Burt — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 17:42:52 +0000

DUAL BOOT WITH TWO DISK DRIVES.
Ten years ago, I would dual boot with two external SCSI disk drives
sitting on the floor behind my computer.
I would kick one’s switch to on and the other’s switch to off,
using my shoe of course — dual boot.

The other, more common approach,
dual booting off the same disk drive,
I always found precarious.
You can boot in peculiar ways, like booting off the master boot record into another area on disk that does the final boot.
I found such techniques obscure and learning unuseful for other endeavors, and I ruined a couple laborious installs by fiddling with dual boot on the same disk drive.

Today, you can buy a 500GB disk drive for $70,
so dual boot off two disk drives.
The MOST ELEGANT approach, one I adopted from
http://thesataswitch.com
drills and inserts a rotary switch into a 5″ bay cover.
I now turn a knob between 3 operating systems
Debian Linux
Ubuntu Linux
Windows XP
The knob decides which of 3 disk drives gets power,
while each SATA disk drive is separately directly attached to the motherboard’s SATA connector.
These 3 disk drives can never see each other,
since the rotary switch powers only one of the 3 disk drives.
The above website tells how to make this with a rotary SATA switch ($7 for switch) where he buys his, or buy one premade by him for about $34.
THIS APPROACH IS UBER, as is Ubuntu.

By: Zenwalker

Zenwalker — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 08:46:18 +0000

Awesome..Finally peeps are stepping towards bright light…
Welcome aboard.

—–
Ever tried Zen Computing?
http://www.zenwalk.org

By: John Deszell

John Deszell — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 20:30:10 +0000

I installed Ubuntu about 2-3 weeks ago and I love it. I installed it on my old HP ZV6000 laptop and it runs like a champ. I only had issues getting the wireless networking working, because of the Broadcom card I have. Though it only took me a little bit of working and reading the forums to get it working properly. Working great so far!

By: Andrew

Andrew — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 16:59:32 +0000

I, too, am a 20-year Windows user (originally starting w/ MS-DOS 2.0) and found Ubuntu, too. I set up Ubuntu Ultimate Edition (http://ultimateedition.info/) dual boot w/ Windows XP and had very high first impressions. The honeymoon quickly faded when I found out my 2-year-old USB scanner isn’t supported by SANE (and most likely won’t be in the future), and there’s no way for me to sync/update DataViz DocumentsToGo and SheetToGo documents on my Palm Pilot. I use iTunes for Windows, which is VERY picky about file names and folder paths, so I wasn’t going to muck around with my existing iTunes’ library with Amarok, Songbird, Banshee, etc. I tried to install iTunes in Ubuntu w/ WINE, but it didn’t work. It’s not practical to copy my music library from Windows into Linux and manage 2 separate libraries. So I can’t use my scanner, Palm Pilot, or listen to music in Linux. But other than that, I was impressed.

By: JohnMc

JohnMc — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 14:47:08 +0000

Glad you joined the club. What took you so long?

Now you want a mind blowing experience that is almost Microsoft-like in the UI without being Microsoft? Load up Kubuntu on that box and prepare to be amazed. Kubuntu has the attritubes of Ubuntu with KDE. Want an integrated Outlook like system? KDE desktop has the mail, contacts, calendar all integrated for an almost Outlook-Exchange metaphor.

Oh one other item. Fire up Synaptic and do a search and install on a package called Basket. Its Microsoft OneNote in usage.

Have fun.

By: LinuxCanuck

LinuxCanuck — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 14:13:56 +0000

I like your attitude. You are willing to take risks and to see the good, even though your past history would dictate that you would be partial to Windows. Most Windows users miss opportunities because they are not willing to take a risk. Congratulations on your positive review and your success!
There are things that need to be said. There is always risk in switching OSes, partitioning and even in installing from scratch. You need to make sure that you are prepared for possible problems and delays. If you are impatient, not willing to spend time to troubleshoot or require a working system, you need to take some precautions. Back up as you said, but don’t throw out the old until the new is working to your satisfaction.
Ubuntu has some added features that makes it good for Windows users to explore and try.
1. It has Live CD in which you can run the OS from the CD before you install.
2. It has Wubi which enables you to install Ubuntu without partitioning from inside Windows as any other Windows program. Just insert you Ubuntu CD while in windows and Wubi pops up. It works just like a full version with a couple of exceptions and runs at native speed. You need to reboot to finish the installation or use Wubi installed Ubuntu, but it runs from a Windows directory on your C: drive.
3. It has an alternative CD that allows users with special requirements to take full control.
4. The installer has default choices that work for most people. Just make sure that you understand what they all mean,
5. Ubuntu can be installed to a usb key so that you can take it with you anywhere.

Thanks again for the review. I add these things only to encourage other Windows users to take the step that you have taken.

By: Tim

Tim — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 11:59:03 +0000

Hope you continue to have fun exploring Linux. It is the only OS installed on my computers at home. One of the things I like best about it is how it can really extend the life of hardware. One of my computers is a 7 year old emachines, with less than 200 megs of ram and a 766 mhz processor. Currently it is running Antix. It works great for word processing, web surfing and checking email.

People can save hundreds of dollars and help the environment if they would follow your advice. Don’t buy another computer if the only problem is the OS. Put Linux on it.