[Closed] anyone here use linux?

All the time. I've stuck with Ubuntu 10.04, pre-Unity.

Mint is a good one to get you kicked off.

Did it for a while out of interest but got fed up with having to find drivers whenever I changed printer, not being able to use software like photoshop elements and having to work that much harder whenever something didn't work straight away. I wanted to love it and did initially but in the end I opted to get on with what I was trying to do rather than mess around with computers. YMMV of course

sudo apt-get sadexpunk.
tar balls
cd
terminal
debian packages
installer
whats not to like.
take your time, it works just different

ubuntu here, right now.

it's all a mystery to me, i've no idea how it works, it was setup on this tiny notebook by a friend of mine about 2 years ago.

some of the settings are a bit weird, but it's proven very reliable.

My laptop is dual boot (Win7 and Linux Mint), I very rarely use windows and Mint is opened every day.

Not had a problem with drivers on it and it'll play (through Wine) old XP games that 7 won't!

It boils down to your hardware really, if you're running fairly normal stuff then there's absolutely no reason to know how Linux works, it just does.
On the other hand, my laptop is Intel sandy bridge/Radeon (ie not exactly uncommon) and it took a while to get things like screen brightness & power saving sorted out. Works fine now, but I've been on Linux since it came on floppy disks - a beginner would have probably thrown the lot out of the window.

Sorry, I only speak Fortran and Klingon.

Regularly. The only real issue you will have is if people send you word or excel files with fancy formatting etc in them. Or if you need to format pretty files they can edit etc.

I'm running an i5 Dell and have no issues whatsoever.

Yes, on 2/3 of my laptops. There's little learning curve for everyday things like accessing email and browsing.

Yes, using Mint now, run our business on it 7 laptops, netbooks, servers etc.

Main computer at home is Ubuntu Linux, as and when I finally get round to getting a new laptop I'll be sticking it on there too. (Posting from a work laptop, with Win7). For web browsing, email, watching videos etc. it's perfect. It's also great for programming, which is the other thing I do with it.

No real issues, but then I do work in IT and have been using Linux since RedHat 4.2 (released in 1997...) You will probably end up having to do stuff on the command line, while usually not strictly necessary you'll find that a lot of the advice Google throws up will assume you know your way around a terminal. No idea whether you've ever used a command line terminal or not, but it's not that complicated and is worth learning.

Main blocking issues are games and MS Word/Excel compatibility: Libre Office is good enough for editing your own documents, but is crap at editing documents originally created on Word. Obviously if the computer is purely for home use this won't be an issue.

Used it all through Uni but then had problems with previously working network shares (which had originally been a royal pain to setup for some unknown reason).

I'm looking to go back part time, especially now Steam is supporting Linux (which should also mean better driver support from AMD et al.).

If there are no Windows only programs holding you back, give it a go!
You could setup a dual boot to start with, but will have to make sure you give it a proper chance and not just boot to Windows as soon as something slightly annoying happens.

thanks chaps. as for dual boot, ive got a 220Gb HD, with around 106Gb of data i want to keep, such as music, vids etc.... i assume if i went dual boot id have to have that 106Gb on 'both' drives? cos theyd be formatted differently? if so itd be a bit of a no-no really i think, as i wouldnt have the space.

as for office, i rarely use it, just the odd works rota, or letter. ive been told open office would be fine for that?

ive used terminal very rarely, only when p*ssing about with my phone, but i guess its a bit like cmd prompt in windows?

oh, and for those of you using ubuntu, im guessing the mint/ubuntu thing is like xp/win 7 etc? just different versions of the same thing but updated maybe?

im pretty sure once i start using it, and get set up with squeezebox servers etc and different programs that i wont go back to windows. i didnt really expect it to be so intuitive (a bit like windows 🙂

thanks

I was until a year or so ago but now my work software is strictly windows only so off it for a while...

When I can I'll be back to it, very little didn't work and most things have a straight method to get it to work that will involve cut/paste from the list of instructions.

This machine, main OS Kubuntu 12.04LTS - that's Ubuntu with a pretty (but complicated) desktop that in my opinion out blings all others. Because Unity, Ubuntus current desktop graphical interface, is utter rubbish. Like Windows 8 is utter rubbish.

Linux Mint is a good place to start.

You do need to be willing to get on a learning curve though. There is nothing that can be done to short cut this fact........truth is, you probably got on the 'how to use Windows' learning curve as a child, and now it is catch up time. Reward, a superior operating system.

P.S. You can set up a data (home or My Docs) partition for dual booting, accessed by both OSes, hence saving hard drive space. I've done this in the past using NTFS, because linux and Windows can read that file system. And it is always easier to add linux to an existing windows install, not vica versa. A linux OS can be made to access files installed within Windows easily.

I've always had a couple of linux devices around home.
I have a couple of linux PC's at work, we have about 20 linux servers running as logging and reporting servers too with a few enterprise instances of linux.

I'm a big fan to be honest but then I am an ex-unix administrator.

The other thing is the missus (not a computer person at all) used it for 5 years as her only computer - I did the initial set u and that was it. No problems or issues - it's just what you get used to.

P.S. You can set up a data (home or My Docs) partition for dual booting, accessed by both OSes, hence saving hard drive space. I've done this in the past using NTFS, because linux and Windows can read that file system. And it is always easier to add linux to an existing windows install, not vica versa. A linux OS can be made to access files installed within Windows easily.

thanks

Virtually all the time at home (I have a Win 8 machine for Lightroom/iTunes/WinXDVD).

Not sure why anyone would stall on pre-Unity Ubuntu. Yes, Unity blows goats, but stick Gnome 3 on it and use that instead, it's a far better desktop than pre-Unity Gnome IMO.

easy enough to do? got a link to the process?
thanks

However you will get nowhere with linux of you wont just type your question straight into google.

I have a dual boot, but rarely use the Ubuntu one - I do however regularly use a Ubuntu VM in Virtualbox (and also RPi which is of course Linux), not to mention the IT support I do in the local school where we run a Linux based server/client system (Centos servers, Fedora clients). My excuse for not using the Ubuntu more is that I use Windows only software - now I come to think of it, there's very little I couldn't do in Ubuntu on a day to day basis, and there would certainly be some advantages (which would avoid some of the messing around I do using Virtualbox), however I am still stuck with some stuff I use fairly regularly which is Windows only. I should think about trying to boot into Ubuntu a bit more...

As for your data, you don't even need to set up a separate partition for it. If it's currently on your Windows partition (presumably formatted NTFS) then you can just happily access that from Linux.

You don't have to use the command line at all - not nowadays when there's a GUI for most things. It's just a geek thing - personally given a Linux system I always dive into the command line as I'm more comfortable with that (it is a lot, lot better and more useful than Windows cmd, which I only use if there's no other way), however the chap I work with on IT support always uses GUIs and has a laugh at me doing things that way (though he appreciates that sometimes it's much easier).

Our companies products all run on various bespoke Linux distributions. I hack the odd script to configure / extract stats from them, but mainly work / develop on Windows (as every customer has that on their laptops). I run MacOSX at home (although I keep meaning to blow it away and install Windows as I honestly think OSX is piss poor).

I've got a straight Ubuntu install at home, using the much-maligned Unity. No complaints, wife (very much non-IT) and kids (slightly better) use it without any problems at all.

sadexpunk: Linux has various bits, there's the kernel (like its name implies, it's the core of the system), then there's a "window manager" on top - this is the desktop and windows etc. that you actually use. Another critical component is the package manager, this is what you use to install new software. Different distributions (Mint, Ubuntu, RedHat, SuSe etc.) may or may not use different versions of each of these. As it's your first go I'd try Ubuntu or possibly Mint, with all the default options - these are probably the best supported distributions, and if you do run into trouble Google (or STW 🙂 ) will sort you out.

I wanted to love it and did initially but in the end I opted to get on with what I was trying to do rather than mess around with computers

Thats about it really. It has no benefits over Windows and is less intuitive and user friendly. Very stable but other than using a lite version to invigorate an old and tired PC there is no reason to choose it over a mainstream operating system.

It has no benefits over Windows and is less intuitive and user friendly.

I'd say it's about the same on the intuitive and user friendly front, there's not a great deal in it. It's considerably better for software development, though.

It's also free.

same on the intuitive and user friendly front

For better or worse we are all "Windows" now. Try using anything else in a commercial environment and let me know how you get on. Doesnt matter what we like its the way it is. Cue somebody telling me about businesses using Mac Osx. Its small beer and Microsoft have it sown up.

better for software development

OK but how many of us do that?

It's also free

Windows is also pretty much free. I'm not talking of stolen copies but it is pretty much ubiquitous (like it or not)

I still use SCO Unix in work and Red Hat as well as every version of Windows etc. I like the Unix stuff for stability and reliability but I wouldnt use it on my desktop.

Linux Mint on my 'office' (built out of bits) PC at home. Quite like it. Have used Ubuntu before but hated the new desktop it uses. To be honest the main reason I use it is because I haven't got a legal copy of windows to use on it.

Also WINE seems quite happy running Photoshop CS3 and LightRoom 2, which is nice.

I'm a bit of a novice with it. I have it on a netbook that was c really struggling with windows. Now it runs much quicker.

Toyed with Ubuntu, preferred Windows 😳

better for software development
OK but how many of us do that?

Yo! I prefer various linux distributions vastly to windows. I find linux generally faster and easier to use in my day to day activities, I also don't have to pay for it - I don't have a windows license so that sure isn't free for me!

Don't get Mint 14! Get Mint 13. Mint 14 is built on ubuntu 12.10 which is generally accepted ( (I believe) as being a bit unstable and Mint 14 certainly isn't stable IME, 13 is fine though.

Depends on your software requirements, gimp isn't a creative suite replacement, libre office has a few compatibility issues with Microsoft office formatted docs. Syncing with iPhone is impossible-no iTunes replacement, and I have yet to figure out file transfer with my nexus 7 too.
I started on Linux mint, and would recommend Linux mint Debian edition over normal Linux mint.
I use crunch bang as my daily driver now.

and I have yet to figure out file transfer with my nexus 7 too.

Just plug it in works for me! If you're using crunchbang then you might have to play about it, it does a little less for you than things like mint in my experience. I thought that crunchbang was excellent and really liked tint2 and openbox but just found it a bit too buggy - I haven't used it for a while now, is it any better?

The people behind Ubuntu are currently talking about moving to a rolling release platform like debian in ubuntu 14 (I think), be pretty excellent if they were to do that!

Not finding crunchbang buggy at all in open box, and I'm using an old dell laptop with an additional monitor for dual screens. Thunar has made big strides forward. The nexus 7 issue is related to libmtp I think as I can sync but not file transfer, stuck with ftp transfer for now