Alternative OS

[Paddy]

I am writing this on my PDA so i'll be brief.

After spending the day trying to get Vista RTM working, I am fed up. It's bloated, slow, difficult to do what you want, but it sure is pretty. I give up.

I am going back to XP after months of exclusive Vista use. I want to try something equally as pretty, just for internet, mail, office and printing. Any recommendations?

[az]

Mac OS X. It's pretty, relatively secure, easy to use, there's MS Office for it...

It shouldn't be hard to get Ubuntu Linux or something like it working on an ordinary PC though, from what I've heard, but I've never tried.

[GNEP]

Yeah give Ubuntu a go if you're looking for that something-less-boring

[Jessterw]

Unless you're willing to purchase new hardware along with learning to use a new OS, the only viable option is Linux. Now most know I would recommend Mac OS X, however, if you're willing to take the time necessary to get settled in a new OS, Linux would seem to fit what you want to do.

As for a specific distro recommendation, I would say Ubuntu or Suse (ignore the zealots chanting that Novell is evil). Fedora is decent as well, but it's too closely tied with RedHat to be one that I would truly recommend. For sheer simplicity though, Ubuntu is probably the way to go (even though I prefer Suse).

I'm guessing you're wanting to switch from XP because of security and stability, because otherwise it sounds like you would be fine with it.

[Paddy]

Cheers guys.

I take it Mac OSX won't run on a stock PC?

I'll have a look at ubuntu...

ubuntu, unbuntu, they drink it in the congo...

[Jessterw]

Not legally or easily it won't. The experience would be rather sub-par even if you could manage to get OS X running on an everyday PC.

Hence Linux being your only viable alternative.

[TransformX]

I've heard that the newest Suse distro blows everything out of the water, might want to give it a try.

[Paddy]

Cheers guys. At work now, so I can type more freely!

I suspect that it is a problem with my hardware.
I have an AIW 9800 card with an external power feed. The power connection seems a little tempremental, and although the PSU checks out, the card intermittantly informs me that there is no power . I also have an Adaptec 2400A ATA RAID card which although is still their current ATA card, has no driver support beyond Windows 2000.

I was happy with the Vista betas. It was pretty although a tad slow on my XP3200+ with 1GB RAM. I put that down to it being a beta and indeed the RTM is much more fluid.

I have realised that I really don't like vista. It is really difficult to find what you are looking for. Eg. To change the IP address of a WiFi card you have to go through loads of seemingly random screens before you can get to the one you want. I think it will be great for people who want it to 'just work'. But for people like me, who like to break things , it's hard work. Perhaps that is a credit to MS!

In any case. All i really use the computer for is the internet/email and MS office related work. I am keen on the whole pretty GUI thing, but I am not prepared to 'upgrade'. I would probably like to keep XP on so I can play games - should the need arise, and it would also be nice to have a familiar failsafe for my email if nothing else.

I will check out ubuntu and the new Suse distro today. Cheers guys.

[Paddy]

Cheers guys.

I have downloaded the Unbuntu distro, and I will get my wife to download the Suse 10.2 DVD.

On pure asthetics alone, it would appear that Suse wins with the new KDE GUI, although it does seem more bloated. I'm newish to lunix, but the cores must be much of a muchness and as the GUIs are seperate, are you just chosing a package that has the right amount of bundled crap? As my wife (linux virgin) will be using this as her primary OS, which one of the two would you go for.

Any installation tips? I hear that Grub is better than NTLoader and therefore if I am going to dual boot, XP should go on first.

Would you stick to using NTFS for XP? How would you partition the 120GB drive?
I have a TB RAID array with all my data seperatly..

[TransformX]

Not much of a linux user here, but a friend of mine who is, is quite inlove with the OpenGL desktop and ReiserFS, so I suppose you'll want those two.

[spadnos]

Cheers guys.

I have downloaded the Unbuntu distro, and I will get my wife to download the Suse 10.2 DVD.

On pure asthetics alone, it would appear that Suse wins with the new KDE GUI, although it does seem more bloated.

You could always use kubuntu instead, it's based on KDE. Some things don't seem to work as well, like the package manager Adept (I prefer Synaptic on Gnome). There's also xubuntu, which uses a lightweight but still fairly pretty user interface, XFCE.

I'm newish to lunix, but the cores must be much of a muchness and as the GUIs are seperate, are you just chosing a package that has the right amount of bundled crap? As my wife (linux virgin) will be using this as her primary OS, which one of the two would you go for.

Why choose just one? You can install the standard ubuntu, then fire up the package manager and install KDE (and XFCE, or if you want something really lovely, install Enlightenment). There's a menu on the login screen to let you choose the desktop environment to use, and you can change it from login to login. This is pretty much unnecessary though, since the only thing that really changes between logins is the desktop background and the menus. You can run KDE programs in Gnome and vice versa.

Any installation tips? I hear that Grub is better than NTLoader and therefore if I am going to dual boot, XP should go on first.

Since NTLoader will refuse to boot Linux (AFAIK), you have to do things that way. Incidentally, unless you want to run some very compute-intensive programs or games, you can run windows quite successfully in VMWare. There are even free versions of it.

Would you stick to using NTFS for XP? How would you partition the 120GB drive?
I have a TB RAID array with all my data seperatly..

I don't see any reason to avoid NTFS. Linux can read it just fine, and unless MS keeps messing with the on-disk structures, you can write to it as well. Accessing the TB datastore should be easy from Ubuntu. If you want to be able to log in from either machine and have it use personal settings from the central storage server, I think you'd have to use NFS or some other "mountable" networking scheme for that. (I don't know much about doing that, but it would be neat to be able to log in on either machine and have the same menus, desktop, and other settings)

As for partitioning, 20G is pretty roomy for Ubuntu. If you want to share data between the two OSes (which you can do easily with openoffice, for example), you may want to create a primary partition for WinXP, two more for Linux (/boot, ~50-100M, 20-40G for Ubuntu), and an extended partition that you use just for data, with both OSes. IF you don't care about sharing data, then just split off about half and half for Windows/Ubuntu, and make 50-100M boot partition.

- Steve

[cjolley]

I've had problems getting ntldr to boot linux (it can be done), and problems losing my ability to load XP if lilo gets messed up.

So, instead of using a boot manager I just use the boot drive selector in my computers bios.

It does mean that I have to keep XP and Linux on separate drives, but it's a pretty no muss no fuss way to do it.

If I'm installing an OS I just unplug any drives with alternate OSs (XP on a primary and Linux on secondary) and just install the OS as if the other drive didn't exist.

Then plug the drive back in and it's just a hotkey while the bios is loading and then pick the drive you want to boot from.

[Wombat]

I've had problems getting ntldr to boot linux (it can be done), and problems losing my ability to load XP if lilo gets messed up.

One of the advantages of grub is that it can be changed on the fly, at boot time.

[cjolley]

One of the advantages of grub is that it can be changed on the fly, at boot time.

yep, I've done that before too.
The disadvantage is that problems are rare, so when they do come up I can't remember what to enter to get going again

But, that's just me and my CRS syndrome.

[Jammrock]

You can always download Live DVDs (like BartPE/knopix, but full featured) of most major distros to try out the UIs before you install one:

Kubuntu: http://www.kubuntu.org/download.php (grab LTS (Dapper) ISO)

Ubuntu: http://www.ubuntu.com/products/GetUb...irect=download (grab LTS/Dapper Drake ISO (will also allow you to install to HDD if you like it from the same disk))

SUSE: http://en.opensuse.org/Download (not installable from Live DVD, 10.2 not available yet, but 10.1 Live is on the mirrors)

Gentoo: http://www.gentoo.org/main/en/where.xml (scroll down)

ReiserFS is the default filesystem for Suse these days, as well as Linspire/Freespire (but they don't have a free Live CD/DVD).

Jammrock