Has anyone removed Windows and installed Ubuntu/Linux?

An Fear Aniar

Just wondering if this is something people are doing...

I'd love to be free of Microsoft but I dare not....


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PogMoThoin

Yep, wiped Vista off my work laptop instantly in favour of Ubuntu, but i need linux for work. Run the live cd first to make sure all devices (wifi card etc) work in linux. If you got a recovery partion I'd suggest you keep it in case you want to revert back.

Capt'n Midnight

If you are removing windows , then not really a windows problem

You could dual boot too , resize the windows partition with gparted and install ubuntu in the freed up space

bushy...

An Fear Aniar wrote: »

Just wondering if this is something people are doing...

I'd love to be free of Microsoft but I dare not....


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Easy way to install it http://goodbye-microsoft.com/ , just click on the logo and follow a few instructions.
It will reboot and the installer will start up.

niallb

I'd suggest the wubi installer instead which will set up
ubuntu linux just like you're installing a windows application.

It'll also leave windows available on your disk which is a bit of a plus if you're not sure yet!
What it does is set up linux in a file and add a menu item to the windows boot loader.
(e.g. Normal Mode, Safe Mode, Linux Mode)

Leave it until the end of the week if you like, and take advantage of the latest new release
of Ubuntu which is due on Thursday.
It looks great and has improved support particularly for wireless hardware.

Tom Dunne

*raises hand*

I didn't technically remove Windows, I just installed Ubuntu over it.

Best thing I ever did.

Bard

Just to try it out I've given Ubuntu a 20GB partition of my 60GB hard drive (XP Pro has the rest and I've an external HDD for data) and even though installation was the simplest thing EVER and Ubuntu is quite pretty, easily extensible and relatively simple to use (for someone who isn't afraid of 'getting their hands dirty' and using the command line quite a bit) ... I'm still not sure.

I'm now dual-booting between XP and Ubuntu 7.10 but I use Ubuntu very little and find very few reasons to transfer over completely - partially because of the systems lack of support for my wireless network card but mostly because of my heavy reliance on some applications which just can't be found (or matched) under the Linux O/S;- examples of those being Atomix Virtual DJ, Adobe Audition 3 (or CoolEdit), CorelDraw X3, Nero 8 Suite, - oh, and of course various games.

If there were realistic alternatives to all the major apps I use, I'd consider it more. As it stands, I like having it there - but probably for now only because it's different and interesting. Until it becomes more than that, and becomes more viable as a day to day O/S for me (and it will... some day, I'm sure), then Windows (but not Vista) will remain my primary O/S of choice.

Naikon

I am running a combination of Debian, Slackware, and FreeBSD on my boxen at home. Tis great not paying the Microsoft tax, and gaining valuable experience in Unix-like systems at the same time. Ubuntu/Mint are hopefully going to reduce M$'s monopoly by a large degree. GO FOR IT!

Khannie

An Fear Aniar wrote: »

Just wondering if this is something people are doing...

I'd love to be free of Microsoft but I dare not....


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I did about a year ago or so. Never looked back.

Orion

I've been purely Linux since last summer. Desktop and laptop. Happy as a pig in shit. Still have to use Windows in work

FruitLover

I've been running various Linux distributions exclusively on my home desktop and workstation for a couple of years now, with a brief foray into Vista on the new laptop (now Ubuntu).

An Fear Aniar wrote: »

I'd love to be free of Microsoft but I dare not....

What's stopping you?

An Fear Aniar

Tom Dunne wrote: »

*raises hand*

I didn't technically remove Windows, I just installed Ubuntu over it.

Best thing I ever did.

Macros42 wrote:

*I've been purely Linux since last summer. Desktop and laptop. Happy as a pig in ****

Brill, I think I'm gonna go do the dual-system solution till I'm comfortable with Linux.
Thanks folks!:)


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pontovic

An Fear Aniar wrote: »

Just wondering if this is something people are doing...

I'd love to be free of Microsoft but I dare not....


.

I did it in work last week and I have no regrets. Just check your hardware though. I've been an on and off linux user for years and I had a love/hate relationship with it. I loved that it was different and free and I hated when it took ages to get something working in it.

Ubuntu is very widely used, is easy to install, and if you are stuck you have plenty of support. Linux was never really easy to get to grips with for most people other than enthusiasts but thats all starting to change now.

It all depends on what you want to do as well. If you are into designing, go for a mac, if you are doing simple tasks then go for ubuntu. It has a very clever and easy to use package management system and all the other bits and pieces you need.

dhaddock

yeh i too removed windows for ubuntu but i then set up virtualbox with a windows xp guest

stereo_steve

Me too! Home PC is ubuntu, great being able to ssh in when I want. I also run ampache so I can stream my music to whereever I am. Great using your home pc as a proxy server so work don't know what your looking at! It's also great for starting torrents so they are ready for you when you go home! I really couldn't go back to windows now.

I even have a 2.5" USB hard drive. Carry it around me and boot off that in work and when I move about. Linux for when your on the go!

An Fear Aniar

One concern is that I have a Blu-Ray player on my laptop. I don't know if I could use it with Linux.


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monosharp

started messing with Linux in 97, started with Slackware, Debian, Red Hat, Fedora. Then settled on Gentoo for a few years and then started with Ubuntu.

Best choice you will ever make.

Orion

An Fear Aniar wrote: »

One concern is that I have a Blu-Ray player on my laptop. I don't know if I could use it with Linux..

Don't think so. It requires DRM which is anathema to Linux.

http://mostly-linux.blogspot.com/2006/06/top-5-reasons-blu-ray-will-never-be-in.html

I use Linux. I have never used professionally anything other than UNIX or Linux, and at home, Linux only. 100% of my hardware purchases are made with Linux compatibility in mind. I will never use another OS, and since Blue Ray will ONLY work on a DRM infected operating system, it will never have a place in my computer.

niallb

An Fear Aniar wrote: »

One concern is that I have a Blu-Ray player on my laptop. I don't know if I could use it with Linux.
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Blu Ray will be a bit of a headache for now.
Don't even try to get it working until you're comfortable with other things.
A mistake a lot of people make starting out is trying to get the most awkward
things working before they do anything at all with their linux system.
If that doesn't work, they feel nothing did, and leave disappointed.
Blu Ray was designed to be hard to play!

Give wubi a chance tomorrow, and you'll be dual booting before you know it.
If you want to watch a movie, boot into windows so you can access the
licensed player.

An Fear Aniar

niallb wrote: »

Give wubi a chance tomorrow, and you'll be dual booting before you know it.
If you want to watch a movie, boot into windows so you can access the
licensed player.

Thanks, yes, I'll have to dual-boot for the time being becuase of the Blu-Ray.


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matrim

stereo_steve wrote: »

Me too! Home PC is ubuntu, great being able to ssh in when I want. I also run ampache so I can stream my music to whereever I am. Great using your home pc as a proxy server so work don't know what your looking at! It's also great for starting torrents so they are ready for you when you go home! I really couldn't go back to windows now.

I've a similar setup. I run a PC that acts as a download \ file \ webserver using ubuntu. *just as an aside you can do the exact same thing on Windows but it's a nicer setup on linux*

My laptop runs a dual boot of windows and Ubuntu, with usage being about 70 / 30 in favour of windows. The main reason I don't use ubuntu more is because I use the 64bit version, and you have to use a workaround to get a 32 bit version of flash running and everytime I update firefox it breaks the workaround.

Voodu Child

I installed it on an old laptop that some of my family (non-techy) use for basic web-browsing and email. Its such an old machine (single core, slow HDD) that Ubuntu is just handier, XP takes ages to get going with all the virus and spyware updates etc. I'll be putting it on another (old) machine shortly.

I had an Ubuntu partition on my own main machine for a while. I don't at the moment, I just prefer Vista tbh.

stereo_steve

matrim wrote: »

My laptop runs a dual boot of windows and Ubuntu, with usage being about 70 / 30 in favour of windows. The main reason I don't use ubuntu more is because I use the 64bit version, and you have to use a workaround to get a 32 bit version of flash running and everytime I update firefox it breaks the workaround.

I have 64bit on my pc at home. Flash is working fine with Hardy. Are using a wrapper for the windows flash plugin or are you using gnash?

ntlbell

Bard wrote: »

- partially because of the systems lack of support for my wireless network card but mostly because of my heavy reliance on some applications which

Just be careful with things like this i's not the systems lack of support for your network card it's you chose a vendor that doesn't provide a driver or open up so someone else can write one.

if people pruchase hardware from vendors that are open it will force the others to follow suit or go bust.

It's not ubuntu's fault.

Shiny

Installed Ubuntu 7.10 and then found that creative xfi cards are not
supported. (That 64bit piece of crap driver from creative doesn't count/or work).

Might give 8.04 a shot to see if the card works but I doubt it will be.

Capt'n Midnight

Shiny wrote: »

Installed Ubuntu 7.10 and then found that creative xfi cards are not
supported. (That 64bit piece of crap driver from creative doesn't count/or work).

Might give 8.04 a shot to see if the card works but I doubt it will be.

In fairness Creative don't fully support windows Vista either http://forums.creative.com/creativelabs/board/message?board.id=soundblaster&thread.id=116332


http://ie.releases.ubuntu.com/hardy/

PogMoThoin

Shiny wrote: »

Installed Ubuntu 7.10 and then found that creative xfi cards are not
supported. (That 64bit piece of crap driver from creative doesn't count/or work).

Might give 8.04 a shot to see if the card works but I doubt it will be.

Don't buy Creatives webcams either if your considering linux, I've got a Creative IM Pro that won't work in Ubuntu as they won't release the source code for this either. I'm never buying another Creative product, especialy after that Daniel_K incident

matrim

stereo_steve wrote: »

I have 64bit on my pc at home. Flash is working fine with Hardy. Are using a wrapper for the windows flash plugin or are you using gnash?

I use the wrapper on Edgy Eff. When it works it works perfectly but breaks on every upgrade and I have to do it all again. I'm considering upgrading to Hardy when I get a chance so hopefully it will work better on it

Oracle

I built my own computer and put Linux on it, it works great, and I've saved myself about €100 by not buying Windows. I have a Windows PC as well, but I rarely use it, far too much hassle, and so slooooow... It's not just the OS that's slow, it's all the apps on top as well, and the endless updates. I just can't be bothered waiting on Windows and Office. I'm a happy Ubuntu user since 2006.

Fionn101

for what it's worth...

I took bushy's advice a while back and went to www.goodbye-windows.com because I had an old laptop (now my most used laptop) and wanted to learn a bit of unix.

By far the best thing I've done, with a decent knowledge of linux improving day by day I find I can get far more done , quicker , and cheaper

If i need a program that burns cd's I just apt-get install and waheyy , off goes my laptop and installs the program I need , right there and then .

Also with linux nearly at a stage where I can pop it onto my C.V. my contracting rate will increase dramatically, my agent (recruitment agent) is crying out for linux support and knows it will increase the daily rate he can charge for me .

So if you want more money , Linux it !

(what ???? you don't want more money????) ;-)

I only hope this gives you a bit of incentive, furthering yourself is great, (as is money)

p.s. did I mention money ?

An Fear Aniar

Well, since my first post I dual booted and now I can choose between Windows Vista and Unbuntu 8.04.

My friend has been using Open Office to work on her thesis, and the documents are fully interchangeable with Word. Really cool.

I do all my browsing on Ubuntu because of the safety aspect. It's tough going, I'm just now learning how to open up tarballs but I'm enjoying it really and hey, over 24,000 free software goodies!!! I think I'm going to love it.:)


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FruitLover

An Fear Aniar wrote: »

It's tough going, I'm just now learning how to open up tarballs but I'm enjoying it really and hey, over 24,000 free software goodies!!! I think I'm going to love it.:)

It should be very rare for you to need to muck around with tarballs on Ubuntu - the standard package repository has almost everything under the sun you might need (and many non-standard apps are available in package form from non-standard repositories).

dulpit

I took the advice from here and installed Ubuntu yesterday using Wubi. Some teething problems, but it seems quite decent. There's no way i'd remove Windows from this laptop though, dual boot only here. I might consider using Ubuntu exclusively on our PC at home when it eventually needs to be replaced (my parents use it a lot, they wouldn't be the most Computer savvy...)

An Fear Aniar

FruitLover wrote: »

It should be very rare for you to need to muck around with tarballs on Ubuntu - the standard package repository has almost everything under the sun you might need (and many non-standard apps are available in package form from non-standard repositories).

Yeah, I was trying to install Flash Player 9. Eventually I just saw a forum message saying to type in the terminal:

apt-get install flashplugin-nonfree

Which worked. Anyway, I can play Youtube now,


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Oracle

Tarballs, furballs, pinballs never bother with them unless I absolutely have too. I just click the Applications menu (top left of the Desktop), and click Add/Remove Applications. I l being able to get extra programs for free. I can play Bejeweled for free now (I've added Gweled) it's a great little pastime for the slow and mentally challenged like myself. I like the music, groovy.