Is Ubuntu for me?

d.anthony

Hi guys, looking for a bit of advice.

Recently read up a little on Ubuntu and was wondering if I should go with it. However, I've found it hard to get a definitive answer as to whether it would suit my computer and what I use it for. I'll give you the details...

I have a Fujitsu Siemens Esprimo Mobile,
Intel Celaron CPU 550@2.00Ghz 2.00Ghz
2.75gb usable RAM
32bit Operating System
Currently using Windows 7 Ultimate

I mainly use my laptop for browsing the net, playing music (does ubuntu support all music file types?), watching films (mostly .avi files), playing games via emulator (Sega Megadrive, SNES, etc) and Football Manager.

Going by that information, would it be worth changing my OS to Ubuntu? Would it support everything I outlined above?

Thanks for reading and any advice is appreciated!

Ficheall

I'm generally a linux advocate, but it isn't great at music, films or games...

Goodshape

Ficheall wrote: »

I'm generally a linux advocate, but it isn't great at music, films or games...

That depends really. Ubuntu is absolutely fine for watching films and listening to music. It's a personal preference but I prefer the music and video playing applications on Linux. Lots of choice there too.

It's the multimedia editing that isn't great. There's no Adobe Photoshop or iMovie. There are alternatives of course, but they're simply not as good/easy/nice.

For gaming you've got to keep in mind that it's a different platform and not one that's optimised for gaming. Nobody makes blockbuster games for Linux. Football Manager probably won't run -- if it runs at all it'll be up to you to do the research and install the extra patches/software/hacks to get it going.

Console emulators will work fine though.


I think if you're tired with Windows and want to learn something new, go for it. For every-day "normal" use (browsing the web, watching video, listening to music) it doesn't really make much difference what operating system you use these days. Your browser choice is probably more important! And they all run the more or less the same browsers.

Are you interested in learning to use the command line at all?

KAGY

I think that any of the ubuntu's are grand for everyday use. I use amarok for music, VLC for media, and Firefox and thunderbird.

Some windows programs will run fine though a program called wine, if you have any, check http://appdb.winehq.org/ to see if and how to get them running.

If there is a program that I have to use windows for I use Virtual box, but that will need a copy of Windows. It's a performance hit, but normally it's good enough.

Most hardware is supported now, but as nearly all manufacturers design for windows there may be some problems, for example, my temperature sensor chip isn't fully supported so I only have one temperature reading instead of three.

You may also want to start of with Linux Mint. It's based on Ubuntu but more things work out of the box.

Karl

Khannie

d.anthony wrote: »

Would it support everything I outlined above?

Yes, no problem.

d.anthony wrote: »

Going by that information, would it be worth changing my OS to Ubuntu?

Much harder question to answer to be honest. What is it that you want that you can't get with Windows 7? Just a bit of a change?

Ficheall wrote: »

I'm generally a linux advocate, but it isn't great at music, films or games...

Linux is not great for games, granted. Music and films though I think it's as good as windows and possibly better (I have a linux HTPC in the house and it's been rock solid now for 5 years delivering delicious content viewing ).

Johnboy1951

Create a livecd of a few different versions of Linux, and run them on your PC to see what they each offer.

Most distro come with the facility to play all sorts of media while using the live CD.

Try a few and see which one you like before installing anything and maybe making a decision you could regret.

Go to distrowatch.com and see the top 10 or twenty and make you pick.

I would suggest these to begin with

Linux Mint
Mepis
PCLinuxOS ...... there are different versions of most available, with different Desktop Environments such as Gnome, KDE, Openbox, LXDE, Xfce etc etc.

A lot of choices can be confusing, but do some reading and visit the forums to get the feel of the different communities behind each.

In the end it is a personal decision ..... no one can tell you what will suit YOU.

regards.

Khannie

Johnboy1951 wrote: »

Most distro come with the facility to play all sorts of media while using the live CD.

A lot of the time you wont get proper graphics drivers running with the livecd (I think they fall back on the ol' vesa drivers fairly handy, and rightly so). It just might not be a good indicator of what you'll actually get from an installed version.

Johnboy1951

Khannie wrote: »

A lot of the time you wont get proper graphics drivers running with the livecd (I think they fall back on the ol' vesa drivers fairly handy, and rightly so). It just might not be a good indicator of what you'll actually get from an installed version.

Have you tried the ones I suggested?

Last time I checked those distros had proprietary video drivers and most codecs on the live CD.

fudgez

d.anthony wrote: »

Hi guys, looking for a bit of advice.

Recently read up a little on Ubuntu and was wondering if I should go with it. However, I've found it hard to get a definitive answer as to whether it would suit my computer and what I use it for. I'll give you the details...

I have a Fujitsu Siemens Esprimo Mobile,
Intel Celaron CPU 550@2.00Ghz 2.00Ghz
2.75gb usable RAM
32bit Operating System
Currently using Windows 7 Ultimate

I mainly use my laptop for browsing the net, playing music (does ubuntu support all music file types?), watching films (mostly .avi files), playing games via emulator (Sega Megadrive, SNES, etc) and Football Manager.

Going by that information, would it be worth changing my OS to Ubuntu? Would it support everything I outlined above?

Thanks for reading and any advice is appreciated!

Hey mate,
I'm just after making the change as pretty much a noob to Linux i'm finding it great I mean its not without its problems and growing pains etc but even if for your first go you tried dualbooting Windows and Linux (prob Mint would be best) then you always have Windows to fall back on if you hate it.

Pro tip! make a Fat 32 partition to store your media on so you can share it between Linux and Windows.

d.anthony

Thanks for the replies guys, appreciate it. Will take the advice on board, do a bit more research on it then give it a shot!

Cheers!

ShooterSF

fudgez wrote: »

Pro tip! make a Fat 32 partition to store your media on so you can share it between Linux and Windows.

Most linux distros, well Ubuntu anyways can deal with NTFS which unlike FAT32 doesn't have a 4gig file size limit in the case you would need to store large ISO files.

fudgez

ShooterSF wrote: »

Most linux distros, well Ubuntu anyways can deal with NTFS which unlike FAT32 doesn't have a 4gig file size limit in the case you would need to store large ISO files.

*slaps self on head* ShooterSF is a gentleman, a scholar and dead right! now my lousy FAT 32 partition looks pretty ****ty

Rockn

In fairness writing to ntfs is very cpu heavy in ubuntu. It's not great if you have an older computer. My old laptop was a 2Ghz Turion and the cpu usage would jump up to 80-90% when writing large/many files to the ntfs partition.

ShooterSF

True but the OPs system can handle Win7 so it should be up for the task.
If it helps Fudgez I learnt the lesson the hard way

Edit: Also your link text has an extra http:// but the actual link is fine but is missing a ":" after its http and appears like a dead link!

PDD

Ive just recently switched over to Linux/Ubuntu in the past few weeks and Ive been installing it on about a half a dozen machines. I would strongly recommend trying out a few using a USB drive and creating live CD's which is very easily done with something like Unetbootin or LiLi USB as this has a nice feature to set persistence on the live USB.

PCLinuxOS - very good for newly switching users from windows

I would put MINT ahead of Ubuntu due to it being media ready out of the box as opposed to having to install the 3rd party stuff under Ubuntu

Also have a look at YLMF OS its a version of Ubuntu that was created to look identical to windows XP.

Dave

Jagera

PDD wrote: »

I would put MINT ahead of Ubuntu due to it being media ready out of the box as opposed to having to install the 3rd party stuff under Ubuntu

I second that. I've been messing with around 5-6 distros and imo - Mint is the best option for a MS Windows escapee.

Just upgraded home laptop to Mint 10 and its just perfect for that general home usage (internet, multimedia, etc).

CiaranC

d.anthony wrote: »

I mainly use my laptop for browsing the net, playing music (does ubuntu support all music file types?), watching films (mostly .avi files), playing games via emulator (Sega Megadrive, SNES, etc) and Football Manager.

Contrary to whats been posted on this thread, there are flawless emulators on Linux for all systems. FM2010 also worked flawlessly under wine (havent tried 2011).

d'Oracle

It can run VLC.
Ergo your movie stuff is sorted.

shizz

I dont see how the argument about choosing Mint over Ubuntu because "more stuff works out of the box" ever wins?

On installation of Ubuntu, you are given the opportunity to include all third party codecs.
So basically if you choose this option, you have everything that Mint offers, but you have to be connected to the internet on installation.

Naikon

shizz wrote: »

I dont see how the argument about choosing Mint over Ubuntu because "more stuff works out of the box" ever wins?

On installation of Ubuntu, you are given the opportunity to include all third party codecs.
So basically if you choose this option, you have everything that Mint offers, but you have to be connected to the internet on installation.

The way I see it, Ubuntu is just saving it's ass from liability issues by providing links to third party repo's. Fedora and Debian for example should be commended for not including ANY closed source software. It not not be up to the maintainers to package this stuff.

ShooterSF

Naikon wrote: »

The way I see it, Ubuntu is just saving it's ass from liability issues by providing links to third party repo's. Fedora and Debian for example should be commended for not including ANY closed source software. It not not be up to the maintainers to package this stuff.

I think the distribution of some of the codecs are legal in some countries and that's why they're available..

BopNiblets

shizz wrote: »

I dont see how the argument about choosing Mint over Ubuntu because "more stuff works out of the box" ever wins?

On installation of Ubuntu, you are given the opportunity to include all third party codecs.
So basically if you choose this option, you have everything that Mint offers, but you have to be connected to the internet on installation.

Well it won up until 10.10 (maybe 10.04?) when that feature was added!
You also get a nice menu and themes an some other stuff in Mint but that's just personal preference.

PDD

shizz wrote: »

I dont see how the argument about choosing Mint over Ubuntu because "more stuff works out of the box" ever wins?

On installation of Ubuntu, you are given the opportunity to include all third party codecs.
So basically if you choose this option, you have everything that Mint offers, but you have to be connected to the internet on installation.

it makes a huge difference to a n00b who has just switched from windows and has no clue of how the underlying unix system works. You might be very comfortable using package managers and using apt-get from the console but very few new windows switchers would be. In order to get alot of your media playing correctly under ubuntu you have to include third party drivers which in itself may not be a big task but can be a very daunting one for a new switcher.

Maybe it was just me but I've done about two dozen installs of distros on 5 different machines in the past three weeks and even with clicking the update from the Internet option within the Ubuntu installation it still didnt make a difference (all flash videos would not play properly or very jittery full screen). While Fluxbuntu, Lumbuntu, Xbuntu and normal Ubuntu failed in this regard Mint worked flawlessly out of the box. Its just my two cents but I would recommend Mint over Ubuntu for that reason besides if someone doesn't like the Mint UI they can still download KDE/Gnome desktop.

I don't think its just about Ubuntu saving its ass, sure there is an element of common sense where they say right leave out this stuff cos it is or could be alot of headaches. I think the exclusion of third party proprietary stems from the fact that Ubuntu is an open source company and is providing open source software. So they apply the letter of the law of open source, if something isn't GPL then its not bundled in the distro. Thats not to say a user cant install it themselves after installation. Its just not bundled with the distro because then the distro would technically no longer be Open Source. Other distros don't take such a hardline approach and some others go to even more extremes. Its all a question of personal preference and its one of the joys of Linux which is roll your own for you.

PeakOutput

im thinking about wiping my macbook installing a fresh macosx and then installing linux mint aswell to learn the basics of linux and try and get into some more command line stuff and understand the guts of it

i know a little about programming but only a little but would be kinda technical i guess so once i start trying to figure things out i usually pick them up fairly quickly

would mint be a good place to start? how much more resource friendly is it then osx? im starting to notice my macbook is slowing down doing some things and it would be nice to get it a bit snappier again