Linux vs. Windows...

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RyanGSams

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Ok, so I am debating on putting Linux on a Laptop i have. What are the negatives of Linux over Windows? Also what are the postives?

The laptop will basically be used for web browsing and some document typing not really much else at all.

Will Linux work for that? I am assuming so but want to have a answer from somebody who knows about Linux. I have never used it before and want to try it.

Thanks in advance.
 
Yes, that'll work fine.
As for positives and negatives, uhm. Test it for a while and see; it's kind of different in many small ways. The basic ones (support the hardware, generally work fine) are sorted, unless the laptop has some rather unusual parts.
 
If you are only going to be doing web browsing and working with documents then linux will work just fine. If you grab a distro like ubuntu, you generally do not have to do much work to get it up and running. There is a basic set of drivers included and some basic software (openoffice). I like CLI because it is fairly simple for me to do, but some people do not like CLI. Of course you do not have to use CLI for everything, but it is one of things I like about linux.
 
RyanGSams said:
What are the negatives of Linux over Windows?
Click to expand...

Gaming. That's about it really. I recommend getting Linux Mint because it comes with everything installed, including stuff like video codecs and flash. Its the best "out of the box" Linux distribution i know of.
 
1. You should use the operating system you like and are most comfortable with

2. If you are just wanting something to use for internet browser, try Ubuntu Netbook Remix

3. If you plan on writing documents, try OpenOffice on your computer (as it is right now) and play around with it to see if it is something you are willing to learn, use, and "put up with"; if all is good for you with OpenOffice, you can use the Linux version of OpenOffice in combination with Ubuntu Netbook Remix (from #2)

(EDIT: Also, Debian Mint isn't too bad either.)

Both Windows and Linux are great and have their functions and purposes. But the most important thing is #1: you should use what you want to use, what you feel most comfortable with, and what you like.

Your satisfaction is my business.
 
Ubuntu 11.04 is in beta now, but will be out later this month. Several changes in it, not sure if I like them all (dropping gnome for unity). However, they are moving to LibreOffice rather than OpenOffice which sounds like a good thing.
 
For the OP: Libreoffice is a fork of openoffice, started after oracle bought sun (sun had a fair bit of control over openoffice). It's much the same, but more open to patches and changes.
 
Laptop make and model?

Some laptops run great under Linux and some don't. Then again, some distros run well on some laptops, and again, some don't. I remember running Linux on a now 5 year old laptop and it ran like a dream. Then I ran the same distro on my Gateway tablet and I had nothing but problems (mostly video and power related).

Really, the best way to find out how it runs on your laptop is to test it on a separate partition and see how it behaves. If Ubuntu doesn't run the way you like it, try Fedora Core. If that doesn't run the way you like it, try openSUSE. If they're all too slow, try Xubuntu, DSL, VectorLinux, or Slackware (if you're brave).
 
Unless you want to spend a considerable amount of time learning a new OS, I would use Ubuntu if you try Linux. My first experience with Linux was Slackware, and coming from Windows, it was a BIG change. I liked it though, and if some of the programs I need for work weren't Windows only, I'd still have a Slackware partition on this drive.
 
I'd say give elementaryOS a shot. It's the "new kid on the block" released just over a week ago. It's very lean, it's very fast, minimal, and it's made basically from Ubuntu 10.10 with a lot of gunk, junk, and assorted useless stuff yanked out to make it leaner and faster than Ubuntu itself.

Only available in 32 bit form, and only by torrent presently. Not much happening for support at present, just an IRC channel (a web IRC chat client is available at the distro homepage), but since it's Ubuntu most issues you might have can be resolved by the same instructions one would get for Ubuntu.

Been messing around with it since about an hour after it was released, and I like it - it cuts through all the muck and provides... well... an elementary OS, to be honest. Great name they chose for it as it's applicable right off the bat: it's the basics, and it gets the job done.

You can install it on a USB stick using UNetbootin and make a "LiveUSB" version just for trying it out, and then install it if you like it.

Considering precisely what the OP asked for: a Linux distro for browsing and simple document typing, I'd say elementaryOS is nearly perfect for such a role.
 
as a follow-up to the gaming comment, what is up with Cedega these days? I noticed that it switched to GameTree. Is it still possible to download and use Cedega on a different distro (eg, Ubuntu or CentOS) or do you _have_ to download and use their specialized GameTree distribution?
 
Need more pictures of ElementaryOS. I'm very much curious about it, but don't have the time right now to work with it. D;
 
ftp://www.allbsd.org/pub/ ... back up after the quake. The subdirectories FreeBSD, FreeBSD-snapshot, pcbsd may be of interest. (I use the first of the three; also Freesbie once in a while ). If you use pcbsd you can "upgrade" it to Freebsd maybe, it has apps pre-installed VS FreeBSD which has the "base" and a large "ports tree" from which to install categories (www, audio, multimedia, x11-fm, math, science, textproc, etc etc.) Currently at v8 (FreeBSD ) although I've recently upgraded to v9 on one machine. (It is
similar, but unlike exactly, linux)
....
Similar to a post below, I'd definitely dual-boot or have a spare other internet machine. (Used to dual boot but too much ram in the machine for windows98 to work without reconfiguration; bsd install with windows must be done according to some explicit guide or the boot may not work).
...
I've flash working, but not in a manner most persons do. Many browsers (usual ones; text-based) etc.
Installed on pentium 2, pentium 3, p4, amd quad-core, etc.
 
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I use latest Kubuntu and Windows 7 on my PC. Let's say Windows is less hassle to install and it feels snappier and less cluttered. Still, Kubuntu works just fine and it's free :)
 
There were some tests on battery life on phorinix (how ever you spell it) it was pretty much like this osx>windows 7>linux so don't expect better battery life. I would stay away from linux also if your documents will be sent to others or really important because open office just can't compare to MS office in any way shape or form.

Last time I used flash on linux it was pretty crappy, it maxed my cpu and the pc was super slow. This might have changed by now.

Linux is great and all and i like to play around with it but it really just isn't worth it if windows came with your pc because of the little problems. I'd say its only benefits for you personally over windows would be its free if you don't have windows and it's more protected and secure in a way against viruses/malware.
 
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TBH, I would recommend dual booting Linux/Windows. It sounds like you would be happy in Linux most of the time, but having Windows available could be handy for any number of reasons.
 
pxc said:
TBH, I would recommend dual booting Linux/Windows. It sounds like you would be happy in Linux most of the time, but having Windows available could be handy for any number of reasons.
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This, or if your machine can handle it, have a Windows VM with hardware acceleration enabled so it should be able to do some games. But dual booting is probably a better option for anything intensive.
 
I would have stuck with Linux Mint on my rig if I could have gotten Samba to work. Shit that was very frustrating !! I have to wipe my rig and put Windows back on.

The other thing that made me have to wipe my drive was for video editing. I couldn't figure out the Linux programs. I may end up dual booting just to keep things simple.
 
If you don't want to use Openoffice/Libre under Linux, you could also try CrossoverOffice.

Its a proprietary work based on Wine that allows Windows versions of office to work on X86 linux machines.

It costs a little bit of money, but does a good job.

The benefits of Linux will be that you need a lot less RAM to do the same things. Most software will be free. The package manager will take care of making sure everything is up to date and patched, so there is a security benefit as well. (You don't have to update each program separately like with Windows)

Most modern Linux distributions (Ubuntu, Fedora, Mint, etc.) work well out of the box on most systems, and when they do, are actually easier and quicker to install than Windows.

When they don't - however - it can often be a hairy mess to get things to work properly, if you are not used to Linux - that is.

Most things can be solved by googling and asking questions on the distributions forums.

There are some linux distributions that offer more configurability, but are also more complicated to use, which I would stay away from as your first Linux distribution. Slackware, Suse and Gentoo are among these.

I used Gentoo for several years, but then got tired of the OS breaking itself every month or so when there was a new update, and having to spend time fixing it, so I switched to Ubuntu.

As far as your laptop goes, most things will likely work out of the box. Some things may require closed source drivers, which Ubuntu will download and install for you, but they are not included on the CD, so they have to be downloaded after install.

In most cases this is fine, and includes video card drivers. Its more tricky - though - if your ethernet or wireless chips require closed source drivers.

Usually wired ethernet is fine, but for wifi you may need closed source drivers. If you install with the laptop connected to a wired network you should be fine.
 
you can burn an ubuntu or linux mint .iso and try it on your lappy without actually installing it... my reccomendation would be to try the live cd/dvd and see if you can live under linux.

There is a really lightweight distro called MacPup that I have been using on my eeePC, I am really impressed with it. Everything works right out of the box, and it looks as nice as the big bloated distros.

http://macpup.org/
 
I always go back to windows because of 1. Games, 2. Program compatibility, 3. MS office is better than open office by a long shot.

These days at work I mostly use Linux because of the fact I need to process large amounts of data and connect to other computers to run programs and collect data and while its POSSIBLE to do that through putty, its so much easier doing it through a linux terminal, especially if I want to remotely process data using a local program.

On my 1000H netbook I just run windows XP as the default install was actually quite well optimised and I could never get linux or windows 7 to run as fast as the default XP install. But these days my netbook is a glorified firefox interface :p
 
There are a few people on this forum who may call me a linux fanboy, but I've had my share of quibbles and issues with linux:
  • Gaming with wine* sucks.
  • There are some Windows only apps without a (direct and/or sufficient) equivalent that would keep me from switching completely (running Windows in a VM at a minimum), such as AnyDVD and EAC.
  • Community fragmentation. I really hate downloading something only to find out it depends on some specific version of a library specific to Ubuntu or is pre-setup for a naming scheme unique to Ubuntu (aka time to make a load of symlinks).
  • The business world uses Microsoft document formats and opening docx/pptx/etc files in Openoffice/Libreoffice usually really jacks up formatting (forget updating and saving them lol). New versions of Office work like crap or don't work at all with wine*.
  • Again, this is business related: most remote meeting programs have poor cross platform support or none at all. EG webex, go to meeting
* wine = { wine, cedega, crossover office, etc }

If wireless is something you're going for (assuming so since it's a laptop you mentioned), I highly recommend investigating driver compatibility. Personally, I only bother with wifi cards that have in kernel drivers in order to avoid a potential ndiswrapper mess.

I run Gentoo on my linux desktop at home, Win7 on my gaming box, Proxmox VE (Debian) as my home server, a mix of OpenBSD, Debian, Gentoo, and Windows 2008 VMs, and Gentoo on my work laptop (T510 at the moment).
 
Volkum said:
There are some Windows only apps without a (direct and/or sufficient) equivalent that would keep me from switching completely (running Windows in a VM at a minimum), such as AnyDVD and EAC.
Click to expand...

I am not familiar with AnyDVD, but there are more GUI Frontenac to CDparanoia for Linux than I can mention, at least one of which ought to work for you.

CDParanoia is the command line tool for Linux to rip bit for bit identical tracks off of CD's with similar (if not better) capabilities to EAC. It's been around on Linux as long as I have been using it and works very well.
 
Zarathustra[H];1037091417 said:
I am not familiar with AnyDVD, but there are more GUI Frontenac to CDparanoia for Linux than I can mention, at least one of which ought to work for you.

CDParanoia is the command line tool for Linux to rip bit for bit identical tracks off of CD's with similar (if not better) capabilities to EAC. It's been around on Linux as long as I have been using it and works very well.
Click to expand...

Yes, there are. I put "sufficient" in parentheses because trackers have standards for rips and the only ones I've seen that are approved at xld for Mac and eac for Windows. Doesn't mean that the linux based tools aren't as good, but they wouldn't be sufficient for all of my needs.
 
AnyDVD is superfluous on Linux; install the libdvdcss library and you'll be able to read encrypted DVDs without issues (at least ones that don't have some truly freakin' oddball way of protecting the content, which has been known to happen I suppose).

EAC's ripping routines (primarily the "Paranoia" mode and the basis for secure rips) were taken from CDParanoia to begin with, iirc.
 
Joe Average said:
AnyDVD is superfluous on Linux; install the libdvdcss library and you'll be able to read encrypted DVDs without issues (at least ones that don't have some truly freakin' oddball way of protecting the content, which has been known to happen I suppose).
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True, but that's DVDs and not bluray.

Joe Average said:
EAC's ripping routines (primarily the "Paranoia" mode and the basis for secure rips) were taken from CDParanoia to begin with, iirc.
Click to expand...

I don't doubt that is true, but it's also irrelevant in my personal use case.


Let's not get off topic here...
 
I see some of the complaints about not having true replacement apps in Linux. This can be very painfully true depending on the industry.

I am a PCB designer and there is not a true Linux equivalent/replacement for doing high end PCB design in Linux. Whenever I mention this people often say "well, what about CADSoft's EAGLE."

The people that say this are usually people that are using the freeware version of EAGLE and are not doing high end PCB work.

I am talking about a replacement on the order of magnitude of Altium DXP, Mentor PADS, or Cadence. Linux just doesn't have it in this arena. EAGLE doesn't hold a candle to these kinds of commercial applications.
 
Dual booting Debian / XP here. Don't miss anything.

Debian for most things and XP for games and stuff that simply needs Windows.

Not bothering with Win 7, unusable IMO.
 
pxc said:
lulz

"imma never, ever going to learn any other windows os."
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Yeah I thought that was a pretty ignorant comment. Might as well post the same thing about linux from the windows fan club.

They both have their places.
 
quantum112 said:
Dual booting Debian / XP here. Don't miss anything.

Debian for most things and XP for games and stuff that simply needs Windows.

Not bothering with Win 7, unusable IMO.
Click to expand...

I thought the same thing about 3 years ago.

I still use Linux for almost everything and dual boot to Windows for games...


But IMHO, based on what I have learned, running XP today is really just a bad idea. Win 7 is not fool proof, but XP is really just a security swiss cheese.

That, and if you have the hardware to support it, Win 7 actually runs faster. On low end machines XP is still faster, but on an enthusiast machine, Win 7 is better. I have had the experience of running both XP and Win 7 pro side by side (one boot for work, one for pleasure) on my Core i5, laptop with 4 gigs of ram. The experience is night and day.

XP feels light weight and faster in fits and starts, but then there are other times when it just grinds to a halt. Win 7 on the other hand, is an even keeled smooth experience.

That, and DX11 really is all that. I wouldn't go without it.

If you only use it rarely it does become difficult to justify though, what with the price of Win 7 being over $100 even for the system builders license, but once you get it, you won't look back.
 
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