Switching from Windows to Linux: Is it worth it?

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Okay, I recently switched from Win 98 SE to 2k Pro, and it's kinda heavy on my poor old P3, and the idea of jumping the fence and switching to Linux already crossed my mind. Now I know Linux is NOT for gaming AT ALL, but that being said, I don't care, I got my P4-soon-to-be-Athlon X2 for that. For your basic usage of browsing the web, listening to music, some instant messaging, and stuff like that, would the switch really be worth it?

We're supposed to get a class about Linux, but unfortunatly we're not having it this year, so I'm kind of in foreign territory.

If any of you had experience, or made the switch, I'd appreciate your sharing the wisdom.

 

There is a way to try out Linux without really switching. There is a small Linux that can boot from a DVD and run completly from the DVD. So you can give things a try without wiping out your Win install. I forget the name but you should be able to find it.

 

I think it's Knoppix, but I'm not that sure...

 

Or you could run a dual-boot system. I've got mine running Gentoo and WinXP Pro together and love it.

 

There are a few distros that have Live CDs. My distro is Ubuntu, which has one.

I'm in the process of making the switch, using dual-boot. I learned a lot really fast, and after a few weeks I'm comfortable with at least the basic tasks of installing and running, changing display settingsand moving things around.

With tasks like yours, the switch is easy; many distros come with the software for all that as standard.

 

Well, I don't have much to lose wiping my Windows install except for some time. But running it from a CD (I'm still in the no-DVD stone age) sounds like a great idea, I'll have to give it a shot.

Dual-boot sounds a decent idea as well, but I'm not overjoyed by the idea of partitioning my hard drive... Hell, just last week, in the aging OS class we did it like 12 or 15 times.

As for the distros, so far I know SuSe and Mandrake. What's the exact difference between the various Linux distros?

 

Ubuntu: Heavy, bloated, easy to use.
Slackware: Works well, requires an advanced user.
Gentoo: Be prepared to use a month to get your sys running.

Knoppix runs off a CD but is limited.

SuSe, Fedora, Mandriva and Linspire aren't really worth trying.

 

Depends how you define "worth it". Linux (well, UNIX in general) is hard to configure (a nightmare if you've never done it before), but once you get everything running properly (which can take a couple of weeks), maintenance is basically zero. Things will keep on running practically forever (unless you personally mess things up, and with some distros like Ubuntu you really have to WANT to mess them up), and you can forget about things like "reinstall OS".

As for which distro to use... tough one. Debian Unstable (very misleading name, it's still more stable than any other Linux distro) is IMO the best one, and this one WILL work forever once you configure it. Configuring it is the problem, since it requires a LOT of tweaking with settings and parameters. It's a lot of fun if you've got a month off in summer or something, but if you're trying to set it up quickly to actually do some work, don't bother.

Ubuntu and Kubuntu (the only difference is in the GUI and some of the extra software included in the package) are good, if they work. They're Debian derivatives, but they're much harder to tweak than Debian, mainly because many superuser options have been removed. They're supposed to work as soon as you install, but they don't. Example: neither detects my graphic card, which forces me to work on 640x480 (Knoppix doesn't detect it either, but still lets me work at 1024x768. Go figure). A friend of mine has Ubuntu crashing as soon as it boots up due to BIOS conflicts. If they work, they're great though.

Knoppix is a Live (boot from CD) version that can also be installed to the HD. For all intent and purposes it is a Debian Live distro. Once you install it, it practically becomes a Debian that doesn't need tweaking. As such it's probably one I most heartily recommend (it works wonderfully well on my system). Being a Debian derivative also means it's got some wonderful things like APT as an installer (which is far, far superior to the RPM system that Red Hat (now Fedora) came up with, and which contaminated most other distros).

Slackware, Gentoo and Debian are all very good, but stay away from them unless you know what you're doing. Not for beginners (or even intermediate users IMO - it's the reason I don't bother with them. They're great, but the inital phase is too time consuming)

Fedora, SuSE, Mandrake, and the like are just not worth it. Too much tweaking, and they're high maintenance (relative to other distros of course. They're still much more stable than Windows).

Those are the only distros I've tried, so I won't comment on the others. Keep in mind there's about a hundred of them, so you'll just have to pick one. As I said, I do recommend Knoppix. Try to boot it from CD, and if everything seems to work then at least you know you'll have no problem installing it.

 

For me Ubuntu was easy install, it recognized harware and process was easier than XP-installation. After install there was same tuning but forum search-button never let me down.

But like they say "there's no such a thing as a free lunch" There was and is much to learn but I don't see me switch back anymore. But for simple use, net, music avi's and so on it's easily aquired and worth it. Me thinks.

 

You probably should have left Win 2000 to the corporate ITs and gone straight to XP, like most of the world. XP is w-a-y better.

 

I like Win2k, in all honesty. It's my favorite M$ OS so far.

But installing XP on my P3 would be insane. I mean, it's a P3 600 Mhz, with 128 MB of memory. Just installing XP would bust my RAM and get my drive working on swap file.... crack more memory in, you'll say. Well, that machine uses RDRAM (or Rambus). It's hard to find, and I won't lie, RDRAM= . I've put a few of my contacts on the hunt, but I'm not expecting much results. I don't really want to invest on that machine. I've saving my dough to upgrade my ****ING Prescott P4 to a dual-core Athlon X2, with Zalman cooling, no less.

That P3 is legacy.

 

I've tried the live versions of Linux and I wasn't impressed...Why not go back to Win98?? Or if you HAVE to have Linux, chin up, partition your HDD and get a nice version going like Ubuntu...

 

i myself recetly installed Ubuntu, and i like it very much, i have dual boot so windows for gaming etc. and linux for mostly everything else, i am still setting up the systems and have learned the basic command lines..

i can reccomend reading on pages like www.ubuntu.org or www.zeropaid.com (krell knows everything about everything)

 

Right. Mine is a P3 500, but it uses SD RAM instead of Rambus (I think it has 320MB). I don't think I would put XP in it though. I have amother P4 1.6 on my network with Rambus and I like it very much, but that has 512MB of RAM, and it runs the hell out of XP.

Before you spring for anything, I would wait and see how the new Intel platform coming out this summer compares to the current AMD. I hear it's very fine....

 

/me beams a sadistic smile and grabs sledgehammer

I... Hate... Intel!!!

Can you see the AMD logo over my head?

RDRAM is great... but damn expensive.

Neither would I on mine. ME fills the gap wonderfully, for the time being. I'm still waiting for my lazy-arse teacher to get me Ubuntu, however.

 

I spent about an hour trying out Slax (a slackware derrivitive that's only around 200mb, and can be run off usb drives) about four days ago. It worked fine for viewing and listening to all types of media (except .wmv and wma's - but this could be fixed with an installation of irfan view). It detected all my hardware wit no problems at all, and the gui is oh-so intuitive - kills xp anyday. The only problem I had was editing things on my hard drives and not being able to change the flags in file properties to allow myself to (I suspect this had something to do with me not being the administrator, and not knowing how to make myself the administrator, log in as one etc.). Anyway I've got exams to do.

 

Stu, how about sudo? The command for doing things as a superuser/root.

 

There's many ways to give yourself administrator privileges in Linux:
- Log in as root (the installer should have asked to set a root password - the only dirstro I know of that doesn't allow root login is Ubuntu)
- Open a root shell instead of the normal shell (not many distros have this though)
- When in a normal shell, enter superuser mode by using the su command. Works very well if you want to do several root tasks in a row then go back to normal mode. Again some distros (including Ubuntu) don't allow this.
- Use sudo for each command you want to carry out as root. I personally don't like this one, but with Ubuntu (and even MacOS X) you're stuck with it.

If you log in as root, you should be able to change the flags through the GUI by altering file properties. With the other methods, use the chmod command (as a superuser - either using su or sudo) to change them. chmod is easy to use, and you can get help on which parameters do what by typing man chmod.

 

Further to a brief discussion on this topic in RBP, most of the comments above seem to suggest putting Linux on your PC is difficult and requires a reasonable amount of technical ability. So what's the point, if your PC works fine as it is?

 

For me, it is because there is joy in being challenged.