Falling into the Vista Trap

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Falling into the Vista Trap
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dpack

Joined: 02 Jul 2005
Posts: 45460
Location: yes

Posted: Mon Nov 26, 07 8:38 pm Post subject:
seems ok so far on this 9000 series i dumped the bundled norton and got avast and so far it works

dougal

Joined: 15 Jan 2005
Posts: 7184
Location: South Kent

Posted: Tue Nov 27, 07 10:50 am Post subject: Re: Linux looks like a good alternative

judyofthewoods wrote:

... I even managed to share files with Vista on my hard drive, external USB hard drive and USB flash stick, ...

Judy, since you have an external USB hard drive, my suggestion would be that the simpest, safest thing would be to boot Linux from that, if at all possible, rather than mucking about with dual booting off the same partition (which requires everything to play nicely).
So...
- discovering about booting from usb (can you? how?)
- repartitioning the external (so you have a backup area and a Linux area?)
- then play with whatever, in the safe "sandpit" partition you have created...

An alternative would be (to avoid altering your current "daily bread" system) to investigate "virtualisation" (use a z if you like on Google) software - again with the intention of keeping your experimentation within a fenced-off "sandbox".
Things have moved beyond VirtualPC, but nevertheless -
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/HowToConfigureUbuntuForMicrosoftVirtualPC2004

Not my area, but hope that helps.

Jb

Joined: 08 Jun 2005
Posts: 7761
Location: 91ï¿½ N

Posted: Tue Nov 27, 07 6:09 pm Post subject:
Looking at trying to get Ubuntu booting off USB at the moment for my laptop but first I want to get it's wireless working. (but regardless of the wireless, ubuntu is looking pretty snazzy in its 7.10 incarnation)

OP

Joined: 28 Jul 2006
Posts: 4661
Location: Yorkshire

Posted: Wed Nov 28, 07 12:15 pm Post subject:
Just got Kubuntu working, running as a virtual machine within Vista ... maybe the best of both worlds! If all you need is basic Internet stuff and office applications it is very good.

tahir

Joined: 28 Oct 2004
Posts: 45420
Location: Essex

Posted: Wed Nov 28, 07 12:17 pm Post subject:
What's the difference between Ubuntu and Kubuntu?

OP

Joined: 28 Jul 2006
Posts: 4661
Location: Yorkshire

Posted: Wed Nov 28, 07 1:02 pm Post subject:
It's got the KDE desktop built in ... so a bit easier for people used to Windows to get up and running.

MarkS

Joined: 01 Aug 2006
Posts: 2626

Posted: Wed Nov 28, 07 10:24 pm Post subject:

there are two major desktop environments (theres loads of others as well)

Gnome is the default with ubuntu
KDE is used in kubuntu (and suse)

They alter slightly the desktop user interface apperance and some behaviour. They also tend to ship with slightly different utility progs (things like mp3 rippers, cd burners etc, although programs written for one interface will generally work perfectly well in another, they jut dont look quite as snazzy out of their usual.

dpack

Joined: 02 Jul 2005
Posts: 45460
Location: yes

Posted: Wed Nov 28, 07 10:37 pm Post subject:
am i missing something ? this works ,so far

jema
Downsizer Moderator

Joined: 28 Oct 2004
Posts: 28111
Location: escaped from Swindon

Posted: Wed Nov 28, 07 11:19 pm Post subject:

MarkS wrote:

My take on these two is that gnome is slightly nicer looking, but a bit more flaky.

oldish chris

Joined: 14 Jun 2006
Posts: 4148
Location: Comfortably Wet Southport

Posted: Thu Nov 29, 07 6:07 pm Post subject:

In spite of 35 years of hands-on experience of trying to use a computer, I simply fail to see how Vista is an improvement on Windows 3.1! All I ask is that the system should be easy to use: can I point and click and fire up a user application such as a web browser? Yes? That'll do!

Downsizers should note that there is a conspiracy to make you dump your old system (even though it works) and buy something new. Resist it!

Out there in Linux-world are myriads of weird geeks who write odd bits of software because they can! Some of them adapt and develop the latest software so that it will run beautifully on old, supposedly obsolete PCs - just for the hell of it.

If you don't want to take a risk, buy a spare hard drive (I got mine for £10 second hand from a back street computer shop) replace the existing one and play, swap them back and carry on as usual.

OP

Joined: 28 Jul 2006
Posts: 4661
Location: Yorkshire

Posted: Thu Nov 29, 07 7:26 pm Post subject:
An even easier way to try out linux is to download one of the various freeware "virtual machine" programs, and use it to run Linux within Windows. Best of both worlds. No rebooting or dual booting required.

dpack

Joined: 02 Jul 2005
Posts: 45460
Location: yes

Posted: Thu Nov 29, 07 7:44 pm Post subject:
now i have an all singing etc laptop i can play with the stack ,mend what is broken and build a thing to do something it will do studio sound and dv editing so far but if i strip out the domestic stuff it may be better im posting this from vista and ie on a top end portable but it works

Gervase

Joined: 17 Nov 2004
Posts: 8655

Posted: Thu Nov 29, 07 8:12 pm Post subject:
...and I am posting this on a ten-year-old Mac, and it still works. It does depress me that we are led by the nose by software companies constantly to upgrade on the premiss that we are somehow 'missing out' if we don't.

MarkS

Joined: 01 Aug 2006
Posts: 2626

Posted: Sat Dec 01, 07 9:38 pm Post subject:

Gervase wrote:

...and I am posting this on a ten-year-old Mac, and it still works. It does depress me that we are led by the nose by software companies constantly to upgrade on the premiss that we are somehow 'missing out' if we don't.

You not a 'Doomslaughterer 2008 pro' player then?

James

Joined: 11 Jan 2006
Posts: 2866
Location: York

Posted: Mon Dec 03, 07 1:12 pm Post subject: Re: Linux looks like a good alternative

judyofthewoods wrote:

I have also found what looks like an easy enough step-by-step instruction (for Ubuntu - including all the commands to copy and paste) to hopefully get my USB Speedtouch Modem working on next boot.

try this:

https://www.squeezedonkey.com/wiki/linux/index.php?title=Main_Page

its a program thats been written specifically for speedtouch USB modems running in ubuntu. Download it, click on the downloaded box icon on the desktop and ubuntu will automatically install it. All you need to do is enter your name & password. Its extremely easy, and very straight forward.
Another chance to get your hands dirty on the command line cruelly taken away from you!

If you've got vistas, its a piece of cake to partition off a little bit of your hard drive (on my laptop I have a 15 Gb linux partition, on my old pc I have a 7Gb partition). It takes a few minutes and a re-boot. Ubuntu needs around 4Gb to run, pluss some space to play with, so will happily run on 7Gb.

But as dougal says, if your BIOS allows booting from USB (press F12 during boot-up to find out), your best off just playing with linux on your external hard-drive

puppy didnt work as well for me as ubuntu on my Toshiba sattalite laptop. Consequently, I'd go for ubuntu.

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