Linux Switch: Is it worth it?

I'm pretty sure I'm going to switch to Linux. I've chosen Fedora as it is supposedly one of the most secure and I want to use KDE desktop which is their default. I have tried it using a live image running off a flash drive and it is still as fast as Windows XP.

Can anyone give ma any reason not to switch? I use my Netbook for the web, media including watching video and music, office programs and some free strategy games. I also use it for my guitar but not as a sequencer, just for running guitar pro.

I can't think of a single reason not to. Do any of you guys have one?

reply to post by Pimander


I dual boot the unbuntu version and love it, but there have been several times that I have had compatibility issues when working with windows files.

If you are a gamer I would not switch either.

reply to post by Pimander


I'd suggest finding an Android build for netbooks. Android has friendly tablet and netbook versions. It's perfect for web, media (music & video), office programs, and perfect for Strategy games with a wide selection of applications. Downside is you wont be able to run guitar pro.

The only reason to not switch to Linux is if you like games. Personally I use Backtrack. You will learn a lot about computers if you decide to switch to Linux. Also, Linux is a lot more secure than Windows (Mainly because of the fact that hardly anyone bothers to write viruses specifically for Linux). The amount of effort you put into understanding the software is what you will get out of it.

You should be able to run music software depending on how good you are with configuration software and if you know about device drivers. There are multiple guitar/music programs that can run on Linux. If they only work for Windows, you might be able to install them on Linux if you use this program called Wine. (It's a basic Windows emulator).

The only reason to not switch to Linux is if you like games. Personally I use Backtrack. You will learn a lot about computers if you decide to switch to Linux. Also, Linux is a lot more secure than Windows (Mainly because of the fact that hardly anyone bothers to write viruses specifically for Linux). The amount of effort you put into understanding the software is what you will get out of it.

I write to you from Linux Mint and it is simply fantastic - It boots faster than win-doze and does all the lightweight computing brilliantly. All the software is free and 99% of your everyday computing needs will be handled by it.

Only thing I would say about Linux, having used it for years is to keep windows on a smaller partition. I occasionally find myself reluctantly booting it up to work the odd program that only windows will run this is usually because I am sent some random thing from work that I need to edit in a microsoft programme in order for it to be useable by my peers.

Not a single reason not to. I too run a dual Windows, Ubuntu boot. I would suggest doing so; though the linux side is where you want to be, I have found that some useful programs, say, Ableton, are not written in linux. A program called Wine will run most of these, but that is a different story, and it isn't always the same...

If you have an NVidia video card, go for it, unless as suggested you enjoy gaming.

I have learned the hard way, Linux and ATI do not get along. I can't watch my videos due to tearing, and using Kaffeine, while reducing this, gives me terrible quality.

Ugh, I never knew... I had been holding back due to games, decided to go cold turkey...

Now I'm back to dual booting. nothing worse than the only vice you have, decent sci fi shows and such, keeping me bound to M$....

Which if strange to be honest, my dvb usb stick works perfect in kaffeine... SO NOT FAIR!!!

Seriously, it's enough to make me go back to nvidia, ATI have proven time and time again to be a flakey flimsy mob..

But if you're not a gamer or video watching pedant like me, cannot see a reason not go go linux.

I cant think of any reason not too either, i dual boot with the latest Ubuntu, i have tried a few different distros though. Some are easier to get to grips with, but i do love linux although as others have said there are some hardware issues now and again, and it is sometimes more difficult to get things to work if they do not work out of the box, but learning to do these things is great and teaches you alot.

Enjoy, i would go for the dual boot option personally as there are some occasions when you have to use windows for the odd thing.

I can think of any reason not to (unless you are heavy gamer). But them I am using linux, been doing so for years.

Installed on the hd it should be much faster than from flash. You could try dualboot if you want to keep windows "just in case".

reply to post by questforevidence


Unlike what many people thinks, the game issue is a false issue... If you really want to game under linux, you can... and I don't mean playing only openttd and other opensource games... You can play WoW for example and MOST of windows games thru emulation of windows APIs.... and when it runs, it runs quite fine !
Windows emulator is called wine... but you'll probably have some pain in the ass to set it up for gaming, since it's quite a minimalistic api... I would suggest using cedega for gaming windows emulation... It's a fork of wine focused on gaming... Unfortunatelly, it's not a free fork... but you should not have too much problems finding an "underground" version, which is legal in some countries as long as it's for personnal use.
There's one issue anyway... Each time I tried to apply a crack to a game (sometimes just for convenience because I don't want to put the cd each time, sometimes for other reasons), the modified .exe would just crash at launch.

Once properly setup, windows emulation even allow tu run .exe files under linux just like you would do under windows (open your favourite desktop file "explorer", and double-click on it, and it just runs...).

Anyway, windows emulation is not something I'd recommand to bother with if you're not ready (psychologically and if you lack the skills to deal with potential problems you may encounter).

reply to post by mainidh


Problem with ati is that they never learned to write a clean driver... This also apply under windows, but it's less left-alone... Under linux, it's almost impossible to setup your ATI card properly at the first attempt... and I would recommand that once you have a working setup (yes it's doable, without the issues you described... but this can cause much white hair ! lol) to NOT update your driver too often... or get ready to rollback in case of problem...
They tend to leave some very serious issue in their drivers... You also have more "stable" drivers under linux, like the open source one... but it's not fully reverse engineered, doesn't support all graphic boards out there, and often have some huge performences issues.

So yeah, for someone that is new to linux, get an nvidia card... Driver setup is user friendly, and I never had a problem with it.

Sold! Not one person gave me a reason to worry too much. I'm not completely tech retarded so hopefully I'll be OK.

I'm thinking I will leave a dual boot as a couple of you advised and forget about Windows emulation altogether. The kinds of games I play are not ones that demand a graphics card so I have little to worry about.

I might be back on here in a couple of days with bald patches where I have pulled out hair so I hope you don't mind rescuing me if I get stuck.

Thanks for the tips.

If you are willing to learn new things, and are willing to do things differently than you used to, then Linux is it.

I'm a Unix / Linux fan for many years now, only use Windows for the occassional game.

The only reason that I could give to not switch is that if you are not a regular Linux user, you could run into problems with certain things later on. For instance, a lot of stuff isn't plug-and-play like Windows, and some things have to be configured manually.

I have never really used Fedora, but it is probably like Ubuntu, and pretty good at configuring itself by now, so maybe it wouldn't be too much hassle. I tried out a version of Ubuntu a few years ago, after using Suse and Knoppix for a while, just to see what it was like, and the only problem I had out of the box was that flash and java weren't working, which is an easy install. I too dual-boot now, which you could consider.

But, as I said, I don't know about Fedora. I do know that many distros can be a bit more complicated, which means you should know a bit more. Ideally, you should be comfortable around a command terminal, knowing when and how to use SU or Sudo status, etc...

You can also get distros based on your preference. For instance, a user above mentioned Backtrack. I have this on a cd because it is a great pentest or hacking distribution, with a boatload of tools all in one place. You can get distros geared for media, science, etc. Many of those are flavors of Ubuntu.

Good luck on your switch. Honestly, if you are new to Linux, I would stick with Ubuntu, since they have the largest online support community, and you will find that any question you have or problem you run into has been addressed on their forums in the past.

reply to post by JiggyPotamus

I ran fedora off the a flash image and everything works fine. Fedora sets itself nicely on my system. It even detected and set up my second monitor without input from me which I was impressed with.

I have chosen Fedora over Ubuntu because it is built to run with KDE desktop which I fancy more than the others. The other reason I have gone for Fedora is that I am told be a hacker that it is about as secure as you will get unless you are an expert on security. I'll let you all know whether I made a bad choice in a few weeks.

Originally posted by Ghostfreak1
reply to post by mainidh

 

Problem with ati is that they never learned to write a clean driver... This also apply under windows, but it's less left-alone... Under linux, it's almost impossible to setup your ATI card properly at the first attempt... and I would recommand that once you have a working setup (yes it's doable, without the issues you described... but this can cause much white hair ! lol) to NOT update your driver too often... or get ready to rollback in case of problem...
They tend to leave some very serious issue in their drivers... You also have more "stable" drivers under linux, like the open source one... but it's not fully reverse engineered, doesn't support all graphic boards out there, and often have some huge performences issues.

So yeah, for someone that is new to linux, get an nvidia card... Driver setup is user friendly, and I never had a problem with it.

I've done everything possible to get the AIT setup working, and it tears no matter what. I had to use the proprietary driver to get almost all the functionality but still, videos tear. I didn't just try it haphazardly and give up, I looked everywhere, and the problem has been ongoing for years. ATI simply do not provide decent drivers.

They make their drives almost exclusively for windows, and in that - while not as stable as NVidia, I experience no tearing at all.

As for gaming, anything with punkbuster is out the window... all I played was COD4. 1 game tied me to windows. I threw it out due to the constant garbage the players of that game were dishing out, and as I only played multiplayer, it was a non sequeter for me, I went pure linux.

No point with it for that, as Evenbalance will not tone down their windows authentication checks, and seeing as wine uses completely different alternatives, it will fail 100% of the time. EB check the checksum of the entire dll. It cannot be emulated. So..

Everything else works flawlessly. I couldn't believe how easy with ubuntu 10.04 how easy it was to mount ntfs drives and connect to shares... Perfect!!

Mind you unity is a shocker... so staying at an earlier version was my choice.

If you can show me a guide that can make videos using mkv or nicely compressed video that has no tearing, I'd be much obliged!! But even the ubuntu forums have give up for now.

The main answer is "Linux is for developers not end users." and this is with every single effect turned off, the latest tweaks and tricks applied. I cannot watch a show that involves any movement without it splitting my screen, which drove me back to dual boot.

Never had it under NVidia. sadly, which means until ATS pull their finger out, I have to resort to dual booting..

I even tried installing the klm codec pack in wine to get media player classic going, but it crashes .. and also, well, it only is a front end to linux calls that would most likely result in the same problem.

Sad shame really, I'd finally taken the plunge.... argh I hate ati..

Originally posted by mainidh
Mind you unity is a shocker... so staying at an earlier version was my choice.

I haven't even tried unity as a nube but not in the slightest bit interested. KDE looks great to me.

Originally posted by mainidh
Sad shame really, I'd finally taken the plunge.... argh I hate ati..

Nightmare!

Mental note taken when I get a new desk top, avoid ATI. I used to have an ATI on my old system.

reply to post by mainidh


Another problem with ati drivers (proprietary ones I mean) is that some boards works perfectly with it, while some other can have problems, even if they are the same chipsets... My advice would be to use not too recent hardware with it...
Proprietary drivers are also a bit tricky to setup due to their kernel modules requirements that aren't always obviously logical... You need to get rid of some kernel modules cuz ati has its own ones that are required for a proper setup (mainly into agp/dri section), and if you leeve those in the kernel, the ATI ones just will not compile. and not everyone is familiar with kernel dealing... especially if you are using a binary based distro like ubuntu (not saying it's a bad distro, just that it's not the best suited for "kernel-playing" (I use gentoo, and build up my kernel manually))
also note that I didn't used ATI cards with linux for 3 years (was tired of drivers issues too, lol), but when I had, I don't remember having issues such as what you described... I had a quad-screen setup pannel with 2 identical ati cards... No need to say that I spent several days if not weeks to get it all working with 3d acceleration and stuff like hardware transparency (aka "Composite" feature in XOrg)...
Now I dropped all this quad screen setup because of the separations between screens were more annoying than expected to watch videos... plus I bought a tv that's bigger than the 4 screens I had...

To come back to your odd problem, have you tried changing resolution / refresh rate ? It may help too...

I've had problems with Nvidia drivers. The screen would be all scrambled on waking from sleep (I own a laptop) or in Gnome 3 the text in the menus would be garbled gibberish after waking. The nouvou open source Nvidia is even worse and unusable as the menus don't appear at all.

Despite snide remarks from Linux users I can't simply replace the graphics card in a laptop as it's integrated into the motherboard. That's the problem with Linux it's a crap shoot on if it will work with your hardware or not.

I'd suggest buying a Windows 7 OEM copy off newegg or tigerdirect for $100, it's the full version of Windows. It's a great way to save money At least you'd know it'd work with your hardware and software as running Windows programs in Wine can be iffy in Linux.