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Levesque
Posted on 08-15-08 03:40 AM Link | Quote | ID: 88941


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Last view: 3031 days 		I got Ubuntu a while back, and I was wondering. Is it really worth the installation over XP?

Does anyone use it, and if so, how would you rate its performance?

blackhole89
Posted on 08-15-08 03:53 AM Link | Quote | ID: 88944


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I use Debian, which is a close relative to that system; however, in particular, some aspects of "end user usability" differ a lot between the two.

- Graphical performance depends a lot on hardware, drivers and your own requirements. New graphics cards are bad, new ATI cards are worse than new Nvidia cards. Exotic graphics hardware is generally no good either.

- The thing with graphics applies to other hardware as well. While support for things like chipsets and periphery of all kinds is generally better than for graphics cards, in case your stuff isn't supported, you're worse off than you are if it's just the graphics card since those have standardised interfaces (vesa).

- For the purpose of running things in the background and keeping control over your system, it generally is superior to all Windows breeds.

- With a lucky hardware configuration, you can get more out of it from a GUI point of view than out of Vista, though the latter still will have an overall more polished and less patchworky look and feel.

- If you are picky, you'll wind up grinding configuration files and devising hackish solutions for the system to suit your needs a lot.

- Software availability generally is superb. In the most cases, installing a program you want doesn't take more than apt-getting the corresponding package; otherwise, you typically have to extract a tarball and go ./configure, make, make install.

- WINE still sucks at emulating 3D graphics applications.

- *nix application GUI designers often give me the feeling that they are wasting much more screen space than their Windows colleagues, but that might just be a personal pet peeve of mine.

- Different approaches at window management and interface design might be an annoyance for a while if you are highly used and feel "native" in Windows workflow like I am.

- It's definitively worth trying out, just don't install it over XP yet. Create a separate partition so you can bail out if it becomes too much for you. At the same time, don't immediately chicken out at the first hardships encountered; acknowledging you are working with a different system and have to start over in understanding many things' workings pays off earlier or later.

That'd be my $.50 for now.

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chungy
Posted on 08-15-08 05:56 AM Link | Quote | ID: 88947


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Last view: 4247 days 		Long story short: Just install it and try it out for yourself. You don't even need to resize XP's partition, just insert the CD while Windows is running, click "Install from Windows" (may be worded different, but you should get the idea), and it will install the whole system into a filesystem image. It's actually a little slower than a straight install to normal partitions, since there is some filesystem overhead from the host partition (XP's); I guess a positive side-effect, this installation method is dead simple to uninstall, it's in the Add/Remove Programs list in Windows.

also read http://linux.oneandoneis2.org/LNW.htm - it will give you some idea that you're trying out a completely different operating system from Windows, and you can't expect it to behave like Windows. If what you're after is a better-Windows-than-Windows-is, support ReactOS.

Now time for some nitpicking.

Posted by blackhole89
I use Debian, which is a close relative to that system; however, in particular, some aspects of "end user usability" differ a lot between the two.

- Graphical performance depends a lot on hardware, drivers and your own requirements. New graphics cards are bad, new ATI cards are worse than new Nvidia cards. Exotic graphics hardware is generally no good either.

In my experience, ATI drivers are generally more stable than NVIDIA ones; and I have no idea what you mean by exotic graphics hardware being no good--practically everyone that's not ATI nor NVIDIA can't afford to stand behind no documentation and proprietary drivers, and are generally better fully supported out of the box most of the time (eg, Intel, Matrox, and VIA chipsets all have full 3D support right from the start because they all have open source drivers).

- The thing with graphics applies to other hardware as well. While support for things like chipsets and periphery of all kinds is generally better than for graphics cards, in case your stuff isn't supported, you're worse off than you are if it's just the graphics card since those have standardised interfaces (vesa).

Pretty much the only other "problem area" is wireless cards. American manufacturers of wireless chips tend to have no documentation or anything to help any OS other than Windows (and maybe Mac OS X); whereas Tawain companies' wireless chips are almost always fully supported for much the same reason minor graphics vendors are fully supported. The problem of Windows-only drivers is partially alleviated by ndiswrapper, although real progress should not depend on it (for the topic creator, ndiswrapper would be fine if his wireless card (if any) isn't supported as-is).

- With a lucky hardware configuration, you can get more out of it from a GUI point of view than out of Vista, though the latter still will have an overall more polished and less patchworky look and feel.

I don't know what you mean by "lucky", but you can generally get a more complex GUI than Windows Vista on something like a Pentium III and a TNT2 card; and I mean full speed ahead, too. Unless you're in a very poor country, it would be hard to believe you can't find a PC more than capable of running all the fancy effects.

- If you are picky, you'll wind up grinding configuration files and devising hackish solutions for the system to suit your needs a lot.

Not really. It's all pretty much point-and-click. Far easier to configure than Windows.

- WINE still sucks at emulating 3D graphics applications.

Vague comment with no real depth to it. Wine runs some 3D apps/games faster than Windows itself, and others it does suck at (which is a bug and the devs intend to fix it).

- *nix application GUI designers often give me the feeling that they are wasting much more screen space than their Windows colleagues, but that might just be a personal pet peeve of mine.

Okay, I'm at a total loss at how to tackle this. Out of all the misconceptions/myths I've heard, this is the very first time I've heard anything remotely like this. And looking at the wastefulness of popular Windows software, I'm going to ask to have your eyes examined.

NightKev
Posted on 08-15-08 06:06 AM Link | Quote | ID: 88949


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Posted by chungy
Long story short: Just install it and try it out for yourself. You don't even need to resize XP's partition, just insert the CD while Windows is running, click "Install from Windows" (may be worded different, but you should get the idea), and it will install the whole system into a filesystem image. It's actually a little slower than a straight install to normal partitions, since there is some filesystem overhead from the host partition (XP's); I guess a positive side-effect, this installation method is dead simple to uninstall, it's in the Add/Remove Programs list in Windows.
Wait... what?! I didn't know you could do that! This is very useful...

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Legomen
Posted on 08-15-08 01:27 PM Link | Quote | ID: 88965


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Last view: 5550 days 		Install Kubuntu (imo much better than ubuntu), and on my laptop, windows xp dont run well (because I only have 256mb ram on it), but when I installled Kubuntu, everything works, so unlike on windows, I didnt need to waste my time to install some F*** drivers (like to get sound work, etc), and I always hated windows, because Kubuntu works constantly, unlike windows.
And also youtube and GameTrailers works at full speed on kubuntu (not that my laptop is quite old, 1,8ghz, 256mb ram, 32vram (ibm thinkpad t30)), but on windows, GT lags, but youtbe works, but still not at full speed.

I only have windows (2000, it had XP when I got it, but it was way too slow, so) and Kubuntu on it, and I just use windows when I need run program what dosent run via WINE (for example, game maker (gm itself works, but games wath are maked with it, dosent work unlesh it is at full screen, but somtimes it freezez whole laptop, and Lunar magic and etc)).

Also I usualy get BSOD, like once I put my mp3/4 player to usb port (via mini-usb cable/whatever) and I got blue screen, and comodo stop'd working .

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chungy
Posted on 08-15-08 01:32 PM (rev. 2 of 08-15-08 01:33 PM) Link | Quote | ID: 88967


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Posted by Legomen
I only have windows (2000, it had XP when I got it, but it was way too slow, so) and Kubuntu on it, and I just use windows when I need run program what dosent run via WINE (for example, game maker (gm itself works, but games wath are maked with it, dosent work unlesh it is at full screen, but somtimes it freezez whole laptop, and Lunar magic and etc)).

I suggest you look into running Windows in VirtualBox, which will avoid the need for a multiboot altogether. with 256MB of system RAM, it could become a tight squeeze (I was on a similar spec computer for quite a while), but if the programs you run will be fine with 64MB of RAM, it should be okay (I used to run a Windows 2000 VM with 64MB of RAM, and it was fairly fine even with a few applications running inside).

Levesque
Posted on 08-15-08 02:40 PM Link | Quote | ID: 88970


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Posted by blackhole89

Create a separate partition so you can bail out if it becomes too much for you.


Thanks, that's what I planned on doing originally, as soon as I get more RAM.

Because, IMO, running Ubuntu and XP on a PC with 128 Megs of RAM is a joke.

Ailure
Posted on 08-15-08 11:44 PM Link | Quote | ID: 88996

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128 megabytes of RAM is a little bit too small for Ubuntu, especially since recomended amount of memory is 192 MB apparently.

I found Ubuntu faster than Win XP, but that's on a 512 megabytes system... which is considered a small amount by today standards.

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Kawa
Posted on 08-16-08 12:13 AM Link | Quote | ID: 89001


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Indeed. I remember people cringing when I described my old lappy. Also 512 mb.

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blackhole89
Posted on 08-16-08 12:45 AM Link | Quote | ID: 89004


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Posted by blackhole89
I use Debian, which is a close relative to that system; however, in particular, some aspects of "end user usability" differ a lot between the two.

- Graphical performance depends a lot on hardware, drivers and your own requirements. New graphics cards are bad, new ATI cards are worse than new Nvidia cards. Exotic graphics hardware is generally no good either.

In my experience, ATI drivers are generally more stable than NVIDIA ones; and I have no idea what you mean by exotic graphics hardware being no good--practically everyone that's not ATI nor NVIDIA can't afford to stand behind no documentation and proprietary drivers, and are generally better fully supported out of the box most of the time (eg, Intel, Matrox, and VIA chipsets all have full 3D support right from the start because they all have open source drivers).

Can't really comment on Intel/Matrox/VIA because I never ran any of them, but ATI's proprietary driver was a constant source of crashes and glitches ever since I started using it, plus it didn't support compositing at all until a few revisions ago, and even now, a lot of Compiz' effects fail inexplicably or produce black windows. Other than that, I'm mostly basing this off general hearsay gathered around communities of the compositing-based window managers. Configurations people reported working nicely were almost exclusively based on NVIDIA hardware, and it generally seemed to have a good reputation for the driver situation. Of course, the tides might well have turned in the past few months.

- The thing with graphics applies to other hardware as well. While support for things like chipsets and periphery of all kinds is generally better than for graphics cards, in case your stuff isn't supported, you're worse off than you are if it's just the graphics card since those have standardised interfaces (vesa).

Pretty much the only other "problem area" is wireless cards. American manufacturers of wireless chips tend to have no documentation or anything to help any OS other than Windows (and maybe Mac OS X); whereas Tawain companies' wireless chips are almost always fully supported for much the same reason minor graphics vendors are fully supported. The problem of Windows-only drivers is partially alleviated by ndiswrapper, although real progress should not depend on it (for the topic creator, ndiswrapper would be fine if his wireless card (if any) isn't supported as-is).

- With a lucky hardware configuration, you can get more out of it from a GUI point of view than out of Vista, though the latter still will have an overall more polished and less patchworky look and feel.

I don't know what you mean by "lucky", but you can generally get a more complex GUI than Windows Vista on something like a Pentium III and a TNT2 card; and I mean full speed ahead, too. Unless you're in a very poor country, it would be hard to believe you can't find a PC more than capable of running all the fancy effects.

I found that Compiz is generally considerably more straining on the CPU on the same machine than Vista's fancy graphical toys.

- If you are picky, you'll wind up grinding configuration files and devising hackish solutions for the system to suit your needs a lot.

Not really. It's all pretty much point-and-click. Far easier to configure than Windows.

I don't even know how to comment on that apart from "what the fuck".

- WINE still sucks at emulating 3D graphics applications.

Vague comment with no real depth to it. Wine runs some 3D apps/games faster than Windows itself, and others it does suck at (which is a bug and the devs intend to fix it).

You gain a lot less goodness points for running something faster than you get detracted for not running something at all.

- *nix application GUI designers often give me the feeling that they are wasting much more screen space than their Windows colleagues, but that might just be a personal pet peeve of mine.

Okay, I'm at a total loss at how to tackle this. Out of all the misconceptions/myths I've heard, this is the very first time I've heard anything remotely like this. And looking at the wastefulness of popular Windows software, I'm going to ask to have your eyes examined.

Arbitrarily picked example just because I happened to have a ZIP file on the desktop of my Linux machine. The applications pictured are GNOME's pretty-much-default File Roller vs. the pretty-much-default, though somewhat losing grounds in competition against WinRAR, Winzip on Windows.

Then, consider minor annoyances like having to restart the X server to get a new font installed.

Don't get me wrong, I am very sympathetic of Linux/BSD/free software and certainly don't have the intention to bash or denounce or spread myths about the platform. It's just that pretending certain abundant faults and weak points don't exist and mindlessly praising it with the confidence of a propaganda machine isn't exactly helping the platform at all.

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Levesque
Posted on 08-16-08 03:48 AM Link | Quote | ID: 89013


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Posted by Ailure
128 megabytes of RAM is a little bit too small for Ubuntu, especially since recomended amount of memory is 192 MB apparently.


On their CD you can order through the mail, they claim the minimum for direct install is 256 MB, and then Live CD install is 382 MB.

That's mainly the reason I need more RAM. Like I said, 128 is a joke.

chungy
Posted on 08-16-08 03:52 AM Link | Quote | ID: 89014


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Last view: 4247 days 		Well, it should be technically possible to install with as little as 32MB of RAM, but not through the normal installer. It requires a pretty solid knowledge of Linux already... Plus, it's not going to be usable for a desktop anyhow.

paulguy
Posted on 08-16-08 11:46 AM Link | Quote | ID: 89026


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If you can at least get something like gparted up, you can put a swap partition in. The installer should work, then, just very slowly...

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neotransotaku
Posted on 08-17-08 07:14 AM Link | Quote | ID: 89067


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Last view: 2906 days 		I use Gentoo because I really wanted to streamline my system as much as I can. In Gentoo, the primary way to install something is to compile it and put in the features you will be using. One of the reasons why I didn't use Debian or Ubuntu is because you might have programs that come with features that you'd never be using. For example, if you never are going to do anything with IPv6 or XML, why install it? Gentoo gives you that control.

However, Gentoo is about as deep as you can go when it comes to diving into Linux. Although, I've heard Slackware is about as gung-ho as you can get. So, Ubuntu and Debian are good choices.

----

I would have to agree with bh89 that configuring the kernel to talk to your hardware is hit or miss, if you want the leanest kernel possible. Ubuntu handles this situation by compiling everything, similar to Windows approach. Even then, you cannot really have too new hardware.

Intel is quite good at providing linux drivers. I did not have much trouble getting Intel video cards to work to their full capacity.

----

One of my major annoyances with Linux are things that I take for granted in Windows are still work in progress in Linux. For example, hibernation and standby don't quite work the same way from what I was familiar with in windows.

Also, if you want to get something to work, you have to delve through a lot of forum posts to find the answer to your question or issue. So with linux, you need to have a lot of patience. Windows has a plethora of issues, but sometimes I rather have those issues than try to tackle some of the things I've run into on Linux.

Ailure
Posted on 08-18-08 08:41 AM Link | Quote | ID: 89104

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My personal opinion about Gentoo is that any performance gain you get isn't really offset by the time you invest by setting the system up. I also have a disdain for the elitism that seems to come from the Gentoo community against distros that is binary-based.

Hibernation and standby works well in Linux, although I wish hibernation didn't try to dump everything into the swap. It's bit of a pain when you have rather limited swap partition (that's the case on my laptop, since I don't have much HD space to begin with), but this might been fixed lately. If you try to hibernate, and the system realizes everything doesn't fit in the SWAP... it aborts the hibernation. :/

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chungy
Posted on 08-18-08 09:05 AM Link | Quote | ID: 89106


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Last view: 4247 days 		You could make a swapfile and use that... though it's always been a general rule to have more swap than you think you'll actually need. Partly because of hibernation and things.

Ailure
Posted on 08-18-08 10:46 AM Link | Quote | ID: 89108

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Well, what I mean is that... if everything doesn't fit into the SWAP during the hibernation, it should try to put the rest into a temporary file.

...of course, I admittedly hadn't used Ubuntu Linux as much lately as before, but partly because the computer it's on (a laptop) is a computer I barely touch.

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Levesque
Posted on 08-18-08 06:21 PM Link | Quote | ID: 89127


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Last view: 3031 days 		Ubuntu uses the swap for hibernation?

Huh, never knew that.

neotransotaku
Posted on 08-21-08 10:18 AM Link | Quote | ID: 89261


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Posted by Ailure
Hibernation and standby works well in Linux,
So, you are staying that if I put a computer into standby, when i turn it on again, it restores my state? instead of just rebooting? if so, i need to mess with my settings

with hibernation, one has a choice between swap partition or a swapfile

chungy
Posted on 08-22-08 05:20 AM Link | Quote | ID: 89289


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Last view: 4247 days 		Hasn't failed me. I would go so far to say it's probably a Gentoo problem (there are tons of reasons I stopped using Gentoo, I don't really want to go into them or I'll be typing all day long).
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