Day 1 - realisations I looked at it in disbelief. Again.... I like blue. It is one of my favourite colours. Slightly damaged by lines of white gobble-di-gook. digits, letters. Terms I could not care for. Instructions I am sick of.... all in white on blue background.... "Listen guys" I muttered. "This cannot carry on for much longer... I, for one, have had enough! If it is not this Matis like creation it is the constant worry about viruses and spyware, not to mention the daily scan which brings a Prescott and 2Gb of memory to a crawl.... enough! Or as they say in Hebrew - Maspik ve die! To be continued.....
I know I have an issue with either my mobo or RAM. I tested RAM to death and always fine so I am leaning more towards the mobo.... In any case where Linux sees these sort of issues as a nuisance, Windows sees them as an unbridgeable chasm.... Day two - shopping lists OS candidate - Linux, but which? Need something simple and easy so the squatters don't get too scared - A good solid desktop, not too complicated but with plenty of POW. A distro which is backed by a decent community and a myriad of packages. I prefer the Debian family and have always liked the ease of use and wealth of control which a user can choose to embrace or leave well alone. I would have gone for Debian full stop if it was not for the havoc that trying to install nVidia drivers, has wreaked. *ubuntu is single user driven and so, is very well geared towards what we need it for, while keeping us safe... sort of... in the words of Ash Catchum - Kubuntu! I choose you!!! Web - FireFox. Works the same. No change needed. Online games and facebook - flash. No problems there either. No shockwave... I wish Macromedia would sort themselves out.... oh well Virtual Golf on miniclip is out of bounds for the moment... Emails - Thunderbird or Outlook through Office (CrossOver). No problems here Messenger - meh, I hate the stuff. Never mind.... Kopete does the trick. No problems. Skype - no problems. Office - through Crossover... no problems... Gaming - got Crossover... not sure... will have to find out later. COD4, Prince of Persia and AOE. Please god of linux, don't make my kids hate me as well as MS.... nVidia drivers - sure... why not. and automatically... Sibelius - to be seen.... Audio/Video - TBC To be continued.....
try FF for windoze running on Wine, shockwave did work doing it that way:beer: Edit: yes it woks on Debian Lenny b2 & FF3
Are you mad? nahhhh I am not easily impressed by a bit of glass and visual trickery... I am using 8.04 until Kubuntu either ship 8.10 with KDE3.5 or, if they exclude KDE4 from the "automatically" upgraded packages when one dist-upgrades Hold on... you made me get ahead of myself!!! Wait 'till day three!!! :chk: Day three - Going cold turkey The Kubuntu Live cd (Kubuntu 8.04 with KDE3.5) is a darling. It has come a very long way from the first attempts which used to crash every time the PC blinked. It is slick and mega fast. Kubuntu is ready for use in about 10-15 minutes. Unlike some OS's (name kept secret to protect the innocent) which take 20 minutes for about an hour... With the help of a nice and user friendly partitioner, I have split a 120GB drive into two partitions (three including swap of 512MB) - '/' of 40GB and '/home' of 80. I also have a "Safe" drive of 250GB which holds tonnes of stuff. Unfortunately, still in NTFS (I simply have not got space to move everything elsewhere before formatting.... another day perhaps). Once that was done I enable the caonical repos and proceeded to install whatever updates where on offer (like with *i*d*w* a nice icon shows on the bottom panel to tell you updates are ready...). Adept also lets you know that a distro upgrade is possible. With a quick shudder (KDE 4 is an unavoidable part of a dist-upgrade) I cancelled that one.... Next a nice icon appeared to tell me that Kubuntu would like to install nVidia drivers for me... who am I to argue? The house is currently w*n*o*s free..... To be continued......
Day 5 - Getting Mohamed away from the mountain or filling up the trough with sugar cubes Yes, I hear you.... where is Day 4? Well.... day 4 is best forgotten... I tried hard, really, really hard. But for all the love of Moses, the squatters were not to be persuaded... The biggest downfall of my plan was trying to use Windows programs or to be precise - games. Wine and CrossOver is all very nice but it is a hit and miss process which can take a while to accomplish. The squatters could not give a toss for my efforts. They seem to glee every time another effort failed, forgetting their frustration when the PC halted with a :swear: BSOD or when they could not do anything for half an hour because the AV scanner was working. One of the hardest things in life is convincing people who have deeply rooted misconceptions.... habits die so very hard.... I tried my best voice and smile, tried to be patient and show them how but...... oh well, *shrug* i tried. :swear:'em - their loss... So the squatters get their beloved OS cancer and I get the chance to gloat.... bitter sweet deal init! 'till next time my friends.... 'till next time. P.s. - if anyone was expecting a happy Windowsless ending, I apologise. But as the title of the diary suggests, I am a coward....
i really have the perfect solution for you, have a machine just for gaming and have another machine fore everyday use. I'm almost there myself, i just need a mATX case and PSU, and a 9800gt or something, the i'll be SET.
Hi Your solution is not really a solution because it does not deal with the core issue. First, my attempt was to solve a hardware issue without injecting more cash-for-low-end-components into the rig. Have I had the money in the first place, I could not give a:swear: what the squatters use on their desktop. It was their constant complaining which sparked this futile exercise..... For me, I do not need windows. I am happy with my laptop which currently runs Ubuntu (I can't stand it and will soon be back with Kubuntu, gone a full circle... :doh. As far as I am concerned, if it can only run under Windows, I prefer not to use it... Second, you need space for two desktops, not to mention two monitors unless I would go for a KVM solution which again, means more money. Third, it seems moronic to me, to switch one PC for gaming and then switch another one for other tasks.... Ultimately, the whole experiment ended up being about trying to make Windows applications work under Linux..... I have got much better things to do..... :dry:
I don't know the exact circumstances nor what you're ultimately trying to accomplish, but most of the people I've helped migrate recently had a lot of success running Linux as the primary OS, with Windows in a virtual machine in order to run those last hold-out applications. That way there is no emulation, and therefore the applications will run exactly as expected. Of course Virtualbox is free and open source, but does have 3D limitations if that's what you wanted it for. Then there is VMWare, which has a free(ish) version you might be able to get by with. There's also Parallels, which carries a modest fee but would decidedly be much more cost effective then putting together another PC. And you do need a Windows license, but its apparent you already have one, so there shouldn't be added cost there. In my own case, I've been lucky enough that the few Windows apps I want to run work fine in WINE. Note the use of the word "want"; I don't *need* any Windows software
What AT said... plus I am curious what applications/games you were trying to run that you had such a hard time with. I understand my needs may be different from yours and the squatters, but I lack for nothing even while running only *nix. I know it is likely too late to bale out the sunken ship, but would you mind posting a few difficult apps, for curiosity's sake?
Ok... so I can see that this list has some interest... I want to make one or two things clear. Although my use of Linux was not all plain sailing, I do not use Windows out of choice and actually refuse to use it for my own personal use. I do not need Office, multimedia is much, much easier and there are enough games out there to satisfy me. Was it down to me, I would not have any instance of windows in the house. It is enough for me to experience the inequities of MS 8 hours of five days of the week... Stating all this, I am no stranger to VirtualBox as there are no alternatives to, lets say, TomTom Home. This is probably the only application I need which you cannot work under Linux. When I do wish to use it I use it with VB. Next - I have a hardware issue in my desktop. I am convinced the issue is with the mobo but without having a spare one to try, I am only guessing. Linux does not produce BSOD. Yes it will crash in some cases but from my experience, my desktop never, ever, ever crashed or stopped or locked while running Linux (Debian or *ubuntu). When the BSOD's became more often, I had two options - spend more money or install Linux. Naturally I chose the latter. I actually managed to persuade the other users to at least give it a go. There was not much to lose. The problem, as I mentioned earlier, started when other users wanted their Windows applications - Office, Messenger, Shockwave player, call of Duty 4, Spore, Prince of Persia, Sibelius and maybe one or two which I might have left out: 1. Office - Office installs beautifully. However, as you use it more and more, you come across some funnies which are not terrible but just niggling like weird display behaviours. Not terrible but certainly not as smooth as using it under Windows. OpenOffice is fine but when you move documents across to Office, they tend to go slightly askew.... again, possible but nagging. 2. Messenger - non existence. KDE has a nice alternative - Kopete. No problems there. (Should not really list it then....). 3. Shockwave player - WTF is Adobe's issue? Oh well, the users actually got used to not playing Shokwave games. They forgot about this issue very quickly... Yes, I know you can install IE and Shockwave under Crossover but it never worked for me. Again no great loss for me. 4. COD4 - this was the "piece de resistance" of Windows applications. It took me probably over two weeks to get it to work, finally under Wine. Graphics were atrocious and game was not enjoyable, end of! I do not play COD since I only have five fingers on each hand. Problem? Not for me.... 5. Spore - never tried. Got sick and tired of the squatters moaning long before the game was bought.... 6. Prince of Persia - as with Spore 7. Sibelius - as before. 8. VirtualBoy - With some tinkering, works great even on my Laptop. I managed to run Kubuntu on my PC for nearly a month. Not one BSOD or any other mishaps. Unfortunately that was not enough to satisfy my disgruntled squatters. Their nose was out of joint nearly as soon as the HDD was NTFS formatted *shudders*. To conclude, I do not need or want to use Windows. For me, I get what I need from Linux and I am helping to keep IT that little bit safer. I could not care less whether certain programs work with Wine or Crossover or VB. I am an out of the box kind of guy. I do not like tinkering, messing, playing around etc. These days, most Linux apps do just that. So why do I want to bother my little brain with such weighty problems? What I cannot stand is PC users who moan and Moan but are never willing to try something different or do something about what's bothering them. How did Pink Floyd put it - "Hot ashes for trees? Hot air for a cool breeze? Cold comfort for change?" So there, I am already enjoying using *nix. I feel no need or wish to make my experience "better" by running windows applications.... :x:
