Transitioning from Windows to Linux

General Discussions
#21

I use Ubuntu on my laptop (a converted C720 Chromebook with 64GB SSD) and find it very quick. I find Windows 10 OK (I preferred 7) on my desktop. If windows is slow on a brand new laptop then I suspect you need to get rid of the bloat ware. Look in the start-up folder for what’s running and start deleting things you don’t need. Have you virus scanned the laptop? Is the virus scanner running continually with too high a priority? If Ubuntu is running slow then it might be because it’s running from a USB stick and needs tweaking to get better performance (here’s one of many pages on this).

Installing applications like Chrome is usually simple as you just open the software centre, type the application you want and then click install.

For gaming windows wins hands down. I find it easier to develop small games on Linux as I’m familiar with all the tools I need but if I’m developing a large system at work then I go straight to Linux. The biggest win for Linux is that it’s cheap, it’s secure, it doesn’t have bloatware and it tends to run fast on low end systems. I just chose Linux on my laptop because I wanted a cheap laptop (a Chromebook) that I could develop on installing Linux was relatively straightforward. Another option is to set up dual booting so you have a choice of Windows or Linux.

#22

I’m using Linux Mint. For me it’s the best flavour of Linux that I’ve tried so far. I still have some hardware though that works with Windows, but not with Linux, so Linux can’t replace my Windows box completely.

For the hacker computer science enhusiast type of person, Linux is fine. For those who just want to use something, and not learn all the background stuff, Linux might not be the quite right choice. And that’s why I switched to Windows, when Windows XP came out. I fiond that more of my stuff works fine with Windows, but almost always needs some extra work to run with Linux, and some things linke my UMTS stick for mobile internet access works as in “hardware”, but there is no UI on Linux to book day or months of access time, which I need to do for my sort of contract. So it always uses the most expensive “pay per minute” mode, which is untolerable.

So even if something “works” with Linux, it doesn’t mean you’ll be happy with how it works …

#23

For a data point, I randomly switch hit between mint and centos.

#24

Interesting responses. So far I’ve tried elementary OS, Ubuntu, Mint, and Mageia 5. I might try Arch too. They all have their own quirks, but I can basically get everything I need done on all them. I’ll probably end up dual-booting one of them, though it’s hard to decide which one since they’re all relatively similar. None of them have any problems that affect my workflow, so I feel fine using any of them. Maybe I’ll leave it up to a coin toss or something. :stuck_out_tongue:

I actually managed to fix my mouse and keyboard lag on Windows, you were right princec, turns out I had to rollback Realtek’s audio driver to the Windows 8.1 version. No idea how the audio driver made the mouse and keyboard lag, but hey, it works now. Still gonna dual-boot Linux though.

#25

[quote=“CelestialCreator,post:24,topic:55599”]
Linux Mint is built upon Ubuntu. Ubuntu is built upon Debian.

Dual boot is a good idea. I had that too, for many years.

#26

On my new PC I’m dual booting with Windows 10 and Linux Mint 17.2 Cinnamon (Rafaela).
Windows 10 is currently used just for gaming and Linux for working/programming, but when I’m looking at Wine and PlayOnLinux I may remove Windows from my system some time in the future.

My advice for you would be to setup a Linux VM like Roquen suggested and do some testing if you really want to switch.
You may want to test out different distros.
Some suggestions: Ubuntu, Linux Mint, Fedora, openSUSE.

#27

[quote=“Varkas,post:25,topic:55599”]

Somewhere I posted the “family tree”. Very funny that. All that work to convert poop into more poop.