I have been getting a bit tired of Windows for some time now. I have never put much effort into switching (or even thinking about it hard) because I didn't want to convert my main machine and haven't had many spares. Now I have a number of desktops available and could likely get my hands on an old laptop to play with if I had to.
So if I wanted to switch rather than fight, how would I begin? How painful will it be? How long will it take before I can use a Linux machine with the same proficiency I am currently using a Windows machine?
This message was inspired by a post by Jan Panteltje in the WINXP Died thread. "I burned my xp disk, everything runs Linux."
There are a few stumbling blocks for me. One is that I design FPGAs frequently and I have found the commercial tools to be more expensive under Linux and some of the free tools just aren't available at all under Linux. I use the free versions as much as I can. Some commercial products like PC enabled logic analyzers and oscopes don't come with Linux drivers. I'm not sure how I would deal with that.
My current laptop is nearing its useful life, not in part because Vista is starting to not work so well. I chalk that up to a problematic hard drive, but so far all efforts to swap the drive out have been resisted by said drive not cooperating with full disk copy efforts. So if I get a new one, once I copy my data files over, I will put a new drive in the old one and start fresh with Linux... perhaps.
It's pretty easy. Download one of the many linux live CD's and boot it. If it does EVERYTHING you'll EVER need to do, you're good to go, just install it. If not, just keep trying different distros until you run out of patience.
Now that you've picked the closest distro, start trying to install programs from the repository that do stuff you can't live without and aren't in the default install. Now, you're done...unless there's still stuff that you can't do. Then, you're screwed. You can try to find a similar tool and learn how to use it and then port the stuff from your old windows program.
Prevailing linux mantra is: "if linux can't do it, you don't need it!" The secret to success is "low expectations."
Then there are all the hardware driver issues. If linux claims support, it's likely support like you get from windows plug and play. Some of the key functions work, but don't expect all the bells and whistles. There's no substitute for a vendor-supplied driver.
Easy, just give up on 'em and bask in the superiority of linux.
YES, it will HURT very much. I've been trying to convert to linux forever. All it takes is one program I can't do without to kill the deal. And I've got more than one.
If it ain't broke, don't fix it. Put a new drive in your laptop and continue to run Vista and all the programs you already know how to use.
Go to a garage sale and buy a $1 computer. Put linux on it. All your old stuff continues to run on your laptop. Take your time porting all your stuff to linux on the new machine. When it gets to the point where you can do EVERYTHING you NEED, just flip the switch to linux.
I'm betting you never get there, but linux is a fun hobby. I wouldn't even try to convert to linux without a second computer.
There's a useful linux conversion tool. Put thick foam padding on the walls about head high. You'll be banging your head there, might as well spare yourself the concussion.
The linux kernel is second to none. Many of the apps work great, once you learn the differences. Your needs fall squarely in the weakest link...support for odd technical hardware and software. It really doesn't matter how superior linux is for what I do. It's what YOU do that counts.
The only way that I know of to completely escape pain is to be dead. Even changing Windows versions is definitely not pain-free, and from what I hear of Windows 8 it's reached a whole new level.
What many do - myself included - is to use linux for much of our development work - and to have a virtualized Windows on the same host to be used as necessary. I have heard that Ubuntu might be a bit easier for Windows users. You can download that for free, burn a "live- CD" (hmmn, probably a DVD now), and boot into it on your existing system without removing/altering anything. Decide for yourself. Linux doesn't make choices easier, or fewer - there is a greater variety to chose from, which can be daunting to some.
One really outstanding feature is the linux community. I've had quick and informed help (almost all of the time) when I've had problems.
Of course, for a long time now I've tended to make sure that purchased equipment was linux-compatible, either by having explicit linux drivers or being OS-neutral {say, operable via ethernet or common USB interface}. You may want to do a web-search if you have some particular device that you'd use much of the time.
Linux Mint is quite good. Ubuntu recently (as of version 11?) switched its user interface and I absolutely hate it. I run Ubuntu 10 on my desktop at home (ignoring the frequent warnings about this being out-of-date), and I run Mint on my netbook.
I would run Mint on my desktop, but there's a bug that prevents dvdauthor from burning digital camera movies to DVD... dvdauthor works fine on Ubuntu though.
I keep an XP partition for applications which *must* run under Windows (like TurboTax). I scan it for viruses on the Windows NTFS partition using the Linux clamav tool.
So, download Linux Mint to a bootable CD (err, a USB stick might be faster) and play around with it. You'll probably notice an instant speed increase...
Oh, and don't forget OpenOffice to read/write .doc and .xls files.
On Thursday, February 28, 2013 7:44:00 PM UTC-8, rickman wrote: ...
Oh! You may be pleasantly surprised by the Linux file copy tools. I found that even Nautilus (the rough Linux equivalent of Windows Explorer) seems to be a better file copier than Windows Explorer itself...
Then there's "dd", a rough equivalent of diskcopy for hard drives.
The first step is to buy a NEW and FAST machine with support for virtualisation and install Linux on it. That will give you a reason to use the faster machine. The next thing to install is Virtualbox to run Windows under Linux for program which are not available. Now you are all set.
--
Failure does not prove something is impossible, failure simply
indicates you are not using the right tools...
nico@nctdevpuntnl (punt=.)
--------------------------------------------------------------
There is also GNU ddrescue. This is very effective at getting as much information as possible from a defective drive without wearing it out prematurely with lots of retries of bad blocks when there are still good ones to read.
It is much better to run ddrescue from linux than from Windows because Windows may try to "fix" the copy once it recognises it. You don't want that to happen.
Ubuntu. Their motto should be "Linux with Training Wheels". Or, if you have an enthusiastic friend who isn't _too_ enthusiastic, whatever distro they recommend.
Download your Ubuntu ISO from ubuntu.com, burn a disk or make a thumb drive, and run it. There will be a learning curve, but things will work. And when you go to develop software for your desktop -- everything will be there when you need it. Think "what would an OS have for software developers if it were developed by software developers to do development on?" Whatever you think up -- Linux has it.
Every serious Linux user has a computer stashed away someplace with Windows installed -- it's the dirty not-so-secret of the Linux world. Mine's installed on a virtual machine; my accounting software lives on it (and I have one or two other virtual machines with must-have customer software installed).
The last release of Xilinx ISE that I installed was 10.something, and it worked just fine under Windows. Your mileage will vary.
--
My liberal friends think I'm a conservative kook.
My conservative friends think I'm a liberal kook.
Why am I not happy that they have found common ground?
Tim Wescott, Communications, Control, Circuits & Software
http://www.wescottdesign.com
My office machine runs CentOS 6.4, which parallels Red Hat Enterprise Linux. There are a number of older DOS and Windows programs that I use a lot, and I need real Windows to run MS Office, because assing around with the incompatibilities of Libre Office wastes too much time.
I run several KVM/qemu virtual machines, two with 32-bit XP and two with
64-bit Win 7. Once you figure out how to lock and unlock the screen, it works just like normal Windows. The good news is that the VMs are just big files, so I can back them up to DVD or on another HDD.
I spend most of my computing time in native Linux, though--I have a Linux programmer's editor that I love (xx from tangbu.org), and the Linux versions of browsers and email clients are fine. (Check out kmail.)
I'm mostly a command line guy, though, so whether in Windows or Linux, I almost always launch programs from the command line: fx means firefox, km is kmail, etc. Getting good at the Linux command line is fun and very useful--you can do things practically instantaneously that are very time consuming in a GUI program.
BTW some years ago, my then 19-year-old daughter (a confirmed fuzzy-subjects person) taught herself Linux in a few days, to the point of being able to compile and install programs from source RPMs. So it isn't too bad.
Cheers
Phil Hobbs
--
Dr Philip C D Hobbs
Principal Consultant
ElectroOptical Innovations LLC
Optics, Electro-optics, Photonics, Analog Electronics
160 North State Road #203
Briarcliff Manor NY 10510 USA
+1 845 480 2058
hobbs at electrooptical dot net
http://electrooptical.net
That is the problem with people telling you 'this distro is best yadda yadda yadda'. In the end you need something that works for several years and doesn't need upgrading all the time. I have been using Debian for the past 15 years or so.
I actually use Linux to develop Windows software :-) Just in the last stages of development I compile for Windows and iron out the last few bugs.
The Xilinx software is one of the first things I moved to Linux. Version 12 or 13 -I think-. Recently I bought a Xilinx USB programmer clone and with the help of a tutorial it works like a charm.
--
Failure does not prove something is impossible, failure simply
indicates you are not using the right tools...
nico@nctdevpuntnl (punt=.)
--------------------------------------------------------------
There's a website for wine compatibility. Has a huge list of programs that you'd think were compatible, cause it's a compatibility list. If you get even slightly off the beaten path, you find that the program is NOT compatible, or works "sort-of". It's more of a wine incompatibility list. Check the list for what you need.
Virtualbox is a great program.
Virtualbox host takes hardware and software it understands and presents an interface to the guest system. It's a very limited subset of the hardware in the wild.
So, if your windows host hardware has windows drivers, it can present an interface to your guest linux. If your hardware requirements are modest, much hardware that ran in windows will run on the guest linux. But, if linux is your host and it can't talk to the hardware, it has no way to support it on the windows guest.
Don't skimp on RAM. You need enough to run BOTH systems.
Cost is not an issue, because you have to buy a windows license anyway. You'll have less hassle running a windows host and linux guest.
I tried an experiment. I set up a computer for dual-boot XP and Ubuntu. I determined that I'd switch to Ubuntu every time I needed something that windows couldn't do. After a week, I'd NEVER switched to Ubuntu. Ok, so I defaulted to booting Ubuntu and would switch back to XP when I needed something that Ubuntu wouldn't support. Worked great for surfing the web, email, news, playing mp3's. I'd learned how to do much of the same stuff I'd been doing, but in a different way. But, as soon as I got off the well-beaten path, I hit roadblocks. None of my utilities written in VisualBasic worked. Couldn't program a microprocessor with the tools I knew how to use.
Yes, I could have thrown away a decade of software and learned C and rewritten everything. Do I really want to learn another/different circuit board layout program? How many free linux layout programs have an autorouter?
I was always switching back to XP. After a week, I was so frustrated, I just gave up and went back to linux as a hobby.
Linux would have great potential as an everyday desktop computing platform. Problem is that there isn't ONE. There's a kernel and a zillion files/apps. And a few dozen people assembling all those into distributions that have different default utilities/apps. What you learned on one is only partly helpful on another. And it will change for the next release. You'll get a different desktop, file manager, editor and on and on and on.
And when you ask for help, you'll get lots of advice on how to fix it on a different version/distro...just won't help you at all.
And when you try to send your program to a friend, it might not run on his distro/version.
If you start your computing life with linux and live with the way it works and associate with other linux users just like you did with windows, you'll be happy. Converting...not so much...
Play it safe and use two computers. Hardware is way cheaper than the meds you'd need for high blood pressure. Use VNC or SYNERGY for the human interface and you can stick the linux machine in a closet.
I agree: forget about Wine. It is a great effort but just not enough to be really useful.
You can always choose to buy hardware which is supported by Linux. That way you never run into trouble. You'll be amazed how much is actually supported. A few years ago I wanted to use a labelprinter together with a MIPS based embedded platform running Linux. I never expected a standard Dymo USB labelprinter to just work out of the box...
Until the Windows host craps out which it will eventually. Memory management on Linux is just so much better it never gets slow like Windows.
Dual boot is a PITA. Either have two machines or use Virtual box so you can use Linux and Windows at the same time.
How is that different when using Windows? It took me several hours to get things back to normal (aka the Win2000 look) on Windows 7. Does Windows 7 even include an e-mail program? Serial port terminal emulator? Haven't found them so far...
Link statically and/or (like Firefox) include all the libraries and compile the program so it starts looking in it's own directory for libraries before anywhere else.
Just take one step at a time. Some things aren't ready yet like OpenOffice.
Xming (an X-server for Windows) is a much better choice to use a Linux computer remotely. The Linux computer doesn't even need to have a decent video card.
--
Failure does not prove something is impossible, failure simply
indicates you are not using the right tools...
nico@nctdevpuntnl (punt=.)
--------------------------------------------------------------
Download a few LiveCD distributions. If your hardware will handle the faster 64 bit distributions, get those instead of 32 bit. For a starter sample, I suggest: (Linux tweaked to look like Windoze). (Engineering Linux distribution). (Welcome to the dark side). There are plenty others, but I think these will keep you busy for a while. All will boot from a 4 or 8GB flash drive. The idea is not to learn any of these in detail, but rather to tinker with them and see which is the most usable.
The next step is to load your favorite on a hard disk drive. Forget about dual boot and virtualization for now. Find a decent *IMAGE* backup program so that experiments do not become fatal. You'll also need a large USB connected Terabloat drive in which to store the images.
After you get Linux running, stuff it full of every program you might think even remotely useful. The idea is to see which one's will install neatly without dependency problems, and which one's will coexist happily without mutual destruction. Plan on wiping this machine after the carnage.
After about the 5th or so reinstall, you'll become sufficiently proficient and application installation and maintenance to handle most anything the multitude of Linux application authors throw at you. Similarly, you'll have some experience with desktops and utilities. The rest you build up slowly. Start with the basics (web, email, LibreOffice, file management, backup) and slowly add the industry specific applications (PCB layout, schematic capture, etc). It's like eating a loaf of bread. No problem one slice at a time, but if you try to eat the whole loaf at once, you'll choke.
One must suffer before enlightenment.
Initially, it will be a confusing mess, like learning anything new. Eventually, you'll begin to get a feel for how it works and how it all fits together, thus reducing the pain. Patience.
From the local Linux user group, typical for a new Linux user in your situation will be about 4 to 6 months. The trick is to find some person or online forum that can answer your questions and offer advice. I don't think anyone has succeeded without either prior Unix experience or without help.
I don't think you can move everything to Linux. You'll probably need to keep your Windoze machine alive for at least during the transition and possibly for those programs that only run well on Windoze (i.e. anything from Intuit or that uses dot.Nyet). If you find yourself going through withdrawl symtoms, you can always take a small hit of Windoze to calm you down.
Simple. Use them under Windoze and don't try to be a purist. I think you'll be pleasantly surprised to find that many things run much better under Linux than under Windoze. Meanwhile, you can derive some entertainment value by repeatedly requesting Linux software from the equipment vendors.
For Windoze backup, I use Acronis True Image Home 2013. It's not great, but after testing a fair number of competing *IMAGE* backup products, I find it the least disgusting. Incidentally, the Acronis recovery boot disk runs Linux.
If you're suffering and currently in pain under Windoze, I don't think Linux will add much to your suffering.
--
Jeff Liebermann jeffl@cruzio.com
150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558
I forgot to mumble something about how support is done locally. We install Teamviewer (free) remote control software on the beginners machine. If they have a problem, any of the local Linux experts can take control of the machine, and fix it. Lots of "How do I do..." type questions are quickly answered in this manner. The catch is that the machine needs to be configured in a fairly well known and standard manner and not customized beyond recognition. I have difficulties with such machines, but I manage.
--
Jeff Liebermann jeffl@cruzio.com
150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558
Microsoft dumped hyperterminal. In a way you can't blame them since I suspect the number of users are a micropercent of their customer base. Just run Terra Term.
Nobody runs OpenOffice. It is all Libreoffice these days.
Virtualization is a time sink. Unless you have power or time constraints, use two computers. For notebook use, I dual boot. Wine is way better than cgywin, so usually you can run those small windows programs under wine. I've even used dosbox for 16 bit code. [MS dropped
It has been my experience that the easiest way to make a linux convert is to run opensuse under KDE. Opensuse has a lot of GUI controls for things like the firewall, adding soundcards, etc.
For all the press that Ubuntu gets, debian distributions seem more complicated than Fedora or Opensuse. It could just be my experience with suse is more than with debian. [Handling root on debian is plain weird. I just give root a password and use it like "normal" linux.]
If you go the debian route, I'd go Ubuntu. You absolutely need synaptic. It is the Ubuntu ripoff of the opensuse package maganger. Otherwise "aptitude" is just plain awful. You are far better off using the ubuntu package search on the web and doing apt-get. Avoid Ubuntu Unity.
I don't bash Ubuntu. It is actually very stable. i just find it clumsy to use. Opensuse for one thing tends to set environment variables as you install packages. Unbuntu does it somewhat differently. For instance, if you are going to compile software, you might as well install the development group. It is less work than installing gcc, cmake, etc then setting up environment variables. It wastes disk space.
For equal time, here is Linus Torvalds rant about opensuse:
The security bugs him. Not me though.
I will say that KDE plasma is a bit over the top. They spent way too much effort to make it look sexy.
Ubuntu seems to have got a bit silly trying to get on the tablet/smartphone bandwagon, dumbing down the interface a la Windows 8 (but in a different way). I believe Linux Mint would be a better alternative, a Ubuntu derivative with a sane interface. And Ubuntu is itself derived from ye olde debian of course.
Haha me too... the same original install, migrated from hard disk to hard disk, motherboard up grade to motherboard upgrade, over the years. Upgrading to each new release every couple of years or so as it comes out. Lucky to have a windows system last two years before grinding to a halt and needing a wipe and reinstall. And I shudder to think what it would look like after winme->win2000>winxp->vista->win7->win8.
It's just now starting to look a bit creaky. There is a new release out any time now, and I would like to go to a 64 bit system which does pretty much need a new install. Shame.
True. There's always something.
The move to USB for a lot of interfaces has been helpful in some ways. The VirtualBox USB virtualization works well for me, so all those little proprietary windows-only utilities work on a windows VM. YMMV.
Having said that GPIB works (or can be got working...) directly on linux and you then have some nice facilities available for scripting experiments, maths, data collection and graphing etc. For those with a boat anchor collection.
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