I'd like to use Linux but...

havent had to use windows in ages but cygwin was the bane of my existence when i did. tech looks pretty cool and i'm interested to see how far both parties take this

it's a good fully half-assed solution instead of unsupported half-assed solutions

perhaps a 3/4-assed solution

terrible battery usage for some reason
sound is bad on any type of video playback
zx spec emulator Fuse won't go 3x display, it does on Windows.
larger font on Firefox bookmarks, meaning they don't all fit on screen

I love it otherwise! :)

btw this is through Ubuntu unity so I might switch to Mint based on comments above.

unity is going away, not sure what'll replace it, maybe gnome 3.

https://arstechnica.co.uk/information-technology/2017/04/ubuntu-unity-is-dead-back-to-gnome/

Yeah unfortunately I found that out three seconds after the installation had completed. My fault for being so hasty.

Can you recommend some good free linux tutorial places? I have been using Linux Academy for about a month just to learn the basics of the Terminal commands and overall structure of linux. It's really helped but alas budget means I can no longer afford the monthly fee.

There's a good terminal walk-through here (though it is geared towards Mac, but a lot of concepts will carry over to any Unix-style system):
http://furbo.org/2014/09/03/the-terminal/

Is there a particular Linux-related application or project you're interested in?

great news re: unity

i don't use linux on my personal computer anymore but still use it a lot at work (usually as a VM, strictly via command line). reading the last few pages of posts on this thread about how rhythmbox, unity etc still being shit is making me laugh/cry

it is quite crazy to me how mainstream linux has become in corporate / cloud world given how it was kinda a "rebel" thing many aeons ago. not knowing at least the basics can seriously hold you back these days.

lol did you guys see that the Windows 10 update will have linux binary support for developers? not meant as a deployment or server platform, but it's native support to the point where you can use the Ubuntu package management and install the same binaries

damn that is pretty nice. when i first started at my current job, i was forced to use a windows laptop for the first few years and yeah cygwin is the pits.

I'm using it right now to tweak around with configuration schemes while waiting for a virtual machine to get provisioned, pretty good

it's kind of ridiculous, if you don't have another version of the bash installed, typing "bash" from the normal windows command line will launch you into the steps to enable developer mode and download the compatibility layer

I have it installed, the only thing I've played on it is Dungeon Crawl: Stone Soup (ascii mode)

which it handles v well indeed tbf

(yes there is a native Windows version so I don't know why I did that, except that I installed the bash/Ubuntu subsystem for Windows, didn't know what to do with it, then thought "lol sudo apt-get crawl amirite")

if it can save me from the bash that comes with git for Windows it may be worth it but after several months I haven't got that far yet (also git-bash may have improved since last time I installed git on Windows)

Tbh I just use git bash on Windows and yes it has got a lot better even in the last year or 2

it's pretty decent, yeah

I may just resent all things bundled with git for Windows since the time long, long ago when it 1. installed some ancient long-deprecated version of Perl 2. silently overwrote my PATH to point to the ancient version

and I didn't notice for a few weeks until I ran some work script which I hadn't changed but it suddenly couldn't cope with utf-8 and I was deeply puzzled

it doesn't do that any more either and hasn't for years but that was a bad enough day to cause long-lasting grudges

Yeah it warns you about the path stuff now and you don't need that option anyway

ffs apparently it's impossible to update my Ubuntu 17 to 18, I have to reinstall the os from nish.

unnacceptable.

(AND THATS WHY)

Does anyone know about this shit?

Windoze has stopped talking to the internet, so I thought I'd give ubuntu a go, not ideal but it'll fill a gap. Installed it, it worked fine, for a day, then stopped booting (would stall at a screen full of text). Tried some fixes but in the end went for the full reinstall and now I just don't get the option to dual boot, it goes straight to windows. I've reinstalled again, deleted the old install and reinstalled, terminated the partition with extreme prejudice and reinstalled, purged and reinstalled grub2 from the ubuntu usb. Nothing. Fuck windows, fuck linux, fuck all computers.

/\
me with every linux installation ever

the uefi secure boot thing often gets in the way of "real" dual booting. to boot into windows (once a month, mostly to pick up new kindle purchases) i now have to stab the f2 button to get the bios options and change it from legacy to uefi.

(this is mint, ubuntu might be different) but see if there's a simlar bios option.

Windows 10 was pissing me off (automatic updates restarting my laptop, and taking out all my wifi logins with it) so I thought about switching to Linux, as a baby step towards it I tried installing a VM running Mint (I think using VMWare or something), but it would only display in a tiny window and it was really unclear how to fix that (I tried something from StackOverflow and it didn't work). basically it didn't work properly straight out of the box and I just gave up on it. Fuck computers OTM

dang ledge. Make sure you're on legacy mode and not UEFI and try this https://help.ubuntu.com/community/RecoveringUbuntuAfterInstallingWindows

Poo, boot from USB will give a better test than a VM.

All the same,yeh,friggin machines

ta for the tips, no joy yet though. f12 brings up a boot menu but choosing legacy or uefi makes no diff. tried installing grub2 from windows but there's a multiplicity of options (uefi? legacy? which drive for boot drive?), maybe i just haven't hit the right one ;_;

one odd thing, when i purged grub2 (maybe a mistake but hey ho, i'm just trying to figure this out as i go, had never heard of grub2 or efi partitions till yesterday) the directory i removed on the efi partition was called ubuntu; now however i try to install it that directory never appears.

i think it's time to... reinstall windows!

well it's good at telling the boot sector what's what!

brutal experience... if you ever go for it again, set Legacy from the go. It can matter what it was when you did the installing..if memory serves

Linux mint seems to have trouble with recognising hardware. Can't get it to recognise my digital camera and it has not recognised internal hard drives.
Windows at least used to automatically connect to both most of the time.

So have wondered what other OSes there are available.
Had windows 7 up until a couple of months ago. Had gone for that intentionally over 10 cos I didn't like that when windows updated to it a couple of years back. But 7 is no longer supported.

Having a lot of hassle with mint though.

I think I picked Mint because it was supposed to be easy for Windows users. lol?

Dual booting is such a pain in the ass, buy a $100 used laptop from your local computer nerd repair shack and try Linux on that imo.

I have a six and a half year old laptop that started off as Win 8, then upgraded to Win 10, then dual boot Win 10 / Ubuntu. I'm pretty sure that continual Win 10 updates killed the drive, so after I replaced it with an SSD, I made it Ubuntu only.
I have a desktop computer that I occasionally use that is also dual boot Win 10 / Ubuntu. For some reason GRUB thinks that the Win 10 installation is actually Win 8 and it hangs the computer when I select it. But I can still boot directly to Win 10 by setting that partition as the default in the BIOS. Whatever. Windows still sucks after all these years.

you're all getting Chromebooks for the holidays

Great I'll install Linux on it.

Tried some fixes but in the end went for the full reinstall and now I just don't get the option to dual boot, it goes straight to windows. I've reinstalled again, deleted the old install and reinstalled, terminated the partition with extreme prejudice and reinstalled, purged and reinstalled grub2 from the ubuntu usb. Nothing. Fuck windows, fuck linux, fuck all computers.

even after 20 years of using Linux as my main driver, the boot process is still a mystery to me. i had to temporarily install window$ for a dual boot last month and it completely took over my boot process.

burn rEFInd to a usb stick and it should let you boot your linux partition: https://www.rodsbooks.com/refind/
from there it's a matter of mounting your EFI partition, reinstalling grub onto it, and then hopefully it'll resolve itself. i blame window$ for being a bad citizen

these steps should work: https://wiki.debian.org/GrubEFIReinstall

installed ubuntu now. NOt sure of drawbacks yet. It does at least recognise the new internal hard drive taht Linux couldn't mount permanently . But it was there at installation so not sure if that would be why..
Have yet to find out if camera will be recognised. But fingers crossed.
Anyway hoping that this si less frustrating than Linux has been for various reasons.
& there are other OSes that I've yet to explore. Anybody use anything else for a PC type desktop that they'd recommend?

So why did Windoze stop talking to the internet though ?

(just sounds like it would be easier to maybe fix that instead)

preferable definitely, or i'd lose access to photoshop and lightroom (about the only things worth keeping windows for). easier? hmm. where linux is arcane and complicated, windows is obscure and secretive.

you're all getting Chromebooks for the holidays

am working on a chromebook now, it's fine except the screen is half the size of my desktop, feel like i'm peering through a glass darkly.

these steps should work: https://wiki.debian.org/GrubEFIReinstall

thanks, will try them once i've worked up the will power.

Stevolende, is that disk formatted NTFS or something? If you're gone full Linux, would be good to back it up then format ext4. Though if you want to read it easily on Windows at some point, then fat32 or exfat

People asking about other alternate OSes, I'm at a loss. My Chromebook "recommendation", I mean, that's also Linux, like Android is as well. Mint and Ubuntu are the easiest things you'll find for full featured* Linux installs... much better than the days when new users were recommended something like Mandrake or Redhat. Steveolende, what did you try before Ubuntu?

* I think it's worth considering how basic you'd like to make things and go with that. I'm using Mint with basic 'window manager' xfce, as opposed to the fancy Gnome or KDE variants. I gave my parents the Cinnamon version as a more user friendly looking compromise (it does the best job of a "Start" menu bar that I've ever seen)... to my slight surprise, it gives all of us less grief than Windows.

I've heard good things about the distribution "elementaryOS" as far as simplifying goes as well.

I've just been dabbling in this stuff a long time. If computers were my job I wouldn't have the patience at all

tried running a linux machine back in 2007. it didn't do a bad job, but when something went wrong my only recourse was The Community. the thing about "volunteers", you know, there's a question of motivation, and what a lot of them get out of it is the ability to feel superior and to gatekeep, the sort of people who refer to anyone who isn't an expert on the workings of their operating system as a "luser" (it's a unix joke, ha ha, get it?)

hate to invoke the "tanstaafl" cliche, but in the case of linux i find it to be true. i can handle everything about linux but the fucking attitude.

yeah, brutal. I even try to read as little as I can get away with online when I do have issues.

Has anyone tried Hackintosh? I'm not into the Mac OS but that could be another option.

allegedly, all you need to do to get an answer from Linux nerd community is to pose the question like this:

"it's really easy to do <x> on Windows, but you can't do it on Linux, what a pile of shit"

isn't stackoverflow yer one stop shop for all flavours of computer problems now?

haha xp

Just been reminded what prompted me to move off Windows 7. Avast installed a free trial of premium that screwed up some functions on the machine.
They've just billed me and taken money about 2 months after I had to move off windows because of them.i thought I was told they'd extended beyond the trial and cancelled particularly as I have not used the service on my desktop since it messed up. Phone apparently has same account though. Aaargh

i'm old enough to remember lilo, the thing grub replaced.

linux installs did get a lot easier - nobody's compiling their own kernels anymore - until UEFI came along and put a (intel- / microsoft-shaped) spanner in the works.

(then there was unity and systemd and wayland and a bunch of other things that didn't help. i fear change. which is why i run mint mate)

it's also a good idea not to use too new a laptop - the nvidia card on this one caused some problems initially and the wireless. the community fixed it quite quickly though.

we should all just use os/2

OpenBSD all the way baybee

we should all just use os/2

― L'assie (Euler)

half an os for half a computer lolllll

everybody knows the one true operating system is TempleOS