Ubuntu Linux...

Im soooo wanting to get away from Windows and Microsoft in general, i use OpenOffice, Firefox etc and love the idea of going open source all round. However, switching to Ubuntu is getting me nervous, i tried it about a year ago and there was so many things which just ground my gears, such as playing a DVD, getting my dads camera to work etc etc

Im basically just needing to take the plunge again and quit moaning, however i may need some pushing. Anyone got any good points about why i should take the leap to Linux.

Any stories of people like myself??

Set up an old system and play with it. I have three here and two of them are always undergoing piddling. I've had a couple kinds of Linux, FreeBSD, and OpenBSD. I'm thinking of QNX, next.

I don't give a rat's about open source, I just like piddling.

Agree with 'grin, take any old box, and play.

This week is a bad time to install the latest and greatest Ubuntu, because 8.04 was just released.

The good things about open source is that its free to play with, and improves daily. The bad thing is that support for weird new hardware makes Vista look great. The latest and coolest hardware will get drivers for Vista first, so be used to it. Be warned that ATI drivers were really bad a year or so ago, things are better, but getting the greatest acceleration is still a challenge

And DRM for audio and video is not high on the linux developers wish list, so some stuff it not going to work without some tweaking.

But if you have an old PC, or can wait a month and then dual boot, go for it, it only costs you some time.

Fishtop, you post a lot. Most of those posts are in the Lounge or in the Outhouse. I won't denigrate those entirely. Hell, I do the same thing.

One question in my mind is whether or not you actually know what the hell you are talking about.

I'm an undisputed asshole, but my evaluation is "NOT". General opinions may vary. So be it.

On some things, yes, others no.

This message is being typed on a Lenovo laptop with Ubuntu 8.04 installed last week. So I know something about that. I never could get Ubuntu 7.10 to run on it, but I ran 7.04 for nearly a year.

There are a couple of Ubuntu, three or four debian, a redhat, and a couple of Windows boxes running in my house right now. I have the beta test CDs from NT 3.1, and started writing code for Windows for Win386/2.11

I post here because most of the folks are smart and fun. Some I even agree with. I post a lot in the crypto section, as I've done that professionally for a decade.

I don't have much unique to add to the modern language sections, php, ruby, python, etc. Now if we had threads about writing recursive descent parsers in Cobol, I could go on and on. Even smalltalk, but no one cares about that anymore.

I'm probably about as old as you are, 'grin, so what do us old coots know anyway.

I'll back up SzGrin and Fishtoprecords on this: one of the greatest things about Linux is it's performance on older hardware. While the current release of Ubuntu is fairly heavyweight compared to Damn Small Linux or even Gentoo, it is intended to run on third-hand systems with a minimum of fuss, and does.

Getting an older PC is pretty easy; even if you don't have some old box sitting around in your closet or attic, you can probably get one fairly cheap. Depending on where you live, you may be able to pick up something just by cruising around the neighborhood for a box which got tossed out just because it's too old to run Portal, or is loaded down with spyware, or some has minor hardware problem that could be fixed with a bit of screwdriver turning and maybe some cash for spare parts (admittedly, that maybe an American thing - there are a lot of people here who don't give a damn how much money they spend if it means they aren't inconvenienced - but I expect that suburbanites tend to be the same no matter where they are, and if you're in a college town or a major city, you shouldn't have too much trouble finding something cast-off like that, either).

While FTR is right that you might not want to put Hardy Heron on your main PC right now - new releases are risky no matter what the OS is, and unless you're specifically testing it, waiting a week or three to let the bugs get shaken out isn't a bad idea - putting it on a junker that you wouldn't be using otherwise is no problem; after all, there's not much to lose even if you need to re-install later. I would recommend setting up the /home and /usr directories as separate partitions from /, even though it may be a less efficient use of space, as it gives you a certain amount of isolation from any catastrophic installation problem down the road (a pity that Windows doesn't make that sort of thing easier, given how often the typical user has to re-install it; while it is better than it used to be in that regard, it's a major hassle to do it, especially since Windows own directories can balloon up far larger than you would expect and you need to commit a lot of extra space for it as a result, and AFAIK no major vendor ships systems that way which means you need to do it yourself).

Check your local craigslist, or even freecycle.
I have a friend who makes pizza and beer money refreshing trash PCs, making sure that they have a decent CPU, some memory and a working hard drive, he sells them on craigslist for well under $100.

To start, you can use that old CRT in your basement, no need for a nice new monitor.

You don't even need to get a second PC... Microsoft Virtual PC 2007 is free, and will allow you to run Ubuntu as if you're on a separate platform. I recently set up this very OS on VPC. The only issues I had was capturing the mouse input, but there are articles on the web which will help you resolve the issue quickly. VPC can capture and utilize the ports and drives of your main system, so you can spend less time on setup, and more time learning how to use Ubuntu's features.

The downside is, you won't be able to sort out driver issues specific to your system, but then again you won't get that from a separate PC, either.

Isn't that a sin? using vista to host a good operating system?

Started with Ubuntu 6.06 a year and a half ago. Tried a couple other distros and now I use Arch. Ubuntu makes a good first distro to try, in my opinion.