Thinking of adopting Linux or the like

[Article_86]

Running Win 7 Pro.  Constantly fighting M$ to stave off/remove forced spyware and getting REAL tired of it ... NOT going to Win 10.  As far a Linux goes, I'm in the market but there are so many flavors!  Ubuntu and Debian GNU are being looked at.  What I REALLY need is a version that likes Aces High and my 6 year old desktop ... there's the trick.  I think that I'll have to get an eSATA external HD first.  I'll need some hand-holding on this one.  - Art

[715]

I dual boot to Win XP and Ubuntu 14.04.  I use XP to play AH.  I do not use XP anymore to connect to the net for anything else, i.e. no browser (except the AV software updates itself).  I have never tried to use Wine or get AH to work on Wine.  I need to keep XP around anyway for some old programs.

I know pretty much nothing about Linux, but Ubuntu is easy to use and comes with Office like applications.  I've also seen that Linux Mint is popular.  Note that Ubuntu comes with spy like character similar to Win 10.  I am no longer sure off all the details.  It's some kind of agreement with Amazon where your searches go through them; i.e. if you search for a file in file manager it also searches the internet, much like Win 10 searches.  This feature can be turned off (and EFF gives simple instructions to remove it entirely).  I don't feel bad about removing it as I sent Ubuntu $120.  It has always struck me as bizarrely inappropriate that an internet search would be done when I am only trying to find something on MY computer, but it seems to be the way things are going.

Ubuntu has lots of easily installed free software in their software center.  These include GIMP (bitmap editing), Inkwell (vector graphics), Blender (3D, but odd), Audacity (audio editing), VLC (video), and a bunch of others, like Stellarium, a neat night sky program.  (All those programs is partly why I contributed the $120.)  Ubuntu is really easy to use, but if a problem pops up the solution is often some arcane command line mumbo jumbo that you have to copy and paste from some blog on the net.  Luckily I've never had a problem.

[jigsaw]

Might be worth looking at using www.virtualbox.org to play around with a few different distros until you find something you like. Makes it very easy to goof with multiple OSes in a safe environment without having to do a lot of mutliboot/hard drive swaps.

[Bizman]

I'm a little confused: Are you saying that Microsoft keeps installing spyware into your Win7 system? If so, I'm interested to learn about that in a professional manner to help me do my job.

As for Linux distros, I'm in the same boat with 715. I know pretty nothing about Linux, but I've tried a few and use some bootable versions frequently. I used to like Ubuntu, but at some point they created a new desktop which I didn't get familiar with. So now my favourite for everyday tasks is Mint. The layout is Windows-like which helps the transition. Plus there's a ton of guides for a novice like me! What I like most in Linux is that once you decide you'd need something and install it, it gets updated along with all of the other OS updates.

For what I've learned, emulating Windows in Linux takes some resources which means AH will run slower than it would in a native Windows environment. Dual boot is the way to get the best out of both worlds.

[save]

i  run virtual box on my win7, using Ubuntu as guest system.

[Bino]

...
For what I've learned, emulating Windows in Linux takes some resources which means AH will run slower than it would in a native Windows environment. Dual boot is the way to get the best out of both worlds.

Bizman is correct, in that running anything in a virtual mode (i.e., virtual Windows box on top of Linux) requires more hardware resources than running in a native mode. Your "6 year old desktop" is not likely to be up to that task.

Setting up one machine to either boot into Windows or Linux may be one solution for you. Another solution might be to have two machines, one for Windows and one for Linux. A functional Linux desktop can be run on some surprisingly small hardware - the Raspberry Pi, for example.

As always, YMMV.

[Bizman]

A functional Linux desktop can be run on some surprisingly small hardware - the Raspberry Pi, for example.

Just for clarification, "functional" can mean many things. Years ago a fellow represented his very small Linux running from a memory stick. All black with text only. Very lightweight indeed, but viewing multimedia sites like Youtube was quite boring. For reading e-mails and news titles it was very functional. Running a graphically rich Linux desktop with all bells and whistles requires roughly as much resources as a modern Windows environment. Or the other way: Windows 95 or NT4 had both the looks and Internet functionality using only a fraction of the power needed for the modern ones. Not to mention the resource hog in between...

[715]

There is one thing I forgot to mention.  Ubuntu updates itself A LOT.  I mean really really often and sometimes really really big downloads.  Just this morning it did over 100 MB.  It also updates security problems quickly: I can be reading about some newly discovered security issue, like HeartBleed, and Ubuntu will update to fix it before I finish the article.

[Bizman]

The same can probably be said about Mint, too. After all, they're basically the same with a different GUI.