dumping windows

[fr33c0untry]

hi all
I've been using ubuntu for 1 year now on dual boot along side windows 7.i like Ubuntu very much and hardly use windows anymore.
whats really bothering me right now is that the bloated windows os which takes up 55 gb of my c drive sits idle without any anti virus,windows etc updates for several months and i dont want to bother maintaining it any more.hence i have the constant urge to wipe out windows and start fresh with linux.but im still worried about compatibility issues.
i would appreciate if anyone can share their experience and advice on using linux exclusively.
im not much of a gamer and i didnt have the need to use windows for job i couldn't do on linux.
tne ubuntu partition takes up 20 gb and has all the apps i need.
would ubuntu perform better (in terms of boot time and resource usage)if i removed windows since i installed it using wubi?

[scy]

I love my lubuntu distro. A couple months back I felt the exact same way- that windows was a waste of my time.

I've never looked back. there is absolutely no way I would reinstall windows. Lubuntu is fast, minimalistic, and very, very, clean. It also has a huge community

I would go for it. I am very happy with using lubuntu exclusively.

And ubuntu would perform better in terms of resource usage if you remove that 55 gb of windows! For sure

[fr33c0untry]

thanks for the ecouragement.
by the way do you use wine just in case.
is it reliable?

[scy]

No, I don't use wine. In fact, I've never needed to use it. Lubuntu can handle pretty much everything on my main machine, and I know there is usually an alternative out there somewhere for all of those windows programs.

In fact, what windows programs are you concerned about not having?

[GameX2]

You could always use a Windows XP virtual machine in Ubuntu, if you need to.
Windows XP use way less disk space than Windows 7 (Calculate about 3GB including all service packs, VS about 15GB for Windows 7).

I use Wine quite often. I keep getting more surprised about how much Wine has progressed. All my games (2003-04) run well, and I even managed to get PhotoShop, Illustrator, and Dreamweaver running. Wine has really limited support for 64-Bit applications, however (AfterEffects, Adobe Premiere.. I'm looking at you. ).

[scy]

Yeah, windows XP is a lot better looking than windows 7. And it's cheap.

[fr33c0untry]

mostly ms office and few pirated stuff

[GameX2]

mostly ms office and few pirated stuff

I've installed Microsoft Office 2010 using PlayOnLinux. Check it, it has an automatic installation (It install the required Winetricks dependencies automatically). You can always install Office 2010 manually by installing the WineTricks dependencies from the Terminal, but that's harder. Stick with an automatic PlayOnLinux installation.

Office never crashed, in my case.

I should warn you althought that Wine is not always compatible with cracks (We do not encourage piracy on the forums). A Windows crack could not work with Wine.

[scy]

If you're really hooked on MS Office, there is also OpenOffice instead of using the actual program.

[Impavidus]

I dumped windows years ago.

Libreoffice (or openoffice, if you prefer) is inspired by MS office and therefore similar (and therefore I don't like it. Actually, I don't use it). It may have difficulty opening your old office files, so you may want to install MS office on wine to keep access to your old files. But first try, maybe libreoffice has no problem opening them.
I've never used wine myself.