A few questions before i cut the cord to Windows.

[shaneptd]

Well have used windows for nearly 10 years now but i have begun to see the age in windows xp and i remain unimpressed with newer microsoft products and there insane prices.

1,Before i cut the cord from microsoft forever i do have a few concerns. I have 2 partitions on the drive i am going to be using. I would like to install over my windows partition and leave the second partition alone. Is this possible?

2. Despite my full faith in Linux supported apps available there are a few programs from windows i would hate to part with. Is there a complete list of what Wine can support/emulate?

3. How difficult is the journey to learn the back end workings of Ubuntu and linux in general?

I thank you for taking a moment to review my question and would appreciate any really good links to beginner learning guides for customization and beginner understanding of Ubuntu.

[Lars Noodén]

2. WINE is a reimplementation of the Windows API, aiming for bug-for-bug compatibility. It uses API compatibility rather than emulation. It's close but not everything is figured out. There is an applications database (http://appdb.winehq.org/) that you can search or browse of what is known to work or not work.

3. Learning is pretty easy because everything is documented and out in the open. There are also lots of howtos, tutorials and guides. Then of course there are forums like this one and mailing lists.

[Lars Noodén]

1. Leaving a partition alone is possible if you manually select the partitions during the installation. I've done this a lot for OS X. However, do backup all your data first just in case.

[howefield]

1,Before i cut the cord from microsoft forever i do have a few concerns. I have 2 partitions on the drive i am going to be using. I would like to install over my windows partition and leave the second partition alone. Is this possible?

Yes, you have full control over the partioning (and mounting) during the installation stage.


2. Despite my full faith in Linux supported apps available there are a few programs from windows i would hate to part with. Is there a complete list of what Wine can support/emulate?

Probably best to find native equivalents for your Windows applications if possible, if not http://appdb.winehq.org/ has a list of how well various applications work via Wine, but I'd only use this as a guide, it is only as good as the testers and reports.


3. How difficult is the journey to learn the back end workings of Ubuntu and linux in general?

Shrug, how long is a piece of string? I'd probably suggest dual booting for a time until you are happy with your new environment to mitigate possible frustration, linux is not windows.

Is it a reasonably modern machine ?

[electrohandyman501]

I'm also "on the fence" and hesitant to "cut the cord" so to speak.
I'm currently dual booting my laptop with W7 and Ubuntu 12.10 Linux should be easier for me as I go back to days of Dos3.0(pre-windows)
I've had similar software concerns with XP on my desktop system, compounded by the fact that the hard disk was dying. I ended up replacing the desktop machine with a new system. It came with W7pro pre-loaded. Some of my XP apps don't play with W7, so what I did for now is made a VmWare image of the xp drive and am able to access my specific apps that way when needed. When the day comes I don't need it anymore I'll just delete the VMimage.
Sorry to get off track here......anyway, there are some options that you can "experiment" with linux before you totally dump your old system.
VMware, if you have the disk room or you could even play with a LiveCD to see how well your hardware will play with linux.

[shaneptd]

Larse Nooden: Thank you for replying and clearing up Wine. I was a little confused on the exactly how it worked. The main problem is that i don't have anything to back up on right now and honestly it would take an immense amount of work to go the DVD route.

Howfield:
Yes quad core 3.2 with 4 gigs of ram and a 1 gig geforce video card. If everything goes well i will be switching my network server over to Ubuntu as well.

How customizable is Ubuntu's GUI, One of the things that excites me about switching over from windows to linux is that i have pretty much customized or skinned windows xp to its limits and Ubuntu offers a new platform to personalize.

[shaneptd]

Electro: I played around with the idea of doing a duel boot for awhile but honestly i have already backed up and pretty much cleaned out my OS of anything i could need from windows that would make my Linux switching comfortable.

Gaming on a pc is not a big concern for me because i am not a huge gamer. I occasionally check out a new release but most of my time on the pc is spent reading and watching online video's such as hulu and youtube, The only intensive thing i use my PC for is digital art and image editing. All things that Ubuntu is perfectly capable of handling nearly out of the box.

[Lars Noodén]

A trip to the store to pick up a cheap USB drive might be in order. That's an inexpensive way to back up your data. Even though the installation process is nearly always flawless, something could still go wrong. Much, much better safe than sorry.

About the GUIs, Ubuntu is kind of an a la carte arrangement even if some configurations are offered prepackaged. That means if you install Ubuntu, you can still experiment with KDE (the most customizable) or XFCE (more traditional). Especially on KDE, all the defaults can be changed and rearranged. Same for any of the packages, you can add or remove what you want, regardless of what came on the DVD.

[grahammechanical]

So, what do you want? A User Interface that is easy to learn? Or, a User Interface that is endlessly customisable. I think that the two things are incompatible. From the beginning Ubuntu was meant to be a Linux distribution for the non-geek user. That is why I choose Ubuntu. In the 6 years that I have been using Ubuntu I have seen it become less and less confusing for ordinary users and I welcome that. Others have complained about the restrictions on customisation.

There is something that you need to understand about Linux distributions. They are a combination of different open source projects. They are not published by multi-billion dollar corporations. Most developers are volunteers who write code for their own satisfaction. This means that Linux distributions should not be seen as fully completed releases. Customising a Linux distribution carries with it the real risk of breaking the OS. Just read the posts in this forum and you will see the mess that we can make of the OS, especially if we do not really know what we are doing.

Do not expect more than you will get.

Regards.

[kurt18947]

I find it useful to keep a small Windows partition. There are some things, usually hardware related, that are very difficult if not impossible on a linux distro. For instance, I have a Pioneer GPS that is not supported at all on Linux. The Windows app is pretty crappy but it kinda works. Another instance - I wanted to update the firmware on a Brother MFD (which does have pretty good linux support). Guess how the updater was packaged? Yup, .exe that required Windows.

[shaneptd]

I have completely decided to go with Ubuntu and properly backed up my data to do a full disk fresh install. Thank you for the helpful comments and rapid replies.

I had my eye between Ubuntu and Mint but Ubuntu really is the best starting point for general use with gentle learning curves. I will be around the forums quite a bit in the future as I take this wonderful adventure in to Linux. :) See you next thread!