So, you've dumped your Windows install.....

[BigSilly]

....or have you?

I was seriously going to do it this time, and wish I had. I'm a recent Ubuntu convert.

I dual boot XP with whichever Linux I fancy at the time, but now I've started to realise that I could actually do without XP altogether. I keep it around for things like gaming, DVD burning and printing tasks. But now I don't care so much about Windows gaming any more, I can burn DVD's with Ubuntu if I want (couldn't do it with Freespire, my last Linux, for some strange reason), and I'm going to get a HP printer to replace my useless Lexmark anyway.

I honestly didn't expect Ubuntu to be this good. Freespire was excellent, but seemed a bit limited, and updates and bug fixes never came, so I didn't dare ditch Windows. There was loads I just couldn't do with Freespire, so I was forced to keep XP around.

Had I known Ubuntu would be this good, I would've ditched XP and had a solely Linux PC. I'm definitely going to do just that with the next release of Ubuntu, and I'll pick another Linux to go with it. Just wish I'd done it this time really. It's not even like I have a family that insists I keep Windows. The missus hates Microsoft, and absolutely loves Ubuntu. Ditto the kids.

Have you kept your Windows install around, or have you finally gone solely Linux? How did you get on? Would you recommend it to me, bearing in mind I'm no power user by any stretch of the imagination but have found Ubuntu to be very easy to use.

Many thanks.

[Ozor Mox]

When I first tried Ubuntu, my decision was to run at it headlong and ditch Windows completely, forcing myself to use only Ubuntu for a few weeks. Then I could decide, after a reasonable period of messing around with it, whether I wanted to stick with it or reinstall Windows. A couple of times during problems with wireless and breaking my installation from fiddling I considered going back to Windows, but it didn't take long at all to get through that. Now I'm perfectly happy with Ubuntu and don't miss Windows in the slightest.

This approach might not be for everyone, but I knew that a dual boot wouldn't commit me to learn as much as just going for it.

As an aside, I'm no longer interested in commercial games for Windows at all either. There's plenty of free software gaming goodness on Linux!

[ticopelp]

I still have my Windows install, but I don't use it for anything anymore. It's my intention to eventually reformat the drive and just keep the Windows games I still enjoy playing on it. My Windows install will essentially be a gaming system only. I use Ubuntu for all my daily work and creative needs now.

[Bru]

I have three machines running Ubuntu,one is dual booted with windows. Just last week I went in to windows on my laptop (last updated 6 weeks before!) I spend about 6-8 hours a day on my new (first time build) computer, I have fiesty 64bit on it. I do still have one dedicated Windows machine to run a business program on, and my wife has a windows machine to play games on. ( anyone know of casino games for linux yet?) I have been learning a lot about Linux and computers (never had one until 2 years ago, had to upgrade 3 times for my business program and video editing thats why I have 5 computers!) I want to thank the community for being so helpful and understanding of noobie's. Everyone sure help me when I ask a dumb question or need some direction, Thanks Bru PS Lovin Ubuntu so are the grand kids! Who say's an old dog can't learn new tricks?

[BigSilly]

It goes to show you though, just how entrenched the Windows history is in computer users these days. The fact that I had to even ask the question goes to prove it, doesn't it?

I'm going to kill my XP install when the next release of Ubuntu comes out, for sure. I'm at that tipping point where, if I can't do it in Linux, then I'm not interested in doing it at all. Gaming for one. That said, the free games for Ubuntu are surprisingly accomplished. OpenArena has blown me away, along with Neverball etc.

Thanks for your replies folks. :)

[jariku]

I dumped my Windows XP from my computer some time ago and so far I've been happy with having Ubuntu as the only OS I use. I can do my school work with OpenOffice, so I don't have any reason to keep a Windows install "just in case".

I do use one piece of Windows software, namely Picasa, since the Linux version didn't support uploading the pictures to the Web Folders (or what ever it's called) the last time I checked.

If I ever get the need to play some games (other than the ones I play with a NES emulator), I'm sure I can get them to work in Wine or a DOS emulator. As for new games, my hardware is too old for them anyway. No S.T.A.L.K.E.R. for me without a completely new computer to go with it. :(

[Malta paul]

I did dump windows XP for a while till I wanted to use my HP 3500c scanner.
'Xsane' worked with text but photo copying was poor quality. I then made a FAT32 partition of only 3GB installed Win 2000, plus HP scanner drivers. Now I can scan a photo in M$ and copy to Ubuntu! ;)

[lapubell]

i am still looking to ditch my xp on this machine, but I still can't. I do everything in linux now except two things. I need to scan stuff, and I know that I can do this in linux just fine, but what I really want is a scanner that works out of the box. supposedly the hp 3500c that I am about to get works out of the box in feisty??? hopefully?

but still I can't ditch xp until those fine folks at Adobe push Flash onto linux. As a web developer I have to have that software for people that want me to build them flash apps.

[mrgnash]

Yes, I have completely ditched Windows. My last flirtation with XP was when I bought a 7950GT expressly for the purpose of play Elder Scrolls IV Oblivion. After I was done with that title, I was done with Windows and happily cleansed it from my hard drive.

[Cyann0923]

I still have wondoze on my second hard drive, though every time I attempt to run it, it takes 20 minutes to load and then lags and crashes for no reason.

I only load it so I can clean shut down and mount the hdd so I can use stuff from it.

I am having a problem running Sonar 5 (I am a musician, and linux really doesn't have much for music making software, luckily I have a mac with Logic Pro and Garageband) and the gaming is rough, but ******* just can't compete with my love of Kubuntu. I also have Ubuntu on my ps3. so nice.

As soon as I get all my stuff off of that hard drive, ******* is gone.

[cmmike1]

I deleted Windows XP the other day because my ubuntu drive was clicking and was going to crash soon. I installed Ubuntu instead.

[Incense]

I overwrote my windows install quite some time a go. After frying my linux install, I thought I would set up windows as a duel boot just to play around with it if I wanted it. I forgot that XP has almost no built in drivers. My wireless, sound did not work at all, my Ethernet did not work, and my display was all off. Threw my Ubuntu disc back in the drive and rebooted. I forgot how bad it was! About half an hour later I had everything back up in Ubuntu again.

[forrestcupp]

I ran without Windows for a long time, but I recently got tired of beating my head against the monitor trying to get games to work. So I just made an XP partition that I only use for games. I wish my games would work better and easier in Linux, but I know that's one price to pay.

[Songwind]

I was just about to delete Windows on my machine, and bought a game I can't run under Wine. So, I will be holding on to it for a little bit longer.

I agree, there is lots of good gaming for Linux, and still more that works with Wine, but I really want to finish the Myst series :)

[justin whitaker]

For me, the best solution has been Gutsy+Xbox 360.

[BigSilly]

I think I said in my original post that I too kept hold of Windows for the gaming side of things. But to be perfectly honest, Windows gaming is such a drag. I only have a few games but it's often a nightmare trying to get them to run without crashing.

I have Pro Evolution 6, but it crashes constantly, starting with a creeping audio delay that gets worse and worse and eventually crashes XP. I Have GTA Vice City, that used to work fine but now all of a sudden it will only run if I change the compatibility to Windows 98. And even then the audio in the cut scenes is crackly and out of synch. And I also have Resident Evil 4, but it looks a bit poor on Windows, although thankfully it's playable enough. I tried the patch, which improves the graphics no end, but unfortunately slows the game to a crawl. And game patches - gah! Finish the thing before releasing it.

I have other games too with various issues. Some I just got rid of because they were plain awful - Halo and Doom3 spring to mind. I suppose if you have a turbo nutter PC you might be OK, but I'll certainly be passing on Vista, thankyouverymuch.

For my money I'm with Justin above: Ubuntu and a games console is the way to go. A Wii for me though; I won't be touching any Microsoft products.

[Songwind]

I actually don't play that many games, but the types I enjoy playing really aren't available on the consoles. Strategy games, puzzle/adventure games, and Sim type games have never found a home there.

However, considering that may gaming time grows less and less with each passing year, it won't much matter soon anyway.

[steven8]

I've been Windows-free for awhile now. I don't need it.

[atbnet]

I was going to dual boot XP/Ubuntu on my laptop, but I ended up trashing XP installing Ubuntu, so it's strictly Ubuntu now and it works great. Still have my Vista desktop for main usage.

[nowshining]

yes and I went in headlong and did it. :)

[tact]

I kinda jumped in the deep end with ubuntu on my corporate laptop - or should I say Microsoft threw me into ubuntu at the deep end.

The corporate policy is all Microsoft shop. I depend heavily on my company laptop for my work, a constant international traveller. My office is any place where i can get an internet connection and mobile phone coverage.

One fine day XP refused to boot any more. Hopping continents means there can be quite a time between backups. But whenever i am in my office XP used to auto backup to the company file server. When XP stopped working - of course there was a LOT of work not backed up. I had been out of the office for too long!

All the windows based recovery tools refused to even see the laptop HDD as anything more than "unpartitioned space". That included Win recovery disks, WinXP installation disks, and things like BartPE.

In desperation I slotted an ubuntu live CD into the drive and booted. Wonder of wonders - booted from CD I was able to see the NTFS partition AND connect to both internet and corporate LAN - even access my file shares (windows file shares) on the file server.

So - I was able to copy all my data to the corporate Windows file server across the LAN, and at the same time do all my work as I could access the corporate Exchange server with Firefox (outlook web access), and I could work with all the documents I needed to work with (spreadsheets, powerpoint presentations, word documents etc)....

Once the back up task was complete I was left with a decision. Reformat, reinstall XP, search online to find and reinstall all the drivers windowsXP will need, reinstall all the corporate applications (Office, Project, anti-virus etc). Days of work! Or just keep on being productive in Linux.

I chose the latter. Hit the "install to HDD icon" on the LiveCD desktop and installed as a dual boot.

With ubuntu then installed to my HDD and my primary OS - I had a few tasks to do - setting up for corporate and home networks, setting up the essential VPN connections to get to corporate windows servers/shares when on the road, setting up a more permanent email client (using evolution to access corporate exchange server), and so on. All of this was pretty easy and took FAR LESS time than it would have taken to get XP and office etc reinstalled.

That was all back in the ubuntu Edgy Eft (v6.10) days. When it came time to upgrade to Feisty Fawn I did a clean install, blowing away the XP partition and dual boot entirely.

Now my company laptop single boots - ubuntu.

Part of my daily work means running some pretty bloated windows applications that my company sells to show/demo to potential customers. I found I can do that easily under VMWare. When running a full system demo I will routinely have 3 VM's running:
1 Windows Server 2003 in a VM,
1 WinXP Pro in a VM,
1 embedded linux black box in a VM
...and all 3 run very well, communicating via TCP/IP in real time, on my little linux laptop.

Throw in some Compiz eyecandy - i.e. have the 3 VMs on different faces of a cube and then use the "scale" function to see them all on the desktop interacting live.... projected onto a large screen.. looks amazing. :)

Since that all works so well - of course it was easy to create a personal VM with XP Pro and office etc that I can use any time IF I ever found a need to.

So I don't even find a need to have a dual boot system. I boot Linux. Anything from microsoft gets run in a VM. (True 3D accellerated games dont run well in a VM - but I dont go there anyway). :)

Can you tell that this corporate roadwarrier, who NEEDs to do some stuff much more difficult than just email and surf the net, is very happy with ubuntu. :)