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Emerzen
December 20th, 2007, 08:00 PM
I had an experience over the last several days that I'd like to share with the rest of the community. I've been using Ubuntu for about 2 years now, and have maintained a dual-boot system with Windows XP Home the entire time. I noticed that Nero 8 had released an update, and it occurred to me that it had been a long time since I booted into Windows. I'm loathe to do this as I have SSH, Apache, and MediaTomb servers running in the background. Nevertheless, I decided it was time to do some maintenance on XP, etc.. When I switched over I became more curious? Could I do all of the things I do with Ubuntu on XP? First I updated Nero 8, a long process requireing 2 reboots. I fired up the media server on Nero, ran to my PS3, and checked to see if it was there. It was, I tried to play a file, and it played it back in fits and jerks even after much tweaking. I rebooted again, and poof Nero Media Server was gone from my PS3 and I've been unable to retrieve it. MediaTomb never had any of these complications. How about SSH? There are several implementations for Windows, Cygwin being the most notable. Couldn't get it working. Well, I use it mainly for remote access, so I thought I'd try a VPN solution, Hamachi. Installed, ran, went to my laptop (lan) perfect. Tried it at work (wan) the following day...no luck (well, 2kb/s proxied connection luck). Webserver on XP Home...no thanks. Finally, Nero 8 and my beloved Recode. I've been using HandBrake CLI in Ubuntu, and actually fire it up from a putty terminal at work quite frequently to get things moving. Nevertheless, I like recode so I tried to rip a dvd to mp4(h264/aac), which it did wonderfully but it took 9 hours. HandBrake does the same task in an hour and 15.

It all came together for me then. There was nothing on Ubuntu that I couldn't do with relative ease and security. It's turned out that now it's in the Windows world where I'm limited. This is just a personal observation of my own experience over the last two years, and is not meant as an argument or proof of one is better than the other for everyone and all time.

bonzodog
December 20th, 2007, 09:35 PM
So, does this mean that your windows partition is now redundant?

Switch entirely to linux, it also means you can hide the grub menu at boot as you only have the one system to boot.
:D

BobCFC
December 20th, 2007, 09:50 PM
There's a million little things too.

Always on top tick box from the title bar menu is a life saver. You need some third party app to do the same on windows. Crazy

Also say if I'm working in an application or the terminal I can move my mouse over the web page underneath and scroll down using the scroll wheel without clicking on it. On windows you have to click to scroll and it brings the window to the top.

Want to grab a .flv video from a page or something similar.. wget + paste at the command line is so simple.. no need for getright or anything.

Symbolic links are magical.. Don't give me shortcuts.. I'm talking about links that software can follow. I can reshape my file tree on the fly transparently.

A few months ago I was reading about some shareware on digg that lets you tweak the safari web browser for the mac. People actually pay for this small util that lets you change a few advanced options. I was shocked, and pleased that I had left that commercial world behind. No more cracks/warez/viruses.

Also the peace of mind of using repos. Safe, auto updated, wonderful.

BASH!!!!!!!!!! Hell I can't think of the infinite possibilities of bash scripts. Constantly amazed. Pipes, redirection, devices as files etc.

And my desktop is pimped out to the max. So customisable, I tweak every icon, tiltebar, transparency etc. COMPIZ FUSION BABY


Just off the top of my head lol.

EDIT: while I'm ranting, press F2 to rename a file in gnome and it selects the name without the extension, genius! And the thumbnails of movie files are taken from the middle of the film so you get a picture instead of a stupid black square or an MGM logo etc; windows uses the first frame which is usually empty.

Wiebelhaus
December 20th, 2007, 09:57 PM
There's a million little things too.

Always on top tick box from the title bar menu is a life saver. You need some third party app to do the same on windows. Crazy

Also say if I'm working in an application or the terminal I can move my mouse over the web page underneath and scroll down using the scroll wheel without clicking on it. On windows you have to click to scroll and it brings the window to the top.

Want to grab a .flv video from a page or something similar.. wget + paste at the command line is so simple.. no need for getright or anything.

Symbolic links are magical.. Don't give me shortcuts.. I'm talking about links that software can follow. I can reshape my file tree on the fly transparently.

A few months ago I was reading about some shareware on digg that lets you tweak the safari web browser for the mac. People actually pay for this small util that lets you change a few advanced options. I was shocked, and pleased that I had left that commercial world behind. No more cracks/warez/viruses.

Also the peace of mind of using repos. Safe, auto updated, wonderful.

BASH!!!!!!!!!! Hell I can't think of the infinite possibilities of bash scripts. Constantly amazed. Pipes, redirection, devices as files etc.

And my desktop is pimped out to the max. So customisable, I tweak every icon, tiltebar, transparency etc. COMPIZ FUSION BABY


Just off the top of my head lol.

Lol , this post owned.

Emerzen
December 20th, 2007, 10:16 PM
So, does this mean that your windows partition is now redundant?

Switch entirely to linux, it also means you can hide the grub menu at boot as you only have the one system to boot.
:D

Great minds think alike. I'm looking forward to having the extra 80gigs to put more movies on.

aimran
December 20th, 2007, 10:39 PM
My eyes, they hurt =(. OP: L2Paragraph, it helps a alot!

Sirron
December 20th, 2007, 10:51 PM
I booted up Vista on my laptop yesterday and would you believe that I had to spent 6 HOURS updating the various software packages? I mean everyday stuff like OOo, DivX and VLC, because Windows Update doesn't support them, you have to manually check for an update, download the update, install the update, check the software still works :( restart, rinse and repeat.

Possibly my favorite feature of ubuntu, is the uniform, neat packages that can be updated in one sweep, automatically, with never more than one restart. Perhaps Wine Doors (http://www.wine-doors.org/) will one day be available for Windows... now that would be cool :)

forrestcupp
December 20th, 2007, 11:11 PM
My eyes, they hurt =(. OP: L2Paragraph, it helps a alot!

My brain, it hurts from trying to figure out your 1337 5p3@k. Just use real words. It helps a lot.

aimran
December 20th, 2007, 11:39 PM
My brain, it hurts from trying to figure out your 1337 5p3@k. Just use real words. It helps a lot.

Aww cr*p! I made that mistake again :D L2 = learn to