Anyone using Ubuntu?

Danase said:
I'll have to get the specs tonight. It's a pretty old DELL Dimensions.



Yeah, my buddy is going to bring the Live CD and show me around the Os first.
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I think this is you windows problem. there is a win7 lite version, don't think its official windows, but using your key would make it more legal. I have a 1.4ghz 512mb pc133 (RAM) and 128mb graphics card, and its really the RAM that bogs it down.



ubuntu is really quick on this machine, but so was a fresh install of XP. if you're using the computer fo basic things, as you stated your already familiar with FF and open office, you'll be fine. if you have any problems with ubuntu, you can find most any solutions by a simple google search.



I agree to a dual boot, or even tri-boot (XP 7 ubuntu), that way if you have any issues with ubuntu (like graphics driver) you can go to an OS you know and get what you need. once you get Ubuntu to your liking, you probably don't go back to windows except for minor things.
 
Yeah, my buddy has the lite version on his netbook and he does not like it. I guess it super stripped down.



I've been looking and reading about Ubuntu a lot and it seems like there is a decent program for anything I'd like to do. For the most part it's internet, office work, and maybe home videos. We still have the Windows 7 laptop though so if I'd ever need it I could use it.
 
Danase said:
Here are my specs:



2.66 ghz

1.5 gb ram

132 gb disc space
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IkeRay said:
I think this is you windows problem. there is a win7 lite version, don't think its official windows, but using your key would make it more legal. I have a 1.4ghz 512mb pc133 (RAM) and 128mb graphics card, and its really the RAM that bogs it down.
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nvm, ignore my post about the specs being the problem, that computer should be fine handling Win7 and definitely handling Ubuntu 9.10. give the LiveCD a try, worse case, you don't like it and try to get a fix on windows. just know, the liveCD will be slightly slower than what your computer will actually do since its running off the CD and not the harddrive.
 
Danase said:
Here are my specs:



2.66 ghz

1.5 gb ram

132 gb disc space
Click to expand...



I'd stick to XP or Ubuntu with those specs. I'm guessing the CPU is single core, and a bit older. I'd really just backup and wipe the box and start from scratch. You also want to be wise about virus protection as some crap (the virus protection) these days chokes your machine to a crawl.
 
yakky said:
I'd stick to XP or Ubuntu with those specs. I'm guessing the CPU is single core, and a bit older. I'd really just backup and wipe the box and start from scratch. You also want to be wise about virus protection as some crap (the virus protection) these days chokes your machine to a crawl.
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Thanks! I have 2 hard drives so I keep everything on one and the other is just the operating system. all my files and stuff are on the other.



I'm using AVG or AGV whatever it is for virus and it seems pretty good.



That brings up something else. Are their less virus threats when using Ubuntu?
 
Danase said:
Thanks! I have 2 hard drives so I keep everything on one and the other is just the operating system. all my files and stuff are on the other.



I'm using AVG or AGV whatever it is for virus and it seems pretty good.



That brings up something else. Are their less virus threats when using Ubuntu?
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AVG is decent. There are very few linux based viruses, however that might be a result of the lack of popularity. That doesn't mean there aren't a lot of exploits on linux, windows has the bulk of the market share, so if you want to write a virus, why would you write one for an OS that is more obscure and the user of said OS more likely to spot something out of the ordinary.
 
yakky said:
You also want to be wise about virus protection as some crap (the virus protection) these days chokes your machine to a crawl.
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The biggest culprit with this tends to be in Internet Security Suites with parental controls for URL filtering, they setup a proxy server on the computer which can tax a machine already on the borderline. I run Norton 360 at home but have the parental controls disabled. I do web filtering with our dedicated firewall and I also use OpenDNS which does web filtering as well.
 
Danase said:
Thanks! I have 2 hard drives so I keep everything on one and the other is just the operating system. all my files and stuff are on the other.



I'm using AVG or AGV whatever it is for virus and it seems pretty good.



That brings up something else. Are their less virus threats when using Ubuntu?
Click to expand...



While there are fewer viruses, the exploits are just as dangerous and there are a lot of them. Linux tends to attract a far more hard core hacker while Windows tends to attract the script kiddies. It is just as important to keep up with updates in Linux as it is for Windows.



Here is a link to the Ubuntu Forums, there is a board dedicated to security.



Ubuntu Forums



Not trying to discourage you but too often I see people discouraged with Windows run to Linux thinking it is going to be the magic bullet and wind up frustrated. It is a matter of expectations, Linux is going to make you work a bit :)



I had a small business about 10 years ago and had a small network of Linux machines setup to host or website and email. We were first collocated in Ft Lauderdale with Cybergate and then AT&T in Miami and then when we moved here I brought it all up to AT&T in Atlanta. I ran Red Hat server on my machines and am still a Red Hat guy these days but I do like Ubuntu as well.



DSC000481.jpg
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Thanks for the info! I was looking at Red Hat and a few others too but for some reason Ubuntu gets the best reviews with 9.1.
 
Danase said:
Thanks for the info! I was looking at Red Hat and a few others too but for some reason Ubuntu gets the best reviews with 9.1.
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For a desktop machine I would go with Ubuntu. Red Hat is more for the corporate desktop and Fedora might be a bit tooo close to the bleeding edge for a first foray into Linux :)



One thing you may find about the Ubuntu forums is the signal to noise ratio is rather skewed so another place you might want to check out is the Linux Forums here.



Ubuntu Help - Linux Forums
 
Another thing you might want to check is orphaned msi files on the Windows box. These orphaned msi files can slow down a PC because the OS keeps trying to finish of the aborted install and creates a new file each time. These files pile up in a system directory and also fill up the hard drive unannounced to the user. You could have a 80G hard drive and 30G's of it will disappear for no reason you can determine.



Microsoft provides a program that finds and deletes these orphaned msi files, but in their infinite wisdom decided it was too dangerous a cleanup program to let user have :) The program is called msizap.exe. If you run it in a command prompt with the G! extensions it will cleanup the drive.



Also try running malewarebytes (malewarebytes.org)and see if it comes up with any trojans and junk that might be slowing down the PC.



Good luck.
 
My buddy brought over the live disc last night and I really liked it. He's going to install it for me Saturday. If anything I can always go back to 7 or buy a Mac. LOL
 
Danase said:
My buddy brought over the live disc last night and I really liked it. He's going to install it for me Saturday. If anything I can always go back to 7 or buy a Mac. LOL
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thats the beauty of Linux, try it for free, don't like it, go another route. Windows has a 30 day period for registering, but I don't think they offer any trial versions, and apples definitely don't offer a free trial period since you have to purchase a computer to try the OS.



funny this post got bumped. I had been using XP almost exclusively since November and wouldn't you guess it, it locked up on me again, no trojans just locked up after a power surge (corrupted files?), thankfully I had Ubuntu already on my computer, I've pulled all my data off the drive and can now reinstall XP worryfree knowing I have all my files :)
 
This morning my clock on Windows 7, which is always correct time, said 12:08 instead of 7:08. No clue how that got messed up because it was fine last night.
 
Danase said:
This morning my clock on Windows 7, which is always correct time, said 12:08 instead of 7:08. No clue how that got messed up because it was fine last night.
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I am assuming your preferences for time are set to update via Microsoft's time servers. If not, could be sign it is time to replace the battery on the motherboard.



Click the time in the bottom right of the screen, click "Change date and time settings", go to the Internet Time tab and see what your settings are. Likely it is set to get time from time.windows.com. Probably just a bad update.
 
Danase said:
Yeah, it gets it from windows.
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More than likely the error was just a temporary glitch with Microsoft's time servers.



If the problem keeps occurring you can change the time server it uses to something else.



Microsoft even provides a list of the more common sites for the network time protocol servers.



A list of the Simple Network Time Protocol (SNTP) time servers that are available on the Internet



If you do decide to change it to something else I would probably go with the NTP Pool Servers



pool.ntp.org: the internet cluster of ntp servers
 
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