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I am currently posting from Ubuntu 7.04 that I installed today and is now coexisting nicely with Windoze.

I find it difficult to return to Windoze, and hope to avoid it as much as possible (now that Steam works thanks to Wine, I'm set ).

Anyone else feel this way after just switching from Windoze?

Personally, no.

I was brought up on DOS, through Win 3.11 and use 2K/XP as my main OS's. At the end of the day, however good Linux is, I am used to the Windows way of doing things and am fairly set in my ways now! Since installing 2K (I guess 7 years ago now), I have not seen a single BSOD despite using the computer for devving, games, office, SQL admin, general net admin etc... Maybe I am just lucky!

Perhaps Vista will be the one that makes me switch, perhaps not - I haven't seen it yet.

Cheers,
Adam

Pcmattman: did you just say you've got steam running with Wine?!?!?!

Wow! I didnt realise it could do that. I'm going to try that tonight

The only reason I boot into windows is to play games. Is ubuntu 7.04 feisty or gusty? I can't remember...

Feisty, and I'm having trouble actually playing games. I'm looking it up now (error about creating the D3D device).

For games, you need Cedega (that's basically "Wine with DirectX"). Cedega is not free, but affordable.

For me, the transition to Linux was a bumpy road, mostly because I tried too early (my first try was RedHat 6.3). I still boot Windows occassionally, for games, using Slysoft products , DVB editing, and cross-checking stuff for Cygwin portability.

I indeed have a very hard time switching back to windows from Kubuntu 7.04 x64. Origionally I had fedora core 6 and plain ubuntu, but I found the Kubuntu was more of my style. I do keep XPpro on my other HD in the computer just for playing BioShock.

I've got all of my audio mixing software setup under wine so I'm all set. =)

Solar wrote:For games, you need Cedega (that's basically "Wine with DirectX"). Cedega is not free, but affordable.

I can play Portal with Wine.

My only problem now is that I can't play my library of music (all WMA files) in RythymBox (I can in Totem though)...

pcmattman wrote:My only problem now is that I can't play my library of music (all WMA files) in RythymBox (I can in Totem though)...

Configuration issue. And that is where Linux really annoys me, since I could tell you how to fix that no problemo - for my distribution, which won't work with yours....

@pcmattman: Ubuntu 7.10 has just been released.

Solar wrote:For games, you need Cedega (that's basically "Wine with DirectX"). Cedega is not free, but affordable.

Actually, WINE has much better DirectX support than Cedega now. The Cedega devs ripped WINE's source code before WINE switched to a different licence (LGPL, I think), added a bunch of hacks to make some games work, and started selling it.

Since then, the Wine developers have implemented a much more complete DX implementation.

@AJ: Just out of curiosity: The OP asks if you've had trouble switching back to windows after trying linux. You answer "no" but then indicate that you've always used Windows (and DOS before that). Have you tried ilnux, though? Or are you saying you just don't feel any need to?

As for me, I tried installing Red Hat a very long time ago, before I knew much about computers. I figured "Server Edition" was analogous to window's various "Server Editions." That is, I thought it was usable as a desktop OS, just somehow more stable. I was very discouraged to find myself at a command line after installing.

Several years ago I tried again with Gentoo. I still have XP on my hard drive, but I only go into it to find some configuration option or whatnot to help someone else with a windows problem. Usually when I enter XP, it finds a software update, so maybe 3 minutes after starting up I get a message like "Do you want to restart? If not, press cancel in like 10 seconds." VERY irritating.

I don't play many games. I must admit that portal made my jaw hit the floor, though. It's like FPS meets puzzle games. I haven't gotten it working in WINE though, hl2.exe always crashes with either a page fault or it tries to use a privileged instruction or something. Haven't tried much more at getting that working but I would enjoy it.

madeofstaples wrote: Have you tried ilnux, though? Or are you saying you just don't feel any need to?

Sorry I wasn't clear. Yes - I have tried a few Linux distros, but haven't really got on with them. I guess I am too set in my ways. It didn't help that I had to mess about in the first place to get things like my wireless networking going (autodetect routines didn't work and eventually I ended up using the Windows .inf from the original installation media run under some kind of compatibility layer).

At the end of the day, though, it wasn't that I thought Linux was bad or didn't think that I would eventually adapt - it was just that I was as happy with Windows and it runs all the thousands of software titles I have accumulated over the years. I do like to unwind with games too and I find Windows better for that. Although I hear people talking about security issues and lockups with Windows, since switching away from 9x, I have never had any such problems.

It's just possible that I may try Linux again in the future, though.

Cheers,
Adam

The only problem that I have that stops me from using Linux is that I have not found a version yet that supports my modem (not linux's fault, I know this) because all of my computers have crappy no-name manufacturer soft modems. Also since this computer is a laptop I can't just add a new modem. I can't use an OS that I can't get on the internet with.

windows normally will only update itself once a month -- and almost always, will do so without prompting, and without rebooting... (i havent been prompted to reboot in at least 6 months... though i think its been over a year, i just cant remember for certain...)

i have used windows since 3.11 and have never had any significant trouble with crashing/bsod/etc -- except once, and that was a hardware problem

i cannot say the same for linux, though i havent used it much, it ran significantly slower, and took a lot longer to boot, and then was much harder to use... not that the last part couldnt be fixed with more experience, but im very comfortable with windows -- i like XP, and vista is even better!

Linux? It sucks. Even if I use it for extended periods of time, and sort of becomes accustomed to it, when I boot windows I just go "ah!!! I didn't remember it was that much better!".

Linux filetype recognition is horribly broken. But wait ... Linux doesn't have filetype recognition!

Linux supposedly has a powerful shell. Did I say powerful??? Bash, the de facto Linux shell doesn't have autompletion of previously typed commands. Cmd has it. The FreeBSD default shell (whatever it is) has it. But not bash.

Linux doesn't support every piece of hardware that you have. Deal with it and buy something supported. So why doesn't even the supported and recommended chipsets work? While the reported issue is for Gutsy, my card with an rt2400 chipset didn't work in Feisty, Edgy or Dapper. There were comfirmed bug reports for those versions, yet they still keep recommending their users to buy something that they have confirmed is broken.

Linux is the only desktop OS which doesn't have a GUI toolkit that is both reasonably fast, has good internationalization support and is free to use for commercial applications.

The Linux kernel doesn't have stable ABI. To provide drivers they basically need to be in the kernel source if they should work and get maintained. Instead of vendor lock-in we now have vendor lock-out!

Linux is totally unsuitable for desktop users. One major reason for that is that it's not working as advertised:
If you tell me that your car isn't rusty and sell it to me, then you tricked me. It's not the fault of the car manufacturer.
In the Linux world, it doesn't work like that, and as long it doesn't, Linux isn't suitable for the desktop.
The Knoppix website says that "IMPS/2-compatible USB-mouse" are supported. And I have a common brand of IMPS/2-compatible USB-mouse (second page of google picture search for "mouse"). For some reason this mouse doesn't work in Knoppix. Now if I complain about this on some forum, I get a reply similar to "you expect THAT mouse to work?!?". Of course I expect it to work when it's listed on the list of supported hardware!
It's not about the amount of supported hardware, it's about working as advertised.

It's the same with wireless network card in Ubuntu. At the time I downloaded Ubuntu they had a list of supported wireless network cards (it seems like they've removed it now?) [Now they have added it again]. Mine was listed. Then I expect it to work. Several Ubuntu releases later it's still doesn't work. Of course it doesn't work in FreeBSD either, but they don't claim it will.
It's not about the amount of supported hardware, it's about working as advertised.

The first Ubuntu LiveCD was notorious for not booting. It's a huge problem which I've seen popping up many places. Still, the Ubuntu website and users continued to claim it had superior hardware support and was very easy to install and it was just a matter of starting the LiveCD.
It's not about the amount of supported hardware, it's about working as advertised.

The Ubuntu website boasts about Firefox, which has popup blocking. Well, that popup blocking doesn't work on a lot of sites (like imageshack.us). Again, it's not about supplying a working a popup blocker, but when you say you do, you should.
It simply doesn't work as advertised.

In the 6.06 LTS release of Xubuntu, if you opened the "Menu Editor" it made your entire menu stop working. If you supply a menu editor it should work. If it doesn't, don't include it.

Now if things like these happened once in a while it would be ok. There must be some fault tolerance. But there is a big difference between once in a while and all the time.

This is for Ubuntu 6.06:
So what happens if you install Ubuntu with your USB stick or portable hard drive plugged in? And if it is formatted with ext3? Well, then your Ubuntu installation will not boot.

That's pretty amazing bad in my opinion.