New Laptop - which flavour of Windows? (and other issues)

[Andy Burns]

A Linux install where everything goes to plan has been easier than a Windows install where everything goes to plan for quite a while, of course installing either O/S can fail to go to plan.

[Roger Mills]

OK, a couple of recent examples. . .

I had another go with Ubuntu on my PC only last night. It is installed on the hard disk and set up to dual boot with XP - so I'm not running from CD.

First problem: Printer. It recognises my HP1220C printer, but when I try to print a test page it prints multiple pages with a line of gibberish at the top of each page. So I remove the paper to stop it wasting and a whole ream - and when I try to troubleshoot, all it tells me is that bloody thing is out of paper! I can't find how to actually cancel job and tell the printer to stop what it's doing.

Second problem: Dual monitors. In my XP setup, I'm using two monitors - the laptop's own screen plus an external monitor, with the 'desktop' extended across the two. This is easy to set up in XP - just by going to Display Properties - but I haven't a clue how to do it in Ubuntu - and couldn't find anything useful in 'Help'.

So I gave up again. Pity - 'cos I'd really like to get shot of everything Microsoft - but life's just too short to do so!

[Jules Richardson]

You can always plan for that failure, though. Unless the plan fails to go to plan.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Exactly. My friend, who is geeky, put Suse linux on a laptop for his daughter, who isn't. Several years ago.

She came back with a shiny new laptop after uni 'Can you put that linux on this one again please'

And you have conformed my own conclusions, that one needs Windows, not because its good, but because it is simply a common platform to run apps one needs, on.

BUT as far as a basic desktop with multimedia and net and WP/spreadsheet capabilities goes, its only distinguishable from windows in that it looks better and runs as fast, or faster, with less vulnerability to malware, and at lower cost..

[The Natural Philosopher]

yes. If windows doesnt work, you are usually screwed. If Linux doesnt work there is usually a workaround, though it can get bloody nasty.

[The Natural Philosopher]

I am using some old XP that I had from somwhere. XP itself on its own was OK ish..it did get slower and slower..dunno why. But the apps that I need it for are not kind to it. They can screw it.

I dunno.

I wasn't interested enough to ask.

[The Natural Philosopher]

thats is the cups system.

you obviously had it thinking the printer was postctript, when it wasnt.

Happens here - mostly from the Macintosh client.

ReEmove tray, wait for gibberish to stop, switch printer off to clear ITS memory and go into system/administration/printers, right click on the printer and delete any queued jobs.

Then if its NOT a postcript printer, reinstalll it correctly.

That's one I havent tried. I use virtual screens and a single monitor.

My guess is there is a special driver, which may be proprietary, to do that. If the video car manufacturer decides he wont support linux, that's that really.

its still got a few years to go before we get shot of Microsoft, but its moving, slowly.

When I started IT life there were no PC operating suystems, apart from CP/M and 20 different mainframe and minicomputer systems.

Now there is Unix at the mainframe and mini level, and that's about it. There's a few VMS/VM around still I believe. Unix and its child, Linux, simply became the more open usable standard. To the point where Apple now uses a version of it.

I shied away from linux for many years as a desktop, (been using it as a server for years and Unix) because it simply couldn't cope..but recently I decided after a brief flirtation with OS-X to give it a try. Its worth it. Its now nearly as good user friendly wise as windows, and streets ahead in most other areas.

BUT there is no breakthrough moment. third party peripherals and support gets better, but its not windows levels yet. But each incremental improvement means there is more onus on the third party gents to make their stuff work with Linux. Its already inside most routers and bridges, on most servers on the net. Windows is a dwindling island of desktops. Still the biggest island by far, but it is shrinking.

AND the virtual box stuff means that you CAN still run windows programs on it.

Which one needs to by and large.

[dennis]

8<

What does that tell you about them? My windows runs for weeks if I let it. It never crashes. It runs stuff that you just can't get on linux not even an equivalent. I installed last year and I don't expect to do so again until I buy a bigger disk, then I may just clone it. I guess some people just never learn how to use a computer.

[dennis]

There is little difference between the two, except for partitioning, the linux partitioner is a real pain and its easy to destroy something you didn't want to.

[Andy Burns]

I'd say the difference was drivers. In windows you'll need to ferret out and download drivers for most devices yourself, with Linux, if a driver exists for your hardware (choose hardware wisely) it'll just be included and work - granted from the little I've seen of Win2008_R2 it appears to have improved over older versions.

[Bill]

In message , The Natural Philosopher writes

A youngster, eh? I wrote my own tiny OS for the 8080 using broken calculators from Tottenham Court Rd. CP/M came later.

That's fine, but the OP was asking about a laptop not a box with no buttons or a server. I work with audio, and fiddled with Slackware for ages, learning nothing about how to multitrack, but lots about Linux. I recently got a Netbook - vastly reduced, probably because it was running Ubuntu. Powered up, went like a dream, connected through the router and it wanted to download updates, just like Windows. Foolishly, I let it. Rebooted, and it had lost all wifi. Even with extensive internet help and personal Skype 2-ways with an expert, never could get that back, so installed the next generation

9.04. Everything came good again. Then started trying to get it to do audio mixing, editing etc. Only one out of all the interfaces here had any hint on the internet that they might work with Linux, and that was an old Tascam US-122. Huge instructions later, and it worked. What a performance, though. I don't think any of the Firewire devices work. I had the Open Office front end connecting to my MySQL database, but something, possibly another Ubuntu update, has stopped that working. Still works on all the Windows laptops.

It works really well for what I bought it for - pointing a usb webcam at the tow hitch on the Land Rover to help with backing up to boat trailers.

I'd recommend it for that, but not for someone who wanted a normal general purpose laptop.

[Huge]

FWIW, I've never used Windows for my home O/S. I presently run Ubuntu, before that Solaris, before that SunOS and before that MS-DOS with GEM.

I've never missed it.

(I use Windows for work, because I have no choice. I tried MacOS, but didn't like it much.)

[djc]

System:preferences:display

If you have ATI graphics then you will probably be prompted to use the ATI program, if Intel graphics the default version works , don't know about Nvidia.

[Bernard Peek]

I might recommend it, with reservations. If someone was completely new computers I might recommend Linux. It's no more difficult to learn *from scratch* than Windows is. If you already know Windows then you have a lot to unlearn before you can be reasonably proficient with Linux. Linux is not Windows.

Support for Linux is growing and we are starting to see manufacturers providing support. As they do that it becomes easier to adopt. As that happens more people will use it. That encourages more manufacturers to support it.

It's clear that Linux has reached the point where a company could decide to become a Windows-free organisation. What doesn't currently make sense is for an organisation that has Windows systems to take on the added burden of a second system that requires different support skills.

[Bill]

In message , Huge writes

I think my point was that it can be a major task getting those sort of OS's to interface with things like usb or firewire audio interfaces. Lots of other interface devices spring to mind as well - things like CAN-BUS devices for cars and so on. The Linux that might, Ubuntu, in my admittedly very limited experience, has similar problems to Windows - huge numbers of updates offered, little guidance as to what should be avoided and to get things working again I had to re-install. I repeat my user experience with a Toshiba Ubuntu netbook. I behaved like a typical new user. Switched on, thought this is good. Up popped the Updates Available message. I let it do its worst, clicking default on any message I didn't understand. The result was no wifi, so, if I were a typical user, no internet, So the net in netbook wasn't there any more.

What I'd love would be a modular sort of OS with a universal public domain standard driver interface system. Communism missed its chance. No hope now. :)

[dennis]

That is exactly the same for windows, if you choose your hardware wisely means windows will also include the drivers and will update them if required. The difference being that its very difficult to chose hardware that doesn't have drivers for windows and its easy to chose hardware that doesn't work with linux. Linux lacks decent drivers for lots of printers and scanners and ATI graphics for example.

[Jules Richardson]

Which "linux partitioner"? I've seen some horrendous bells-and-whistles ones before (Redhat had a nasty one at one point, IIRC).

I normally use fdisk though - makes it obvious what's going on (and I usually back the MBR up using dd first, just in case I toast something)

[dennis]

They are all pretty bad. The one on ubuntu 9.4 was bad, it even had the exact same warning at the end when it was going to delete your windows partition as it did if it wasn't going to do so. That would be a real pain for someone that didn;t understand partitions, slices, etc.

[tony sayer]

In article , Bill scribeth thus

Yep, and I've spent many many hours sodding around with Microsoft problems and somehow I reckon I'm not the only one either;!...

[BillW50]

In news:hnrrum$3ei$ [e-mail], The Natural Philosopher typed on Thu, 18 Mar 2010 00:25:58 +0000:

Reinstalling Windows? That is the wrong way to do things. I install them once and that is it. I make backups and if the hard drive fails or something, just restore it to another hard drive. I have 4TB of external drive space so making multiple backups are easy and I can make as many I would like too without problems of running out of space. And you are back up and running in about 20 minutes or less.

Only had Windows running for two days tops? Gee mine don't get rebooted for months at a time. Some of them for years at a time. Even when I was running Windows 98, I wouldn't have to reboot for about every 2 months and that was it.

Linux? Well Xandros crashes all of the time. So that one isn't so good. Ubuntu doesn't crash too often, but there is very limited applications and games for Linux. Plus Linux is terrible in the multimedia department. So Linux isn't so hot of an OS anyway. As I still think of Linux as just a glorified PDA OS. As that is about all it is good for anyway. Just those simple computing tasks.