O T: Been Given A Laptop, But ?

I think you've summed it up. Linux is fine for linux apps and legacy windows apps. But anything intensive that is designed for Windows is likely to have problems.

Reply to
John Whitworth
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They asked for "any advice", and got it... :-)

If reinstalling the whole OS is the only way to fix the problem, then it's as good a time as any to look at a completely different* OS.

  • for suitable values of different, these days...
Reply to
Jules Richardson

By 'intensive' are you talking about games? I can't think of much else that won't run happily within a VM under Linux.

Reply to
Jules Richardson

Jules Richardson gurgled happily, sounding much like they were saying:

...or that doesn't have alternative, native Linux apps.

Sure, they might have a different name. Sure, they might require a subtly different approach. But the basic functionality will be very similar.

I've been using Linux as my main daily desktop OS for about three or four years now. The only things I regularly fire up a Win VM for are the accounting software (QuickBooks - and there's other alternatives, I just haven't got round to switching) and RM's SmartStamp (and I could just use the online service instead).

OpenOffice, Firefox, Thunderbird - the three main productivity apps I use

- are all exactly the same on Win as Linux. Yes, there's "bigname" Win alternatives I can't use on Linux - MSOffice, IE, Outlook - but having used them all regularly in the past (and periodically now) I wouldn't be using them if I was on Win.

Some things work better on Lin than Win. Running VMs - which I'd be doing anyway. Running multiple remote desktop sessions. Having multiple desktops available. Building multi-page PDFs from a scanner.

I don't play games. If I did, I'd buy a console - which'll blow Win out the water.

Reply to
Adrian

Depends what you mean by intensive.

The biggest performance hit is probably screen update rates. I would say that real time games were the only thing I wouldn't run on it. Might work in 'full screen' mode.

Everything else is fine. I'm running massive 3D CAD on it no problems. It gets the whole CPU too play with, and the disk speed is similar.

Reply to
The Natural Philosopher

Well, yes, true. They did ask for 'any advice'. And I am as guilty as any for assuming that the OP has less knowledge of Linux than of Windows.

Reply to
John Whitworth

Photoshop's hardware acceleration? What about something like Chief Architect? Or any CAD package for that purpose?

Reply to
John Whitworth

That as I said, is my take too.

Having said that, my current dual core celeron equipped XP in a virtualbox with 2 gigs of RAM allocated to windows is a LOT faster than my old 512MB XP setup in a 1.4Ghz single core, even screen wise.

Reply to
The Natural Philosopher

I guess it depends how much investment (time and money) goes down the drain with the switch.

Office 2003 is pretty similar to OpenOffice - but Office 2007 is so much more functionally rich. It depends, I guess, on just how much of that functionality you use.

The only VM I run is to connect to my work VPN, without tying up my main desktop LAN connection. I have no issues there. As I don't run multiple VMs though, I can't really comment. Though I would argue that multiple VMs would be better supported in a server environment anyway, and hence qualify under my Linux is brilliant for servers comment! Similarly with RDP, I only connect to my one server from the desktop, so can't comment!

I have a console and a PC. They both are suited to different types of games. A console will blow a PC out of the water on launch day. But PCs keep evolving between console generations. But as you don't play, you can't really comment. ;-)

JW

Reply to
John Whitworth

It can never get the whole CPU to play with. The VM itself *has* to have some CPU time. And similarly, will have some disk I/O. Quite what the overhead is, I don't know. But there will be some.

Reply to
John Whitworth

Precisely.

I was runing MACS and a PC here, and a linux SERVER. So I got to try everything on everything.

To be honest, if you hate computers, and have a fat bank account, get a mac. They don't do a lot, but they do it well.

It's a very capable basic desktop.

Then I left my WinPC where it was, and ditched the Mac for Linux. VERY similar performance to the Mac, and very similar smoothness of graphics. Fonts way ahead of the PeeCee. and as much functionality as the Mac but hugely less costly. Like half the price.

Big downside was some hardware support. Not as bad as the Macintosh, but bad.

Then I got fed up with having to change rooms to get a windows program running, so tried the virtualisation route. I was pretty happy with VMware, but somewhere down the line it broke. So I have gone virtual box, and its been superb.

And then the windows box crashed. So its gone. Or rather after a motherboard crash in the linux server, the windows machine now runs the linux, and the native windows machines is gone altogether.

I run just three packages in Windows. Rhino CAD, Corel Draw, and a maths package that's of no interest to you guys..specialised stuff.

I can instantaneously switch windows between windows windows and linux windows, and they all see the same disks and data areas. Windows is just another Linux app, that's all.

AND because of that, the WHOLE windows virtual machine can be backed up and restored, so if it does go wrong, its about 30 seconds to restore it to last snapshot etc..

And because I am scrupulous and never store any work inside windows, but on either the host machine or the office sever, restoring the VM never loses any work.

SPO its not a visionary path of religious conversion for me. merely a careful assessment of options and cost-benefit that ultimately has arrived at a setup that really cant be currently bettered. Ive got Windows when I need it, but on a far more stable and recoverable platform that native hardware, and I've go a native linux: very stable, loads of useful software, and totally free.

Reply to
The Natural Philosopher

For you.

Reply to
John Whitworth

Ubuntu and its variants are easy for a windows user to get going with, hence its popularity. Its not quite what the OP asked, but I'd agree its sound advice.

NT

Reply to
NT

My experience of VMs is that they run reasonably close to native speed, though (I assume there's very little in the way of translation layer between the VM's graphics driver and the native hardware) - games are the thing that presumably push things the hardest, but I'm not sure that a drop of x percent graphics performance would be noticable for *most* photoshop, CAD etc. situations.

I'd run some tests, but the hardware acceleration's totaly snafu and I have it turned off on this 'ere Linux system (which also has win2k running via virtualbox)

cheers

Jules

Reply to
Jules Richardson

Yeah, around 17 for me now - and I've pretty much always had the productivity stuff that I needed (code development, email, usenet, web browsing, word processor etc.) - although of course the wordproc side didn't really kick off until quite late in the game.

The graphics side has always been a bit lacking, though; I can't stand gimp, so I've always ended up with either a dual-boot machine or more recently a copy of windows in a VM just for that aspect.

I find more and more these days I'm getting frustrated with Linux, though

- or at least with the GUI side of things. Too bloated, badly-designed, badly-documented, over-complicated... in other words, far too much like MS Windows. KDE 4.x on this system, but I've seen recent Gnome and it doesn't appear much better.

Yeah, nor me. I'll play a few 80s classics via emulators once in a while, and I'd quite like to get some of the early 3D stuff up and running sometime (Doom, ROTT etc.) just for nostalgia's sake, but I've no interest in whatever the latest and greatest titles have been for the last decade...

cheers

Jules

Reply to
Jules Richardson

See the fix at

formatting link
deleting a few registry entries so make sure you happy with this process and take a backup first.

Reply to
Mike

CAD runs fine here. CAD is surprisingly NOT that screen intensive. Its computation intensive.

Neither is photoshop where hardware acceleration takes place. That takes place in the hardware drivers, and no application talks directly to hardware screen drivers these days.

Reply to
The Natural Philosopher

I got faster screens with hardware acceleration off..

:-)

Reply to
The Natural Philosopher

My point is its no worse than running native.

And in fact, under serious cycle chewing, the VM itself doesn't get any CPU, and nor does anything else. The machines will happily freeze for a minute or 5 calculating intersections and so on.

The real point being that the overhead of the VM is very small compared with the real work the app is doing.

Reply to
The Natural Philosopher

Was it really necessary to quote 50 odd lines to state the blindingly obvious? Of course if I was running a multi hosted data ceneter and Oracle application for 50,000 users, a linux PC would not be the best cost benefit.

Reply to
The Natural Philosopher

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