Swapping Out an Operating System

Factual Questions
1

Okay, so I’ve about decided to float-test the wonderful copy of Vista that I got with my new laptop. I find I don’t need message boxes to fade in a cool special-effects fashion and I don’t like to think about how much memory is being sucked by the cool-looking little things Vista does. I’m old enough to have written websites by typing H, T, M and L and I just want the thing to run programs flawlessly and never crash.

I’ve heard good things about Linux, and I’m sure there must be other robust systems. I want my new notebook to run a browser, my music composition program, a word processor, a number cruncher and Rosetta Stone™.

Question one: is Linux a good choice for a new operating system?
two: will it run programs that I’ve previously run on Windows systems?
three: how do I do the swap-out, if I decide to go ahead with it?

Thanks.
-H.

2

You can get versions which run directly from CD, so you can try before you buy.

3

You can install Linux alongside Windows so that both are present on your computer. You select which one to run during boot-up. With most popular versions of Linux, you can also try them out by booting from a CD and if you decide you like it, you can install it to hard disk alongside/instead of your existing OS. The install procedure in most Linux distributions is not too different or more difficult than the Windows one, if you’re familiar with that.

You won’t have any trouble finding generic things like web browsers - Firefox, for example, will be included in any Linux distro. Specific commercial products may well not be available in Linux versions (Rosetta Stone isn’t). In that case your options would be: leave Windows on the PC and boot into Windows when you want to use the app; run a Windows virtual machine in Linux (but it will be slow); try to run the app in WINE, which allows Windows apps to run in Linux and other operating systems (but many apps don’t run properly under WINE, and can be tricky to set up).

One caveat though - programs will still crash. No operating system is immune from that, and quite a bit of the free software available is beta-ish in quality. And the O/S may be stable, but the desktop environments can still lock up on you. Experienced users can recover from this, but to the inexperienced it’s tantamount to a complete system crash.

4

BTW before you float-test Vista, turn off all the indexing and make sure your laptop has at least 2 GB of memory.

5

To add to what Usram wrote.

Try Ubuntu. It is very stable, easy to install and easy to use - it is NOT Windows however, don’t expect it to be.
You can download an .iso direct from the site, burn it and install it - note that Windows doesn’t come equipped to burn .iso files, you may have to resort to third party burners (Nero, possibly)
You can order a free CD which will take a few days to get to you. They mention up to 11 weeks but my latest one came in four days, which is pretty normal. I haven’t used it yet as I just upgraded the desktop a couple of weeks ago, online installation. Despite many warnings to the contrary it worked perfectly, just like it did for the last release six months ago.

There is also Wubi. You download it into a Windows folder - no need to repartition - and use it from there. I have absolutely no experience of this so couldn’t say if it would be suitable for you.
Also, as noted above, you can install WINE direct from the Ubuntu repository and run quite a few Windows programs in it. Again, I have no experience of it as I have never had the need or desire to run Windows programs on Linux. I have heard that games are a complete waste of time though.

As Usram mentioned, there is a “Live CD” option (actually, the ‘Alternative’ CD has this option on it too, I don’t understand why they bother with both.

You run this from your CD ROM. I’ve done this repeatedly on my Toshiba Vista laptop and it actually runs faster and smoother than Vista. I would try this for a bit to get the feel of Ubuntu, then install it alongside Vista if there is sufficient spare capacity on your hard drive - it has a very small footprint compared to Vista. That way you don’t lose your known computer and program while you familiarise yourself with Ubuntu.

The best thing about Ubuntu, IMO, is the support forums. The people there are much like the people here, friendly to a fault and keen as mustard to help out with any problems.

There is also a site semi-dedicated to help topics for the Ubuntu uninitiated that would be worth a look before you leap, Psychocats, that gives simple tutorials on how to partition and install, also some of the relatively routine bits and bobs that you need to do to get things the way you want them to be.

Over the past year the hardware support has improved immensely and installation become easier.

6

Despite using Linux on my desktop here at work, I’m going to go against the other posts here are recommend you go for Windows XP. It will work in ways you are familiar with, and will run your favoured apps without any need for you to search for equivalents (which you WILL have to do on Linux). You can legally buy it on eBay with SP2 built-in, last I checked.

But to install, you’ll pretty much have to nuke your machine and start from scratch, so ensure your data files are reliably backed up elsewhere.

7

I was thinking of ganking vista off the second laptop I bought to have as a spare for houseguests to use, and want to put XP on - I have a spare copy of XP that I bought to upgrade a desktop with bit it died before I could upgrade.

Is there a webpage that gives the poor idiots like me hints? I am going to assume that I need to get drivers and such offline to update, and since it is an HP laptop, it has the dvd player burner and so forth, I wont have the programming that came inherantly on my other laptop [they are both dv9000, set up almost identically. I think the only difference is the video card actually]

8

Thanks, I’m thinking of going back to XP, now that I’ve read some responses. It worked for what I wanted it to do, and there’s almost no data on this new machine to worry about - everything that is on that machine is also on my flash drive.

9

Check your laptop against the distro your thinking of installing. I have never had a problem installing on a desktop but it took me a few distros to run on my acer laptop.

Some programs will be the same as Windows , Firefox comes to mind, I would say ask on a linux specific forum for a comparable program to what your using. When you do ask , ask what are the pro’s as well as the con’s of the program.

If its cheap enough for you , get another hard drive. You can multiboot on any system, but a virgin drive means that you can switch back seamlessly to windows if linux is not for you.

Declan

10

I have found XP to be very good at seeking out drivers.
I have two HP printers and XP installed them very quickly. Went online, downloaded and installed the drivers and printed test pages in just a few minutes. They were better than the drivers that came with the printers and far easier than using the discs that came with them - that was a nightmare and took ages.
Same with the scanner - that won’t work at all with vista, and only one of the printers will.

Mr Google will serve up any amount of guides for installing XP, here is just one of them.
Declan’s proposal to install on a virgin drive is an excellent one if the budget allows for it - you could use the current drive as an external and may be able even to boot windows from it without swapping drives. YMMV.