Posted on 11/17/2015 8:41:49 AM PST by SeekAndFind
“Don’t like the unity GUI.”
Nor do I. So, don’t use it. Both Ubuntu and Mint offer the Mate desktop environment. It runs faster than Unity and looks very much like Windows XP.
“Most people don’t want to spend hours mounting and partitioning drives or care about Kernel Versioning or nVidia drivers, they just want to turn their computer on and it works.”
In five years of using Linux (alternating between Ubuntu and Mint) I have never encountered the issues you mentioned. I never became a Unix geek, because Linux does not require me to. Current versions will automatically partition the hard drive for you. Really, those distros of Linux are easier to install than Windows. You might have problems with the newest or exotic machines if the drivers have not been written yet, but I never had any problems installing on an older desktop PC with a generic built-in video card. I bought a Dell dual-core Optiplex at a yard sale for $15. Within a hour, I had replaced Windows XP with the latest Ubuntu “Mate”.
Thanks. Guess it is time for me to upgrade. :)
Windows was never sent for free. Now in the 3.x days there was no copy protection and they didn’t care if you bootlegged it (because the real money is in the SDK, and user base forces SDKs to be purchased), but they never SENT it free. 10 is the first time they’ve outright said “yes take this OS for free”.
Also, can you still boot Ubuntu from a flash drive or DVD and test compatibility that way?
Linux works well with older systems, too. My laptop is 9 years old and going strong. The first four years under Windows, the remaining 4+ under Linux.
“Also, can you still boot Ubuntu from a flash drive or DVD and test compatibility that way?”
Yes. Really old PC BIOS may not support booting from USB, but surely all support booting from DVD. Running from a DVD is slow, but at least it will verify the OS and hardware are compatible.
I installed Red Hat over 10 years ago, and that did require enough technical knowledge about partitioning that Joe Sixpack’s mother probably couldn’t do it. That computer did not have enough RAM to be practical (16MB!) even though it was enough for Windows 95. When I returned to Linux years later on a better PC, installing Ubuntu’s “Gloria” was a revelation of simplicity. I’ve been hooked on Linux ever since.
I was just a tinkerer back then. Actually I still am.
Not like you. :)
Anyway, my sad story...
Back in 2006, I was trying build a home theater system and struggled with drivers for the video card plus a couple of other things. Red Hat was a son-of-a-gun until someone put me onto Ubuntu. Duh! After that, I learned the value of the Internet and Linux blogs. Guaranteed, someone else had already tried exactly what you were trying to do, struggled and fought with it and finally figured it out and posted their success story on the Linux blog. The Linux community is great!
BTW, Ubuntu has come a long way too. It was still kind of clunky back then but is a VERY GOOD alternative to Windows or OSX. Best of all its FREE!
Anyway, I have installed the desktop version of Ubuntu on a number of PCs and a laptop then even tried my hand at Apache. I installed it on a PC and had an https encrypted web server running out of my house plus a secured/encrypted WebDAV service. Had a wifi webcam talking to it too so that I could login remotely and check activity at the house.
I had a lot of spare PC hardware laying around. :)
No upgrades for windows 10 yet.
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