Hello, Love2D community! I've finally decided to swap from Win7 to Linux. I need your opinions (and help) on a few things-
I need a distro. I've VM'd Fedora (forget which version) with GNOME and I like it, however, I've not used any other distros nor truly used it. A VM is limited in the user experience... So, I need your opinions. I'm not willing to spend money like on Red Hat, the free would be best.
As for the help? There's a few things I cannot live without from Windows, seeing as I need to send in .docx files for my school. There's also a few games I'd like that I'm not sure would run with something like Wine. I already have Win7 installed. Is there any way to run x64 Windows applications (free is best)? I know I can use VMs but those force me to purchase them for the money I cannot provide.
Thanks in advance. -LuaWeaver
EDIT: My processor is x64. I'd like to distro to support it as well. I'll try to release more hardware info once I get back to my home PC.
"your actions cause me to infer your ego is the size of three houses" -finley
As long as you have OpenOffice (or LibreOffice) then .docx files should be fine. (Open/Libre)Office Impress (the Powerpoint alternative) is not nearly as feature complete as MS Powerpoint, especially when importing .ppt/.pptx files. Best bet on that end would be to see if you can turn those in as .pdf and/or import to .pdf on a Windows machine before you view them in Linux.
All the major distrobutions try to keep things as simple for the end user as possible. Just pick up a stock version of those distros and it'll feel fairly similar.
Gaming is fairly limited on Linux. For Wine compatibility, you'll need to check each game individually at http://appdb.winehq.org/.
I have Ubuntu and i never been so happy with a OS before, is so easy to find and install programs with the Software Center. Also i have Microsoft Office installed with wine, so all the ppt and docx is not a problem for me. Apart from all this i havent tried other distros.
Also, Virtualbox is completely free VM software, and a good one too, so you should have no problem running windows (or linux or whatever) in the VM.
I have been using Ubuntu Linux for the past 5 years. In college I used it exclusively for my laptop. I never had a problem with games because the laptop wasn't good enough to play anything. The older games (like Age of Empires 2) worked great in Wine, so I didn't care. I used Microsoft Office 2007 in Wine (worked great at the time, bet the support is even better now). I used MS office over OpenOffice (or libreoffice) because I did a lot of collaberative writing and the way the different programs format is not exactly the same, so it will work and they are cross-compatible, but something created in OpenOffice will look a little different in MS Word. If you are only working by yourself, then it is no issue. You can always print the files to PDF on the laptop and then transfer them to a school computer to print if you are worried about it.
Now I use Windows 7 and Ubuntu dual boot. I keep Windows 7 because I use Steam, and my computer is high end so I can enjoy the more graphically intense games. Steam is now on Linux and a handful of games I own on Steam now natively support Linux, so that's good news. One step closer to removing it for good.
I have my harddrive partitioned in 3 major partitions: Windows, Linux and Data. I first uninstalled all my games and tried to minimize the size of windows. I moved all my data to a usb harddrive and backed up my windows partition. I then shrank my windows drive until it had about 5 gibs of extra space. You might have a problem with the virtual memory file or the hibernation file. You might have to disable them, and then remove them in order to shrink them. I actually made a different partition (windows swap) for the virtual memory so that it doesn't use the same partition as my OS. This way when I backup the OS partition it doesn't include the extra 16GB (or however large it is) of virtual memory. Be sure to do a harddrive backup before you start. You can use clonezilla (free live CD that can run off a CD or a USB) to make an image. If you resize a windows partition with 3rd party tools you can screw up the boot sector so it won't boot properly. I did that a few times. Its a pain to fix, especially if you are not familiar with fixing Windows issues. So best bet is to image the whole disk before any shrinking and the restore it if you have problems.
After I shrank the windows partition, I installed Ubuntu. Usually Linux will install two partitions: swap and the '/' partition. (/ is the root directory). You can opt to have a seperate partition for '/home' which is you settings / preferences / and documents folder. This is a good idea because you can reinstall the OS and keep all your documents and settings. The only issue is that the '/home' directory should be a ext2/3/4 partition because otherwise the permissions can get messed up and linux will have trouble, so you can't really share your '/home' partition between the 7 and Linux. But there are other things you can do. I gave my linux OS partition 10gb and my /home partition 10gb. Swap is weird. Some people say it should be 2x the ram, some say .5x the ram if the ram is greater than 2GB (or 4GB). I'd say make it 2x the size of your memory unless your harddrive is kind of small, then just do it 1x or maybe 0.5x if you have lots of memory.
So after Linux is setup, I created a new partition with the rest of the space and called it Data. This would have all my documents and files and be shared by the two OSes. Data has to be FAT32 or NTFS, I would recommend NTFS because FAT32 can't support files over 4gbs (which you don't think is an issue until you need it, and then it screws everything up). YOu should probably link the Windows size first, because the linux side is very easy to do.
So go to Windows 7 and move your documents folder to the Data partition. (you have to go to properties and chose its location, it will then copy your music / photos / etc to the new partition). Then you can install your games and software, and use the data partition instead of the system partition. This keeps your system partition lean and the shared space maximized. The only thing that should be installed on the system partition will be system apps and OS updates. All space hungry programs (like games) should be on the data partition.
Then in linux you can edit your /etc/fstab to 'bind' the folders from the data partition to your home partition, so now you downloads / pictures / music are shared between the oses.
This is what I did. Long winded, but I find it works really well. I haven't had a problem yet. The only thing I haven't seemed to figure out is when I am on Linux and delete something from the NTFS partition, I think it gets perminently deleted. I don't think it is added to the recycling bin. I haven't looked into this because I don't really care, but its something you should know.
I'd say either Ubuntu or Fedora are good for a new user. Ubuntu if you like the Unity desktop, Fedora if you like Gnome. I actually installed Gnome 3 on Ubuntu because I like debian and I am comfortable with how Ubuntu works, but I wouldn't recommend that for a beginner, unless you don't mind spending lots of time learning the system while trying to figure out why things aren't working right.
If you're completely new to Linux and its concepts, then Ubuntu is the distro for you. Now, here's a few tips that'll help you along
1. Linux is different. The Better or Worse distinction comes on a case by case basis, but overall it's only different to other operating systems. The things that drove you crazy on Windows will be nice on Linux, but the things you took for granted on Windows will drive you crazy on Linux. As a result, you need to unlearn many things, and learn many new things. So, the best tip is to accept and learn the differences.
2. Linux will feel inside-out. There's no "Program Files" directory, for instance. When applications are installed, their files are spread out over many directories. The reasons for this are long and varied, but to get along you can't think "Where's Firefox, okay now where's the help file?", you have to think "Where's the help directories, okay and where's Firefox's help files?" (the answer to that second line of questioning is /usr/share/doc and /usr/share/doc/firefox/)
3. Linux is piecemeal. Where as with Windows7 you turned on the computer and had every piece of it made by Microsoft until you could get to the apps that are made by 3rd parties, any Linux distro is comprised of hundred to thousands of apps all made by third parties. For instance, the Linux Kernel is made by the Linux Foundation, the X Windows System and PulseAudio Sound System are made by FreeDesktop.Org, the Unity Desktop Environment and Software Center are made by Canonical, the Aptitude and Synaptic package managers are made by Debian, and that's all the core system just to have a working system. As a result, it can feel like things don't really fit together well. But, the bonus is that most of these systems can be switched for another one. For instance, it's very common for people who don't like Unity to install a new Desktop Environment (like Gnome, KDE, or XFCE).
4. Linux is principled. Many of the developers are contributing code as part of a Foundation, Collaboration, or Charity. As a result there may be features that feel as though they're left out, and the reason is that these organizations were doing it out of the goodness of their heart, or as a goodwill collaboration. In many cases, this is a good thing, in that things like DRM are not present on Linux. However, the side effect is that content choices will also feel limited. The availability of Games is short (though Valve is trying to break this), and apps like Netflix will refuse to work on Linux because of content deal negotiations will exclude it.
5. Linux is very old and very mature. The Linux Kernel project is 20 years old, but the GNU Operating System is even older, and it's based on Unix, which is older still. So there are also a large number of traditions and backwards-compatibilities in place. The number one spot where this will affect your day to day usage of your computer is that you will probably need to learn the command line in order to do anything advanced. Which means that at very basic you'll need to learn a Terminal Emulator (a window where you control colors and fonts for the command line), Bash (the typing and keyboard behavior), and a number of commands that appear in folders like /bin and maybe /usr/bin.
So, this may all seem daunting, but remember tip #1, it's just different. As long as you're willing to learn, then it'll be a rewarding albeit somewhat frustrating experience.
Incidentally, I'm a Xubuntu user. Xubuntu is just Ubuntu with the XFCE Desktop Environment installed. And I've been using Linux full-time since 2009, and have been educated in Linux use since the late 90s. So that may give weight to my initial advice that Ubuntu is the way to go.
Ubuntu is a free operating system, and, if you have a spare hard drive, you can install it on that hard drive, and switch between operating systems any time. Also, Linux is the kind hackers use, so yeah, I think it's also good for programmers.
Edit : VirtualBox is a free VM player by Oracle for any operating system. I use it for running CS50 Appliance (google it, not explaining ) and for running Ubuntu (although I didn't install it in the virtual hard drive).
I absolutely love Ubuntu Linux 12.04. However, you may want to check out CentOS for a free version of Red Hat Enterprise. However, that means no support when you might need it. Ubuntu has the ever-loving (see what I did there) Synaptic and web-based PPAs for integrating downloads. Ubuntu even has a PPA with Love 0.8 ready to go. If you don't look for a PPA, the version I think it currently has is the 0.72 maybe.
Also, Ubuntu is one of the friendlier distros towards odd hardware like wireless NICs. You just have to be careful to search the web before buying hardware because not all firmware will like Linux.
Finally, I give a shout out to ZeroBrane Studio. I use it with Ubuntu, and I get decent results for Lua. (I use Geany for Python. I have yet to test it with Java or C++ though.)
shatterblast wrote:However, you may want to check out CentOS for a free version of Red Hat Enterprise.
Nah, Centos, ScientificLinux, and Redhat Enterprise Linux are really meant for server, not desktop. A lot of the software in those distros are painfully behind on the version of software installed, and intentionally so.
MarekkPie wrote:Represent!
<3
xfce has its sharp edges, but as someone who believes that Windows XP was the best version of Windows, using xfce feels like hanging out with other XP refugees.
