Should I JUST run Ubuntu?

G'day,
I installed Ubuntu 9.10 via Wubi, and I must say, after having a proper play with it, I REALLY like Ubuntu.. I'm actually seriously thinking of ditching Windows! Does anyone here just run Linux, or more specifically Ubuntu? I'm really liking the idea of FOSS, and the Ubuntu Software Centre. Really handy features. Any ideas?

Cheers,
Joel.

EDIT: BTW, does anyone know a program that is exactly like Outlook 2007, in a way that I can import my calender and emails. ALSO, does anyone know how to get the wifi working?

 

I'm running ubuntu as sole OS (well, until my pc got shipped off for repairs that is). It's a nice environment you'll grow accustomed to after a few days, but in all honesty it isn't that different from windows.
Mozilla's thunderbird might be the answer to your problems if you use one of the calendar addons, but Ubuntu 10.04 features a more integrated approach to mail and things which you might like.
What problems are you running into with the wifi?

 

How are we supposed to know what your computer needs are and if Ubuntu meets them? I run Ubuntu on my laptop and it does what *I* need it to do there just fine. You should probably make a list of tasks/applications and then figure out the Ubuntu way of doing them/Linux equivalents of your Windows apps and play with them first. Only then can you decide if this will work for you or not.

I doubt there's a 100% Outlook clone, but Ubuntu comes with Evolution which does similar things. Thunderbird is an e-mail client that can also do calendars with the Lightning extension. Again, you need to try these things first before making a decision.

Wireless should work out of the box if you have the right hardware, it can get complicated if you don't (depends on the actual wireless chipset you have).

 

My needs are basic, I'm a high school student, so, IM, Web Browsing, Word Processing, Spreadsheet work, Music, etc. Nothing to intensive. If I was still doing Programming I would've stuck with Windows for Visual Studio, but seems as though I'm not doing it, I don't need it.

I've been using Evolution for a little bit now, and I quite like it, actually. I think I may have found the one - I can import my Outlook .pst files too.

I have the Dell Wireless 1390 card, but I cannot connect to anything. ATM I'm using an old PCMCIA card.

 

Did you install the driver for the wireless card? The lspci output might be helpful as well.

 

I'm in the process of following the below site, trying to get the Wifi to work, if it doesn't then I won't run Linux natively.
How-To: Dell 1390 WLAN (Broadcom 4311 [14e4:4311]) for Laptops using ndiswrapper - Ubuntu Forums

 

Assuming you've already found applications you like for those tasks, you should be fine... and if you ever needed Windows you could just install VirtualBox and run it as a virtual machine.

I think that's a fairly common card, but you may have to use proprietary drivers to get it working. If you go to System > Administration > Hardware Drivers, does it offer any drivers for your wireless?

And as droes mentioned, you might want to try the latest version (10.04 LTS), it should have better hardware support than previous versions.

 

:O I didn't even think of that, I'll try that now! Thanks.

EDIT: It's installed, but doesn't work.

EDIT: I don't like 10.04, otherwise I'd be on it right now. It just feels really heavy.

 

Did you unplug the pcmcia card and reboot?

Looks like you've already found ubuntuforums.org, the solution is probably on there somewhere, but when following how-tos and tutorials make sure it's a recent one for the specific version of Ubuntu you're running. There's some very old stuff floating around that just won't work or might even break things in current releases.

 

Heh, my bad. I forgot to reboot, just did, and it works! Thanks. Ah well, guess it's good bye Windows!

 

Yay! Contrats! Glad we've got another Linux convert. Linux is perfect for web, im, etc.

 

I'm in the midst of backing up my Windows junk, and have my Ubuntu 9.10 CD sitting RIGHT next to me! Ready to install!

EDIT: Ok, I installed it, now installing applications. No Windows now!

 

I ditched Windows years ago. Had a - very - brief fling with Win7 a few weeks ago, but ultimately dumped it. Though it's not a bad OS, I felt dissatisfied with the number of updates requiring the system to be taken down. That, and the fact that WMP could still lock the entire system up.

Yes, everyone said not to use WMP. But that's not the issue - an OS should be able to handle any program crash gracefully. It's 2010, not 1995...

Anyway, I digress...

I'd really urge you to consider using the 10.04 LTS release. It's a really good release, IMO. It doesn't feel heavy or sluggish to me on my system. Plus you've got 3 years of support on it, which is a good thing - the next release will move over to a fairly big release of Gnome, as well as moving from EXT4 to btrfs. I'd advise to sit on 10.04 for a while, as you may well see quite a few disgruntled users for a while after the next release.

Of course, that's speculation... but 10.04 isn't a bad release at all.

 

10.04 or Mint9 would be best. The upgrade process from 9.10 to 10.04 is very painful - on the order of 10x as long, and it doesn't work well.
If you don't have programs that require Windows (like for work or gaming), leaving Windows is fine. My work laptop has to have Windows, but the rest are Linux or dual-boot (for games).

 

The reason I'm not going to use 10.04 is because I personally don't like it, on my system, it feels bulky and heavy, 9.10 feels just right, I may have the sudden urge to put 10.04 on my system later, but for now, I'm quite happy with 9.10.

Anyway, If I need Windows, I'll just install it in VirtualBox. - Very unlikely though.

 

Anything in particular that feels bulky and heavy? You mentioned earlier of problems with your wifi card - if the system was trying to pull an IP address all the time, that'd certainly add to the feeling of it being laggy...

I've gone from 8.04 and 9.04(2 different machines) up to 10.04, and honestly can't say they feel less responsive to me.

 

Just the whole system feels bulky, who knows, it may have been a one of thing. The wifi card was not being picked up by and Ubuntu install, until I put in the PCMCIA card, then it showed up but I couldn't connect, but I installed the B43 driver, and now it works. I'm pretty happy with 9.10, and there's no rush to upgrade to 10.04.

 

10.04 actually boots faster and at least to me feels a tad more snappy in general, but since 9.10 is supported until April 2011 you're in no rush to upgrade if you don't want to.

 

If you're that much interested in speed, then you should try another DE or run a WM standalone. The best way to speed up your system is to run light apps.

 

That's the reason why I tried Mint 9. I'm a noob and first tried Ubuntu 9.04 and I thought the OS was very responsive. I had a similar experience with 9.10 but I don't know what happened with 10.4 because the whole GUI felt sluggish. I mean Windows 7 felt snappier on the same laptop when I compared it to 10.4

So I tired Mint 9 on the recommendation of others and the system response was how I recall 9.04

 

Ubuntu is generally chunkier than it needs to be, mostly from the effort to make it uber-compatible and pretty. Once you strip out the junk, it's not bad. At the least, it takes less effort to get up and running than most distros or OSes.

 

I have 10.04 Ubuntu installed on a dual booting XP Pro desktop. I upgraded from 6.06 but by doing a clean install. I really like 10.04 on that machine ( Pentium IV, 2 Ghz, 2 GB Ram, on a 75 GB partition. I boot Ubuntu with a floppy since it is a business Windows machine for all intents and purposes. But I like to keep dabbling in Ubuntu. I have OpenOffice BASE connected to a MySql server on local host, and routinely transfer Windows Access 2003 data to it, trying to get it as functional as the Access application. (BASE is still very primitive however.)

I also have the Acer Aspire One 532h netbook, which came with Windows 7 Starter, which I removed, and installed Ubuntu 10.4 full edition along side the netbook remix edition. I usually work in the Netbook remix edition for routine internet surfing, email etc. The Acer comes with 1 GB ram and 160 GB hdd, and runs on a Intel Atom 450N processor. No need to upgrade the hardware with Ubuntu running (as would have been necessary if I had kept Windows 7) Ubuntu doesn't seem to have a driver for the built in microphone (although the webcam does work) and I'm having trouble with the VGA output port, although the laptop screen looks great.

 

I read that Kontact is better than Evolution in a lot of ways. Give that a try and see which one you like more.

 

I'm quite happy with Evolution atm, but if I somehow decide that I don't like it, I'll test out a few others. Thanks.

 

Well, somethings come up at school, had to move classes now doing an IT class, and need Windows! grr.
So, I'm now installing Windows 7 back, and going to dual boot.

 

Use virtualbox.

 

Yeah, I was using VirtualBox, but it just didn't cut it. I needed a dedicated Windows partition. Doesn't really matter though, I'll just dual boot.

 

I'm right now running Lucid Lynx. It's great. Almost everything runs out of box on my laptop.