Switching to Ubuntu

Johnatan56 said:
No. Most of us use Windows due to lots of apps that just don't run well using Wine because there are no Windows alternatives or because too lazy to learn something new/companies already purchased Windows laptops.

Actually have friends in jobs whereby they exclusively use Linux especially when the company's entire work suite is custom web apps.

In terms of GUI, there are lots of Linux distros that are very similar, and many that I find have better interfaces, though there are some with way worse ones, but Ubuntu/Mate are not one of those.
Software support is what keeps us with Windows, but that's starting to change as more programs become Open Source, with most have Linux support.

For basic web development, Linux is perfectly good, VS Code support and IntelliJ/Jetbrains suite, with your projects being hosted on a Linux server anyways, it makes it easier to be sure that your code works, plus using Docker outside of Linux forces it to run in a VM, so much wasted dedicated memory that can cripple those with weak devices.

EDIT:

Oh, and do remember that Linux has nice tools like Aptik, so quick migration to new machines with all your old settings. Still find it crazy that Windows can't properly back-up settings.
https://www.ostechnix.com/how-to-mi...ld-system-to-a-newly-installed-ubuntu-system/
Click to expand...

Thanks for this link

I have an old laptop, been using (not much) Ubuntu on it for past few years (IIRC, Ubuntu 9/10,then 12.04; 16.04 and now 18.04)

Bought an SSD, HDD enclosure and 4GB RAM, to upgrade the laptop, as it has been freezing every now and then (since 16.04, 18.04 is bit better but still freezing at times) - awaiting delivery for these things.
I plan to replace my current HDD with the SSD and most probably use the old HDD for storage.

Question - do I use Aptik to backup directly to the new SSD?
Then remove the old HDD
and, then install the SSD into the laptop
Thereafter, install Ubuntu 18.04 on SSD?

sorry, i'm a bit confused on the steps to take, appreciate assistance
TIA
 
gamer16 said:
... what are some things during and after the installation you would recommend I do.
Click to expand...

During the installation of any Ubuntu flavour (on 18.04 LTS) you possibly know by now there's the option to do a minimal install so it doesn't install apps included in a full installation. I'm far from a Linux expert, but this is the option I'd recommend for anyone, and what I choose for myself. I prefer adding apps. / progs. to an install, rather than having to sudo apt purge <whatever I don't want>
That's why I'm not keen on a distro like Linux Mint (far as I know you have to install the full thing).

I prefer https://peppermintos.com/ over the Ubuntu OSs or any other distros that I've tried (not that many, and not for a long time now), but it's based on Ubuntu, is very quick and the latest version (# 9) is incredibly reliable - have had it on the laptop writing this on since it was released a few months ago, and haven't had a moment's trouble - no wi-fi issues, failed updates, whether the installed apps, the kernel or grub. It's also only around a 1.5GB ISO download (average these days).

After installation, I'd suggest putting on Vivaldi (a fantastic browser, based on Chromium/Chrome) and Chromium as well, and not using Firefox (my personal pref.). Make sure you activate "Gufw Firewall" if it's already installed, otherwise install it if it's not - sudo apt install gufw in the terminal window (as has an easy to use interface). Another pref. is mpv Media Player (over VLC which I dislike) but there is a bit of a learning curve with mpv.

Finally, I'd suggest "locking down' the kernel for a time at least, though on the LTS's (Ubuntu/based long term service) they're usually stable enough. If interested, you can do so using this method, which I used last night for myself : https://www.howtogeek.com/howto/10606/how-to-hide-kernel-updates-in-ubuntu/
 
@inanabhay - if your laptop is freezing and you don't know what the reason is, I'd suggest rather (backing up any important files from your current Ubuntu install, then) downloading a clean ISO image of whatever Linux OS you want to run, checking the MD5 and SHA-1 hashes so you know the download hasn't been corrupted, and thereafter do a clean install of that image to the SSD (after you put it in the laptop).

Have never used Aptik or another backup solution, though, so it might be worthwhile, but if the freezing is software related then you might just be transferring the same problem to the SSD. I'd personally start from scratch.
 
With Linux it's even possible to copy your files from the old disk to the new. You have to take a bit more care with /proc, /boot and /dev, but I've done it in the past. However, not recommended. A fresh install will probably work best. Aptik I've never used before, hadn't heard of actually, but after a quick Google I wouldn't bother with it. Just start fresh and install your apps manually.

If you prefer to do @I O U's thing of minimal install, that's fine, but IMO Mint comes with a good selection of apps, especially for a beginner. The nice thing about Linux compared to Windows is that the concept of bloatware doesn't really apply, having lots of apps installed doesn't make your system any slower. Just uses a bit of hard drive space. The even nicer thing is, you're free to do as you please :-) because it's free software.

@inanabhay - I would download a new ISO and put it on a flash drive (unetbootin is a good tool that you can use), put the SSD in your laptop and the old hard drive in an enclosure, do a fresh install on the SSD and copy whatever files you need across - documents, music, photos, whatever, not applications. Let the fresh install take care of that.
 
Right so got home yesterday, made a bootable usb with Mint. I could access the drive in question earlier but decided I'll start fresh and delete the partition and create a new one.

Install took 6 min, really impressed by that but I cant adjust the resolution and media files need extra codecs so I'll be downloading VLC and my GPu drivers at work today, so far so good.

Impressed by the boot time, say 15 sec from pressing power, leave about 4 seconds for the bios to do its thing.
 
I O U said:
Snip
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Think I'll leave the kernel as is, I know too little to mess around there.

Thing with the default apps, if they don't slow my system down or bother me in any way I would prefer to have them there so I have the easiest experience with trying to do the things I want to do ahead of having to research apps specific to functions.

At a later stage in time I'll be looking to start personalizing things, for now I just want to get everything running and I want windows in a virtual machine as I am still somewhat dependent on it, Vbox shall be the first priority this weekend.
 
What @I O U was describing was not messing around with the kernel, but preventing Ubuntu (or Mint, they do basically the same thing here) from updating it.

In the past, updating a kernel could break something which takes a bit of knowledge to fix. But it's been at least five years since that has happened to me running Mint at home and Ubuntu at work, and kernel updates have been seamless every time. No issues at all. So you're pretty safe leaving everything at the default.

(When you are ready to start messing around with the kernel then that's lots of fun but quite risky ;-)

As to virtual machines - I might be crucified by the open-source pundits, but I'd suggest looking into VMWare Player (I believe it's the free personal use version of VMWare Workstation). I find the performance much better on VMWare than on Virtual Box. VBox can be painfully slow, for some reason, but VMWare gets near-native performance in my experience. It's closed-source though, not sure whether you're influenced by that at all.
 
gamer16 said:
Install took 6 min, really impressed by that but I cant adjust the resolution and media files need extra codecs so I'll be downloading VLC and my GPu drivers at work today, so far so good.
Click to expand...

Just on this - GPU drivers can come from Nvidia in a bundle if I recall, but you can just as easily install them from inside Mint and this works better. It'll be under the system settings somewhere, forget what the app is called now. As for VLC, it's also better to install it from the package manager.

You don't really use a browser to look for and download software in Linux, unless you specifically want to build it from source and then you need to manage your dependencies manually. You can probably download the .deb files directly from the web, but if there's some kind of mismatch then you will struggle to solve it. (Understanding how this works is a bit more advanced topic, which I can explain if you're keen, when I've got a bit more time.)
 
newby_investor said:
What @I O U was describing was not messing around with the kernel, but preventing Ubuntu (or Mint, they do basically the same thing here) from updating it.

In the past, updating a kernel could break something which takes a bit of knowledge to fix. But it's been at least five years since that has happened to me running Mint at home and Ubuntu at work, and kernel updates have been seamless every time. No issues at all. So you're pretty safe leaving everything at the default.

(When you are ready to start messing around with the kernel then that's lots of fun but quite risky ;-)

As to virtual machines - I might be crucified by the open-source pundits, but I'd suggest looking into VMWare Player (I believe it's the free personal use version of VMWare Workstation). I find the performance much better on VMWare than on Virtual Box. VBox can be painfully slow, for some reason, but VMWare gets near-native performance in my experience. It's closed-source though, not sure whether you're influenced by that at all.
Click to expand...

I tried VMware on Windows, it and my old processor weren't playing too well together although it was a lot better in terms of performance, I'll give it a shot on mint.
 
Just as an aside, and based upon your username... Steam now has Playonlinux. It is still in beta, but I have seen some YouTubers have good gameplay results with it. It seems to be running non-Indie dx9 titles really well, so your old games might work well on it.

As a new Linux user, stay away from any KDE desktop, if you like using your keyboard for driving your PC, then try Ubuntu with Gnome, Unity is no longer the default Desktop on Ubuntu, I noticed someone here mention it. Gnome is a bit heavy on RAM, but it makes excellent use of what it uses. Ubuntu 18.04 is super stable. Mint is based on Ubuntu, with a more Windows-like Desktop environment, but I never enjoyed Mint.

Patience is key when switching to a different environment.
 
newby_investor said:
Just on this - GPU drivers can come from Nvidia in a bundle if I recall, but you can just as easily install them from inside Mint and this works better. It'll be under the system settings somewhere, forget what the app is called now. As for VLC, it's also better to install it from the package manager.

You don't really use a browser to look for and download software in Linux, unless you specifically want to build it from source and then you need to manage your dependencies manually. You can probably download the .deb files directly from the web, but if there's some kind of mismatch then you will struggle to solve it. (Understanding how this works is a bit more advanced topic, which I can explain if you're keen, when I've got a bit more time.)
Click to expand...

I agree, thing your forgetting is I don't have internet access at home on my PC, I have to use my phone, which can become expensive. I take advantage of Telkom's 450Gb mostly
 
NickLeStrange said:
Just as an aside, and based upon your username... Steam now has Playonlinux. It is still in beta, but I have seen some YouTubers have good gameplay results with it. It seems to be running non-Indie dx9 titles really well, so your old games might work well on it.

As a new Linux user, stay away from any KDE desktop, if you like using your keyboard for driving your PC, then try Ubuntu with Gnome, Unity is no longer the default Desktop on Ubuntu, I noticed someone here mention it. Gnome is a bit heavy on RAM, but it makes excellent use of what it uses. Ubuntu 18.04 is super stable. Mint is based on Ubuntu, with a more Windows-like Desktop environment, but I never enjoyed Mint.

Patience is key when switching to a different environment.
Click to expand...

I've heard about playonlinux, seen some vids it looks to be working good, even on some of the AAA titles.
 
gamer16 said:
I agree, thing your forgetting is I don't have internet access at home on my PC, I have to use my phone, which can become expensive. I take advantage of Telkom's 450Gb mostly
Click to expand...

I didn't forget, I just pointed out that there are caveats. If you can get away with taking your box into the office, you might have better luck. Or to a friend's house or something.

Debian allow you to download DVD ISOs of their entire repo basically, so you could do a completely offline install at home from these. Debian is a bit more advanced than Ubuntu, but not hopelessly more so. I don't know of any other distro that will offer that possibility. Downloading stuff in one place and installing it in another is going to be a challenge, I don't have the experience to be able to guide you through that.
 
SauRoNZA said:
Which functions exactly?

Would Midnight Commander not to the job?
Click to expand...

Various small things, like pressing Ctrl+Shift+Enter to show all file sizes in a directory.
Never heard of Midnight Commander. I will give it a go.
 
newby_investor said:
With Linux it's even possible to copy your files from the old disk to the new. You have to take a bit more care with /proc, /boot and /dev, but I've done it in the past. However, not recommended. A fresh install will probably work best. Aptik I've never used before, hadn't heard of actually, but after a quick Google I wouldn't bother with it. Just start fresh and install your apps manually.

If you prefer to do @I O U's thing of minimal install, that's fine, but IMO Mint comes with a good selection of apps, especially for a beginner. The nice thing about Linux compared to Windows is that the concept of bloatware doesn't really apply, having lots of apps installed doesn't make your system any slower. Just uses a bit of hard drive space. The even nicer thing is, you're free to do as you please :) because it's free software.

@inanabhay - I would download a new ISO and put it on a flash drive (unetbootin is a good tool that you can use), put the SSD in your laptop and the old hard drive in an enclosure, do a fresh install on the SSD and copy whatever files you need across - documents, music, photos, whatever, not applications. Let the fresh install take care of that.
Click to expand...
Aptik is so you can move your settings etc. over as well, so all the customization that you've done. For work environments it means that you can quickly reinstall and work as fast as possible again.
For home machines, especially with the poster whose machine is freezing, rather do a clean install if have the time for it as it could be an app/setting that is making it freeze.
 
I O U said:
@inanabhay - if your laptop is freezing and you don't know what the reason is, I'd suggest rather (backing up any important files from your current Ubuntu install, then) downloading a clean ISO image of whatever Linux OS you want to run, checking the MD5 and SHA-1 hashes so you know the download hasn't been corrupted, and thereafter do a clean install of that image to the SSD (after you put it in the laptop).

Have never used Aptik or another backup solution, though, so it might be worthwhile, but if the freezing is software related then you might just be transferring the same problem to the SSD. I'd personally start from scratch.
Click to expand...

hi

kindly advise how do i check the MD5 and SHA-1 hashes - i read the tutorial (https://tutorials.ubuntu.com/tutori...1631539156.1530406319-1200047917.1530406319#3) but its confusing

TIA
 
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