saintm said:
The sad truth of it is that it depends. My experience has been that you need to have a decent Internet connection for Linux so you can install the various updates and software packages that you want and need.
So I'll presume you haven't recently installed XP (and we'll presume either SP2, or with the SP2 service pack at least local as a single file) and THEN needed to go online for the hundreds of megs worth of *cough*"security" updates and the like? ..that chow up no small amount of bandwidth (and continue to do so, on an ongoing basis!)
Also, if you want to do "special" things like playing games and so on, it may not always work.
Indeed, but some games are available from the get-go ..with more coming all the time. At least it's a better position to be in than the Mac world (who now have Boot Camp to install XP for gaming-love) and get games in native form.
Or video editing or a number of other applications.
This looks like a good time to introduce you to
Cinelerra
Drivers often need a bit of tweaking or downloading a particular version or just not supported from the manufacturer at all.
*bzzzzzt* that's too generalised a claim: the only real culprits now are the video thugs; networking ..even Wi-Fi is essentially sorted, scanning has SANE, printing has, inter alia, CUPS ..what else do you need?
From a usability perspective, I think KDE for the window manager is easier to use coming from a Windows background. Standard Ubuntu only includes gnome so you would either have to download the KDE version of Ubuntu or download the KDE environment once you have installed Ubuntu.
this, at least, is a subjective preference. For my part, coming from a 'doze background, I'm quite happy with the differences and improvements that Gnome offers. And that's before any other genuinely groundbreaking GUI alternatives that are available in the *NIX world.
What is nice about Windows is that it usually just "works."
Maybe more for you than for me: I get, in part, to install 'doze and setup boxen for a living and yes, one can
largely do a Windows installation without too much hassle. But start adding bits and pieces and you need driver CDs ..you ALWAYS need a better video driver from (yes, as always) the video thugs. And that gives you a 'doze box that's in the main TOTALLY stupid about just about every kind of media (all the office-type docs, .mov, .pdf, .movies-that-are-not .avi and DivX encoded) bar .zip. Which leaves you able to do what, exactly? At least just about every Linux distro out there has
OOo integrated, can already handle a VAST array of media and are really only limited in this field by the problems of decoders for propietary media - .mp3 anyone? (and this, too, is usally easily fixed)
Maybe it is more of a thing of we are just used to (how) Windows
yes, the second most successful and intensive marketing campaign
ever, in a close second behind (religious text of your choice)
but moving over to Linux does require learning a few more tricks than always just running a program to install it.
Moving to America from here would require me getting used to driving on the "wrong"
side of the road and (this would be killer) learning their ass-backwards interpretation of imperial weights and measurements (not to mention what they do to the language! *shudder*). Point being a different system means a different way of doing things: one learns, integrates the difference and after a short time, that's that.
What I really miss in Ubuntu is a decent Outlook 2003 (or even 2007) replacement. I am so used it now that almost anything else irritates!
Does Evolution not suffice? Or, as an up-and-coming alternative, how about
Chandler?
The biggest drawback to me for any Linux distro is my need to have an online connection to make sure everything is updated properly and I can install software when I want to.
Heh, again: next time you do/watch an XP install, watch and see how much it chews up.
In this country, it can seriously chew up your bandwidth and the cap comes way too early in the month if you get carried away!
shameless plug
time: this is why, care of a buddy (whom I initially convinced to buy in) we do all this on a MyWi Premium account ..with 40gigs to burn every month, we basically don't care about the bandwidth limitations everyone else suffers from.
Apparently Xandros has released some XP killers - not freeware though, but may be worth a look some time.
And how close to "freeware" is XP and Office 2003 (presuming one actually *gasp* pays for it?)
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