Installed Ubuntu Last Night

[em2ab]

And loving it! I was running Gentoo back in the day but there was way too much maintenance to custom modifying everything to keep it running and trying to add new hardware. So a few years ago I tried Ubuntu and it was okay but lacked a few things. But this new version is great, lots of cool features and lightning fast! I was downloading package updates at 1.4 megabytes per second. I got XP running on a computer in my car and Vista running on my laptop so I figured, "What the hell." I installed Ubuntu on my desktop.
It's even got cool features like if you have a mp3 file that you want to know what it is, you hover the mouse over it and it'll play until you move the mouse off it.

So with that, does anyone have any ideas of cool tweaks I can do on it? Is it worth it to switch to the 64 bit edition to take advantage of my processor? Would it make a difference or be a pain in the ass trying to find the proper 64 bit applications? And finally, which package can I download to run server processes in the background and host my own website? Anything you got, throw it out here.

Oh, I'm disappointed about Google Chrome though. Hoping they release a Linux package soon.

[revelations]

I updated to 8.04 (from 7.10)and the office computer stopped working little by little... one week, no more sound, next, no more office network, etc.

Got tired of fighting and googling all the error messages and just reverted to windoze

:dunno:

[D'z Nutz]

Isn't Ubuntu a fork of Debian? Nobody can seem to shut up about Ubuntu. I've been a Gentoo user for over 5 years and prior to that I was a Debian user. The thing that drove me from Debian all those years ago was mixing and matching stable and experimental packages (and stable packages were always versions behind from everyone else). I even tried some of those other Debian forks like Mepis and Libranet, but at the time all they were were just reskined Debians with a GUI installer (the installer even said Debian!).

Maybe I'll fire up a VM and see how I like Ubuntu. DistroWatch seems to indicate it's the most popular one right now.

[Neil4Speed]

I am using XP right now, and its alright but how is Ubuntu speed wise? It it going to make things better for me?

My main concerns are:

- Using office applications (Word/Excel/Powerpoint)
- Being able to use Filesharing such as utorrent/frostwire
- Being able to burn Music CD's and Data DVD's
- Playback of video's of various formats, is it going to mess with my video card
- Full use of my ipod

Thats about all I use my computer, the occasional game of AOEII or Q2 as well ;)

It seems pretty userfriendly, am I going to notice a big speed difference? Maybe I will give it a try by running it from a flash drive.

[em2ab]

Originally posted by Neil4Speed
I am using XP right now, and its alright but how is Ubuntu speed wise? It it going to make things better for me?

My main concerns are:

- Using office applications (Word/Excel/Powerpoint)
- Being able to use Filesharing such as utorrent/frostwire
- Being able to burn Music CD's and Data DVD's
- Playback of video's of various formats, is it going to mess with my video card
- Full use of my ipod

Thats about all I use my computer, the occasional game of AOEII or Q2 as well ;)

It seems pretty userfriendly, am I going to notice a big speed difference? Maybe I will give it a try by running it from a flash drive.

- For Office applications, there's OpenOffice which is also available under Windows. It's free and opens any Microsoft Office file, the only bad thing I see is that you can't save with the Microsoft (.doc/.xls) extensions so when I'd be applying for a job and they require a resume in Word format, I had to do it somewhere else. Otherwise they work the same.
- I can't remember if it's uTorrent but there is one (maybe Bittorrent?) that you can use and it works the same. Same thing with Frostwire, it's available for Linux and works exactly the same.
- burning media is the same out of the box
- supports all file formats for videos
- the newer distributions have full iPod control.....remember, the iPod is an anti-Microsoft product to begin with.

You seem to be worried about things that have been supported for a long, long, long time so I think you'll be very surprised if you tried it.

[Neil4Speed]

Thanks for the response! Look forward to giving it a whirl!

[Doozer]

I actually tried it for the first time a few weeks back when my laptop died. The boot record was screwed, but we loaded a bootable Ubuntu cd in the drive, and it was able to see all the files. I backed the stuff up through Ubuntu, and restored the machine.

It's a work laptop so I can't put Ubuntu on it, but I've still got the cd and I think I'm going to make a VM at home that I can play with here. Seemed very slick.

[bonjoey]

:thumbsup: good choice on ubuntu

now install emerald and compiz (used to be beryl) and you'll love it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xC5uEe5OzNQ

[bonjoey]

Originally posted by revelations
I updated to 8.04 (from 7.10)and the office computer stopped working little by little... one week, no more sound, next, no more office network, etc.

Got tired of fighting and googling all the error messages and just reverted to windoze

:dunno:

thats the :devil: (M$) talking to you to ditch other OS haha

[em2ab]

Just set up networking and transferring all my media! Eeeeexcellent......

[Ashers]

Originally posted by em2ab


- For Office applications, there's OpenOffice which is also available under Windows. It's free and opens any Microsoft Office file, the only bad thing I see is that you can't save with the Microsoft (.doc/.xls) extensions so when I'd be applying for a job and they require a resume in Word format, I had to do it somewhere else. Otherwise they work the same.



OpenOffice does save Word format, you have to select it in the file type on the save dialog.

Transmission works really well for bittorrent. I've been using linux since '99, or... I remember the release of kernel 2.0! Plug 'n Play? USB Hotplug? XFree86 3?