Computer operating systems

[myglaren]

I have Win7 and Ubuntu dual bootable on this ASUS laptop - I never run Win7 though, no need, Ubuntu is faster, cleaner and a lot less hassle - no hassle at all in fact.

I would suggest that you run Ubuntu from a dongle to get the feel of it. It is not as fast or as easy as an installed version but will run quite well, probably faster than Windows. Did on my elderly Toshiba laptop until I binned Windows completely.

There is a thing to sort of run iTunes - GTKpod. Haven't tried it as I have no iThings and hated iTunes when I investigated it. GTKpod seemed to work OK with my daughter's Shuffle thing.

The Gimp is the Linux alternative to Photoshop. Only touched lightly on it but will have to get more involved to produce a wedding album for my son and new daughter-in-law.

There are tons of other Linux distributions too, if Ubuntu doesn't do it for you. Linux Mint is very popular and very user friendly.

I haven't used it for a while but there is a new OpenSüSE just released that looks good.

[CitroJim]

Seems that iTunes can't run on it through, or Photoshop which is a bit of a pain.

No, sadly, i-Tunes can't which is bad form on Mr. Apple for making his i stuff so dammed closed and surrounded by needless protection He is a very naughty man and if he was more open then you know a Lunux version would be available and better than the Windows and Mac offering. It's how it is in the Linux world. Better.

Photoshop is not a problem. All Linux distros can run 'The Gimp' and that's slated to be better than most Windows photo-buggering software. If that's too heavy for you then there's Pinta which is basically excellent...

I've never dual booted but it's not seen as a problem but do take advice from a brighter soul in IT than me Franklin

[Ben82]

Apparently the gimp doesn't really cut it for the more seasoned photoshop user, and doesn't claim to be. I dislike photoshop a lot and would probably use the gimp in its place if I could but then I use windows and Paint.net suits me fine.

OpenOffice is another one that isn't a patch on the ms suite, oo is rather slow in comparison, and ms office isn't exactly nippy.

[CitroJim]

OpenOffice is another one that isn't a patch on the ms suite, oo is rather slow in comparison, and ms office isn't exactly nippy.

No but LibreOffice in my experience is absolutely excellent... I did find OO under Windows was terribly slow, nearly as slow as MS Office...

[Ben82]

OpenOffice is another one that isn't a patch on the ms suite, oo is rather slow in comparison, and ms office isn't exactly nippy.

No but LibreOffice in my experience is absolutely excellent... I did find OO under Windows was terribly slow, nearly as slow as MS Office...

Oh yeah I forgot about libreoffice, did use it for a while, was better that oo for sure. Think it had some issues but I did use it in its fairly early days, so can't really compare.

[myglaren]

LibreOffice on Linux is more that adequate.

It is rather amusing/infuriating that iChunes won't work on Linux when MacOS is so closely related to Linux.
Of academic interest only to me though.

[CitroJim]

Of academic interest only to me though.

And me.. Ubuntu has an excellent MP3 store and downloads can easily be burned to CD for the CD Jukebox in the cars...

CDs are so cheap nowadays they can almost be treated as disposable music carriers...

And those downloads are yours to do whatever you wish with them. No restrictive Appley type rubbish at all...

Sorted...

I do have an old i-tunes Nano thingy but it infuriates me that I can do nothing with it except listen to what I initially put onto the wretched little thing about five years ago now...

I believe even if I put it on a Windows box now it'll whine and whinge that the paid-for music I have on there isn't rightly mine any more. Tried it once and that was the result... Had to rapidly back out before the infernal thing tried to delete it all

Apple I detest with a passion for simply this reason that they tie you up in their restrictions and try to lock you in. Gawd knows how difficult life must be with other Apple stuff... I don't want to be their prisoner.

In my world apples are strictly for eating...

Ben, LibreOffice is a lot better now than it was in the early days. Very much worth a revisit. It's been updated several times quite recently.

[myglaren]

My daughter's computer crashed and burned - although I recovered the hard drive the Apple store won't recognise her ownership of the music that she has paid for and allow her to put it on her iMusicthingy

[CitroJim]

My daughter's computer crashed and burned - although I recovered the hard drive the Apple store won't recognise her ownership of the music that she has paid for and allow her to put it on her iMusicthingy

That Steve, is despicable Apple should hang their heads in shame...

How do they get away with it? Why have they not been hauled up in court and fined billions? I'd think if Mr. Gates tried such a seazy trick they'd roast him over hot coals... He, poor sod, can't even get away with giving away an inferior web browser

[myglaren]

He does give away a lot of money to very worthy causes though. I do admire him for that.

I read his book "The Road Ahead" and was impressed by that too.

I am sure that we do owe him a debt of gratitude as I don't think our world would have been quite the same without his and IBM's contributions.

[Ben82]

iTunes purchases are linked to an iTunes account, for purchases to be able to be used on a different computer you need to authorised the computer for use with the iTunes account (it's not enough to log into iTunes with the account!) I don't like their practices, but they're not making you repurchase things you have already bought

[Citroening]

All very interesting, thanks folks!

The lack of Photoshop sounds fine then, with The GIMP or Pinta. I don't heavily manipulate my pictures that much at all really, a bit of tweaking here and there on some of them. Can keep the full Photoshop on the Windows side for the heavy stuff.

I don't use iTunes that much at all really (no music on there) and certainly haven't synced the iPhone or iPad to it for a good while as everything can be done from them through the 3G/WiFi...

I'm seriously contemplating this, and going to look into it further...

[myglaren]

If you opt to install and dual-boot, Ubuntu will repartition to your requirements.
Windows MUST be installed first as the Windows bootloader will not recognise Linux installations.

You should of course back up anything you don't want to lose from your Windows partition and run defrag before partitioning.

I do have some stuff (films, mainly) in my Win7 partition that I can run from Ubuntu. Doesn't work the other way though.

[Ben82]

and run defrag before partitioning.

No need to defrag beforehand, repartitioning will essentially make the had appear as a clean slate (although it isn't), and the is will just write as there was nothing there. If you are resizing an existing partition down with for example the old partition magic then yes a defrag would help but pm used to take care of that for you to ensure the free space for the new partition was sequential.

[Xaccers]

There's a long list of things that Linux isn't as good as windows performing (and a long list of things Linux just can't do that windows can).

Bill and Microsoft get a lot of stick they don't deserve. I can't think of any software they just stole from developers (unlike Apple), they either licenced it or bought out the company.
Their software isn't over priced when compared with the competition, they don't insist you purchase hardware from specific manufacturers at inflated prices, they respond quickly when security flaws are discovered and detail what is fixed.
When XDA developers started, where people were taking hand held computers, improving the ROMs on them and making them available freely, MS checked it out and gave their blessing, so owners of some PDAs were able to use newer versions of Windows Mobile when the manufacturers had no plans to release updates.
When they heard that people we buying Xbox Kinect devices to experiment with, Micorosoft released information to assist them with their alternate uses of the device.
They release evaluation copies of many of their products to use for months aiding with skills development (along with the huge amount of free training material).
When they found out Comet were ripping off consumers who'd bought new computers they started legal proceedings against them. Comet were calling customers up saying that manufacturers no longer provide Windows CDs to re-install and for £15 Comet could provide one. The thing is, part of MS's OEM licence is that manufacturers must provide either the media or the means to create the media to recover in the event of a malfunction, so the users could create the media for the price of a DVD.
They believe Android infringes one of their patents, so rather than sue everyone making Android devices, they offer licensing at a rumoured $10-15 per unit, reduced to $5 if the company also agrees to make Windows phones.