On Tue, Oct 28, 2014 at 11:24:36AM -0600, Gillian Densmore wrote: > Second Question: > Feeling as if I've had about enough of windows, I want to consider > linux as a option. What's been peoples experience with it these days? >
It keeps getting better and better. I remember the days when it was a right royal PITA to set up X-windows, but that was like 20 years ago. Now there are versions you can download onto a DVD or USB stick and run without installing anything. Great for try-before-you-buy. Nowadays, a linux distro will just install and work, and support the latest USB devices (except Apple iOS devices, *cough*). I happen to use OpenSUSE, but other distros I've used have worked well too. The only gotchas? If you want to preserve your windows, you can bet into trouble. Last time I bought a laptop and installed the latest OpenSUSE, it trashed the Windows 8 partition (which I hadn't even booted at that stage). I had to badger HP into sending me the OEM disks to reinstall the system (which I insisted should have been part of the sale in the first place). Now, of course, OpenSUSE's version has bumped, and it will happily install alongside Windows 8. It just needed to catch up with the latest UEFI shenannigans. The second gotcha is systemd. You can read a ton of vitriol about it on the web. Personally, systemd is not so bad, but just very badly documented when first released, so it did cause a lot of pain a couple of years ago. Now its easier to figure out how to use it. That's it. Just check whether you have any applications that are Windows only - if you do, you can have a dual boot setup, or use a virtual machine - or you can also try wine, which will run a lot of Windows software natively on Linux. For example, I ran Microsoft Word for years on Wine (MSWord happened to be a requirement for one of my clients as personally, I'd use LibreOffice by preference). Cheers -- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) Principal, High Performance Coders Visiting Professor of Mathematics [email protected] University of New South Wales http://www.hpcoders.com.au Latest project: The Amoeba's Secret (http://www.hpcoders.com.au/AmoebasSecret.html) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
