Thinking of Moving to Ubuntu

[RyanLevy]

Hello all,

I have an Acer Aspire 5100 laptop with 2gb of ram, Vista only right now.

I'm considering making it a dual O/S with Ubuntu, however I have never used Linux before and I was wondering if most of my programs are cross compatible. Specifically MSN Messenger.

I was also hoping that someone would be able to tell me how much space I will need to install Ubuntu along with the majority of the programs I will have to install to actually use it pretty much fulltime.

Will uTorrent work on Ubuntu? VLC player? Any help/suggestions would be greatly appreciated

Thank you in advance

 

[Mallory]

Although I'm sure you'll get some good replies here, you might have gotten a better response had you posted this in the Science and Technology forum. Good luck with the project, if you decide to go ahead with it.

 

[RyanLevy]

could i get it moved to that forum?

 

[Deleted 2]

I was also hoping that someone would be able to tell me how much space I will need to install Ubuntu along with the majority of the programs I will have to install to actually use it pretty much fulltime.

In terms of software, 4-6 GiB should be enough to install all the software you'll ever need. But you'll want to allocate more space than that to store files.

Will uTorrent work on Ubuntu?

µTorrent doesn't exist for Linux, but there are plenty of alternatives; Gnome-torrent comes with Ubuntu, but it's very basic. I'm partial to rtorrent, I've heard other people are enthusiastic about Azureus.

VLC player?

Exists for Linux

MSN Messenger.

You can use Pidgin, which I believe will do everything MSN Messenger does, with the exception of webcam support.

 

[RyanLevy]

i assume that skype would work if i did want to use the webcam

 

[Deleted 2]

I wouldn't assume it'll work.

 

[Omnius]

I recommend you download VMWare player, and install Ubuntu in a vmware image. That way you can play with/experience Ubuntu easily without going through the whole ordeal of resizing your partitions.
I've been using Ubuntu for almost a year now, and I like it very much.
For messenger you have aMSN which is practically identical.
There is Amarok, which resembles iTunes, and of course VLC Player.
Skype for Linux (unfortunately) does not support webcams (yet).
And for torrents, I use the linux variant of Bittornado. But Azareus is also available.

 

[Shaytan]

You should perhaps try the live CD only first, just to check that everything works fine.
If it's not working the way you want, don't forget that Ubuntu is not the only Linux distribution available.
See http://distrowatch.com/ for a full listing.

 

[Holdfast]

could i get it moved to that forum?

Moved as requested. :thumbsup:

 

[Alaedhros]

I recommend you download VMWare player, and install Ubuntu in a vmware image. That way you can play with/experience Ubuntu easily without going through the whole ordeal of resizing your partitions.
I've been using Ubuntu for almost a year now, and I like it very much.

It might be easier to use Wubi--you'll have to get it from them for now, but I think Canonical is putting it on the next release's CD.

There is Amarok, which resembles iTunes, and of course VLC Player.

If you're looking for an iTunes-like experience, Rhythmbox or Quod Libet would be closer.

 

[Santaman]

I've got a few Kubuntu and Xubuntu machines, thats Ubuntu with KDE or XfCE desktop instead of Gnome and in general these machines can do the same as Windows machines except some of the gaming stuff.

I use Kopete for MSN/Yahoo/etc, you could indeed use Pidgin, for chatrooms you can use Xchat or Ksirc and there are players plenty for every kind of media file you want.

It seems to do well in the wireless LAN department as well as far as I know, I haven't tried that myself though.

Anyway, give it a go.

 

[Stormrage]

I've had bad experience with Ubuntu. I got a livecd and when I ran it it managed to erase some windows files. I could only login in safe mode or Ubuntu. So I went on the internet on Ubuntu and found out that I hade to do a check files. Took hours.


In short stay away from Ubuntu.

 

[RyanLevy]

if not ubuntu, what linux version should i be looking into?

 

[Amaris]

^ Ubuntu is your best bet. Stormrage's encounter is very strange and I would consider to be extraordinarily remote. I've ran Ubuntu on several different systems, and it is, by far, the best choice of Linux for a user who is either switching from Windows or wants to dual boot Windows and Linux.

J.

 

[Shaytan]

if not ubuntu, what linux version should i be looking into?

OpenSuse, Fedora or Mandriva. I've tested all of them and I never had a problem with them. There're good for a beginner and you can have a strong support from the users community.

 

[jeff lebowski]

Ubuntu is pretty good and it's easy as hell to setup.

I've got a Linux partition on all my machines except the Ps3. I'll install Linux there when I get a bigger HDD.

 

[Mooch]

My computer is a Vista/Ubuntu 7.10 dual boot.
It was pretty painless to set up, although I had to do some reading ahead of time to figure out how to set it up without overwriting the vista boot loader.

I previously had an XP/Ubuntu 6.10 system, but I had a much more difficult time configuring my video card and monitor with 6.10. I eventually got it working properly, but it was very easy in 7.10.

 

[RyanLevy]

so how much should i partition off for the ubuntu harddrive? i need enough for the initial install but how much will i need for programs as well?

 

[C. Cole-Chakotay]

My only reason I haven't tried Ubuntu is it and my winmodem don't get along. I'm on dialup so I need that modem to access the Internet. I'm not saavy enough to fiddle around with the insides of my PC and install a proper modem.

Other than that, from what research I did, Ubuntu is one of the better Linux OS's.

 

[Warp Core Breach]

This page has some great info about planning out your partition sizes, and there's a bunch of other info there that's worth reading.

Generally, what I do is set:

- a root partition of 8-10GB;

- a /swap partition of 1500MB;

-a /boot partition of 100MB (just in case your boot loader gets borked - it's easier to fix that way);

- and a /home partition of whatever's left. This makes upgrading easier and also keeps all of you settings, documents, downloads etc in one place.

Have fun, it's a great OS.