Looking to switch full time


Recommended Posts

I've been using various distributions off and on for a year or two now (Ubuntu, openSUSE, Fedora) and have lately been thinking about switching full time. However, there's a couple of things I need to figure out before I do so.

1) XP/Vista performance in a VM. I'd probably only use the VM for syncing my Zune and using Steam (for now, as I've tried it before with Wine and wasn't too impressed). How does Vista run in a VM? Or has anybody tried Windows 7, for that matter? My preferred application of choice for this has been Virtual Box, so if anyone has experience with that, please share.

2) Compatibility with NTFS external hard drives. I've noticed Ubuntu 8.10 has been a little flaky on detecting, mounting and being able to read from it, while Suse 11 did it right out of the box. However, these may be false positives/negatives to using them in VMs and Live CDs.

3) Printer Support. I checked it out a while ago and found it was quite lacking. Is it any better now? I have a Dell All-in-One device that came with one of my laptops for free. Since I only really print word documents, it's been servicable to this point.

4) Personal distro recommendation. I'm not a huge fan of KDE, preferring Gnome instead. Just looking for personal experiences with distributions here to try and sway me to one side or another.

Thanks!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1) Most Vista EULAs forbid it to be virtualized. And if all you are doing is syncing a device, Vista seems a little... overkill. :unsure:

2) I am Linux only, so haven't had NTFS in a PC I have owned in almost 6 years. But any partition with a valid filesystem on it should be able to be set user mountable easily enough.

3) Printer support is good. Abomination support (these all-in-one devices are several devices on one connection) is gonna be iffy. Look up linuxprinting.org for your specific model, but don't hold your breath :( Sad but true. I lamented the state of scanner support on my Neowin blog early this year. Same situation. Knowing ahead of time to look for Linux compatibility makes a world of difference.

4) I was an old Red Hat (Fedora) guy until recently. I switched to Xubuntu. I don't much care for how heavy Gnome or KDE are, and prefer Fluxbox instead. I would stick to one of the main distros, because you will find more results in googling. *buntu, Fedora, OpenSUSE perhaps to top off your list. They all will suit just fine.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1) Most Vista EULAs forbid it to be virtualized. And if all you are doing is syncing a device, Vista seems a little... overkill. :unsure:

2) I am Linux only, so haven't had NTFS in a PC I have owned in almost 6 years. But any partition with a valid filesystem on it should be able to be set user mountable easily enough.

3) Printer support is good. Abomination support (these all-in-one devices are several devices on one connection) is gonna be iffy. Look up linuxprinting.org for your specific model, but don't hold your breath :( Sad but true. I lamented the state of scanner support on my Neowin blog early this year. Same situation. Knowing ahead of time to look for Linux compatibility makes a world of difference.

4) I was an old Red Hat (Fedora) guy until recently. I switched to Xubuntu. I don't much care for how heavy Gnome or KDE are, and prefer Fluxbox instead. I would stick to one of the main distros, because you will find more results in googling. *buntu, Fedora, OpenSUSE perhaps to top off your list. They all will suit just fine.

Thanks for the quick reply. I've found support for issues on every distro I've ever tried somewhat easily, so I'm not worried. As for the printer, I really don't use anything besides the printer, so if there's a just a printer driver out there for it I could make do.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I Have only tried Xubuntu so far, I still haven't got to installing it again since I ****ed up my Windows partition but TBH Performance wise I think it might be refreshing to have something lightweight as this, even if they use XFCE (If that's what its called) as long as you can get things done quickly ...

I wouldn't like to you the only tasks I have tried is Browsing, Some music and some GIMP But even these tasks run faster than they do on XP which works fine from me

I recently heard some people not happy with Ubuntu 8.10 here so I'm sticking to Xubuntu and will probably install it again this weekend

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Well I went ahead and moved everything over last night. Everything's going fine so far. Just two preference questions:

1) Evolution or Thunderbird? Or another client if you like it?

2) Does anybody have some great themes, Emerald or otherwise?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1) Anything but Evolution, in my opinion. Evolution is similar to a full "Outlook" so contains calendar and collaboration tools. Very heavy. If you are looking at just an email client, Thunderbird is what I use.

2) If you are using Ubuntu, then you are using Gnome and can look here for customizations: http://gnome-look.org There are wallpapers, Compiz toys and more there.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1) Anything but Evolution, in my opinion. Evolution is similar to a full "Outlook" so contains calendar and collaboration tools. Very heavy. If you are looking at just an email client, Thunderbird is what I use.

2) If you are using Ubuntu, then you are using Gnome and can look here for customizations: http://gnome-look.org There are wallpapers, Compiz toys and more there.

Yeah I've looked at Gnome-Look before, I'm just wondering if anybody has one that stands out from the vast library.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

This topic is now closed to further replies.
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.