Replacing Windows

November 10, 2008 3:38 PM

I'm thinking of getting rid of Windows XP and switching to a Linux distro....and I have some questions.

I've used Xubuntu on an old laptop in the past, and have been relatively happy with it. My desktop, which has XP on it, is a ~5 yo Dell XPS 400, with the original XP install. It's really started to creep the last year or so, and it takes forever for the thing to startup, and apps to load - when they finally load they frequently crash. When I run the occasional antivirus/antispyware program I usually come up with something that needs repaired/quarantined.

So is this a good candidate for a complete wipe of windows? I have Wubi installed and the performance of Ubuntu doesn't seem that great. Could this be because of my shoddy windows partition?

If I should just clear Windows, how exactly should I setup my partitions on the new Linux install? I've heard of people making a separate partition for their home folder or something, so it makes upgrading easier. Does this make sense?

Finally, I basically just use my desktop for surfing, word processing, playing mp3's, and watching movies. Is Ubuntu a good candidate for this - or is it mostly bloat? Would I be better off with something a little more customizeable? My highest priority would be speed, but I'd also like a distro that looks clean and modern. I don't need any fancy rotating cube effects, etc.

Thanks for the help

posted by pilibeen to technology (23 comments total)

I am a newbie at Linux.
I can only tell you I had a spare laptop and put ubuntu-8.10-desktop-i386.iso on it.
I downloaded it from the Internet and put it on a CD using ImgBurn (also free, downloaded from the Internet).
Everything worked out fine, no problems. No need for "sudo" etc. as there is a File Manager.
It found my WPA enabled wifi with no problems. It has lots of useful programs, all Open Source, including Firefox.
It told me when there were updates.
So I am happy! Except I do not know how to use the console (yet).
Shall be interested to have other views.
posted by lungtaworld at 4:01 PM on November 10, 2008

Reinstalling XP can really speed things up, particularly if you haven't done so for a year or more. And that fact that you've got virus/spyware issues is also a good reason to reinstall. I find XP to be extremely stable after a fresh install and two hours of applying updates.

Having installed Ubuntu on older ex-XP PCs myself, I wouldn't say that it's a huge amount faster than XP, at least for desktop apps. But it does all the things you've listed, and does them fairly well and without too much bloat. I wouldn't worry too much about messing with partitions - Ubuntu is excellent in terms of ease of upgrading and updating.
posted by le morte de bea arthur at 4:03 PM on November 10, 2008

Ubuntu has a large, loud echo chamber for whatever reason.

But personally I think SUSE is the most well polished, and it comes with the most stuff. Sort of out-of-the-box easy. Ubuntu is ok, but it is really for the nerd tinkerer. You have to install everything with apt-get, easy enough, but what mp3 jukebox should you get? What media player? Do you compile it? Oh fuck, ALSA doesn't work, now what? Etc.

SuSe has everything, ready to go. Great support, too.
posted by plexi at 4:05 PM on November 10, 2008

So is this a good candidate for a complete wipe of windows? I have Wubi installed and the performance of Ubuntu doesn't seem that great. Could this be because of my shoddy windows partition?

Yes. Wubi turns Ubuntu into a windows app. Native Ubuntu is better.

What are your hardware specs? If you've got at least 1GB of RAM Ubuntu will shine. Install with default settings and you'll be happy if that's all you're doing.
posted by tarheelcoxn at 4:06 PM on November 10, 2008

Oh fuck, ALSA doesn't work, now what? Etc.

That may have been true two releases ago, but 8.10 is pretty solid from personal experience and reading. That loud echo chamber you mention is also a support community sometimes, so....
posted by tarheelcoxn at 4:08 PM on November 10, 2008

So is this a good candidate for a complete wipe of windows?

Yes.

I have Wubi installed and the performance of Ubuntu doesn't seem that great. Could this be because of my shoddy windows partition?

Kind of, it is probably because Wubi run on top of Windows in some weird virtual box thing. I don't really know how it works, but I would expect a fresh, clean, native install would be much faster.

How exactly should I setup my partitions on the new Linux install?

Setting up a separate home partition is a probably a good idea. There are plenty of good guides online.

As to what is the best Linux distro for your needs, I won't attempt to answer that as it is really something you can only get a feel for after trying a few. I think Ubuntu is a great place to start though, and should suit your needs quite well. It can't be much worse than a horribly crippled XP install, now can it?
posted by sophist at 4:13 PM on November 10, 2008

I've got SuSe 11 installed and I'm pretty much blown away-- I still go back to my Windows install for a few games but Wine (a Windows compatibility layer) has gotten a lot better over the past 8 years I've been using Linux, it even runs Half-Life 2.

If you get Ubuntu, I would suggest getting the standard distro as opposed to Kubuntu. The Gnome desktop has a much more integrated feel to it, and I've just had too many problems with KDE in the past to recommend it.
posted by dunkadunc at 4:21 PM on November 10, 2008

My laptop dual boots XP and Ubuntu 8.04. XP takes 4-5 minutes to boot and be usable. Ubuntu takes about 45 seconds. I actually have a lot more stuff on the Linux partition as I only use XP for Windows Movie Maker. I haven't found anything in Linux that replaces that yet. I regularly go weeks without a reboot, everything simply just works.
posted by COD at 4:32 PM on November 10, 2008

Note that ubuntu does not play mp3s out of the box. You need to add some stuff. Details here.
posted by DarkForest at 4:36 PM on November 10, 2008

Thanks for the answers so far. I think I'll install Ubuntu 8.10 for starters, and leave some space on my hard drive to experiment w/ Suse, Debian, BSD, and anything else interesting.

Another question...are there any tips for maintaining a linux install? Should I even bother with antivirus/antispyware apps? Do I worry about installing/uninstalling apps and slowly ruining the registry as in Windows? Are there any tools I should be installing from the start, basically?

Thanks again for the help
posted by pilibeen at 4:52 PM on November 10, 2008

Wubi's performance shouldn't be viewed as a predictor of how Ubuntu would run natively -- Wubi is competing for resources with the rest of Windows.

I wouldn't worry about separate partitions. They can be a useful thing for particular plans. Since you don't have particular plans now, you'd just be guessing about whether a given partition scheme is useful.

The XPS 400 is a reasonably hefty machine -- any distro you might pick won't challenge its capacity. I run Ubuntu, but not the Gnome desktop. I'm one of the tinkerers plexi's talking about. Most Ubuntu users aren't, and just run one of the full desktops, which are pretty easy to install and use if you don't run into hardware problems, which you probably won't. The Ubuntu wiki says everything worked fine on the XPS 400 in Gutsy (7.10) except dual monitors, which still worked, but required some effort.

Do you have a wireless card? There aren't open source drivers for some wireless chipsets. In many cases, you can work around it with a wrapper around the Windows driver, but it can be a big pain.

I doubt there are any distros that could be characterized as hard to customize (well, okay, Linux From Scratch, in which everything's hard.)

If you pick Ubuntu, I'd recommend Hardy (8.04), April's release. It's had it tires kicked; Intrepid is still pretty new and includes a lot of new software. (I'm running Intrepid on my desktop, but just installed Hardy on another machine in the house in the expectation of fewer surprises.)
posted by Zed_Lopez at 4:58 PM on November 10, 2008

There are endless tips for maintaining a Linux installation, but a lot of them don't have a correspondence to the tips for Windows.

The anti-malware software for Linux is about making sure you're not forwarding any Windows crap in your email. If you start to install servers, you'll want a firewall -- firestarter is a popular one. (Ubuntu by default isn't listening to any incoming network connections, so its lack of firewall by default isn't a security issue.) There is no equivalent to a registry -- so long as you're installing and removing the packages in the Ubuntu repositories, it's relatively hard to get things screwed up. If you start adding a lot of non-standard repositories and installing things from them, or building things from scratch, then you start having some potential to drive your system insane.
posted by Zed_Lopez at 5:06 PM on November 10, 2008

Another question...are there any tips for maintaining a linux install?

Join the forums or google when you run into trouble.

Should I even bother with antivirus/antispyware apps?

Not for the OS. I would recommend that you use firefox extensions like noscript and ABP, however.

Do I worry about installing/uninstalling apps and slowly ruining the registry as in Windows?

No on the registry bit, but here's a link about getting rid of orphaned programs and suchlike.

I'd just like to repeat that, while there are a lot of Ubuntu users here, I really think you should poke around the Ubuntu forums and other official community support. Also the goog. She is the all-seeing, all-knowing oracle.
posted by tarheelcoxn at 5:14 PM on November 10, 2008

Per partitioning, I would recommend having separate partitions for /, /boot, /usr, /home, /var, and /tmp at the least, although it's a good idea to have /var/tmp and /var/logs as well, and if you're planning to run any servers, they should have their own partitions. /boot should be about 32 MB and at the beginning of your hard-drive. / should be right after /boot for technical reasons, and about 1-2 GB. The rest is up to you, based on what you think you'll need. Do not put /home at the end of the drive as Windows, if you try to install it later, may very well erase it. /home and /usr should get the most space, followed by /var, and finally /tmp.
posted by Electrius at 5:45 PM on November 10, 2008

Per partitioning, I would recommend having separate partitions for /, /boot, /usr, /home, /var, and /tmp at the least

If he's just doing a desktop (which is what he said) and he had to ask, I think having him do all those manually is a shooting-self-in-foot recipe. Just do a "guided: use entire disk" partition scheme during the install. Maybe the "guided: use entire disk with LVM" option.
posted by tarheelcoxn at 5:56 PM on November 10, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

I have no particular dog in this fight, but this:

You have to install everything with apt-get

is not true.
posted by pompomtom at 6:56 PM on November 10, 2008

You have to install everything with apt-get, easy enough, but what mp3 jukebox should you get? What media player? Do you compile it? Oh fuck, ALSA doesn't work, now what?

Sounds like you had an opportunity to try Debian in 2001 or so. A lot has happened since then.
posted by yath at 7:39 PM on November 10, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

Wubi turns Ubuntu into a windows app.
Wubi run on top of Windows in some weird virtual box thing.
Wubi is competing for resources with the rest of Windows.

There seems to be some misconceptions about how Wubi works. It's not virtualization. It doesn't start Windows, then start Ubuntu. The only difference between a Wubi install and a normal Ubuntu install is that Wubi installs Ubuntu to a file in the Windows filesystem. This should only have a minor impact on performance. For more details see the lupin project.
posted by PueExMachina at 9:40 PM on November 10, 2008

I think i say this every time. How about Linux mint ? It is the latest Ubuntu with all the media and other bits filled in.

Linux Mint Rc1.

"Based on Ubuntu 8.10 Intrepid Ibex, Linux 2.6.27, Gnome 2.24 and Xorg 7.4" Release candidate 1 so maybe a few more tweaks but still a probably more rewarding out of the box experience.

Try the live cd etc .
posted by stuartmm at 10:28 PM on November 10, 2008 [2 favorites has favorites]

Ubuntu is ok, but it is really for the nerd tinkerer.

This is the exact opposite of who Ubuntu is for.

You have to install everything with apt-get

No you don't.

but what mp3 jukebox should you get?

Just use the default one that is installed.

What media player?

Just use the default one that is installed.

Do you compile it?

Why on earth would you want to do that? If you want to install something just click on it in "Add/Remove".

Oh fuck, ALSA doesn't work, now what?

Why wouldn't it work? If it didn't you'd be looking at the exact same problems in Suse or any other distro, since presumably your sound card isn't supported.
posted by markr at 10:29 PM on November 10, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

If you don't want to mess around with partitions and installation of the linux distro but just want to try it out, obtain a free vmware image of the distro and get vmplayer. No need to install linux this way.
posted by bbyboi at 9:29 AM on November 11, 2008

There seems to be some misconceptions about how Wubi works.

I sit corrected. The Wubi FAQ notes:

The performance is identical to a standard installation, except for hard-disk access which is slightly slower than an installation to a dedicated partition. If your hard disk is very fragmented the performance will degenerate.

posted by Zed_Lopez at 10:19 AM on November 11, 2008

On the subject of anti-virus software... it's a good idea to have something on a linux installation. Your machine won't get a virus, but if you use a USB key and transfer files to and from Windows machines you may haplessly infect friends and colleagues. Which is embarrassing.

Anecdata: I use my Ubuntu laptop for listening to mp3s, surfing the web, watching DVDs, instant messaging, Skype-ing with the family, loading my iPod, typing things up, off-loading from my digital camera. In other words, it's a general purpose computer. I set it up a couple of years ago, upgraded it with each new version. I personally like the wobbly windows effects and they work fine. Desktop Search is nice.

Pain points: Integration with my Nokia mobile phone sucks. The only DVD player which does what I expect is VLC (VideoLan Client). Upgrading is a pain in the ass, though not a severe one. Looks very different from Windows, which freaks out friends who borrow my computer for whatever reason.

Installing is incredibly easy however, and for that reason I would recommend a separate /home partition. I wish I had done that.
posted by Wrinkled Stumpskin at 1:58 PM on November 11, 2008