Linux vs Windows

[Obadiah]

The little man running the file system in my head broke his leg when I fell off my Mixer and it takes that nut forever to retrieve information for me these days but he finally made the trip for me. That windoze 8 will never run on your computer. The new registration records the make, model and s/n of the processor and that prevents it from running on another machine. See what kind of bums you have to deal with these days?

Ahhh, yes. That sounds familiar. I'm pretty sure that's what they guy that built my computer told me about why it wouldn't work too. I guess you have to actually install it from the disc.

 

[Lewis]

Lewis,
If you download one of the Ubuntu OS's, Linux Mint, Ubuntu or an y of the others, be sure to use the Cinnamon Desk Top. It comes with the Mint version but can be downloaded through the Ubuntu Software Center for non-nerds and through the Synaptic Package Manager or by an apt-get command line for nerds like myself. It really makes the transition, almost, painless.

I do not like the current move by the Ubuntu Team to look more like windoze 8 but Cinnamon is more like XP or the Gnome 2 Desk top menu.

I have downloaded Ubuntu I and I gonna let Nero ISO the thing, I remember getting Unbuntu when it first came out but for some reason back then I could not get online with it so I put XP back. So if Mint is the latest that's what I want, and I leave 8 on my desktop and just dual boot with Mint

 

[th1b.taylor]

I have downloaded Ubuntu I and I gonna let Nero ISO the thing, I remember getting Unbuntu when it first came out but for some reason back then I could not get online with it so I put XP back. So if Mint is the latest that's what I want, and I leave 8 on my desktop and just dual boot with Mint

Okay but there are a couple of things you need to know about 8. You will need to search the web for "Windows 8 shrink partition" because you cannot do that to a win8 partition from the external without damaging the OS. Print the instructions and follow closely. Before you do that though, you need to create a restore disk. For this I used Five DVDs with number five about 60 percent full and be sure to number them.

Also, before messing with eight download Magic or Magical Jelly Beans. This is an executable file and when it is executed an info window will pop on your desktop. Record the 5 sets of 5 alpha numeric code in the event you loose everything. The Key Code is not needed with the Reinstall Disk Set but if all else fails you can download a free Win8 iso file from MS for a fresh install and otherwise it can cost you over 200 for a new key Code and disk.

Now the one that just rips me to the point of hate. Remember mine is not on the Legacy BIOS, I am on the new UEFI and when I boot to the GRUB I must choose the Windows Loader and that erases GRUB so that the next time I boot into Ubuntu or Mint I must boot from the Live DVD, mount the Ubuntu Partition, bring up the Terminal with ALT, CTRL and T. then You must type update-grub. Shut down, remove the disk and reboot into the Linux. MS has really gone evil with this release.

 

[th1b.taylor]

Ahhh, yes. That sounds familiar. I'm pretty sure that's what they guy that built my computer told me about why it wouldn't work too. I guess you have to actually install it from the disc.

Yes, but they are desperate to sell this release. I purchased a license for Win 7 for my daughter from a company in Saudi Arabia that was an illegal license code. MS offered her a free copy of 8. She laughed at him and declined the offer.

The Saudi Company refunded my money but it was a hassel to get her a copy of seven because MS made it illegal to sell 7 in store in the US.

 

[Obadiah]

What a bunch of jerks. All the more reason for people like me to start migrating away from MS as much as possible now.

 

[th1b.taylor]

What a bunch of jerks. All the more reason for people like me to start migrating away from MS as much as possible now.

My daughter swore she would never switch but win 8 changed that and she is in the process of learning the operator friendly versions of Linux now. One thing you will want to look into is Crossover. I believe when I looked at it last it supported the MS Flight Sim and my copy cost me the first year's support, $60.00, and that is much less than the cost of windoze.

 

[Obadiah]

My daughter swore she would never switch but win 8 changed that and she is in the process of learning the operator friendly versions of Linux now. One thing you will want to look into is Crossover. I believe when I looked at it last it supported the MS Flight Sim and my copy cost me the first year's support, $60.00, and that is much less than the cost of windoze.

Yep, I was looking at that a while ago. At least I think it was called "Crossover", that sounds familiar. It seems it supports MS Flight sim with some restrictions, but that's just the base program. Can't find anything saying it supports all the other programs I use along with it. But that's not a problem. I have no problem rebooting to Win7 for flying and using Linux for everything else. I think next week when I have some time I'm going to bite the bullet and try it out.

 

[Lewis]

Years ago you could send away for free Linux software, as a matter of fact they sent me 10 of them. I don't think they have the free ones anymore.

 

[th1b.taylor]

Yep, I was looking at that a while ago. At least I think it was called "Crossover", that sounds familiar. It seems it supports MS Flight sim with some restrictions, but that's just the base program. Can't find anything saying it supports all the other programs I use along with it. But that's not a problem. I have no problem rebooting to Win7 for flying and using Linux for everything else. I think next week when I have some time I'm going to bite the bullet and try it out.

The only windoze I've had issue with running from inside Ubuntu is my version of 8. My version came preinstalled and it needs five DVDs to reinstall. Every system I've tried to install inside Ubuntu from a disk has run without issue.

I, personally, have not installed 7 but I believe I recall seeing on the Virtual Box forums that 7 does install from the disk. I don't know the size of your disk but I usually install VBox and create a virtual drive from the add button and size it at about ten gig and dedicate half the onboard memory to it so both systems have plenty. If you, like me, have 6 or more gig, Ubuntu runs fast on two gig and the rest can go to your VBox when it is running. I have run Ubuntu on as little as 768mb giving the rest to windoze.

I recommend you go to the Virtual Box web site and check in at the Communities Forum and ask questions, they are great about responding.

 

[Knotical]

Interesting that you would have had to reinstall Windows 8 from disks. Not too long ago I had some issues with the onboard sound driver. I thought I could fix it by upgrading to 8.1, but that just made things worse. I was actually able to restore my original Windows 8 without using any restore disks. Most, if not all, windows machines come with a recovery partition which has eliminated the need for disks.

Everything got back to normal when I did the restore. I also partitioned the hard drive so I wouldn't lose any important files due to having to reinstall windows in the future.

Of course this does not help anyone if the drive itself dies, but that is a problem for another time.

 

[th1b.taylor]

Interesting that you would have had to reinstall Windows 8 from disks. Not too long ago I had some issues with the onboard sound driver. I thought I could fix it by upgrading to 8.1, but that just made things worse. I was actually able to restore my original Windows 8 without using any restore disks. Most, if not all, windows machines come with a recovery partition which has eliminated the need for disks.

Everything got back to normal when I did the restore. I also partitioned the hard drive so I wouldn't lose any important files due to having to reinstall windows in the future.

Of course this does not help anyone if the drive itself dies, but that is a problem for another time.

There is more to that story. Having started in the seventies with building from scratch and belonging to a small geeks club I have been doing IT for a while and one of the first things I did was to back the system with the one time only option to create the disks. I have not been happy with the way the Redmond Team has been turning out garbage since they began to develop Vista and have, since '06, been playing with crashing windoze and warning their users, locally, of what not to do. One of those experiments with 8 was the last of my adventures with windoze and it destroyed the recovery partition. I still warn folks to get the key code and to do a Reinstall Disk out of the box. If you have the key code you can download the iso from MS and no matter if your disk dies, the reinstall disks restore it to brand new.

 

[Obadiah]

The computer the church bought me for the sound system control and recording has Windoze 8 because there was simply no choice anymore in the off the shelf units from the discount stores, which ws the only way to get one with the performance I needed at the price they were willing to pay. (The guy that builds my computers refuses to work on anything related to a church because of bad experiences with church people. :-( ) That's been my only experience with Win8 and I've never liked it. Couldn't even figure out how to shut the darn thing off the first time I used it, and had to just leave it running when I went home! But there was a notice about creating the recovery discs so it sounds like I did the right thing by creating those. I put them in paper envelopes taped to the inside of the case with a label on the outside stating they are there for anyone who may need them one day. My experience with that computer over the last year and a half has shown me that Win8 does nothing new or better that is of any value, and in fact, it made a lot of things a lot harder to do. Not impressed at all, and it's the main reason when I had my new flight sim computer custom built several months ago I was adamant that I did NOT want Win8 on it at all.

 

[th1b.taylor]

The computer the church bought me for the sound system control and recording has Windoze 8 because there was simply no choice anymore in the off the shelf units from the discount stores, which ws the only way to get one with the performance I needed at the price they were willing to pay. (The guy that builds my computers refuses to work on anything related to a church because of bad experiences with church people. :-( ) That's been my only experience with Win8 and I've never liked it. Couldn't even figure out how to shut the darn thing off the first time I used it, and had to just leave it running when I went home! But there was a notice about creating the recovery discs so it sounds like I did the right thing by creating those. I put them in paper envelopes taped to the inside of the case with a label on the outside stating they are there for anyone who may need them one day. My experience with that computer over the last year and a half has shown me that Win8 does nothing new or better that is of any value, and in fact, it made a lot of things a lot harder to do. Not impressed at all, and it's the main reason when I had my new flight sim computer custom built several months ago I was adamant that I did NOT want Win8 on it at all.

MS feels totally safe giving people that notice because they know that less than 5% will do so because they believe they can rely on people like myself, as they did in the past. If you can download the Magic Jelly Bean, waste a CD and burn it to the disk and fire the Church Computer up five minutes early and click the exe file on the CD, record the Key Code and tape it to the inside also. Then if a catastrophe occures the iso can be downloaded by anyone and reinstall the base system. Any software the Church needs for worship service, such as Play List can be downloaded from sourceforge.org, cost free. Linux people port almost everything over to windoze from sourceforge. That is where 90% of the business software comes from when a company purchases a complete system and has it installed, including the Networking software. And now HP and some others are moving all their commercial Servers to run on Ubuntu because of the non-failure rate.

 

[Obadiah]

Just had an epiphany! Why don't I just install Linux on the church computer? (As a dual boot so they can't say I ruined their computer if someone who likes windoze needs it some day) The only thing it runs that's not your average run of the mill programing is some proprietary recording and control programs from Presonus. If those work ok with it, I've got no need for Windoze there. I've been wanting to put a 2nd hard drive in it anyway for backups. Should be easy to instal Linux on the second drive... The pastor's pretty computer savy, so I don't think he would have a problem with that, and there really isn't anyone besides me and him that are supposed to mess with this one anyway. From what I'm learning from you guys, I think I want to try it. Hmmmm.

 

[Obadiah]

Okay but there are a couple of things you need to know about 8. You will need to search the web for "Windows 8 shrink partition" because you cannot do that to a win8 partition from the external without damaging the OS. Print the instructions and follow closely. Before you do that though, you need to create a restore disk. For this I used Five DVDs with number five about 60 percent full and be sure to number them.

Also, before messing with eight download Magic or Magical Jelly Beans. This is an executable file and when it is executed an info window will pop on your desktop. Record the 5 sets of 5 alpha numeric code in the event you loose everything. The Key Code is not needed with the Reinstall Disk Set but if all else fails you can download a free Win8 iso file from MS for a fresh install and otherwise it can cost you over 200 for a new key Code and disk.

Now the one that just rips me to the point of hate. Remember mine is not on the Legacy BIOS, I am on the new UEFI and when I boot to the GRUB I must choose the Windows Loader and that erases GRUB so that the next time I boot into Ubuntu or Mint I must boot from the Live DVD, mount the Ubuntu Partition, bring up the Terminal with ALT, CTRL and T. then You must type update-grub. Shut down, remove the disk and reboot into the Linux. MS has really gone evil with this release.

On second thought, I just went back and re-read this post that I didn't pay a lot of attention to before because I was concentrating on doing the dual boot thing on a Win7 machine (my own). Have to admit this is going over my head. Does all this still apply if I am putting a completely seperate hard drive into the Win8 machine (the church's machine) and putting linux on the new separate drive? Or will this still cause problems with this newer (maybe less than 2 years old) Win8 machine? I can't take a chance on doing something that disables it from being able to be booted up in Win8 since we need it every Sunday and there is no spare to put in it's place...

 

[Obadiah]

Ah crud, never mind. Just went to the Presonus web site and found this statement: "Note: PreSonus hardware and software does not support the Linux operating system at this time."

 

[th1b.taylor]

Ah crud, never mind. Just went to the Presonus web site and found this statement: "Note: PreSonus hardware and software does not support the Linux operating system at this time."

That is a silly statement, the PreSonus one. Take the manual (instruction booklet) that came with it, open to the spec sheet and write a list of the hardware and check to see if Linux supports each piece or give the specs to me and I'll do it for you. The latest things out are the micro box units and Linux supports them. My Foxconn Main Board and AMD A4-5000 are the very latest in Desktops and all of the hardware is the latest generation, some never existing before this Main Board was built and all I must do to run it is to use the proper Kernel model and there are six to choose from at boot if the default does not work.

And like I said, at sourceforge.org you will find replacement software for the church, free of charge. Question; How many disks did your System Restore create? And have you copied them to store in a separate location, in case someone gets stupid? I'll be happy to help if you get me a list of the software the church is using so as to ease this. Also, the model number of the unit will help me to be accurate in my advise, if you will. Your unit there might still be on the BIOS system and that makes the whole thing easier if it is.

 

[By Grace]

The only windoze I've had issue with running from inside Ubuntu is my version of 8. My version came preinstalled and it needs five DVDs to reinstall. Every system I've tried to install inside Ubuntu from a disk has run without issue.

I, personally, have not installed 7 but I believe I recall seeing on the Virtual Box forums that 7 does install from the disk. I don't know the size of your disk but I usually install VBox and create a virtual drive from the add button and size it at about ten gig and dedicate half the onboard memory to it so both systems have plenty. If you, like me, have 6 or more gig, Ubuntu runs fast on two gig and the rest can go to your VBox when it is running. I have run Ubuntu on as little as 768mb giving the rest to windoze.

I recommend you go to the Virtual Box web site and check in at the Communities Forum and ask questions, they are great about responding.

Does Linux work with on 64 bit based file system? I simply want to get away from having to sign on every time! That feature is really a pain in the OS. I am running windows 8.1, and I will be very happy to get away from using that product, HOWEVER, I do not want to cause a catastrophe when I do the switch

 

[th1b.taylor]

The only way I know to use more than 3.5 gig of RAM is on 64 bit and I'm using a full 6 gig at the moment. As for signing in that is a choice you make in the last and seventh step of the install choices. You will still need to choose a password for allowing changes to be made to your system it can be set up to auto log on by checking the box on the personal info screen. My windows on the preinstall is also 8.1 and already I have learned never to boot it in windoze if I do not want to repair the GRUB boot system used by Ubuntu. It's not a hard item to repair but MS has gone completely stupid with their new boot system.

 

[By Grace]

The only way I know to use more than 3.5 gig of RAM is on 64 bit and I'm using a full 6 gig at the moment. As for signing in that is a choice you make in the last and seventh step of the install choices. You will still need to choose a password for allowing changes to be made to your system it can be set up to auto log on by checking the box on the personal info screen. My windows on the preinstall is also 8.1 and already I have learned never to boot it in windoze if I do not want to repair the GRUB boot system used by Ubuntu. It's not a hard item to repair but MS has gone completely stupid with their new boot system.

Thanks for the advice.

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