Slashdot Mirror
THG On Migrating To Linux
inphinity writes "The fine folks over at Tom's Hardware have posted an interesting guide titled Migrating from Windows to Linux. In the first of what will hopefully be several parts, they describe what steps to take to back up critical data and move to open-source apps. All in all, a fairly in-depth and comprehensive step-by-step guide. As a nice touch, they've even included a downloadable checklist for confused people."
I was recommended Debian. (First linux install). Why is Red Hat/Mandrake better?
Hope I'm not opening up a can of worms here...
I was very impressed with the way that they explain the differences between distros. I.e., same kernel/under the hood with different apps on top.
Although I am a diehard Debian user, I totally agree with the recommendation for RH, SUSE, or Mandrake. Personally, if I am helping the person migrate and doing the Linux install for them, I usually do Debian stable with GNOME or KDE backport, depending on the user's preferences. However, if they intend on doing it themselves I recommend RH, Mandrake or a Knopppix hard drive install.
I am also impressed with the way in which they specify which apps work best for certain things. I.e., Evolution for email, OOo for office productivity. There wasn't any "you need to choose from one of these 50 email clients and one of these 5 office suites."
Kudos to THG for a well thought out and well written article. Hopefully the rest of the articles in the series are as well written.
K3B is as good in terms of ease of use and GUI, but in my experience it makes about 5 times the number of coasters as Nero. Maybe just a default setting I forgot to change, but if I didn't see it then your average newbie won't and wasting DVD-Rs isn't cheap.
Mandrake 10.0 is the distribution I'd recommend to anyone! It is still community, hence a bit buggy, but the official version will be out in May and will be ready for general use.
I have tried many distros, including SuSE, Fedora, Severn, Slackware, Knoppix, Debian, Ark, Lindows, Phat, Dragon, LFS, G/CX and yes even FreeBSD which isn't even a "Linux", but out of all of those i chose Mandrake.
Why? Because it works. My mouse, keyboard, desktop, cdrw, dvd-rw, printer, scanner, digital camera, sound, tv card, alien beacon, toothbrush and nuclear reactor all work with Mandrake linux. Tell that to XP, who BSOD'd on me when I plugged in my digital camera!
Software is installed with ease, Hardware is configured with point and click! If you wanted the ultimate distro for both begginners AND experts (I have used linux for nearly three years) then get Mandrake!
I have a fetish for traffic cones
My first thought, "Whoa, The Humble Guys, are doing hardware reviews on /. now??" I remember those guys!!
www.TheHumbleGuys.com
Mod +5 Drunk
I would expect to see much more MS advertisments in the future.
... an online experience without hitting a Microsoft ad," he said.
This CNN - Microsoft exec concedes 'worst' goof story includes:
Ballmer said Microsoft spends about 12 percent of its media budget on online advertising, and that he orders his staff to "saturate" that market first and foremost.
"I want to make sure [a user] can't get through
If they can't produce a superior product, advertise and saturate the market with what you have. With some of the larger IT vendors publicly adding more support for Linux based systems, MS almost has to advertise to this level.
You wrote "Debian's good for people who already have some clue about Linux, or indeed experience with *nix-alike OSen."
:)
... slight messiness of hard drive partitioning / formatting is the worst stickiness; other than that it is, for good and bad, a pretty limited install. After it's on, though, apt can be used to trim or expand the available software.)
True, if you mean *installing* Debian, at least the Debian way
But for testing out whether Linux could work on one's hardware, and to give a lot of software a spin, Live CDs (I'm partial to Knoppix, partly because a lot of others, including Gnoppix, which I'd otherwise love to love, don't work as well with my hardware) are an excellent beginner course and don't cost a hard drive (or repartitioning a current one).
(And Knoppix makes IMO a pretty good 'migration' mechanism, too
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
mkisofs && cdrecord is quite superior actually. I thought Nero was the shiznit until I started recording cd's at the command line under Linux. It is much faster and predictable. Just create a folder and copy files (or symlinks), and type a single command.
I don't know in Gnome-land, but KDE has K3b, which gives Nero, in my humble opinion, a run for its money.
Real life anecdote: two weeks ago I went to my friend Lorenzo's with a Knoppix disc, booted it and showed him. He liked it and wanted to keep it, but it was my only copy and I had deleted the ISO from my own hard drive. No problem. Mount his HD read/write, fire K3b, select the HD for temp storage of the iso, and rip/burn in under 30 minutes. Flawless.
The operating system was running from the same CD we were copying, mind you. No hassle.
http://barrapunto.com/ - News for nerds, en español
-----
config files to change the "r128" to "vesa".
-----
You're right. You shouldn't have to do that. You probably shouldn't do it at all. Using the VESA driver negates just about every performance optimization that you had.
I see that there's a benefit to Linux not being easy to install. When Linux becomes easy to install then it will be just like Windows. The kernel will be generic (and huge) to account for all possible chipsets and drivers. Only one application will be installed for a given task. If people want to learn about their computer, how it works, and be able to use it properly then it's almost necessary for the system to be difficult. Eg. "Lemme think, learn how to debug pango, fontconfig, xft, glib, gtk, imlib, expat, qiv or go browse the web?" Which would most users choose.
I don't really have a problem with people installing Linux just as an average user and getting an easy install. What I worry about is that, due to the top-down corporate Big Brother iron fist that rules our society, when BigBrotherEasyInstallLinux becomes the popularly accepted (and funded through lucrative and huge government partnerships), will Debian be made illegal because it's different? If BBEI-Linux is easy to install, easy to use, and what the population is familiar with then the logical next question for the clueless majority is: "Why would anyone want to use Debian if it's difficult to install and maintain?" The logical next answer from the clueless majority is: *in low tones* "It's a _hacker_ distribution. They're doing things they shouldn't be doing."
So you see, once the population has EasyInstallBigBrother-Linux, water-cooler gossips come to claim Debian.
It would be better for the world to end.
+++ATHZ 99:5:80
Oh yeah. About the only Windows apps that I didn't find better Linux equivalents were the games that won't run on my laptop anyway. I haven't used Open Office much even though it installed as the default, because I prefer Abiword for word processing. Both of those will save a final manuscript in Word .doc format, which is good enough for me to print out manuscript submissions or burn to CD or save to floppy for publishers and editors.
I write in .txt format and haven't figured out how to make emacs wrap to screen and not in the file, so I use gedit for most of my writing. It tabs and wraps to screen without altering the file, so I'm able to keep all my chapters open while working on a novel. I don't quite understand why programmers put up with the inconvenience of very long lines that don't wrap, but many of them swear by emacs.
Robert and Ari >^..^
So you see, once the population has EasyInstallBigBrother-Linux, water-cooler gossips come to claim Debian.
Wow...that's rather apocalyptic. "Easy to install" does not mean the end to open source, nor does it mean a huge generic kernel. It's not like I was adding hardware after the initial install. This was the initial install. The kernel should have been built to suit the needs of the hardware in the laptop. Later, if I wanted to install more hardware, then it could easily (relatively speaking of course) ask for the disk and then recompile the kernel.
Of course, if you look at an XP disk or even "/windows" for example, it's not insanely huge (by today's HD standards.) My 80GB drive is not choking on the 800MB Windows install. I say, make a Linux distro that "has everything" and even a "huge kernel" -- it won't make distros like Debian or Gentoo go away because the developer, hacker, tinkerer community needs it.
Wooden armaments to battle your imaginary foes!
I'm on Red Hat 9 on a Toshiba Tecra 8000 networked to a Windows PC. The one thing I hated about Linux was the black type on white background default in most of the themes. The only dark theme available was white on navy blue and clunky. On Windows, I could select colors for menu bars and choose icons and sounds while in use, on Linux, I can't do that on the fly. That sounds petty, but I used to change colors and themes constantly in any long work session to reduce eyestrain. I created color combinations and saved them whenever I was bored, from psychedelic "roommate keep off this computer" warning colors to soothing deep-sea greens or Gothic red and black stuff while doing horror stories. I themed the colors to my writing in progress and it's still something I miss. Eventually a friend pointed me to freshmeat.com and I successfully downloaded a lightweight dark theme, Black Marble 2. Changing background became what I did to set the theme of a writing project -- but ever since I found out most of their gorgeous themes wouldn't work automatically, I have stayed off the site. Cool as they are, they aren't the ones I would make up on the spot. So this is a double question: Is there a Gnome "custom" theme that would let me make on the fly font and color changes within its parameters, for everyday use? Is there a way that I can create new Themes without being a programmer and understanding code? If I could do variations on Black Marble 2, it would still run light but I could vary the font color, typeface and maybe even the skinny .jpg files that make the top bar on the windows by drawing those in GIMP to the same size.
I'd like to learn how, and if I ever get it, will probably upload a lot of neat themes to Freshmeat. :)
If you have ever migrated a Windows NT domain to Samba, you know what I mean...
Nonsense. You almost switched and if your wireless card had worked then you would have switched. You'd already invested effort into getting X working, proving that you wanted Linux and were willing to work at it.
The problem is that the bar was a little higher than you were willing to jump. That's OK. I switched to Linux in 1992. The bar was pretty fucking high back then. The "installer" was 10 floppies containing files such as binutils.tar.gz and X386.tar.gz and a README explaining how to use the fdisk program. I switched anyway (leaving behind Interactive UNIX). Different people are willing to invest different levels of effort.
Though I must say, you might have gotten more joy trying Mandrake or Fedora. I honestly wouldn't have expected a 2.5 year old Linux distribution to contain built-in drivers for the hardware in the latest laptop. Perhaps your expectations were a little high.