Tales of Conversion - Using Ubuntu at Work

madgreek writes "Here is a short story about my switch to Ubuntu from XP at work. I have been Microsoft-free for 3 months now at a Microsoft heavy shop. Few people know I am using Open Office and Linux. I create countless documents that people open using Word, Excel, PPT and nobody can tell that they were created using Open Office. From the article: 'When I first started my experiment I was trying to keep it a secret out of fear of attacks from angry Microsoft worshipers (especially from the admins and desktop support). What I am finding out is that most of the folks that I was hiding from are sick and tired of supporting Windows and are proponents of Linux. Several of them are using Linux at home. One of the guys I talked to has Vista and XP installed on his laptop. He swaps out the hard drive when switching between OS's.'"

Comments

Re:Ubuntu drive partition

[sqrt(2)]

Strange, were you using 7.04? I remember, back before I reinstalled and went Linux only for this laptop, the default partitioning was setup to shrink my empty space of the windows partition and install Ubuntu on the freed space. Grub set up the dual booting (with Ubuntu as the default option) and both OSs booted and worked perfectly. I found myself booting into Windows less and less and about a month ago did a clean install selecting the second option, "Use entire hard disk."

Re:Ubuntu drive partition

[Ash-Fox]

Why does someone who wants to use an OS for daily office tasks have to know more about partitions when using your operating system than they already know about your competitors.

Yes, why does Windows require me to know more exactly about partitions than Ubuntu/Kubuntu does? I can just click the resize partitions option (selected by default when it sees Windows partitions, so you can just push 'next' anyway) and install the OS needed, it'll even setup dual boot...

But then, try installing Windows for daily office tasks on a Ubuntu/Kubuntu system, where is the resize option? What is a unknown partition type?

If you figure this out and resize the partition in Linux so you can install windows along side with your Ubuntu/Kubuntu install, where did Linux go after installing it?
Where is the dual boot menu?
Where is the Windows application, registry entry, configuration file for setting up the Linux dual boot under Windows even?

You fail to see that he has been using windows and didn't need to understand more about partitioning to get the tasks he uses his computer for done.

I didn't see a need to understand partitioning with the Ubuntu/Kubuntu installer, I did for the Windows installer.

He is told: "You are the problem, not Linux."

No, he has been told that Windows is more difficult to setup with preinstalled Linux system than Windows being preinstalled and Linux being setup after.

Come on. You don't think that you can make a perl script that chooses from a few parameters like drive size and used partition space and makes a reasonable judgement call. Put a "just make it work" button on the installer and tell noobs to click it if they want a dual boot with their old stuff accessable to both operating systems. I thought Linux was better.

Here is the thing, Ubuntu/Kubuntu already do this, it's been in the installer for ages.

Re:Ubuntu drive partition

[Ash-Fox]

But the reason I don't use Ubuntu is because there was no option to just put the CD in the drive, click 'OK' to the the "Do you want to set up a Dual Boot System?" and come back after making coffee to find everything done except maybe setting the time and the date. In my experience, installing Windows hasn't ever been much more complicated than that.

Err... For Ubuntu and Kubuntu, Just open the install icon on the desktop, click next all the way except where it asks you to enter your user credentials, machine name and timezone information and done.

The default options selected in the installer are to resize the windows partition, install it. The boot loader updater program is set to automatically probe all partitions for other OS installations and set it up in the bootloader, so dual boot is ready out of the box.

Ubuntu will even give you a migration manager to migrate your settings from Windows such as bookmarks, documents etc.

For all the linux fanboys out there, It's worth remembering that Linux doesn't just have to be user friendly to use in order to capture market share from M$, it has to be a one-click, no-brains migration process as well.

I honestly don't believe you tried Ubuntu from your descriptions.

So long as you don't have that, the evidence in the real world speaks for itself about Linux's failed strategy.

That's great and all, except the issues you complained about, don't exist.

Re:Ubuntu drive partition

[replicant108]

An even easier and less risky way to try Ubuntu is to use Wubi

How does Wubi work?

Wubi adds an entry to the Windows boot menu which allows you to run Linux. Ubuntu is installed within a file in the windows file system (c:\wubi\disks\system.virtual.disk), this file is seen by Linux as a real hard disk.

Re:right tool for the job

[Bert64]

For many technically minded people, Linux does what they want and windows doesnt.
Remember, the more skilled you are at programming, the more linux will suit you because you can modify it to suit your needs. Similarly, the entire working environment is far more easily customised.
So you see, most linux advocates are technically minded people, who use linux for the above reasons, which fulfills the same basic requirements that you have.
Oh, and OSX is nice too but if the frontend doesnt suit you (and it cant possibly, one size never fits all) then your screwed unless you replace aqua with X11, and then you may as well be running linux.