Ubuntu 9.04 For the Windows Power User

crazipper writes "Know a Windows power user who is (honestly) good with technology, but hasn't yet warmed to Linux? Tom's Hardware just posted a guide to installing and using Ubuntu 9.04, written specifically for the MS crowd (in other words, it talks about file systems, mount points, app installation, etc). Hopefully, by the end, your 'friend' will realize just how easy Ubuntu can be to use and start down a long path of exploration with a new operating system."

Comments

My experience shows a short path

[BadAnalogyGuy]

Dr. Pepper is not a valid substitute for Mr. Pibb.

What I've found is that many Windows users are quite happy to try other operating systems, especially free systems like Linux. They download MS Virtual PC, install the distro, fiddle with it for a while, then return to their Windows world.

It's not so much that there is something wrong with Linux that makes them reject it. It's not even really rejecting Linux so much as simply not finding their needs satisfied on the system.

Maybe it's lack of apps. Maybe it's lack of quality. Maybe it's the pain of actually migrating over all their data.

Whatever it is, Windows users usually seem to find their way back to Windows because it just does what they need. Emulating the look and feel of Windows isn't going to change the fact that their needs aren't satisfied by Linux.

Re:My experience shows a short path

[A Friendly Troll]

Whatever it is, Windows users usually seem to find their way back to Windows because it just does what they need. Emulating the look and feel of Windows isn't going to change the fact that their needs aren't satisfied by Linux.

In my case - I just don't feel like it. Back when I was a kid and when DOS ruled the lands, I fiddled around for weeks with Slackware and its dozens of floppies, and that was the time when Linux really didn't have much to offer and nobody had internet access. Configuring X for my Cirrus Logic 5426 VESA card was a pain, but I was a hacker and it was fun (I think I still have my old Linux home dir somewhere on my HDD). When I was in DOS, I used to spend a lot of time tinkering around with assembler and running programs through debuggers; a hex editor was my favourite toy.

When Windows 95 came out, I still booted to DOS most of the time. It was around 1996 or 1997 when I finally switched to Windows and told DOS to FO. Now I'm on XP SP2 and I can't even be bothered to upgrade to SP3.

Linux would suit my needs perfectly. I don't do anything special on my PC - I rarely play games, and let's face it, most of the time we spend online is in the browser or inside an IM app.

I can't be bothered. Windows works, it's stable, it's secure because I have a long background with computers. The only time I had a virus infection was in the above-mentioned 90s when I wrote my own virus and it accidentally spread to ".." (which happened to be the root of C partition) instead of "." (whoops).

Any OS would do what I need, and that's exactly the point - I have no incentive to switch to anything and waste time on it. "I'm too old for that shit."

Re:Fantastic!

[FreeFull]

I say knowing several operating systems is better than knowing just one. In my life I used MS-DOS 3, Windows 3.1 for workgroups, AmigaOS, Windows 98 SE, Windows XP, BeOS, SuSE 9.1, OpenSuSE, and right now I'm using Xubuntu 9.04 (starting from version 6.10). I ran ReactOS from a livecd. I also emulate Haiku, Slackware, Debian and ReactOS. I'm 15 years old, and certainly going to try more operating systems in the future.