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Old 11-02-2008, 07:21 PM   #1
laplante19
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Registered: Nov 2008
Location: Louisville, KY
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Linux and Windows Applications


Hello Linux/Unix Community,

I am newb to this site and let me say hello and God Bless. I am new to Linux/Unix and am feedUP extremely with Microsoft and Windows. Here are some of my concerns an issues that I have and hope you all can help me get them answered so I can make my integration over to Linux as smooth as possible. Here they are:

1.) What is the best Linux version out, meaning name and version and anything else I may need to search and buy it. Money is not a matter here I just want the best. If anyone has a copy that they would like to sell and think it is the best and great to get to learn Linux than let me know cost and edition and I will be happy to purchase and pay by Paypal if you wish.

2.) I assume that it is possible to dual boot a Windows OS and also a Linux OS and choose which OS I want to boot from on bootup of system?

3.) What are compatibility issues like for PCs. Will I have an extremely hard time finding drivers and the sorts for my hardware?

4.) What about software? Can I load and use Office or must I buy all new software including $500 copies of Photoshop, Dreamweaver, Acrobat Professional and tons of other applications that I have and already aid for.

5.) I have a ton of questions and want to make this the easiest I can when I attempt to do this.

Any advice and/or suggestions that anyone has I would really appreciate it. If there are any experts out there that would be willing to give me some of their time to go over this stuff and to provide other tips or ANYTHING else that would help me would be great. I will even be willing to pay you for your time. I just really need to get away from Windows ASAP. Please send me an email to mlaplante@laplanteconsulting.com and I will provide you with my number so we can talk. Thanks so much.

Michael LaPlante
 
Old 11-02-2008, 07:38 PM   #2
sycamorex
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1. Linux is free. You can download some great distros from www.distrowatch.com
The answer as to which linux is best will depend who you ask. You can't answer the question which car is the best, can you?
2. Yes, you can
3. Generally, you'll have no problems with your hardware (there might be problems with some cutting-edge hardware though)
4. Linux has its own equivalents of those pieces of software which will be enough for your daily usage.
 
Old 11-02-2008, 07:46 PM   #3
i92guboj
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Hello and welcome.

Quote:
1.) What is the best Linux version out, meaning name and version and anything else I may need to search and buy it. Money is not a matter here I just want the best. If anyone has a copy that they would like to sell and think it is the best and great to get to learn Linux than let me know cost and edition and I will be happy to purchase and pay by Paypal if you wish.
That question has as much valid responses as linux distros are out there.

There's no absolute best, because in that case there wouldn't be any sense in having alternatives, would there? You will have to try out and find yourself, though a simple way to start would be here:

http://www.zegeniestudios.net/ldc/in...firsttime=true

There are lots of similar tests. Though they are certainly not 100% accurate (after all no divination powers are behind them). A good way to test any distro is to download a livecd, so you can play a bit around without having to install it.

Also, usually, you don't buy linux. There are some companies who sell it, but they charge is usually in concept of manuals, support and such things. You can download any linux distro from the manufacturers/packager/creator's site. It's a must. If you develop something based on the gnu gpl license (which is what most components on linux use, including the linux kernel) then you have to license it in compatible terms, and that means that you MUST provided an easy way to obtain the product, and the sources for that product.

Quote:
2.) I assume that it is possible to dual boot a Windows OS and also a Linux OS and choose which OS I want to boot from on bootup of system?
Yep. The installers for most distros will set that up for you. However having a backup of your data is a must when doing administrative tasks, like installing a new OS, it doesn't matter if linux or any other.

Quote:
3.) What are compatibility issues like for PCs. Will I have an extremely hard time finding drivers and the sorts for my hardware?
Just like you buy hardware with the windows logo on its box to run windows, you will have a better time with linux if you first check your components. USB modems and wireless cards can be problematic sometimes, it all depends on the concrete hardware. If you have doubts about a specific device, just ask and hopefully someone will answer your doubts. For that, a new thread in the hardware subforum will get better chance to get an useful response.

Quote:
4.) What about software? Can I load and use Office or must I buy all new software including $500 copies of Photoshop, Dreamweaver, Acrobat Professional and tons of other applications that I have and already aid for.
Well...

When you buy a playstation you need to buy games for a playstation. Regardless of how much you paid for your nintendo DS ones. This is the same. Windows programs run in windows. Linux is not binary compatible with windows, and it doesn't have a reason to either. It would be like asking windows to run a linux program, it doesn't really make any sense.

Being that said, there's a project that aims to implement the windows application interface under linux, and it can run some windows programs. How well they run, if at all, depends on the concrete program. It's called "wine", and you can search the wine database to see if there has been any success running your concrete programs, so you can see if you have any chance to get them running or not in wine.

http://appdb.winehq.org/

However, I consider that migrating to a native linux solution is the best option when possible. As part of the experience, you should use linux programs in linux, rather than windows one under a compatibility layer. If you are going to run windows programs all the time, there's really no point in using linux.

Last edited by i92guboj; 11-02-2008 at 07:47 PM.
 
Old 11-02-2008, 07:48 PM   #4
chrism01
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1. There's no 'best', its matter of preference. The usual advice is to check out the top 5 or 10 at www.distrowatch.com. You could look at Mandriva, any Ubuntu, Fedora etc.
They are all FREE, so just the download. I believe Canonical (who provide Ubuntu) send CDs out for free in some places.
You can also get CD/DVD from some companies for minimal cost.

2. dual boot is an option. Some distros also provide a 'Live' CD option, which means you can boot/run from CD and try it out without affecting your current system at all ie it doesn't write to the harddisk.

3.Generally HW drivers aren't a problem unless you have the absolute latest HW. Check out the HW Compat list on the right hand menu here at LQ.
http://www.linuxquestions.org/hcl/

4. Generally for SW, try using the Linux equivs rather than the MS versions: http://wiki.linuxquestions.org/wiki/...ndows_software
They might be a bit different, but normally sufficient. (again, generally free)
Otherwise you could look at a compatibility layer eg Wine: www.winehq.org


Don't put your email there, spam harvesters will pick it up. At least disguise it.

Here's some links to get you started:

http://linux.oneandoneis2.org/LNW.htm
http://rute.2038bug.com/index.html.gz
http://tldp.org/LDP/Bash-Beginners-G...tml/index.html

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