Is Linux something I should try?

[rm -rf]

On 3 June 2016 at 11:58 AM, Okjoek said:

The idea of a free OS is kind of appealing and I was considerig buying a cheap small HDD to experiment with the Ubuntu kernel of Linux (that's what it is called right? A kernel?). Basically I've never used a non-windows OS and I'm very weak when it comes to my knowledge of software, and I still have a lot to learn about hardware too, but software is still far more alien to me. Is an OS like Ubuntu user friendly? What kinds of things will I recognize and what won't I? I know there was a recent techquickie about linux, but is there a good tutorial or guide for a beginner? 

Giving Linux a shot is great fun, like many other people I recommend Linux Mint. I'm running Linix on a different partition on my laptop, if you understand partitions you'll be fine.

[Lehti]

It all depends on what you need it for: do you need to run a relatively weak computer that you're going to use for light tasks, such as web browsing, email reading, and document editing and watching the occasional movie? Then I'd say you give Linux Mint a shot.

If you intend to game on it, don't even bother: AMD drivers are shit on Linux and I personally have never been able to get Intel HD Graphics to work correctly in Linux (it only runs in software mode). NVidia drivers, on the other hand, are quite good and come close to Windows OpenGL performance, but seeing the current state of OpenGL itself, it's not that worth it IMHO.

 

I suggest you stay away from Ubuntu and try Linux Mint instead because of the latter's better update handling.. The version using Cinnamon as its desktop environment is my favourite.

[Dat Guy]

If you don't plan to perform advanced tasks, there is no reason to use a bloated OS like GNU/Linux.

[vorticalbox]

5 hours ago, Lehti said:

It all depends on what you need it for: do you need to run a relatively weak computer that you're going to use for light tasks, such as web browsing, email reading, and document editing and watching the occasional movie? Then I'd say you give Linux Mint a shot.

If you intend to game on it, don't even bother: AMD drivers are shit on Linux and I personally have never been able to get Intel HD Graphics to work correctly in Linux (it only runs in software mode). NVidia drivers, on the other hand, are quite good and come close to Windows OpenGL performance, but seeing the current state of OpenGL itself, it's not that worth it IMHO.

 

I suggest you stay away from Ubuntu and try Linux Mint instead because of the latter's better update handling.. The version using Cinnamon as its desktop environment is my favourite.

mt 7770 runs just as well on ubuntu as windows.

 

[SpaceNugget]

9 hours ago, Dat Guy said:

If you don't plan to perform advanced tasks, there is no reason to use a bloated OS like GNU/Linux.

Linux is not bloated. On the contrary, it is generally much lighter weight and certain low-resource optimized distributions can be used to prolong the life of older computers.

[Dat Guy]

Of course Linux is bloated. All that kernel functionality that does not even belong there. Linux is bloated to an extent that basically makes it unmaintainable (source: L. Torvalds).

 

Just because it's almost as fast as Windows on some machines, it's not exactly "not bloated". 

[vorticalbox]

56 minutes ago, Dat Guy said:

Of course Linux is bloated. All that kernel functionality that does not even belong there. Linux is bloated to an extent that basically makes it unmaintainable (source: L. Torvalds).

 

Just because it's almost as fast as Windows on some machines, it's not exactly "not bloated". 

the linux kernel us modular so "bloated" in the sense of large isn't exactly true.

[Dat Guy]

"Bloated" in the sense of "the kernel does too many things which should be handled by the user land".

[Lehti]

56 minutes ago, Dat Guy said:

"Bloated" in the sense of "the kernel does too many things which should be handled by the user land".

The end user doesn't care if a function is handled by the kernel or not. All it does care about is if it works or not. For the most part, things in Linux work well enough out of the box until you incur in a stupid driver issue or if apt-get dist-upgrade fucks up your install.

[SkilledRebuilds]

I think everyone should have a dabble... learn some basics,...