updated to windows 10

been having a look – the laptop was becoming virtually unuseable – suspect some deep seated problem with the brain – it was very slow from the start – the screen has flaked out a few times and then returned to normal

is Linux any better than the windows OS?

if i’m thinking seriously of this i’m thinking Microsoft has finally done itself serious damage

ive hopeful turned off its vulnerability of sharing your passwords with everyone but to be honest i’m thinking i’m done with windows / Microsoft – they keep changing the way you use the machine with every new version making it more and more useless every time

the whole point of having a classic view is to stop relearning everything over and over again to navigate around the machine – its just got too stupid for me now – they say you can revert to classic view but its a lie.

any thoughts on how to reboot the machine to a different OS?

• is Linux any better than the windows OS?

All of my computers at home run on linux and have no problems but it depends on what you want to use it for…

You could have a dual boot to win7 and Linux

I use Linux on my work related machines.

dv said:

I use Linux on my work related machines.

yes

i’m thinking I should use Linux on a separate machine

I deeply suspect that Microsoft/ windows is so buggered and full of backdoors and vulnerabilities its virtually useless

I updated to see what would happen with the laptop

when I get another laptop i’ll spend some asking and thinking instead of getting it on the fly

when I see perfectly useful user interfaces perpetually buggered up for no other reason that someone’s idea without asking the customer, its a game over scenario

they’ve kept doing stupid things

Why bother even asking, Wookie? You’ve got a Raspberry Pi that you don’t use because you don’t know how to use Linux. If you just want to get away from Windows stuff, buy an iMac.

Sudo apt-get skillzupdate

CrazyNeutrino said:

You could have a dual boot to win7 and Linux

The problem there is that you have to hard-divide your disk space into a Windows and a Linux partition. Which means that if you run out of disk space under one of the operating system then you’re stuffed. I think (but am not sure) that you also need to turn off your computer every time you want to switch from Linux to Windows or visa versa. You can’t read a Windows file in Linux, but you can read a Linux file in Windows.

Perhaps a bit of background. I used Unix from 1976 to about 1994. Unix morphed into Linux about then. For a while I was dual capable (one machine Unix and one machine Windows) before switching to Windows for everything except supercomputing – the CSIRO supercomputers have always run on Linux.

I still need to run occasional Linux software, particularly for typesetting mathematics papers, running Fortran & C, and running astrophysics codes. But rather than run a full version of the Linux operating system I run Cygwin under Windows. “Cygwin is a Linux-like environment for Windows.” “With Cygwin installed, users have access to many standard UNIX utilities.”

For someone who’s never used Linux, switching from Windows to Linux comes as a huge culture shock. The culture shock includes the loss of Word, Excel and Powerpoint, different filenames in different locations, and different ways of running programs such as the need to manually download missing commands. I recommend practicing with Cygwin before making the full switch to Linux.

Unless you go straight to Android.

I haven’t use Android but it’s becoming more popular. “Android is based on Linux, but it’s not based on the type of Linux system you may have used on your PC. You can’t run Android apps on typical Linux distributions and you can’t run the Linux programs you’re familiar with on Android. Linux makes up the core part of Android, but Google hasn’t added all the typical software and libraries you’d find on Linux. This makes all the difference.”

mollwollfumble said:

CrazyNeutrino said:

You could have a dual boot to win7 and Linux

The problem there is that you have to hard-divide your disk space into a Windows and a Linux partition. Which means that if you run out of disk space under one of the operating system then you’re stuffed. I think (but am not sure) that you also need to turn off your computer every time you want to switch from Linux to Windows or visa versa. You can’t read a Windows file in Linux, but you can read a Linux file in Windows.

Perhaps a bit of background. I used Unix from 1976 to about 1994. Unix morphed into Linux about then. For a while I was dual capable (one machine Unix and one machine Windows) before switching to Windows for everything except supercomputing – the CSIRO supercomputers have always run on Linux.

I still need to run occasional Linux software, particularly for typesetting mathematics papers, running Fortran & C, and running astrophysics codes. But rather than run a full version of the Linux operating system I run Cygwin under Windows. “Cygwin is a Linux-like environment for Windows.” “With Cygwin installed, users have access to many standard UNIX utilities.”

For someone who’s never used Linux, switching from Windows to Linux comes as a huge culture shock. The culture shock includes the loss of Word, Excel and Powerpoint, different filenames in different locations, and different ways of running programs such as the need to manually download missing commands. I recommend practicing with Cygwin before making the full switch to Linux.

Unless you go straight to Android.

I haven’t use Android but it’s becoming more popular. “Android is based on Linux, but it’s not based on the type of Linux system you may have used on your PC. You can’t run Android apps on typical Linux distributions and you can’t run the Linux programs you’re familiar with on Android. Linux makes up the core part of Android, but Google hasn’t added all the typical software and libraries you’d find on Linux. This makes all the difference.”

Virtual machines

Just a word on Android. You can run MS Office on Andoroid, but you can’t use any VBA macros or functions, which makes it totally useless for me.

btm said:

Why bother even asking, Wookie? You’ve got a Raspberry Pi that you don’t use because you don’t know how to use Linux. If you just want to get away from Windows stuff, buy an iMac.

I had it working, it didn’t seem that amazing

now I’ve reached that point where i’m not satisfied with microsoft

• You can’t read a Windows file in Linux, but you can read a Linux file in Windows.

Since when? In my experience, if anything, it is the other way around…

• For someone who’s never used Linux, switching from Windows to Linux comes as a huge culture shock.

Some flavours are specifically designed to reduce the visual differences to not shock a first time user crossing over from a windows environment. The person just needs to look into what is right for them. Though, even the ones that don’t look exactly like windows are easy to use…

• The culture shock includes the loss of Word, Excel and Powerpoint

But with very capable alternatives…

furious said:

• The culture shock includes the loss of Word, Excel and Powerpoint

But with very capable alternatives…

I thought Apple used Linux these days?

In which case you can use MS Office.

The Rev Dodgson said:

furious said:

• The culture shock includes the loss of Word, Excel and Powerpoint

But with very capable alternatives…

I thought Apple used Linux these days?

In which case you can use MS Office.

I should have checked the electric internet before typing.

Apparently I am wrong.

The Rev Dodgson said:

furious said:

• The culture shock includes the loss of Word, Excel and Powerpoint

But with very capable alternatives…

I thought Apple used Linux these days?

In which case you can use MS Office.

No, Apple use OS X, which was derived from NeXTStep, which was derived from BSD Unix. Linux is similar to SYSV. (BSD and SYSV are two different flavours of Unix, one from Berkeley (BSD), the other from AT&T.)

Wookie, download a copy of Linux Mint. There’s a reason it’s become the most popular flavour of Linux. I recommend the Cinnamon desktop, but have a look at Mate as well, you may prefer it.

You can run it as a live disk to try before you buy. Running as a dual boot is entirely possible. I keep a token Windows installation to run a single piece of software that I need occasionally and haven’t found a good replacement for. Apart from that one piece of software, I haven’t used Windows on my home machines for many years.

Linux has come a very long way since the days of having to use the command line for everything. The various package managers are a brilliant way to install software. It is not the huge learning curve that people claim. I find it pretty intuitive for most things and there’s loads of free advice available via the various forums.

Libre Office is a very capable replacement for MS Office but if you feel tied to to it, MS Office runs fine under WINE or you could even install Windows on a virtual machine inside Linux.

Come, join us on the dark side.

Don’t listen to him Wookie, use the Force.

mollwollfumble said:

…
For someone who’s never used Linux, switching from Windows to Linux comes as a huge culture shock. The culture shock includes the loss of Word, Excel and Powerpoint, different filenames in different locations, and different ways of running programs such as the need to manually download missing commands. I recommend practicing with Cygwin before making the full switch to Linux.
…