Linux Desktop OS

Staxed

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Jul 29, 2019
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So,

I've been thinking for a while of uninstalling windows 8 and sticking Linux on my laptop. My question is, while I use a linux shell to run my server, etc...I've never experienced it on a desktop/laptop.

For those of you who use linux as your OS, which distribution do you use?

Right now I'm looking at Mint 15 or Ubuntu Unity
 

Staxed

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Mint 15 with Cinnamon is what I use, and it is exceedingly user friendly. I'm rather disenchanted with Ubuntu Unity.

I'm leaning more towards Mint as well, been testing it out a little bit having it dual booted. Still trying to learn how to get all the games and other windows apps I need loaded up though :)
 

zedkar

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Mint 15 with Cinnamon it's amazing :D I don't like unity. I was using Linux Mint the KDE version, now I use Arch. On my Arch i have XFCE and Faenza Icons to have that nice look , I also use Windows 7 Ultimate (I work in Computer security and i need Windows).
 

ShneekeyTheLost

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I also use Windows 7 Ultimate (I work in Computer security and i need Windows).
Am I the only person around who finds this uproariously ironic?
I'm leaning more towards Mint as well, been testing it out a little bit having it dual booted. Still trying to learn how to get all the games and other windows apps I need loaded up though :)
What kind of games and apps are you wanting?

PlayOnLinux does a pretty darn good job of getting most windows games to run. DosBOX for any of your old DOS games. Most of the apps have alternate versions.
 

Staxed

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Am I the only person around who finds this uproariously ironic?

What kind of games and apps are you wanting?


Hmm, off the top of my head, adobe creative suite, lord of the rings online, minecraft, filezilla, teamspeak, streaming, fraps, ms office, ms visio, visual studio, quicken, notepad++...these are the main ones I need in order to switch over to linux, so I'm in the process of researching if they all work before I can actually do the complete switchover.
 

ShneekeyTheLost

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Hmm, off the top of my head, adobe creative suite, lord of the rings online, minecraft, filezilla, teamspeak, streaming, fraps, ms office, ms visio, visual studio, quicken, notepad++...these are the main ones I need in order to switch over to linux, so I'm in the process of researching if they all work before I can actually do the complete switchover.
You won't miss Notepad++ with Gedit unless you are using it as an IDE.

Streaming is a PITA, but you can check out Kazam Screencaster, which will also beat out Fraps. You can also use ffmpeg if you don't mind command line instead of GUI. For MS Office, you have LibreOffice which saves to and reads all MS Office file formats. The Adobe Creative Suite is going to be a hard one, there IS Inkscape, which is a vector-based graphics program much like Impress, but it uses a different mindset with respect to hotkeys, so it might be counter-intuitive for you to use. As a vector-based graphics program, I feel it to be inherently superior to Viso, however LibreOffice has a program called LibreDraw that does much the same thing. Minecraft has no problems, of course, being a Java program. I'm running TS3 no problems on Mint 15. Filezilla works natively in Mint 15. Quicken can be run in Wine or Crossover, but GNUCash also has a double-accounting system which can read the same formats. There are other options as well you might want to look into.

In other words, about the only problems you will have will be duplicating Visual Studio and Adobe Creative Suite. Unless you do Visual Studio professionally, however, you will no longer need to use it as you will no longer be running in a Windows environment. For Creative Suite, you can try using GIMP, Blender, Inkscape, and a few others that you can google around for (and once you find alternatives, they'll likely be in the repositories), however be advised that all the controls are going to be different than what you are used to, so your training will likely be working against you when working with them. Unfortunately, Adobe CS is one of the few software suites which has extreme difficulties porting over.
 

Staxed

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You won't miss Notepad++ with Gedit unless you are using it as an IDE.

Streaming is a PITA, but you can check out Kazam Screencaster, which will also beat out Fraps. You can also use ffmpeg if you don't mind command line instead of GUI. For MS Office, you have LibreOffice which saves to and reads all MS Office file formats. The Adobe Creative Suite is going to be a hard one, there IS Inkscape, which is a vector-based graphics program much like Impress, but it uses a different mindset with respect to hotkeys, so it might be counter-intuitive for you to use. As a vector-based graphics program, I feel it to be inherently superior to Viso, however LibreOffice has a program called LibreDraw that does much the same thing. Minecraft has no problems, of course, being a Java program. I'm running TS3 no problems on Mint 15. Filezilla works natively in Mint 15. Quicken can be run in Wine or Crossover, but GNUCash also has a double-accounting system which can read the same formats. There are other options as well you might want to look into.

In other words, about the only problems you will have will be duplicating Visual Studio and Adobe Creative Suite. Unless you do Visual Studio professionally, however, you will no longer need to use it as you will no longer be running in a Windows environment. For Creative Suite, you can try using GIMP, Blender, Inkscape, and a few others that you can google around for (and once you find alternatives, they'll likely be in the repositories), however be advised that all the controls are going to be different than what you are used to, so your training will likely be working against you when working with them. Unfortunately, Adobe CS is one of the few software suites which has extreme difficulties porting over.


Thanks for that!

Sadly, Visual Studio and Adobe will be required, as I do them professionally (well, have done them for years, and am taking courses that require them at the moment). Though, since I do have a copy of windows, I supposed I could always just load it up on a virtualbox to use those two programs. Thanks again for the info!
 

ShneekeyTheLost

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Thanks for that!

Sadly, Visual Studio and Adobe will be required, as I do them professionally (well, have done them for years, and am taking courses that require them at the moment). Though, since I do have a copy of windows, I supposed I could always just load it up on a virtualbox to use those two programs. Thanks again for the info!
Ouch, yea... those two are rather infamous for being difficult to deal with. Like I said, there -are- alternatives for Adobe, and they -will- read and write Adobe CS files, however they work in different ways and you may find them counter-intuitive, so for your purposes, it's probably better to Vbox Adobe CS. For VS, however, you're pretty much stuck to VBox.