A new convert!

[bastard_lunatic]

Hi everyone,

One week ago, after considering Linux for some time, I decided to DL the live cd and see if it would work with my PC, and it did with no problems whatsoever. I considered dual booting, but I've always had the "go big or go home" mentality, so I figured I'd go solely with Kubuntu. I didn't play with the live cd long, so I didn't get a chance to really get a feel for it until I installed it. Since then I have been hooked. It's so much faster than Windows, and although there was a bit of a learning curve, I've had very little problems, learning the terminal was kind of hard, but once I figured out how to do it by reading a few tutorials, I think it's kind of fun.

With Windows I had trouble getting DVD's to play. In Kubuntu? Watch whatever you want Lisa!

With Windows I had to have a pesky activation check, which made me feel like Microsoft considered everyone guilty of pirating their OS before being proven innocent. ( And me thinking it was the other way around....how silly of me /snark)

An Office suite with Windows is pretty pricey, but I can really get one free with Kubuntu? You bet your ass!

I don't even wanna go into all of the additional crap you have to have; AV, firewall, a defragmenter that actually does something, disk cleaning tools and what not. I don't need any of that with Kubuntu...YAY!!

I'd first like to say to the developers, and the people who work so hard to make this work....thank you, so much. I don't know much about how this stuff works, but I'd love to be able to learn to help.

And also to the forum people; admins, mods, and the members who give of their time, which can't be gotten back once "spent", a huge thank you. Without the forums being available to me, I probably would have had a much bigger problem than I did.

~Lisa K

[DeathKitten]

Re: A new convert!

Hi Lisa!

I pulled the cold turkey switch myself when I went from Windows to Linux five years ago, and I've had no regrets. I had previously tried dual booting maybe a couple years before that, but what I found when I'd done that was I'd just boot into windows because it was easier and everything was familiar. Going full out and not bothering with the dual boot, I forced myself to learn and install the stuff I needed for my day to day tasks on the computer.

I love this forum. It's easy to join a community on the internet, and find yourself unwelcome or the group too focused on existing members, but I've been really impressed with everyone here. Even when my computers are running tip top and I haven't managed to break something*, these forums are at least a daily stop for me.

Glad to have you around, and I hope you enjoy your newly installed Kubuntu system!

* Really, if nothing's broken, am I trying hard enough? I suppose I could always just run a sudo apt-get dist-upgrade to "fix" that pesky nothing broken issue. ^_^

[bastard_lunatic]

Re: A new convert!

Hi DK!

I'm absolutely amazed by Kubuntu, I thought I would have some problems, but as you said, forcing myself to learn helped immensely.

I am a member of a few other forums, but never contributed much to them unless I was bored, because there wasn't much that interested me, I love these forums too, and hope to be regular, I'm pretty busy through the week with school stuff, but I'm pretty sure this will be my weekend hang out. I think I felt (on those other forums) that same thing you described, of sort of feeling like an outsider of sorts, I'm kind of anti social at times, a little too much for most people, I try to avoid most people, in forums it's a little easier for me to connect with people, and this one is perfect because there are a lot of people like me.

I'm not sure if I am ready to try out Karmic yet, but I'll get myself there!

Thank you for the welcome!!

~Lisa K

[Snowhog]

Re: A new convert!

Welcome Lisa. It's nice to hear of your exuberant foray into Linux, and the success with Kubuntu. I've been running Linux now since 2007. I still have Windoze XP, but it is safely contained within a VM (virtual machine), allowing me safe access to it when ever I want - without having to reboot out of Kubuntu.

KFN's members represent a wide range of knowledge, experience, and skills. The forum is full of asked (and answered) questions that run the gamut. If you have any questions, and you can't find the answer, or don't understand what you find, don't hesitate to post your questions here.

Again, welcome to KFN.

[Fintan]

Re: A new convert!

Hey Lisa, welcome to the party

I can only repeat the above.

enjoy

[Exodist]

Re: A new convert!

Welcome to Fantasy Island, Lisa!

Always glad to see newcomers to the community.

[bossa]

Re: A new convert!

Excellent move .Welcome
I have a machine next to me that I have not turned on for months and when I do it makes me feel nervous! it contains XPPro and Vista . I only keep them to keep my hand in and remind myself of the way to fix things for other people.
Been a Linux follower for years now, never going back to windoze ....what for

[Ole Juul]

Re: A new convert!

Welcome Lisa. This is a friendly community here and you can get help when you need it. I've never used MS-Win myself and I can't imagine being controlled by a vendor like that. To me using Linux is not even about quality (though it's pretty good), it's about basic freedoms and cooperation instead of competition.

[GreyGeek]

Re: A new convert!

Hi Lisa!

Welcome to the Kubuntu Forum!

Your journey from Windows to Linux mirrors mine, a mere 11 years ago! I have tried many distros over the years. In fact, I enjoyed "distro hopping" just to see what was out there. In my own experience the 64bit version of Kubuntu 9.10 (Karmic) is the BEST OS and KDE 4.3.1 is the best desktop that I have ever used, Linux or Windows.

I'm curious, Lisa. Your rapid move to Linux suggests that you are a coder. Are you? If you are, have you tried QtCreator and the Qt4 widget toolkit?

GreyGeek
(Grey because my hair, what's left of it, is grey. Geek because most of my 68 years have been spent tinkering with technology)

[dibl]

Re: A new convert!

Hi Lisa, and WELCOME!

Free advice here (and worth every penny of the price!)

[bastard_lunatic]

Re: A new convert!

Hi Lisa!

Welcome to the Kubuntu Forum!

Your journey from Windows to Linux mirrors mine, a mere 11 years ago! I have tried many distros over the years. In fact, I enjoyed "distro hopping" just to see what was out there. In my own experience the 64bit version of Kubuntu 9.10 (Karmic) is the BEST OS and KDE 4.3.1 is the best desktop that I have ever used, Linux or Windows.

I'm curious, Lisa. Your rapid move to Linux suggests that you are a coder. Are you? If you are, have you tried QtCreator and the Qt4 widget toolkit?

GreyGeek

Hi all (again!) and hi to you GreyGeek. Yes, I am a coder, , or a coder-in -training rather, lol. I have been playing aaround with Qt, yes. I upgraded to Karmic last night because I didn't want to be the last one here to do it, lol.

It's crazy fast, loving it!!

(Grey because my hair, what's left of it, is grey. Geek because most of my 68 years have been spent tinkering with technology)

[bastard_lunatic]

Re: A new convert!

Haven't gotten the quotes figured out quite yet, I'll figure it out though, lol. Hoping you can figure out who said what, lol.

Hi Dibl, Ole Juul, bossa. fintan, and Snowhog!!

My sn comes from Progress Quest if anyone was wondering, lol...

[GreyGeek]

Re: A new convert!

.......
Hi all (again!) and hi to you GreyGeek. Yes, I am a coder, , or a coder-in -training rather, lol. I have been playing aaround with Qt, yes. I upgraded to Karmic last night because I didn't want to be the last one here to do it, lol.

It's crazy fast, loving it!!

....

Yaaaaaaa! Another coder!!! 8)

Every coder is a "coder-in-training".... some have just trained longer than others! For example, after coding nearly 40 years I picked up C++ and Qt just three years before I retired. Never too old to learn, nor too young.... I'm introducing my 3 year old grandson to "input, output, sequence, choice and repetition"

Where is "here" at (if it's not a secret)?

[bastard_lunatic]

Re: A new convert!

Here is where I happen to be lol. Or you happen to be lol.

My physical location is Indiana, but I'm living in the Kubuntu forums whenever I can.

Coding is fun, except when the code doesn't compile correctly *grrr*


I'm looking at Perl, Python and Qt.

That and the guy who turned me on to all this stuff several months ago said Qt would fit me pretty well, but I think most guys say that kinda stuff to girls lol.

Does Karmic seem to respond faster than Jaunty or is it just my imagination. Either way it's way faster than Windows, lol. On my machine anyway.

[GreyGeek]

Re: A new convert!

Here is where I happen to be lol. Or you happen to be lol.

Oh, OK!

My physical location is Indiana, but I'm living in the Kubuntu forums whenever I can.

I'm in Lincoln, NE. Home of the Cornhuskers! We just enjoyed our 300rdth consecutive sellout! 88,700+

Coding is fun, except when the code doesn't compile correctly *grrr*

Yup, that's always fun!

I'm looking at Perl, Python and Qt.

Perl is a write-only language. Be sure you document every line, because 6 months later Perl is notorious for being difficult to read the programmer's intent.

I LOVE Python! There is a Python dev tool called "Boa-Constructor". Very powerful. I was going to use it for some of my projects at work but found Qt instead. The only drawback to Boa is that it requires coordination of various tool sets, just like Glade/GTK2+.

That and the guy who turned me on to all this stuff several months ago said Qt would fit me pretty well, but I think most guys say that kinda stuff to girls lol.

Na, he wasn't trying to charm you, he was telling you pure gospel! Qt would fit any programmer. I like it for several reasons:
1) All tools and libraries are installed from a single zip or tar download. One does not have to install synchronized versions of libraries and tools from several different projects just to get a working compiler and widget set, like you would if you used Glade and GTK2+ as your development tool.
2) qt-designer has drag & drop form and interface design capabilities and saves the form as an xml source with a *.ui extension. During compile the Qt moc (meta-object-compiler) converts the *.ui files to valid C++ source files which are then combined with the other *.cpp source files to continue the compiling process.
3) When you write your own classes you make QOBJECT the first line of your class definition, and during compile it automatically pulls in garbage collection, null pointer deletion and other features so the programmer doesn't have to worry about them.
4) One uses main.cpp, *.h and *.cpp files in the classic C++ programming paradigm. You create your project file, *.pro, by using "qmake -project" under your main project directory (say, whatever), then "qmake whatever.pro" to create the Makefile. After that its "make" time.

Does Karmic seem to respond faster than Jaunty or is it just my imagination. Either way it's way faster than Windows, lol. On my machine anyway.

It's NOT your imagination! KDE 4.3.1 is notably faster than previous versions of KDE4, BUT, the 2.6.31 Linux kernel is a large part of the speedup. When (if) Jaunty gets upgraded to the *.31 kernel it should demonstrate an improvement of speed also.

I get a double whammy because I switched from the 32bit Karmic to the 64bit Karmic, and I've noticed about a 15% improvement in over all speed, and a 2 or 3X improvement in 3D video acceleration, although it is less stable and has more artifacts in secondary 3D screens.