Anyone switch from Windows to Kubu in cold turkey fashion?

[mivo]

Did any of you switch from Windows to Kubuntu in a "cold turkey" fashion?

I played around with various distros and FreeBSD some six or seven years ago, but I was too much of a PC gamer at the time to just change my OS permanently (and dual-boot seemed too tedious because I usually played in between working, so switching between games and applications was important),

Nowadays I play mostly on consoles and/or board games (real and on the computer), and the application of the company I work for runs fine under Wine, so I can finally drop Windows for good, without any compromises. I've been using multi-platform open source software for most things I do at the PC, so the switch-over won't be much of a problem. Still, it's a big step. Faintly reminds me of switching from an Amstrad CPC in '86 to an Atari ST, and from an Atari ST to a Windows PC in '91.

If you are or were in the same boat, what have your experiences and impressions been?

[lowey23]

Re: Anyone switch from Windows to Kubu in cold turkey fashion?

G'day, mivo.

I went cold turkey just over two years ago. (Wish I could do the same with cigarettes!!).
Spent a lot of time reading and learning things first, and even more when I switched. Have had a few problems but nothing that I haven't been able to fix with the help of Google and (especially) from the good people on this forum.

I have never regretted the move. I was so frustrated with my old Windows box, with the spyware etc etc, I really had to try something else. The biggest problem has been when I have had a small problem I can't just ring a mate and say "how do you do........". As far as I know, I am the only person in my small country town using Linux. This actually turns out not to be a bad thing. You have to do some research yourself, and even though the answer to your original problem may have been sh!t simple, you learn all sorts of good stuff along the way.

For the last three Kubuntu releases, I got all impatient and upgraded to the new version before the official release. That was helpful in breaking my machine and learning to fix it again. While I still consider myself very much a newbie, I am now able to break and fix most things on my own without having to ask for help on the forum. I have also learned to be a little bit patient and am now waiting for the official release of Gutsy. (I wish they would bloodywell hurry, though. Is it October yet?)

All in all, I have never regretted the move to Kubuntu, regardless of what I may have said at 3am while I was going to the fridge to get another beer. It really is, for me, a sensational OS and I will be using it till at least the 23.04 version (at this stage, tentatively named Zonked Zebra).

Hope my thoughts have been of some interest to you

Cheers

Lowey

[JohanLingen]

Re: Anyone switch from Windows to Kubu in cold turkey fashion?

I also switched quite instantly, more than a year ago. I was very much pleased by someone helping me and giving me remote assistance each time I had a question. You could try to find someone you trust to help you.

[DeathKitten]

Re: Anyone switch from Windows to Kubu in cold turkey fashion?

I went Cold Turkey three years ago, though it wasn't to kubuntu, it was to Mandrake, as that's what my friend who was helping me out was running at the time. When Mandrake went weird and turned into Mandriva, I bailed on that and came to kubuntu, but I've never regretted quitting the windows.

[fleamailman]

Re: Anyone switch from Windows to Kubu in cold turkey fashion?

I believe it is hard to say that one actually has an os under windows, one has only a finite timespan given under the EULA of Microsoft, a lease of license then until that os is dropped and unsupported as we have seen windows98se and probably will see next with XP

OK, above written, my goal remains to stop perfectly usable laptops from being scrapped just because Microsoft withdraws support, linux is perfect for this as a longterm platform and the gui-install and windows-like features make kubuntu especially suitable for someone wising up to Microsoft's leaseware tactics

the advantages of an old laptop is simply the following: their price, their robustness, their expendability, and the moral advantage to the environment and the snub to leaseware tactics

[eriefisher]

Re: Anyone switch from Windows to Kubu in cold turkey fashion?

My first run with Linux was Knoppix 3.4. It wasn't installable but it gave me some uptime with Linux. I then came across Mepis 3.3.2 live/install. It worked nice on an old win98 machine. I purchased a new computer and decided to wipe 98 and install Mepis. Used it for some time.

When I first found out about Ubuntu I just had to try it. I ordered a disc online and they sent me 5. After playing with it a little I decided to wipe Mepis and install it on the old 98 machine. Not bad but being used to KDE and finding out that I could apt-get install kubuntu-desktop I was sold.

With Kde the old 98 box was a little slow, so I decided to dual boot on my newer box just after dapper came out. Once I installed and everything was up I found I no longer had much use for XP but there were times when I needed that one app. I moved my Xp partition into VM so now there is no reason to reboot just for one app.

I still have that old 98 box. I use it to distro jump. It keeps me entertained.

eriefisher

[Jay_Jay]

Re: Anyone switch from Windows to Kubu in cold turkey fashion?

Faintly reminds me of switching from an Amstrad CPC in '86 to an Atari ST, and from an Atari ST to a Windows PC in '91

Atari ST? Nostalgia... I had that (STE) and the Amiga too (are you a Brit by any chance?)

Back to the question... Yes, I tried a cold turkey switch last spring with Kubuntu 5.10 on a spare laptop and failed miserably. The wireless card I was using at the time was incompatible (still is lol) and as a novice Ndiswrapper seemed unfathomable. Without any direct internet access I was forced to go back and forth to my Win boxes to get solutions, download software etc and I gave up.

This year I tried again, with a new wi-fi card, some good books and a dual boot to Win2k as a "fail safe" and It's a totally different story. I'm nearly at the point where I'll only need Windows for the odd game.

I believe it is hard to say that one actually has an os under windows, one has only a finite timespan given under the EULA of Microsoft, a lease of license then until that os is dropped and unsupported as we have seen windows98se and probably will see next with XP

my goal remains to stop perfectly usable laptops from being scrapped just because Microsoft withdraws support, linux is perfect for this as a longterm platform and the gui-install and windows-like features make kubuntu especially suitable for someone wising up to Microsoft's leaseware tactics

Agreed, my Win98se boxes are now high and dry support wise, I'd need to put them behind a firewall appliance to go online and I can see a similar day looming soon for my Win2k machines too. When MS pull the rug from under you, that's it...

the advantages of an old laptop is simply the following: their price, their robustness, their expendability, and the moral advantage to the environment and the snub to leaseware tactics

Absolutely, my Linux laptop is a 5yr old HP P3 saved from being thrown onto a landfill. It runs most of the latest distros quite happily and achieves all my goals, meanwhile Vista won't even run on many recent machines...

[Snowhog]

Re: Anyone switch from Windows to Kubu in cold turkey fashion?

Up until March of this year, I've been a Windoze user, both at home, and at work. I started with Windoze 3.1! Several years ago, I tried Debian. It was a struggle to get configured and get a GUI desktop to actually work. I did finally get it configured, and was able to connect to the Internet via the internal modem. I was using a Sony VAIO laptop at the time, with Windoze 98SE as the installed OS. I ultimately dumped Debian, as I was simply unable to get dual-booting to work. It wasn't the fault of Debian - I came to believe, after MANY attempts with several boot managers - that the fault lay with either Windoze 98 itself, or some 'hard coded/wired' code in the laptop that simply prevented Windoze from restarting after exiting Debian.

I'm using Kubuntu Feisty on my current laptop, a Toshiba Satellite P105-S6147, which I'm dual-booting with Windoze Vista which was the pre-installed OEM OS. I'm still keeping Vista as I use Quicken for my finances, and have not yet found a suitable Linux program to use in place of Quicken. But that is about the only thing that I'm using Vista for.

I've been very happy with Kubuntu. It was easy to install from the LiveCD. Everything I've got on this laptop works. My USB optical mouse, USB hard drives, USB floppy, and my internal CD/DVD read/writer disc drive. The network card works 'out of the box' with my Linksys Cable/DSL Router. I haven't taken the laptop 'mobile' yet, so don't know if my internal wireless connection would work in a hot spot, but it has been recognized/identified by KNetworkManager.

[mivo]

Re: Anyone switch from Windows to Kubu in cold turkey fashion?

Atari ST? Nostalgia... I had that (STE) and the Amiga too Grin (are you a Brit by any chance?)

No, but close enough, I'm from Germany. Atari computers were really big here in the 80s and 90s, too. I went through three different systems before I was "forced" to switch to an IBM compatible machine in the very early 90s. I was writing for a German ST magazine (called "ST Magazin" ), and was offered the opportunity to work for a number of back then new PC publications. In some of my nightmares I occasionally re-live the first impressions of Windows after having enjoyed GEM for years! I still have an Atari Falcon sitting around. I never had an Amiga, however! *shudders*

Anyway, I made a Kubuntu live CD today. I was happy to see that Kubuntu recognized almost all of my hardware (except the monitor, but it was in the list), and also didn't have any trouble finding my memory sticks and SD cards. It even found the Sony PSP that was connected to the computer. Definitely impressive!

The only issue I experienced was with my ATI X700pro/256. The system did recognize it as an ATI card, but picked the default ATI driver for it. The performance of that driver was not impressive -- the entire KDE desktop seemed "sluggish", kind of like what you get when you play a 3D game on a box with an integrated video system. I read some posts here (which weren't too reassuring), but it seems that I really can't test alternative drivers properly in a live CD environment (can't install drivers or save settings). Not sure what to do about that yet.

Everything else was fantastic. My sound system was found, I could play MP3s (after using Adept to get the codecs -- where the heck were these stored? In the RAM?), and I still like the KDE desktop so much better than the XP GUI.

I'm almost ready to switch over, just need to investigate the video card issue a bit more. I need a "snappy" and "sharp" desktop.

[Snowhog]

Re: Anyone switch from Windows to Kubu in cold turkey fashion?

You've not said if you're system is 64-bit or 32-bit. No matter. There are Linux drivers for your card.

Check out:
ATI Proprietary Linux x86 Display Driver 8.40.4 for 32-bit systems
ATI Proprietary Linux x86_64 Display Driver 8.40.4 for 64-bit systems

These are proprietary drivers from ATI, but they are released by ATI for Linux.

[integr8e]

Re: Anyone switch from Windows to Kubu in cold turkey fashion?

I made the transition from Windows to Kubuntu rather quickly myself. I first installed Xubuntu on my old pc due to its low resources, then Kubuntu on a pc I built roughly two months later; that was just over the summer. My journey also began with Windows 3.1 on my dad's "new" Gateway 2000 back in '92 (long time ago but not so long ago, know what I mean?). I just got tired of Windows using all my resources and all the security holes in the system, and, Microsoft in general. Since then, I've been a very happy Kubu' user.

[ulsterman]

Re: Anyone switch from Windows to Kubu in cold turkey fashion?

This old Irish coot made the switch about four years ago. Since then, I've been all over the Linux map because I didn't know what I wanted or liked - and even if I did, there wasn't much I could do about it. It was a steep learning curve, but with some trial and error, and some reading I finally settled in with KDE. I never regretted dumping Windows and the transition has actually been fun.

My first sucessful distro was Ubuntu - can't remember what version, but I remember being very surprised I could finally do everything I had previously done in Windows. As soon as Kubuntu came out I jumped all over it. Since, I've been into Mepis, had Xandros for awhile, then PCLOS, tried Fedora; but, I've had Kubuntu all along and still do.

Often I read of folks stating Linux isn't ready for prime-time, will never be a major competitor to Windows and how "hard" it is to configure, etc...on and on; but, if an old Irish coot, with no technical or computer background or training can figure this out - it can't be all that hard. Admitedly, I'm a mere "user" with simple needs from my computer, like about most folks presently using Windows.

[croderick]

Re: Anyone switch from Windows to Kubu in cold turkey fashion?

Have been toying with the idea of changing OS for a few years, especially with the advent (and extreme) price of Window$ Vi$ta. Thought I was too old and set to do it. Got the dvd earlier this week, (not knowlegable enough to do the whole "imaging" download) tried the live CD version the other night. Really like the intergration of the OS. Got brave and partitioned off my HDD last night and couldn't move the cursor to select OS from the "grub??" menu (duh USB keyboard won't work without USB drivers being loaded ) Hooked up conventional keyboard and wow really slick now.

Trying to install it on my toshiba laptop also but can't get the CD version to work . Any one have any ideas. Just started working with this last night. TIA

[nuahs79]

Re: Anyone switch from Windows to Kubu in cold turkey fashion?

I can't say I made a cold turkey switch because my desktop at home is an XP box but my laptop is fully set up with Kubuntu and nothing else. My laptop isn't the fastest thing in the world and when I got it, it came pre-installed with Vi$ta home basic. It barely ran. The resources being used to load the OS were maxing out the memory and nearly flooding over the virtual memory. It was horrible. I backed it down to XP but even that was a little sluggish for my taste. I had used a dual-boot on my desktop about a year ago with ubuntu and i really enjoyed it. i just never had a reason to use it. I'm a hardcore gamer when it comes to my desktop box and through playing around and following instructions through the forums, i could not get my games to run the same way they did in XP. so i dumped the dual-boot and didn't think much of linux again until i got the laptop. my experience with the switch was good. my only problem is getting the monitor to be detected properly by x.org. i've tried a few different things and each time it crashes so i have to force a re-detect in the prompt since x.org will not boot to the UI to let me change it back. so for now, until i can figure out what is up, i am stuck in 1024x768 on a monitor that can run at 1280x800. it's tolerable but i would like it at the proper rate.
don't let my problem turn you off though. i've found every prog i needed for free through the packages and searching forums and googling. and i can say this without a doubt, Amarok is the best music player i've ever used. it beats any windows music app any day. i can't wait for the day they release 2.0

[bernieszu]

Re: Anyone switch from Windows to Kubu in cold turkey fashion?

Switched five days ago. My windows laptop died and a friend set me up a Desktop with Kubuntu. If I'd known it was so easy I'd have done it years ago - always thought it was too techie for me but have found it very easy to use so far. The only problem I have found is that, while my camera and usb pens work fine on it, I can't get my external storage drive to work. I get a message saying my drive is 'unmounted removable media' but no matter what option I choose nothing happens. I have seen a lot of stuff about this in the forum tonight but don't understand the solutions offered as they refer to lines of code and I'm so technically ignoran I don't even know where to go to read that code. Another solution offered talked about using the desktop preferences menu but the menu I was able to access didn't have the options he mentioned using as a solution. Ah well, I'm still glad to have made the leap - my nephew has been nagging me to do it for the last four or five years!