Ubuntu questions.

[GiantZombies]

Alright, so I've finally broken down and decided that I want to install Ubuntu. Actually, I've wanted to do it for a while. But I never really saw a reason to do it until I started gaming on my PC. I've heard that it's far less resource heavy and games tend to run better, and with my budget that's a huge plus since I won't be getting a new computer for a while.

So, I've got some questions if there are any Ubuntu users here, or anyone that might be able to point me in the direction of someone who could help me out with this.

First off, unless I just completely fall in love with Ubuntu once I actually start using it (which I suspect will happen). I probably won't be doing much on it besides playing games on it and getting used to using it. So I'm planning on setting my PC up to dual-boot Windows 7 and Ubuntu 12.04. Now, to the questions.

1.) When I do this, is backing up my system a major concern? I don't exactly have a spare hard drive or something laying around that I can use to do so.

2.) Will I need to install all of my drivers again on the Ubuntu partition?

3.) What sort of things will I need to learn, if any. To be able to switch over to Ubuntu completely?

I'd really appreciate any help or advice on this. I'm pretty eager to get started with Ubuntu.

[John Crichton]

Setting up a dual boot is easy, just burn Ubuntu on a CD.

Also check out alternative Linux distros, there are better options in my opinion. Personally, I fell in love with a small distro called MANJARO LINUX. It uses very (!!) little resources compared to Ubuntu (or anything else for that matter) and is super easy to update. Great community forum too, so if you're stuck, they will help you. My 72 year old dad is now using Manjaro, and just a year ago he asked me what a "double-click" is...just to put things in perspective.

As for your questions:

1) Get a cheap external hard disk...they aren't expensive and totally worth it. Alternatively, sign up with Dropbox or a similar service and simply use that to back up your most important files.

2) Yup, you need to install drivers...but Linux is getting much better at recognizing hardware. Manjaro installed everything automatically for me.

3) Check out those hundreds of Youtube tutorial videos or simply pick a distro with a great (helpful) community. In my experience, the larger distros like Ubuntu have a larger community which can be good...but a small dedicated community will often get you more accurate help. Never pay for Linux training, all the info is on the net for free. Manjaro is based on Arch Linux which has the largest Linux wiki on the net...and Manjaro has one too: Manjaro Wiki

Keep in mind Manjaro is slightly different to Ubuntu...not much though.

Ubuntu is the best-known distro...but imo it's bloated.

Check out this website if you're considering alternative Linux distros: Distro Watch

I run Manjaro on a Macbook Pro 15 Retina...works like a charm. I didn't bother with Windows, between OS X and Linux I can run most software I need, including Metatrader 4 and Steam.

The nice thing about Linux is, you can really set it up the way you like it. Total freedom. If you like the OS X look, try elementary. If you like a more barebones approach, try Manjaro Openbox. Want something in between that looks good but still performs quickly? Pick the XFCE desktop environment.

Most distros allow you to pick different desktop environment. For example, you can have a KDE Ubuntu or an XFCE Ubuntu. Do your research and watch Youtube reviews before installing something! If you're new to Linux, the most important thing is to pick a distro with a helpful community in my opinion.

Edited March 4, 2014 by John Crichton

[Aghanim]

Actually, Linux driver support is much better than Windows when we compare both after clean install. Windows needs driver so it could uses its NIC and connect to internet to download more driver, problematic if you are planning to use wifi USB dongle and there is no installer there. While in Linux, it works out of box, even in live CD

[Nuke]

im not a big fan of the new gui, gnome was ok, kde was better. linux is getting better, the fact that it automatically installed my nvidia drivers was nice. but i dont like how you have to use the command line for so many mundane things.

[Red Iron Crown]

Actually, Linux driver support is much better than Windows when we compare both after clean install. Windows needs driver so it could uses its NIC and connect to internet to download more driver, problematic if you are planning to use wifi USB dongle and there is no installer there. While in Linux, it works out of box, even in live CD

This is the opposite of my experience. If your hardware is uncommon at all it is very difficult to find Linux drivers for it. Almost every manufacturer provides Windows drivers.

Windows out-of-the-box supports a wide variety of network adapters, I suspect any that are difficult to set up in Windows will also be difficult in Linux.

[Camacha]

When I do this, is backing up my system a major concern? I don't exactly have a spare hard drive or something laying around that I can use to do so.

Yes, very much so! Not because of Ubuntu, but because any data without a backup is data you are prepared to lose. Seriously, backing your data up is important in any case. Fast processors and quick internet are nice and all, but making backups is the one thing you should do right.

3.) What sort of things will I need to learn, if any. To be able to switch over to Ubuntu completely?

I must say I find the depencencies thing a bit confusing. There are other ways of doing it, but it all works quite a bit different than it would on Windows. On the other hand, it is mostly a matter of getting used to it.

Edited March 4, 2014 by Camacha

[pxi]

This is the opposite of my experience. If your hardware is uncommon at all it is very difficult to find Linux drivers for it. Almost every manufacturer provides Windows drivers.

Windows out-of-the-box supports a wide variety of network adapters, I suspect any that are difficult to set up in Windows will also be difficult in Linux.

It's a YMMV thing with drivers.

In my personal experience I routinely use a live cd to retrieve drivers for windows. The NIC drivers in particular are often missing from a fresh install of Windows. On top of that, Windows often does an incredibly bad job of identifying hardware that it doesn't have a driver for. I have yet to encounter a time when a live CD didn't have a driver available for the hardware, and lspci does an incredible job of telling me what's what.

Now this would be hardware from Dell or HP mostly. Some of the more obscure stuff may have problems but I've yet to encounter it.

On the other hand I've been able to get oddball hardware like GPS dongles working with a minimum of rtfm - even when a driver is not supplied by the manufacturer.

Also I love the terminal, it's just so damn functional.

[Camacha]

Also I love the terminal, it's just so damn functional.

I must say that that's also a feature that is a little daunting to the new user. I can copy command lines fine from the intarwebz, but what I am doing? Barely a clue.

[Nuke]

Also I love the terminal, it's just so damn functional.

no os is complete without its command line. even on windows there are a few things you need to use the command line for, like setting up junction points is a good example. but there are other things, like managing services where it really helps to have a gui. for example on a recent ubuntu install there was one service, which i didnt need, which was causing the system to have trouble shutting down. it took me 6 hours of typing things i read in internet forums into it (all of it as superuser, since the commands dont work otherwise. i could be installing worms for all i know) just to kill that service. on windows its a mundane problem which can be solved in a few seconds. everything you need to setup, configure, and run the system should be handled by gui elements.

ive had a few good linux experiences. i love the version of debian for raspberry pi, since the system is configured specifically for the hardware, very little is needed to be done for setup except copy an image to an sd card and tweak a config file. just need to know which applications i want to install. but even then i had to do console fu to get a network adapter installed. for the very limited resources of the hardware that was acceptable. i also love gcc, its a breeze to get your code to compile (visual studio can be a nightmare to configure and its all gui based). i like to say here are my includes here are my libraries here is my code, compile pls. and of course you can put that in a makefile. its just a fun way to code.

but i think thats a thing linux needs to work on, wrap the more useful commands into guis. i like how i can tweak drivers, tweak the os, tweak network stuff in a couple of clicks.

[sal_vager]

Many drivers are in the repositories so you may find things "just work", also don't worry about desktop environments too much, if you don't like one you can install another

Personally I like the Xfce desktop, you are free to use what you like, that is one of the great things about Linux as a whole, you can tailor it to your preferences.

[Nuke]

one of these days i may try to get kde to work, though at that point i might as well just get kubuntu. recent developments in windows is making me want to move away from it. short of reactos ever getting completed, linux is really the only other option.

[pxi]

I must say that that's also a feature that is a little daunting to the new user. I can copy command lines fine from the intarwebz, but what I am doing? Barely a clue.

it took me 6 hours of typing things i read in internet forums into it (all of it as superuser, since the commands dont work otherwise. i could be installing worms for all i know) just to kill that service.

I have a personal thing about consulting the man pages before running any command I'm not familiar with. It's just a quick man commandname away.

but there are other things, like managing services where it really helps to have a gui. for example on a recent ubuntu install there was one service, which i didnt need, which was causing the system to have trouble shutting down. it took me 6 hours of typing things i read in internet forums into it (all of it as superuser, since the commands dont work otherwise. i could be installing worms for all i know) just to kill that service. on windows its a mundane problem which can be solved in a few seconds. everything you need to setup, configure, and run the system should be handled by gui elements.

Where there is a gui, I agree. It should be present. A lot of people who run Linux servers don't have a desktop installed. In fact out of the 3 I use personally, only my slackware box has a desktop, and even then I manually startx to invoke it. I'm quite used to managing services from the command-line at this point, and being able to script keeps me there.

[John Crichton]

General comment: Arch Linux based commands are much easier (and shorter) than Ubuntu commands.

Best advice imo: Burn LiveCDs for a couple of linux distributions you like and try them without having to install anything. For starters, go with Ubuntu, Manjaro, elementary and Mint. They're all a bit different. Also try one with the XFCE desktop environment and one with KDE...or Cinnamon if available.

[Seret]

I never really saw a reason to do it until I started gaming on my PC. I've heard that it's far less resource heavy and games tend to run better

I'm a Linux user and while I totally think you should give it a go, I'd just like to make sure you're aware of the lay of the land: Windows is still a vastly superior gaming platform to Linux.

The state of gaming on Linux has improved immensely over the last few years, but we're still a long way behind Windows. We've got Steam now, but there are only 341 Linux games, compared to many thousands on Windows. Linux doesn't get the big AAA games, we tend to only get supported by the indies. We also aren't very well supported by the graphics card manufacturers. Nvidia performance is good enough IMO, but continually slightly inferior to the Windows drivers, so if you're a FPS geek you're in trouble.

Having said this, there are some great games on Linux (KSP, Minecraft, World of Goo) and some of the older Windows games run well using a compatibility layer called Wine (I'd recommend using the Wine helper app called Play on Linux). If the games that YOU want to play are well supported on Linux then it makes an excellent gaming platform. Just make sure you do your homework and definitely keep Windows around in a dual-boot setup.

As for hardware, I agree with both sides of the discussion above. If you have well-supported hardware (eg: Intel chipsets, non-Optimus Nvidia graphics) then Linux is actually a lot easier than Windows. If you have oddball or unsupported hardware then it can be a bit of a nightmare, especially as the solution to obscure config problems is indeed to drop to the command line. Once your system is install however the command line is totally optional, it's certainly not required for everyday tasks.

Go ahead, try Ubuntu on a LiveCD or LiveUSB. The best place for any questions or problems would be askubuntu or the Ubuntu Forums. The folks on both those sites are extremely helpful and friendly, they'll sort you out. Askubuntu is best for very techy questions, the forums are best for discussion.

Good luck and have fun!

Edited March 5, 2014 by Seret

[tavert]

Ubuntu or Mint are the easiest to get started with. Installing Arch is more complicated, it kind of forces you to understand what you're doing every step along the way of building the operating system, piece by piece.

Unless you know what you're doing, it's best to go with an apt-get based distribution: Debian, Ubuntu, Mint, etc. These are the most popular, so most documentation online starts first with "you need to sudo apt-get install this that and-other-thing." If you're on an RPM or Pacman distribution (Fedora, Arch or Manjaro, etc), then packages will often be named slightly differently and you may have to go looking for the equivalent call to yum or pacman.

Frequent use of the command line is a feature, not a bug. Bash is an infinitely superior scripting environment to Windows cmd and batch files. Once you get the hang of it, you may find yourself writing lots of little shell scripts to help automate routine tasks. If you want more power/expressiveness than bash, pick your favorite out of perl, python, ruby, etc - they're all right there for you. Package management for these languages works much much better in a recent apt-get distribution than anywhere else.

[Nuke]

currently my main holdup is the number of applications that do not have linux versions that i use. so far my big ones are 3d studio max, and photoshop, both of which i am quite proficient with, and for which i will accept no substitute. while i have installed wine on my linux box, i have yet to try to get either of those to work. i presume its going to be a long and drawn out process with limited success.

[GiantZombies]

Thanks for all the help guys, I appreciate it. I went out and picked up a cheap external hard drive yesterday so I could back up the stuff I didn't want to lose, and I did a clean install of Windows 7 to clean out my computer before I went ahead with anything else. I also played around with Linux a bit before I started the install process and I think I'll like it once I get used to using it. I don't play many AAA games, mainly because this computer just can't manage running most of them, so 90% of the games I play are Indie and as far as I know the ones I play support Linux. Now, I've got one final question.

How should I partition my hard drive? From what I've read, a boot partition is important so you don't mess up the MBR or anything, so I'll make room for one of those. The root partition seems to be necessary as well, so I'll make room for that too. But are the home partition and swap space partitions absolutely necessary? I'm not going to want to have files accessible from both OS's, but if either of those are needed I'll make them too.

[pxi]

How should I partition my hard drive? From what I've read, a boot partition is important so you don't mess up the MBR or anything, so I'll make room for one of those. The root partition seems to be necessary as well, so I'll make room for that too. But are the home partition and swap space partitions absolutely necessary? I'm not going to want to have files accessible from both OS's, but if either of those are needed I'll make them too.

Easiest for you would be to create 2 partitions, one for windows, and one notionally for linux. Leave the linux partition as empty space. The linux installer should find the free space, and suggest an actual partition configuration for you.

The minimum you should need partition-wise for linux is boot, swap and root. (You could technically do without swap if you have a fair amount of memory, but really you're much better off with some swap than without.)

Having a separate partition for home is an excellent idea, allowing you to replace the distro at a whim, and just remount the existing home partition. In server configurations it is quite common to mount var on a separate partition too.

EDIT:

Oh you mentioned files on windows. Usually ubuntu will auto-mount any windows partition it comes across iirc.

EDIT THE SECOND:

I suppose I should point out the existence of https://www.virtualbox.org/ and the like. If you're at all unsure about what you're doing, a dry-run in a virtual machine might be an idea.

Edited March 6, 2014 by pxi

[m4v]

I'm a linux advocate and everything but really Windows is hands off a better gaming platform, switch to linux because you like it, switching because of gaming is a mistake. I have a windows install exclusively for playing games, the only game I play in linux is KSP and still doesn't work as well as in Windows.

I don't get how people can claim that gaming in linux is better, they are either making stuff up because linux doesn't need an antivirus or stuff like that or they are just blindly trying to evangelize people, probably both. Don't misunderstand me, I believe that Linux is a superior platform in every way... except for gaming.

[GiantZombies]

Easiest for you would be to create 2 partitions, one for windows, and one notionally for linux. Leave the linux partition as empty space. The linux installer should find the free space, and suggest an actual partition configuration for you.

The minimum you should need partition-wise for linux is boot, swap and root. (You could technically do without swap if you have a fair amount of memory, but really you're much better off with some swap than without.)

Having a separate partition for home is an excellent idea, allowing you to replace the distro at a whim, and just remount the existing home partition. In server configurations it is quite common to mount var on a separate partition too.

EDIT:

Oh you mentioned files on windows. Usually ubuntu will auto-mount any windows partition it comes across iirc.

EDIT THE SECOND:

I suppose I should point out the existence of https://www.virtualbox.org/ and the like. If you're at all unsure about what you're doing, a dry-run in a virtual machine might be an idea.

Thanks, I'll go about doing it in VirtualBox before I actually go ahead with doing it for real.

I'm a linux advocate and everything but really Windows is hands off a better gaming platform, switch to linux because you like it, switching because of gaming is a mistake. I have a windows install exclusively for playing games, the only game I play in linux is KSP and still doesn't work as well as in Windows.

I don't get how people can claim that gaming in linux is better, they are either making stuff up because linux doesn't need an antivirus or stuff like that or they are just blindly trying to evangelize people, probably both. Don't misunderstand me, I believe that Linux is a superior platform in every way... except for gaming.

Strictly speaking, I'm not totally doing it for gaming. I've been wanting to do it for a while now, but I'm just now getting around to it.

[Camacha]

I have a personal thing about consulting the man pages before running any command I'm not familiar with. It's just a quick man commandname away.

I was actually not referring to any inherent dangers (that might be there, come to think of it), but just that I had no clue what I was doing. I was just copying what I saw, but hardly learning anything, as that requires insight into the process.

[Camacha]

I don't get how people can claim that gaming in linux is better, they are either making stuff up because linux doesn't need an antivirus or stuff like that or they are just blindly trying to evangelize people, probably both. Don't misunderstand me, I believe that Linux is a superior platform in every way... except for gaming.

I think the idea is to run KSP as a 64-bit application in Linux, which enables it to use more memory and run more mods. Even though as a whole it is not very practical as a gaming platform, using it for KSP might well be.

[m4v]

I think the idea is to run KSP as a 64-bit application in Linux, which enables it to use more memory and run more mods. Even though as a whole it is not very practical as a gaming platform, using it for KSP might well be.

And that's a myth that I'm tired of seeing, myself and others in #kspofficial tried to test how much memory you can use in KSP and even with 64bits and the libpng patch it still crashes at around 4gb of memory usage. So far I haven't seen anyone with any sort of proof showing KSP using more than 4gb of RAM in linux, they are just claiming that it can because is 64bits.

[Camacha]

they are just claiming that it can because is 64bits.

Well, technically it does make sense. If there are practical objections, it means that something is not working like it should. Might give it a whirl sometimes in the somewhat distant future.

[Nuke]

And that's a myth that I'm tired of seeing, myself and others in #kspofficial tried to test how much memory you can use in KSP and even with 64bits and the libpng patch it still crashes at around 4gb of memory usage. So far I haven't seen anyone with any sort of proof showing KSP using more than 4gb of RAM in linux, they are just claiming that it can because is 64bits.

ditto. i tried it on a c2q rig with 8gb ram and a gtx260. old machine but still has some life in it. ubuntu 12.something.something. the game had a horrible framerate just running stock, and half the mods i tried crashed the game. it didnt let me run more of anything.