Linux Question

big soft moose

big soft moose

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Okay - situation is this

I have a toshiba laptop , with a dual core chip ( I forget what) and 2Gb of ram - its currently running windoze vista and its so slow that its virtually not useable ( Ive checked for malware etc and theres none)

So knowing that windows is generally pretty heavy I was wondering would i see a marked improvement if I trashed windows and put a linux distro on it instead ?

Assuming the answers yes - I have a few noob questions about linux

a) Which distro should i go for (Ive not used linux before - but ive read good things about mint)

b) How simple is the installation - is it just a case of downloading it to a memory key and then booting from there in DoS or do I have to format the HD first to remove all the windows garbage ( I know it sounds like a daft question but the only installs ive done have been windows from CDs)

c) Am I right in assuming that open office can open use and resave an MS office file - we have MS Office at work and its essential I have compatibility to work on stuff at home

d) Are there any good DTP programs for linux - I use serif page plus quite a lot so its essential I have something equally capable

e) Photo software - I'm aware of GIMP as a replacement for photoshop, but what raw browsers etc are there out their in open source land ? , I use LR3 a fair bit

f ) at the end of the day is this really going to be worth it , or should I just give a loud "**** it all" and go and deploy the drastic plastic on getting a new windows laptop.
 
a) Linux Mint

b) Yes

c) Yes. Kinda sorta. I use MS Office for work and the first file I opened with OpenOffice was formatted slightly differently. OO will open the files, but you are not guaranteed to get the same layout. How much that matters to you is a personal choice.

d) Yes, but see above about compatibility

e) Will depend on your camera. You are listed as having a 40D which is quite old. I think Darktable is where you need to look. Linux tends to lag on newer cameras though...

f) That depends. At the end of the day, you have a Dual Core laptop with 2G of RAM. That will limit you if you are trying to do serious processing. It will be fine for web browsing and light computational tasks though. Let me put it this way: I sold a laptop close to 2 years ago that *I* thought was unusable for picture editing. The person who bought it was thrilled. It's all about expectations........
 
PS. Was it you I sold the laptop to??? That would be funny if it were the same one...!
 
arad85 said:
a) Linux Mint

b) Yes

c) Yes. Kinda sorta. I use MS Office for work and the first file I opened with OpenOffice was formatted slightly differently. OO will open the files, but you are not guaranteed to get the same layout. How much that matters to you is a personal choice.

d) Yes, but see above about compatibility

e) Will depend on your camera. You are listed as having a 40D which is quite old. I think Darktable is where you need to look. Linux tends to lag on newer cameras though...

f) That depends. At the end of the day, you have a Dual Core laptop with 2G of RAM. That will limit you if you are trying to do serious processing. It will be fine for web browsing and light computational tasks though. Let me put it this way: I sold a laptop close to 2 years ago that *I* thought was unusable for picture editing. The person who bought it was thrilled. It's all about expectations........
Click to expand...

Thanks - I may go for the both route - put linux on the toshiba for just web browsing, and then buy a more serious machine for more serious ends.

or equally i might just say balls to it and buy an ipad for web browsing and finally get round to fixing my HP desktop to use for more serious ends

ohh decisions decisions
 
arad85 said:
PS. Was it you I sold the laptop to??? That would be funny if it were the same one...!
Click to expand...

Nope - my laptop was originally swimbos - she bought it new from Pc word in '06 ( I also have an i5 chip laptop from work - which is what i'm using now- but i can't load software onto that so its non starter for photoediting or writing on)
 
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big soft moose said:
Thanks - I may go for the both route - put linux on the toshiba for just web browsing,
Click to expand...
If youa re happy trashing the machine - just put Mint on it. You'll either love it or decide what you really need to do is install a version of Windows again... If it is so slow to be unusable, you have very little to lose by reformatting.

As usual with Linux distributions, Mint has a LiveCD that allows you to test without wiping the disk...
 
arad85 said:
If youa re happy trashing the machine - just put Mint on it. You'll either love it or decide what you really need to do is install a version of Windows again... If it is so slow to be unusable, you have very little to lose by reformatting.
Click to expand...

Sound plan thanks
 
Bear in mind that running off the live CD means it'll run really slowly, once you've installed it properly, you'll find you've got a real flyer of an operating system. Once you've got it runnning off the live cd, and press "install" it gives you the option of installing on the whole hard disk, or it can walk you through making it a "dual boot" system so you can choose Mint or Windoze at each boot-up.

Darktable is excellent, as is Raw Therapee, Digikam is pretty good as well............. I started off some 6 years ago by installing Ubuntu on an aged Dell laptop that had slowed to a crawl using Windoze, and found I'd got a quick and fun to use machine again. Best tip, don't try to run Windoze programmes, there's thousands of excellent Linux ones, at first it's like landing in a foreign country, but you'll soon get the hang of it........
 
Lots of good answers so far but I would weigh in with suggesting you try running Ubuntu from a USB drive - far quicker than a CD and the OS has matured into something very useable.

That said, if I were looking to do the same, I'd be looking at trying to get a chromium OS on there - but I'm an avid user of google products!
 
Organnyx said:
Darktable is excellent, as is Raw Therapee, Digikam is pretty good as well............. I started off some 6 years ago by installing Ubuntu on an aged Dell laptop that had slowed to a crawl using Windoze, and found I'd got a quick and fun to use machine again. Best tip, don't try to run Windoze programmes, there's thousands of excellent Linux ones, at first it's like landing in a foreign country, but you'll soon get the hang of it........
Click to expand...

I really like linux and it does most things same or better, but RAW converters are one of the biggest holes. There is very little that can touch Lightroom on any OS - but that will require a much faster PC regardless

Moos3h said:
Lots of good answers so far but I would weigh in with suggesting you try running Ubuntu from a USB drive - far quicker than a CD and the OS has matured into something very useable.
Click to expand...

Yes, they run and install a lot faster from USB drive. There is no point saving windows on that laptop as it is plain unusable...
 
Just to clear up the "ubuntu" thing, I started with it 6 years ago, and it used to be really excellent, but a while back they gave it a truly awful interface called "Unity" which rendered it frankly unusable and unintuitive - Linux Mint (which is based on it) is far more usable, and definitely recommended to someone new to Linux.

When you go to download Mint, there are somewhat confusingly several versions available - I suggest going for the "Cinnamon" version...........
 
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Do people still burn LiveCDs to CD?

Last couple of computers I've built don't even have DVD drives in them (and there was me complaining Apple had removed DVD drives from the latest iMacs...). Having said that, they are server machines...
 
How does a photographer exist with a computer that doesn't have the means to burn a cd/dvd for their clients? (hence the means to read one!)
 
daugirdas said:
There is no point saving windows on that laptop as it is plain unusable...
Click to expand...
I run Win7 on a DC laptop with 2G. It may be slower than my quad core i7 laptop with 8G & a top spec SSD, but it is fine. (EDIT: I don't run LR/PS on it, but for everything else, it is fine).

You don't half talk some rubbish sometimes :shrug:
 
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Organnyx said:
How does a photographer exist with a computer that doesn't have the means to burn a cd/dvd for their clients? (hence the means to read one!)
Click to expand...
Cloud computing innit..... :D
 
arad85 said:
I run Win7 on a DC laptop with 2G. It may be slower than my quad core i7 laptop with 8G & a top spec SSD, but it is fine. (EDIT: I don't run LR/PS on it, but for everything else, it is fine).

You don't half talk some rubbish sometimes :shrug:
Click to expand...

Ok, anti windows = total rubbish even if its a valid comment

arad85 said:
Cloud computing innit..... :D
Click to expand...

Or USB sticks
 
daugirdas said:
Ok, anti windows = total rubbish even if its a valid comment
Click to expand...
It's trying to spot the "valid comment" in your original post that I'm having trouble with at the moment....

Nope. Still can't see it ;) :D
 
Organnyx said:
Just to clear up the "ubuntu" thing, I started with it 6 years ago, and it used to be really excellent, but a while back they gave it a truly awful interface called "Unity" which rendered it frankly unusable and unintuitive - Linux Mint (which is based on it) is far more usable, and definitely recommended to someone new to Linux.

When you go to download Mint, there are somewhat confusingly several versions available - I suggest going for the "Cinnamon" version...........
Click to expand...

arent they releasing a new version (Ubuntu) on the 25th of this month???
I wonder if its any better
 
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Gr8Shot said:
arent they relesing a new version (Ubuntu) on the 25th of this month???
I wonder if its any better
Click to expand...
Although Ubuntu is a very well known distribution, I'd avoid it unless there was a pressing need. The UI development is too quick to take new changes and as such can be unstable at times. I've lodged my xbmc boxes on 12.04LTS, precisely because it is an LTS release and won't be moving until 14.04 is out (and has had a few months in the wild) unless I really really have to...

Of the Linuxes I've tried recently, Mint was by far the best out the box experience (Fedora wasn't too far behind either).

Click here: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/LTS to see the longevity of the support for each release (notice the even shorter support times for 13.04 compared with 12.10...)
 
arad85 said:
Although Ubuntu is a very well known distribution, I'd avoid it unless there was a pressing need. The UI development is too quick to take new changes and as such can be unstable at times. I've lodged my xbmc boxes on 12.04LTS, precisely because it is an LTS release and won't be moving until 14.04 is out (and has had a few months in the wild) unless I really really have to...

Of the Linuxes I've tried recently, Mint was by far the best out the box experience (Fedora wasn't too far behind either).

Click here: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/LTS to see the longevity of the support for each release (notice the even shorter support times for 13.04 compared with 12.10...)
Click to expand...

If you dislike unity (I could see why), you can put cinamon desktop on top of ubuntu. Linux is an open system and you luckily can mx and match :thumbs:

arad85 said:
It's trying to spot the "valid comment" in your original post that I'm having trouble with at the moment....

Nope. Still can't see it ;) :D
Click to expand...

Look harder, the screen might be a good place to start :D. It might not necessarily agree with your opinion though :nono:
 
Can we not turn this into a windows vs linux argument leading to thread closure please.

On this particular machine windows is running very slowly - its possible that a clean windows install might speed it up, but I dont have a disk and can't be arsed paying for one on the off chance it might help - hence linux as a way forward

its possible that the problem is actually a hardware fault - though the diagnostic thingy in dos isnt showing any faults , but at least if i try a linux install and the machine is still crap I havent lost anything
 
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daugirdas said:
and you luckily can mx and match :thumbs:
Click to expand...
And this is often where you start getting into problems - different versions of shared libraries can cause issues.... and once you start down that line, you're leading to a potentially very confused system.

I still maintain that Ubuntus adoption of the latest releases is too rushed.

daugirdas said:
Look harder, the screen might be a good place to start :D. It might not necessarily agree with your opinion though :nono:
Click to expand...
I don't have problems with views different to mine. I have a problem with dogma - it is clear you can run Windows on a DC 2G machine quite happily. It won't be the fastest possible, but it will run and do most office jobs fine (and runs most linux shell scripts too with cygwin installed). I wouldn't run PS6 on it though, but as you pointed out earlier, Linux lags on raw codec support, so Linux isn't necessarily a good choice for image processing either. Why this particular windows install isn't working well is anybodys guess.

And, as I've stated many times, I run more *nix boxes here than Windows, so I'm definitely not in the anti-Linux camp ;)
 
Windows 7 runs just fine on much lesser spec laptops than the Toshiba Moose mentioned. I've installed it on a couple of ancient Acers (Pentium M 2ghz with 2gb ram) and it runs absolutely fine. It's not as heavy on hardware as Vista is so maybe a fresh install will help.
My current laptop is a HP with a 2.2ghz Core2Duo and 4gb of ram and it'll run CS6 and Lightroom.

If Moose want to try Windows7 before a Linux distro the ISO can be downloaded from here and if it works ok then he only need purchase an activation key from MS.
 
Mike-a said:
Windows 7 runs just fine on much lesser spec laptops than the Toshiba Moose mentioned. I've installed it on a couple of ancient Acers (Pentium M 2ghz with 2gb ram) and it runs absolutely fine. It's not as heavy on hardware as Vista is so maybe a fresh install will help.
My current laptop is a HP with a 2.2ghz Core2Duo and 4gb of ram and it'll run CS6 and Lightroom.

If Moose want to try Windows7 before a Linux distro the ISO can be downloaded from here and if it works ok then he only need purchase an activation key from MS.
Click to expand...

W7 is definitely better on HW than vista, and so was XP, but I am not sure OP would want to spend £££ on it as he is already planning a new PC for editing
 
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