The Dink Network

Well I've always been an ordinary Windows user with most of my computer experience being from XP and Vista. I've put up with the nasty viruses and malware, laggyness in general, and quite frankly, I just want to try something fresh and new.

So, I went to the Ubuntu website and d/l the OS, installed it to a CD, and booted it from there. I played around on it for a bit and there were a few things I liked, but thinking about replacing my old windows habits is somewhat worrisome.

The software center is appealing and makes downloads easy to find at first glance, it seems to run smoother than vista, and heck it's better looking (looking at my other computer's desktop is depressing in comparison), but what about my old programs and games and such? What will I have to do to get the same functionality that I have with Vista. And running games? And things I can't think of now that I will want back later

I know that some of you guys have experience with alternative operating systems, and me, being less computer savvy and inexperienced outside of casual computing (heck I surprised myself when I was able to boot it up) someone here could enlighten me on the advantages and features, as well as how to make things work in a new OS like games and other familiar programs. Also to disclose information about the different types of OS's. I know of Ubuntu because it's the most widely known, but I'm oblivious to all others, the differences between them and what would best suit me.

Any info would be appreciated. I've been researching things for a few hours now, but it would be nice to hear things from real people. And I need to go to bed now. There's more searching to be done tomorrow.

I've been using Ubuntu since 2008 and I now definitely prefer it over Windows. I'm more in control as it only takes action when I say so, not when it feels like and this becomes more noticeable when you haven't used Windows for a while. The lack of viruses and malware is also a relief, no more annoying messages of the virus scanner.

Ubuntu is currently the standard of the Linux desktop, as alternative for Windows and Mac OS X. There are other Linux distributions as well and you can try those as well if you like. It mainly depends on what you want to do with it: text editing, browsing the web, and so on can be done in any distribution but some are more catered towards certain users, such as those with slow computers.

Many Windows applications have a free equivalent that you can use instead. If you're using Firefox to browse the web, you're already settled for browsing the web. For Word, we have OpenOffice and for WordPad, we have gedit, and so on.

For games and other Windows applications that have no free equivalent, you can use Wine (www.winehq.org/). Quite a few games are known to work with that or with only minor issues. In the AppDB, you can see how well a particular application/game is supported: http://appdb.winehq.org/ . For example, I've played Team Fortress 2 through this method and it works pretty well, aside from minor graphical glitches. There are also some games that you can try, like the first-person shooter Urban Terror. If you're looking for really the latest DirectX 10 graphical accomplishments, it probably won't work.

If you have any particular questions, just post them here.

Dual boot vista/ubuntu and try ubuntu for some weeks and then remove the os you don't prefer.

Dual-booting is recommended anyway - sometimes you run into things where you need Windows.

I have to agree with mr. Iplaydink here. If you use a dual boot you can always switch back to windows to play a game if you want to. I've been using a dual boot for quite a while now and I like it a lot. 95% of the time I use windows, but if I feel like using linux for a while (for whatever reason) I can easily switch.

So dual booting is the way to go then. That being said, is there anything special I should know or do before using the Ubuntu install?

Defragment your Vista partition once or twice or you won't be able to repartition your drive properly.

Also, if you're going to do manual partitioning in Ubuntu's installer, make sure you have a partition layout like this:

- An ext4 partition pointing to / (root folder, where everything else goes)
- an ext4 partition pointing to /home (acts as your "my documents" AND application config storage folder). The advantage of having this is that you could later reinstall Ubuntu and not lose any of your app settings or documents.
- A swap partition equal to or greater than the amount of RAM you have. This is important if you wish to have hibernate functionality.

When Ubuntu installed, get Wine. It works pretty well for a fair amount of Windows apps. But don't rely on it when there's Linux native versions or alternatives of software you want/need.

"Defragment your Vista partition once or twice or you won't be able to repartition your drive properly."

I assume this is different from a regular defragment of the hard drive? Sorry for acting helpless, I have no previous experience doing this thing. Not that I knew what about partitions without looking it up.

And the rest of it went over my head just a little bit. I guess I won't be doing the manual.

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<looks in amazement as all these cool people talk about programing>
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<understands nothing>

I boot Ubuntu from an USB drive. Works perfectly.

I assume this is different from a regular defragment of the hard drive?

Nope. Just defragment from Windows. The thing is, data is probably scattered all over your Windows partition, meaning you can't partition it until you have put everything in its place (ie. at the beginning of the partition).

Cool that you're learning more about computers in general by just installing Ubuntu.

As for the whole partitioning bit, you could have Ubuntu automatically pick "install alongside other OSes" and it will partition things for you (though without /home being separate).

As for things you may not be understanding, I used some terms that would be showing up in the installer. Basically telling you what would be best to do without really explaining the terms themselves (well, except for / and /home).

<looks in amazement as all these cool people talk about programing>

Nobody's talking about programming. It's about installing a different OS alongside an existing OS. It's really not that difficult anymore, though some experience with computers and some prerequisite knowledge like what I'm giving is useful.

I boot Ubuntu from an USB drive. Works perfectly.

This works too. This is most easily done from a Live CD, and there are good online instructions on how to do this.

There are some things to be aware of: if you dual-boot besides a pre-installed Windows 7, you may already have the maximum number (four) of primary partitions that a hard-drive can have. The Ubuntu installer won't be able to create the partition in that case.

If so, you need to delete a primary partition and create an extended partition, which can then be divided into several logical partitions. There are guides on the internet on how to do this.

Crap. Failed installing twice from CD. Said something about my cd drive being retarded. Now attempting to install by flash drive I had prepared earlier.

Now about the partitions... I went under the basic option before (both times), and now I'm under manual. There's like 9 things here now. It doesn't look right. I don't want to start messing with things without some confirmation, so here's what I see, what should I delete and do afterwards.

Edit:
To sum up what I already know (or think I know)..

At the bottom the /dev/sdc1 and free space appears to be my flash drive. It wasn't there before and that's why it threw me off.

From what DaVince said, I assume both of the ext4 types and swap types are from the failed installations. So I'm thinking I should get rid of those and start over.

That's exactly correct. Remove all ext4 and swap partitions, then make new ones with the configuration I mentioned before (ext4 partition with mount point / and ext4 partition with mount point /home). Make sure to reserve plenty of space for both.

Bummer about your CD drive not working well (or the disc not being burnt properly)...

By the way... About the free space on your flash drive, this is actually completely unused, unpartitioned space on the drive that will never be used as it is. You can grow the partition in Ubuntu later when you've properly installed that, I'll tell you how once you're that far.

Ok, now it's installed and working. I downloaded WINE as you've recommended. I even got it to open Dink. A small victory indeed. However, when I tried opening Diablo 2: LOD.. I got nothing. BTW I just right click the program and open with WINE. Is that all I need to do or is there more to it?

Now about my browser. I'm used to using opera since it has all my bookmarks and accounts/passwords saved. I tried opening it in WINE. It worked, but my bookmarks and stuff are gone. So I tried the Ubuntu opera and it still wasn't there. Any hope for getting those to work in Ubuntu?

For each Windows application that doesn't work immediately in Wine, you may need to tweak certain settings a bit. You can find more information on Diablo II + Wine in the AppDB: Diablo II in AppDB.

I don't know about Opera but you'll want to use the Linux version of Opera. Use Wine only when no other options are available. In this case, your Opera settings are still on the Windows part of your hard-drive so you'll need to import them from there. There appear to be instructions on how to share Opera settings between Windows and Linux here but that may appear daunting. However, from what I can see the Linux version of Opera just uses the same files so you can also copy the files to the right places for your Linux installation of Opera. Does Opera have an Import/Export feature of Bookmarks and Settings? That may even be easier if you export on Windows and import on Linux. Edit: someone wrote a program for that, you could try that; the description even explicitly mentions moving settings between OSes.

Now opera is working the way I want it. Thanks a bunch.

On to the next problem

I was going to install novashell since I've been playing with it for the past few days, but it doesn't work when I try to run it. Upon further inspection, it says that for linux, something called clanlib 1.0 is required. So I follow that link and download that file. It's a bunch of files that I need to compile or something? Zero experience in anything like that. On top of that, any instructions on how to do that are way over my head. Can't run it in WINE either. This just makes me feel dumb.

Edit:
Derr, I looked it up in the software center and installed from there. That works.

Use the more complicated version of the software center, Synaptic, to get libraries, and search for it in there. You almost never have to actually *download* libs or software from websites.

I'm seeing a library called clanlib2 in the repos, try that before anything else. If that failed, yes, you'll have to compile. (Note: this is pretty rare.)

In that case, before anything else, install build-essentials (from Synaptic) so you make your system actually able to compile code in the first place. Then open the "INSTALL" file that comes with your downloaded tarball (the tar.gz or tar.bz2 file) with a text editor for further instructions on how to install that specific software.