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Ten Tips for Windows users making the switch to Linux

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zridling:
Here are ten tips for Windows users who are considering making the switch to Linux. Details on each point and helpful links after the jump. If I can make the switch from Windows to GNU/Linux, anyone can. I’m not a programmer, not an expert, nor do I have time to endlessly futz with my system. Based on my experience over the past year, these tips will smooth your transition from Win to Lin.


01. KEEP YOUR OLD WINDOWS MACHINE/PARTITION INTACT
You may want some training wheels at first.

02. EXPECT A LEARNING CURVE AT FIRST
If I can make the switch, anyone can! Immersion is your best friend.

03. DON’T EXPECT LINUX TO BE JUST LIKE WINDOWS
It’s better, and you’ll soon see why.

04. WHETHER YOU USE UBUNTU OR NOT, PERUSE THEIR FORUMS TO GAIN KNOWLEDGE
Some Ubuntu forum members have written great tutorials on the intricacies of fstab, grub, virtualization, customization, etc.

05. DON’T BE AFRAID TO EXPERIMENT
It’s harder than you think to take down a Linux machine.

06. HELP IS AS NEAR AS YOUR KEYBOARD
There are forums. There are Usenet groups. There’s Google, of course. Better is Google/Linux. In the end, it’s a community relationship, not a customer relationship. (A lot like DC!)

07. TAKE ADVANTAGE OF CROSS-PLATFORM SOFTWARE
You know more than you think you do, since you may already be using Firefox/Opera/Chrome or OpenOffice or 7-Zip/RAR or GIMP or MySQL or Beyond Compare or XnView/Picasa or Kompozer or FileZilla… I could do this all day.

08. TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THE CLOUD
Don’t laugh. Linux is built for cloud computing, mobile computing, thick computing, Hadron colliders, and even phones!

09. LET OTHERS KNOW YOU’VE SWITCHED TO LINUX, BUT DON’T BE A JERK ABOUT IT
Don’t be "that guy." Mac users have been this way and the whole routine gets old by the second sentence. Enjoy Linux for what it is — great code, stable OS, fast platform — not for what it’s not (Windows).

10. THE COMMAND LINE AND SHELL IS YOUR BEST FRIEND
A little command line knowledge goes a long way, but you will likely use it far less than you expect to. Its power is irresistible because it’s so efficient.

More...

cranioscopical:
Thanks, Zaine.  This will be an interesting one to follow...

fenixproductions:
Wise thoughts but never worked for me. Everytime I've tried to switch there were more than 3 additional points against me which I couldn't pass right.

Why "additional"? Because 9th was always in the air :(

After few years of trying I don't see the point to change from XP.

f0dder:
I wouldn't mind moving away from Windows, because I'm certainly not a fan of Microsoft at large, the DRM (even though that's not just Microsoft's fault), the proprietary file formats etc. But I don't want to move away when all the alternatives are inferior. Linux is not great code. Kernel and other parts might be OK, but when you start digging into the other components that make up a distribution, and start looking at some of the bitchfights... ugh. Microsoft certainly isn't perfect, but moving to that kind of infantility?

I had actually planned to dual-boot my new laptop with Xubuntu and give it a serious try, but of course the thing doesn't want to install - weird grub errors I've never seen before, and haven't been able to track down the source of. And can't give GRUB a try since, for some reason, it wants to grab that off the net. And while the pretty standard realtek gigabit NIC is detected by the kernel, there's no connectivity - some kernel IRQ routing fuckup is my guess, considering the insane number reported in /proc/interrupts .

And that's just the point where I give up. I don't want to go through a zillion hoops just to do simple things. I've used linux since RedHat 5.1, I've messed with debian, slackware, archlinux, gentoo, x/k/ubuntu and a couple of others. I've usually been able to make them do what I wanted (including DSL router/firewall, root-encrypted fileserver, various development support needs like apache/php/mysql/postgres/subversion/redmine etc.), but there's always been too much bloody work involved.

No filesystem hierarchy standard that everybody agrees on. And even when there's a somewhat similar layout, subtle (or not so subtle!) things are handled differently. A zillion different package managers, not to mention that Perl, Python and Ruby have their own systems. Makes me want to scream and knock my head against the wall.

But at least for server use, it makes sense. I can run the system headless and SSH to it, which is more efficient across the internet than remote desktop. And once you've spent all the frustrated time getting things working and firewalled the stuff, you can often let the systems sit by unattended for years (same with Windows, though. Both systems obviously need to be updated when there's vulnerable software).

But for desktops? Too much bloody work, I'd have to spend time hunting for replacement software (some of it beta and/or pretty inferior to what I have - show me a competitor to Visual Studio that isn't half-baked), and to what benefit? Sure, "freedom" - whatever that means.

Sorry for the rant, but I get frustrated when I see people claiming it's easy and full of joy to 'switch over'. Sure, it can work for some people - my mum could probably be happy with an Ubuntu, she'd still be able to play flash games, do her java-enabled web banking, surf the net, use OpenOffice and send/receive mails. And you don't need to "shop for compatible hardware" in the same sense as in the early years. But for me it's just too much frustration to be worth it :(

Oh, and that was just from the end-user's perspective. I won't go into the issues of GPL and program-for-a-living now, but that's another thing that I'm pretty skeptical about, to put it mildly.

fenixproductions:
2f0dder
100% agree.

In my case, many times the scheme was simple: Live CDs working flawless but when it goes to install... kernel panic.

He. Once I couldn't get my net working after HDD install and the only help I get was: "Google it, f*n n00b". OK, I did it. After dozen of hours in net cafeterias and many days of trying, the only thing I learnt was that "It is my fault for buying crappy wireless card". Well, it worked under Windows and any Live distro I've ever tried.

As I wrote in previous post: too many nines which drove me back to MS software. It is stupid but many times I felt too strange seeing looks full of disgust from "gurus", after they discovered that I own full-payed version of XP. It is not my pair of boots being somewhere unwelcome.

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