Thinking about switching to Linux?
Well the time has come… I use the computer fairly often… surfing the web.. listening to music… I’m not much of a gamer.. however i know there is enough gaming between open source linux compatible games and my good old xbox to keep my occupied… heres where I need some help.
The only thing I care about on my xp is my music… I have about thirty gb… also… if I’m going to switch .. I think I want to go all the way.. I like the dual boot concept.. except my hardrive space is precious.. and Im afraid I would run out if I dual boot… will I have any regrets? Xubuntu or ubuntu? I’m a new user but pretty tech savy.. thanks
Tagged with: boot concept • compatible games • dual boot • gamer • gb • hardrive space • Linux • listening to music • Open Source • regrets • xbox • xubuntu
Filed under: Open Source
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If you are thinking about using Linux with your music library, you should realize a couple things. First, Linux is free, open-source software. Because of that, it works best with open standards. MP3s and OGGs should work fine. Other music fromats may not work on open systems because their software requires licensing.
Second, the music itself may have Digital Rights Management (DRM) encoded into it. So you may have to pay for the music before you listen to it. Linux normally doesn’t work with these files either.
So, in short, if you had to pay for your music playing software, or you had to pay for the music itself, you might have problems. If they will play under a LiveCD version of Linux, you should be perfectly fine.
First, regardless of what anyone might tell you, it is not a good idea to dual boot.
My suggestion is either get another hard drive to install Linux on or get an external one.
If you are tech savy use google to get good, solid information.
If you don’t have the harddisk space, dual-booting isn’t really an option is it. I have dual-booted every machine I have ever owned and never had a problem. I had a desktop put together here in VN with a harddisk for XP and a harddisk for Linux. I don’t notice any performance difference between that system (which uses grub) and any of the other machines (which use grub).
If you jump off the deep end and switch to linux, zapping windoze, you will come back and complain. If you dual-boot, tinker for a while and like what you see, you can always make that final step when the time is right.
If you don’t backup your data, don’t read a whole lot more than you have so far, and understand the process, the odds are you will be really unhappy when you lose it all!
I have installed/reinstalled dual-boot setups maybe 20 times if not more, and no lost data, no sad tales. But the yahoo forums are full of people who didn’t know what they were doing, or why they were doing it. Don’t be in that group –
read, heed and proceed