What's it like to run a Linux OS when you only have a Windows background?
Saturday, July 24th, 2010 at
06:48
Can I go about buying software and/or downloading it? And have all my on-line accounts or my browsers the same?
thx all, I’m thinking I’m going to go with that.
Tagged with: buying software • line accounts • thx
Filed under: Linux
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Much of the basic functionality is exactly the same.
Buying/Downloading/Installing:
1. Buying: The majority of the things you will need are free.
2. Downloading: software downloads works two ways
A. you can download directly from the website
B. There is a add program menu in many distros that will download and install programs for you from a list.
3. Installing:
A. Programs will generally have to be made for linux to run without issue. So for example itunes will not work on linux because there is no linux version
B. There is a program that lets you run windows programs on linux called wine.
For example: Wine would allow you to run Microsoft office in linux
Wine note: Some programs require special configurations to work properly and these configuration setting are listed on
http://www.winehq.org/ this should not be difficult for a experienced windows user.
Browsers\Online accounts:
1. You can use many of the browsers available in windows in linux. For example: chrome, firefox,.opera
2. Internet explorer will not be a real option , you can run it using wine but it not very stable.
Not being able to use internet explorer can be a problem if a site you use requires it that brings us to the next issue, your online accounts.
3. Your online accounts should all work provided they don’t need internet explorer.
For example: Government websites are notorious for only working in internet explorer , sites that require propriety Microsoft protocols , many business applications will only function with ie.
If you could post the sites where you have online accounts I could tell you if they would work.
The best option for someone starting out is to use both linux and windows.
Here is a simple way to try it out
http://wubi-installer.org/
wubi installs linux like a program so to remove it all you have to do is go to the uninstall menu in windows.
the next time you restart you computer you will have the option of Linux and windows.
In terms of the user interface, its very similar. Linux is open-source, and so is the vast majority of the software written for it, which means you won’t be buying anything really.
Your online accounts probably won’t change, but you’ll be using different browsers with the same functionality. And installing new software is easy. For a lot of Linux distributions, there are tools that automatically link you to an archive of utilities you can download and install in one command line.
All on-line accounts are stored on remote servers, not your computer. Most browsers that are available on windows are also available for linux. Linux does not work the same way as most operating systems in that it is completely open-source and is completely free. It comes in many different arrangements, or distributions. Check out http://www.Linux.com for more information and a list of distributions.
Linux is the best to me
If you are a competent windows user, you should have no problem picking up Linux, especially if you start with a Distro like Ubuntu, which is aimed at people like you.
The great thing about Linux is that when you want to download some software, you can search within the operating system itself and will be able to find almost anything you would ever need. This is another reason Ubuntu is great for new users, because they have a lot of programs in their repositories.