Moving from Windows to Ubuntu

mattyjim123

mattyjim123

mattyjim123

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So, I'm sick of windows.

I would REALLY love to move to ubuntu... and I would in an instant...
But, I use programs that are only windows compatible.

Does wine really work well? Is it buggy?

Is there any way I can move from Windows to Ubuntu, and still be able to run the games and programs that don't have linux support. Basically, I want to somehow do away with the core windows system, but keep some of the programs.

There probably isn't a way, but worth a shot.
Thanks for any help
 
mattyjim123 said:
But what about running games? Will that not impede the performance by a lot?
Click to expand...

Probably.

As kkelly says, if there's games you still play that will require Wine, dual boot. I did. Wine did nothing but give me a headache trying to get everything working as it would on Windows (particularly EVE Online). It was easier to just restart and jump into Windows. But I completely ditched Windows, so the only games I play now are those with Linux ports. Thankfully, most of what I play had Linux ports (steam / source). The only game I really miss is ARMA3. But I can live without it, if it means no Windows.
 
If windows gaming is important dual booting is best. You could keep a small windows boot drive and use a fat32 formatted drive for storing all shared data that you could easily have read and write access to from Linux. I know it's possible from VMWare, but I've also seen being able to run a Windows VM from a linux install of virtual box so you may be able to also run the "real" install of windows as a VM for those programs that you don't need full windows performance for (and then boot into full windows as well)
 
If it wasn't for games I'd use Ubuntu exclusively.
There is pretty much an equivalent to most apps now in Ubuntu that you can get in Windows and as said, if you really need a windows app a VB is the way forwards.
 
I dual boot windows and Mint, unfortunately neither wine or VMs give great performance results in some programs.

My main windows uses are games CS:GO battlefield etc and some of the Adobe apps like Photoshop.

To be honest I still also get issues with the Nvidia proprietary drivers with my 1440p monitor in Mint, so I've reverted back to the nouveu driver.

E-I
 
On my old PC I used to use Virtual box and it’s excellent. It has come a long way over the years. Takes a bit of setting up like printers USB ports etc but it is great. It is not useful for games. Windows will run is slower but depends on your hardware so the actual speed you get out of it might be more than sufficient.

Wine is ok but I think Virtual box is a lot better. I use wine for simple executables. For more complex problems wine can be buggy. I had a lot of trouble getting Rosetta stone to work in Wine. You get there eventually but it seems pointless when VB will do it correctly. Of course the big drawback is that you actually need a copy of Windows OS whereas in wine you don’t

I would not remove Windows fully just yet. Ubuntu is not an all singing all dancing system and doesn’t replace everything with windows. Libre office is good but it is not 100% compatible with MS Office especially if you have VBA code or complex pivot tables. Furthermore I just can’t be assed learned Libra Office fully given I know excel inside out. If you do coding like I do on Microsoft visual Studio (C#), Ubuntu is a no go. I was playing about with the Asus ROG MB software last night and it’s just a lot easier to do it in windows.

On my new build I have installed Windows and Ubuntu on a single SSD and have a dual boot option. It’s easier to install windows first, create space on the Hard disk and then install Ubuntu. Best do it on a bootable flash drive as you might need a few goes because windows hasn’t made installing Ubuntu easy by any means. For data I have two hard disks formatted to NTFS so can be read on both Windows and Linux. One thing I must do is ensure that the windows partition is not automatically mounted in Ubuntu as I don’t want to accidently delete some files. It’s worth labelling your disks using gparted in Ubuntu so you know exactly what disk you are playing about with.
 
Wine is really hit or miss depending on the game. Some work as well as they do on windows (WoW works fantastically, for instance) others refuse to work at all. If you're a gamer, I'd highly suggest not using Linux as your only OS. Generally speaking performance in WINE is usually around 60% that of windows for nvidia gpus and 40% for AMD gpus ( source: http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?px=MTU5MjA&page=news_item ) so WINE "isn't there yet" as a proper replacement. Some games do run at near native speeds though. If anything WoW is faster in certain scenarios for me under wine.

If you're doing a new build, and research the hardware carefully, getting ~99% performance inside a virual machine is possible: http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?t=112013 although it's a bit tricky to set up.
 
Just drop any thoughts of Wine... it's just a fudge up and unless your a superstar newbie it's almost impossible to get working.

Just dual boot and flip back and forth as needed. May I suggest that when you dual boot. .. install your Linux flavour of choice to a separate drive. That way... when it goes pear shaped. .. and it will.. a simple boot manager repair and you have a untainted Win install to at least do something with.

Even a trial run on a old laptop will bear dividends in learning the ropes.

And forget about running games in VB or VM's unless your running some serious hardware and large chunks of RAM... It won't work
 
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You dont need wine no more for games if you are prepared to run at least one windows box that can run games and hide it under a desk somewhere. Steam Streaming allows you to stream every PC game made that works on that current version of windows. Add all your old games to steam as a non stream game and stream every single one to your linux box even over wireless. WIN
 
Essexraptor said:
Just drop any thoughts of Wine... it's just a fudge up and unless your a superstar newbie it's almost impossible to get working.
Click to expand...


I disagree. For a lot of games it really is as simple as installing wine then running

wine game.exe

Sometimes it's worth looking up specific configuration online but I've found a lot of the time it just works. This definitely was not the case a couple of years ago, however.
 
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