Vista or Ubuntu...Help me choose...

.Kencs

.Kencs

.Kencs

Soldato
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14 Oct 2007
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I like Windows as you can get a lot of programs to work with it, but I use MSN Messenger and Photoshop a lot, can these be used with Ubuntu?
I want to completely get rid of Windows, ONLY if Photoshop and MSN will work to Ubuntu.

Also, has anyone tried Linux Mint yet? If so, what's it like?
 
I switched to ubuntu from xp about 6 months ago when i got an acer aspire one and have never looked back

As for msn there is plenty of alternatives such as nimbuzz or amsn and although ubuntu has the WINE windows compatibility layer and will run photoshop i'd recommend using VMware or Sun virtual box to run xp as a virtual machine for photoshop

regards
 
frozennova said:
I switched to ubuntu from xp about 6 months ago when i got an acer aspire one and have never looked back

As for msn there is plenty of alternatives such as nimbuzz or amsn and although ubuntu has the WINE windows compatibility layer and will run photoshop i'd recommend using VMware or Sun virtual box to run xp as a virtual machine for photoshop

regards
Click to expand...

Thanks mate...I'll stick to my Dual-Boot for the time being :)
 
I prefer Pidgin to be honest, but it's personal taste. If it doesn't have to be Photoshop then GIMP, Paint.net or SumoPaint are good alternatives.
 
Looks like you would be happier to dual boot at the moment - Linux should be about having fun (enjoying your os) among other benefits. It took me a while to fully ditch windows (a few months of dual booting).

As mentioned Pidgin and the GIMP are great programmes, haven't really tried the others. You could easily install the GIMP natively in Windows to see if you would get on with it :)
 
Virtual Machines are better than Dual Boot IMO as you dont need to reboot to use your windows apps, and with sun virtual box and the guest additions you can seamlessly integrate your windows os into the ubuntu desktop so it intefers with your work in ubuntu less
 
I would also recommend just using ubuntu with pidgin for msn. Pidgin is superior in many ways. Then instead of dual booting use virtualbox to run windows, virtualbox runs flawlessy I use it exclusively for Photoshop and Microsoft office. It's super fast, no restarting and as some have said it will just be like you are running a native install.

One other feature that is neat with virtualbox is that you can then simply keep a copy of the virtual machine image file (like an iso file) and if you ever get a new computer or reformat you just import that file to virtualbox on your new computer and your at the same place you left off and don't have to spend the good part of a day installing windows from scratch. It's a feature I have used several times :)
 
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zinc said:
I would also recommend just using ubuntu with pidgin for msn. Pidgin is superior in many ways. Then instead of dual booting use virtualbox to run windows, virtualbox runs flawlessy I use it exclusively for Photoshop and Microsoft office. It's super fast, no restarting and as some have said it will just be like you are running a native install.

One other feature that is neat with virtualbox is that you can then simply keep a copy of the virtual machine image file (like an iso file) and if you ever get a new computer or reformat you just import that file to virtualbox on your new computer and your at the same place you left off and don't have to spend the good part of a day installing windows from scratch. It's a feature I have used several times :)
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Thanks :)

I went to the Pidgin site, followed what it said on their, and entered the commands into Terminal, it said it has finished, I then had to run an Update, I did that, it found some update for Pidgin, I installed updates but can not find Pidgin anywhere on my system :/
 
Code: 
sudo apt-get install pidgin
would have been easier, but nevermind now. At a guess it's not in gnome menu because you didn't install it the normal way (linux doesn't really do digging through strange websites to find code in windows fashion). What happens if you type
Code: 
pidgin &
into a terminal (and hit enter)?

pidgin was dropped in favour of empathy for the last version of ubuntu, not sure why. I tend to use emesene, installed using apt-get, which is very similar to msn messenger and consequently crap in much the same ways as msn.

Virtualbox is an amazing piece of software. Despite this, and depending on how advanced your requirements are, you may find adapting to gimp (gnu image manipulation program) quite pleasant. It's probably already installed too.
 
It said it wasn't installed, yet I did it 3 times.

I put in the install command line you suggested and it works fine :) How comes Linux relies on command lines for everything? Can't they make things simple lol...

Also, has anyone heard of k3b?
I have looked at installing it but again its all this long winded coding, which I don't fully understand. Is there a command line that will do it all for you?
 
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From my experience you rarely have to resort to the command line, even then it's actually easier that the alternative. I've used Mint, which has a fantastic graphical software and package manager that contain pretty much everything you'd ever want. But what people fail to realise is that when you think about it, entering a few lines of text is actually easier than trawling through pages of stuff just to get what you want.

k3b is a burning software is it not?

Code: 
sudo apt-get install k3b

Should work. Just to explain a little, 'sudo' gives you 'administrator privileges', 'apt-get' is the 'program' of sorts, 'install' tells it what to do and 'k3b' is obviously what to install.
 
There is also emesene [edit] Someone above already mentioned it.

I'll split that up so you get the jist...

Em Es Ene

Ps Cs2 works ok in wine on my machine, although the clone tool sometimes acts weird when compiz is enabled as alt does it's own thing.

For people used to doing file management the windows way you can press left alt F2 and type gksudo nautilus. But you can now royally screw things up !!

K3B is an awesome proggie ... But (there's always a but). You have to install all the extra plugins. You wont find out about those until you want to do something and it wont work because it needs "said" plugin.. Then it's a Googling you will go !!
 
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.Kencs said:
It said it wasn't installed, yet I did it 3 times.

I put in the install command line you suggested and it works fine :) How comes Linux relies on command lines for everything? Can't they make things simple lol...
Click to expand...

As superewza also said you do not have to use commands to install, you have the software center under applications or synaptic which are both just like app stores.

The good thing about Linux is that everything is centralised on trusted servers and when you put in a command or use a gui program to install the application it comes from a secure and trusted source, no need to go exploring the web for it. Then the update managers Linux has is tied in with it as well so your operating system and all your applications are updated from that centralised repository automatically. No need for you to go out to all your drivers and applications websites to download the new version. I would say this is far better in many ways.

You may find that on forums and websites people tend to use command line as it's easier to just say apt-get install pidgin than type a few paragraphs of text to explain how to install it an alternative way.
 
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Personally I don't feel comfortable pushing Linux where not appropriate. If you only need a very good Photoshop-like app GIMP will be fine. If you need Photoshop itself, it wont. Wine appdb shows that the last two versions do not work under wine. The last one that does is 9.0 (CS2).

You could always run it through a virtualised Windows under Linux but you will incurr a performance hit. If you're the kind of person that specifically needs Photoshop and no alternative is acceptable you will likely need that performance.

Msn is a non issue as other people mentioned and mint is a great choice for a newbie, makes things very straightforward for you.

I would recommend trying GIMP under Windows first and if you find this acceptable then switch to Linux, if not, don't. Here is a link to the website
 
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Good to hear pidgin is behaving itself. The version on their website is probably different to the official ubuntu one, so incompatibilities aren't all that surprising.

I wouldn't expect gimp to run anything like as well in windows as it does under linux, but perhaps it will do.

Instead of sudo apt-get you can try
Code: 
sudo synaptic &
which opens the same thing as "system => administration => synaptic package manager" from the menus. This is a pretty graphical tool for installing software if you don't like the command line.

If photoshop specifically is required, xp in virtualbox doesn't perform so differently to a normal xp install. As long as 3D work is not involved I haven't noticed any difference between visualised and native.

The most windows-like installation I do routinely is virtualbox as the open source version is missing bits I use. If you go here and pick the version that matches your install (i.e. 32bit or 64bit) it'll download, and a graphical program will open and install it along with any dependencies for you. The end result is very similar to using apt-get, it'll turn up under "applications" and so forth.
 
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