Update: 2007.10.12 - Alternative to Windows - Investigation Journal


With the ever increasing cost of the Windows operating system I have decided to experiment with Ubuntu. A Windows machine now requires close to $500 just for software to build a working machine.


XP Pro 140

Virus Software 80

Office 200

and more


Ubuntu is free and includes Open Office which I find to be superior to MS Office. Virus software is unnecessary as Linux-Ubuntu has no virus problems. With the advent of Wine many pieces of Windows software can be run on Ubuntu. I had an older machine that I have dedicated to this project. I have wanted to see what can be done with this free operating system so I installed it on a machine which is an AMD 3300 processor with 512megs of ram. This is the bare minimum for a Windows system but Ubuntu is much more efficient in the use of hardware and it should work well despite the fact that this is a somewhat anemic machine.  For an ISO of the installation disk download from here.  You will have to do this from a High Speed internet conection as it is 700mb.

http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/download


I have installed with the user name: user

and the password: user

 

I spent several days trying to get the machine to play DVD's. Numerous searches for the PlugIns necessary yielded some of the most confusing and inadequate instructions I have ever experienced. I finally downloaded a program called “Easy Ubuntu” which fixed all the problems. In the future I will make the download and install of this software a priority.        

http://easyubuntu.freecontrib.org/get.html

 To date I have been able to do the following on this machine.

Edit and print a text file.

Surf the Internet with Firefox

Access my Gmail and reply

      I have also installed a GMAIL notifier.

http://www.ubuntugeek.com/gmail-notifier-for-your-ubuntu-desktop.html

Run my HP scanner

Play a CD

Listen to MP3 files

Rip an audio CD and encode to MP3

Display a commercial DVD

Do a screen capture and print it

Play Chess

 

Run numerous Windows programs under Wine

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Wine

For a lot of interesting info on wine:

http://frankscorner.org/index.php?p=dvdshrink32

 

Programs that I have working under Wine: 

 

DVD Shrink - Rip a DVD to disk. No problem

 

DVD decrypter  - To make it recognize drives see:

http://nikdoof.net/perma/using-dvd-decrypter-on-ubuntu-wine

DVD2AVI - Convert VOB files to an AVI - Problems creating  .d2v files

TMPGenc.exe - Encode an AVI to MPEG and convert AVI to single frames

 

Digimorph.exe - Manipulate a .BMP


My experiment with Ubuntu is not comprehensive or complete but based upon what I have seen I believe it to be a low cost alternative to M$.

 

I am now thinking of building a 64bit machine using Ubuntu. There are some Windows programs that I must be able to use so installation of Wine is a necessity. This has been a project frought with difficulty but I recently found this and I am going to give it a try.

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/WineForAMD64

 

Wine did not run the programs I require under Ubuntu AMD64 I read much info on making it work but have decided it is easier to go back to the Ubuntu 32bit which I know worked.

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This is a new machine out of the box 

MSI bare bones box - MSI K9VGM-V

AMD 4600 X2 processor

1gig Ram 

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So here is the order of events for this fourth install.  By having this list on my Web Page I can use it to access the various sites to do the install  >

 

http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/download

The operating system Download

I have installed with the user name: user

and the password: user

 

http://easyubuntu.freecontrib.org/get.html

Pluggins to play DVD and MP3

 

http://www.ubuntugeek.com/widows-ntfs-partitions-readwrite-support-made-easy-in-ubuntu-feisty.html

Make NTFS drives read write

 

http://www.ubuntugeek.com/gmail-notifier-for-your-ubuntu-desktop.html

Install my notifier for GMAIL

 

https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/feisty/+package/libncurses5-dev 

I have recently dug out some of the old C++ source code I wrote under Mandrake which utilized the header file #include <ncurses.h>.  Ubuntu Feisty Fawn did not contain this so I had to download and install.



https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Wine

Program to run Windows programs

 

Programs that I presently have working with Wine and some notes: 

 

DVD Shrink - Install easy 

 

DVD decrypter - Would not recognize DVD drive corrected with: 

http://nikdoof.net/perma/using-dvd-decrypter-on-ubuntu-wine


DVD2AVI - Convert VOB files to an AVI - Problems creating  .d2v files

 

TMPGenc.exe - Encode an AVI to MPEG and convert AVI to single frames

 

Digimorph.exe - Manipulate a .BMP

 

This install took many days on previous occasions but this time it was accomplished in about 4 hours.

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One major drawback of Ubuntu is the lack of support for dial up modems.   Controller modems that connect through the serial port are said to work well but most newer machines have no serial port.  Win modems require special drivers which require internet access to implement a real catch22.  I read a lot of information relating to this and I have been left more confused.  It would seem that someone should provide an out of the box solution for this problem.  I still have no solution for this problem.