Calling all computer geeks! :-)

[stonebender]

I'm thinking about going to open source and getting rid of as much Windows stuff as possible. I've been thinking about it for a while, but the thing that stopped me was voice input software. I love my DragonDictate and really don't want to give up voice input. I now have a couple of leads to open source voice input that may very well work for me. So now I'm looking for any advice, warning signs, handholding that my friends list can offer. A few questions to start with: How much trouble did people have moving from Windows to Linux? Any versions of Linux people prefer? Is there anything I should watch out for? Any plug ins, utilities, programs should I make sure I get? Remember, I am not a very technical person, nor do I play one on TV. I think of myself as a better than average computer user, but anyone who really knows anything about computers is way ahead of me. Am I correct that iTunes will work on Linux? I am worried that some of my multimedia stuff won't work. Things like drivers for my DVD/CD players need to work. I hope there is some Zip program and WinRAR that works with Linux. Oh, and I really need an on-screen keyboard that will work too. I will probably think of other questions but that's a good start.

Comments

[serenejournal.livejournal.com]

I find Ubuntu as easy to use as Windows, and it's set up to be similar in look and feel. However, I have a dual-boot system so I can boot up Windows if I want to, because the following stuff won't work in Linux:

Netflix Watch Instantly
Quicken software
Anything that requires Internet Explorer (because I don't have that in my Ubuntu partition)

Ubuntu actually handles the driver thing better than Windows does, and zips things up (and unzips them) just fine. I use the built-in media players, so I don't know about iTunes.

[stonebender.livejournal.com]

Humm, Netflix not working is a problem. I'm pretty close to maxing out my hard drive now. Maybe I should wait, get a bigger hard drive and partition it like you did. I have no idea how that would work. I was kind of hoping I could just make a full changeover, but that may still not be possible.

[daze39.livejournal.com]

I'd say go ahead and get a big hard drive (they're astonishingly cheap anymore), add it to your system as an additional drive, and partition it as desired for the Linux installation. You should be able to set things up so that you can leave your Windows installation undisturbed, and select either OS at startup.

It should be possible to mount the Windows drive on your Linux directory structure (so that the files in e.g. c:\windows\system32 could be found somewhere such as /my_windows_drive/windows/system32/) - this gives you a back door into your extant data so you can get at your old files from the new system.

[hel]

http://www.tatanka.com.br/ Ies4linux is awesome.
Netflix is supposedly working on a watch instantly for linux solution. The problem is DRM.
I use KMyMoney for financial software. To use it in ubuntu instead of kubuntu, you'd just need to install the KDE libraries, which the package manager will do for you.

[gconnor.livejournal.com]

I have heard good things about WINE, which is an emulator that lets you run Windows programs under Linux. I haven't used it myself, but my understanding is that most Windows programs will just work (even games, which is a good sign that performance is probably OK and sound stuff probably works well).

A good first step might be installing Linux in a dual-boot configuration (either in a partition on your disk, or on a completely separate disk) so you can flip back and forth and try stuff. If dual-boot works, run that way for a while until you figure out whether all your apps will work right (or reasonable replacements can be found). If Dragon works within WINE that would be a good test. If you find yourself booting to linux all the time, then you can decide to ditch MS windows, or just keep the copy of Windows you've already bought as a backup plan and just not buy more :)

[necturus.livejournal.com]

I've used Wine. It's an imperfect solution; most Windows programs I've tried don't work with it. By finding and installing all the .DLL files required by any particular program, you may be able to get it to work, but unless you know what .DLL's you need, the process becomes well nigh impossible. I spent several hours a couple years ago trying to get Qualitap, a program used to analyze radio ratings, to run under Wine, before ultimately giving up. There were too many fixme() errors, and no clue where to look for the missing code.

If you buy Wine from CodeWeavers, it'll come with the .DLL's to work with Office and some games; otherwise, forget it.

[johnpalmer.livejournal.com]

Nowadays, a lot of folks will create a virtual machine to run another OS. In Windows, that's easy with Virtual PC being available for free download. There are similar programs for Linux, but they're not necessarily as easy.

But it requires a modern-ish machine, and a hard drive big enough to hold a new machine's data.

[hitchhiker.livejournal.com]

and a fair amount of ram (2gb at the very least)

[stonebender.livejournal.com]

Well, I have that at least.

[stonebender.livejournal.com]

Is it hard to set up a dual boot? How do you you switch from one to the other?

[hel]

When installing any modern linux distro, the installation process will set up the dual boot, either on its own, or walking you through it. To switch from one to the other, there's a menu when you start the computer which lists the options, and you select, and then the computer boots into that OS.

[johnpalmer.livejournal.com]

Nod. And you can pick which is the default. This is important to keep in mind. I keep forgetting to set my default to XP, which is a source of continuing annoyance, since if I reboot, and walk away, it boots into Vista.

(I should be embarrassed that, as a Microsof blue badge, I still hate having that happen :-).)

[hel]

Easy enough to fix tho. Quick text file edit and you're good to go!
I don't get why people prefer XP to vista. I like vista well enough. I see nothing in particular to recommend it over XP, they seem about the same to me. Then again, I didn't start using vista til long after it'd launched, and I was already a mostly full time linux user by then.

[veryfineredwine.livejournal.com]

iTunes won't work. I use banshee instead. http://banshee-project.org/
File compression is pretty common; I use archive manager and it supports stuff I've never heard of. I don't know what's out there for making a computer more accessible as I don't need it, but a quick search reveals: gnome-voice-control.

I run ubuntu, and during installation it recognised that I had stuff in c:\Documents and Settings\name\Documents... and moved it into \home\dawn. Very nice. https://help.ubuntu.com/8.10/switching/index.html documents the process of switching and dual booting.

Oh, and serene: gnucash. Runs under windows and linux, and if the spreadsheet (data) is in your windows partition, you can use the same data files in either environment.

Good luck.

[necturus.livejournal.com]

I'm not aware of an iTunes for Linux, although there are a number of Linux programs that resemble it.

DVD and CD drives seem to be well supported, at least by Ubuntu, my Linux of choice.

Zip isn't a problem; I've no experience with WinRAR, though.

As far as multimedia goes, Web sites that require Silverlight won't work, but most others will. If you are running 64-bit Linux on an AMD64-based machine, Flash is *very* buggy; many Web sites (e.g. dailykos.com, nytimes.com, wsj.com) will cause Firefox to crash. As far as I know, 64-bit Flash is still an alpha pre-release.

On 32-bit x86 systems, Flash is not a problem.

I've never tried to use an on-screen keyboard, but suspect that such a thing exists.

I am using Ubuntu 8.04.1 ("Hardy Heron") -- not the latest version, but the latest with long-term support. It's an easy install and can be run from a CD.

[stonebender.livejournal.com]

Cool, thanks!

[hel]

http://lifehacker.com/5152266/moonlight-10-gives-linux-users-silverlight-10-compatability Silverlight 1 firefox plugin. They're still working on silverlight 2. :)

[ailbhe]

Rob says that what I used 8 years ago "used an IBM voice recognition engine with a GNOME front-end." I ran it on Debian but it would have been easier on Red Hat.

I was never able to keep the American accent up long enough to find it really useful though.

[stonebender.livejournal.com]

*nod* That's what's good about DragonDictate Naturally Speaking, with some patience, it will learn how you speak.

[someotherguy.livejournal.com]

ubuntu does have some sort of voice recognition available, but I don't know how good it is. They also have at least one on-screen keyboard plus some sort of predictive text entry system that is supposed to be usable with a just a mouse.

Ubuntu can be run from a CD, so you might be able to try it out without doing anything to your system. Not sure if you can activate the accessibility stuff easily in that mode.

I can set up accessibility on my laptop and send it over for you to try sometime, if you like.

[stonebender.livejournal.com]

Thanks, Let me see what I can work out on my own first (I'm such an independent SOB :) If it gets too frustrating, I'll take you up on your offer. I did remember one more thing that has to work in Linux, my Kensington Turbo Mouse or something like it.

migrating to linux

[pir-anha.livejournal.com]

i run debian, but from everything i hear, ubuntu is the new king of linux distros, and quite easy to use. it even has a migration assistant. find yourself a few good guides, and make yourself a plan. here's a link to get started: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/SwitchingToUbuntu/FromWindows

dual-boot seems to me a sensible first step; that way you can start to experiment with linux while still having your familiar windows stuff to fall back on when it gets too frustrating. get a big hard drive; they're cheap now.

wine can be quite helpful, and especially so since google has been putting support into it. itunes runs under wine, but with problems. dragon seems to have more problems, but also runs in part. in general, expect to have to fiddle if you want to run actual windows apps; i've found it more worthwhile to look for native replacement programs. you can check application support and status here: http://appdb.winehq.org/

here's a quick Q&A on installing DNS on linux: http://www.speechcomputing.com/node/1751 for informational purposes.

Re: migrating to linux

[stonebender.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the advice and links!

[trixtah.livejournal.com]

I second all the Ubuntu recommendations, as well as the dual-boot suggestino.

For iTunes-like functionality (ie. a media manager), there are any number of programs that will play anything (more formats than iTunes will), such as Banshee, Amarok (my favourite), Exaile, and so on.

As others have said, there should be no problem with media drivers for DVD and CD players, or archive files. Playing DVDs might require installing DeCSS to unscramble encrypted DVDs, but that's very easily done in Ubuntu.

Dragon software apparently runs under Wine - voice support in Linux is still rudimentary, alas, although if you've got some leads, great.

The onscreen keyboard in Ubuntu is called "onBoard" - a bunch of accessibility tools are also contained in a module called "Orca", but I think you can enable what you like from the Control Panel anyway (I'm not running Ubuntu at the moment, myself).

[stonebender.livejournal.com]

I'll do some checking, I hope I can easily transfer my music to one of the other programs. I'd hate to reload all my CD's. Thanks for the info.

[hel]

Dual booting (having windows AND linux) is a good idea if you haven't used linux before. I still have all my machines set up to dual boot, even tho I almost never boot windows, just because some few things still require windows, and having two OSes on the computer means if I break something in one, I can probably boot into the other to figure out how to fix it.

Itunes on linux only works under wine, and takes some poking to get working, but there are tons of guides. There are also other music management programs, tho if most of your music is DRMed from itunes, you're going to have problems. your dvd/cd player won't need drivers, almost certainly. you will need to install decss tho to watch DVDs. most modern distros have some sort of compression program installed already, tho you'll probably need to install packages to make rar work.
Ubuntu or Kubuntu are currently held as the most user friendly distros. The difference is just which window manager they use, gnome or kde. I prefer KDE because it allows more tweaking than Gnome.

Feel free to ping me with questions, but the forum is your friend. ubuntuforums.org Whatever problem you are having, someone else has had it.
Oh, and if you do get a larger hard drive and want to partition it, the (k)ubuntu installer will walk you through doing so.

it's possible, and not especially difficult, to set up windows so that the folders windows looks at for your documents, music, etc, are actually in linux. I do this, to always have files available, avoid duplication, and save space and hassle.

sorry for the million edits, I keep thinking of more to say :)

[hel]

Ok, rather than editing AGAIN, I'll make a new comment.
http://appdb.winehq.org/ will tell you how well any given piece of windows software will work under linux. In most cases, it's better to find the linux native equivalent software, rather than trying to use the windows software, but that's not always an option.
Also, kubuntu has a quite useful onscreen keyboard, and other accessibility stuff. I dunno about voice control tho.

[stonebender.livejournal.com]

Gee, thank you so much for all the info,. Its very *very* helpful.

[hel]

You might be interested in this-http://lifehacker.com/5195999/portable-ubuntu-runs-ubuntu-inside-windows
It runs ubuntu off a USB drive, inside windows. The performance isn't what you'd get from native linux, since it's an operating system in an operating system, it's slower, but it sounds like an even more painless way than a livecd to check out ubuntu.

[stonebender.livejournal.com]

No problem! I appreciate all the help.

[eveningstartwo.livejournal.com]

I am *not* a computer geek, in big capital letters. I am running Linux on my Asus and have been somewhat frustrated. What works in linux works well, what doesn't work at all and installing programs takes more smarts than I have. Part of my issue is disk space but if I didn't have a windows machine handy, I'd dump this--it's too much trouble for me.

[stonebender.livejournal.com]

*nod* I'm worried about how much trouble it my be for me, especially with all the adaptive software I absolutly need.

[hel]

Have you checked out ubuntuforums.org? A lot of the stuff that "doesn't work" takes just typing a few things into the command line (shell) to get working. As linked above, there are some great resources at the ubuntu wiki for those new to or stuggling with linux.
Also, assuming you're running ubuntu or kubuntu, installing programs should be just a question of going to add/remove programs, typing in what you want (such as office or music player), or browsing the listed categories, and then picking something from the results.
If the below links don't help, and basic program installation (rather than the more complicated compiling programs) is what you're having trouble with, my IM info is in my profile, and I'd be happy to help you sometime.
https://help.ubuntu.com/8.10/add-applications/C/index.html
https://help.ubuntu.com/8.10/add-applications/C/gnome-app-install.html
https://help.ubuntu.com/8.10/add-applications/C/advanced.html#synaptic

[johnpalmer.livejournal.com]

BTW: do you know what a LiveCD is? Most Linux distros now come on a LiveCD. You put the CD in, and you're running Linux.

(I might be mis-remembering the name... but I'm not mis-remembering the concept. It's a good way of getting your feet wet.)

What kind of hard drive do you need? Or what kind of space do you need? I might have a spare hard drive, or USB-connectable drive, to help out.

[stonebender.livejournal.com]

Wow LiveCD sounds like the old days when I ran software off my 5 1/4 floppy. :)

Right now I have a 245 GB hard drive with a 100MB free (this surprised me, I've just started getting "not enough memory" notices). I'm not sure how much I need. 300GB? I'm sure a lot of it is eaten up with music and ebooks. I probably should loose a brower. I like Opera, but of course need to keep Internet Explorer, with Windows being Windows.

[johnpalmer.livejournal.com]

Well, I have a 160gb SATA drive that you're welcome to - if you say you're Well Off, I'll let you pay shipping charges - if you want it. That's more than enough to run a basic Linux on dual-boot. (It'll also give you the ability to offload some of your music and e-books, if you'd like.) But if you don't use SATA, I don't think I have a spare 3.5" IDE drive sitting around.

If you don't know what kind of hard drive you have, I can kinda-sorta walk you through hard drive identification.

And, yes, LiveCD is very much like running off of a floppy. There's one problem with it, IIRC, and it's about what you might expect: you get the same configuration each time you reboot, because the CD can't remember that you made configuration changes. But you you can typically go a long time without rebooting in Linux.

Ubuntu uses a LiveCD for installation, so you can play with it and decide if you like it, and then install it right away if you do. And, Linux uses a good boot manager, so you can always boot back to Windows if you need to.

[stonebender.livejournal.com]

Nope no SATA, but that's ok. Thanks for the kind offer. I've been looking at hard drive prices and I think I can cope.

[hel]

http://windirstat.info/ will look at your hard drive and break down for you exactly where your hard drive space is going. I don't know how accessibility friendly windirstat is or what your accessibility needs are, but at worst, someone else could set it up and run it for you, as it's not something you need to use often, just once or a few times to see where all your space is going.
My preferred solution is to have media files, such as music and ebooks, on a separate drive. The reason this is my preferred solution is that it relocates the most easily moved data. Operating systems don't like to be moved from the drive they were installed on. Ebooks and mp3s and such don't care what drive they are on. At one point, I actually had separate drives for documents, pictures, music, and several drives for videos.
However, if you get a second drive, and install linux to the new drive, you give yourself some redundancy, in that if the hard drive windows is on crashes, you still have a working operating system on the drive linux is on, and vice versa.
Also, if you're dual booting, you'll almost certainly end up wanting Ext2ifs http://www.fs-driver.org/ which lets windows work with the linux filesystem, which windows can't do by itself. I currently have it set up so that all my windows user folders, docs&pics etc, are actually located on my linux drive, as I mentioned before. IF you end up dual booting and IF that's something you'd like further info on, feel free to let me know.
Also, it is possible to run a live cd and have changes persist between reboots. It just requires using a USB stick to save the changes to. :) If you want more info on THAT, let me know.
....sorry to be comment spamming, I'm procrastinating working on a paper. :)