Finally switched to Linux.

[Pommie]

My PC is fairly old but still runs Win7 reasonably fast. However, having just wrote an Android app I need a new one due to Android Studio not being able to run emulators with an AMD processor, which I have. I then realised that building a new PC would mean I couldn't get the required drivers for Win7 which would force me to go to Win10 or 11. So, took the plunge and switched to Linux. Had a problem with Ubuntu, it kept dropping WiFi every 30 seconds and reconnecting a few seconds later - tried to fix it, failed. So went to Linux Mint, Fantastic, so far absolutely no problems. Comes with Wine (just incase!!!) - found out it stands for Wine Is Not an Emulator - who knew - not me. Tomorrow, going to install all the stuff I use, MPLABX (spit, spit), going to learn to use Inkscape instead of Illustrator and Gimp instead of Photoshop.

It's going to be fun. Hopefully not going to finish that sentence with, they said.

Loving it so far, hopefully gonna live long and prosper rather than a divorce.

Mike.

 

[granddad]

Welcome to the free and open side .. gimp is steep ..but the view from the top is wow.

 

[rjenkinsgb]

Nice one!

For info, Android Studio can run the emulator with an AMD CPU, as long as the BIOS is not crippled to block virtualisation.

But any possible excuse is good to move away from Windows - I just wish I could totally get rid of it, but there is just too much software critical for my work that only works on Windows & won't work via wine..

For servers and other systems, nothing beats linux!

Personally, I prefer the Redhat derived versions like Centos (before they messed it up), Whitebox, Fedora etc., but I do use the debian derivatives on Raspberry Pi's etc.

ps. If you need an old version of windows on a new machine that has no compatible drivers - run it as a VM under Linux! I've had to do that for some stuff that only runs on XP, after my last Toughbook upgrade, as there are no XP drivers for the latest Intel chipsets.

XP installs and runs perfectly in a VM though.

 

[Pommie]

Great news. My machine now "magically" supports Android Emulators.
Went through this page and voila, emulators all working.

Think I'm gonna become a HUGE Linux fan. No more of this "crippled by Windows" nonsense.

The incredible thing is, I switched to Linux as my old machine couldn't run emulators and I was about to buy a new one but didn't want any of the new versions of Windows. Looks like Microsoft shot themselves in the foot.

Mike.
Edit, forgot to mention, all I did was buy a 500G SSD (US$40) and swapped it so I still have the old windows setup if needed.

 

[Inquisitive]

When Microsloth came up the wire and disabled my personal purchased copy of office suite which I owned for several years. I was pretty ticked off. I switched to Ubuntu, have not regretted that move. Any newer machine I dual boot just in case a copy of MS utilities is required. It doesn't happen very often, can count on one hand the number of times that it was needed.

Now they are pushing subscription to the big suite. I'm not a corporation, I can't justify it. Linux can do the same things for free. Libreoffice works well. Btw,it seems to run faster too.

Inq

 

[Pommie]

That's why I purchased a new drive, so that I could revert to Windows if needs be.
I also doubt I'll regret switching.

Mike.

 

[granddad]

installing MPLABX and the XC compilers is straight forward, the MC developer site has command line scripts if you need them .. I still have my win7 hard drive in the case but not connected should i need it .

 

[Pommie]

installing MPLABX and the XC compilers is straight forward

That's a job for manana. Beer time now.

To be fair, I've not found anything to be difficult. Once you get over the fear of "sudo apt" etc. then it's really straight forward.

Mike.

 

[Ian Rogers]

Maybe I need some tuition??? I have tried many!! linux flavour's all seem to break quite quickly... Firefox on the super duper Zorin!! ( I was told this was the best of the best ) Broke weekly... I had to re install it far too often.. Back in windows..

 

[Pommie]

I had problems with Ubuntu so used Linux Mint. So far, flawless. Somethings are actually easier in Linux than windows. Installed Android Studio and, as I said earlier, can now run Emulators in studio. Did Microsoft have some sort of agreement with Intel to sell more Intel chips?

I was same as you, tried many times and failed but I'm now wondering why.

Currently using Brave browser and I really can't tell any difference to Windows.

Strangely, my dual monitor setup has the main screen (with the icons) as the right screen and I've no idea how to change it - just seems more natural to have the left screen as the main screen - no idea why. I'll work this out next week.

I'm assuming that in the UK you can get a 500G SSD for around ₤30. If so, buy one and give it a try.

If I have problems in the next week or two I'll report here.

Mike.

 

[granddad]

Mike. just to add a couple of cents worth.
1 c ... don't forget to enable the firewall.
2 c .. join the mint forum , https://forums.linuxmint.com/index.php
3 c .. virtually everything has settings in linux.mint

 

[Nigel Goodwin]

I'm assuming that in the UK you can get a 500G SSD for around ₤30. If so, buy one and give it a try.

It depends on the type of drive, you can get the SIMM type ones from not much more than £30 - but for trying Linux many of most likely have suitable HDD's lying around to try it on.

You can get 500GB HDD's for under £15.

I've built Linux machines a number of times over the years, but never really got on with them - I do purposely opt for Linux for my webservers though

 

[Terry_g]

I started with Linux Red Hat 4.0 many years ago. Red Hat switched to enterprise but
created Fedora for casual users. I ran Fedora up to about version 22. Fedora
is "bleeding edge" something is always broken with a new release and updates
can cause problems as well. The solution could always be found on the fedora
forum. I switched to Mint with the Mate desktop a few years back and stayed with it.
I have not used windows in years.

 

[Pommie]

A little update, having installed all I want, I had a problem with Linux not recognising my Android Tablet.
I solved the problem by following This Page.

I think the crunch instruction was, apt-get install android-sdk-platform-tools-common

Still a happy chappy.

Mike.

 

[granddad]

Ditching windows, is a big challenge especially if like me you had run some MS OS / programs for many years , i think i only ever 'paid' for one program, Turbo Basic . I had been running Z80 assembler on a home brew board attached to a 5 1/4" floppy disk drive ! (a scrap machine i managed to fix and using a D1797-02 I still have the IC ). I do hang on to computer stuff thinking I might need it someday ..but if you want a win system then linux ' wine ' can do most of the OS , wine is not perfect and needs lots of experimentation , Previously i used DipTrace(32bit) for schematics on win7 , but now it runs pretty good on linux with all my old designs , failures and successes available from win CD backups.

 

[Nigel Goodwin]

Ditching windows, is a big challenge especially if like me you had run some MS OS / programs for many years , i think i only ever 'paid' for one program, Turbo Basic .

I always thought the 'Turbo' name was an advertising gimmick - but while I didn't use Turbo BASIC I did use Turbo Pascal, and it's compilation and execution speed was incredible. I did have occasion to try Microsoft Pascal, and it's compilation speed was abysmally slow - I can't comment on it's execution speed as it was so slow to compile in comparison to Turbo Pascal I couldn't be bothered to wait for it

 

[JimB]

I always thought the 'Turbo' name was an advertising gimmick

Yes indeed!
Everything in the 1980s was "Turbo this" and "Turbo that", the advertising and marketing people were obsessed with the term.

Not forgetting of course, the "Turbo" button which adorned the front of the average PC and changed the clock speed from something like 4MHz to 6MHz.

Happy days.


JimB

 

[Nigel Goodwin]

Not forgetting of course, the "Turbo" button which adorned the front of the average PC and changed the clock speed from something like 4MHz to 6MHz.

Good god, I'd forgotten about that

 

[sagor1]

You guys are talking about "modern" stuff. I had a 2Mhz 8080 Altair with 8" hard sectored floppies. No turbo in those days. A little known fact about the floppy BIOS for that system. The 2Mhz was too slow to check the status register of "byte ready" in the registers. What the Altair BIOS did was first look for "ready" status , read the byte and then simply read another byte without further checks. Then, go back to check the status again for 3rd byte to read 3rd and 4th bytes and so on. Amazing that there were no errors (none that I could find). Of course when one got a 4Mhz 8080, the BIOS had to be changed to check status for every byte. Once the Z80 came out and we had things like Versafloppy controllers, things all changed...

 

[Terry_g]

Codeweaver's has a Linux program called Crossover Office that is reasonably priced
and allows you to run Windows programs on Linux. I believe it is similar to Wine but
with support.