Windows or Ubunto?

[Yhor]

I've been considering switching from Windows to Ubunto recently, and I was curious if some of the people here that have used both could give some pros and cons. My first impression of Ubunto was from from a SS that was posted, I believe it was Dreadelord's. It looks awesome, but looks can be deceiving.

I'll start with pro# 1.

1) Ubunto is Free.

[Petrah]

The only Con I can think of is that Blizzard does not officially support Linux... so you will get no official technical support from them.

[Yhor]

I've been playing since mid 2005 and have never 'contacted' Blizzard for anything with successful results. I use an authenticator as well for security of my account (not failsafe, but it's a great tool). I think WoWI has better support for WoW anyway, at least in my experience.

[saanlem]

Pike of Aspect of the Hare rubs WoW on Linux.
Check her site here.

[Vyper]

Originally Posted by Yhor I've been considering switching from Windows to Ubunto recently, and I was curious if some of the people here that have used both could give some pros and cons. My first impression of Ubunto was from from a SS that was posted, I believe it was Dreadelord's. It looks awesome, but looks can be deceiving. I'll start with pro# 1. 1) Ubunto is Free.

Pros:
2) Ubuntu has lots of support from the community
3) Linux is often more efficient
4) Symbolic links are great for addon devs
5) If you want software to do it, chances are its both available and free.
6) Often time more secure.

Cons:
1) No native client
2) WINE is sometimes buggy
3) Linux sometimes has a steeper learning curve
4) GNOME? KDE? XCFE? OpenBox? OMG I can't decide! (actually I can... I love GNOME (ubuntu default))
5) Driver hell... generics may not work as well, proprietary not always available
6) sudo confuses windows users (come on people its not that hard!)

Hope this helps. FYI on the driver hell, if your using a NVIDIA card, ubuntu includes the proprietary drivers and will ask if you want to activate them. If you have further questions on any of these points let me know.

[Yhor]

I keep seeing this "sudo" popping up in everything I read, just what is it?

My guess... it's a pseudo (alternate) method of doing something, such as admin on your computer or fixing files?

[Shirik]

sudo is used to execute a command at root level. This way, you don't have to su into root, you just excute that command.

[Vyper]

Originally Posted by Yhor I keep seeing this "sudo" popping up in everything I read, just what is it? My guess... it's a pseudo (alternate) method of doing something, such as admin on your computer or fixing files?

Basically, in order to perform certain actions, that action must be run as root. Root is an unrestricted user, which can do anything they want on the system and nothing will get in the way. Many distributions no longer (by default) allow the root user to log in, instead giving users a method to temporarily gain root privileges for the duration of the single command. Hence sudo. So, say I wanted to do something silly like write over my disk with zeroes. The old way:

1. Log in as root (or use su)
2. run: cat /dev/zero > /dev/sda0

now
1. run: sudo cat /dev/zero > /dev/sda0
Sudo will prompt you to re-enter your password.

There are serveral advantages of this method, especially if multiple people use the machine. For more information read this

Note: For many at this point it is possible to completely manage the machine using the GUIs, so you may never need sudo unless you are doing something complex.

[Yhor]

Thanks for the help, I think I'm going to dive into it. I have 2 hard drives (one is a clone of the other) and I'm curious as to the best route I should take into making the switch? I don't have a cd burner, so burning a copy of Ubunto isn't really an option. Should I make a partition and go from there? (Sorry for my newbness).

[Shirik]

Originally Posted by Vyper Many distributions no longer (by default) allow the root user to log in, instead giving users a method to temporarily gain root privileges for the duration of the single command. Hence sudo.

I don't find this to be true. Rather, most distributions allow the user to su to root. I still don't use a distribution with sudo, and never really liked it in the first place due to the fact that it doesn't always ask for the password (its inconsistency seems like a security flaw to me, despite the fact that it is rather good at guessing whether or not you are actually the user).

I still su to root, though I do have my box set up such that you cannot log in as root, you must su to it.

[Vyper]

The Debian derivatives such as Ubuntu all (or almost all) do not setup a root password by default (on Linux no password=no login). If you use an RPM or source based distro, I believe those still setup the root password (I know Fedora does).

As for not asking for the password on sudo, that is configurable. By default on Ubuntu, if you have sudoed in the last 5 minutes it will not ask you again, but that can easily be changed. You can also (though its not recommenced) set sudo to never ask for a password.

Finally, as far as what I'd recommend for a beginning user: If you have at least say 40Gb of spare hard drive space on windows (more is better) or on a spare drive, I would recommend giving Wubi a try. It makes installing/removing Ubuntu as easy as any windows program an runs almost as well as a native installation. This also allows you to keep running windows for those times when you want it (it gives you the choice at boot between Ubuntu and Windows)

Edit: IF for some reason you want to go straight to a native installation STOP! Take some time, make a list of all those windows applications you cannot live without. There may be several that cannot run under WINE or don't run well. Post the list here and I'll help you either find open source alternates, or determine if they can run under WINE easily.

[Yhor]

Originally Posted by Vyper Finally, as far as what I'd recommend for a beginning user: If you have at least say 40Gb of spare hard drive space on windows (more is better) or on a spare drive, I would recommend giving Wubi a try. It makes installing/removing Ubuntu as easy as any windows program an runs almost as well as a native installation. This also allows you to keep running windows for those times when you want it (it gives you the choice at boot between Ubuntu and Windows) Edit: IF for some reason you want to go straight to a native installation STOP! Take some time, make a list of all those windows applications you cannot live without. There may be several that cannot run under WINE or don't run well. Post the list here and I'll help you either find open source alternates, or determine is they can run under WINE easily.

I'll give wubi a try, thanks.

As for what Windows programs I use.

1) Notepad
2) Firefox
3) WoW currently
4) Paint
5) Wowuides (haven't read to see if it works with other OS, but considering the number of 'Linux' users here on WoWI, I'd say it does).
6) ventrilo
7) 7-zip
8) Tortoise
9) McAfee

I play WoW, attempt to make addons (very new to it), and lol at youtube videos that guildies and friends link on my forums. I use forums to keep in touch with everyone near and afar (guildomatic would be ticked if they knew I use them as a long distance conference room).

That's what I use my computer for... gaming and keeping in touch with friends, relatives and work partners.

[Yhor]

Okay, something I noticed on Firefox seems /different/... Adobe Flash is "non-free" for Firefox Linux version; I'm not sure I know exactly what that means. I'm liking what I see so far though, everything "works", but what I'm /really/ interested in is seeing how WoW runs in Ubunto. That looks like it will take me awhile to set up, because I like to read everything before actually committing.

[sensory]

Please stop saying "Ubunto".. it's Ubuntu.

I've yet to try WoW in Ubuntu.. can't seem to get WINE downloaded and working properly. I'd love to try it, though as it might improve my frame-rate a bit.

[Gemini_II]

Been many moons since I played with *nix, but last time it was to give Ubuntu a try, and I liked what I played with. Before that, I used to like Mandrake (before it went more commercialized like RedHat). Of all the currently popular distro's I would suggest Ubuntu, for stability, compatibility, and ease of transition.

I love the idea of sudo. I had often wished for a command to temporarily grant su privledges for just a command or two. I may have to find my VMware and play around again.

PS: Gnome FTW

[Vyper]

Non-free doesn't mean what you think. All it means is that it is not licensed under an open source license such as the GPL. All the Apps on your list except Wowuides should run great on linux (or have obvious alternatives ex gedit for notepad). By tortoise I assume you mean the svn client, of which there are plenty available for Ubuntu. McAfee won't run, but you don't need it under linux anyway.

Anyway feel free to ask if you have any questions.
Also check: https://help.ubuntu.com/8.10/index.html

[Dreadlorde]

Use Ubuntu. It will be worth it in the long run if you're just playing WoW, don't expect wine to play crysis great; because it won't.

Sudo means 'super-user do', which as shirik said, lets you run commands as root.

Also, Ubuntu installs a ton of extra stuff (like compiz fusion) by default now. That makes it a lit'le bloated. You can remove what you don't want though after installation.

There is also a slight learning curve, but it's not so bad (at least it wasn't with me).

And wine comes with a clone of windows notepad

If you choose Ubuntu, just post here or im me (see profile) and I or some of the other GNU/Linux users here will help out.

[Psoewish]

Hmm my Ubuntu didn't come with Compiz Fusion ... unless there's an updated one since 2 months ago?

Either way, I've used Ubuntu for a long time, but then I started getting into Age of Conan, and couldn't get it to run in WINE, so I made a dualboot. Rebooting every time got on my nerves so I just installed Windows again, did a Vista install to see if it had gotten any better yet, it hasn't, so time for a format again this weekend :P

[Vyper]

You could try andLinux if booting back and forth between the two bothers you that much. It puts a working install of Ubuntu inside windows.

[shkm]

Unless I'm blind, I'm quite surprised to be the first person to mention that Linux just doesn't work as a modern (post-Diablo II) gaming platform--at least, never as well as Windows currently does and is likely to for a long time.

Now don't get me wrong: I love Linux and I've tried many times to get rid of my Windows partition in order to do everything under my favourite OS. I've tried different distros and different machines, all with different problems and the same conclusion: it's just not good enough.

WoW does run OK under Linux, though. It doesn't run great, but it runs playably if you're just checking on auctions or popping on to help a friend or do dailies for an hour. The biggest problem is the lack of hardware mouse acceleration when your FPS drops even the tiniest bit, and of course the FPS fluctuation itself. Running on an 8800GT, I went from a solid 75FPS to a very unstable <60, sometimes dropping to 20-30 for no visible reason. While some people claim to play WoW under Linux just as well as on Windows, it's something I'll believe when I see.

So I've been keeping a Linux and Windows partition on my gaming machine in order to play games (Windows) and have a usable desktop where I could get some work done (Linux). The end solution was to purchase another exclusively Linux machine.

Don't expect it to work well and you won't be disappointed. Hopefully the Linux/gaming situation will change sometime in the near future.

PS: Arch & wmii here, though looking to try ratpoison, dwm and ion.

PPS: If you're interested in quickly checking how WoW runs, just apply the registry tweaks (found on WoWWiki's Linux page), mount your Windows partition and run 'wine Wow.exe -opengl'. I found this to have exactly the same performance as a copy installed on a Linux partition.