OK, so it’s been 6 ish years since I last tried Linux. It was crap. It installed itself perfectly, configured the networks for me, ran so fast and was stable, BUT, would not let me install drivers so my res was 800x600! I could not install apps because you had to manually pale the files into places I did not know existed, and nobody could tell me. I wanted to love it, I wanted to escape M$ (this was before I moved to Mac), but I had to go back to M$ 2000.
So, I’ve been looking back into it for MT stuff. I have some questions though if somebody would care to indulge me.
1> Is it really faster and more stable than XP or Vista?
2> What is Flash performance like on it, compared to XP or Vita?
3> Which build should I go for, considering I need ease of driver installation and software installation etc.
My reasons are that I want to build a few tables, I don’t want to have to buy Windows for each table. I can’t afford to buy a Mac for each table! If I can build a good dual core PC for £300 and stick Linux on it for free I’d be a fool not to.
Just to present my credentials, I have been using Linux for 7 years, and 6 of those have been on Gentoo linux. In addition I am in school acquiring an EET degree, hoping to go into embedded design.
OK, so it’s been 6 ish years since I last tried Linux. It was crap. It installed itself perfectly, configured the networks for me, ran so fast and was stable, BUT, would not let me install drivers so my res was 800x600! I could not install apps because you had to manually pale the files into places I did not know existed, and nobody could tell me. I wanted to love it, I wanted to escape M$ (this was before I moved to Mac), but I had to go back to M$ 2000.
So, I’ve been looking back into it for MT stuff. I have some questions though if somebody would care to indulge me.
1> Is it really faster and more stable than XP or Vista?
It really is faster due to a lower resource requirement. Granted this assumes you aren’t running the entire world on your computer.
Also, there is more choice of environments which can drastically effect how responsive your computer is.
There always are caveats to things like this, you always can install unstable software, like e17 for the most part.
2> What is Flash performance like on it, compared to XP or Vita?
While I haven’t run the benchmarks myself, from what I remember the performance of flash etc is similar to that on windows XP.
3> Which build should I go for, considering I need ease of driver installation and software installation etc.
By build, I assume you mean distribution. If not I am unsure to what you are referring. While I don’t particularly like Ubuntu, many people do appear to like it. Compiling from source on non source distributions can be a pain, which is the biggest reason I don’t use it. You do need a good grasp of how a computer does what it does to really get the most out of Linux. As to installing software on almost any Linux computer, it is generally easier to do than on any Windows computer due to the installer most linux distributions have. Most packages can be pulled directly onto your computer without the need to navigate half of the web to find.
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Notice that the keyword below is good, drivers might exist, but are rather poor in some cases.
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As to potential problems you might run into, not all webcams have good linux drivers. Neither do wireless NICs. Hardware developers typically don’t release good drivers for Linux. However you can browse the web for what will work. I can gaurantee you will find a working cam or wireless NIC, but it may not be convenient to acquire.
As to question 4, I can’t answer that because Lux hasn’t been released yet, and I am obviously not a developer so i have no access to it.
Thanks for that kraix, it’s interesting. The other thing of course is support for cameras. I notice the Firefly MV doesn’t list Linux support, the Fire-i does but at 30fps it’s not enough. Decisions decisions…
I have been in and out of a few distro’s, myself, including Red Hat ES 3, Fedora, Debian, Ubuntu, and Damn Small Linux. I like Ubuntu for the simple fact that hardware support is vast, (it “autodetected” every piece of hardware on both machines I’ve installed it on, right out of the box) and you can get help for almost ANYTHING on Ubuntu Forums quicker than you will on ANY other linux helpsite. All these things make it really easy to transition from XP. Not to mention the fact that it now comes in a live cd format that allows you to boot into the OS from a CD and see how well it works with your crap, before actually installing it, AND gives you the option to install it right on the desktop, either as an “overwrite” to your current O.S., OR as an almost seamless “Dual Boot” that I have never had a single problem with, as far as making Windows unbootable, or anything crazy like that.
When My table is done I will build the internal components of a computer inside of it, with port and drive access on the front, and it will dual boot XP pro and Ubuntu Linux, so I can try everything in both worlds without complications. It’s really the easiest distro out there right now, that I’ve seen, and the ease of dual booting is great if you’re unsure of leaving Windows altogether.
I’ve been using several Linux distros for a few years now, among them Gentoo, Ubuntu, Puppy and since a few days Arch. Given that your hardware is not the latest of the latest, today’s distros work very well. What I probably like most about Linux is the way you set up your system: Just open the package manager, tell it what to install, and a few seconds or minutes later, everything is cleanly installed. No driver hell, no strange apps here and there, everything is more clean and organised (or at least seems to be - the feeling is the same ).
Concerning your questions:
1. From what I know about Vista, Linux should definitely be faster. No miracle though. As for XP, it depends… overall, I’d say it’s comparable to a well-kept XP. However, the more you go the minimalist way, the faster it will get, or feel, respectively. Generally, I think Linux desktops seem to be sluggish sometimes purely because of the way things are drawn. Windows seems faster because you can see some response, even though in fact it’ll still take the same time to be operational. Psychology, after all.
2. I don’t really know about Flash performance, but there’s a closed source Flash player available from Adobe, so I suppose the performance should be ok. It is superior to the open source Flash implementations, that’s for sure.
3. Ubuntu is what I recommend to anybody without or with little Linux experience. I even got a flat mate converted who does not have a clue about computers at all and he was amazed how it could do all the things (and more) he did with XP before, while it was less confusing and very comfortable. (One of the most “impressing” examples was that he wanted to listen to a special web radio stream. The app said a needed codec was not installed, and simply downloaded and installed it by itself. Ever seen Windows doing that for you (in a way that you would trust it)?)
As for the Firefly, I used it with Ubuntu and libdc1394 and it worked like a charm. Well, at least as soon as I got a few glitches sorted out and a a few bugs circumvented. Anyway, that should not keep you away from Linux. Try it!
Oh, and by the way, take a look at this: Wubi. It lets you install Ubuntu like any other programme under Windows. If you don’t like it, simply remove it from inside Windows. There’s not much left to make it even more comfortable.
starting to sound like a broken record here, but try ubuntu.
it is indeed far more stable than windows, and faster than vista and (depending on circumstances) XP.
Installing good drivers for your video card is easy (provided you’re doing something mainstream like ATI or NVidia) and works a treat.
Thanks to our good chaps at Adobe, flash is up and running at the latest version on linux, which was never the case with Macromedia, and the performance is excellent.
In many cases it renders at a higher framerate than its Windows counterpart.
Camera support however, is absolute horror if you don’t know your way around the linux terminal.
For many webcams you need to download, compile and install the drivers manually (some of these even require patching the kernel, i beleive, which frightened me out of doing it)
IEE 1394 Cameras however seem to work nicely and out of the box.
Ubuntu it is then. We are using Firewire cams so I’m happy to see they work ok, and we’re using nVidia cards so hoping the drivers will be easy. I’ll try Wubi, sounds like a good place to start my learning.
Thanks for all the help, A.
One thing though, I run Vista on BootCamp, will installing this bugger up OS or Vista?
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Completely forgot to answer your question. I assume your talking about using Wubi, otherwise you don’t install it under either, it is its own standalone OS. You download the ISO, then burn it as an image file onto a CD/DVD. Then restart your computer and have it boot from your CD/DVD. It is pretty self-explanatory from that point if you are using Ubuntu. Also, the Ubuntu website does have instructions! You could try reading it.
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I do have to disagree entirely with it being the same speed or responsiveness being lower. I have always noticed Linux to be more responsive, granted I am always actively running multiple programs. For example I have 3 terminal windows open and three windows on firefox open. One of the terminals is doing tail -f /var/log/messages another is compiling a program and the third I am running vim inside. And my resolution is at 3360x1050. I would love to see you get decent responsiveness with windows out of this. Granted, compiling a three applications does noticeably increase each programs compile times, but still doesn’t decrease responsiveness. Oh and I am running KDE 3.5.9, at least I think 3.5.9 is the latest. I would have have to say Linux is far more responsive.
And just to reiterate, none of us can know the answer to the fourth question. Well, unless nuiman would deign to show up. One problem with using linux to setup touchlib is that video feeds are disabled by default, so it will be a pain to setup your cameras unless you already know your settings. Unless of course someone knows how to get around this?
One final note, http://www.winehq.com has an open source implementation of the Windows API. For the sake of being simple, it is a windows emulator, but Wine Is Not an Emulator. I have seen many reports that if you can get a Windows program to run in it, it normally runs faster in Linux than Windows, at least for games. Two paying versions which have extra code which may or may not help, are cedega/winex and crossover office. crossover office can potentially run any application that the other two could, not just office apps.
One thing though, I run Vista on BootCamp, will installing this bugger up OS or Vista?
Oops, that’s a special situation then. Quickly asking Google gives a number of positive reports, so it should be alright.
In general, whenever there’s a question regarding Linux, it’s very likely that either ubuntuforums.org or a Google search with “[your subject] ubuntu” will provide a solution.
Edit: Looking at it more closely, it seems to turn out that Wubi won’t work with bootcamp. However, you might want to investigate yourself to find out the truth. As Wubi uses the Windows boot manager, it should also be safe to simply try it. Your Vista installation should not be harmed.
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