Ubuntu

[Cheese]

so I had a laptop kicking around that needed a clean up and after I formatted the HD I thought...lets try Ubuntu, Ive heard nothing but positive remarks about it.
I have 3 or 4 latops with Win7 kicking around anyways so no big deal.

Lets just say Im truly surprised. Its a rocketship when starting and shutting down...no more than 5-10 secs each way.
Interfaces are easy to grasp and outside of the fact it doesn't run MS Office I quite like what I'm seeing.

So my question to those in the know is, what are the must haves for Ubuntu users? Are there workarounds to get MS Office running?
Any thoughts are appreciated.

[FlamesPuck12]

Have you looked into openoffice.org? It's a free alternative to MS Office.

If you really need MS Office, you can run it using wine (http://www.winehq.org/download/ubuntu).

[Cheese]

yes have seen and used OO before. Thanks for Wine.

[rbochan]

http://www.libreoffice.org/

[Cheese]

^^^have this on my current Ubuntu system.

[KevanGuy]

I love Ubuntu. I got it running on a couple older laptops after wiping XP and they run like new. I also wiped Vista off a desktop and install Ubuntu for media/torrents and it is lightning fast. Way faster than it ever was with Vista and all the bloat that goes along with it.

As for Office, I dont use any of my Linux comps for work stuff so I cant really say.

[Rathji]

Aside from Flash and Adobe Reader, if Firefox isn't your thing you could take a look at Chromium.

There is a Transmission client already installed if that's up your alley.

Netflix is something you might want to consider, it isn't offcially supported outside of Windows/OSx so you need Wine or another similar solution.

Speaking of Wine, Crossover is a product I never really tried, but does kind of the same thing. IIRC the game support was a bit better, but who knows if that remains true.

[Galakanokis]

Been messing around with CentOS at work but was thinking or running Ubuntu on an old laptop. Does Ubuntu support an HDMI output? Mostly want to mess with this for streaming.

[Cheese]

^^^ seems the answer is yes.
http://askubuntu.com/questions/64056...pport-hdmi-out

and if not...
there appear to be many fixes online.

[Galakanokis]

Thanks. I was going to google but I got lazy...Thanks for the askubuntu link though looks handy. Was able to dig out a full manual for my laptop in two clicks. Will give this a whirl tonight/tomorrow.

[Milt Schmidt]

Clementine is a great music player, Lightread for RSS, Digikam for photos, Shutter for screenshots, Pidgin for IM, and Libreoffice (when I work from home I often use libreoffice, as long as I avoid tables and bullet lists I have no problems converting to .docx). Those are often the first things I add to a fresh install, but aside from gaming there's an alternative for just about any task.

I'd also recommend GUFW to set up your firewall, assuming you're not comfortable with the command line, it's not activated by default and GUFW is pretty easy to use.

Milt

[Rathji]

Gimp for photo editing.

[Hack&Lube]

I haven't been able to stand Ubuntu since they replaced Gnome with the Unity interface.

My first step in any Ubuntu distro is to get rid of Unity ASAP. They've thankfully made it easier with Gnome fallback.

http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2012/03/g...g-ever-changed

Gnome is much more a tradtional Mac/Windows type interface with a task/menu bar and cascading menus rather than the big annoying icon/netbook focused Unity. That said, if I'm in Linux, I'm in it for the command line shell and not for a GUI anyway.

[Hack&Lube]

Libre Office is a fork of Open Office because of lot of the people behind OO were unhappy that Sun/Oracle owned it. Eventually Oracle donated Open Office to Apache. I have no idea how either are at this point since I'm too fully in bed with MS Office.

[BloodFetish]

^^ These days I prefer LibreOffice. From the little bit I've read on the whole Sun/Oracle fallout, the better part of the brain trust left to develop LibreOffice.

[Rathji]

Originally Posted by Hack&Lube

I haven't been able to stand Ubuntu since they replaced Gnome with the Unity interface.

My first step in any Ubuntu distro is to get rid of Unity ASAP. They've thankfully made it easier with Gnome fallback.

http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2012/03/g...g-ever-changed

Gnome is much more a tradtional Mac/Windows type interface with a task/menu bar and cascading menus rather than the big annoying icon/netbook focused Unity. That said, if I'm in Linux, I'm in it for the command line shell and not for a GUI anyway.

I could not agree more.

[Milt Schmidt]

Originally Posted by Hack&Lube

I haven't been able to stand Ubuntu since they replaced Gnome with the Unity interface.

My first step in any Ubuntu distro is to get rid of Unity ASAP. They've thankfully made it easier with Gnome fallback.

http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2012/03/g...g-ever-changed

Gnome is much more a tradtional Mac/Windows type interface with a task/menu bar and cascading menus rather than the big annoying icon/netbook focused Unity. That said, if I'm in Linux, I'm in it for the command line shell and not for a GUI anyway.

Yeah, each time a new version is released I try out Unity for a couple days then inevitably install either XFCE or KDE.

Milt

[Milt Schmidt]

Originally Posted by Hack&Lube

Libre Office is a fork of Open Office because of lot of the people behind OO were unhappy that Sun/Oracle owned it. Eventually Oracle donated Open Office to Apache. I have no idea how either are at this point since I'm too fully in bed with MS Office.

LibreOffice has a huge mindshare advantage among Linux/BSD power users and devs, but Open Office still has IBM backing it. It'll be interesting to see how that plays out, especially in Europe where some (mostly municipal) governments are starting to make the switch away from MS Office to try to save money.

Milt

[sclitheroe]

Originally Posted by Hack&Lube

I haven't been able to stand Ubuntu since they replaced Gnome with the Unity interface.

My first step in any Ubuntu distro is to get rid of Unity ASAP. They've thankfully made it easier with Gnome fallback.

http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2012/03/g...g-ever-changed

Gnome is much more a tradtional Mac/Windows type interface with a task/menu bar and cascading menus rather than the big annoying icon/netbook focused Unity. That said, if I'm in Linux, I'm in it for the command line shell and not for a GUI anyway.

Is Mint Linux basically a Unity-less Ubuntu? It's also based on Debian, so under the covers at least its quite similar.

I haven't really checked it out, so I'm not 100% sure.

[JohnnyB]

I've been considering the switch to ubuntu, but I'm worried that I won't be able to run the things I need on it. Other than internet browsing I do a lot of work in Photoshop and Sony Vegas on my home PC. Does anybody know how these run on Ubuntu?