Ubuntu

[KevanGuy]

Originally Posted by 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?

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=7424771

[BloodFetish]

Originally Posted by sclitheroe

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.

I think that's essentially correct. But then with Mint you need to choose between Cinnamon, Mate, or...something else. It gets a bit murky for me there.

[Hack&Lube]

Originally Posted by sclitheroe

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.

http://distrowatch.com/dwres.php?resource=popularity

Mint has been top dog in terms of popularity for some time. Huge swathes jumped ship when Ubuntu came out with Unity and Mint decided to stick with Gnome.

That said, Linux is all about free reign to do whatever you want so you could get the features of whatever interface and distro you want into other distros with a little elbow grease since the GUIs are all just Xorg based. All the GUIs I basically see as just frosting on top in different flavors and not the main reason why I choose one over another...as long as it's a workable environment. I still prefer the shell if I'm using Linux anyway.

I still have my Ubuntu environment and a Fedora one just because I am wayyy too lazy to start over again but I would definitely go with Mint if I was interested in that.

[Hack&Lube]

Originally Posted by 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?

They don't natively. You'd have to run them through a Windows emulator like Wine which will present some challenges.

Stick with a PC or Mac if your focus is on big name commercial media products as they are not designed for other platforms. The Linux community has alternatives for everything but they are typically open-source, community efforts which are fantastic things but not going to be the same as $$$ industry apps.

[Milt Schmidt]

Originally Posted by sclitheroe

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.

Yup, the main version of Mint is actually based on Ubuntu, which is in turn based on Debian, though Mint does also have a 'Debian Edition' called LMDE. It used to be that Mint was just Ubuntu with some proprietary codecs pre-installed and a few minor tweaks. Nothing that couldn't be done pretty quickly by most users. Since Unity became the Ubuntu DE, Mint has become a whole different experience with Cinnamon and Mate for desktop options. To me it's like Mint has really started to come into its own while still having the same great Ubuntu software repositories, which is great to see.

Milt

[Milt Schmidt]

Originally Posted by 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?

What Hack&Lube said. There's alternatives to pretty much everything in Linux, but the experience is different and expecting it to be just like in Windows will just leave you disappointed and/or pissed off.

Milt

[BlackEleven]

Originally Posted by 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?

I have an Ubuntu box. I ran it for years as my primary OS until I upgraded my hardware because Windows ran like crap on it, but Ubuntu was screaming fast. Now that I have an up-to-date system, Windows runs fine, so I use that most of the time, but still have an Ubuntu partition.

To answer your question, you can only run Photoshop through Wine and even then, it doesn't run that great. GIMP works really well though, if you can get by with it. The only feature I really found lacking from GIMP was the quick adjustment layers, but maybe that's changed now; it's been a while since I used GIMP.

There was a nice utility, that I can't remember the name of now, that would display raw files as thumbnails in the file browser. Really useful if you shoot in raw, not to have to fire up photoshop or bridge to see what the files are.

[Galakanokis]

Question for you better computer hardware guys than myself.

I have Ubuntu up and running on my laptop but it is running very very slow. I do not believe it is the software as two Win7 installs were extremely slow as well.

So my question is are there tools or commands I can run in Linux that help me narrow down the issue? Bad hard drive, corrupt RAM or bad processor?

When I say slow I mean it can take awhile for the OS to recognize a mouse click or a button push. Open system setting can take a 30 second to a minute at times as an example.

Thanks G.

[Hack&Lube]

Originally Posted by Rathji

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

I use Opera on Ubuntu and it's always been my favorite.

[JohnnyB]

Thanks for the advice on running PS and Vegas in Ubuntu.
I'm fairly committed to those to programs, so I guess I'll stick with Windows.

[Cheese]

n/m

[Cheese]

Originally Posted by Galakanokis

Question for you better computer hardware guys than myself.

I have Ubuntu up and running on my laptop but it is running very very slow. I do not believe it is the software as two Win7 installs were extremely slow as well.

So my question is are there tools or commands I can run in Linux that help me narrow down the issue? Bad hard drive, corrupt RAM or bad processor?

When I say slow I mean it can take awhile for the OS to recognize a mouse click or a button push. Open system setting can take a 30 second to a minute at times as an example.

Thanks G.

Did you run a full format on the HD before installing Ubuntu or did you install over the top?
I havent had any issues at all with Ubuntu...still amazed how fast it is.

[Galakanokis]

Originally Posted by Cheese

Did you run a full format on the HD before installing Ubuntu or did you install over the top?
I havent had any issues at all with Ubuntu...still amazed how fast it is.

Yeah, full wipe before the install. I think this is hardware related as win7 ran supper slow as well.

History...I windows 7 on this for a year or two with no issues until I came home one day and windows just wouldn't launch. No big deal just reloaded windows 7 (after a format) but it ran really slow. Slow to do simple tasks like open a window. Tried and other install of 7 and Ubuntu and the same thing.

I'm trying to run some diagnostics but it is taking it's sweet time. I was just hoping to narrow down if it is a disk issue or RAM possibly. I have been cruising the net and picking up tips and tricks which is probably best.

[Milt Schmidt]

Galakanokis, if you make a bootable usb drive with Ubuntu or some other distro, you could boot that test some things. If it runs faster it could mean its a disk issue, which you could also test with Disk Utility (in Ubuntu) or some other tool. You can make a bootable usb with Unetbootin, it's in the repos/Software centre, or run the following in Terminal:

sudo apt-get install unetbootin

Milt

[Galakanokis]

Originally Posted by Milt Schmidt

Galakanokis, if you make a bootable usb drive with Ubuntu or some other distro, you could boot that test some things. If it runs faster it could mean its a disk issue, which you could also test with Disk Utility (in Ubuntu) or some other tool. You can make a bootable usb with Unetbootin, it's in the repos/Software centre, or run the following in Terminal:

sudo apt-get install unetbootin

Milt

Thanks Milt. Should have thought of running off of the install disk. Tried it out and it ran smooth. I was able to dig out another hard drive and sure enough it is running great now. Fun to play with for sure.

Thanks for the tip.

[Milt Schmidt]

Originally Posted by Galakanokis

Thanks Milt. Should have thought of running off of the install disk. Tried it out and it ran smooth. I was able to dig out another hard drive and sure enough it is running great now. Fun to play with for sure.

Thanks for the tip.

Linux live cd's/usb's have saved my butt more times than I can count, glad it helped you figure out your problem.

Milt

[Galakanokis]

Yeah, it runs great so far, really digging it. Just got netflix running as well which I really wanted. Loving the support on Linus as well.

[Cheese]

^^^ it is great to use. There is an app you can run to go back to Gnome...I also prefer it as mentioned above.