zeromac said:
Hmm I am really tempted to install a Linux distro on it since I always see such praise of it here on these forums and elsewhere but what I want to know is, how functional is Linux? (ie. can it run .exe files or what can it be used for)
That or I could turn it into a media center but I don't watch that much TV/shows/movies anyways :/
Lets see
Installing Wine allows you to run some .exes (You'll need to check WineDB online for specific program compatibility). Steam installs and runs flawlessly for the most part. PlayOnLinux makes installing supported games a bit nicer and user-friendly.
.exe files are not natively supported by Linux, and for good reason too.
Functionalitywise...I could list everything, but I'd probably run out of room in my post. You get/have access to stuff like Libreoffice (Full blown office suite) GIMP (Graphics Manipulaton), Firefox/Chromium/Whatever (Web Browsers), Terminal (Command Line, and learn to use it well, it will be one of your greatest tools at your disposal as a Linux user), Games (Including Emulators such as ZSNES, Gens, Gnuboy, Mupen64, and pretty much everything you could think of), Different Desktop Environments (Gnome 3+Gnome-shell, KDE4, Xfce4, LXDE, Unity (Ubuntu), Openbox, etc), Media Players (Rhythmbox, Banshee, DeadBeeF, Amarok, and the list goes on and on), Video Players (VLC, SMPlayer, MPlayer, etc). Virtualization too (Virtualbox allows you to run Windows in a virtualized machine without having to actually install it locally on your OS, you just need the install disk/iso and a key)
Your best bet is to download either an Ubuntu or Linux Mint Live CD and try it out (If it's on a laptop, make sure you hook it into an ethernet port first if your wireless card isn't supported), browse the software center and literally blow your own mind away at all of the different application and functionality.
Again, wireless wise I can't promise your card will work out of the box. If it does, great! Otherwise you'll need to patch into an ethernet connection as I mentioned before, and do some research on the exact model of wireless card to see what you need to do to get it to work.
Codec wise, MP3 codecs, Adobe Flash, and several other utilities that are Propriatary cannot be included with the CD most of the time. Ubuntu gives you an option to install these at one point in it's installer if you have an internet connection. Mint seems to get away with including them, so you might want to go with Mint, provided you don't mind the color green (It's irrelivant anyway, as the entire OS interface for the most part is extensively themable)
Get used to Linux asking for your password to install stuff and run administrative stuff, it uses privalages and permissions like no other OS does. It's really just making sure it's really you, and to be honest there is 0% chance they will change this.
Finally, the part I cant stress enough, is having seperate partitions for
Home (Where your home directories go), identified as /home
Root (Where the OS, Roots Home Directory, and eveything else goes)
Swap (Don't ever not give your machine swap)
The reason why I can't stress it enough, is having /home and / on different partitions allows you to reinstall your distro and keep all of your documents, pictures, files, etc. The only thing needing to be reinstalled are the applications themselves, which often reside somewhere in / , provided that you meet the following criteria
- Do not tell the installer to format the drive you put /home on (Make a note of it's /dev/sdx tag) (NEVER FORMAT /HOME!)
- Give the installer the same user information, including Actual Name, username, password, etc as you did while installing it the first time
Here's a good example of what your drive should typically be partitioned like
Root ( / )
Partition Size: 15-20GB
Should only be 15-25GB at Max, unless you have a really big drive and want to spare some)
Swap ( /swap )
Partition Size: 2x Physical RAM, or 2x Whatever the amount of PhysicalRAM you will have in the machine at any point
Reason: Your computer cannot use Hibernate or some other useful and critical features without a good deal of swap, as it has to store whatever was in RAM in swap. If the amount given isn't adequate, your OS will never give you an option to hibernate or suspend, even if you explicitely tell it to show them, they most likely will be greyed out. So for example if you think you're gonna have 4GB of ram in your machine at some point, even if you don't currently have that much, then make the /swap partition 8GB. In fact, if you want to play it safe, give /swap 8GB one way or the other.
Linux swap is often more efficient by the way than a Windows Swap file
/home
Partition Size: Whatever's leftover, but this should always be the majority of your drives space, as it gives you more room for actuall files, since Applications rarely, if ever reside in /home which is where your home directory resides in this case. Applications that reside in root typically take a sliver in Linux of what they would apposed to Windows.
In Linux we don't use drive letters, (heh....drive letters....how cute...not!), we use stuff like this
/dev/sdx# (Where x could be any letter depending on the type of drive, and # is a number assigned to it for identification)
Additionally we also use /dev/sdx (Again, where x could be any letter depending on the type of drive) without the number to represent the entire drive in general.
In fact Zeromac, PM me your hard drive size, and I'll whip up a quick partitioning table scheme for you based on it.
EDIT: Just looked up the specifications on it, all I can say is that unless you did upgrade the HDD (And you might want to based on what I found out), it's kinda...well It's gonna be pressed for space.
It has a 80GB SATA (Cant find out if it's a 2 or 1, Guessing it's a SATA2), drive. If you're willing to spend a bit, I'd go out and get a 250GB or 320GB 2.5 inch internal SATA drive, and throw it in that sucka (A SATA3 will still work in a SATA2 drive bay). It'll work, and I recommend staying away from Seagate like the black plauge (Bash me nao seagate fans!), go with Western Digital. Never had problems with WD drives ever before.
Based of HDD capcities, here's my recommended Paritioning schemes
80GB (You'll probably really be able to use 74-78GB "Curse manufacturers and their base 10", Computers use base 16 btw)
/ (Root): 18GB
/home (Home): 54GB
/swap: 6GB
Yeah, you might wanna splurge a bit and get a bigger drive, 80GB is gonna be a bit small.
250GB (Again, you'll likely be able to use 233gb, due to the base 10/base 16 difference)
/ (Root): 25GB
/home (Home): 180GB
/swap (Swap) 8GB
/tmp (Temporary): 20GB
Note: I added a /tmp or temporary partition into this schematic, for one reason. Having a seperate /tmp partition helps your root partition if a program suddenly goes rouge (Aka it stops behaving), and starts eatiing it, as it will only fill up /tmp and eventually crash as it no longer has the space. Additionally /tmp is cleared on boot, which means it will always start out empty. 20GB is plenty for ripping stuff, having a torrent program going, and a few other things using it at the same time. /tmp is essentually where any data is stored temporarily before being moved to another partition
320GB (Once again, you'll likely be able to use only 298GB of this, for the same reasons as mentioned before)
/ (Root): 30GB
/home (Home): 235GB
/swap (Swap) 8GB
/tmp (Temporary): 25GB
If you go with any bigger drive such as a 500GB or higher, adjust the partitions accordingly, but always make the majority of it your /home partition. The OS itself when initially installed takes about 4GB-8GB, and once you've got a good deal of programs installed it can range anywhere from 10GB to 15 or so.
Make notes on which partitions are which and memorize them, for example if Root is on /dev/sda1, home is on /dev/sda2, make sure you note /home so that you don't accidentally tell the installer to format it in case you end up reinstalling your distro or installing another one. If you fail to do this and you do tell it to format the partition, kiss your data goodbye.
