Switching over to the Penguin side of things

Hey everyone,

I've been putting off switching over to linux for the past couple weeks, but my computer is finally coming together and this is the last bit. For the distro I'm thinking of using Ubuntu.

It will be going on two rigs, my main rig (see sig) and a laptop (Compaq Presario v2000, AMD Turion 64 1.6ghz, ATI x200 express onboard.)

Few questions:
1. Will linux be able to read files on my NTFS formatted drives? I have three 200gb storage drives full of movies and music.
2. Is linux OC friendly? (for main rig only)
3. How is linux power management? (for laptop)
4. 64bit linux (for laptop)
5. How much does having a RAID0 array complicate installation? (I have a 20gb partition set aside for linux on my Raid0 array)

I'm switching over to linux because:
1. I can
2. It's free
3. I've always wanted to
4. Airsnort and WEP Crack

What I'm looking for out of linux:
1. Gaming? Not sure if this is possible, BF2, WoW, and Starcraft
2. Something to put on my Resume: I use linux at work (SUSE with KDE GUI I believe.) I believe there are many CAD and graphics rendering programs that use linux, so what better way for me to learn.

Thanks for your help, feel free to suggest a different linux package.

Maviryk said:

Hey everyone,

I've been putting off switching over to linux for the past couple weeks, but my computer is finally coming together and this is the last bit. For the distro I'm thinking of using Ubuntu.

It will be going on two rigs, my main rig (see sig) and a laptop (Compaq Presario v2000, AMD Turion 64 1.6ghz, ATI x200 express onboard.)

Few questions:
1. Will linux be able to read files on my NTFS formatted drives? I have three 200gb storage drives full of movies and music.

Click to expand...

Read? Yes.

2. Is linux OC friendly? (for main rig only)

Click to expand...

Well, there isn't any overclocking software for it, but there is temperature monitoring software, and stuff for stability testing (memtest86, prime95, etc).

3. How is linux power management? (for laptop)

Click to expand...

Decent. Linux has support for ACPI and for cpu voltage/frequency scaling.

4. 64bit linux (for laptop)

Click to expand...

There is such a thing. What's your question?

5. How much does having a RAID0 array complicate installation? (I have a 20gb partition set aside for linux on my Raid0 array)

Click to expand...

It depends on if the controller is supported or not.

First off: my friend, welcome to the future on your desktop!

Yeah, you may have problems if your controller is unsupported; I had difficulties with my nV RAID (although this was some time ago) support. Linux does include a software RAID system as well.

It sounds to me like you have no reason to switch aside from boredom. Windows will do all of those things much better. Linux is good for people who are studying IT, running servers, hate Microsoft, have slow computers, or like to tinker with computers and don't run much beside's FireFox.

Overclocking is better in windows, Gamin in Linux is near worthless. ATI drivers suck, Power Management exists but isn't as good (with Debian). You'd be better off buying a used Xbox on eBay and hacking Linux onto it, instead of shredding your laptop.

whoever said:

It sounds to me like you have no reason to switch aside from boredom. Windows will do all of those things much better. Linux is good for people who are studying IT, running servers, hate Microsoft, have slow computers, or like to tinker with computers and don't run much beside's FireFox.

Overclocking is better in windows, Gamin in Linux is near worthless. ATI drivers suck, Power Management exists but isn't as good (with Debian). You'd be better off buying a used Xbox on eBay and hacking Linux onto it, instead of shredding your laptop.

Click to expand...

Don't hate on Linux. Linux is also good for people who don't like spending nearly $100 for a copy of Windows. Most overclocking is done in the BIOS so that doesn't matter, unless you use A64 tweaker, and the OP's rig is using a P4. There are even Linux programs for video card oc'ing. You can play most popular games (unless they're brand new) using Cedega (windows/directx emulator), and the Nvidia drivers (card in his main rig is a 7800GT) are almost up to par with the ones for Windows. Power management can be just as good if you're using the right distro (in Gentoo my laptop works the same as it did in Windows). There are 64 bit versions of most distros, and I'd recommend either Ubuntu, Kubuntu, or Gentoo, although Gentoo is substantially harder for the initial install and takes a while due to the fact that it compiles all packages from source (for speed optimization). You should be fine with any of those distros though, since (K)Ubuntu has a graphical installer and there's a step-by-step install guide for Gentoo at their site.

First of all, Gentoo is really hard to install. It takes a few hours of typing at the console to make it install. And most people have to try it a few times.

But, I wasn't hating on Linux, but for Gaming linux doesn't have much standing, and he obviously has a copy of Windoze

You can actually play a fair number of games on Linux, but yes, the newest games may or may not work.

World of Warcraft, Ragnarok Online, and Steam (that means CSS and HL2) work.

Check out the app db of WINE:
http://appdb.winehq.org/

OpenOffice is great for word processing and spreadsheets and stuff like that. Can even save into and read from Microsoft Word and Excel formats.

whoever said:

First of all, Gentoo is really hard to install. It takes a few hours of typing at the console to make it install. And most people have to try it a few times.

Click to expand...

Well, Gentoo now has a graphical install method.. So its not as hard.

And its not "really hard to install". Yeah, its a pain sometimes, but its just reading directions.

Installing Gentoo is just about as hard as building and overclocking a computer. You have to be careful, you run into snags, and you have to work at it. But the performance and satisfaction are worth it.