Time for a new OS?

[anonymo]

ZD has been telling us how great Ubuntu is for a while now but I think this might seal the deal for you if you're tired of XP/Vista

 

[utube]E4Fbk52Mk1w&NR=1[/utube]

 

It's easy to get all the plugins (video is a little old), you just go to the "Add/Remove Programs" option under your Applications tab and search for Compiz Fusion

 

If Wine integrated vendor specific USB driver support I would be completely switched over

 

PS...I'm working on the weighted companion cube background

 

Edit: Got a fairly good companion cube background and yes, it kind of looks like the real thing...screenshots are turning up garbled unfortunately

 

Wait...is it saturday night?

[ZeroDamage]

Ubuntu 7.10 has Compiz Fusion built in by default and it will automatically be turned on if your hardware is supported. You have to add one thing to be able to manipulate the extra features such as the Cube or writing on your desktop in flames.

 

You install the compizconfig-settings-manager by running this command in the terminal: sudo apt-get install compizconfig-settings-manager

and you install emerald if you want some extra stuff.

 

Then in the System => Preferences => Advanced Desktop Effects Settings you can turn on the desktop cube and what not.

 

I've been thinking of putting together a how-to to setup and make Ubuntu run the best for you but only if there is enough interest. It would be a waste of my time otherwise since there are plenty online that cover what I do. howtoforge.net has a nice one for the Ubuntu perfect desktop but I would not do some of what is there and I would add a few things.

[ZeroDamage]

Here are a few screen shots of what I was just able to do.

 

(A PM I was typing to send to Anon.

 

 

 

 

 

 

My zoomed in because I am blind.

 

Edited February 10, 2008 by ZeroDamage

[ConGregation]

awesome. I might give this a try. It's easy to dual boot with a partition?

[ZeroDamage]

Yeah, it is easy to dual boot. It will auto config the partitions for you and resize and what not as necessary. Just backup your important stuff before doing this because sometimes, bad things happen.

[ConGregation]

Posting from it now. Gonna have to spend some time to get it all setup properly. But so far was really a breeze to setup! It said i needed 185 updates. YIKES!

[nut]

Yeah, it is easy to dual boot. It will auto config the partitions for you and resize and what not as necessary. Just backup your important stuff before doing this because sometimes, bad things happen.

 

 

what do you mean? lol i don't got lotsa $$ and i don't got lotsa hd space to backup.. what are the problems with it?

[ZeroDamage]

Yeah, it is easy to dual boot. It will auto config the partitions for you and resize and what not as necessary. Just backup your important stuff before doing this because sometimes, bad things happen.

 

 

what do you mean? lol i don't got lotsa $$ and i don't got lotsa hd space to backup.. what are the problems with it?

 

 

Nothing wrong with it but you never just assume everything is going to go ok. Assume the worst and backup just in case something does happen. That is just the way things are with computers in general. Installing another OS is dual boot mode is a major change no matter what two OS's you put on the computer.

[TheGeek]

So how is it on the memory? I have a friend that has vista on her laptop and it uses 500 megs of memory idle. I'm looking for alternatives.

[ZeroDamage]

This is my system running for a week solid with vmware running an instance of Ubuntu server, firefox open with a couple of tabs, compiz-fusion running, and pidgin (IM client) all running.

 

 

Let me add that I do remove a couple of unneccessary programs from the system when I first install. I remove Evolution, the search/index thing (sort of like Google Desktop), and a few other minor things like the blue tooth support and what not. Other than that, it runs 100 times more efficiently than XP ever did. This is an old system with an ATI 7500 All-in-wonder, 3500 Athlon64, and a Gig of RAM. I do everything on this system while I only game on my other rig and it is only on when I game.

 

Some new features and tech on the way from the Compiz-Fusion group.

Looks bad-donkey!

 

http://www.pramnos.com/story69-2390.html

Edited February 12, 2008 by ZeroDamage

[LoveForPriscillaChan]

the reason vista is using lots of memory when idle is because it tries to cache a lot of your stuff, meaning when you do need it, you get it really fast instead of going to the HD

 

its actually good because i mean, your memory is free, your computer is idle, why not use the free time and memory space to do something that can potentially speed up your operations?

[ZesteR]

^ agreed, but this can be bad when you want to mutlitask and all ur memory is now used up for caching, rather than applications

 

it has it's ups and downs.

[LoveForPriscillaChan]

i can't say for sure but i'm going to assume that the OS is going to first give memory to all the apps you need, and afterwards, if there is any free memory left, they'll start caching it;

 

even if they have already used that memory for cache and you start a new app, bringing that new app's stuff in from HD is going to be a blind write onto memory, which is the same perf as you not caching it, so there really is no loss, unless there is some corner case that i am not thinking about