Been working with ubuntu 10 all semester in my networking class... and I am thinking of dropping my windows partition for a Linux distro. Just wondering if anyone else has done the same, and how it held up in the long run...and what problems would a typical Windows user find in Linux.

And yes...I am keeping my OS X partition. It is extremely fast, lazy, and simple. Now it's win7 vs ubuntu.

 

I had the ubuntu for a year... I did like it at 1st, however, after a month or 2 I noticed it was a bit quirky... even by windows standards... It did not deal with video very well, especially streaming video. setting up multiple monitors was a headache, and the biggest deal for me, was driver support, or should I say, lack there of... I have a cannon mp620 printer/scanner...etc, and could not use it with linux.... also...I use magic jack for my phone service... also wont work with linux, there is however a workaround to these problems... I installed vmware player, and ran windows inside of linux, so I could use my phone and printer, but again... it slowed linux down so much, that it just wasnt worth it to me.
I now have switched to windows 7, and I gotta say, so far I'm impressed. I'm not worried about viruses, I have used windows for years with no firewall, or virus protection, and havent got a single virus yet, of course I find some spyware every now and again, but even the best anti-virus/spyware programs out there, can not prevent that, all they do is let ya know they are there, and give the option to remove it....

 

Why are you going to run GNU/Linux alongside a UNIX? It would be better to just include linux support in your OSX install, keep the windows install, and do all the *nix stuff in OSX. That way you're not running two variations of essentially the same operation system.

 

what do you mean include linux support? Like run it virtually? or from a portable drive?

 

The only "Linux support" that I know of in OSX is the option to install the X window manager. Doing that will allow you to run programs meant to run with the X window manager in OSX.

I believe you'll have to compile most programs from source so they will run in your OSX install. It will probably be more of a headache to run this way, especially without having Synaptic and the Ubuntu repositories to install from.

I run Ubuntu 10.10 exclusively on my desktop at home. I love it but I am a bit of a geek Driver support is not an issue for me. You just need to make sure that Ubuntu has good support for your hardware. The Nvidia binary graphics driver works great.

 

this is what I thought. OSX and linux distros are far from each other...it's not like I am would straight up run two variations of *nix if I run osx and linux.

I have a macbook. Last time I tried to run ubuntu virtually there was no support for my airport card, so I want to run it natively. I run windows and osx with boot camp. Maybe I will just find the time to triple boot my mac...I heard its a PITA.