Does anyone here use Ubuntu Operating System?

[gman]

My sons Windows 7 laptop suffered a monumental crash at the weekend. I wasnt sure if it was a Virus, Hardware failure or software crash, all i knew was that the laptop was to all intents and purposes unuseable!

Sadly, when he got the latop at xmas, no system restore discs were made which didnt make life easy.

So...after endless hours of trying everything under the sun...i opted to try and install Ubuntu OS. So...it all went well (suprisingly) and after a few hickups, all is running well. Its going to take a bit of getting used to.

Anyhoo, i was wondering a few things. firstly......

Can Ubuntu run Windows based programs or do i need to find Linux alternatives?

I believe i dont really need anti virus software on Ubuntu?

Are there any good/useful programs/apps that i should download for him?

Are there any programs i should really install, to make life easier?

 

[Canadiens1131]

OpenOffice for opening and editing Microsoft Office documents.

 

[digitize]

I run Ubuntu, and I have for years.

A program called Wine can run Windows programs with varying degrees of success. It's gotten a lot better lately. But it's not perfect. Games will be problematic, and support is hardly universal for other programs. Here is their program database. Generally it's definitely better to run Linux alternatives, or run a Windows virtual machine within Ubuntu for what Windows programs you need.

You absolutely do not need antivirus for Ubuntu (hell, I don't use it for Windows).

Ubuntu comes with a fairly rich collection of apps pre-installed, really. Generally, software installation works differently on Ubuntu than it does on Windows and Mac OS X. It uses a system called apt, although nowadays one can get by without encountering that term. Basically, it works the same way as the App Store for iPod/iPhone/iPad, that is now actually in turn being replicated on Mac OS X and Windows 8. If you open the Ubuntu Software Center (the icon looks like a shopping bag on the toolbar on the left), you can download a whole bunch of software right from there, all for free. It's really nice.

OpenOffice is essential, and it is pre-installed with Ubuntu. Well, sort of. It is actually called LibreOffice in Ubuntu; LibreOffice is a spin-off of OpenOffice. But the two are, for all intents and purposes, identical right now.

I hope you enjoy Ubuntu. This is an interesting time to try it. Ubuntu just completed a shift from a more classic, Windows-esque desktop environment to one that they made from scratch, called Unity. I personally find the old environment much easier to work with. However, the developers of that environment (Gnome) moved to something of their own fairly similar to Unity, and Ubuntu moved over to their own home-cooked solution. I know that there's a lot of controversy about all of this in the Ubuntu community right now. But it's still a really good operating system.

 

[gman]

My son announces last night that hes really liking ubuntu (after one day). All he has done is surf the net on google chrome (which is lightning quick for browsing btw).

I have to say...i was playing about with ubuntu, and i must say...i do kinda like the look of it. Im thinking about doing a dual boot scenario on my laptop. Ubuntu just looks cooler than windows 7, then again, windows 7 has served me well, with not ONE issue. I will mibees wait and see how stable it is on Lewis's laptop before going installing it on mine...but im deffo tempted

 

[Canadiens1131]

Modern builds of Linux that are aimed at the regular consumer (Ubuntu included) are very stable. You would do fine with a dual boot of both 7 and Ubuntu. Although I am a bit of a minimalist, and if an OS is handling all of my daily needs without issue like Windows 7, dual-booting with Linux would be a bit redundant.

 

[digitize]

Yeah, I find Ubuntu builds from the past several years to all be extremely stable, unless you mess around enough and mess something up.

 

[gman]

Modern builds of Linux that are aimed at the regular consumer (Ubuntu included) are very stable. You would do fine with a dual boot of both 7 and Ubuntu. Although I am a bit of a minimalist, and if an OS is handling all of my daily needs without issue like Windows 7, dual-booting with Linux would be a bit redundant.

You are absolutely RIGHT!! I guess im just too scared to get rid of Windows 7 altogether

 

[Dfit00]

Glary Utilities is useful to run a cleaner for registry errors, temporary files and spyware.