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[ComputerFixz]

I have been thinking lately of changing my vista hp pavilion notebook to Ubuntu Linux....is Linux any good? I have never used linux so I wouldnt know. As far as I know vista seems to be sorta slow and always gets problems....is linux reliable and does it have the ability to play games on it? Also will I have any hardware problems if I make the change? And if I do decide to change to linux...do I only have to do the Ubuntu download and run it?

[techieMoe]

I have been thinking lately of changing my vista hp pavilion notebook to Ubuntu Linux....is Linux any good? I have never used linux so I wouldnt know. As far as I know vista seems to be sorta slow and always gets problems....is linux reliable and does it have the ability to play games on it? Also will I have any hardware problems if I make the change? And if I do decide to change to linux...do I only have to do the Ubuntu download and run it?

You're about the only person who can say whether or not Linux is "any good" for you. The good news is you don't have to even install it to try it out. Download the Ubuntu CD and boot from it. You can run it from there.

If you want to try it out, there are several options. One is you can install Linux alongside Vista using the Wubi installer. This will let you play with Linux and uninstall it like any other Windows program if you don't like it.

[jayd512]

One thing you might want to know, however, is that if you run Linux from a LiveCD, it will be quite a bit slower than if you run it from a standard install. But it will still give you the chance to find out whether or not you'll have any problems with hardware detection.

[elija]

If you want to play games on your PC, there are some native games for Linux and you may have some luck getting some Windows games working using the Wine Emulation Layer*

If you are really into Windows games your best bet is to stick with Windows. If gaming is a minority of what you want to do then I would personally have no hesitation in recommending that you try Linux to see if you like it...

* I know, I know Wine Is Not Emulation. But it is. Kinda!

[Roxoff]

I ditched windows XP off my HP Pavilion laptop about three and a half years ago, never looked back. I used Fedora by choice, but only 'cos I didn't like some minor stuff in Ubuntu. But I had a choice.

I had problems with the wireless lan at first, the chipset was so new there was no Linux support for it, but that soon changed and everything else worked great. I used mine to play Neverwinter Nights a lot, and I did lots of other non-games stuff.

I'd recommend you give it a go, but only you can decide if it's the right choice for you.

I bet you thought the answers you got to 'is Linux any good?' on a Linux forum would be very different to this one and the ones above, eh?

[carlosponti]

as for me personally it just works. some people when asking about converting they typically start asking about this program and that program. there are a lot of equivalents for software you generally use in windows. office for instance in Ubuntu has Open Office pre-installed. has some graphics tools etc. games like previously mentioned is based on whether you can run it natively in linux or whether you can run it in wine(equivalent) or just have to have a smallish windows partition for just games. is it good will depend mostly on how you perceive things. some people that are long time windows techies hate linux because it doesn't work the same as windows, which is not a good argument for whether its any good. try it and if you have problems or questions come back here and they will get answered.