Why you should replace Windows 7 with Linux

[jrsilvey]

@mossman You left a really amazing, lightning quick distro that has a 32-bit version available but would be hard to find if you weren't already aware of it called Porteus. Reviews and other info can be found on their DistroWatch page.

I was trying to refurbish a 32-bit dinosaur I found at my family's house. I can't recall the specs but the machine itself was built in 2004 and I was able to run Porteus LXQt on it and it was -FAST-. Porteus runs in system RAM as a Live system. It is based on Slack.

I am not sure of your proficiency with Linux but Slack can be very difficult and, indeed, it surpassed my skills to figure out how to package every darn thing myself. I tried with Porteus version 3.2 and you needed to build the web browser from source before you could connect to the web. Porteus 4.0 dealt with this issue and you can build the browser of your choice (Firefox, Opera, Palemoon, and a few others) with just a few clicks.

Porteus is available in MULTIPLE DE's and this was reason I learned about the difference in them when I was first starting Linux.

As you can see by the image below all of the ISOs are small enough to fit on a CD for machines without a DVD or USB boot option.

Porteus's build page is no longer maintained and you have to reach it through their mirror sites. I use the first one listed located on a vim.org FTP Server

The only Desktop Environment I was unable to run successfully with KDE. I could get into the CLI but was never able to get the DE to successfully load.

Other than that Porteus was, and remains, one my favorite distros because of how blazing FAST it is and it's lack of persistence.

Good luck and feel free to message me if you run into any problems! If you do try a pLop CD boot loader and that should solve any problems with USB boot issues.

[jrsilvey]

@Pathduck Forbes just recently did an article on Linux Gaming which featured multiple parts and Part 3 featured Solus.

Chris Titus is a Youtuber that went from being an IT professional who specialized in Windows and other Microsoft products and services and decided to give that up and work on promoting, explaining and spreading knowledge about what Linux is, how it works, and why and how you can start using it.

He recently did a video on the release of Fedora 31 and the multiple features it offered. He is an avid gamer and he was impressed with the ease of setting up a gaming environment in Fedora 31 and explained and showed exactly the steps you should take to enable all of the most used services.

Hope those links can help you or others get some more insight on gaming on Linux!

[jrsilvey]

@onurmarc Ugh, I couldn't disagree more. If you are going to dual-boot Windows and any Linux distro I would definitely suggest doing so on different hard drives completely rather than doing it on the same drive. Microsoft has worked diligently to make it difficult (well nigh impossible for non-technical users) to install Linux with the implementation of UEFI and the use of Secure Boot.

With any install of Linux I always make sure Windows exists FIRST because if you install it after any Linux installation that uses an EFI it will most definitely steal the control from the bootloader and force you to reconfigure the grub loader. I have even seen cases where external drives that used to have Windows installations on them but were simply being used for storage were able to mangle Linux dual or multi-bootlloaders.

Once Solus 4 came out I was able to leave Windows behind completely. It is extremely liberating not to have to be held back by a program that is designed to track you and invade your privacy. Using my computer with Windows on it became a daily nightmare of constant updating that I no longer have to worry about and even if I miss a few updates Linux is far more secure than anything Microsoft offers.

[chdsl]

@Koolio Have you ever used Linux in any capacity? Or, just shouting?

[Catweazle]

@chdsl said in Why you should replace Windows 7 with Linux:

@Koolio Have you ever used Linux in any capacity? Or, just shouting?

For what it describes, he have tried it, but surely many years ago, where Linux was indeed quite poor in its functions, or some very simple distro that can really be worse than XP.
He should consider, that there are currently many distros, which in particular functionality, leave Windows in diapers.
The problematic of Linux is another, as described before (software, certain drivers,etc)

[justinzobel]

@mib2berlin said in Why you should replace Windows 7 with Linux:

Hi, tried Solus today from USB3 pendrive and seams quite speedy but it is only a basic installation. You have to install 80 dependencies to run Vivaldi, 120 to install Dolphin.
May it need restart but Dolphin does not work without.
Vivaldi is not installed in the default directory so propritary media does not work without fiddling. It is nice but no distro for Linux beginners.
Will check other media later, btw. no Gimp installed per default.

Cheers, mib

I imagine you haven't updated, that's why it's saying it needs 80 and 120 dependencies, it means there are updates that need to be applied in order to install Vivaldi/Dolphin and it's dependencies.

[justinzobel]

@mib2berlin said in Why you should replace Windows 7 with Linux:

Thanks for help but I am long term OpenSuse user since 20 years or something.
I tested Budgie, never liked Gnome based distros.
With basic I meant a Opensuse iso is 4 GB, most software you can imagine is already installed.
It was only a quick test, all hardware was working but I cant create a desktop shortcut for Vivaldi, for example. Horror for a Windows user.
Solus seams nice and fast so far-

Cheers, mib

Solus doesn't install 30,000 applications you'll never need. It keeps it basic (web browser, office suite, email client, file manager, etc) and allows you to build from there if you need more, however many users don't need more.

[Catweazle]

@justinzobel said in Why you should replace Windows 7 with Linux:

@mib2berlin said in Why you should replace Windows 7 with Linux:

Thanks for help but I am long term OpenSuse user since 20 years or something.
I tested Budgie, never liked Gnome based distros.
With basic I meant a Opensuse iso is 4 GB, most software you can imagine is already installed.
It was only a quick test, all hardware was working but I cant create a desktop shortcut for Vivaldi, for example. Horror for a Windows user.
Solus seams nice and fast so far-

Cheers, mib

Solus doesn't install 30,000 applications you'll never need. It keeps it basic (web browser, office suite, email client, file manager, etc) and allows you to build from there if you need more, however many users don't need more.

Many users for home use do not even need much more than, as this, an email client and a browser.
For punctual use there are excellent online applications that are enough for this

[mib2berlin]

@justinzobel
Hi, have not updated, Solus don´t tell me to do so.
If you want a small distro because of hardware limitations Suse is not for you or you have disable packets during installation.
I work with Puppy Linux and DS Linux, they are really small and extreme fast, too.
For a beginner it is better to have all inclusive as he/she not even know how to install software on Linux.
This is no offence to Solus, I will check on my workstation today how fast it really is.

Cheers, mib

[dbouley]

Very good article. If you're coming from a MS-Windows environment, I would highly recommend taking a look at Q4OS (Linux) as an OS alternative. It's built on top of Debian, but is very sympathetic towards the MS-Windows user. It also performs very well on older tech. It is the OS installed on all of the daily use PCs in our household.

[Catweazle]

@dbouley said in Why you should replace Windows 7 with Linux:

Very good article. If you're coming from a MS-Windows environment, I would highly recommend taking a look at Q4OS (Linux) as an OS alternative. It's built on top of Debian, but is very sympathetic towards the MS-Windows user. It also performs very well on older tech. It is the OS installed on all of the daily use PCs in our household.

It is certainly an excellent option for Windows users, with a very similar UI and its easy handling. Also with KDE there is a good name behind this OS

[dbouley]

@catweazle: It also runs Vivaldi just fine. At the moment, to install it on Q4OS you need to use the dpkg -i command at the command prompt. But, Q4OS also has a custom package installer, and maybe they could make a Vivaldi script for it, if they were asked politely.

[mossman]

There have been a lot of recommendations on here, thanks to everyone if I didn't reply.

I'll be changing the netbook OS some time, but it's not urgent as Lubuntu 18.04 (the last 32 bit one) is still fine - apart from not having installed a swap file... Talking of that, there's a shop here which sells old 2GB modules to replace the 1GB one very cheap - so I'll probably get the netbook double memory as a Christmas present.

But as everyone is so enthusiastic about recommending their pet distros, could I ask this: which meet my minimum demands?

• 32 bit
• encrypted disk
• swap file

Bonus points for having VLC, LibreOffice, DoubleCommander, Vivaldi etc. in the package manager list...

Edit: there was one other thing - I notice that the battery drains much faster in Lubuntu than it did in XP (around 2 hours versus 8+ hours) - it also runs hotter (continuous CPU fan). It seems that Lubuntu might not be that "lite" on the hardware after all. So ideally I need a distro with better resource use.

[Catweazle]

@mossman ,with the aforementioned you are already doing well on a netbook As I mentioned before, if you need something else on time, you can use one of the applications that are online, without the need to use more system resources.
(see in my signature Online Tools)

[jajens00]

I use win 10 on job computers, but Linux mint on some of my private laptops. Linux Mint is very easy and Win 7 like to use. For new to Linux try linux mint and You will understand what I talk about. There is lot of programs out there. Vivaldi is very stable on linux mint. I have used linux mandriva, Ubuntu and other but end up with mint since every thing is so easy from You start install procedure and run it first time.

[dbouley]

@mossman I think Q4OS meets your minimum needs. This is a year old now, but here's a review of Q4OS that may help you decide.
https://www.linuxinsider.com/story/85748.html

David.

[JoelYoung]

@dbouley Thanks for mentioning this one. I've been researching the bajillion flavors of Linux, and finding it hard to decide what to try first. This one looks like a contender, and I've downloaded the ISO in case I give it a shot (Mint is in the running as well).

I also found Ubuntu Studio, made for creative work. Being a musician, that might be perfect for my music production laptop. But for everyday stuff, Q4OS looks good.

I'm geeky enough to get my hands dirty with many distros, but not enough time and no spare laptop to explore them all.

[dbouley]

@JoelYoung You're most welcome. I hope it works out for you. We use it on all of our laptops/PCs now. It works well for us, not only because it's easy enough to use, but our hardware is older (Acer Aspire One netbooks, a Lenovo T61 and E530 laptop) and they have no problem running Q4OS.

I know what you mean about trying out all of the different flavours of Linux. I've been working with them since 2001. But, these days, there's just so many different versions to choose from, I've kind of lost the drive to try them all.

If you do decide to give Q4OS a try, I've just posted a brief How-To on my blog on how to install Vivaldi (as Q4OS does not have it included in it's repository).

[Zalex108]

@dbouley said in Why you should replace Windows 7 with Linux:

I've just posted a brief How-To on my blog on how to install Vivaldi (as Q4OS does not have it included in it's repository)

Link?

Thank you.

[dbouley]

@Zalex108 Here you go!
https://dbouley.vivaldi.net/2019/12/01/how-to-install-vivaldi-on-q4os/#more-231