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endlesszeal

Senior Member
I'm getting tired of virsues and spyware on Winhoes. Most of the stuff takes 2 installs to get it right and BSOD gives me nightmares. Anyway, I was thinking about moving to Linux but there are two main concerns.

1) Software compatiblity. Stuff like DVDShrink, Nero, PowerDVD, Bitcomet, AIM, Mozilla, and games. Games like Far Cry, Doom 3, and Half Life2. I already own the titles and dont want to rebuy them.

2) Which one do i use for AMD 64???? I saw like 12 and i was fuck this. I have no idea which ones and why so many besides server and regular?

Anyway, IF i migrate, do i have to back eveyrthing up and clean a hard drive and install it?
 
Originally posted by endlesszeal@Jun 24 2005, 01:09 PM
I'm getting tired of virsues and spyware on Winhoes. Most of the stuff takes 2 installs to get it right and BSOD gives me nightmares. Anyway, I was thinking about moving to Linux but there are two main concerns.

1) Software compatiblity. Stuff like DVDShrink, Nero, PowerDVD, Bitcomet, AIM, Mozilla, and games. Games like Far Cry, Doom 3, and Half Life2. I already own the titles and dont want to rebuy them.

2) Which one do i use for AMD 64???? I saw like 12 and i was fuck this. I have no idea which ones and why so many besides server and regular?

Anyway, IF i migrate, do i have to back eveyrthing up and clean a hard drive and install it?
[post=516149]Quoted post[/post]​


You will have to buy a second drive or repartition your current one. Either way I'd wipe out windows and start over.

Linux will not run Windows apps. To run windows-only applications you will need an emulator (WINE).

As a rule, any major linux distro will support AMD 64. I recommend Mandrake, Fedora, or possibly Suse.

If I were you, I'd buy a second hard drive and run a dual-boot system, with windows only there to play games and stuff on. That's what I'm going to do at some point, is run Mandrake and XP Pro.
 
1) You needn't worry about those, most Linux distros ship (yes come with it, no need to add a bunch of shit) with Mozilla (Firefox and Thunderbird for sure) and Gaim (if you don't know, it is a multiclient instant message that combines you accounts into one interface, very cool) There are Linux versions of Nero, and Bit Torrent cleints Azureus I know, some others too. For the games, you'll have to run Cedegra(sp) from transgaming, and WINE for applications. You can use Mplayer, or Xine for movies, burniogn there's a ton of options too.

2) The reason there are so many is that it is open source, so different companies can take the kernel and modify it to their own taste, and there's a LOT more than 12 haha. I have a AMD 64, and have run about 7 different distros, as long as they are i386 (means they will run on 386 and above) you're fine You coudl even get into a 64 bit version. The easiest to go from Windows to are probably Mandrake, Suse, or Xandros<--very nice. Fedora Core (what I use) is awesome, pretty simple to get the hang of and has a lot of out the box support for newer hardware.

I would do what Battle suggested, find yourself a little 20GB HD and dual boot Windows and Linux at first till you get the hang of it. Definitely install Windows first, and then Linux so it can install the bootloader on teh master boot record, or you'll be sucking. I just did a complete reinstall of Windows (twice 64 bit then back to 32) and FC4 (about 7 times because of the MBR problem, and several other distros on VMware an two days :)

That's also another thought "get" a copy of VMware, and install Linux in that, then you can try it out inside Windows.
 
Gentoo for 64 bit systems. Its the most complex of the Linux distros but your entire install will be compiled specifically for your system. Even ls will be a 64 bit application.

Slackware has SLAMD64. Although not as good as a full install of Genny, it will get the job done.

Open source versions of your software needs:

PowerDVD: Kaffeine. Grab the essential windows codec pack (yes it is called that) along with a copy of deCSS.

Nero: K3B.

AIM: GAIM. Handles every known IM protocol. No ads. Choice.

Mozilla: C'mon, you know the answer to that one :)

Your games will require WINE. Here's when keeping your Windows partition around helps. To answer the next question, no you will not have to reformat. Use a partition resizing program like fips. Be sure to defrag your windows partition beforehand. That way you will have a complete (and updatable) source for WINE to pull its DLLs and all that DirectX goodness from.

For a BitTorrent client, use Azureus. You'll wonder why you didn't before.
 
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