Linux help

[Sonnenburg]

So after SP3 fubared my OS and destroyed an entire hard drive, I've reached the obvious point that it's time to bite the bullet and learn a new OS where I won't have to cower in fear for every update. I was hoping someone could help me pick out a good version of Linux to use.

I need stability. I can't spend hours trying to sort shit out.
I really need to be able to use Microsoft Office; it's the software of my employer (I was told Crossover Linux is good?)
I occassionally do some gaming, like Civilization and DOS stuff
I like customizing my layout to speed up my efficiency
I use Windows Movie Maker, as it's designed for idiots. Is there a fairly simple to understand and use Linux program?

Any help would be appreciated.

[Gandalf]

If you've got the patience, I'd recommend trying a live disk before committing, it's like an OS demo that also allows you to see if it's compatible with your hardware.

I like customizing my layout to speed up my efficiency

With Ubuntu you can pretty much recreate the Windows desktop to make the transition easier.

It also really easy to experiment.

I need stability. I can't spend hours trying to sort shit out.

I've been using Ubuntu for about six months and the only glitch to appear was a 3rd party video player (Kaffeine) which would occasionally perform an illegal op and be shut down.

[Bounty]

I need stability. I can't spend hours trying to sort shit out.

Be prepared to spend quite some time getting your OS to run right. Ubuntu is probably the least hassle-free option, and once it's up and running it's rock-solid, but a single hardware issue can cost you several hours of your life to sort out.

I really need to be able to use Microsoft Office; it's the software of my employer (I was told Crossover Linux is good?)

If you depend that much on Office, you may be better off sticking with Windows. I personally have no experience with Crossover, but if it is really based on Wine, you should know that compatibility will be flaky at best.

I occassionally do some gaming, like Civilization and DOS stuff

Again, Wine, but compatibility fluctuates wildly. DOS games run quite well on Dosbox, with some tweaking.

I like customizing my layout to speed up my efficiency

You'll love Linux then. You choose your distro, your window manager, then go nuts tweaking half a billion things.

I use Windows Movie Maker, as it's designed for idiots. Is there a fairly simple to understand and use Linux program?

There are quite a few video editing applications on Linux - I use Avidemux, which is easy enough for simple editing, and would work quite nicely for your video reviews.

[Lord MJ]

Get linux, and for any windows specific things you need, use something like VMWare to run windows. VMWare is $80, and you can reuse your old Win XP license for the installation on the VM.

[Bounty]

Get linux, and for any windows specific things you need, use something like VMWare to run windows. VMWare is $80, and you can reuse your old Win XP license for the installation on the VM.

Running a Virtual Machine requires quite a few resources, and it would simply perpetuate his problem.

If you are suggesting going this route, at least point him to VirtualBox (easy to use, Windows-optimized, free) or Qemu (powerful, happy to run DOS, free).

[Chris OFarrell]

Ubuntu is a great transistion Linux OS IMHO, its stable enough to just use as an OS if you're not looking to learn how to do more then you absolutely have to using the CLI and its stable and solid enough to make it worth your while if you want to play around with the underlying 'nix core, with a lot of documentation online about it.

Now again, the biggest stop sign for people with Linux installs is that its often much harder to get all the components of their computer working due to driver insanity, though its less of a problem these days then it was say a decade ago, it does still happen. A few years back, I was trying to install Ubuntu on a box and my ATI Video card made everything just utter HELL.

[Bounty]

A few years back, I was trying to install Ubuntu on a box and my ATI Video card made everything just utter HELL.

I had that happen just a few months ago. Ubuntu is great, and I wouldn't go back to Windows, but you do need to grit your teeth and work through its quirks.

[Pu-239]

The new fglrx drivers have been much better behaved, for the cards that it supports.

[Braedley]

Hell, I still have problems with my ATI card in my old computer, but it works. I've been using Ubuntu for over a year now on my current computer, and I love it. I also kept my windows install on my current computer so that I can play games.

As far as MS Office interoperability, OpenOffice does a very good job, assuming that the documents you're dealing with are not all that complex. However, AFAIK, full OOXML support is not built in yet, but coming soon.

[General Zod]

Hell, I still have problems with my ATI card in my old computer, but it works. I've been using Ubuntu for over a year now on my current computer, and I love it. I also kept my windows install on my current computer so that I can play games.

As far as MS Office interoperability, OpenOffice does a very good job, assuming that the documents you're dealing with are not all that complex. However, AFAIK, full OOXML support is not built in yet, but coming soon.

Even on mildly complicated documents OOO isn't that great. I've tried using OoO on some of the stuff we have at work before, and things like sorting, filtering and using formulas was counter-intuitive to how I learned to use them in MS Office for spreadsheets, to say nothing about its incompatibility with things like .csv files. OoO is pretty much only useful if your office doesn't depend on anything Microsoft based at all.

[Crayz9000]

Even on mildly complicated documents OOO isn't that great. I've tried using OoO on some of the stuff we have at work before, and things like sorting, filtering and using formulas was counter-intuitive to how I learned to use them in MS Office for spreadsheets, to say nothing about its incompatibility with things like .csv files. OoO is pretty much only useful if your office doesn't depend on anything Microsoft based at all.

Well, don't get me started on how Office 2k7 is counter-intuitive to almost everything you already learned about Office...

And by the way, .CSV files are so simple that I have yet to see OOo have a problem with one. Or are you talking about getting OOo to open one in the first place?

[Bounty]

OO.o is a good "in a pinch" office suite - I use it to quickly review documents and maybe type up some simple stuff. But it's a generation behind 2007 in terms of usability and user-friendliness, and certainly won't be a pleasant transition.

[General Zod]

Well, don't get me started on how Office 2k7 is counter-intuitive to almost everything you already learned about Office...

It felt just the opposite to me. 2k7 streamlined everything and made it much simpler to use while vastly improving most features.

And by the way, .CSV files are so simple that I have yet to see OOo have a problem with one. Or are you talking about getting OOo to open one in the first place?

Getting it to open one in the first place. It didn't even recognize the .csv as a viable format.

[Braedley]

Hell, I still have problems with my ATI card in my old computer, but it works. I've been using Ubuntu for over a year now on my current computer, and I love it. I also kept my windows install on my current computer so that I can play games.

As far as MS Office interoperability, OpenOffice does a very good job, assuming that the documents you're dealing with are not all that complex. However, AFAIK, full OOXML support is not built in yet, but coming soon.

Even on mildly complicated documents OOO isn't that great. I've tried using OoO on some of the stuff we have at work before, and things like sorting, filtering and using formulas was counter-intuitive to how I learned to use them in MS Office for spreadsheets, to say nothing about its incompatibility with things like .csv files. OoO is pretty much only useful if your office doesn't depend on anything Microsoft based at all.

Are you serious? CSV files? One of the simplest table file formats available? Either you were using a very early version, or you can't locate File->Open. Sure, early support for MS file formats was not great, but they've improved drastically. So much so that wrote my portion of my groups senior project report in OOo, saved it into word, and let my partner just copy and paste, applying customized styles as needed. Tables, pictures, and graphs were all preserved. The only thing I've found not to work 100% of the time is equations in a text document. Granted, I haven't tested the interoperability of spreadsheets, but considering that text documents and presentations work fine, I'm sure that spreadsheets have few problems.

[General Zod]

Are you serious? CSV files? One of the simplest table file formats available? Either you were using a very early version, or you can't locate File->Open.

Define "early-version". The last time I tried installing OoO and using its spreadsheet ability was about two years ago. I recently tried installing it on my home machine again and some of the features still left a lot to be desired (such as filtering).

[Xenophobe3691]

I don't know, I've been using Ubuntu for almost a year now, and I keep having this problem with the sound drivers where I can only use them in one program. All the other programs can't then use the sound driver.

[Pu-239]

In the latest versino of ubuntu, everything should be routed through pulseaudio, which does the mixing, and in older versions, ALSA should do that itself. Legacy OSS apps require a wrapper to keep them from hogging the card.

[Crayz9000]

Getting it to open one in the first place. It didn't even recognize the .csv as a viable format.

That's actually due to the Windows Registry more than anything else. OOo doesn't automatically "claim" the CSV format, meaning that you have to manually go File-> Open As, select OOo, and then save that choice.

Most Linux distros recognize CSVs for what they are (an ability that Windows is still sorely lacking, being unable to determine file type except by extension) and set them to open with OOo/program of choice automatically.

[Crayz9000]

OO.o is a good "in a pinch" office suite - I use it to quickly review documents and maybe type up some simple stuff. But it's a generation behind 2007 in terms of usability and user-friendliness, and certainly won't be a pleasant transition.

On the other hand, if you haven't yet switched to Office 2007, as many of us haven't (due to the cost of actually buying it, and no, some of us aren't about to get a cracked copy) then OOo isn't too big of a change. In fact, since my office ran out of copies of Office XP/2003, I've set up a number of employees with OOo/StarOffice, and the only real retraining I had to do was to show that Page Setup moved from the File menu (where it never really made sense anyway) to the Format menu.

And if you have a hard-on for the Office 2007 ribbon, then this may be of interest to you:

RedOffice, a Chinese fork of OOo

What they've done is to rework the OOo interface to include a vertical sidebar similar to the 2k7 ribbon. Frankly, this seems like a far better choice anyway, given the prevalence of widescreen monitors now. We just don't have that much real estate at the top and bottom to waste, but there's plenty of room on the sides of the screen now. Why Microsoft didn't realize that is absolutely beyond me, but probably has to do with the fact that they're a marketing company that just happens to produce software.

[Bounty]

I'd try that fork, except Xubuntu decided it had run reliably long enough and died during the upgrade to 8.04. I got a grey flashing square, a reboot, and while X starts it just shows a blank screen.

So I backed up my Home folder and will be nuking the partition just as soon as my ISO download finishes. The joys of Linux.

[Bounty]

Bounty: It sounds like your window manager is broken. Running as a new user or rolling back the WM version might fix it. And, of course, nuking the partition almost certainly will.

The partition's already nuked, I'm now doing my traditional battle with Network Manager to try and get it to send out my WEP key. RT2500 drivers and Ubuntu still don't mix.

But this is way OT.

ETA: after two hours, I found the two number in my driver's .INF file that stopped it from properly sending my WPA key... or something. Networking's back up. This, too, is part of the Linux experience.

[Sonnenburg]

I just wanted to thank everyone for their input, and I've already downloaded Ubuntu based on your recommendation. Here's hoping!