Home > Uncategorized > 2-minute review; Win 7 and Ubuntu 9.10

2-minute review; Win 7 and Ubuntu 9.10

November 22, 2009

I installed Windows 7 on the new computer that I built for MrsDoF.  Installation was complicated by the fact that it was an “upgrade” that couldn’t upgrade; even if you install it on an existing Win installation, it sets the old installation aside and you still have to re-install your applications.  But as this was a new computer with a blank hard drive, I did a bare XP installation and then 7; then it installed fine.  XP moved into a folder named something like “oldwin”, which I deleted.

7 is FAST, and I mean smoking fast.  It’s as if Microsoft looked at Ubuntu and had a vision of themselves selling Apples on the streetcorner and got to work.  It boots in twenty seconds and logs on in ten. It runs applications fast.  You couldn’t achieve that with a minor update of Vista, so they must have done something pretty fundamental.  (Of course it will be interesting to see if it stays fast after a few months of use by a non-technical user.)

MrsDoF, after complaining bitterly about how slow/dysfunctional her XP machine was, has paid scant attention to how fast her new machine is, focusing instead on the inconvenient differences every new computer installation has from the old one.  But I think we’ve about gotten through that part now.

I’m using Microsoft Security Essentials, which seems to be faster and smoother than McAfee.

Friday I was in a meeting with a campus planner who was using a dual-core Thinkpad with 7 on it.  I commented on that and he said; “I was ready to frisbee this thing off [a dormitory] with Vista, but one of my guys put 7 on it.  World of difference; now I love it.”  And last week our student tech put 7 on an older P4 Thinkpad (also upgraded it to 2gig ram) and it’s now our fastest laptop, smoking dual-core machines with Vista.  So if you’re getting frustrated with your machine, and you have to run Windows for some reason, boost it to 2 gigs and put 7 on it instead of replacing it.

Or, if you don’t need to run Windows (and how many good reasons can there be for that?) then put Ubuntu 9.1 9.10 on instead.  I’m now running it on 3 machines including my laptop and it’s awesome.  Different, yes; but it does all that computer-y stuff maybe a bit faster than 7 and it’s free.  And though I’m hardly a Linux expert, I manage just fine with it – most of the time when I need an answer I just hit the Googles. I’d suggest at least 1 gig ram,  preferably 2. And when you install, put your /home in a separate partition so you can upgrade without worrying about losing your stuff.

9.1 9.10 is slick like 7, with lots of eye-candy that I really don’t care about and which seem like wasted CPU (or GPU) cycles, but it doesn’t seem to slow it down any.  Yesterday I put 9.1 9.10 on a P4 with 2 gig of ram and it runs great. 

On a related note, our network admin is running Ubuntu server as one of our web servers, and he loves it.  Wants to convert every box he can to it.

That may have been a bit more than 2 minutes, but wanted to share what I found out with you.

Categories: Uncategorized
  1. EdK
    November 22, 2009 at 12:33 | #1

    If you can find a retailer that will actually stock and ship it, MS sells a three license home premium edition that’s actually reasonably priced at $150.  Many advertise, few will sell.  I don’t know if this is a temporary offer or not.

  2. November 22, 2009 at 13:11 | #2

    That’s a really good deal, if you want Windows.

  3. November 23, 2009 at 08:40 | #3

    I tried Ubuntu on my daughter’s old Gateway notebook.  Burned the DVD just fine, booted off it just fine.

    Install.  No joy.  Reboot.  Nope.

    Went to SuSE, the enterprise edition.  Yikes!  Too many DVDs to burn, I was out of blank disks.  There was one other alternative … install “over the network” … which for me meant the Interwebs with the Gateway attached via CAT6 directly to the home network.

    Hours later … it worked!  Took some fiddling and noodling to get the WiFi working, but now it’s fine, and solid. 

    I still have an issue with the driver for the sound card, but I’ll let my Linux-genius son figure that out once he arrives.  :cheese:

  4. November 23, 2009 at 21:48 | #4

    Okay the geek in me must come out for this one. It’s not “9.1” it’s “9.10”. Note the last digit which makes ten and not one. It refers to the general release month. New versions of Ubuntu are released in October and April, not January and April.  :P

    There I feel better now. Sorry for that.

    I too had an easy time putting Windows 7 on an old machine and it runs great with 7. Installed just fine on my IBM X31 which is amazingly old. I was very impressed. All I had to do was Windows Update after install and a few Vista drivers downloaded from Lenovo and all is well. But I don’t have a license and my 7 hack isn’t working right so looks like Linux here I come. :) Oh well…

  5. November 23, 2009 at 22:21 | #5

    No need to apologize Webs, I didn’t know about the numbering scheme.  Correction made.  After all you taught me most of what I know about Linux.

  6. November 24, 2009 at 14:55 | #6

    Toward the end of a product cycle, you’re almost better off going with a net install, WeeDram. Once you’ve loaded a Linux distribution will immediately look for updates. If it’s been several months since the distro was released, it will take hours for those updates to download anyway. Might as well get the fresh stuff right away.

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