XP or linux?

[therieldeal]

i'm turning my old ibm t40 into a dedicated tuning machine

should i wipe it and reinstall winxp, or give linux a shot? i have a copy of Ubuntu downloaded already, but i'm nervous it will be annoying to get everything working right. never used linux before.

can anyone offer any insight?

[martiniac]

If you've never used linux before, the learning curve for Ubuntu can be abrupt, but it's really not too bad. I think that you would be much happier with Ubuntu over XP in the long run... that is IF you are going to use the machine strictly for tuning.

Let me know if you have any questions. I haven't worked with Ubuntu for awhile, but I have tons of experience with operating the OS.

[deadly_sleeper]

Why don't you just run the live cd and see if you like it. If you do then install it onto the laptop. If not then when you reboot it will still be fresh. Do have to warn you, if you decide to do the live cd for awhile, each time you boot it up, you have to redo everything and install drivers and what not.

OR

Do a dual boot option. Install XP first, then put in the Ubuntu cd and it will create the dual boot option for you.

[yunvmyegt]

megatunix isnt even being updated as far as i remember, your better off with something that can run ts as thats atleast out of beta finally .... and you said you threw down for it too...

ok i take that back, i forgot ts can be ran on linux... if you can figure out linux easy enough jump in, i never tried to figure it out yet... im sure its nothing hard tho...

[Beerizfood]

I use xp stripped down with n-lite.
Works good.

[jumpncrash]

Ubuntu is pretty good for beginners, most things are pretty easily done, and whenever you need to use console commands they can usually be found on the web, so just copy paste the command and you're good to go.

Nick

[1st Gen]

Live CD is a go.
Like was already mentioned, learning how to configure Linux is a time consuming, inconvenient PITA. There are also compatibility issues sometimes.

That being said, if you like figuring stuff out and get excited over a good project, open source is one of the best. I'm kind of surprised your not already knee deep in it.

I reformatted my sisters old Dell 8600 Inspiron with XP and oh what a feeling it was trying to find those drivers.

[SgtRauksauff]

they both have their pros and cons. I say load up a bit of Lucid Lynx, play with it, and see how you like it. Awhile back, I had an XP box that hadn't been rebuilt in about 5 years, so I just wiped the system drive, and installed Jaunty Jackalope (9.04, 2 releases before the 10.04 current release), and never had a single bit of issue. That was my main machine at home, as far as email and web access, and my main media server. Actually, using Samba for that was a lot easier permissions-wise than using winxp. Never had an iota of problems.

I think the biggest issue would be making sure you can run whatever applications you want to.

it's not like it takes a long time to do either one, other than the updates for winxp... Personally, i'd do the install instead of the liveCd, just because with the LiveCD, the system tends to run slower than its 'real' speed, because of caching and drive access.

--sarge