Ubuntu

[Freitag]

I'm thinking about giving Ubuntu a shot but before I spend a lot of time figuring it out, I thought I just ask for some feedback here.

At the moment I'm a (very poor) student and every penny counts. So saving the cost of an OS would be great. (getting a new laptop btw)

However, I'm afraid it won't run everything i need or it will be too complicated. I work with different programs to analyse and plot data(MATLAB, Igor, etc.) and I read they work with wine but I'm not sure how well.

Also, I heard it has some performance issues, running slower than windows on some machines specially while using wine.

Should I bother with it or just stick with windows?

[EverFX]

Hi Freitag,

You can actually get a version of Windows for next to nothing just for being a student. There are many programs(particularly DreamSpark) that provide this service.

As for the programs you mentioned, I'm still up in the air about performance for anything with Unity. However, 10.04 LTS is still supported and will still run MUCH faster than Windows. MATLAB is very well supported on Ubuntu and there's quite a bit of documentation for getting it working. Igor, I'm not so sure about. However, winetricks tends to fix 99% of all problems with WINE. Using Ubuntu comes down to a thing of time vs. money in terms of cost-effectiveness.

EverFX

[Snorkle]

If you are a university student, check with your uni if they have an agreement with microsoft so that students can have access to the MSDNAA. IF so, you can get a lot of things for free.

[Freitag]

yeah they have some kind of apple partnership which only gives you the educational price which is still 4 digits for the cheepest one. :/

The university even bought an armada of huge imacs while we still have 8 year old PC's in some faculties.

Microsoft Dreamspark/msdnaa only for the IT students, not for science. fml

I think I'll just try Ubuntu and if it doesn't work out I'll find some source for windows. Arrrrrrr

[Deleted]

As a student you should ask your administration about MSDNAA. Through it, you can get a Windows license at a reduced price or even free.

[Cyanotical]

WoW can be run in linux, although there are issues, it's not exactly a simple installation like windows, nor does it run that well, however, most other games will not, which is why we all still use windows,

WINE is a sandbox emulation environment for windows based programs, and like any emulation program usually takes around twice the power of the original to run at the same level of performance, Linux fanboys will claim that you can run any windows based program in WINE, which is true, but many programs need a lot of patience and time to get working, and for 90% of users, it is not worth the effort

personally i love ubuntu, but i don't love it enough to use it, as others have said, ask your school about an MSDNAA, you should be able to get a copy of windows for free, if not, 7 home premium OEM is $100, but any new laptop should come with it pre installed, and most OEMs will not discount you to remove it

[glo]

WoW can be run in linux, although there are issues, it's not exactly a simple installation like windows, nor does it run that well, however, most other games will not, which is why we all still use windows,

WINE is a sandbox emulation environment for windows based programs, and like any emulation program usually takes around twice the power of the original to run at the same level of performance, Linux fanboys will claim that you can run any windows based program in WINE, which is true, but many programs need a lot of patience and time to get working, and for 90% of users, it is not worth the effort

personally i love ubuntu, but i don't love it enough to use it, as others have said, ask your school about an MSDNAA, you should be able to get a copy of windows for free, if not, 7 home premium OEM is $100, but any new laptop should come with it pre installed, and most OEMs will not discount you to remove it

Wine isn't an emulator, programs run natively with the compatibility layer Wine provides.

Wine Is Not an Emulator.

[Cyanotical]

Wine isn't an emulator, programs run natively with the compatibility layer Wine provides.

Wine Is Not an Emulator.

i know what wine stands for, but, it is an emulator, it's just very different from a standard emulator, which is why they went with "wine is not an emulator" this was changed from the previous name of "WINdows Emulator", the name change was meant to make wine stand out

[glo]

i know what wine stands for, but, it is an emulator, it's just very different from a standard emulator, which is why they went with "wine is not an emulator" this was changed from the previous name of "WINdows Emulator", the name change was meant to make wine stand out

Yeah, this is why you shouldn't quote Wikipedia as an accurate source of information. How about we click through to the source on that statement! We get directed to:

http://www.faqs.org/faqs/windows-emulation/wine-faq/

Turns out to be some random usenet FAQ a guy wrote up, with absolutely zero reference to the origin of the name. He simply decided to capitalize a few letters! Did he write code or contribute to the Wine project in any way? Not at all.

Regardless -

Unless you want to call -any- software library in Linux an "emulator", you cannot apply that word to Wine, since that's exactly what it is. A software library. Wine simply adds a bunch of real dll's, system files, and directories for the kernel to call for when -natively- running Windows apps. Emulators virtualize an entire system environment. There's no kernel imitation going on with Wine whatsoever, thus, it's not an emulator.

A direct quote from their official FAQ further proves my point:

1.3. Is Wine an emulator? There seems to be disagreement.

There is a lot of confusion about this, particularly caused by people getting Wine's name wrong and calling it WINdows Emulator.
When users think of an emulator, they tend to think of things like game console emulators or virtualization software. However, Wine is a compatibility layer - it runs Windows applications in much the same way Windows does. There is no inherent loss of speed due to "emulation" when using Wine, nor is there a need to open Wine before running your application.
That said, Wine can be thought of as a Windows emulator in much the same way that Windows Vista can be thought of as a Windows XP emulator: both allow you to run the same applications by translating system calls in much the same way. Setting Wine to mimic Windows XP is not much different from setting Vista to launch an application in XP compatibility mode.
A few things make Wine more than just an emulator:
Sections of Wine can be used on Windows. Some virtual machines use Wine's OpenGL-based implementation of Direct3D on Windows rather than truly emulate 3D hardware.
Winelib can be used for porting Windows application source code to other operating systems that Wine supports to run on any processor, even processors that Windows itself does not support.
"Wine is not just an emulator" is more accurate. Thinking of Wine as just an emulator is really forgetting about the other things it is. Wine's "emulator" is really just a binary loader that allows Windows applications to interface with the Wine API replacement.

TLDR - Don't quote Wikipedia as fact!

[Cyanotical]

TLDR - Don't quote Wikipedia as fact!

i wasn't, that was from memory, but anyway, we had a nice discussion of this in my CEH class, and it IS and emulator, just not in the traditional sense, whether the Devs want to call it that or not, because of the sandboxing and application layers it is more complex then a simple emulator, but that is what it does, which is why i called it a sandbox emulation environment

this also doesn't change the fact that unless you are an advanced linux user with a lot of experience with wine, then gaming on linux is not the best idea

[glo]

i wasn't, that was from memory, but anyway, we had a nice discussion of this in my CEH class, and it IS and emulator, just not in the traditional sense, whether the Devs want to call it that or not, because of the sandboxing and application layers it is more complex then a simple emulator, but that is what it does, which is why i called it a sandbox emulation environment

this also doesn't change the fact that unless you are an advanced linux user with a lot of experience with wine, then gaming on linux is not the best idea

Wine isn't a sandbox. Again, it's not an isolated virtualized environment. And if one insists on calling it an emulator just because of the Windows compatibility layer, then you may as well call the entire Linux kernel and shared libraries an "emulator". Because that's what Wine is, a glorified shared library for the kernel to call to while natively running a Windows app.

I'm guessing you haven't extensively worked with Linux much. Here's a basic rundown of how shared libraries work and are loaded for programs requiring them:

http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/li...x.html?ca=drs-

[Cyanotical]

I'm guessing you haven't extensively worked with Linux much.

read from my other laptop running arch with most of my networking and va tools

the problem is that with the way you are trying to say wine works, it makes a perfect attack vector into a linux system

i will agree that wine is not an true emulator, but it does emulate, and it is a sandbox, all you need to prove that is a simple own-the-box trick