Alternative Operating Systems

Disadvantages? I don't think you will find there are many! You get to enjoy a crash-free experience, and often it costs you nothing in the process! :rotfl:

Well, that is pretty true actually.

Given the fact operating systems are expensive and time consuming to code, they generally fall into one of two categories - Windows or Unix.

Unix does include popular ones like Linux and Mac OS X, since they are both based on Unix.

If you have never used Linux or BSD, its definitely worth giving them a go! You can have multiple operating systems installed on one PC (I have FreeBSD installed in our student house as my OS of choice for our server, although I have a copy of Win2000 on there too... and another build of freebsd on my laptop with XP)... people usually recommend starting with a user friendly distribution such as Mandrake Linux or Gentoo. Disadvantages: There is of course, as with everything in life, some learning involved. FreeBSD has a steep learning curve; I have never used Mandrake - but Gentoo is quite nice.

I don't think there is a single Linux distribution which doesn't come with KDE these days... the graphical desktop environment which is so easy to use my 6 year old cousin can quite happily play for hours.

The most common/popular office programs for Unix-based operating systems are OpenOffice and KOffice (part of KDE), although Mac is slightly different since it has its own packages. You can get MS office for Mac, but that kinda defeats the object of using a Mac!

Moving files from Unix systems to windows ones and vice verse is easy - there are a load of ways to do it... its what the document is going to look like when its opened.

Filters are getting better for opening MS Word (and other MS office) documents on non-Microsoft software (mostly because of the introduction of XML).... the current filters today generally work very well, except for documents which contain things such as very complex table layouts and feature incompatibilities between Microsoft and non-Microsoft programs. Also remember that fonts used in Windows are not always available in Unix systems (although you can get around this). Openoffice allows you to export back to Microsoft documents as well.

Maybe you should try it for yourself! :cool:

Joe_Bloggs wrote:

If you want to try it out then try a Live CD version. These can boot off the CD without modifying your existing system. There is a performance hit but you can speed things up via hard disk installation when you are happy. A few distributions are listed here:-
http://www.linuxbasis.com/distributions.html?/distributions1.html
J_B.

Joe Bloggs suggestion is a good one. I made a knoppix cd and every so often I have a little expertiment with it and I'm slowly getting used to it.
(see the thread here)

You can also look on the coverdisc of computer magazines. I've seen knoppix and other versions offered a few times

Would save you the bother of a large download and having to burn it to disc

I'll try and give you a few answers - bear in mind that these are my opinions - others may disagree:

1) Are there alternative Operating systems to Win 98 & XP that a novice could cope with?
A1) There are other OSs. I am assuming that you want to run them on a PC. So, Microsoft have Windows NT, Windows 2000 and Windows ME. All of these, as far as a home user is concerned, are variations on a theme - they all look and feel similar and are capable of running very similar applications. As a home user, you'd be better off running Windows XP.
Non-microsoft OSs are generally variations on the UNIX theme. Now UNIX was an operating system developed a long time ago (in the 70s I think) in the US and was developed to run on machines that only had a teleprinter as a terminal. This means that the base interface is made up of lots of very short two and three letter commands - pretty confusing to a novice. However, there is light at the end of this tunnel - in recent years companies like Mandrake, Red Hat, Suse and others have produced flavours of this UNIX (called Linux - named after a chap called Linus Torvalds who wrote the core OS to run on PCs) which have a nice graphical interface that is very similar in look and feel to the windows stuff you may be used to.
It is slightly more tricky to run these OSs, however, they can be downloded for free - and if you want to try them, some allow you to run from windows,or you could partition your disk and dual boot - i.e. have the option of whether you run Windows or UNIX when you first start your machine.

2) Are these systems Free or inexpensive ?
A2) Yes. Both - depending on what you go for. Most can come free with no support - but you have to download and install yourself. There are loads of help websites around that can fill in the details for free. However, if you !!!!!! up your system, you may not have web access to find the answer to un-!!!!!! it :-)
You could buy a Linux in a box solution for around 50 quid. This would come with everything you need on some CDs and would come with telephone support too.

3) What does anybody think of the Open Source systems?
A3) Good - bugs etc are generally found and fixed very quickly - lots of help on the web - and lots of enthusiastic people who are willing to help.
The downside is that they tend to be a bit more techincal and rely on you having pretty good and in depth knolwedge of how your machine works and all of the bits and bobs that make up your PC.

4) Would you suggest changing ?
A4) For a novice no!
So, you may ask, how would I ever learn? Well, instead of changing, I would suggest that you try one of the above mentioned ways of running it in parallel with your current OS. This approach means that you do not burn your bridges and you get to have a play with a new OS.

5) Anything else on this or related subjects would be appreciated.
A5) Try looking at this website, if any of this interests you:
Linux Beginners Links

Hope some of this helps.

b.

I replied to this thread, and so did a few others:

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=35092


I come from a FreeBSD Unix backgrund, and I'd say that Mac OS X is quite suitable for novices. Of course, you do need an Apple Mac to run OS X...

FreeBSD IMHO is probably the most stable operating system in the world. Mac OS X has all the power of the FreeBSD core, with a really fun and easy to use graphical interface on top, which hides all the complexities of unix from the user. Because FreeBSD has great memory management, which was incorporated into OS X, it means program crashes don't generally crash the entire operating system and you really don't get spyware or viruses for it either...


Boardguide comment: The two threads have been merged.