Comments on: Migrating from Windows

By: Mike

Mike — Thu, 14 May 2009 14:05:16 +0000

My mother rang earlier today: her computer (XP) has suddenly become slow/unresponsive.

I’m going ’round to install Ubuntu/XP dual boot in a few days – It’ll stick if I’m able to wean her off Publisher ‘97…

My wife used to be stuck in Windows – hated Ubuntu. I convinced her to buy a Mac, she’s enjoyed OS X. Has to dual boot though – she’s Chinese and therefore uses the “Chinese Internet”, which is very Microsoft orientated. All the Chinese programming graduates I’ve talked to (OK so only 3-4) only know MS languages – it seems to be all they’re taught.

By: Wayne

Wayne — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 04:35:52 +0000

My wife has a love/hate relationship with Microsoft. She keeps buying Microsoft products, and absolutely hates how they work. I asked her about this, and her response was that it was what she was used to, that OSX was too hard to work with, and that Ubuntu wasn’t as polished.

I pointed out to her that we’ve never had a problem with OSX, and the only problem we’d had with Ubuntu was hardware related (oddball mother board), and that neither of them had ever crashed, or lost any data. Right now she’s thinking the situation over. There’s one Windows program, Personal Ancestral File, that she uses a lot, as she’s a genealogist. We did try it under Wine at one point, and ran into data file corruption issues. I’ve going to check with the Wine project, and see if I can get them to look into PAF compatibility.

By: kyttkat

kyttkat — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 21:56:07 +0000

Back to the initial trigger for this post – if it looks like an iFrame issue install the NoScript Firefox add-on on Helen’s computer (presuming you haven’t already) – about as close as anybody gets to dealing with the problem. You do need to “train” it like a firewall but probably worth it in the long run.

By: twitter

twitter — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 04:14:33 +0000

I moved my wife away from Windows four of five years ago without many issues. I used Mepis and highly recommend it for it’s use of KDE easy installation and excellent package choices. It comes with Adobe Flash and a few other programs most people consider indispensable. While there was some initial frustration, the wife almost never looked back. Dual boot did not last long at all.

Good luck with it.

By: Ed Landaveri

Ed Landaveri — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 02:07:55 +0000

Way to go OpenSourcerer. We did migrate the last one 8 months ago when my wife’s computer’s power supply crashed. I had a good excuse and voila! After a few months nevertheless she asked me to switch from Ubuntu (which she didn’t get used to) to Centos whose interface she’s well aware off, since that’s what me & my daugthers been using for over six years. Now I have to Centos boxe’s (mine & my wife’s), my daughters debian’s box plus my personal laptop. Cool! My second daughter (7) is always the most enthusiastic about this. “Papa there ain’t no losers in this house, We all run Linux”! That’s right daughter! We’re all winners!

Regards!

By: Alan Lord

Alan Lord — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 18:54:54 +0000

Thanks for the comments so far. Songbird I played with quite a while ago and left it as it was very “raw” at the time. I do recall the recent announcement of the 1.0 release too, but then completely forgot about it again! Doh…

As it is cross platform I will give it a go with my wifey first in the next day or two.

Cheers

By: Samuel Barrett

Samuel Barrett — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 17:57:58 +0000

I second Songbird… it can connect to emusic etc. as well or she could use amazon mp3 downloads to replace itunes purchase features.

By: L4Linux

L4Linux — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 07:10:51 +0000

2 good alternatives are Songbird and Amarok. Songbird is also available in Windows, so she can start using it now to make the migration easier. There are instructions about installing Songbird in Ubuntu here:
http://yatsite.blogspot.com/2009/01/installing-songbird-on-ubuntu-804-hardy.html

By: Mackenzie

Mackenzie — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 04:16:12 +0000

Assuming she’s not using DRM’d music bought from iTunes, Rhythmbox should work just fine for syncing her iPod.

By: Aaron Toponce

Aaron Toponce — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 23:04:27 +0000

We finally made the switch to a non-Microsoft (notice, I didn’t say “non-Windows”- NO Microsoft product is allowed) home a few months back. My wife has a legit copy of Fastt Math, but lost the key for installing it, so she went online in search of one. Unfortunately, she downloaded a compressed executable, and executed it. Needless to say, the box was hosed with more viruses, trojans and other malware than you can count. When I returned home from a business trip, I promptly removed Windows from the computer, and announced our Freedom. It’s good to be Microsoft free.

So far, she hasn’t had much trouble making the switch. She’s a Mac OS X user primarily, so other than Office 2003, which she knew inside and out, she isn’t missing much, and it hasn’t been hard for her to get her work done. She’s the creative types anyway, so Mac OS X just fits the bill nicely for her anyway.

At any event, welcome aboard!