I love the terminal. I also love having a python interpreter. I use that a lot as a scientific calculator. I only wish it supported RPN. 🙂
I used TurboTax online. Does that not work on linux?
Tom
We have a complicated tax situation, income from property and stock investments. I don't think the online version is going to work for all of that. Could be wrong so I'll check that out.
Possibly true. It's been a while since I touched TurboTax. I know the online version doesn't handle cross-border taxes.
Tom
Yep. TurboTax is one of the only applications that I keep Windows VMs around for. The other ones include SEAmpCAD, PSUD2, and a couple of utilities for updating firmware on cameras, GPS units, etc. Perhaps a couple more that I’m not remembering.
Hiren's mini xp and linux recovery disk was good. Both ran in ram. They were making a W10 version, but I'm not sure it was getting linux. It would be nice to run a recent linux, just to look at it. Without effecting normal running.
I'm on 7, and my laptop 95. I tried win8, until I ran out of hair to pull. 11 can forget it. People moving back to 10 is increasing.
Win95 unpacks to 50MB. I couldn't see why 98 needed 450MB more. Then XP wanted 1.5GB. What was it doing with them. I knew people with hard drives smaller than that.
Win11... 27GB. It's is over 500 times bigger than 95, which is a joy to load.
I'm on 7, and my laptop 95. I tried win8, until I ran out of hair to pull. 11 can forget it. People moving back to 10 is increasing.
Win95 unpacks to 50MB. I couldn't see why 98 needed 450MB more. Then XP wanted 1.5GB. What was it doing with them. I knew people with hard drives smaller than that.
Win11... 27GB. It's is over 500 times bigger than 95, which is a joy to load.
Maybe you can create a VHD (Virtual Hard Disk) first mount it transfer your data ie your whole windows installation and mount it during creation of the VM and tell it to boot from it should work just fine.
maybe this may help just check if you have enough storage (always check which partition contains what ) or something from microsoft.
best of luck
I tried dual-boot as wel in order to switch from Windows (W2K) to Linux. While it works I found I always went back to the path of least resistance, being the W2K. So it took a small disaster (loosing the demo recordings of a band) in order to wake up and make the jump. I searched for what I needed (hardware and software, made a list and then asked at the office for advise (quite a few linux users there). Tried a few distros to check which one had what I really needed with the least setup. Ended up with Gentoo at that time and just stuck with it.
Right now I still have a VM with XP running for a single application. And a small pc with W7 for running the scanners. It doesn't run anything else and is not connected to a network. I really should dump those 2 as well. There are options but again the path of least resistance wins.
Right now I still have a VM with XP running for a single application. And a small pc with W7 for running the scanners. It doesn't run anything else and is not connected to a network. I really should dump those 2 as well. There are options but again the path of least resistance wins.
Any Linux distro worth your attention will have a downloadable “live CD” (or ISO that can be flashed onto a thumb drive) that lets you run it and use it without doing anything to your existing OS.
Correct, a live ISO download. That is a fantastic way to give linux a try. Here are some options:
For the Cinnamon, Xfce or MATE desktop: https://www.linuxmint.com/download.php
For the KDE Plasma desktop: https://neon.kde.org/download OR https://fedoraproject.org/spins/kde/download
For the Gnome desktop: https://ubuntu.com/download/desktop OR https://fedoraproject.org/workstation/download
In my opinion, Linux Mint Cinnamon Edition provides the easiest transition for those comfortable with Windows, and Linux Mint has a forum with a good support community.
I write software professionally, and IME Linux has never been the best developer environment. I have not seen any Integrated Development Environment that is even close to Visual Studio for dev work. To be fair, it has been a while since I looked seriously at any recent Linux dev environments.
For the record: I like Linux, and am certainly not a fan of Microsoft and their business practices and the general enshittification of Windows that they are indulging in. I run Linux in virtual machines, and my home VPN server is a headless Linux Mint machine.
Cheers, and regards,
Ant
While not the full Visual Studio IDE, Visual Studio Code is available for Linux as a flatpak: https://flathub.org/apps/search?q=visual+studio
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Visual Studio is nice, but it is an island. Outside of Visual Studio, Windows offers nothing for developers.
In contrast, a Linux distro is a developer environment. It comes with hundreds of tools and libraries, the complete source code, and is free. The integration may not be the best, but as a toolkit, it is extremely good at getting things done.
Ed
Yes, but there can be issues. I'll share an exerience I had:
I was running Gnome in Arch. I had some shell extensions installed to configure Gnome just the way I wanted. An update came through for a new version of Gnome, but the shell extensions had not been updated for that new version. The next time I opened up the desktop environment I only had the wallpaper, nothing else. So, I lauched the terminal using a keyboard shortcut and installed KDE Plasma. Great, so I thought.
Every time I updated Arch, not only was it updating KDE Plasma and its built-in applications, it also was updating Gnome and its built-in applications. Updates took a frustratingly long time.
So, I decided to uninstall Gnome, and did so. Somehow that corrupted my entire Arch install. I could not even chroot into Arch to try to fix it. I ended up having to do a fresh install.
After using and hating DOS3.3, Win3.11, Win95 & Win98 a switched to Linux about Millenium. Starting with Suse I had a hard time, moved to other distros, had a great time with Ubuntu and now am stuck to LMDE.
I had to learn something like using the command line interface basics and so on.
But hey, if I had stuck to windows, I would have learned all these secrets of the registry.
Over the years I learned to organize things in a way not possible in windows:
My home directory is located on its own harddisk partition.
So I can re-install any Linux OS and re-import my personal data without hassle.
I have written a bash script that installs all my application programs not provided by the distribution app pool.
All in all I can set up a full working new Linux computer in less than 2 hours.
I store some Lenovo laptop oldies like X220 where you can swap the disk drive in seconds,
making moves extremely simple.
I had to learn something like using the command line interface basics and so on.
But hey, if I had stuck to windows, I would have learned all these secrets of the registry.
Over the years I learned to organize things in a way not possible in windows:
My home directory is located on its own harddisk partition.
So I can re-install any Linux OS and re-import my personal data without hassle.
I have written a bash script that installs all my application programs not provided by the distribution app pool.
All in all I can set up a full working new Linux computer in less than 2 hours.
I store some Lenovo laptop oldies like X220 where you can swap the disk drive in seconds,
making moves extremely simple.
I use Windows 11 and 365 at work and at home. They work fine and the cost is reasonable. Yes, I did buy a new computer, but it was time anyway. There really aren't any Linux photo and video editing application equivalents to what I like on Windows. For my basement lab, to run test equipment, I'm experimenting with Puppy Linux on an ancient 1mb Acer machine with no other upgrade path. I've yet to get the wireless to work and may just buy another Windows machine, but it's worth a try.
BTW, I highly recommend using a filtered DNS service on your Windows machine. See Ultimate Hosts on github. Or just try 88.198.70.38 and 39. You'll lose most ads and between that and Windows Definder, you won't need much else.
BTW, I highly recommend using a filtered DNS service on your Windows machine. See Ultimate Hosts on github. Or just try 88.198.70.38 and 39. You'll lose most ads and between that and Windows Definder, you won't need much else.
Does it have a USB port or a spare expansion slot you can use to add a Linux compatible WiFi module?
Windoze can be tolerable once you remove the bloatware, remove all the live tiles in the start menu, install Google Chrome, Firefox, or some other non-Edge browser so you can surf the web in peace. You still have to be willing to tolerate the spontaneous "STOP your work NOW and reboot" update process, the "notifications" that are basically advertising for Microsoft services, etc. Windoze is like cable TV. You pay so the service provider can serve you ads.
How many times do I have to say NO? No. I don't want Windoze Backup. No. I don't want to use OneDrive. No. I don't want Cortana. No. I don't want Copilot. No. I don't want my start menu to flicker to the point where I can't find anything. No. I don't want the keyboard layout to change after an update. The list goes on. I thought informed consent was a thing and that no meant no.
I do agree about photo editing, though. Photoshop is hard to replace. Yes. There's Gimp, but last I checked (and, granted, that was many years ago) I couldn't do what I needed to do with Gimp. I use Photoshop Elements on the Mac. Works great. Affinity Photo is pretty good too.
I don't know about linux video editing, but Final Cut Pro is very hard to beat (IMNSHO).
Tom
Funny, I've always been given the option to reboot at a later time. Never had to stop work for an update.
I agree about the occasional reminder to backup to Onedrive, which I don't use anyway. The worst is after an MS update, with a few popup windows wanting me to do something. After that's dealt with, it's pretty ok.
My computer at work is still running Win10, and I'm definitely not going to upgrade to 11.
jeff
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“Let’s finish setting up your system.”
Uh…no.
Uh…no.
I have done some of this before. That's certainly one way to PWM down from using Windows all the time.
I even smoked the OEM Chrome system on an Acer laptop I paid very little for at the Thrift store, which required installing a new bootloader - the one with the rabbit icon - and now it runs Mint. It barely functions; locks up after too long runtime, but I keep it for its big fat battery and if someone swipes it at a coffee shop, no biggie. Right now it serves as interface to my Soundcraft Ui24 mixer, wired. Lets me press the record button...
To these nefarious corporations who built closed systems that barely work or want to completely gentrify their OS out of the hands of technical people, I say thee nay. At least in my little world. And I wouldnt have been able to do the above without others feeling similarly and doing the hard work of writing software that kicks an OEM install to the curb and lets the user do as they please. I'm sure they "hate it" that I can make good use of something that from their view should be in the recycle pile by now, with me funding a brand new instance, to their investors benefit.
I once had another Acer I guess it was, that was the biggest POS and I think that one even ran Windows originally, or was supposed to on some Atom processor. The worst Atom processor, something that should have never even been built, nevermind fostered upon customers. I did get it to do one thing in OK land, be the "Pi-Hole" DNS filter machine for my router. Alas, my wife views lots of Chinese sites and it blocked most of 'em, so I was politely asked to remove its function from our network. It's gone now, in one of the recent Thrift donation boxes - power supply included, as you never get that part.
Read last night that the Virtualbox will run the "VMDK container" that the Starwind free app can create, I'm just not clear on the workflow; it seems Starwind dumps directly to a server on line, instead of a file. But then perhaps as I read above, maybe the Virtualbox itself can create a container from my W10 SSD, plugged into a USB adapter. Or maybe I need to convert that disk to an "iso" file, put that on a USB drive and Virtualbox will make the container out of it that will successfully boot. Again, I'm just not clear on the workflow for doing it in the best way.
I have purchased "online" and used the W10 version "LTSB" which I suppose would solve some of the upcoming support EOL issue. I put it on a HP laptop - used it for a while two personal laptops ago - sold it years ago on ebay. I have a second key for that in some file somewhere, quite possibly lost it. Cant remember if the .iso is different to do the install, or by key the standard iso everyone has knows which version; home, pro, LTSB to creatte. Probably should have done that when I first got this machine, I was just lazy, or didnt feel like facing the anticipation anxiety of it getting "activated" successfully.