Hi,

I have just bought some cheap HP computers for work £10 ea. I don't think they come with an OS so I was thinking of installing Ubuntu on them. One is going to be for my kids, one for my mum and dad in law. Mum ad dad in law have been using win XP but I'm continually having to sort things out like AV and hardware/software issues. All they use it for is email, internet and a bit of word processing. The one for my kids is just for that really. We have Mac's at home (a Macbook Pro and ipad) and they are too nice to let my kids use really hence the cheap PC.

I was wondering of the history and the why behind linux and what all the different types are (I understand there are more than Ubuntu) I had thought of trying to install Mac OS but I don't think I am clever enough.......

Has anyone any views as to wether I am doing the right or wrong thing here.

Thanks

Tom

Linux started off as a school project by Linus, and is technically just the kernel itself, on which people build to get ubuntu etc. There are several OS's running on Linux, based on debian etc.

In terms of which one to use, I personally like http://www.linuxmint.com/ Linux Mint, pretty much ubunutu but with a more Windows-esque style of interface, and has more pre-installed as standard in terms of media and so on, which make life easier with the children.

Doubt you'd get MAC to install on anything old enough to warrant a £10 price tag tbh, but would happily be proved wrong.

Thanks for that. Going to look at Mint too then.

Not sure about the computers. They are HP DC5700 with a 3 ghz intel processor, 2 Gb ram and 160 Gb Hdd so seem fairly decent. I just think it may be beyond my understanding to do it rather than the ability of the computer to cope with it.

Waiting for a keyboard and mouse to arrive so that I can start to play....

Regards

Tom

Linux started off as a school project by Linus, and is technically just the kernel itself, on which people build to get ubuntu etc. There are several OS's running on Linux, based on debian etc.

In terms of which one to use, I personally like http://www.linuxmint.com/ Linux Mint, pretty much ubunutu but with a more Windows-esque style of interface, and has more pre-installed as standard in terms of media and so on, which make life easier with the children.

Doubt you'd get MAC to install on anything old enough to warrant a £10 price tag tbh, but would happily be proved wrong.

I was thinking, but could be wrong, mac supporting Intel cpu's was quite a new thing, and wasn't sure if it would support older machines as well. Think it was mainly the core2duo stuff onwards, but most likely mistaken on that.

Should be fairly fast though, but for £10, can't go wrong either way. Surprised it has an HDD in them, thought most business scrapped them.

try Ubuntu or OpenSUSE Both have good Hardware support and Forum support aswell,You will also get a choice of Desktop enviroments (the big 2 being KDE and Gnome)

Been using Linux,Unix and BSD since i started high school (1999-2000) the only things i havent managed to replace/get running are car programs (ETKA and VCDS)

Linux is great for surfing the internet, Got a choice of many browsers such as the usual Firefox,Chrome,Opera, For email theres clients to replace outlook such as Thunderbird and obviously the Free office suite OpenOffice. The Big advantage is that obviously 99% of Viruses out there are Windows Viruses so dont affect Unix Based machines. Thats not to say there arent viruses out there that can harm the systems but ive never come across one

The other Huge advantage is that its Free-not got to pay for stupid licences for each machine and 99% of software out there for it is also free

Edited 12 December, 201015 yr by AndrewJB

As a Unix administrator I would say - BSD ;-) But I know it's will be very hard.

My option for standard home use will be LinuxMint. Ubuntu based with multimedia pre installed stuff.

Very easy to use. My wife using this system on her laptop without any problems.

Easy setup and installation.

Ubuntu will fly on those- they're good machines.

They're a steal at £10 each, share the wealth. I'd have 10! lol

Kev

Ubuntu is pretty good. If all you are familiar with is Windows it can be tough to start with. If you don't know much about computers then it'll be no harder than learning windows from scratch.

You'll find you can't just install anything from the internet, on the plus side you're unlikely to fark up the machine with a virus.

Ubuntu now comes with a built in marketplace type thingy top pick and choose programs from. you look for what you want say a photo program, it'll give you the choice and you tell it to get it. It'll download and install it for you. There are plans to have paid for programs available in the future.

For £10 that's a pretty good deal.

Forewarned is forearmed... do not take for granted that everything works OOTB, e.g. printers, wlan/wifi connections, or Fn keys for volume, screen brightness and so on. It might work, but it might not... the good thing with Linux is that there are a lot of users forums out there with (most often) friendly and helpful people especially if you choose a widespread distro such as Ubuntu or Mint.

And while it's true that Linux are less affected by viruses it's not 100 % immune, and the more user-friendly the distros become, the more vulnerable they are. See e.g. http://www.geekzone.co.nz/foobar/6229

Most AV programs for Linux do not run permanently in the background, they just scan at your request. Might be a good idea making that a habit - and of course use a decent firewall.

Just downloaded mint to try off the mint website and cant get the cd or dvd to auto boot. The computer does not even try to boot from the cd - just goes straight into windows. The Ubuntu dvd i downloaded worked perfectly.

Any ideas?

Ta

Tom

Just downloaded mint to try off the mint website and cant get the cd or dvd to auto boot. The computer does not even try to boot from the cd - just goes straight into windows. The Ubuntu dvd i downloaded worked perfectly.

Any ideas?

Ta

Tom

Should be fine, my laptop runs Mint and first boot was off the CD. Have you checked the BIOS settings to put CD first?

Sounds like the Mint cd hasnt been burn as a bootable cd

For me Umbunu is the one to go for. Easy to navigate your way around too

But there again I find my Mac even betterer

Since you can boot Ubuntu from a dvd it shouldn't be a BIOS issue. Forgive me for asking, but we all make silly mistakes now and then (I do, at least): did you make an ISO image and not just burned the file to a dvd? See the Mint user guide: "Make sure to burn the ISO image to disk, and not to write the ISO file to the disk. A very common mistake, especially for people using Nero, is to actually burn the ISO file on the disk as a data file. The ISO file is an image of a disk so it needs to be burnt not as a file which will appear on the disk, but as an ISO image which will be decompressed and whose content will be burnt onto the disc. After burning the CD you shouldn't see the ISO file within the disc, but rather folders like “casper†or “isolinuxâ€. Most burning software has a special option for this."

Since you can boot Ubuntu from a dvd it shouldn't be a BIOS issue. Forgive me for asking, but we all make silly mistakes now and then (I do, at least): did you make an ISO image and not just burned the file to a dvd? See the Mint user guide: "Make sure to burn the ISO image to disk, and not to write the ISO file to the disk. A very common mistake, especially for people using Nero, is to actually burn the ISO file on the disk as a data file. The ISO file is an image of a disk so it needs to be burnt not as a file which will appear on the disk, but as an ISO image which will be decompressed and whose content will be burnt onto the disc. After burning the CD you shouldn't see the ISO file within the disc, but rather folders like “casper†or “isolinuxâ€. Most burning software has a special option for this."

Definitely burnt the iso image to disk, can see several folders and files when I open the disk in windows or Mac OS. Im doing the cd making all through Mac OS. The Ubuntu disk was made from an iso image and that works fine. I did think maybe the image file might be missing or corrupt so downloaded it again and no better.

Very Good!

Tom

I assume you've try Mint 10?

Try download from another one repository, maybe Ireland will be better. After downloading check ISO with MD5 sum. Sums must be identical.

It's another option for Mint. It's called LMDE (Linux Mint Debian Edition). Before downloading this version read info on LM webpage.

If you have a spare memory stick (1gb or so I'd guess) then you can use those to burn iso's to - save wasting a disk each time. Faster too, and can be reverted back to whatever it was before you started (make a backup first though!).

Of course, this relies on the pc's BIOS supporting boot from USB, which an older unit might not do. Worth trying though IMO.

http://unetbootin.sourceforge.net/ <-- Is the software - pretty self explanatory really.

Mint al installed now and it's great. Found drivers for the tv (windows 7 didn't), audio etc all in a flash.

Struggling with my printer at the moment but not too important as I can pdf it and then transfer it to the apple to print if needs be.

Tom

Mint al installed now and it's great. Found drivers for the tv (windows 7 didn't), audio etc all in a flash.

Struggling with my printer at the moment but not too important as I can pdf it and then transfer it to the apple to print if needs be.

Tom

What printer do you have? I struggled a bit with my Epson but got it sorted in the end...

I've got a Brother MFC-6490CW and there is something to download from the Brother site in Linux but I can't work it out.

Just set my in laws new computer up in Mint and it didn't have a driver for their Canon printer but there was a self installing package for the scanner and printer parts of the all in one on the Brother site which self installed no problems.

Tom

I was doing an update for windows on my Laptop, several months ago and it crashed. When I tried to restart, windows wouldn't.

I am currently using a Live CD of Ubuntu 10.04 LTS.

It comes with open office, FireFox and other things. To prove it, this is my current Home Page: http://start.ubuntu.com/10.04/Google/

The only problem is it only uses restricted drivers and therefore I can't get any sound or video. Looking at some websites without Flash player is a pain sometime. However I cope with most of the websites/forums I look at.

One of these days I will run the disc and reinstall Vista.

I ran Ubuntu for a week or so.

For me, compatability was a big issue. I couldn't run my music programs (cubase, reason) as wine wouldn't accept them.

The biggest issue for me though was media streaming. I couldn't get it to work no matter what I did. I should probably get a NAS box but I haven't the space so everything streams from the PC. No such luck with linux...

Also, again with the music stuff, I couldn't get any linux midi drivers anywhere for my lead (Uno, the big name in USB midi leads).

For the basic stuff, it was great. Even played games fine! Just felt like half a machine to me though.

I ran Ubuntu for a week or so.

For me, compatability was a big issue. I couldn't run my music programs (cubase, reason) as wine wouldn't accept them.

The biggest issue for me though was media streaming. I couldn't get it to work no matter what I did. I should probably get a NAS box but I haven't the space so everything streams from the PC. No such luck with linux...

Also, again with the music stuff, I couldn't get any linux midi drivers anywhere for my lead (Uno, the big name in USB midi leads).

For the basic stuff, it was great. Even played games fine! Just felt like half a machine to me though.

Can't comment on the midi stuff as I don't use it, but I stream media from my linux box to the PS3 with very few issues (I do have a couple of movies that I had to change transcoding settings for it to work on the PS3 until I get round to converting them...)