Full time Linux user now...

Beach · Post by **Beach** » Mon Jul 14, 2008 6:53 pm

I had two machines here and lost one to a storm recently. One was running XP (quite well) and the other one was running Ubuntu Linux. I only used the Linux machine occasionally. After the Windows box died, I combined all the good stuff into one box and have been tweaking it out for a couple of weeks now. I loaded VMWare in anticipation of not having everything I needed on Linux, I was wrong. I have not had to boot the virtual machine yet. Everything I do is here and works very well. Dual monitor support, DVD ripping, Lame encoding, web, multimedia, HTML/PHP coding, PureBasic, etc... There were a few things that I could not find a suitable replacement for, but Wine loads them very nicely.

I don't have a grudge against Microsoft or anything and I suspect I will always have a Windows based machine at work. I just thought I would come here and testify after having burned a Lightscribe label with no drama.

-Beach

Num3 · Post by **Num3** » Mon Jul 14, 2008 7:17 pm

I also was surprised with ubuntu, everything seems to work!

Even my HP F370 printer / scanner works. Curiously there are no drivers for it in Vista, HP drivers just don't work for this model !

Beach · Post by **Beach** » Mon Jul 14, 2008 7:42 pm

You reminded me that I had not tested my Canon scanner, but it was fine. Xsane is every bit as good as what I had with Windows.

Foz · Post by **Foz** » Mon Jul 14, 2008 8:31 pm

I have kept a Windows partition for games (no matter how good Wine is, it still has its share of problems with games).

I also have a Windows virtual machine and a Ubuntu x32 virtual machine with VirtualBox (installed on both the Windows partition and my Ubuntu x64 partition) for purposes of development only.

It sounds weird to do so, but it means that I can keep working on my projects no matter which partition I boot up in.

Well, welcome to the mad house club

Beach · Post by **Beach** » Mon Jul 14, 2008 8:57 pm

Yeah, I guess I should should say that I have been blocked by things that use DirectX. I don't do that much in the way of games, but I might fiddle with Grub and see if I can point it to my old Windows drive so I can still boot up in Windows. Google has a crazy virtual chat thingy that I would like to see. I enabled 3D graphics support for VMWare, but I blue-screened after starting up the chat program. No biggie. It probably saved hours for me this weekend by not working.

-Beach

garretthylltun · Post by **garretthylltun** » Thu Jul 17, 2008 8:29 pm

Seriously, there's only a few area's where Linux lacks right now, Games being one of them. That's a big area too and may never be filled, and likely, Wine will never be able to catch up and keep pace at all. There are of course some alternatives. You could purchase like Cedega which allows some of the more recent games to run on your Linux system. It's probably a Wine base that's been worked on more exensively to work with games.

http://www.cedega.com/start/

garretthylltun · Post by **garretthylltun** » Thu Jul 17, 2008 8:32 pm

I should note though that Cedega is not free, it's a subscription based service. Which is why I don't use it myself. I'm not into subscription fee.. I'd rather pay once, use it, and not pay again unless I upgrade.

pdwyer · Post by **pdwyer** » Fri Jul 18, 2008 2:36 am

How easy is DVD ripping on linux these days?

Living outside of my DVD zone I often need to rip DVD's I buy from overseas in order to watch. On XP, dvddecyptor takes the zone off in the time it takes to copy the dvd to hdd (15mins) shrink to singe side and drop unwanted languages/menus (5mins) write to new blank dvd (10-15mins). Including manual time to click buttons, change disks etc it's all done in well under an hour

I have it down to a fine art now with high quality and (on top of games) this is one area I'm wondering if linux is as easy. I know ripping dvd's really started on linux but I haven't heard that it's as easy or as fast.

Rook Zimbabwe · Post by **Rook Zimbabwe** » Fri Jul 18, 2008 5:56 am

@Paul:

http://www.world-import.com/dvd.htm

I don't think most of the new Blu-Ray players are regioned but that is a squirrelly fact in my brain... I will check it out

http://www.world-import.com/dv-400DV.htm

but I woul double check the specifications to make sure the output is 1080p at a minimum

pdwyer · Post by **pdwyer** » Fri Jul 18, 2008 7:47 am

Actually we are thinking of buying one of those bluray HDD recorder things soon... that's a $1000+ purchase though so I'm not sure I want to get it shipped intl...

then again, I don't think BD's are cracked yet anyway so I might want to think about this with this next generation

Beach · Post by **Beach** » Fri Jul 18, 2008 5:24 pm

pdwyer wrote:How easy is DVD ripping on linux these days?

I tried many combinations of Open Source stuff - but could not find anything that is as consistent as DVDFab. Here is the current method that seems to work best for me:

- DVDFab HD with Wine to decrypt the DVD to the drive
- OGMRip to convert it to Xvid/MP3

If I need to make a backup of my DVD, I still have to use DVDShrink (with Wine). I have not found an equal application for Gnome.

KarLKoX · Post by **KarLKoX** » Fri Jul 18, 2008 7:20 pm

Beach wrote:If I need to make a backup of my DVD, I still have to use DVDShrink (with Wine). I have not found an equal application for Gnome.

gDvdShrink