Switching OS' on personal laptop

[X-13]

I'm considering switching to Ubnuntu [10.10 or notebook?] but I just wanted to know if certain files would be compatable.

I have about 80GB of anime, all .avi but some needed special codecs, and wanted to make sure they'd work because there's no way I'm trying to get them again. [It took too long.]

Some programs I use I know I can get to work via Wine. [Guild wars, Pokesav, AR Code manager.]


I'm thinking about dual booting Vista Home Pro/Ubuntu[w/Wine] until I'm 100% sure everything works properly, then changing to single boot Ubuntu. [Is this hard? I can't find much infor on this.]

Also, would I need to modify anything or should it just install properly? [Laptop is a eMachines e525, IIRC]

[danbuntu]

The avi files should play in VLC. Pretty much everything palys in VLC. But Ubuntu will also prompt you to install the right codec if if can't find the one it needs.

Change to single boot isn't hard, you reformat and reinstall or delete windows and use gparted to grow your disks into the space.

Be careful with relying on Wine though. It's great but often doesn't work or perform well. Guild Wars for instance could well take a performance hit and if your into pc gaming then Wine will likely drive you nuts.

You can also ways install virtualbox with a windows install in it for when you really must use windows. It's fine for 2d stuff and the 3d drivers are getting better all the time.

[X-13]

From what I've seen GW doesn't really suffer that much when used with Wine. There was a few glitches in previous versions, but it's rated platinum now.

Hmm... I was expecting switching back to single boot would have been harder. [It's basically boot Ubunto, format Vista drive, remove/resize partition. Right?]

[danbuntu]

I was expecting switching back to single boot would have been harder. [It's basically boot Ubunto, format Vista drive, remove/resize partition. Right?]

yeap it's that easy. Just make sure that when you install Ubuntu you have separate / and /home partitions to make them easier to manage and allow a simpler reinstall should you need to in the future.

[carvjo]

Mint is an Ubuntu derived OS - but with more things like video/audio codecs - you can always boot from a live CD and see if your stuff will run before going the whole hog and wiping your machine..

[AWicher]

I'm big advocate for GNU, at moment i'm using gNewSense on Tosh A120 but several good distros can be found here - List of Free GNU/Linux Distributions - GNU Project - Free Software Foundation (FSF)

[CAM]

I second dual boot. It will help immensely if it turns out something doesn't run. Even for platinum rated games on WineHQ, they can still run into trouble, especially during setup.

As for codecs, they are a whole boat of fun in Ubuntu. Many are not included for licencing reasons and you have to hunt for an obscure library in the repository. But dual boot will help until you have everything set up.

[somabc]

You can use Medibuntu :: Multimedia, Entertainment & Distractions In Ubuntu to add codec's to Ubuntu

In the Terminal run this

sudo wget --output-document=/etc/apt/sources.list.d/medibuntu.list http://www.medibuntu.org/sources.list.d/$(lsb_release -cs).list && sudo apt-get --quiet update && sudo apt-get --yes --quiet --allow-unauthenticated install medibuntu-keyring && sudo apt-get --quiet update
sudo apt-get install app-install-data-medibuntu apport-hooks-medibuntu

[X-13]

Well... At the moment It seems I'm single booting.

My Vista failed on Friday night and I can't find my recovery disks. Strangely, I can access the files stored on it, but when Grub loads and I try to boot to it, it fails.

I saved the cartoons... Which took 2 hours, but I'm hunting for a Vista install disk to try and fix it.