Moving my desktop to Linux

John Spikowski · Post by **John Spikowski** » Nov 06, 2010 22:01

I decided to move my primary working desktop to Ubuntu Linux with the intent of retaining as much functionality as possible. I thought I would share my adventure on the All Basic forum if you would like to check it out or participate.

http://www.allbasic.info/forum/index.php?topic=33.0

angros47 · Post by **angros47** » Nov 06, 2010 23:36

I wish you good luck!

Ubuntu is a nice OS. You'll like it.

Landeel · Post by **Landeel** » Nov 07, 2010 3:02

Wise decision my friend! :)

John Spikowski · Post by **John Spikowski** » Nov 07, 2010 5:08

I still haven't tried a webcam session with my granddaughter under Ubuntu yet. At this point that is the only reason I might backslide and boot my Windows partition. Any suggestions that would allow me to connect to a Yahoo messenger user and do a webcam under Ubuntu would be appreciated.

I have to say the transition of desktops went smooth and had a lot of fun doing it. It's nice when there are mature solutions available without always having to pull out my credit card to buy extensions to Windows or upgrade something.

I have had a CentOS development box setup for sometime which I mostly use as a local webserver to develop dynamic web sites before moving it up to the live hosting server. (also CentOS) I have dabbled with Gtk under Linux but mostly as a support effort for the ScriptBasic open source project.

Sisophon2001 · Post by **Sisophon2001** » Nov 07, 2010 6:28

In my experience web-cams either work in linux, or they don't work, and the camera you have might be the determinig factor rather than knowledge of how to install drivers for it, or what programs you use.

I plugged in my webcam to a USB port and was studying the information on drivers available online when somebody called me on Skype and it turned itself on.

See this site.
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Webcam

I keep cheese installed to test the camera is working, because from time to time I have had to reconfigure skype. I think if it works in one program, you will be able to get it working in all.

Garvan

John Spikowski · Post by **John Spikowski** » Nov 07, 2010 7:02

Garvan,

Empathy works with my Microsoft Live webcam and all the popular messenger services. (auto detected)

I will have to give it a try next time I can round up my granddaughter and get her to sit in front of her dad's computer.

Thanks for the help with the link.

fsw · Post by **fsw** » Nov 08, 2010 2:07

Personally I find Ubuntu a slow OS (could be my 2006 TurionX2-64 laptop is too old for it...) so I switched to LMDE (Linux Mint Debian Edition) and like it very much.

John Spikowski · Post by **John Spikowski** » Nov 08, 2010 2:43

My HP laptop is 2004-2005 vintage (2.8 ghz) but runs Ubuntu much better than XP running in the other partition. The only issues I have run into is if I have the window effects enable. I lose my system menu/butons/title bar after displaying a dialog based window that doesn't have any title bar or system menu/buttons. Must be my graphics card is too old to handle custom window effects. I'm sure Ubuntu is a screamer on todays class desk/laptops.