Linux

[Tom Stenzel]

I've mentioned before I run Point Linux on my old XP box with a Athlon XP processor. Debian Jessie with the Mate (pronouched mah-tay) interface. With 1 gig of ram I have a 5 gig swap partition, a decent chunk out of a 40 gig disk. Still I haven't had much problem with space. On my box Linux takes longer to boot than XP did but once running it lopes along OK.

The best way to find out if Linux will work for you is to try the Windows versions of applications like Libreoffice, Gimp, Audacity, Gnucash, Emacs for the masochist in you, and the like. If those work for you in Windows moving to Linux will be pretty painless.

I haven't tried running any heroics to get Windows apps going like using Wine. I kept a hard drive with XP on it and used it at tax time. The machine is off the net (an axe through the coax as I call it) while this goes on. Now I have a Toshiba laptop with Win 8.1 I bought off my daughter so it might become the tax machine. Other than tax software I haven't needed to use Windows, the apps I have on the laptop mirror what is on the Linux box.

Applications still rule. Linux is a fine OS but if you can't get software on it to do what you need then it isn't for you.

-Tom

[Mike Henderson]

I agree with Tom that applications are critical. I haven't really tried LibreOffice applications yet but I did try Gimp and it's really good as a photo editor. I've been using Photoshop Elements on my Windows machine and it looks like Gimp will do essentially the same things as Photoshop Elements. But I haven't worked Gimp hard yet. Like all applications, it takes time to really know the ins and outs of the program so that you can do your work quickly.

What has surprised me is how good some of the common applications are - mail, calendar, and Gimp so far - but I'm still exploring.

Mike

[Bill McNiel]

I have understood absolutely nothing in this thread. I tend to hang with pencils, paper and wood.

Merry Christmas all - Bill