Switching to Linux...

[shorerider]

So I think I am going to do it. Running XP now, kinda sick of it. I'll be getting my desktop back, going to format the HD and stick Ubuntu on it. If I like it, then on my laptop. here goes with some questions. Hooray!

does Gimp have a good raw/.nef conversion?
How about nikon Capture Control? I already asked on the forum, we'll see what they say. I like to do tethered shooting.

I have a bunch of 20 gig HDs with a lot of shit on them. I want to know if I can plug them in and use the files without fucking around and risking loosing the data.

Wireless. I have a lynksis wireless router. I want to swap files EASILY!

Spyware and viruses. they worry me. what should I do to protect my self?

what about my USB card readers and shit for compact flash? or my external HD (USB as well)

I trust on my desktop I will be able to run dual monitors? my vid card supports it.

anyways, your help is helpful!

[ebbomega]

okay. lemme try. apologies as i'm drunk at the moment, i'll try to correct anything i get wrong tomorrow....

for gimp stuff, understand gimp is very basic. what it will do is take already-captured-images and covert it, rotate it, invert the colours, do very simple operations on it. it is not photoshop, and definately ain't ready to replace it... yet... (be a good number of years before it's there)

as for hard drives/data/partitions, they're not too difficult to work with if you understand fstab and mounting. the two following commands will help you immensely:

# man mount
# man fstab

the first is about the 'mount' command, which is how you pull up hard drives and partitions in linux. understand that the ntfs (win2k or winxp) is read-only, and you cannot write to under linux, and that vfat (win98 or winme... if you're using anything earlier change your operating system) is read/write under linux. the mount command is how you throw a drive onto your filesystem (for instance, if you have a fat32 partition you can put it on /mnt/vfat/ in your filesystem)

the second is the 'fstab' file, found in /etc/fstab, and it's like the automounter for your partitions. once you have the information filled out completely in there, mounting the drive is merely a matter of typing 'mnt /mnt/vfat' and bam, hard drive mounted.

wireless. uck. i had to fuck around with ndiswrapper in linux just to get a broadcom driver working for my wireless card. i eventually got it working but it required some innovative thinking on my part, as most linux work does eventually. that _was_ about 2 years ago though, and the technology may have improved since then. in which case i highly recommend you make google your friend and start finding out what kind of chipset you have on your card and what your options are.

ndiswrapper is a program that takes the windows drivers and 'wraps' around them before handing it over to the linux kernel, basically fools the kernel into thinking this is a linux driver instead of a windows one. worth checking out, though there may be other alternatives (see: google, largest repository of human information to date, ranked by popularity).

spyware and viruses: to date there has only been one unix virus and it was entirely distributed by intentional purposes: an email telling people to send it to everybody on their list and delete all the files on their hard drive.

basically, it's real easy to keep your computer secure and up-to-date. get some type of repository checker (i like apt, if you want more information i'll try to explain when more sober, otherwise check google) and just make sure you run regular updates.

think about it. it's like running windows updates except you can run it on EVERY PROGRAM INSTALLED.

usb card readers have varied support in linux. best to look up 'compact flash linux' on google and find what kind of readers are supported.

dual monitors - yes. but you need to learn how to configure video drivers in the /etc/X11/ folders... not a fun process by any means... but there are some decent readme files depending on what kind of video card you might have (nvidia = good in linux world. ati technically has their own 3d linux drivers but they're nowhere near as nice as nvidia's....)

did that make any sense?

[Gusto]

never used ubuntu, but a lot of new distributions will do a lot of what ebbo just mentioned for you. but yeah you're gonna have a few concerns with hardware and definately those drives. if they are ntfs, and they probably are, then you're gonna have to reformat them if you ever want to be able to write to them from linux. you can still access the stuff on them though.

[shorerider]

sounds like this could be quite a challenge! good thing I am doing it on a box that I donut really need, I just want to try it out and see how it goes.
I just really wish that PS CS would work with linux! that would be nice.