Instead of giving up on Linux entirely and reaching for the comfortable shores of Windows or Apple (where you know for certain you will be able to play DVDs…), you do a bit of poking around and realise that it is not in fact Linux’s fault that you cannot play DVDs, it is because the disck is encrypted. Reading encrypted disks is a right that Apple, and Microsoft pay for (don’t worry, the cost is moved on to the you consumer) because it is a proprietary protection format. This means that to be legal everywhere, Ubuntu (and most other versions of Linux) would have to pay for the rights to use the software (that is my understanding anyway).

If you cannot play DVD movies, your install of Linux is most likely missing these libraries. They available in most repositories (and on some websites) free of charge because in some countries it is not illegal to use, and the laws in some countries should not hinder the legal use of them in others. If you are in one of these countries then you are in luck, otherwise, I am telling you that you should go buy a dvd player and watch your movies on a Television. Neither I, nor this site will be held liable for your breaking the law. Before you install the packages required, please make sure that you are in one of the countries that their use is legal.

If you are sure that you are in one of the safe countries (hint, America is not one of them), all you have to do is open up synaptic and install gxine, libdvdcss2, libdvdnav4, libdvdplay0, and libdvdread3. And voila, your DVDs should play no problem. Of course, if you are watching dvds that have not been encrypted, you will not have run into this problem. Yes it is possible to buy DVDs that are not encrypted.

[1] More information about deCSS and its legality

[2] An haiku for those among us who are nerdy enough… (I don’t think that linking to a poem is illegal)

Ok, so I lied, I didn’t write about Virtual machines this time…

From browsing the site I found that we get a lot of comments here that say things like “I am not switching to Linux because then I can’t play my games!” and “Ubuntu sucks because I can’t play games!”. Well, here is the thing… you can. There are tonnes and tonnes of games out there for you to try and play. There are even sites and programs dedicated to getting your windows games up and running. These comments actually puzzle me somewhat, because if you do not want to change to Ubuntu (or some version of Linux) then, are you still using XP (or Windows 98) for the same reason?

One interesting thing to note about gaming on Windows machines (and most consoles as well) is that Wal-mart controls what you will and will not experience in the case of commercial games. Don’t believe me? Look here (it will open in a new window). It is 4 pages long, but the gist of it is that Wal-mart is a huge company who dictates to the gaming industry what it will and will not sell and since Wal-mart is a popular stop for many people who would purchase games, the gaming industry has to bend to Wal-mart’s policies or risk not being a popular game. This sometimes has the opposite effect (think the GTA series) but generally it does not.

Ok, enough of my ranting… Onto games on Linux. There is a great deal of nostalgia involved in the game developer crowd on Linux, which means that you will find many clones (games that are similar to other ones) like Tron, Snake, Worms (yes those violent little guys), Asteroids, Frets on Fire (Guitar hero anyone?), and the ever popular Solitaire (I think there are at least 2 versions of it in the Ubuntu maintained repositories). So, if you are nostalgic for the older games, this is perfect for you. There are also games like Sudoku, Mahjong and Chess (which Microsoft only just decided to add in to their OS), which are classics and have been around for a really long time. Additionally, if you do some digging, you will find that some games that you bought for Windows (Never Winter Nights for example) have built in support for installing on Linux.

There are also options for installing Windows games on your Linux machine, there is Wine. Make sure that you check out appdb.winehq.org to be sure that your particular game is supported (if it is at least Gold if you will generally have a good experience). If you do not understand the directions to get your game running (sometimes they are quite difficult), you could try using one of the front ends to Wine that are floating around. Two that I know of and have used are Cdega, which is a custom implementation of Wine.

If you cannot afford (or don’t want to pay for) Cdega.  An alternative is to use PlayOnLinux. It is a true front-end to Wine instead of a re-write. It runs on user submitted (created) scripts that are tested throughly and updated quite frequently. All you have to do is look through the list and find the game that you want to play (it is possible that it is not supported unfortunately), and double click it and it will prompt you on each step of the way and lead you through the installation. There is a very extensive list of games, so you should be able to find something that you want to play. It also has a built in messenger so that you can ask for help if you need it (I have not really needed to use it so I don’t know how quick responses to your questions would be…).

There are also lots of websites dedicated to games that work in Linux. Some of them cater to true Linux games (non-commercial for the most part) like linuxgames.com and happypenguin.org (or rather the Linux Game Tome if you will). These sites keep track of games and their updates so that you too can keep your games up to date, since it is possible that they don’t have an auto-updater built in to the program. There are also sites that specialize in commercial games that are available for purchase. A quick web search turns up Linux Game Publishing, and Loki (which is now closed ), among many many others.

There is also always the opportunity to run a virtual machine to run your windows programs (that will be the topic of my next post). So, next time someone says to you that they don’t want to switch to Linux because they won’t be able to play games, you might want to correct them.

I am sorry for any inconvenience.

Thank you

1. Open the Applications menu and select Add/Remove Applications
2. Type in the name or a phrase to describe the type of application you want into the search field
   
   
3. All results are shown in the listbox below, by clicking one you can view details and links to the applications website.
4. Once you have found the application you like you can tick the box next to the application title
   
5. You can install as many applications as you like all in one go so have a look around the other applications and tick the ones you want.
6. Once you are happy with your choices click the Apply Changes button in the bottom right of the window.
7. A confirmation window will appear, check the applications in the list and click Apply
   
   
8. In order to install an application you need to input the administrator (root) password into the window that appears.
9. It will then download and install all of the files for you, you should not need to do anything as there are no custom settings, license agreements etc.
10. Once installed you will see a window, choose Close and you can start the application through the Applications menu.

When I converted I was using my computer for building .NET applications which meant that I had no choice but to use Visual Studio, which isn’t available on Linux. This meant that I had to find a way of using the software on Linux else it would be pointless switching. I had a look around and found VirtualBox, which is an application that allows you to run Windows inside a window on your linux box. Meaning, that you can use Windows on Linux which inevitably results in being able to use Windows applications on Linux.

This then led me on to my web design work. At the time of converting I was just starting out as a web designer so I was using applications like Frontpage and Dreamweaver, non of which are available on Linux. I installed a program called Wine which enabled me to run Dreamweaver but it wasn’t the nicest experience on Linux.

I started to look into alternatives to Dreamweaver and found NVU, it was a great alternative although it added bits of code that made the html look untidy. It was at this point that I started to understand the code behind websites and so moved to the code editor, Bluefish.

I used Open Office instead of Microsoft Office which was a valuable contender as it offered many of the features of MS Office and also allowed me to save into the MS Office .doc format so I could use my documents elsewhere.

I use Banshee instead of Windows Media Player/iTunes because it has a similar interface to iTunes, is fast and plays all of my music. Amarok is another worthy alternative in this area.

And finally, as for my .NET programming, I have now learnt Java and use NetBeans on Linux.

Just because you convert it doesn’t mean that you have to stoop on the quality of the applications you use. The people who make applications for Linux put a lot of work into making them into the standards of their Windows counterparts and best of all they are all free to use. And if you don’t want to convert then you can use Wine or an virtual machine like VirtualBox or VMware.

And that’s it for part 2, in part three I will look at my overall experience with the conversion and one year on, was it the right choice to make?

Wine is an application that emulates (acts like) Windows in a window which means that you can use your Windows software on Linux and interact with the files on Linux. Wine gets better each release adding more functionality and allowing for more applications to be used with it. However, some applications have trouble for example Office 2007 so in some cases you will have to use workarounds. Below are some tutorials to help you with using Wine and find out more information.

Main Wine Site (wine hq)

Running MS Office 2003

Wine Review Blog/Tutorials

Crossover Office - Run popular Windows programs without the hassle

I was going to be turning 18 and as a present my parents were going to buy me a laptop. I had been using Windows Vista on my computer previous to this and it was slow and buggy and just overall a big mess and I wanted to try something different on the new laptop. I had used Linux before on live CDs which I got on Linux magazines but I was skeptical about committing it to my hard drive in case there were problems and my brand new laptop was ruined.

A couple of weeks before I got the laptop I looked around the internet for the right Linux for me, I wanted the following to be satisfied:

• Look good so it was pleasurable to use
• Easy to use
• Packed with great applications
• Fast, very fast
• Be able to work all of my hardware
• Be easy to install and set up
• Find wireless internet connections

I found Mandriva. Formally known as Mandrake, Mandriva was a linux distro based on the KDE environment which is one of the easiest to use and I had come across this previously when I tried out Knoppix on live cd.

The laptop had 2 partitions already set up because it was from Acer and they do that for some reason. One partition had Windows XP Media Centre on and one was empty. I decided to install Mandriva to the empty partition so that if there was any problems I would still have Windows available to use.

Installing Mandriva (as a dual boot with Windows) was pretty painless, I simply followed the instructions and did a search in google for installing Mandriva and it was installed very quickly.

Mandriva looked and functioned great, it was easy to use, packed to the brim with the latest and best applications, it was fast and easy to install, however some of my hardware didn’t work. After a while of tinkering around I started to get bored. There wasn’t really any excitement and I started to look for other distributions.

At this time, one of my friends recommended me to look at Ubuntu. Ubuntu is one of the biggest and most popular linux distros available and it is by far one of the best. I installed it over Mandriva, crossing my fingers and hoping that it wouldn’t mess up my machine and in particular my boot loader (this is the screen that shows up when you start the computer to select the operating system if you have more than one installed, if this messes up then it could mean that you cannot load anything, painful).

Ubuntu installed within half an hour and didn’t mess up my bootloader one bit. Everything worked great, it satisfied all of my point above (apart from my integrated web cam but I dont use that anyway). It was incredibly fast and I was using it efficiently within minutes. I was able to install new applications easily through its Add/Remove Applications feature and I was starting to get used to all of the new applications like Open Office and The Gimp.

That’s it for this part, in the next part of my conversion, I will talk about how I adjusted to using the new applications, what I needed to change and how I was able to use some of my Windows applications on Linux.

The owners of Ubuntu, Canonical, release a new stable version every 6 months, each with their own catchy names. Each release is packed full of the latest free software that allows you to perform most tasks including Internet Browsing, Email, Document Writing and media. It also includes an application that enables you to download more programs as and when you need them.

“Ubuntu is a community developed, Linux-based operating system that is perfect for laptops, desktops and servers. It contains all the applications you need - a web browser, presentation, document and spreadsheet software, instant messaging and much more.” Source: Ubuntu

Ubuntu uses the Gnome user interface which is simple to use with elements looking similar to Windows (menu, window buttons, system tray etc). There are other flavours of Ubuntu as well, for example there are editions that use KDE and XFCE as well as editions geared towards mobile computing and educational based computing.

Choosing the edition for you can get quite hard, however the major distributions of Ubuntu such as the Gnome based and KDE based come with live CD functionality which means that you can run the operating system off of the CD and it wont touch your hard drive, therefore you can make the right choice of what is right for your needs.

One of the biggest advantages of using Ubuntu first is that because it is one of the biggest distributions, there is a massive community out there ready to help you with any of your problems.

You can get more details on Ubuntu at their website: http://ubuntu.com or by visiting the Ubuntu Forums (http://ubuntuforums.org)

A bit of background before I start so you know where I am coming from. As a user of Windows all of my life it was a very big risk moving to Linux for me, I used Visual Studio for all my programming, Dreamweaver for my web designing and countless other programs that were only available on Windows so I knew that I would have to change a lot of things when moving to Linux. And now nearly one year on since the conversion I am not using Visual Studio anymore (mainly because I got taught Java at uni and I have moved to PHP/MySQL [online]) and I don’t use Dreamweaver because I realised that coding website with a text editor (or Bluefish) was much better and faster, oh and free. Converting to Linux completely is a decision you cannot take lightly, you will need to change applications so if you are not literate in computer software then this may put you off.

OK so onto the list:

10 reasons to convert

1. A big disadvantage of Windows is the hefty price tag, Windows Vista is around £100 at the moment, that is one hundred pounds on a piece of software that really doesn’t offer you more than XP (but I wont get onto the whole hating Vista thing in this post). Linux is free, you can download it, order it on CD or even get it delivered to you for free, no charge whatsoever. Linux is free to use, distribute and even rip to pieces and get into the code and totally change it.
2. If you choose one of the bigger names in Linux, for example Ubuntu, there is free and helpful support from the community, you can pretty much guarantee that if you have a problem then posting it on to the community forum will provide you with an answer within minutes in most cases, certainly my experience of both the Ubuntu and Mandriva forums has proved this.
3. Continuous updates is something that Linux does best. We will take the example of Ubuntu again, Ubuntu is updated every 6 months with a new version of the operating system. Most of the Linux third party software is updated more regularly so your system keeps up to date with the very best software. Windows updates are much less frequent, I know it isn’t fair to pick out the 6 years it took for Windows XP to be updated to Windows Vista, but this is an example of total disregard for its users, you do not get this on Linux, at the end of the day, Linux makers care about their users and not about the money because they don’t make their money from the operating system sales.
4. The lack of viruses is something that attracts a lot of users now. You cannot use Windows on the internet without a virus checker else you can wave goodbye to your computer. Viruses are rarely written for Linux and those that are do not get through because as a Linux user your user account doesn’t have the rights to control the system directly like in Windows, which means that viruses cannot attack your system.
5. Extremely fast compared to Windows. Linux may take longer to boot up than Windows but once you are logged in you rarely see any lag in running time (unless on really old computers). Linux doesn’t have to run applications such as a virus checker which are running all the time taking up system resources, so it can run a lot faster. Because of the lack of things running continuously it means that Linux hardly ever crashes. I say hardly ever because it has crashed on me in the past. What tends to happen though is that an application will crash and then you can force quit it, not keep pressing exit and then getting End Now windows coming up over and over again doing nothing like a certain operating system (mentioning no names, W*nd*ws, lol, I don’t totally hate Windows you’ll see that later on)
6. Applications tend to be free. Most applications available on Linux are open source which means that they are available to be used at no charge, ever. It also means that for the gurus out there, you can go into the code and change things to how you want it.
7. Applications are easy to install. It once was that installing applications involved a nice big readme file and a black screen with white text, well now that is no longer the case (in most Linux distros that is). In the most user friendly linux’s (Ubuntu, Mandriva etc.) there are applications that simply list all of the applications available and you simply do a search for applications you would like to install and select the Install option, it downloads the files and installs them without you needing to do anything, no agreeing to licenses, setting up options etc.
8. A wide range of choices. Unlike Windows where you can choose between 5 versions, one better than the previous one, there are literally thousands of Linux distro’s out there for you to choose, geared at different types of users. Most people start with the simpler and popular ones like Ubuntu, Debian, RedHat etc. and then when they get really good at it they may try investigating what else is out there. As a beginner it is always best to go for a popular one so that there is a big community to get help from if needed.
9. Linux has a lot of options to configure you operating system to exactly how you want it without having to install programs like WindowBlinds and such. Everything is packed into the system so you can have visual effects on your applications, change the look of your applications etc and plus there are a lot more options if you go into the terminal.
10. And finally, Linux is getting more popular and easy to use. There was a time when Linux was scary for everyone who simply used a computer for work but it is now getting increasingly popular as Linux makers start to make their operating systems more user friendly, this was mainly seen during the 6 year period between Windows XP and Vista, users started to see that Windows may not be the only operating system out there and Linux was offering more than XP. Linux is getting more and more features than ever before, it is starting to improve brilliantly on a lot of areas that it didn’t do so well at and it is now starting to be seen as a valuable alternative.

So there is the 5 reasons why you should consider converting, there are more but I don’t want to bore you to much. I will now give you 10 reasons why converting may not be the best option for you.

1. Linux is not as user friendly as Windows. Although this is changing with each release, Linux still isn’t classed as user friendly as Windows, put Windows in front of someone and then Linux and ask them to do a task, I can guarantee that they will be able to do it on Windows faster, this is because everybody has grown up or has learned Windows before ever considering anything else. Windows has a simple interface which it has kept over the years which has meant that most people have got used to it. There are however some Linux distro’s that luck similar to Windows.
2. Gaming on Linux is pretty dia unless you like games like solitaire or KGolf of course then its killer. However, playing proper games is not something that Linux is designed for but this is changing, there are companies trying to get Windows games to run on Linux using technologies like Wine (which allows you to run some Windows applications on Linux). If you are a gamer, then converting may not be a good idea.
3. Lack of applications. Although there are plenty of applications to perform most tasks on Linux, there aren’t as many as Windows especially big applications like Photoshop and such, there are alternatives Photoshop/Gimp, MS Office/Open Office but you will have to dump features if you are to convert. The truth of the matter is that most application makers create their applications for Windows because that is where they will make the most money.
4. Compatibility. Not as bad as it used to be on Linux but is still not as good as Windows, as with the above point, most drivers are written for Windows (and Mac), it is very rare that you will get manufacturers making drivers for Linux, this tends to be done by the community around Linux, chances are if you plug in your printer, Linux will not see it without special applications such as CUPS, put it into Windows and there should be a manufacturer driver readily available. Compatibility is improving with each release but until manufacturers see Linux as a viable market they wont add support for their products and it is left for the community around Linux to sort out.
5. High possibility of problems. With Linux you are undoubtedly going to see problems, maybe its your web cam doesn’t work or you can’t get to grips with Open Office, whatever it is there will be problems. Because most things are designed for Windows there is unlikely to be any problems. In converting to Linux you need to be aware that although your web cam worked on Windows, it doesn’t mean that it will work on Linux.

There you have it, originally this post was going to have 10 bad points and 10 good points but I couldn’t think of any more for the reasons not to convert so if you do know any (or any good reasons) then please do leave them as comments, or discuss them over at the forum in this thread: Converting to Linux, good and bad points.

Further Reading on this

13 reasons why Linux should be on your desktop

10 Advantages of Ubuntu over Vista

A blog that I wrote during my personal conversion - The Linux Convert

Switching From XP to Linux - Should You?

10 reasons to choose Linux

Digg this post

The Live CD can be ordered from stores such as http://www.thelinuxstore.org.uk, pre packed on Linux magazines or downloaded and burnt to CD, you can even get them for free, for example Ubuntu will send you a professionally made copy of their software on CD from https://shipit.ubuntu.com/.

To create a live CD yourself from an ISO you can follow one of the tutorials below or ask a question in our forums:

Burn Using Nero

Burn using IMGBURN

Burn using InfraRecorder: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/BurningIsoHowto