[ubuntu-uk] serious advice

[Tom Bamford]

Hi Norman,

As someone who tries to get everyone I help off Windows and onto Ubuntu, 
I've had to come up with some unusual solutions. For most needs 
excluding 3D graphics I'd recommend installing Windows 2000/XP on a 
virtual machine. If you switch off system restore and automatic updates 
in Windows it should run nice and fast even with 192 or 256MB of RAM 
allocated to it. The nice thing about virtualising it is that you can 
just close Windows like an ordinary application and it will be paused in 
the state you left it. You can run it in a window or in full screen 
mode, it really is almost seamless. Until recently I have been using 
VMware but recently I've switched to VirtualBox and I'd strongly 
recommend it over the former (although you will need the freeware closed 
source edition to get USB device sharing.

I don't recommend Wine for most purposes because despite enormous 
efforts it cannot give you a real Windows environment. Using Windows 
itself allows you to use nearly any software and it doesn't necessarily 
need a monster PC to cope. My laptop is a Pentium 4 1.4GHz with 768MB 
RAM and I run Windows XP and Win98 alongside each other under Ubuntu 
quite happily.

You can also utilise a virtual machine running in the background (say 
with the freeware VMware server) to have Windows applications running 
seamingly natively in Ubuntu using terminal services (remote desktop) 
and a couple of tricks - more info here: 
http://www.venturecake.com/10-minutes-to-run-every-windows-app-seamlessly-on-your-ubuntu-desktop/ 
. A similar feat is supposedly possible using VirtualBox alone (article 
here: 
http://www.venturecake.com/virtualbox-15-the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly/) 
but I haven't tried that yet.

With a bit of ingenuity and often some fiddling, you can get even the 
worst software to run and usually work better than on Windows alone.

Regards,
Tom


norman wrote:
> I am contemplating buying my 9 year old granddaughter a new PC for
> Christmas. Presently, she has a fairly old PC and has been using Windows
> both at home and at school. (I hear cries of shame). She is of course
> familiar with Ubuntu when she uses my machine and it would be my
> intention to wean her onto Ubuntu on her new machine. Where I need
> advice is in selecting the best way to enable her to join in with her
> classmates, if and when she may need to, with regard to such things as
> educational games and suchlike which do not play on Linux.
>
> I know of Wine and Crossover Office but neither of these appear to be
> what is needed. So, fellow Ubuntu users, what would you advise an old
> codger to do.
>
> Norman
>
>
>