Evening all,

I have a program that runs much better on a Linux system, and I was hoping you guys could help me out getting ubuntu or something similar to run in an window in vista.

Is VMware player and Unbuntu, the best way to go if I'm looking for linux?

Thanks in advance,

CM

Yeah - VMWare or one of the other virtual systems would do what you require. Alternately, clear at least 10 GB of space on a drive, and install Linux onto that and let it create a dual-boot - much better for learning Linux.

Many thanks for that scribble, I was thinking of partitioning the drive but I need to use this program with others I run from windows so I'm going to rock VMware.

Thanks again,

CM

No worries.

¿What's the application as a matter of interest?

It's called ESP-r, its been developed over the last 15/20 years at my uni.

Its for analysing energy use, solar activity, humidity etc. in buildings its a pretty powerful piece of kit if you can fight your way through the poor interface

Take a peek at vmware player and the pre-made machines, really is a case of just downloading the player and torrent the image/appliance - a really easy way to test out different os setups with out having to deal with the initial install and disk partitioning - simple run the image and login.

http://www.vmware.com/appliances/

I think virtual box is going to catch up but for a windows box i think vmware still has the edge speed/compatibility wise. But virtual box will run on more os'es and is pretty much opensourced now so i suspect there are now lots of images being released for it as well but vmware player is just far simpler.

Many thanks HG, thats where I found the version of ubuntu and got it loaded up alright.

Having some issues getting to grips with ubuntu, but its my first crack and a Linux OS so just got to keep at it I guess.

No probs, if your vaguely familiar with good old dos then a shell (bash/sh/tcsh/zsh etc aint too different and tab is your best friend)

Quick primer:

DOS UNIX
dir ls
cd cd
copy cp
move mv

they liked to keep keystrokes to a minimum when naming commands so just remove the vowels and usually thats the commands name.

just remember also there is no a:, c: etc drive as such and everything lives off this magical thing called root '/' just accept it and u will learn to love it. It is by far so much simpler than the windows way of laying out devices.

the one other thing to know is that everything is just a file or directory.

That's one thing or concept that I love about UNIX/Linux, that *everything* is addressable as a file. Like you can:

cat /dev/sda1 > /dev/dsp

and send the entire raw contents of your first hard disc straight to the sound card or you can:

cat /dev/urandom > dev/dsp

and send a stream of (pseudo)random data raw to the sound card. Someone on a Linux forum said that they did this and heard the sound of God.

Scribble, HG, thank you both very much I'll take your advice to heart, watch this space for UNIX based jokes coming to a topic near you soon.

Edit- Spelling

I use Fedora, the laytest version has Virtualisation built in - one of my tech mates set it up - so i can use windows on a virt machine or something like that. I find it easy enough, when i need windows i just switch.

fedora is open Source linux

All linux is open source - essentially there are 2 main licenses for open source GPL or BSD

The GPL (GNU General Public License) is considered a viral license - ie if you make changes to any source code and try to sell any product based on it you have to publish your changes to the code so other people can incorporate those changes.

The BSD (Berkeley Software Distribution) is thought of as a more buisness friendly license - it allows you to do what ever you want with the code including making no changes to it what so ever and selling it - the only thing is you cannot claim you wrote it and you do not need to publish any changes you have made.

In practice i have found BSD license code to be far cleaner and more reliable than GPL'ed and generally most of the time any modifications made to a BSD licensed program are contributed back to the project as a lot of the time it more hassle than it is worth to keep a separate version of something in track with the main program source code. Most of the windows network stack (and almost all other os's) have stuff from the original BSD OS releases - even now many of the little progs in windows like ftp in command prompt still have this code in them - some of it being 30+ years old now!

There are flame wars going on forever about which is the better or correct license to use for an open source project, as long as you are not selling a piece of software or extending it and closing its source there is little difference between either for most people.