Will Linux support this well?

PEM

Solid State Member
Messages
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I have a Dell Latitude D510 and am thinking of trying Linux on it. Will Linux support all my hardware ( its all stock ).
Will it support my most used programs;
Word
Firefox
Exel
Google SketchUp
Paint
Photo Shop Pro
Itunes
IE
Google earth
How dose it compare to Windows XP?
What distro do you recomend?
Will it affect and upgrades I may want to do to the computer in the future.

Thanks

I found out that Linux will support the laptop and Firefox well, as for the rest I Don't know.
Exel, Google SketchUp, Paint, and Photo Shop Pro, are the big ones.

I found out that Linux will support the laptop and Firefox well
Exel, Google SketchUp, Paint, and Photo Shop Pro are the big ones.

Parts of Excel will work, its not used enough to be needed I guess. Paint shop pro will not work, thats one of the top programs I use so I will need to find a replacement; if you can give me ideas on this that'd be great. Google SketchUp will work but getting to work might be a task. I found this info on WINE hq site. WINE in a program in development to help windows programs run on Linux.
http://appdb.winehq.org/index.php
 
Hi,

Great to hear that you are going to give linux a try. I can find you a replacement for Paint Shop Pro, I just need to know is it similar to Photoshop? You can use OpenOffice.org for an alternitive to Exel. I don't know about Google SketchUp either, but I can try to find something for that.

What distro of linux are you going to try out? This will help a lot too.

Cheers!
 
I don't know yet, I have not looked into that.

Update: I have not found any info that will help me chose.

I will be putting it on a cheap laptop; a Dell Latitude D510;
40GB hard disk
Pentium M 1.73 GHz processor
512.0 MB RAM
CD-RW / DVD-ROM optical drive
Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 900 graphic card

I won't be doing to much with it. Mostly just surfing the web and small projects with photo modification and word processing.

As for the Photo shop thing idk as I am not familiar with photoshop.

Thanks

Update:
If you watch the video here you can see a 4 sided desktop;
http://images.google.com/imgres?img...Q_ENUS256&sa=G&um=1&ei=RdsRSvjEAqCltgeSl-iTCA

I don't know what distros offer that but I definitely want that feature.
Let me know if you have any suggestions of what I should use.
Thanks

___________________________________________________________
Update;
looks like its Ubuntu for me.
___________________________________________________________
 
Hi,

I would have suggested Fedora, but that is just because I am an Ambassador. Ubuntu is an ok choice as well. You might find that GIMP is a program that will work for photo modification. Let me know if you need any help with it. I can usually find the answer to your problem.

Cheers!
 
Alright, what would Fedora have over Ubuntu?

Will I need to download any drivers for the hardware before I can install Linux?

I plan to download linux on my desktop, write it to a CD-RW then boot the laptop off it. What program do you recomend for writing the bootable disk.

Thanks
 
As a substitute for excel, you can try openoffice. It's spreadsheet program is backwords compatable with excel, and it's functionality is roughly the same, and they are very simmilar. Some software is windows only and can be emulated with wine as you found out, but emulation can sometimes be a royal pain getting things to work. I recomend trying ubuntu, it's one of the easiest to use distro's out there, and it also seems to be the most popular one.
 
I am downloading Ubuntu 9.04 as I type this. It should be done in an hour and a half. I will them proceed to create the CD-RW according to the instructions on the ubuntu site.

The laptop charger should be here tomorrow and I can get linux on the laptop any time after that assuming I get a good download and write to the disk.

The only thing that could get in the way is drivers. I will need to get those files before I can load linux to the laptop, right? If so, where do I get them?
 
I am downloading Ubuntu 9.04 as I type this. It should be done in an hour and a half. I will them proceed to create the CD-RW according to the instructions on the ubuntu site.

The laptop charger should be here tomorrow and I can get linux on the laptop any time after that assuming I get a good download and write to the disk.

The only thing that could get in the way is drivers. I will need to get those files before I can load linux to the laptop, right? If so, where do I get them?

For the main part, ubuntu will have all the correct drivers. Sometimes you find that you need drivers for wireless network cards or graphics cards though. I would say you are 99% likely to be able to connect to the internet and download anything necessary after installing Ubuntu.
 
So I can just load Unbuntu to the laptop and worry about divers only if something goes wrong.

________________________________
Update;
The version I got is ubuntu-9.04-desktop-i386.iso . I see they have a notebook remix, wish I knew that before I downloaded. Oh well. I got the program MD5SUM and checked the hash. It matched!
 
So I can just load Unbuntu to the laptop and worry about divers only if something goes wrong.

Exactly.

Your question about Fedora, and what it has that Ubuntu doesn't. The answer there is that it just has some other features that a user might want, such a root access, a very easy firewall program. But you should be more than happy with ubuntu. This way you won't get too confused with stuff too early on.

Cheers!
 
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