windows or Linux?

whats a better os windows 7 or Linux?

I have used both extensively and my conclusion is: Depends what for. For games: Windows. For everything else: Linux (I’d recommend Linux Mint).

Linux:

  • Better resource management (Noticeable when rendering or playing cross-platform games)
  • Supports more hardware out-of-the-box
  • Easier Installation (half an hour)
  • Small base installtion size (4gb for most systems, down to 50mb for others!)
  • Free!
  • Great community
  • Shell scripting
  • Proprietary drivers hard to get working (eg some graphic cards and wifi cards)
  • Less software available

Windows:

  • Better graphics card support
  • More software
  • CMD scripting
  • Cost
  • Installation complexity
  • Fewer default drivers
  • Occupies more disk space (24gb. And what’s in it? I still have to install my computers USB3 drivers??!)
  • Worse resource management

I run linux 99% of the time these days. I like my custom window-manager, I like being able to script in a sensible manner, I like that installing blender is as simple as getting a terminal and typing “sudo apt-get install blender” and so on…

could try duel booting for a while see which you prefer

If you’re going to be installing Blender with each update, you might prefer Windows. It’s far easier to install things that are on the cutting edge.

I’m sure I’ll get flamed for this, but if so, please tell me why I’m wrong.

How do I know what version to get there are so many?

another question is once I do download it how can i run it and still keep my windows till I decide what I like better?

If you’ve got a new fancy computer with lots of space dual boot! You’ll get the biggest range of software that way. If you have an older slow computer get Xubuntu, a lightweight Ubuntu! Uses very little resources so you can get the most out of your hardware. :slight_smile:

I recommend you some KDE-based distribution like Kubuntu or OpenSuse. If you are a Windows user, you give yourself a reasonable time to learn about Linux.

You look about Dual Boot that others have mentioned. What version of Windows you have installed? You tell us some details of your machine, PC? What mother board?

How to chose a distribution of linux:
Thankfully, most have ‘live mode.’ This means you can test hem without needing to install them. So you download it, burn it to a CD or flash drive, plug it in, and boot you computer off said drive. It will run quite slowly, but it means you can test that it works on your hardware. The list of distributions I’d suggest are: Ubuntu, Linux Mint or Bodhi Linux.

How to install/dual boot:
The simplest way when using a linux like ubuntu is to boot in live mode, press install, and it will tell you that it’s found anoher operating system, and ask what it should do. One of the choices is to ‘Install alongside.’ Once you have a bit of computer experience you may like to partition your hard drive so that, well, it’s just neater!

There are plenty of guides how to do this online, but if you get stuck, don’t be afraid to ask questions.

Finally, Linux is different to windows, ajd will take a bit of time to get used to. So don’t be put off at first sight, when things are confusing. Remember the ‘too many buttons’ phase of learning blender? Yeah, it’s a little loke that.

when I download I get a .ISO file I burn to cd and nothing happens when I reboot?

You must boot your computer from cd, like when you were installing windows. Check your motherboard manual for boot menu shortkey.

BTW, live version of linux can be extremely slow, because everything is loading from the cd on demand.

There is only very little chance that you will find linux good enough for you. It is very probable that you will need a several programs that run only on Windows (or Mac). The dual-boot is a solution but keep in mind that you will spend twice the time maintaining your operating systems (and that is not fun). Imagine you install a new blender on your windows. Than you will have to install it again on linux.
If you go win7 (or even win8) you won’t regret. You will get reliable OS with good support of hardware and huge selection of software. What else do you need from an operating system?

Some recommendations. To download large files you never use the native browser download manager, because you can download a corrupt file. You use a good external download manager.
When you download the .iso, you should check if the image has been downloaded correctly. To verify that the file is not corrupt, you should check the MD5 checksum. You can use a program in Windows to check the MD5 hash of the iso you downloaded:
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/HowToMD5SUM#MD5SUM_on_Windows

Then you should compare the MD5 obtained with the MD5 has given the site of the Linux distribution, and they must be the same. For example the Ubuntu family:
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/UbuntuHashes

Everything explained here is not strictly necessary, but you should do this with any .iso image downloaded to discard that the image is corrupt, even if you download an iso image of Microsoft Windows.

Keep in mind what others have said about to set your BIOS to boot from CD/DVD. I also asked which version of Windows you had, you know, Microsoft wants to take control of the things that you install and this is why they uses UEFI. If you have Windows 8 installed in EFI mode, you must properly configure your BIOS and install Linux also in EFI mode. If that’s the case, look in google about it (dual boot linux windows 8 UEFI) that there are tutorials.

And you remember that when you make major changes to the system, you should always make backup of your important data (eg what you have in your Documents and Settings folder in Windows)

Edit:
Ok, anyway you seem to use Windows 7. You forget what I said about the UEFI :slight_smile:

You forgot a real big negative for Linux

  • Requires the use of the terminal for a number of operations that is completely GUI driven in Windows

This is a big deal because a good OS should not require you to even touch the terminal unless you were developing mods for the OS or something.

There was also an article posted recently that ran down all of the more technical issues in Linux, including the fact that it’s a bit easier to accidentally screw up your machine after a crash (since Linux cannot recover from certain things like driver crashes).

ok ty guys can’t find any other way to download it so I guess i am stuck with windows.:frowning:

[citation needed]

Please try to give more information. You did not say which distribution you are trying to download. What old is your computer? Does it support 64-bit architecture?

If you do really basic stuff like surfing the web, listening to music, playing videos, then Linux is sufficient. However, if you need specific programs like Photoshop etc. or gaming, then Windows makes more sense.

The distro you choose really depends on your level of tinkering. If you’re coming from Windows, I’d recommend the Ubuntu-derived Linux Mint with the Cnnamon desktop. If you can install Windows, then you can probably install Linux Mint since it uses a GUI also.

Personally, I use Arch Linux with Cinnamon, but it’s geared towards power users. For example, I personally like to customize my desktop to streamline my workflow, which I can’t do with Windows.

http://www.linuxmint.com/download.php - Get Cinnamon 64-bit (assuming you have a relatively modern computer)

@Ace Dragon
Are you referring to this?
http://linuxfonts.narod.ru/why.linux.is.not.ready.for.the.desktop.current.html

Ah, there it is, thanks :slight_smile:

People can call out Microsoft as ‘evil’ and ‘boneheaded’ all they want when it comes to feedback from Windows users and their policies, but the article shows that Linus Torvalds (especially when it comes to feedback) isn’t exactly a saint in comparison.

If there is not a straight forward way to install like a zip file with a downloader I am lost guy so ty for the help but I just don’t get it.