Quote:
Originally Posted by Neil
If all you do is surf the net and write a few letters then you would not notice much of a difference and you would probably have a lot less problems with your PC
|
Generally speaking, people with web/email/word processing don't have problems with their PC. An up-to-date operating system, decent antivirus measures, a firewall and a sensible approach to surfing should all be employed regardless of the o/s in use. If that's all you do with a windows PC, I think it's unlikely to go wrong, so why change?
I've had Ubuntu (the only Linux flavour I've ever tried) on this laptop twice, now. On each occasion it took several attended hours to set up, mostly because of struggles with the proprietary drivers for the wireless network card.
I reinstalled Vista on another laptop which had needed a new hard drive. It took the same amount* of time to get fully patched, but apart from the occasional intervention, it did it all by itself.
For those reasons, I reckon that for anyone with my level of computer ability or lower, Linux is not the o/s to choose.
However, having said that, there is an easy way for you two to settle your argument. Windows users can install
wubi which will give you a fully working Ubuntu install that can be removed if you don't like it just using the standard windows install/remove regime. You choose at startup whether you want to boot into windows or linux. It doesn't even mess with your drive partitions - the installation, including the linux root drive, are all contained within folders on the NTFS (or whatever) windows directory structure.
* Actually it took several days, but that's because it was up at the studio waiting overnight for me to reboot it.