Ubuntu

Hi!

I have installed ubuntu out of an error, a bit of frustration, a bit of annoyance and a bit of excitement! I am (was!) a windows user. I had windows 7 on my laptop. You might already know how famous windows is with nasty viruses. I got one too! Had no option but to get rid of the whole OS. I installed ubuntu - mainly because it was free! But the main factor was, google said, it's not that hard to learn using ubuntu! So I had to give it a go after being annoyed at Windows - it ruined my documents! Rant over.

So now, I have ubuntu. Love it to bits. Like the new things I am finding. Few things I am very used to in Windows are:

but the once listed above are major and daily used programmes (when I had windows!) My university does not support anything to do with Linux so this forum is THE hope for me!


I found WINEHQ over the internet. Installed it. I don't know if I have correct packages etc with it. But it mostly runs all my .exe formats when I tried to install them. It installed Minitab perfectly and so it did with Spotify. What it din't install well is my Driving test (UK) CD and Microsoft Office - It installed them but the 'tick boxes' and some other contents are not visible at all. It opens a grayish windows like box with nothing written in it! It runs the CD but with a huge gray screen and nothing to read or click on it!!


It din't install SPSS and gave me string of errors! And same was the case with VPN!


As for my hard-drive - it doesn't like it! It doesn't mount it! (I guess because it's got a Seagate manager.exe that needs to be installed). So I tried Wine to see if it installs. It installed the setup but then does nothing! Can't mount it! I am guessing it's because of encryption, but is there no way around it?


I don't have Windows anymore on my laptop. I don't intend to ever go back to windows! But these are some key programmes I need daily with my project, studies and work! If I can get them working, I can save myself from living terrible computing life with Windows!


Please help me!!


Ps: As my name says, I am a complete noob with Linux language, terminal commands, etc. If there is a solution, please can you give me a step by step noob language guide? I hope there is someone out there who will save me from going back to Windows.. I love Ubuntu, please save me from Windows!!


Fingers crossed....

WINE is fighting an uphill battle against the ever-changing Windows API (sometimes you'll find it runs older Windows programs better than modern Windows does!) and frequently has problems installing new software. It also has limitations it can't exceed -- it's not an emulator. It uses Linux stand-ins for Windows libraries instead of using Windows device drivers. Meaning Windows device drivers and other kernel-level code simply can't be installed or used. That probably includes your proprietary Seagate encryption software.

Using Linux means adopting more portable, often different programs to do what you need. IE and Outlook and Office are Windows programs, for example, but Firefox, Thunderbird, and OOffice work in both. Your Seagate thing is Windows-specific, but Truecrypt runs on both. There might be a Linux client for your VPN but if your university won't tell you what protocol they use that'd be very difficult to guessify into working. SPSS, I suspect, you're out of luck on. Older versions of SPSS might run better(and having dealt with SPSS a little, I've found that old versions do much more than their crippled "new" versions, not less!) etc, etc, etc. You'd probably benefit from using portable alternatives to proprietary things even if you're stuck with Windows.

Another alternative would be getting something like a VMWARE virtual machine running inside your Linux box, in which you could install Windows inside to use those niggling Windows-only things WINE can't run. That really would be an emulator and should handle them fine.

Linux is not, hasn't ever been, and cannot be "FreeWindowsXP". If you want to run Windows programs, run Windows. Would you buy a Mac and expect it to run all your non-Mac software?

I had problems with some programs under Wine. According to their documentation, you can substitute native DLLs for some of the generic Wine DLL's if they are available. That may help on somethings.

I went back to Office 2003 for some Powerpoint presentations that we do at church. I just couldn't get OO to do them right without screwing the fonts up. 2002 PP runs perfectly under Wine.

As far as your other productivity stuff... Linux alternatives are better. Your choice of calendar, mail, photo editors, music creation and burning software.
And for you gamers, there are a TON of cool, very entertaining choices in every genre.

I've come up with another scenario that works even better. I reinstalled Ubuntu on the whole drive (I was dual-booting with Vista). I created a VM in Virtual Box to run Vista and one to run Win 7. I've loaded Office 2007 on the Vista VM and it runs perfectly. Some guys at work were doing that for Windows specific tools they needed and it does work really well.