Ubuntu for College
- Thread starter aranzou
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Any OS that youre comfortable with is good for college. As long as you have a good word typing program that youre comfortable using, you should be fine.
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Open office ftw
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Theres really no reason for a personal user to use any Linux distro, especially seeing as you're not experienced with it atm.
It's not that I'm inexperienced with it, even though I have had a hell of a time getting 3D acceleration for my video card, it's just something that has always fascinated me. I was actually wondering if anyone else uses it for college and what programs do they use academically.
The security and stability are welcome in college especially when so much is on the line these days when you do lose your laptop.
The security and stability are welcome in college especially when so much is on the line these days when you do lose your laptop.
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I agree with blizbiggy, openoffice should handle most of your needs for completing projects & papers and such. If youre still not 100% sure that you wanna go linux for college, you can always dual boot & then you can work in linux as youd like or switch over to windows or OSX if you needed.
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it should suite your needs as long as there is no special software need for school.
personally i don't really like ubuntu but iv been useing linux for a long time mainly SuSE but some debian and slackware.
if you have any issues you can pm me i haven't came across anything in linux i couldn't solve since i started using it years ago.
personally i don't really like ubuntu but iv been useing linux for a long time mainly SuSE but some debian and slackware.
if you have any issues you can pm me i haven't came across anything in linux i couldn't solve since i started using it years ago.
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ya but the same could be argued for windows or os x.
personally when i have to do work i hate windows with a passion it has a crap UI that is ridged as hell and wont work how i want it too.
unlike a linux distro that works exactly as i want and what works for me after i customize it, it works exactly how i want and makes my work flow much more efficient.
not to mention it is a much more secure and stable operating system.
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The IDES and software you're going to be using will likely run across every OS, i know that all of my programs did. That being said, if the programs you're using run only on ubuntu, dual boot it, but Ubuntu can be a hassle for personal use, so i'd suggest running win 7, but thats just me
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Some intro computer science projects may cater to Windows users (i.e. use of visual studio for C/C++) and have requirements such as "must compile on certain OS's compiler".
If that is the case, campus computer labs or dual booting may help soothe the issue.
As for note-taking, I always preferred pen and paper; a laptop and wireless was an attention killer.
If that is the case, campus computer labs or dual booting may help soothe the issue.
As for note-taking, I always preferred pen and paper; a laptop and wireless was an attention killer.
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good point. if your just codeing text olny c++ applications that use olny basic includes it should just compile and work on any target but once you start useing guis things change up a bit for windows you will need visual studio and it's librarys than on linux it is either going to be with the qt toolkit and qt creator for the ide or mono for working with gtk+ stuff. and than there are differing librarys if your working with linux there is qtlibs and kdelibs which can take care of the basic for you and im sure windows has some equilvent.
Agreed. Considering your major is important in choosing Linux over Windows.
TBH, I'd say using Windows would be your best option, since nearly every piece of software you receive will be compatible for Windows, but some may not be for Linux.
I guess an ideal would be dual boot, where you can just shift between the two OSes.
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For computer science you'll be doing a lot of programming with both Linux and Windows operating systems. Choose one, it doesn't matter which, and then do yourself a favor and create virtual machines for the others. VMWare if you can get it from your school for free, or Virtualbox if you need an open source alternative.
Of course that's just my opinion from what I saw of the work my Computer Science friend did. I was a Biology major so this isn't personal experience.
Oh and I prefer Fedora over Ubuntu for my linux needs.
Of course that's just my opinion from what I saw of the work my Computer Science friend did. I was a Biology major so this isn't personal experience.
Oh and I prefer Fedora over Ubuntu for my linux needs.
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ya virtualbox or vmware can be very usefull for this and if you got a quad core or a decent duel with 4gb ram or more the vm will perform pretty good.
i do some programing here and there and what i have on my main computer is a duel boot with openSuSE 11.2 as my main OS than Windows 7(which i olny game on)
than in openSuSE i got virtualbox with several VM's got an other openSuSE vm which i use to test more bleeding edge stuff so i can keep my main os stable and i got a xp and 7 vm's and a haiku VM.
works really well for me and i got enough ram and power behind this to run all vm's at once with good performance on the guest vm's and the host system.
Also never install vmware and virtualbox on the same os they both install kernel level components and can mess thing up good with both of them there.
and about them i find vmware works slightly better with windows because of unity and it's 3d acceleration supports d3d and virtualbox seems to work better with unix type guest because it has seamless mode and has better openGL acceleration than vmware.
and if you really want to learn more about linux your better of going with debian, SuSE or fedora than Ubuntu there are still user friendley but they dont dumb things down like ubuntu and if you pretty much want to learn everything about linux there is slackware and gentoo .
i do some programing here and there and what i have on my main computer is a duel boot with openSuSE 11.2 as my main OS than Windows 7(which i olny game on)
than in openSuSE i got virtualbox with several VM's got an other openSuSE vm which i use to test more bleeding edge stuff so i can keep my main os stable and i got a xp and 7 vm's and a haiku VM.
works really well for me and i got enough ram and power behind this to run all vm's at once with good performance on the guest vm's and the host system.
Also never install vmware and virtualbox on the same os they both install kernel level components and can mess thing up good with both of them there.
and about them i find vmware works slightly better with windows because of unity and it's 3d acceleration supports d3d and virtualbox seems to work better with unix type guest because it has seamless mode and has better openGL acceleration than vmware.
and if you really want to learn more about linux your better of going with debian, SuSE or fedora than Ubuntu there are still user friendley but they dont dumb things down like ubuntu and if you pretty much want to learn everything about linux there is slackware and gentoo .
