Keep Linux or back to XP?

Prisoner · 04 Jun 2010

Well, I just noticed a problem with my laptop, with Dreamlinux installed.

Went to sleep one night with it running perfectly. Did not install or uninstall a single thing, didn't do any system-affecting operations. Just visited Sevenforums, played my usual online games, and checked my Deviantart before I went to sleep.

Woke up next morning, turned my laptop on, loaded normally, and compiz was gone. So was my dock. So was Conky. So were the window borders. I've tried re-installing compiz, and it still doesn't work. Compiz-check doesn't even work anymore.

It disturbs me a little that this sort of thing would happen randomly. I know that nobody else had access to the system, as I keep a pretty hard password on it. It seems to me that the install is getting a little unstable... after 2 weeks...

Anyway, I need some advise. Should I keep with Dreamlinux? It runs smooth, about the smoothest of all the OS's I've tried so far, on my 256 MB RAM system. The other option would be to use Windows XP (probably TinyXP), so I could have Wifi access back as well as being able to do work on here as well as my desktop.

Opinions? Thanks in advance.

pparks1 · 04 Jun 2010

Whichever is more comfortable for you.

Kari · 04 Jun 2010

Just out of personal interest: how is your question related to Windows 7 and Seven Forums?

Prisoner · 04 Jun 2010

Kari, Chillout Room forum.

fseal · 04 Jun 2010

I've found that ALL my desktop linux installs over the years tend to eat themselves sooner or later. Usualy the GUI elements. Ooops, search crashes every time you run it now. Or Ooops, the task bar is gone... Especially if you religeously apply updates (which can come in daily sometimes).

I think that most Linux desktop users tend to reinstall a lot, if not for that reason then for the fact thay their chosen distro is updated every 6 months anyway.

If you want to stick with Desktop Linux, then a strategy is to make sure that all updating software it turned off. Keep all user data on a seperate drive or partition. Be ready to reinstall at any time.

I don't use my Linux wordstations to connect to the net so being up to date on security fixes is of no consequence for me. If it is for you then monitoring critical updates may be necessary, just don't have them auto installed (same as on windows).

Prisoner · 04 Jun 2010

Fair. Right now I'm transferring files over to my desktop so I can get another DL install ready.

Kari · 04 Jun 2010

Prisoner said:

Kari, Chillout Room forum.

My bad. Didn't notice where we are.

Thorsen · 04 Jun 2010

Why not Dual boot.....Maybe with 3 partitions.. 1 for XP, 1 for Linux and 1 for data

Edit: this way you could also backup-image linux and xp and have your data seperate. If linux fails on you, you can just re-image partition from backup without worrying about the data.

Another Edit: just looked at your specs. I dont know which you would put on SSD or 80GB HDD....I guess data on your 1.5TB...This might be a challenge....

And Note: I have not done this before, myself, but am about to (Ubuntu/2003server/data)

johnwillyums · 04 Jun 2010

+1 for that Thorsen.
I'm triple booting with Linux Mint at the moment and Mint is lovely:)

fseal · 04 Jun 2010

I guess I should say that my favorite setup is to run 7 all the time, use CS5, Blender and al lmy hard hitting apps on 7, then run my Linux distros for funand work in virtual machines which for the most part really kicks butt for ease and versatility.

Now there are some hardware speficic things you may not be able to so using a VM. But if your needs are not that hardware heavy, it's an incredibly simple/fast way to get to and use various linux distros for testing or develoment.