Just found this program and am thinking of converting my laptop over to linux. I'm curious if my computer would be able to handle my needs, or if I need to invest in something better. Particularly I'm concerned if my video cads up to par. (I know I'll need a bigger hard drive at some point.) It's a Toshiba Satelite A-135-S447, gig of Ram, duo core 1.73, 80 gig hard drive. Sorry not to include the graphics card. Goggle didn't turn it up easily.
Your laptop should handle Linux and Cinelerra just fine. Linux is actually more powerful than Windows (sorry if I'm rubbing it in). You can dual-boot both Windows and Linux on your laptop. Anyway, here is a link to a free Ubuntu Linux CD. https://shipit.ubuntu.com/
Linux will certainly require less resources to run than windows under almost any circumstances. In fact, it will probably be considerably faster than you're used to. Your computer is far from obsolete - there is no need to worry. Since you're new to it, perhaps try out a few distributions of Linux. Many come with live CD versions that do not alter your hard disk information in any way. You simply put them in the disk drive, boot your computer, et voila! Linux. (Occasionally the default computer settings don't enable a disk drive boot before a hard drive boot, in which case you may need to enter the bios and change the boot order. . . if you need help with that, post here) As Assasin said, Ubuntu is a good place to start. I'd wait two more days for the new version though, if I were you! You'll want to have the latest one anyway. . If never used Cinelerra. There is a lot a good software for Linux though--you won't need to worry about that. It may not be the exact same as you're used to, but Linux isn't the same as windows--that's the choice you're making here. The terminal is important. It's for command line operation of computer functions, as opposed to a graphical interface. There is plenty of information and many "how to"'s out there, that walk you through anything. Generally file transfer is easy enough from Windows to Linux and back. Just--understand the differences between file types. Sorry, okay, damn. I'm getting way too stoned and way too tired. I gotta go to sleep. I'll come back in the morning. I think there was something else I was going to say.
ha. I hardly answered your question last night. you should be fine though - like you said, a bigger hard drive at some point might come in handy. Maybe get an external one. Go to tigerdirect.com or something similar and you can find like 500GB external drives for just over a hundred bucks. Your processing power isn't huge either though, how big and intensive is the work you plan on doing? Do you do anything similar in windows already? That might give you a good estimate. . it might run a little smoother, depends what program you're using now. . .
Installed Ubuntu yesterday. The BETA version, will be switching to the 8.1 when it comes out. I'm vaguely familiar with linux. I also ended up downloading the packages for Cinelerra. It works well. I needed it because it's by far the most powerful application for non-linear video editing, perhaps comparable to Final Cut and Avid which are both $1000 pieces of software. I'm just tinkering with it at this point. Hugely intensive. I'll probably switch over to a 64 bit at some point. I'm going to dual boot XP here, for a few other things I want to do. My only concern now is the fact that I have visual distortions in all my dvd players. Perhaps this would be better asked in the Ubuntu forums. Various video distortions ( freezing, green lines) and sound problems. Totem was experiencing the problems so tried VLC and Mplayer.
if you're going to run Ubuntu don't dual boot WinXP, it's like having two WinXPs on one computer, except one of them is a unix winxp haha honestly, your best bet right now is to keep just ubuntu, and learn it inside and out. it's much more functional if the person running it knows how to. =p once you're ready, move on to a new distro and have fun. =) btw, Cinelerra looks really good.
Hey man, there's no need to call me a fanboy. I said to get rid of winxp because how is he supposed to learn linux if he's not using it? I would never suggest someone who wants a good linux machine to run Ubuntu =p it's just the easiest way to get comfortable with unix for a first time guy. "Ubuntu is an african word for can't configure debian"(hah!) just tweak tweak and tweak your machine as much as you can whenever you can, you'll pick up ao much from that. there are so many good resources to open your mind the shell, such as the PDF files mentioned above. Another good tip is to find a friend who is pretty good with the shell who doesn't mind helping you (or doing it for you in an ssh session), you'll learn alot from him too. but yeah, i'm not a fanboy, thanks though...
Take it easy kid. I need a windows partition for some things I do, and it's only 13 gig. The setup went fine, and I'm not interested in converting so I can make the l33t think I r0x. I'm interested in function. Everything went fine everyone. Thanks.
Now that you have Ubuntu installed, use this to get all the stuff you need. https://help.ubuntu.com/community/RestrictedFormats All the codecs and file formats that are "closed-source" can be played, used, etc. Anything you need then post up or let me know.
I actually got all my codecs working already, and now have everything working fine for right now. The other thing I was trying to emulate was a file format called veoh. Apparently people have gotten it to work by downloading the windows version of firefox and using it through WINE. I haven't played around with WINE yet. So hopefully that goes well. The insturctions looked a little tricky. Thanks Adderal.
