Help leaving Windows for Linux in China...

[wobblythoughts]

First of all, let me tell you a little story.

There was once a happy Mexican (with some United Stater in him) living alone in Beijing. He woke up alone, ate alone, showered alone and even went to sleep alone. But he didn't feel alone at all. With dozens of DVD's, a recently purchased Lenovo Laptop, slow but consistent Internet, bycicle and cooking stove he felt right at home. Without economic pressure, he spent his days without saying a single word, but reading and hearing hundreds of them.

Then, one fateful day, he went to visit a friend in Tianjin.

Two days passed, and he returned. But he noticed that something had changed, forever: his laptop was showing signs of sickness and the Internet connection was behaving strangely. He checked the other two computers that share the same connection and they didn't report any problems. He connected his computer to their cable and he couldn't access the Internet smoothly. He decided to download AVG's free antivirus and Spybot.

After the search, a stable of Trojan Horses and other peculiarities appeared. I proceeded to erase them and returned to my primitive surfing state. But for only a few hours, for this slowliness and buggery have not left my computer. Sometimes I can't log on to anything, but have no problem with Gmail. Sometimes Gmail freezes, but I can do other things. I am commencing to lead a life of quiet desperation.

This is where the tale ends, however, I must say that a couple of days before I left for Tianjin I had decided to, after so many years of suffering, make a move and leave Hotmail. And, while I was at it, Internet Explorer, Microsoft Office and Windows. It was a four-step program, and before going to Tianjin I downloaded Firefox and Opera and put a number of websites related to"leaving Microsoft" literature in my favorites.

I don't download anything (music, movies or non-elemental programs) so I must say that when I returned and found all these bugs and glitches my computer-challenged mind thought of three things: 1. Maybe the problem was related to my neighbors adding a third computer to our Internet connection (three in total), 2. Microsoft has a way of sabotaging people that want to leave it, and 3. My neighbors' unhealthy interneting somehow infects me.

So now I'm a bit stuck, because on the one hand I want to leave Windows but I don't know exactly what to do. What I want is this: erase absolutely EVERYTHING that this computer has, and have a completely new operating system on it, without any traces of the previous one. I don't want to venture on my own, but I don't know who can help/guide me. I have been reading stuff on Linux and Debian but haven't gathered the nerve to do something. Also, the issue of installing Chinese characters on the new system is holding me back. But mainly it's that in case of problems, I don't have anybody trustworthy and with whom I can communicate easily to help me.

Anybody know somebody in Beijing that can help me out with this? Or can you guide me through the transition or provide a simple website that can explain it?

Thanks,

Fernando

[imron]

Download a Kubuntu (or ubuntu) live-cd, pop it in, and away you go. It will boot from the CD so you can make sure that everything works (i.e. all the hardware is detected properly, and your internet connection works etc), and then if you decide you like it, you just click on the install icon. It'll even let you use the computer to surf the internet while it's installing. It really couldn't be simpler.

If you decide you don't like it, simply remove the CD and reboot, and everything will be back to normal. It really is a no-risk proposition, and the most you have to lose is 1 blank CD if you decide you don't want to end up installing Linux.

The install process itself will give you the option of completely reformatting your entire hard-drive and removing all instances of Windows or anything else that will be lurking around.

[gato]

Two days passed, and he returned. But he noticed that something had changed, forever: his laptop was showing signs of sickness and the Internet connection was behaving strangely.

After the search, a stable of Trojan Horses and other peculiarities appeared. I proceeded to erase them and returned to my primitive surfing state.

Hey, what did "you" do to "him"?

Anyway, do you have any experience using command prompt-based OS like DOS or a variety of UNIX? Because if you don't, Linux might be a challenge. But go ahead and give it a try if you feel that you're ready.

See these articles:

http://ptech.allthingsd.com/20070913/linuxs-free-system-is-now-easier-to-use-but-not-for-everyone/

Linux’s Free System Is Now Easier to Use, But Not for Everyone

http://www.bmighty.com/blog/main/archives/2007/09/forget_linux_on.html

Should We Listen to Walt Mossberg?

http://www.ehomeupgrade.com/entry/4337/why_analysts_like

Why Analysts Like Gartenberg, Mossberg, Enderle Don't Get Linux on the Desktop

[roddy]

I wish everyone would post questions in third-person narrative form. Please start doing so, everyone.

These people might be able to help you? Or then again they may just confuse you . . .

So what about the Chinese support side of things? How easy is that to set up? What are the IMEs like?

[adrianlondon]

I got some dodgy virus in China too (after borrowing someone's USB memory stick). I know what I'm doing so was able to get rid of it, but I doubt someone who's not competent in general Windows/PC stuff would have done it easily.

Just put it down to experience. Either make sure you back up regularly (use the excellent R&R software which comes with Lenovo laptops) so you can restore at any time, or ensure you use some anti-virus software which you keep up to date.

If you don't want to do any of those, then ... don't click on "yes" to anything which pops up when you connect to web sites unless you're very sure you know what they are and turn off the autorun feature on all external drives (including USB drives).

[OracleBone]

I think you can phone Lennove Company and tell them your problems. Their technicians will visit your home and solve all your problems.

according to your computer level, it's not a good idea to install linux.

[imron]

I did a linux install recently on a machine at work (with permission, as long as I did it on my own time), and things work reasonably well Chinese wise although it's still a pain trying to get fonts that will look nice when part of the screen is in English, and part of it is in Chinese. I'm hoping to be able to run Linux full-time once I've got all my data copied across and set up with everything necessary to do my job, however I haven't had the time recently to play around with it.

However, it's definately far less painful to set up that it was a couple of years ago, and if you're happy with the standard fonts, it's useable right out of the box.

The SCIM input method that is the default when installing the Chinese version, supports a large variety of input styles (pinyin, wubi and a whole lot more) and seems to work well enough, and is at least on par with MS Pinyin IME.

according to your computer level, it's not a good idea to install linux.

This might have been the case several years ago, but it's definately not now. Installing linux from a Ubuntu or Kubuntu live-cd is easier and less hassle than installing windows.

Anyway, do you have any experience using command prompt-based OS like DOS or a variety of UNIX? Because if you don't, Linux might be a challenge.

Things are not nearly as bad as they used to be, and nowadays you can reasonably easily manage without touching the command-line or editing config files at all.

[OracleBone]

Yes, Ubuntu is one of the best Linux operation systems. If you want to leave Windows for Linux, Ubuntu is the best choice.

However, you will meet some trouble when you try to install excess software on Ubuntu, especially when you know nothing about the BASH command line or the Linux system architecture.

Besides, some hardware such as wireless netcard may be out of work because you can't find a linux diver for it.

If your Chinese level is very high, the following forum will help you much or little:

http://forum.ubuntu.org.cn

[imron]

However, you will meet some trouble when you try to install excess software on Ubuntu, especially when you know nothing about the BASH command line or the Linux system architecture.

Once again, I disagree. Of course using the command line and apt-get can seem a bit intimidating at first, however both Ubuntu (and Kubuntu) come with graphical interfaces for installing new software.

Under Kubuntu it's as simple as selecting "Add/Remove Programs" from the main KDE menu and selecting the packages you want installed. This page has a good overview on installing new programs without needing to touch the command line at all.

[ipsi()]

However, his point about Wireless Network Cards seems valid, from what I've seen. Many of them use proprietary, windows-only drivers, making it anywhere from very hard to impossible to get it working on Linux. It could be anywhere from needing to download a file and use a few commands in the terminal (happily explained by someone else), to recompiling your kernel (which I have not attempted, and not a task for the fainthearted). On the other hand, it is getting better.

Also, see http://ubuntuforums.org/ for more help.

Hmm... I should buy a cheap computer for an Ubuntu desktop...

[imron]

However, his point about Wireless Network Cards seems valid, from what I've seen. Many of them use proprietary, windows-only drivers, making it anywhere from very hard to impossible to get it working on Linux.

This is the beauty of the Live-CD. It lets you check that every works fine before you actually install anything.

[renzhe]

I second the suggestion of contacting the local Linux Users Group (LUG). Usually, they are a good source of information for new users without linux-savvy friends.

As for the fonts, just copy all your Windows fonts (burn them on a CD or something) into your linux fonts directory. As long as you have good fonts, they will look great under Linux. There are also many freely available Chinese fonts out there which you can download if your distribution doesn't come with them. The freely available MS core fonts packate for web surfing comes with a couple of nice Chinese fonts, and they should already be on your windows partition.

Most modern Linux applications "speak" unicode, and SCIM is a wonderful input method, so there should be zero problems with entering and reading Chinese on a modern Linux distro.

[imron]

I'd long-ago copied the Windows fonts, but I still have a couple of unresolved issues.

Firstly, when the chinese-fonts are anti-aliased, they become excessively blurry (far more so than under either windows or Mac OSX). So I either have to turn off anti-aliasing and have ugly fonts, or I have to have blurry fonts. Neither of which is an appealing option, and I haven't been able to find some middle ground setting.

The second problem is getting chinese fonts and English fonts working well together. What I'd like is for all non-chinese characters to use Tahoma, and for all Chinese characters to use 宋体 or some other Chinese font. However because I did a Chinese install and the default locale is Chinese, fontconfig always makes a Chinese font first in the font selection process, meaning that all English characters use the butt-ugly glyphs from the Chinese font rather than from Tahoma.

After playing around with my local .font.conf I managed to force Tahoma to be first font chosen and then fall back on the Chinese font, however this only seems to work for KDE apps (I'm running under KDE). When a Gnome app runs and uses Chinese, all that appears are square blocks.

If you have any useful suggestions for how to solve the above 2 problems, I'd love to hear it.

[renzhe]

1) The first problem has to do with font hinting. Apparently, there is a patented method for storing hints on how to display anti-aliased fonts at different sizes. The modern X.org server can read and apply these just fine.

The problem is that, as it's patented, they are not allowed to distribute it in the US and some other countries, which is why it's disabled in most distributions. If you want to use this, you have to build your X Server from source, because the functionality is there.

Here is some background info: http://freetype.sourceforge.net/patents.html

Some howtos which may hint at the solution (haven't read them in depth): http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/XOrg_Font_Configuration and http://gentoo-wiki.com/HOWTO_Xorg_and_Fonts

Another thing that you can do if you use an LCD display is to turn on subpixel rendering -- it should be available in your KDE configuration dialog somewhere. Due to the design of LCDs, you can sometimes activate "parts" of pixels by using only the red or blue channel, which results in higher percieved resolution (with minor discoloration which is usually not a problem).

I have very good results by using subpixel rendering and the default X autohinter (I haven't compiled in the bytecode interpreter). The fonts may look a bit better on OSX, but they look very good.

This, however, will not work on a CRT monitor.

2) For KDE, you can start the qtconfig tool, which comes with qt, which KDE is based on. Since Qt deals with all the font rendering, you can usually fix things there by defining font substitutions. It sounds like you did something similar.

This will only work for apps using Qt (like KDE apps). For Gtk-based apps, you should look at configuring pango, the font rendering engine used by GNOME folks. I'm not sure how this works, and Mozilla-based apps have their own configuration for this.

But what you should look into is using a UTF-8 locale, like zh_cn.utf-8, instead of zh_cn.gb or whatever. This is what I'm using, and I also find it good, because unicode is the future. I don't have font-substitution issues while using this, and you still get the benefits of a Chinese locale (which for me amounts to having SCIM work).

This may be impractical if you're dealing with lots of GB-2312 materials, which is pretty much everything out there, unfortunately.

[Hero Doug]

I was about to post a new thread when I came across this one, so I'll continue it. First off I have to say to the other's who asked for help, I can't provide any, but I would love some.

Here's what I want Linux to do.

1) I want to use an IME that's as good as Google's. SCIM wasn't as good in my opinion.

2) Program localization: My wife is Chinese and uses QQ and a few other Chinese programs. The problem is that when I login to an English session, QQ (through Wine) displays question marks. If I login to a Chinese session everything displays fine. In Windows I can use English but still have QQ display all the Chinese just fine. Does anyone know how this can be done in Linux?

3) I found that the internet was faster on Windows then it was on Ubuntu and Fedora. It's a PPPOE connection. This is obvisouly important. I don't need to download any soft(spy)ware to use the internet so that's not a problem. Are there any general tweeks that can be done to improve that.

4) The last thing is QQ. This is the one must have program as pidgin is a sub-par messenger in my opinion. I remember the last time we used we couldn't figure out how to use the webcams (I don't think you could actually). So running QQ under Wine is a must, this shouldn't be too big of a problem; but using SCIM on an application running under Wine might be. Thought's on this?

P.S. I know the answers will vary between distros, but any help is welcome. Thanks.

[Battosai]

Here are some suggestions :

Scim is not as good as google though it does have more options like typing in cantonese or 吴 language. You can add a dictionary to it and it will make it much better. I did that to Scim-anthy (japanese) and it improved dramatically.

For QQ - try eva ,here is some more info . If you want to run a Chinese app using wine on an English session - read this.

try this as well

For internet speed did you try to disable ipv6? (here)

you can also create a local DNS cache for faster browsing (here )

Finally -use Opera instead of Firefox (at least until Firefox3 comes out)

[Hero Doug]

Battosai thanks. Those links look so good I think I'm going to give Ubuntu another try. I really love Linux so much, it's just always a few issues here and there that make me switch back to Windows.

If Wine works with CJK then I hopefully won't need that other messenger.

Anyways, I'm going to begin the download now and give it a try soon after. I'll report back with my results.

[Hero Doug]

Ok, I have a quick update here about switching to Linux.

I downloaded the Ubuntu 7.1 (gutsy) LiveCD and found that there was a problem with my graphics card. When the GUI displayed (or when it would have) the video signal would get lost. The workaround I read for this is to download the alternate CD (the text based installer) and install form that. If I were to do that I would still have the problem of the incorrect video driver settings.

The second easiest fix I saw was to use a Windows partition and download a driver to read/write to the linux partition and manually make the changes, then re-boot into Linux.

I decided to just download feisty fawn and avoid the whole mess. The install from the LiveCD worked fine (albiet slowly).

Anyways I'm now working my way though the issues I posted above, and I'm posting the solutions here since I know someone else will have the same trouble I ran into.

Internet Speed

When I first tried Ubuntu the internet was horrid. I couldn't even load a page. Iswitched back to Windows after a while. This time when I installed Ubuntu it was blazing fast, until this morning. I had the same problems again. So I took the advice of Battosai and changed one setting (to use Ipv4 instead of DCHP).

Note: If you don't know how to connect to the internet go to System -> Help and Support

It'll list some common questions, one of which is how to connect to the internet. Click that, follow the instructions.

If you don't see a link stating how to connect to the internet, type "internet" into the search bar. It should bring up a link called "internet". Click it, follow the instructions.

To change the network connection from DCHP to IPv4 go to

System -> Administration -> Network

In the tab titled "Connections" I clicked Wired connection (there'll most likely be two connections, a modem, and your actual connection to the internet). In the properties section the first option is titled Configuration. I changed that from DCHP to "Local zeroconf Network (IPv4 ll)". I didn't change anything else.

I need to state that I'm not a Linux networking guru, and you may not have the same settings as I do, but it should be similar to what I have. This is how I fixed my connectivity problems (or seem to have anyways), here's hoping it works for you.

Software Sources

In "System -> Administration -> Software Sources" you have the option to select your download location. I've found that ftp://ftp.twaren.net/Linux/Ubuntu/ubuntu/ is quite fast (over 200kbs fast (remember, this is China)).

Change it by going to custom server, and look in Taiwan's section, it's in there.

Language Support

During the install process it tried to download some language packs (when the install was around 77% complete). I pressed the skip button and the install finished up quickly. However, this left me without Chinese support.

I went to "System -> Administration -> Language Support" and checked Chinese. I proceded to download the language files.

One thing I'd like to note is that the download kept timing out (this was before I adjusted my internet settings). I was prompted with a dialog box asking if I wanted to continue without downloading the rest of the packages, or to cancel.

Pick cancel. If you continue you'll only be installing half of what you need. Instead, you can go back into the control panel, and check on Chinese again, and download the remaining files. The files you already downloaded are still there so you will only download the missing files. When they have all been downloaded, then install the language pack.

SCIM

When SCIm is installed you're going to have a lot of input options. I went to "System -> Preferences -> SCIM Input Method Setup". In there go to "Im Engine -> GLobal Setup". I disabled everything but English and Chinese simplified. Furthermore, if you click on arrow beside Chinese simplified you'll be presented with all the options you can use for entering Chinese text. I personally think they all suck except for the one that's listed in Chinese writing. I'm sorry, my Chinese isn't good enough to type out the characters, but it's the only one with Chinese so you can't miss it. I found this one to be damn close to the Google IME.

Opera

I don't use Firefox, I use Opera; so there won't be any help here for how to type Chinese in firefox.

To get Chinese working in Opera go to http://ftp.opera.com/pub/opera/linux/ and download the static (latest "stable") version, don't get shared, and don't install it from the repisitory. This is the easiest way I've found to get SCIM working with Opera.

I'm going to try Wine and QQ now, so I'll post again when that's over with.

[anthony_barker]

Bit of a pitty that Windows is the default in China. A lot of sites seem to be only windows media and don't support the linux browsers so well.

I have a feeling that in 4-10 years Microsoft will turn on the screws in China for their 100 a computer tax via the US government like they did in Taiwan a few years ago.

[lilongyue]

I switched to Ubuntu for my main internet surfing computer in China, and love it. It isn't perfect, but I'll take anything over having to worry about friggin' viruses all the time! I've also never been a big Windows fan. I started moving away from Windows when I got my first Mac. If you have the money, and are in the market for a new laptop, get a Mac! You can find them easily in China, although they are a bit more expensive than in the West (although rumor has it that they are the same or cheaper in Hong Kong). You can always install Windows via Boot Camp if you really need to use it.

I also recommend using Wine (www.winehq.org/) with Ubuntu so you can use any Windows programs you miss. My friend started playing a Windows game in Ubuntu via Wine and had no problem. There is a long thread about whether or not Window's viruses can infect your computer via Wine in the Ubuntu forums. To make a long story short, so long as you don't tell the virus to run yourself there's no problem. Even if you purposefully run it (which someone did just as an experiment) it can't really mess thing up. The virus used by the poster downloaded hundreds of copies of itself, but the viruses weren't able to run themselves within the Ubuntu environment. So, so long as you don't tell the virus to run, there's no problems!