Dual OS question

Kitbashinfo

Hello everybody ! I'm a digital artist, which means that I need to constatly search for google hi-res images of textures , photos etc. The problem is that I'm on windows and after a while my PC gets slow, plus I'm  affraid of catching viruses. I was wondering  if is it a good idea to install some form of Linux on a Windows PC. And use linux to  image search , then transfer the images i saved to my working windows PC via USB ? The second question is can you recommend me linux version which would be suitable for this task. Thanks !

saqman2060

First thing I would do is investigate what could be causing your windows system to slow down. It could be an app that is comsuming too much memory, an app that lunches automatically when your PC boots but hides in the background, or just a lot of activities. Check your windows system monitoring tools to diagnos what is going on within your computer. Installing Linux for a problem that can easily be fixed is not efficient. 

However, you can try any flavor of Linux if you want. Linux can be tested running straight from system memory and a boot CD. Nothing needs to be installed. A good fail-safe just for testing things out. Linux also has some image manipulation software. Play with some of those to get a feel for open source.

In linux there is a golden guide, "to each his own". Meaning, you will have to find what works best for YOU and YOUR system. No one size fits all. I use Ubuntu because it's very "user" friendly with it comes to operations. Troubleshooting it can be a difficullt task if you are not familar with the  general makeup of Linux. It has good security and works with most modern hardware. I us Xubuntu which uses the Xfce desktop GUI. I it has a fast response time and you don't need a lot of system resources to get it installed and running. It might not play well with all graphical controllers. 

 Navigate to the "Resources" tab and click on "Distrubutions. This is a long list, but there are descriptions and download links should you ever need to test things physically. Happy testing.

sx200n

Hello,

This issue may be resolved by now, but I had this same issue and just decided to install Ubuntu along side Windows 10. I found Windows 10 to be so slow and messy as it always has soooo many processes going on in the background. I used to spend ages removing processes and altering the Registry keys until I had had enough and looked to Linux. I found Ubuntu to be a great place to start (although by no means the best version of Linux in my opinion). But the speed issues were resolved in an instant once using Ubuntu. 

You can get your hands on a boot CD pretty easily for Ubuntu and (provided you make a relevant partition on your existing Hard Drive) you can easily install it to run beside Windows. You can then also store any images you need within your Linux partition and you can easily copy or move the files to within your Windows file system (no need for moving onto USB's and such). 

You will not regret making use of Linux - I rarely use Windows at all now. 

Hope it helps? 

ferren090

Your posting is very useful. Thanks for the sharing.