Electric Engineers student OS

SuperMiguel

Im an Electric Engineers student and im trying to decide to use Windows XP or Ubuntu.. Most of the programs i need will run in both if not wine will do...

What do you guys think?

System has a quadcore CPU, 2TB HD and 16gb of ram.. (I know kinda overkill but i got it for free)

story645

Find out what your department uses and go from there?

You shouldn't use XP 'cause it's unsupported and ubuntu is a good way to learn other operating systems, but at least at my school the EE department mostly uses XP and I'm stuck encouraging ubuntu for robotics projects.

SuperMiguel

they use windows xp :(

zpconn

Why not dual boot?

SuperMiguel

i guess i could do that

story645

Or use a vm since you've got enough gigs for it. Use the OS you want to stick with as the host and throw the experimental os on the vm.

SuperMiguel

whats a better host for vms ubuntu or windows??

pankaj66866

Ubuntu linux will be a smarter choose as for robotics and other hardware interfacing stuff … you will realize linux has tons of source code available …. and parallel or serial interface in linux systems is easier if you try ..that in windows … you have to go through elaborate NT kernel apis to do so .. or if you could use some libraries in VB.

But VB as such sucks for moderately complex setup … or where u want to use some functional programming language like newton script or haskell and want to call some C libraries or vice versa. So use Linux it will save u lot of trouble and you can focus on the project instead of vast Interfaces to the operating system.

story645

*shrugs* Depends on what you want to do. If you game a lot, you may want windows to be the host system 'cause I've heard of some issues with mouse response times in vms. I've also heard of some issues with hardware interfacing issues with vms, so you may just want to make the host system whichever one you expect to use more with hardware.

SuperMiguel

no gaming at all

Topher925

+1 for dual booting.

SuperMiguel

bah ubuntu it is