Mak the Night

You're welcome. It seems to be another case of MS incompetency.

Are you getting huge CPU spikes? Try setting it to never check for updates, and when you update just do it manually. A lot of people have the same CPU spiking often for hours (probably svchost.exe) and setting it never to check for updating stops this. I run GIMP on Ubuntu and it's in the repo, along with Pinta which is a cross platform fork of Paint.NET.

Another (Ubuntu fork) is LXLE, I found it very light and it will run on older hardware.

Yeah, Unity's a lot like Marmite, you either love it or loathe it lol. I'm kinda partial to Marmite myself.

I run KStars on Trusty Tahr, although I don't drive a mount with it.

Yeah, Linux is weird. I could load CDC via the Terminal on my old laptop running Trusty (x86) but VMA positively refused to download. Notwithstanding hardware compatibility problems.

Yes, but of the OS's above only three are LTS releases and Trusty, Vivid and Xenial will be supported for years to come. Mint's probably based on Trusty as Trusty is the most stable.

Unity is very easy to use though. I often wonder why people claim it's not intuitive. I remember the old Gnome interface and Unity is a definite improvement IMO. It's a bit Marmite in a way I think; you either love Unity or hate it. I remember the first time I tried Unity, I think it took me all of 15 mins to get used to it. lol

Mint is basically Ubuntu anyway, so it should work. I'm pretty sure anything in the Ubuntu repo works with Mint.

Well, I wouldn't say I was that well informed lol, more an amateur struggling with Linux who's had a little bit of experience. 'Trusty Tahr' is the usual alliterative name of the Ubuntu 14.04 version of the Long Term Release Linux operating system. Although I bought my present laptop with Trusty Tahr pre-installed, many people load Ubuntu onto machines by using a downloaded ISO image as I have done in the past. As well as LTR releases which are supported for at least five years these days, there are intermediary Canonical releases that are often a tad experimental and not supported for a long time. My point here was that the latest Ubuntu version isn't always the most stable or compatible. 'Trusty Tahr' is renown to be stable. However, the recently released 16.04 LTS 'Xenial Xerus' is having teething problems. No doubt Canonical will fix this. Furthermore, Trusty Tahr will be supported for a while and is a perfectly usable operating system for at least another four years I believe. There is no need whatsoever with Linux to run out and get the latest operating system. Canonical (Ubuntu) isn't Microsoft and they have no need to push newer operating systems on anyone.

I've spoken to a few people on the Ubuntu forums who had problems with it. Trusty Tahr is more stable than 16.0.4 LTS at the moment and it will be supported for a few more years yet, so I don't believe that being that up to date with Ubuntu releases is necessarily true. In fact, non-LTS Canonical releases are far less stable than the long term ISO's and less compatible usually. Ubuntu isn't Microsoft and there is no compulsion to purchase every new OS version released.

I don't think WINE runs too well on Ubuntu 14.0.4 LTS, although I haven't actually tried it myself yet.

I think Unity resembles a Mac interface a bit with the systems tray being in the upper right, and it looks much more like OS X with an added dock. I believe there was even a 'MacBuntu' theme once for people who want a MacBook feel to their laptop lol. I wasn't brave enough to try MacBuntu ROTFL.

I've got more faith in Linux (Ubuntu) these days than MS. Come to think of it, isn't OS X basically UNIX?

I run Celestia on Ubuntu and it works well but the skins on some of the planets don't render properly. I don't know of any fix for this.

Yes, that's what I mean though. Saying 'Linux' is or isn't astro ready is a bit like saying 'binary operating systems' are or are not ready. Linux is many things. Android is a form of Linux. The most common distros appear to be Debian based; Ubuntu and its forks predominantly. But there are quite popular distros that aren't Debian based and fall under the umbrella term of Unix-like. Furthermore, software update releases for individual distros, whether Debian or non-Debian, are often different to or behind the Windows equivalent. PPA packages aren't always updated with the same frequency in Ubuntu for example. I don't even think there is actually a Windows equivalent for KStars, although I think it can be compiled on Windows if you have the necessary libraries.

I run Stellarium and KStars on Ubuntu Trusty Tahr LTS and ran CDC on Trusty on another computer, so I can only comment from experience. I don't know about non-Debian based distros as I don't run them. Linux is ready, and has been for a long time, but outside of Debian based packages I can't comment. Linux isn't just one thing. It's a mistake to treat it as one entity. If you do, you may as well include Android.

Stellarium is actually in the Ubuntu (Canonical) repo. CDC and VMA also run on Ubuntu but have to be installed via the Terminal. KStars is in the Ubuntu repo as well.

It's usually the way.

Sounds cool. If I had one like that I'd probably break it. I'm a tad clumsy these days.

Metric or Imperial? lol

With a tape measure lol?

Have you measured this?

Twice 75 miles?

Well, I'm only taking three eyepieces out tonight. A 10mm Celestron Luminos, a 14mm Baader Morpheus and an 18mm AH ortho'. Plus a couple of Barlows. And a telescope. Well, maybe a 20mm Celestron erecting eyepiece for initial target acquisition, although I've just sorted my RACI out, so I'll see.