I Hate Bill Gates

[Play_The_0dds]

the main problem with any linux based system is bad rumors. these systems are not intended to be for the home user to send email and surf the web with, they are intended for a user with at least a passing knowledge of computers, that will use it for business or programming needs, i complain because i would like to see more software support these systems, which it is getting to be the case, starting to find a lot of freeware sites with, those "just what i needed" utilities. i have used wine, my games crashed a lot, which, just me seeing what it could do. didn't really expect gta vc to play as well as it did....when you take home users that barely know how to defrag windows,1 they say it is crap, because they dont want to admit they dont know how to install drivers on it, which lets see them install nt4 drivers,...hehe. 2. they just dont want to admit to being stupid.
you see alot of people come here and other forum and post little tid-bits of info, like reg edits, gpedits, and other things when read by the average windows user could be destruction in the making. i quit posting any info i thought could be misunderstood a long time ago, unless there is a really good reason i think i should. if they want more, http://www.google.com/
i told someone at yahoo one night to google search something, they said they didnt have google,.............noobs, newbs, trolls, or whatever they may be called,.......you got to love them. they make me laugh

[deanrantala]

known_criminal:

You really should try SuSE. It is the only Distro that is not available as a free ISO download, but is worth the 50 - 70 bucks.

It includes Wizzards for most common setup tasks. It autoconfigs everything and features one click softwareinstall and one click system updating (just like Windows)

The config tool - YaST is one of the most powerfull ones even on a Linux system. It is a dynamic tool that not only edits the config files in the background, but also checks system integrity, compares manual changes made to the system, autodetects new hardware and automatically configures it, and also is smart enough to change any other config settings that might be dependant on the one that was just changed.

As for the available apps for Linux, you really should check out sourceforge or rpmfind.net. There are FAR more available software apps than most think. SuSE will come with *8* gigs of compressed software apps wich you may choose from durring install. And it is not all for workstation, there are quite a few nice apps. K3B - the CD/DVD burning app, probably excels over Nero - it does everytihng Nero does, plus rips/converts DVD's to VCD and DiVX, will make self bootable DiVX disks that "play themselves", it will also decode DVD's and rip them to HD and of coarse does all the usuall stuff your used to in Nero. And to make it nice - it is all done with Wizzards and ultra-freindly GUI's.

Media playback? Xine, Mplayer, Ogle, and VideoLan cclient are just a few that do everything - including DVD playback as well as all the other codecs. You will also be happy to find that you can get some perfectly smooth Video playback on even a Pentium 266 using Xine. Of coarse it is all GUI and easy to use. Also note these apps do the normal: 5.1 audio playback, OpenGL, DVD menus, the works.

Are you a die hard winamp person? You should check out XMMS - a default player on nearly all distros. It does all the usual, plays Waves, Ogg, MP3, CD audio - even CD digital audio extraction. To add to that, it uses Winamp skins, and has a myrid of plugins just as winamp does.

Web browsers? Mozilla, Netscape, Opera, Konqueror, and Galeon to name a few of the endless amount of web browsers for Linux. If you are not happy with that, wine runs IE rather nicely.

Office software? Open Office, Star Office, Koffice, and a few hundred others - there are perhaps TOO MANY office apps on Linux right now. And like I mentioned earlier, Office 2000 and XP run absolutely great with wine at the moment.

Graphics? The Gimp (wich uses photoshop plugins and add ons), XPDF, , Xpaint, kpaint, and a few hundred others as well. The Gimp is among the nicest - even Disney has went Linux just for the Gimp. And of coarse, Photoshop is one of the officially supported apps with wine.

Email? Netscape mail, Kmail, Evolution, Pine, and some other 20 apps. If you know how to use Outlook, you know how to use these as well. Of coarse, none do hotmail or other webmail-based services - so the towel goes to XP in that regards.

Audio/Vidio editing? Audacity, StudioMAX, and some 30 others. Half even have Windows ports, they have become so popular and nice to use.

Games.. OK, the towel goes to XP hands down here - even I keep a XP box around for this Actually, there is a special Wine build that is specifically for Windows games - even DirectX ones. But it costs extra (a monthly subscription) and I personally do not belive in paying to use something I already bought. On the bright side, there are quite a few really nice games for Linux already - and most do not even know it, but even UT had supported Linux - right from the CD! If you got UT even 2003 includes a installer for Linux. 2004 will even have it printed on the box. And many game developers are now declaring that they will be following within the next couple years now.

File sharing? GTK-Gnutella, Edonkey, Emule, giFT, and a few others are just a few of the big ones. As stated before, Kazaa runs nicely with wine - in fact I refuse to use Kazaa on win anymore just because it is safer to DL it using my Linux and scan the files remotely - since Linux does not know what a virus is to put it simply.

Drivers? HHmm.. support is not bad. The list of support "out of the box" is nearly twice as good as - say XP - is . Even TV cards, Wireless networking, Sound blaset Audigies, etc. It is all supported - and if SuSE has a driver for it, it also has at least 2 - 3 apps to actually use that hardware

Well, enough with that

[pcfanatic2]

Have been running xp home & xp pro ( dual boot) for well over a year and maybe I have been lucky but-no complaints as of yet.

[Play_The_0dds]

i complain because i would like to see more software support these systems, which it is getting to be the case, starting to find a lot of freeware sites with, those "just what i needed" utilities.

that quote was intended to say that i know that there is software for about everything for linux based systems, though sometimes i know i, breeze over somethings and get hung up on others, i have not tried SuSE yet, another site i go to has just about sold me on the idea, several members of the devshed site i go to brag on it, post screen shots....and from what i have seen drawbacks=none. i am not a die hard windows fan, used os2 and dos in college, wasn't until i moved south a few years back that i even used windows, being i live at least 100 miles from anywhere, windows hardware/software were readily available and what the local market/users prefer, i order everything or go to Jackson Mississippi to purchase things of the linux nature, but it is hard to stock spare parts and software for something, pretty much only i use, the other local people who use these systems buy their own stuff, online or making the trip. the main reason i post in these forums, chit chat in particular, just trying to have a conversation with someone who understands more then deer hunting and fishing, i like to fish, but not talk about it. i like to play video games, but i dont like to talk about that either. i am trying to get used to "talking shop" again with people who have a clue about it, i dont explain things very well, most of the people i deal with everyday just say fix it, if they ask what was wrong and you say more then virus, or a program messed up windows they count the ceiling dots. sometimes i get aggrevated with people who expect that we can break out a magic wand and fix their situation with just"my computer wont boot please help" i guess i should ignore those post, but i try to help. if their was a can of instant-fix i could open i would do it gladly. that commercial about the pixie dust for servers still kills me. i am starting to ramble again, thanks for the reply.

[deanrantala]

OS/2

Cool - never got to play with it a lot, however

SuSE is not bad, like I said, it comes packed with nearly every app for linux under the sun and is truly the "XP" of linux . I still keep a WinXP box around myself because 1) I am a PC repair tech and 2) XP IS a nice OS, despite the Viruses and fact that nearly everything for it costs $$. And we can't forget who defined the GUI for the *mass* market

As for SuSE - I have installed it for some 30 some customers now and have had but one unhappy person thus far - and they are total Linux n00bs

Cheers