Ten words or less: “I don’t use Linux because…”

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In ten words or less, complete the following sentence: “I don’t use Linux because…”

I’ll start with “…I’m required to use Windows for work.”

Topic

Ditto

In reply to Ten words or less: “I don’t use Linux because…”

But I am saving to buy a computer I can install Knoppix on.

]:)

Don’t install Knoppix

In reply to Ditto

Stargazerr, you don’t need to install Knoppix, it’s a live CD (or DVD). In fact, they strongly recommend that you NOT install it to a hard drive as it’s a specially thrown-together mashup of a lot of stuff that doesn’t necessarily belong together (bits and pieces from different distributions, etc.) and it would be virtually impossible to maintain as there will be version conflicts, missing dependencies, or whatever.

Instead, run it directly from the CD or DVD and find out some of the stuff that’s available and how you can use it, find out how much hardware is compatible, and just get an idea of what you can do with it.

Then, if you like what you see, you can get a normal distribution like OpenSuSE 10 or Fedora Core, or even Ubuntu (or Kubuntu, if you like the KDE interface better than Gnome), though I consider it to be a bit watered-down. You can get live CDs for many distributions so you can try them out without having to go through the hassle of installing them, trying them out, then reloading another flavor.

In fact, if you have plenty of space left on your drive (several gig worth of free space is recommended), you can back up your important stuff, run scandisk at least once thoroughly, then install Linux on the same box. Many distributions can install themselves on your Windows machine and set up a dual-boot arrangement so you can go back and forth between Windows and Linux. If you get VMWare or VirtualPC, you can even run a Windows virtual machine inside Linux.

Anyway, try out some live CDs and don’t wait until you can buy another box. You might discover that you don’t need another machine at all.

I think you missed

In reply to Don’t install Knoppix

the joke. I don’t think he was being serious. But your information about live CD’s and dual-booting may be valuable to others nonetheless.

She

In reply to I think you missed

Not a He :p

And No, I was Serious. Thanks for the Info Alangeek. I have an Ubuntu distro that I would like to try too. Trouble is I cant start using Linux on my work laptop. something in the stupid contract.

]:)

bah

In reply to She

There’s nothing wrong with installing from a Knoppix CD. I’d prefer a Knoppix install over an Ubuntu install.

There are some dependency conflicts once you get the Debian-style install from a Knoppix CD done, but for a temporary desktop setup Knoppix is pretty darned good. Just don’t figure on it being “permanent”, as you’ll probably want to try a “serious” installed distro like Debian once you’ve gotten used to Linux by playing around with Knoppix.

Star which Ubuntu Distro do you have

In reply to She

The latest one is 5.1 and comes in both Live Linux and the installable variety.

If you where to drop in a Live Linux and boot from the CD/DVD drive you wouldn’t actually be loading Linux onto your Company Supplied NB and unless you did something very interesting like remiove all admin passwords no one would be any the wiser unless of course if you in a fit of [b]Hormonal[/b] Brain Fade forgot to remove the CD. :^0

Even then you could insist that you are still recovering from That Time of the Month [b]MS Patch Time[/b] and someone is attempting to set you up and throw a Fit that will drive everyone away. 😀

Anyway a copy of Knoppix should be in every Techs tool box as it’s just plain and simple necessary. It allows you to get around so many WIndows Problems. You know the undocumented ones. :0

Col ]:)

Okay, I’m always willing to admit my ignorance.

In reply to Star which Ubuntu Distro do you have

“… a copy of Knoppix should be in every Techs tool box …”

I’ll bite. Why? What would I do with in a strictly Windows shop?

three ideas

In reply to Okay, I’m always willing to admit my ignorance.

Recover a broken Windows installation. Resize partitions. Run hardware diagnostics.

apotheon, elaborate please

In reply to Okay, I’m always willing to admit my ignorance.

Where would I find infomation on how to use a Linux live CD to do some of these things?

We set everything up with a single partition, but your other suggestions sound interesting.

a couple of books

In reply to Okay, I’m always willing to admit my ignorance.

I’m sure there are a couple places online that list such information, but since I haven’t been doing serious single-system Windows disaster recovery for a while I haven’t been keeping up with these tricks of the trade as much as I perhaps should. I can recommend two books that are quite excellent for such information, however, along with a fair bit of information unrelated to Windows:

O’Reilly’s [i]Knoppix Hacks[/i]

ExtremeTech’s [i]Hacking Knoppix[/i]

I’m intending to get a review of the latter of these published at TR soonish.

Well worth looking into

In reply to Okay, I’m always willing to admit my ignorance.

As I’m sure you’ve gathered, these live CDs allow you to boot into a fully functional modern operating system without necessarily impacting on the machine and no installation.

As a support person, I expect you can see the worth in that.

Got a machine that’s been the breeding ground for virii and you don’t want to boot it up for fear of propagation causing futher damage and you don’t want to throw the drive into another machine?
You can run linux anti virus programs like ClamAV or BitDefender to iron out Windows targetting infections.

As Apotheon has stated elswhere, any linux administration/usage skills you pick up are easily transferrable across the entire linux family, not to mention make you a bit more comfortable working with Unix or Mac OS X (as someone who uses Windows, Mac OS and Fedora at least once a day, I think I can vouch for that).

At the end of the day, a wider range of skills or the ability to comprehend a wider range of skills is a good thing.

Saviour in a tight spot

In reply to Okay, I’m always willing to admit my ignorance.

Recover “corrupt” office docs – we had a manager who can to us with a corrput excel s/sheet, and all the vers I tried (97, 2000, 2003) bombed when opening it. Enter knoppix – boot from the CD, use open office to open it, dump to PDF, ftp over to network server (or put on a USB stick). Great if your company’s software policy won’t allow you to install openoffice on your PC as it’s a non-intrusive (disk-writing wise) process

Knoppix to the rescue…

In reply to Okay, I’m always willing to admit my ignorance.

On three separate occasions I have helped people rescue files with Knoppix. In all three cases, Drive were experiencing imminent failure. Windows was reporting the drive as unformatted. I booted a Knoppix CD, it happily mounted the windows drive, and from tehre I was able to copy most/all of the data to a new drive.

A use for the paranoid…

In reply to Okay, I’m always willing to admit my ignorance.

I also find Knoppix handy when I have to do web research. Call it paranoia, but I am never entirely confident that Antivirus/Spyware will catch all the little bits of undesireable code, cookies, etc (malicious or otherwise) that those various sites might wish to push out to me. As such, I do nearly all my web browsing from a Knoppix CD. My pristine system is a mere reboot away…

recover data off a windows partition (nt)

In reply to Okay, I’m always willing to admit my ignorance.

NT

yep

In reply to Star which Ubuntu Distro do you have

5.10 or the stupid name Breezy Badger. 😀

I booted from the Live CD but opening up applications is mega slow, so I had to revert back to Windows 🙁

How about if I put out an advert to donate computer parts to the needy? Do you reckon that will speed up the time untill I acquire a computer? :p

]:)

Unfortantly it will be slow

In reply to yep

Running off a CD s the CD is slow by its very nature as CD’s are slow to load. But the Live Nix’s are desicned to run this way so you can get in a rescue data or bypass Passwords and the like.

That’s what I always use them for as I find that things are too slow running off the CD but they do at the very least give you an idea of what’s possible.

How about taking a proposal to managment asking for one of the units about to be decommissioned as a test bed for alternative OS’s? You could even maybe push the idea that you would willing be a Beta Tester for Vista when it hits the streets to drive us all crazy. :p

That way as the computer isn’t actually leaving the companies control they wouldn’t have to go through all the trouble of replacing the HDD to keep their Security Processes intact.

Or you could attend one of the many Excorporate Auctions and pick up a unit very cheaply over here there are many companies who specalise in selling off Ex Corporate/Government computers and most of the tiume they break them up and sell as bits that way they get more for the bits than the complete computer. But to keep people walking through the doors they always have a smal range of complete Computers are reasonable prices. Or you could even hit E-Bay for an old dicommissioned server those things are practially [b]Give Away[/b] items just try to avoid the SCSI only units as they are harder to load any form of Nix to in a lot of cases.

Col

Beta Tester for Vista ?

In reply to yep

Willingly ?

I think I am happier on my work laptop dreaming of a day I will get my own box. :p

Actually, it isnt very far now. Just 2 more months and I will be able to use the money I earn to do what I want. But buying something my company doesnt want is a good idea. Now, where the hell has my boss dissapeared to ?

Jaqui suggested buying something in Canada and that he can ship it, since I can be exempted from duties and taxes if stuff is sent from a private person to a private person. I still have to test that theory though.

]:)

Couple of things to watch out for

In reply to yep

Shipping costs can be very high and more importantly the Voltage of the mains from the country that the unit is originating from can be a potential problem. Back when I fixed Sewing Machines I used to get a lot of calls from the States asking me exactly what needed changing to meet AU Electrical Safety requirments. In one case they changed everything except the light buld and sent it over and when it was tested the 110 V Buld exploded making the chassis live so the machine was returned to the originating point as Unsafe. That was an expensive mistake. :^0

But if freight isn’t an issue I can send you one from here and if it’s just the tower for a desktop it wouldn’t take up much space and the wife would be as happy as Larry to see one go. The monitor wouldn’t be such a good ides to ship as they are less than gentle and a Keyboard & Mouse are [b]As Cheap As Chips[/b] as I understand the Poms say. :p

I can pickup a Second Hand NB for about $480.00 AU and that is one of the decent ones not one of the old junkers that are floating around so much. Hell I could even build you a really good NB for about 2K AU which would be about 1 Pound 50 Pence if my last visit to the UK is anything to go by. Luckly the company was paying for everything otherwise I couldn’t have afforded to eat let alone live or have the odd drink or 10. 😀

If memory serves me correctly the UK is on 240 V AC at 50 HZ and any hardware sold here would work perfectly there with the added advantage that we have tighter electrical laws so it would be better electrically than what you are currently getting there.

Lets know if you’r interested but it all depends on the UK Import Laws. It’s been a very long time since I’ve had anything to do with them so I’m not sure how things stand at the moment.

Col

There never was a Ubuntu 5.1

In reply to Star which Ubuntu Distro do you have

You’re referring to 5.10. Ubuntu distributions come out twice a year, in April (xx.4) and October (xx.10), where the year-2000 is the version number. That said, there was supposed to be 6.4 last month, but I haven’t seen it (may have been delayed). The Ubuntu site (www.ubuntu.com) lists 5.10 as the latest downloadable version. By the way, I have found Ubuntu to be a very nice, easy to use and easy to install distribution.

It is but the Live version

In reply to There never was a Ubuntu 5.1

Like all Live versions of Linux is slow running off a CD Drive.

Even for a Debian Deritive it’s a particuarly easy Distro to play with and should work quite well for the market that it’s aimed at.

Col

It was delayed.

In reply to There never was a Ubuntu 5.1

The last I saw (about a month or two ago) it was officially being delayed in order to give it more time for testing. They’re going to longer support cycles so they want to make sure they’ve got it right. Best of luck to them.

Not use, or not install?

In reply to She

The Live CD would allow you to use Linux without doing anything to the laptop, so depending on the wording of your contract, you may be OK.
The joke they are referring to (in my take on it)is the idea that you need to save for a computer, as Linux will run on the $100 refurbs, $200 new white boxes, any box you presently have, etc. No big money costs there, and no loss of whatever OS you have now.
Good luck!

Knoppix

In reply to She

If you boot to Knoppix – what they don’t know won’t hurt them….

Try Mepis

In reply to She

It is a kubunto distro, and it works very well as a live CD. Then you don’t have to install it on the HD. I like Knoppix and BeatrIX for old hardware, but run a dual boot xp/mepis 6 beta3 on my t41.

No it isn’t!

In reply to Try Mepis

Kubuntu is a KDE-using variant of Ubuntu. Ubuntu is based on Debian.

MEPIS is based on Debian.

MEPIS is, in fact, an older distribution than Ubuntu (and the even younger Kubuntu). The only relationship between the two is that they are both Debian-based. MEPIS is [b]not[/b] “a kubunto[sic] distro” by any stretch!

That having been said . . .

MEPIS is excellent, as LiveCD distributions go. For those who find its default configuration to their taste, I definitely recommend it. Like many spin-off distributions, however, it’s not really suited to having its configuration monkeyed with too much, so if you want something more customized for your particular tastes you might want to look into Debian itself.

Oops, O starry one

In reply to She

Sorry. I was trying to catch up on my discussions and was posting in a bit of a hurry. I didn’t realize it was you I was responding to. I’d have known better otherwise.

I hope you took it as a compliment that I thought of you as “one of the guys”. You should.

This is my first and last entry into the Linux debate.

In reply to I think you missed

I don’t use Linux
..because I don’t need to.
..because I do my work with applications not Operating Systems
..because my OS choice is motivated by purpose and function, not ideology.
..because I don’t buy into fud nor hype.
..because OSX would be the second choice.
..because I don’t need Apache.
..because I have a job with performance measures.
..because my social conscience is where it belongs.. with real people in real need.
..because I can afford to choose my applications and not worry about their purchase price.
..because I don’t have a ‘box’.
..because my cpu is more powerful than a 386.
..because I need to learn another OS like I need to pick up z80 machine language.
..because I have better things to do with my life.
..because I have tasks, hobbies and interests other than playing with operating systems.
..and because I’d like to get on them them now.

On a side note.. I have thrice over 9 years attempted to install and use Linux. Each effort ended up in a wasted day and reaffirmed all of the above reasons.

Open source is a great method for creating software. It is not a method for creating great software. A narrow mind will confuse these things.

Point by point?

In reply to This is my first and last entry into the Linux debate.

I don’t use Windows . . .

because I don’t need to.

because I don’t want my work to vanish because of my Operating System.

because my OS choice is motivated by purpose and function, not marketing.

because I don’t buy into fud or hype.

because OSX would be the second choice.

because I don’t need IIS.

because I have a job where performance matters.

because my social conscience is where it belongs: with real people in real need.

because I can afford to choose my applications and not worry about their corporate acceptability.

because I don’t have a “PC” — I know what they’re really called.

because my cpu is more powerful than a 386, and I don’t want it to [i]act like[/i] a 386 under the weight of Redmond.

because I need to learn another OS every time Microsoft decides it wants more money like I need to pick up z80 machine language.

because I have better things to do with my life than fix mysterious magical Windows problems and chase malware.

because I have tasks, hobbies and interests other than keeping abreast of the latest bugs introduced by Windows Update.

(I decided to leave “and because I’d like to get on them them now” alone because it doesn’t make any sense.)

Bravo

In reply to Point by point?

Well said! Does anybody have the link to “Linux is not Windows”? Cause someone needs to read it…ahum Robax…ahum!

Linux != Windows

In reply to Bravo

Ask and ye shall receive.

http://linux.oneandoneis2.org/LNW.htm

This guy won’t learn from it, though. That much is obvious.

A response to FUD

In reply to This is my first and last entry into the Linux debate.

“..because I don’t need to.”

This is a poor reason not to use anything. Being a techy means you SHOULD want to explore new and exciting technology.

“..because I do my work with applications not Operating Systems”

WTF does this mean? Of course you do work with applications. Your OS should be hidden and you should NEVER see it. Windows breaks this rule constantly.

“..because my OS choice is motivated by purpose and function, not ideology.”

You have a strange idea of purpose and function then.

“..because I don’t buy into fud nor hype.”

HA! Sure you don’t…If you didn’t you’d at least understand some of the basic concept of Linux.

“..because OSX would be the second choice.”

Sure, why not…

“..because I don’t need Apache.”

Why not? No need for a web server? If you use IIS you have just introduced a serious attack vector.

“..because I have a job with performance measures.”

They must not measure very well because *nix typically out performs Windows in almost all server tasks*

* I’d mention AD here, but honestly, we’ve been over this…

“..because my social conscience is where it belongs.. with real people in real need.”

No it isn’t. It is in MS’s pocket. If you wanted to support need, you’d look into various technologies and not just one.

“..because I can afford to choose my applications and not worry about their purchase price.”

Uh, ok…good for you…

“..because I don’t have a ‘box’.”

Uh…ok….sure….

“..because my cpu is more powerful than a 386.”

But grinds down to the performance of one when Windows “forgets” to release resources.

“..because I need to learn another OS like I need to pick up z80 machine language.”

Uh…”another” OS. How many OSs do you have to maintain…sounds like just one. You don’t want to double your knowledge?

“..because I have better things to do with my life.”

Like looking into freaky Windows issues and fighting with malware?

“..because I have tasks, hobbies and interests other than playing with operating systems.”

Welcome to my life…That’s why I use Linux…So I don’t have to mess with it…

“..and because I’d like to get on them them now.”

HUH!!?? What the deuce does that mean?

“On a side note.. I have thrice over 9 years attempted to install and use Linux. Each effort ended up in a wasted day and reaffirmed all of the above reasons.”

Then your technological compentencies suck. If you can’t click next to install Linux, I’ll be taking your job (or possibly even firing you) soon.

Honestly, why do people say it is hard to install Linux?

“Open source is a great method for creating software. It is not a method for creating great software. A narrow mind will confuse these things.”

What are you going on about? Are you saying not all open source software is good? Well, DUH!! Just like not all closed source software is good…the difference is I can modify crappy open source stuff and make it good.

Re: A response to FUD

In reply to A response to FUD

“This is a poor reason not to use anything. Being a techy means you SHOULD want to explore new and exciting technology.”

Most of us do constantly explore new and exciting technology. But there is a limit to how much one can explore. We all pick and choose based upon numerous factors. Just because someone doesn’t explore your choice doesn’t mean they are not exploring.

“You have a strange idea of purpose and function then.”

Maybe, but just because you don’t agree with him, don’t knock him.

“HA! Sure you don’t…If you didn’t you’d at least understand some of the basic concept of Linux.”

There’s plenty of FUD on both sides and while many of us don’t use Linux, we do have a basic concept of Linux.

“Why not? No need for a web server? If you use IIS you have just introduced a serious attack vector.’

Most home users don’t need a web server.

“They must not measure very well because *nix typically out performs Windows in almost all server tasks”

You’re right, my job and many others don’t measure the peformance of my server per se, my job performance is measure by how much I add to the bottom line. Linux very well may help that, but there are plenty of other areas I have chosen to tackle first.

“No it isn’t. It is in MS’s pocket. If you wanted to support need, you’d look into various technologies and not just one.”

This is kind of like being a doctor. There are times when you can cure a patient but the patient doesn’t want to be cured, for example cancer…not saying Microsoft is a cancer as I’m sure you’ll point out. If the customer wants Microsoft, give them Microsoft.

“But grinds down to the performance of one when Windows “forgets” to release resources.”

My P4 has never performed like a x386.

“Then your technological compentencies suck. If you can’t click next to install Linux, I’ll be taking your job (or possibly even firing you) soon.”

Probably have to agree with this one.

He doesn’t sound like a home user

In reply to Re: A response to FUD

So long story short:
Rickk, you are right *shudder*, IF he was a home user. 🙂 I think he is an IT guy on the ground somewhere….Which is bad….

The problem here is that if consumers KEEP drinking the poison, they will eventually die. It is VERY hard to prove ROI and TCO on IT stuff, but generally it is pretty clear that the ROI and TCO of MS is far more (long term) than *nix infrastructure….

Skill level alert!!!

In reply to This is my first and last entry into the Linux debate.

Tainted evidence of skills wasted away.

Christian David Sanko age 7 has installed…

In reply to This is my first and last entry into the Linux debate.

Debian,Suse10,fedora 5, fedora 4, and Mandriva.

Unixware 7.1, OpenLinux, Solaris 10 on x86. My wife reminded me of this…

This so called professional can’t…

Who pays him??? My youngest son need some fast cash…

Congratulations to “Christian David Sanko”

In reply to Christian David Sanko age 7 has installed…

You must be Proud
Aaron

That’s brilliant…

In reply to This is my first and last entry into the Linux debate.

…I’ve spent way too many pointless hours messing around with that damned OS, while doing all my real-world work on Windows. Thanks, bro. Sometimes someone needs to say something obvious to wake people up.

Nothing to add…

In reply to This is my first and last entry into the Linux debate.

robax,

Been there, done that, nothing to add – my sentiments exactly!

Of Course I am proud.

In reply to Nothing to add…

My daughter 21 has decided to try for a job as a Unix admin at the local University. She did get their Server back up in 10 minutes tht had been down for a day. She probably won’t get the job because the PhD who interviewed her was upset she has had 0 (zero) computer classes.

If she gets the job she’ll be the #3 person on the platforms and the only one with a clue on debian and HPUX and Solaris 9 & 10. (She learned from her daddy’s side…)

Son, 20 is our Household admin. He won’t let me touch the 6509 Cisco Router now that he is practicing for his CNE…

uhm

In reply to Don’t install Knoppix

Alan,

That’s more than 10 words.

😛
CuteElf

Ditto

In reply to Don’t install Knoppix

http://www.ubuntu.com and download the live version, burn to bootable cd and fire it up. Recently installed Ubuntu 5.10 and *really* like it. It comes with Open Office and does just about everything I want right off the cd. Those handful of things that I want that are not there are very easy to download and install.

Knoppix install works fine

In reply to Don’t install Knoppix

I don’t know what “they” you’re talking about, but I wonder what their issue is.

Knoppix is not a “mashup” of things from different distributions. Knoppix is a rather clever Debian installation, with a couple of hardware recognition features derived from Red Hat’s Kudzu. The main components of Knoppix 4 are straight out of Debian 3.1 “Stable.” It uses a stock Debian kernel plus the Union File System as a loadable kernel module.

I installed Knoppix on a laptop and used it for about a year. Worked great. I wouldn’t install it on a colocated server that I expect to have to do distribution upgrades on from home. That’s what Debian 3.1 is for. But if I only have a few minutes to do a workstation install, on a machine I won’t have to maintain remotely, Knoppix is on my short list. My biggest issue with knoppix-installer is the partitioning isn’t very flexible. It wants to install in one big partition. I prefer separate partitions for root and /tmp. Root contains mishap recovery tools and should be small and static. /tmp should be mounted noexec except when you’re installing packages.

Cameron
Linux user #229 at counter.li.org

I disagree!!

In reply to Don’t install Knoppix

I’m a big Linux user and i disagree with NOT installing Knoppix. It’s a great distro on CD/DVD or on the hard drive. If you are having trouble installing Knoppix to your HD, i reccommend visiting this site. http://www.irongeek.com/i.php?page=videos/knoppix1 This is a great step by step on how to install Knoppix to your HD. Enjoy!!

Good Question

In reply to Ditto

I don’t use Linux because I thought he was one of the Peanuts characters.

I have no reason to.

In reply to Ten words or less: “I don’t use Linux because…”

We don’t use it at work.

At home it takes some time to make sure my various anti-malware utilities are kept up to date. That’s nothing compared to the time than it would take me to backup my HD, install Linux, find and install drivers (the continued discussions of Linux / on-board modem conflicts are discouraging), learn how to use it, locate the OSS counterparts of my Windows-based apps, install them, learn how to use them, install an Windows emulator for those apps that don’t have OSS counterparts, teach my wife how to use it, etc.

Why bother? Free software? I don’t spend $50 a year on software now. Security? Never been a problem. I keep all my data backed up. Even if I have to rebuild the system from scratch, Ghost will be faster than learning Linux. Anti-MS feelings? I don’t bear any ill-will towards Redmond; I’ve never had a problem with their products that I can’t solve quicker than learning an alternative.

No, that’s not 10 words, at least not in Base 10.

< $50 per year?

In reply to I have no reason to.

That seems awfully low.
Do you mind if I ask what sort of software you use that costs so little (I assume we’re talking about the home environment here)?

I would suggest (for personal use rather than as a work tool as mentioned elsewhere) that you have a look at a live CD of one of the modern distributions.

Whether you choose to implement it in your home environment is entirely up to you, of course. I know I always feel a bit better about what I’m using when I know what the options are.

Many of us dual boot Windows and linux without any problems, and the upshot of not being locked into a specific software set or operating system is very gratifying.

I know one of the key reasons I use open source software is because (at least as far as the software I use goes) I can have the freedom of platform mobility as well as the benifits of standardised software (the GIMP, Blender, Firefox, Inkscape, OpenOffice.org, Eclipse, MPlayer, jEdit, etc. all give me – more or less – the same experience across all the platforms I use), and because I’m not dealing with any proprietary data formats, I’m free to move to alternative software should I choose.

Few people spend as much time on support forums saying “My new Ubuntu installation worked out of the box!” as they would “I can’t get this BSD thing to work. Grar.”, which I think accounts for the perception that getting hardware to run under linux can be tricky (admittedly I’ve got one or two bits that took a bit of effort, but before I installed, I did some research to see what was and wasn’t supported).

Yep.

In reply to < $50 per year?

The software I use to run a fantasy racing league is $25 annually – http://www.greenflagracing.com . Now that I think about it, that isn’t even my money; it comes out of the league dues, along with the 1and1 hosting fee. I treat myself to a game or two a year from PopCap ( http://www.popcap.com/ ) occasionally – $20. That’s it. I use my home box for running that league, web surfing, e-mail, MS Money, and some low end games. No MORPG, no multimedia, no DVD drive, no music, no movies, no photo editing. JPG’s get saved just as they came from the camera. I have a legal copy of Office 03 I received from MS as a promo; only Word and Excel are installed.

I appreciate your suggestion, but I still haven’t seen a reason to try a live CD on my home machine, much less set it up dual boot, other than as an academic exercise. Multiple platforms and proprietary formats are not issues for me. I haven’t heard of many of the programs you named, but I probably don’t use their MS / proprietary counterparts. I’m sure almost any distro would work with the basic hardware I have, except possibly the modem. But why bother? I could be weeding the rosebed instead.

Still doesn’t add up

In reply to Yep.

Does the cost of your operating system factor into this (when spread across the years at $50 intervals (or less if you’re buying something else that year)?

Do you use third party firewall or antivirus software? A packaged version of Norton AntiVirus with one year’s subscription retails here for about the $75AU mark.

You claimed a “why bother” attitude towards free and open source software. Within that context if you use any spyware, antivirus packages or imaging software (such as Norton Ghost) those alone would put you above budget.

Linux sometimes has issues with dialup modems (mostly with ‘winmodems’ though), but unfortunately, without broadband, linux is far less feasible to use in terms of getting updates, software, etc.

Whether you check it out or not is your call. Gardening is good though.

Sure it does,

In reply to Still doesn’t add up

The OS came with the computer. If I was a business and amoritizing the purchase, you would have a point. I’m not; I’m an individual who paid for the OS up front with the box. If you want to separate the cost of the hardware from the software (which Dell didn’t do on the invoice), then I was over budget once, four years ago.

I’m using McAfee VirusScan 8 on the company license, negotiated to include employees’ home computers including updates. The basic versions of ZoneAlarm, Search and Destroy, and AdAware are free, as are the updates. My copy of Ghost 7 is a legal copy with CD and license, taken home with departmental permission when we purchased a new version at work in exchange for a $10 donation to the employee scholarship fund. It is no longer in use on any machine at work. It’s old but it does what I need. We frequently sell or give away older hardware and software.

I don’t have a “why bother” attitude toward FOSS. I’m viewing this in Firefox right now. I love Gravity when I’m hitting the newsgroups. Free software is not limited to Linux apps. I don’t care if it’s open source since I wouldn’t know what to do with the code anyway.

“without broadband, linux is far less feasible to use in terms of getting updates, software, etc.”

Thanks for the info. I don’t see myself getting broadband until the prices drop to under $25 U.S., without all those fine-print requirements that I also bundle TV cable and telephone service. I don’t do enough to justify the cost.

Cheap Broadband

In reply to Sure it does,

SBC/Yahoo…$12.99 a month if you sign up on-line. One year contract only. No strings attached other than being in their service area.

And many of the ISP’s that I work with at work offer discounted or free internet access to our company employees.

The cable companies are good at this. They offer the commercial service to our employees for the residential rate.

That means same day, onsite tech support, 7Mb down and 1Mb up, and a static IP.

Work those relationships if you have them.

We have 23 remote locations and they usually give us free cable TV if we sign up for their internet service.

Broadband for under $25

In reply to Sure it does,

I pay a little over $16 per month (including taxes and fees)for broadband from Verizon. And, that’s not an “introductory offer”

Futility

In reply to Sure it does,

Palmetto, you’re never going to change the mind of jbush… Sounds like a committed Linux geek who will never admit any positives in Windows. You know, MS = EVIL, Linux = GOOD… 🙂 Both O/S have their own pros and cons. You pointed out the best reasons for maintaining Windows. Our company has a whole lot of money tied up in MS products — it would take some major convincing to toss the investment.

Linux is still too geeky for the end user. Maybe eventually it will become a polished product. Our users require results now. You can’t consider the cost of software and machines in a vacuum. You also have to consider the cost of downtime, training users and trying to make apps work that users want. We have a lot of third part software that is designed for Windows – Linux isn’t an option at this time.

I installed Linux at home at got rid of it after a couple of months. Too much futzing around to get stuff to work. It just didn’t seem that useful. Keep in mind, I use my machines for work NOT games.

beowulf_cam, I don’t want to change jbush’s mind.

In reply to Sure it does,

I’m only trying to point out to him that it doesn’t matter if the software is free when I rarely install new software. Rabbit food could be free, but I don’t want it if I have no interest in raising rabbits.

Nice

In reply to beowulf_cam, I don’t want to change jbush’s mind.

Rabbits, is that Of Mice and Men? Been reading lately? That was funny.

rickk, no comprendo

In reply to beowulf_cam, I don’t want to change jbush’s mind.

I’ve never read “Of Mice and Men”, so I didn’t get your reference. My leisure reading is almost completely sci-fi / fantasy.

“Rabbit food” is an old line in my family about getting a “bargain” on something you didn’t need anyway.

Great Book

In reply to beowulf_cam, I don’t want to change jbush’s mind.

And a decent movie.

Written by John Steinbeck.

About two migrant workers in depression era. One, Lennie, is retarded and has a thing for rabbits.

Worth checking out.

His Point

In reply to Still doesn’t add up

I think his point is that free doesn’t have to mean open source and free isn’t equal to Linux.

There are tons of good software packages out there for Windows that are free in addition to what comes out of the box when you buy a PC.

For example, AVG, Spyware Blaster, Adaware, Spybot, Firefox, Opera, Netscape, Open Office, Diskkeeper Lite, HiJackThis, JAS Capture, NoAds, tons of games like America’s Army, etc.

All are free, some open source, some not.

When you purchase a PC you typically get Windows, Works or Office, and some others. Compliment that with other free software and you have a good package that will last you for years.

Add to that student discounts (if you qualify) and company handouts and you have one hell of a system for very little money.

You can’t characterize Windows systems by the generalization that everyone runs out to the store and pays full retail for everything they want.

Not fair and not realistic.

not a good point

In reply to His Point

There are advantages for every OS. I have had many clients which I would not point to Linux. There are arguments against it in many cases, but software and equipment costs are solidly in Linux’ corner.

Fair and realistic would be remembering that the OS installed in the box isn’t free, and neither are the additional hardware requirements. It would also consider TCO.

A better point may have been the cost of re-training end users, or a learning curve example of sorts. Thankfully (for the people trying to train), that argument won’t be around for long either.

With regards to the argument, there are a few points that are not really correct. Here are some specifics.

A manufacturer does not give you all of that software for free, and almost all of them will leave it out by request. That will cut the cost of the system by a fair margin.

There is also the issue of hardware cost. Linux needs much less resources available for equal performance. That obviously cuts the cost more.

There is the cost of maintenance time. I know that someone mentioned that Linux isn’t good without broadband, but I do point out that any given XP system will spend just as much time doing downloads. Did you ever download SP2 with a dialup account? Linux does more frequent updates, but smaller ones. It is a fair balance between the two there.

There is also the cost of downtime, but that depends on the quality of software you pick, and your ability, so I won’t brag about Linux there.

Finally, in a commercial (especially enterprise) setting, there is the consideration of Admin time, and Uptime. You need better Admins, but they can monitor and maintain more boxes in less time, with a much broader scope for customization. Uptime is amazing in Linux. I have servers that are only rebooted when upgrading Kernals, and my home systems are rebooted every six months when I clean and check them.

The best argument for Windows is convenience.

In reply to I have no reason to.

😀

Only for those already using it

In reply to The best argument for Windows is convenience.

Change for change’s sake is dumb (though for learning purposes it’s worthwhile).

At the end of the day, you need a reason to migrate to a new operating system, or at least a reason that might make a new operating system viable.

Personally, I don’t think windows is more convenient, but then I use three (completely) different operating systems a day and am more or less used to the idiosyncrasies of each.

The only reason I choose to boot into Windows is to play Oblivion. And once Cedega supports that, I (‘ll go back the the way it was before it came out and) won’t bother.

“Only for those already using it” Right!!!

In reply to Only for those already using it

That’s my point. It’s more convenient for me because it’s already installed, configured, and I know how to use it. Why inconvenience myself for an academic exercise?

Well if that was continued to its logical Conclusion

In reply to “Only for those already using it” Right!!!

Why are you using XP now?

If Windows 3 did everything that you needed why change from that?

Why even move away from DOS onto Windows after all DOS worked well enough for the adverage user back then.

You change OS’s for the same reason as everyone else to keep a job but for some reason you are limiting your ability to remian employed in the [b]Long Run[/b] and where you can be employed in the [b]Short Term[/b] as well. I’m betting that you have never applied to work for a ISP or even bothered looking for IT jobs outside your confort zone right?

While you are continuning to insist that Windows is OK I’m constantly told at MS Partner Meetings that I’m expecting [b]Too Much[/b] from an OS and Windows was never designed to work in the manner that I continually ask about.

Col

Answers

In reply to Well if that was continued to its logical Conclusion

HAL, I value your opinion. None of this is intended as flippant or argumentative.

The new computer came with XP. I gave my old 98 box to my parents so I couldn’t legally put 98 on the new box, now could I? I’m not running much software on the XP box at home that I didn’t have 98 counterparts for, so I didn’t upgrade for the apps. I had W3 on the 486 box before the 98 machine. I think it’s here at work, still running W3 and proprietary legacy software.

“You change OS’s for the same reason as everyone else to keep a job …”

Unlike 95, then 98, then NT, then 2K, then XP, and eventually Vista, Linux isn’t required to keep my job.

” … for some reason you are limiting your ability to remain employed in the Long Run” You’re assuming I’m not upgrading my skills at all. My manager and I work on a list every year of what new and upgraded skills I should work on. Topics over the last couple of years have included Server 03, AD, SMS, and VM. Yes, most of those are MS, but we’re an MS shop. Hell, I started out a COBOL programmer and was asked to transition to PC’s and networking in the early 90’s. That required completely overhauling my skills. Please explain how neglecting a technology we don’t use limits my remaining employed in long or short term.

“I’m betting that you have never applied to work for a ISP … ” I’m betting that less than 5% of TR members have worked for an ISP. I’m sure if I had I would have a different skill set than I do now, but they probably wouldn’t match the skills I need in a manufacturing plant. That can be said of any job: the skills required for one don’t match the skills needed for anther.

” … or even bothered looking for IT jobs outside your confort zone right?” Right. I’ve worked for three companies in 22 years in IT. At two of the three (including the current one where I have worked for thirteen years) I enjoyed considerable daily autonomy, reasonable management, pay I consider acceptable, and neither beeper nor cell phone. What’s wrong with remaining with a company I enjoy working for?

” … I’m constantly told at MS Partner Meetings that I’m expecting Too Much from an OS … ” I’m not insisting Windows is OK or that it’s the answer for everybody. You can’t find a post anywhere the Internet where I’ve said Windows is anything other than an OS that fits some people’s needs, and several (including in this discussion) where I’ve said in some areas it’s inferior to Linux. Windows fits my existing needs at the house, and I feel the advantages of switching my computer to Linux don’t outweigh the time and effort involved. Your mileage may vary.

Actuall I wasn’t trying to be flippant either

In reply to Answers

It’s just with the continual backdating of Vista and MS Licensing problems and cost I can see many people wanting to switch from Windows as their Primary OS to something else in the not to distant future.

With all the CAM plants that I’ve done work for while they use Windows on the Desktop the designers of the final product tend to use different OS’s ranging from DOS to Fully Fledged Unix depending on the hardware used and what they are making. Things like Microprocessor Controlled Lathes tend to be all DOS Bassed but when you start getting into the big Robotics they are all Unix based systems.

This is just something that I’ve seen over time as more and more people are getting fed up with MS and it’s Pricing & Licensing Policies. The total lack of Technical Support in the Specalised areas doesn’t help much either

But as for the idea that [i]if it works don’t change it[/i] I was just asking why change a perfectly good OS to somethign different just because MS tells you to?

Currently I’m buying copies of XP Pro and installing NT4 onto boxes that will have a very short life and need NT4 to run a program that isn’t going to be rewritten in the foreseeable future. Provided I attach the XP COA to the case this is Perfectly Legal but currently a big bug bear for some companies to accept. These CD’s are never going to be used and they just see it as more of the Bully Boy Tatics from MS and are slowely getting sick & tied of doing business this way. These boxes live On Site where there is heavy Earth Moving Equipment being used to scrape the dirt to a level controlled by Laser sighting equipment all around the site and on the earthmovers and they can get the earthworks to within 2 CM’s of the design so they naturally want to keep using the software as it saves them lots of money in Fuel, over removing dirt and backfilling. Of course the down side is that place is anything but clean and the computers all suffer as a result generally not being expected to last longer than 1 job and if it’s a big one I’ll be building several of the same computers for the job.

Of course the costs of these machines are factored into the tender for the job but it gets hard to deal with the [b]Bean Counters[/b] who insist that they don’t actually need the XP Pro copy as it is effectively a throw away item and a waste of money. Which really it is. I’m even to this day still buying MS DOS from MS for some computer controlled lathes which kill the controller connected to them every 12 18 months and I do see those licenses as a Waste of Money and nothing more than a MS Tax for using the big expensive tools.

I’m constantly told that they are unwilling to pay for these Licenses but as I’m unwilling to be the bunny that MS picks on I refuse and suggest that they ring MS and ask why [b]It IS So.[/b]

On the other side of the coin stolen or destroyed computers covered by insurance don’t require the selling of replacment MS Product as the Insurance Companies will not accept this and MS doesn’t raise a single complaint.

I just see something wrong and wasteful in doing things like this for the customer who is paying for a unnecessary product and even it it was acceptiable they don’t get any Tecincal Support from MS for the products that I’m installing. Luckly it’s not an issue with the units that I sell but it very well could be to some companies.

MS answer is to [b]Migrate to XP[/b] which is really helpful when the software doesn’t run on XP they expect everything to work as Windows is a 1 size fits all to their way of thinking which no OS can be.

Currently I’m working on a CAM Factory that makes bench tops and the factory floor covers 1 acre and there are 3 floors so I’m using Optical Fibre for the networking runs as there isn’t one under several hundred feet all are too long for CAT Cable and the owner wants not to see any hardware or at least as little as possible and because of the RF that the machines produce WIFI is out of the question.

Currently I’m not sure of what’s going in the office but I know what’s gong into the Server Room and there are 2 of everything as any stopage causes the destruction of what’s currently in the machines and with imported Marbel this can be very expensive so it requires UPS’s on everything on the factory side of things and a massive Backup PS that will kick in if there are any power outages the UPS’s are just there for safety and to cover the Gap between power sources and for filtering when the Power Sources change.

I’ve been working with the Designer for 3 months now and it has required weekly site inspections which is a 250 K round trip and I have to hit the builders heavilly I cought them trying to stretch a 420 MT Optical Fibre cable because it was 4 inches too short. Good thing to catch it then rather than attempting to pull another run after the event though. 😀

Col ]:)

?

In reply to “Only for those already using it” Right!!!

You don’t enjoy learning new things?

Yes, I enjoy learning new things.

In reply to ?

But there are so many new things to learn, I have to be selective. Please see my reply to HAL above this one. Why spend time learning something I may not use when I’m required to learn other skills I will use on a daily basis? I haven’t learned AutoCAD, PhotoShop, or Dreamweaver for the same reason. There’s only so many hours in the day; I’m not going to spend all of them on work-related learning.

Most People Think Linux is a Box of Cereal

In reply to “Only for those already using it” Right!!!

or something…98% of the populace never heard of it, and probably never will. Most people would never attempt to get more profecient using an OS than clicking on a desktop Icon. The real growth in home PC sales occured when prices went below $400 dollars and XP came out. Most people only use thier PC to check email download music, and go to porn sites (if you beleive the experts). Once you mention things like recompiling the kernal, thier eyes galze over.

recompiling the kernal

In reply to Most People Think Linux is a Box of Cereal

Come on now, you know better than to drag that old horse out on the track again.

I’ve used Linux for 5 years now privately, and we recently set-up 2 RH enterprise servers at work. I have no clue about how to compile the kernel. Once it was needed for my video card, and it was done automatically. I never use a command line either.

Users can use any OS. All they need is to press icons.

Cereal, kernels, I get it!!!

In reply to Most People Think Linux is a Box of Cereal

but as far as your post goes, pretty true. The only thing, IMHO, keeping Linux from more use on the desktop is that Linux excludes the average Joe User from calling (or IMing) their friend and saying, I found this cool thing at the XYZ site, download it and install it! In Windows they can, in only a few clicks, be seeing what their friend is seeing. In Linux, they can’t. They have to be “better” or more capable users, or they can’t install it, or configure it, or for that matter even choose the correct file(s) to download for their distro!

not so

In reply to Cereal, kernels, I get it!!!

The perception that you have to compile things from source to install software on Linux is persistent, but incorrect. I’ve compiled a grand total of two applications that I’ve used on my Linux systems over the years, and I’m an expert user. The common “Average Joe” needn’t compile anything at all. There are point-and-click interfaces for installing software that don’t even require you to open your browser. Can you imagine (to compare to the Windows world) being able to use something like the Add/Remove Programs dialog to install office suites, computer games, image editors, CAD/CAM software, integrated development environments, IM clients, media players, CD rippers/burners, VoIP software, and pretty much everything else under the sun without ever having to so much as press the eject button on your CD-ROM drive? I can, because I use Linux.

Why would I want to search Google for crappy free software when I can have high quality free software without ever having to open my browser?

Evolution

In reply to “Only for those already using it” Right!!!

No of course you should not change. Stay where you are.
This thing was good enough for my dad.
We have been throwing money at the supplier for 2 decades now.
The alternatives doesn’t work
It is impossible to learn something new
We know what we have – we don’t know what we get.
This time they will get it right.

.. the road to hell is littered with good excuses, and many more than the few listed here.

When the wind af change blows, some people build a shelter, others build a windmill.

Better Analogy

In reply to Evolution

Windows is the shelter and windmill.

Linux is Don Quixote.

🙂

terrible analogy

In reply to Better Analogy

Even if it provided an accurate representation of the situation, it still wouldn’t be even slightly clever. Go back to the drawing board.

Do you have anything non-trollish to contribute to the discussion, or are you just here for the flaming?

best analogy

In reply to Better Analogy

windows is the straw house built by the first little piggie
osx is the stick house by the second piggie.
linux is the brick house built by the third.

balmer is the wolf.

By the way . . .

In reply to Better Analogy

People who live in houses made of Windows shouldn’t throw stones. I’m glad Linux was built from reinforced concrete.

Best Analogy

In reply to Better Analogy

Linux may be a house of reinforced concrete.

Steel walls, concrete floors, shatter proof glass, etc. Quite sturdy.

But not very comfortable. It’s cold, cramped, and feels more like a prison than a house.

Windows is warm, comfortable, and familar.

I’d rather be in your steel prison during a tornado but I’d rather be in my comfy house with the green grass and leather sofa when it’s time to play.

maybe to you

In reply to Better Analogy

You may find Windows more comfortable due to familiarity than Linux, but that’s just you.

I’m thoroughly familiar with both Windows and Linux. I find that I’m more comfortable with a couch custom-designed for the shape of my but than one designed by molding it to Bill Gates’ butt, though. I’m living in the lap of luxury here — and I can clone more copies of my house for free any time I like if I want a summer home in the Hamptons, without having to pay the (real estate) developer beaucoup bucks.

great line

In reply to Evolution

I love the line about the winds of change. Where’d you get that?

Thanks..

In reply to great line

Politeness forbid me to tell where…
OK – it just popped out while writing.

I’m so fed-up with these people trying to convince me that once you learned Windows and the OfficePackage, it’s impossible to learn Linux, StarOffice, OpenOffice or whatever. If that’s a problem, they should be prepared for some shocks later.

I have tricked people into believing that OpenOffice was the newest test version of MS Office by fiddling with icons.They claimed it was very good, and they just loved being able to open any kind of document no matter what kind of document you had open.

The general user have no reason to be familiar with the OS, it is a leftover from the PC pioneering days of the 80’es. No clerk in a bank, or airline check-in knows anything about the OS on the mainframe they use, they don’t know what make and model, and they certainly don’t know the name of the supplier’s CEO, or cheif software architect. Who’s boss of IBM or IBM SW? But they are experts in the application they use, and that’s what matters.

A Few Options

In reply to Ten words or less: “I don’t use Linux because…”

Personally:

“Oblivion.”

“World of Warcraft.”

Professionally:

“My clients use Windows.”

“My clients don’t want to invest in the Linux learningcurve.” (okay, I took a liberty there)

“I can do what I need to now…”

Personally:

In reply to A Few Options

Cedega. You’d be pleasantly surprised about the ability of Linux to run your favorite games.

http://www.transgaming.com

As for “I can do what I need to now”, there are things I can’t do on Windows (or can’t do easily) that I can do on Linux. Except for getting the latest spyware to run, I can’t think of anything I can’t do in Linux that I could do with Windoesn’t.

As for a Linux learning curve, I’d bet that if I snuck in one night and installed Linux with KDE on all the desktops of some company, most people wouldn’t even notice. And most of the ones who did would probably wonder, “Hey, why does my desktop look so much cooler this morning than it did when I left last night?” They’d probably just assume that you downgraded them to Vista overnight. Basically, if you know how to use a computer, you know how to use a Linux GUI.

Post edited to correct typographical errur.

“Cooler” is a matter of preference

In reply to Personally:

“Cedega. You’d be pleasantly surprised about the ability of Linux to run your favorite games.”

Yeah, but why bother?

“As for ‘I can do what I need to now’, there are things I can’t do on Windows (or can’t do easily) that I can do on Linux.”

Linux fits your needs and the way you use a computer. That’s not a reason to change if someone is happy with Windows.

” …if I snuck in one night and installed Linux … most people wouldn’t even notice. And most of the ones who did would probably wonder, ‘Hey, why does my desktop look so much cooler this morning”‘ Basically, if you know how to use a computer, you know how to use a Linux GUI.

One geek’s “looking cooler” is another end user’s call to tech support because, “Something’s wrong with my computer!” Unfortunately, many corporate end users don’t actually know to use a computer. This is especially true in environments where computers are used by laborers to retrieve information. They know how to perform only the particular tasks they’ve been shown. Their “training” consisted of, “Click this icon, then click ‘Okay’ three times, then click here.” They don’t read prompt boxes or windows, they follow a routine. They don’t have skills, they have habits. Change any one step in that task and they’re lost. I see it several times a day.

By Laborers

In reply to “Cooler” is a matter of preference

You mean people like Doctors, Nurses, Lawyers, and Beacrucratsin general right? As you’ve just done a perfect description on how most of these people use computersin thier work. :^0

Col ]:)

I wasn’t that far up the food chain

In reply to By Laborers

I originally meant factory assembly line workers, storeroom restockers, and others required to interact with computerized inventory systems, blueprint and drawing libraries, etc.

However, I do now recall my brother-in-law, who’s a help desk super. in a Florida hospital. He wishes more doctors and nurses would practice a little cyberhygiene to match their physical efforts.

“labourers”

In reply to I wasn’t that far up the food chain

I used to work in a large office supplies retail chain here in Australia (I believe we opened 500 new stores during my three years there). Surprisingly enough, we used (up until about 18 months ago), a dos based point of sale and inventory system which the managers logged onto at the beginning of the day and weren’t closed until the managers did the same at the end. When we actually started using windows (presumably the newer stores got newer equipment when they opened) about 6 months before that, none of the employees at my site (besides me and the managers) were aware of that change.

The point is that the sorts of occupations to which you refer run platform obscuring software and the end users (though perhaps not in smaller businesses).

I’m not saying that everybody should run out and start using Linux in the corporate environment, but I do think it’s worthwhile investigating as an option for any future developments that could encompass such a move within their scope (eg: new hardware rollout, or OS upgrade rollout). At the very least, it reaffirms that you made the right choice by sticking with what you’ve got.

Palmetto, you’ve been around

In reply to “Cooler” is a matter of preference

long enough to know that I tend to inject a bit of levity into most of my posts. I don’t take myself too seriously, and I treat my posts the same way. There was a bit of humor in that one. I’ve been at a help desk long enough to see stories like this one: We upgraded to the latest version of one of our main applications. The new version’s icon had a different picture, but the same name. Naturally, I received several calls about that application being “missing”.

But anyway:
Antivirus.
Antispyware (preferably more than one).
Defragging.
Reinstalling anually to fix a corrupted registry.
Rebooting just to install a simple patch.
Application crashes.
Hoping the vendor will fix the problem that caused that crash (sometimes they do, sometimes they don’t), since you don’t have the source available to do it yourself.
DRM “inserted rectally” whether you like it or not. Bought a Sony CD lately?
The BSOD.

To use your words, “Why bother?”

Point by point

In reply to Palmetto, you’ve been around

AV and antispyware – they’re already installed and self-updating at both work and the house. So I’m not gaining or losing anything by switching. Some would quibble about lost processor speed and unnecessary services, but we’re not taxing the processor, so I just don’t care.

Defragging – I haven’t defragged a box since I replaced my last NT 4 box. With the size of drives these days, why bother? When I did defrag, it ran in the background. Again, some would criticize the loss of resources, but I never felt it was enough of a drain to worry about it.

Reinstalling annually – you must have a bad ghost. On 180 supported computers, I probably see two or three registry corruptions annually. I’m often able to fix these booting from the XP CD and running the repair tool. When I can’t, I ghost them with a turn around of less than 60 minutes. Most of the boxes at work run years without any attention at the OS or Office level.

Patches – Okay, you got me there. But I shut my computer at work down weekly, and my home machine nightly. We push patches out at work in the middle of the night, so the users don’t see the reboots. Sorry, rebooting isn’t an issue for me.

App crashes – Yeah, these happen too; are you going to tell me they don’t happen in OSS? But they don’t happen at the house, and they aren’t happening often enough at work to make converting worth the trouble. Even if I had the source, I wouldn’t know where to start. I haven’t done any programming other than Office macros in ten years, and back then it was Fortran and COBOL. I don’t have a clue what languages or techniques are used to write Linux-compatible applications. Having access to the code is not a selling point to me, and lack of it isn’t a deal-breaker.

DRM? We don’t do anything at work and I don’t do anything at home with digital media. I’ve never put a Sony (or any other) CD (or DVD) in my computer. I’ve got a great component CD and DVD players connected to the TV, and a CD player in the car. I’m happy listening to an entire album from start to finish and don’t know how to download music (Way the hell off-topic: all of today’s music is crap 🙂 End of old fogey diatribe.) So DRM is just a philosophical topic to me.

BSOD? Of the last three I saw, two were due to bad RAM. The third was a failing hard drive. All were under warranty.

Sure, Windows has it’s flaws, and a lot of them don’t exist in Linux. Some of your points may apply to other Windows users. If that motivates those people to switch to Linux, great. Most of your points don’t apply to me personally. The few that do don’t motivate me to start over learning software skills from scratch. Inertia, baby, inertia.

No Defrag!!

In reply to Point by point

If your users/you are using your systems much, then you are all missing out on the true capability of the systems if you fail to do a regular defrag. Windows or horrible about just throwing things down where it wants. I was at a clients office the other day, and noticed some real speed degradation. Ran a Defrag analysis, and the Windows XP 180 GB system was 90% fraged. I can assure you that their system is running much faster now, plus the HD is doing much less work.

it’s unfortunate

In reply to No Defrag!!

Microsoft has been promising an NTFS that doesn’t require defragging since the mid-1990s at the latest, and still hasn’t delivered. Other OSes have had filesystems that don’t require defragging for years now.

I try it occasionally.

In reply to No Defrag!!

I haven’t seen any noticable results. I’m sure if I ran a diagnostic or performance suite I’d see some results, but if the end user doesn’t notice any improvement in performance, why bother?

I defrag a machine before I use it as the model for a new Ghost image. No one keeps data on the local drives, or has the privs to remove apps.

Think about HD life-span

In reply to No Defrag!!

defrag makes the hd more efficient, and thus by my way of reasoning, it could in theory extend the life of the device.

While I don’t have anything in the way of data to back this with, if the drive is not operating at max speed, it should have somewhat less wear on the mechanical parts.

I have seen systems where no maintenance was occurring that the hard drives quickly had numerous bad sectors, as well as in some cases just quit spinning (note that some of these were probably due to the systems being filled with dust-bunnies).

Lifespan + Defrag

In reply to No Defrag!!

At time of manufacture any hard drive has a finite number of seeks it can make before it’s dead.

Osumiller mentions that having a less fragmented drive would result in more efficient mechanical movements by the drive and thus extending its lifespan.

Sounds fairly solid, the amount of drive activity involved with the fragmentation analysis as well as the defragmentation process is waaaaay more than average use (the specifics of fragmentation vs lifespan compared to degfragmentation process vs lifespan would be interesting to know).

The Joy of WoW on Windows

In reply to “Cooler” is a matter of preference

If you do not play World of Warcraft ignore this entire reply (it won’t make sense to you anyway)

You?re methodically stalking a Mage (in all purples), for that very moment he mistakenly pulls multiple adds. You can taste the victory, dagger’s are poisoned, Preparation is not on cool off, you close in for the kill, you click Ambush, you prepare to bask in the glow of yet another one shot (I admit sometimes Backstab is need too) kill?

WHAT THE…?

Frame rates are suddenly garbage, you?re moving slower then a snail, your still in stealth !, the mage backs away from the adds (through you) and frost novas, locking you in place (with the adds). Your hard drive is grinding (like a 16 year old?s first try with a stick shift), you?re franticly mashing the vanish button, the mage blizzards… you die (he laughs and dances on your corpse). While running back, you cuss Blizzard, 15$ a month (per player) and they can’t buy better servers!!!

You?re about to rez when WoW decides to minimize itself and you are prompted…

Windows has finishing installing new updates? Reboot now? Yes/Later

NOOOOoooo?
macro /target microsoft /rude

Anonymous member of The Crows on Stormreaver

So turn the darn updates off

In reply to The Joy of WoW on Windows

Set the updates to “notify before downloading”, or whatever the exact wording is.

Lack of…

In reply to The Joy of WoW on Windows

If you don’t know how to avoid this, go back to a typewriter.

You act as if one can’t turn off automatic updates. Any serious gamer does.

hypocrisy

In reply to Lack of…

That’s interesting. If a Linux user said that, you’d be all over him for being such an “elitist” who doesn’t understand the needs of the “average user”.

Not Elitest

In reply to hypocrisy

He was being a smart ass and you know it.

99% of the crowd on TR knows better than that.

Oh, I’m sorry . . .

In reply to hypocrisy

I should have said “elitest”, not “elitist”. I keep forgetting that you can’t spell, even when you have the proper spelling for a term right in front of your face.

Yet if this were Linux

In reply to Lack of…

you’d say:
“Only the highly technical can even figure out what the updates are, much less turn them off.”

If this were Linux I wouldn’t be able to read these post s or anything

In reply to Yet if this were Linux

because I wouldn’t be able to go online or bootup and who knows what other things I would not be able to do. The latest update for Ubuntu 6.06 LTS sucks the worst of all yet. Do they know they are supposed to improve, not regress. This is an important question.

Um, CraigLarry, you are trolling, right?

In reply to Yet if this were Linux

Your question is an implementation specific one, not a general Linux question.

Games…..

In reply to Lack of…

Any serious gamer would by a piece of HW designed for games, wouldn’t he/she ? Instead of buying a “one size – fits all” device.

Let’s get back to the topic.. mea culpa

In reply to The Joy of WoW on Windows

I’m well aware the service can be turned off, but unlike most of you, I don’t advise users to disable services. Why, because the average user should never be given that kind of advice. It only leads to them disabling other services like AV updates, which we all know they won?t turn back on.

The average desktop I come across has 8 or more icons down in the tray. Do you really think your average user is going to click on the little yellow shield and tell Windows to update? Sure they will, the same users has no idea what those icons even do… go ahead ask them. So preach on guys, encourage every gamer to disable any service that might hamper their game play. I guess that’s why so many Microsoft updates silently re-enable Windows update.

Or Microsoft (and others) could work on intelligent background agents that don?t not consume 90% of the processor and send a system prompt (flagged high priority) that stomps all over running processes. Just a thought.

Apotheon has an interesting point, people that are smart enough to disable Windows update and smart enough to run it manually all the time, certainly have the mental capacity to use Linux. Therefore the only appropriate response to this forum topic should be? because I?m to lazy.

There’s the lazy accusation again.

In reply to Let’s get back to the topic.. mea culpa

” … people that are smart enough to disable Windows update … have the mental capacity to use Linux. Therefore the only appropriate response … because I?m to lazy.”

There’s a difference between lazy and choosing to doing something other than learn an OS. There are other things in life besides computers. Spend a weekend working in the garden with me; the light will do your Vitamin D-deprived skin some good.

I’ve got your “lazy” right HERE.

I prefer OJ.

In reply to There’s the lazy accusation again.

I like my Tropicana Pure Premium orange juice, fortified with calcium and Vitamin D. It doesn’t harm my delicate skin like irradiating it with UV does.

Must be nice to have a 9 – 5 job

In reply to There’s the lazy accusation again.

I bet you even get Holidays as well right? Unfortunately I don’t never have well I did get 4 weeks off when my daughter was born but that was back in 1976 and the only things close to holidays since that time have been Hospital Stays and Court Appearances which took me away from work so they where considered a break from work.

As for getting out in the Sun and doing some gardening [b]No Thank You Very Much[/b] I’ve already had quite a few Skin Cancers surgically removed by a [b]Blackmailing Bastard of a Surgeon[/b] who stands over you with a sharp instrument and after the first cut suggests that the wants his business computers looked at and then starts shaking his hand making out that he’s so worried about those [b]BLOODY Computers.[/b]

I’ve currently got it down to once a year seeing him at work though I go to this home on many more occasions than that and make threats of my own. But he defiantly know how to get you to do work that you really do not want to do and despite his little Foibles he’s a really Great Surgeon who always good to know as he insists that he has to keep me alive so that he can call me at unreasonable hours to get advice on how to use the NB that I built him. The last phone call was that he couldn’t get an Internet connection through the Dial Up Modem in the NB and he only had the RJ12 lead plugged into the RJ45 Socket. I wish they where all that easy to fix.

Oh he’s also the typical Appliance User as well if it aint on the desktop it don’t exist so all the programs that he needs I have to place Shortcuts on the Desktop so he can use them. Then he keeps asking me why I sold him something so hard to work he like most appliance users expects it to work no matter what they do wrong. A perfect example was when they bought a new vacuum cleaner for home it came with a DVD Destruction Manual and he dropped it into the NB and wanted to know how to play it when he rang me 20 minutes latter without knowing if it was a Video CD/DVD or a written manual. He just expects it to work regardless.

Col

Not just MSFT

In reply to The Joy of WoW on Windows

Keep an eye out for the blizzard do9wnloader – we were farming the front end of MC and people kept getting DC’d – finally it dawned on us that the blizzard downloader was doing its thing in the background and if your network connection was even vaguely stressed POOF, you were cut off….

don’t think so

In reply to Personally:

Thanks for the cedega link. Figured something like that was out there.

As to your learning curve comments, no. It’s not THAT similar. Our users would notice bigtime. For myself, I’m reasonably adept with computing and the tools, and am still fairly low on the learning curve. But there are still simple things that I don’t know how to do yet, things readily done in Win or Mac. It’s probably just experience, but – most people don’t like change.

I’m looking linux desktop stuff as a potential for our users. For the ones tired of all the virii, etc. It will be their choice (at least from my perspective as the service provider.)

If they are just typical end users

In reply to don’t think so

Who only open the OS and then a couple of apps like a Word Processor E-Mail Client and Web Browser and maybe a Spread Sheet or DBase I very much doubt that any would really notice any differentce at all.

They could only start to experience problems if they attempted to instll some softwate which the Corporate Usage Policy should not allow. But for Opening Office Applications and Web Browsers and Mail Clients other than the different Icons used they would see very little difference and most would be none the wiser. One End User grabed my NB with Debian Loaded and it had the Matrix Screen Saver working and some strange Desktop Theme and their only comment was [i]Where Do I find that Screen Saver/Desktop combination on my work computer?[/i]

But they managed to use it without a problem and even sent some word processor documents from Open Office 1 to their printer without a single problem. The file was saved to their server as a DOC format file and while the formating might not have been correct when opened in Word it would have still been readable and easy to alter to suit their needs.

Col

Professionally:

In reply to A Few Options

“My clients use Windows”
And by knowing how their operating environment can integrate with alternatives, you can offer them more insightful services and recommendations, *and* be ready should that situation change.

“My clients don’t want to invest in the Linux learningcurve”
My clients generally don’t want every proposal I give them (particularly when I give them three and tell them to pick). By giving your clients more options, you either a) open up new and potentially better avenues for them or b) reaffirm that they’re better of sticking with what they’re with.
Plus if they later decide they do want to invest in that learning curve, existing linux experience and knowledge will allow you to provide the support they require.

“I can do what I need to now…”
Now that’s what I call forward thinking. If the industry suddenly turns on its head (as it has done many times in the past), you’re going to be left high and dry.

You don’t have to like Lunix to justify using it.

(Oh, and World of Warcraft runs with Wine 0.9.5 and above and is also supported by Cedega if that’s the sort of thing you prefer. Cedega suport for Oblivion won’t be far away juding from how many votes it has)

Still More Professionally:

In reply to Professionally:

“My clients use Windows”
I understand Linux. I understand what it can do. That still doesn’t change the fact that my clients use Windows.

“My clients don’t want to invest in the Linux learningcurve”
If you’d like some help on selling your clients on your proposals just let me know – my clients generally accept all my proposals… 🙂 But I think you’re missing the point. I know Linux. Worked with it for years. I don’t use it regularly because none of my clients use it, and I prefer to actually USE the applications my clients do – I’ve found it allows for better support.

“I can do what I need to now…”
Keep me honest – the world is still, primarily, a Windows-based world, right? So the fact that I can do what needs to be done now is bad, how…? If the world goes Linux I’ll still be in a good position – I’ll just help my clients migrate over. But it ain’t a Linux world yet (nor in the short-term), so…

I actually happen to like Linux – it just doesn’t make any sense for me to use it (regularly, anyway). It doesn’t offer me any advantages over Windows at this point, so I don’t use it.

Apologies

In reply to Still More Professionally:

From your original post it wasn’t obvious that you had any linux familiarity (especially given that this is a “I don’t use linux” thread).

If you’re familiar with linux and use it sporadically for learning or out of interest then you’re benifiting form the sorts of things I was talking about in my last post.

Knowing what you need to know now isn’t a bad thing, but also knowing what you might need to know tomorrow is better.
We obviously live in different worlds, as my world is more than less a linux world.

In regards to proposals, if I had a client who wanted to roll out an entirely new infrastructure, I may hypothetically give them three separate proposals, one for an Apple based, system, a linux based system, and a Windows based system. I wouldn’t expect them to pick all three.
(Realistically, I’d probably be tending more towards mixed networks, perhaps with *nix based servers and windows based clients)

I don’t use Linux because…

In reply to Ten words or less: “I don’t use Linux because…”

…I have to, I use it because I want to.

Clever!! (nt)

In reply to I don’t use Linux because…

.

I don’t use Linux because

In reply to Ten words or less: “I don’t use Linux because…”

Microsoft tells me it’s bad*…

* Ok, I’m caught…I use Linux, but I’m just waiting for that comment…

I hope you’ll be waiting a while

In reply to I don’t use Linux because

Few of us who use MS software believe much of what comes from the Fertiliz.., uh, Marketing Department. Few of us think Linux is bad. Most of us recognize it as a perfectly viable alternative to Windows. We just don’t have reason to learn to use it (or OS X, or Unix, or any other OS or programming language or utility not in use where we work).

I dont use linux because..

In reply to I hope you’ll be waiting a while

I can never get sound or wireless to work correctly.

It’s a pain in the butt

In reply to I dont use linux because..

It’s a pain in the butt to do simple things like download and install a program. It’s a pain in the butt to get my sound card to work. It’s a pain in the butt when you have to be a super geek to even use it.

You just don’t understand

In reply to It’s a pain in the butt

It’s not a pain in the butt. It’s great fun:

http://www.dumbentia.com/pdflib/moregeeky.pdf

Now who wouldn’t want an OS like that???

That’s a hoot!

In reply to You just don’t understand

You’ll probably catch hell for it from some of the more militant Penguinistas, but screw ’em if they can’t take a joke.

militant Penguinistas

In reply to That’s a hoot!

What a phrase! I had to laugh when I saw that.

Rock and Roll, don’t laugh too loud

In reply to That’s a hoot!

They’ll cross miles of cyberice to beat you with their flippers. (Every try to use a keyboard with flippers? No wonder they’re so cranky!) After you’re stunned or dead, they nibble your body and regurgitate you for their young.

no militant Penguinistas here

In reply to That’s a hoot!

I guess there must not be (m)any militant Penguinistas here at TR, since nobody seems to be catching hell for that humorous PDF. Someone (rightly) pointed out that its satirical criticism is about seven years out of date, but still credited its amusement value.

On the other hand, your comment about “militant Penguinistas” might be (mis?)read as insultingly similar to the often abused term “zealot”. Try a semester of Tact 101, third door on the left. Thanks.

— your friendly neighborhood Debianista

Great link

In reply to You just don’t understand

I’ll send it to the guy from the Real Estate congloromate who quoted 6 hoours to install a new 2003 server for 150 users and spent 10 days getting it to work part way right. :^0

Eventually the in house guy who spent most of his time redoing pictures of houses finished off that install and then 2 weeks latter pulled the entire thing out threw it in the trash and replaced it with a machine that actually worked. I’m sure that He’ll fully agree with the sedeminents in that link. 😀

Col ]:)

Um, Moron?

In reply to Great link

“who quoted 6 hoours to install a new 2003 server for 150 users and spent 10 days getting it to work part way right.”

Sorry, but anyone that incompetent shouldn’t be installing anything. He should have been able to do it in 5 hours.

But it gets even better

In reply to Great link

This moron supplied and installed the entire system fot this one office and to make matters worse he has the contract to supply this organisation AU wide.

It’s a perfect case of spending 2 Million $ to make a $25.00 saving.

They even pay his travel and accomidation expences as well. :^0

Col

Funny but dated

In reply to You just don’t understand

In 1998 (when this thing was copyrighted) this was true. However, in the computer world, eight years is approximately four generations. While you’re at it, why don’t you post an ad from the Douglas Aircraft Corporation telling us about how the DC-3 is the most comfortable way to fly? Here, I’ll save you the trouble:
http://www.centennialofflight.gov/essay/Aerospace/DC-3/Aero29.htm

I know that you posted that link as a joke, so don’t take this as a flame, but people still believe that what was in there is true. Do you know how many times I’ve heard those things said about Linux today? It’s one of the dead giveaways that the person talking about Linux has never actually used it. But they heard it from a friend who likes computers and once tried to install Red Hat 5.0 back in 1999, so it must be true in 2006. There are people who think that there is no GUI for Linux, but that doesn’t keep them from giving their opinion of it.

I have no problems with people who have used Linux for more than a day or two voicing their concerns with it. Yet even though only about 5% of the computing population has used Linux, it somehow doesn’t keep 100% of people from sharing their wisdom about it. Probably 99.9% of Linux users have used Windows, so the uninformed opinion-spouting isn’t coming from our camp. The reason you don’t hear people who have used Linux enough to become knowledgeable about it complaining about how bad it is is because once you start to get spoiled by how much better it is than Windows, you never want to go back. That’s one of the reasons Cedega is so popular.

BTW, no person on this planet has ever uttered the sentence “Yeah, I installed this new SCSI adapter in my system last night and Windows 95 just recognized it and it worked the first time.” Trust me; I’ve been through that before.

If this makes me a militant Penguinista, then so be it. Viva la revolucion!

Now wait a min…

In reply to Funny but dated

The DC-3 is STILL flying schedualed service. That’s a damn Good Aircraft. It sure doesn’t belong in the same context as Windows. Please. (and for comfort, any landing one can walk away from is good, and if you can use the aircraft again, it was a great landing!) 🙂

You’re right – it was a joke…

In reply to Funny but dated

…however, sadly, parts that joke are still true today, 8 years later. I wish it was not so, or I would switch. We run MKS Toolkit just to get access to all the great command line tools (grep, vi, which, etc) that Windows didn’t provide before 2003 Server R2. I’ve installed Red Hat 5, 6, 7.2, Fedora Core, and Enterprise 3 over the years, and they’ve all been a huge time suck with no major benefit to me.

Out of the 50 servers in this office, 5 of them run Red Hat Enterprise 3 or Solaris 9. We used to run AIX as well. I’m not saying I’m any kind of Unix expert, but we do run it, and have for years.

I’m sure it has a lot to do with familiarity, but the *nix boxes are simply much harder to administer. Even with Enterprise 3 and a hardcore Linux guy (one of the most technical guys I’ve met in 14 years of IT work, and he only did Unix admin before he started working for me last year), we recently spent about an hour mucking about in various config files to get VNC set up correctly, and another two hours on top of that to get Samba working. And even with all that time there are still issues – Samba can’t deal with Windows DFS shares, and the security doesn’t integrate well with our 2003 domain (maybe it could if we spent a few more hours on it). It took so long that we didn’t even bother to do it on the next two Enterprise 3 boxes we built – we just walk in to the server room if we need GUI access, and other than that we use ssh for terminal access and FTP for file transfers. Like most IT departments, we are highly understaffed and simply don’t have the time to waste on this stuff.

Even simple things like getting the Sybase Server to start when the machine boots still requires knowing the correct rc.local file to put the startup script in. You just can’t argue that remembering which file it goes in (and knowing how to use vi to get it in there) is as easy as having it show up in Services automatically, already set to start. And that’s not any knock on vi – the MKS Toolkit version of vi is about the only text editor I ever use. 🙂

So, yes – it was a joke, and yes – it is dated, and DEFINITELY yes – no one has ever uttered the phrase, “Yeah, I installed this new SCSI adapter in my system last night and Windows 95 just recognized it and it worked the first time.” But speaking as someone who supports both environments, Linux still has a ways to go before I’ll start using it on my desktop. And if it doesn’t work for me, think how much farther away it is for my parents, or less-technical friends, or (since we’re pulling statistics out of the air) 99% of everyone I know. 🙂

Points

In reply to Funny but dated

Samba can be a real bear for two reasons:
1) It has a HUGE number of options to choose from
2) It is working with something it MS doesn’t want it to work it

Let me point you to a link for some DFS (which can be a PITA depending on your authentication scheme) help:
http://www.faqs.org/docs/samba/appa.html

As for the rest of it:
I HIGHLY recommend a tool called webmin (www.webmin.com). It is a great centralized, web based sys admin tool for Linux. You can setup a ton of stuff in there and do typical admin tasks.

As for getting services to start at boot time(I’ve forgotten what you mentioned) there is a tool that Red Hat uses called ntsysv. Try that out.

From your post I have to say a major problem is simply that you aren’t familiar with the way Linux works. Once you get over the hump (the MS stupid way), you’ll see that administering *nix is WAY easier…

SCSI Adapter

In reply to Funny but dated

I have to say – I have uttered a sentence very similar to “Yeah, I installed this new sCSI adapter in my system last night and Windows 98 just recognized it and it worked the first time.” – I said it, cos I was utterly, utterly, utterly gob-smacked!
And, I hate to say it, but much as I love tinkering with OSes and the like, and am moving all my 9 home machines across to *nixes, I’m still finding that I have lots of problems with drivers – especially wireless cards.

I’ve got a PCMCIA wireless card that works fine on Windows, and seems to work ok on Linux, until I ifup the interface – when it literally hangs the system. I’ve also got a PCI wireless card which I’m trying to run with NDISulator on FreeBSD (a card that someone else seems to have got working on FreeBSD via the same method) and it pulls up a kernel panic… I’m getting tempted to move to FreeBSD for the laptop in order to make use of it’s native driver for the PCMCIA card, and to Linux for the FreeBSD box, because I’ve got a linux driver for the PCI card… This may or may not be do-able, and it may or may not work…

I admit – I am not even a power user in Linux, but I could have installed about 1000 wireless cards in Windows with the time it’s taken me to get it running so far, and two OS rebuilds to come I may still be looking at issues…

Much as I enjoy doing this sort of thing, and have (evidently) a scarey amount of free time to waste – I suspect most people would give up in frustration at this point…

But this is one of those issues about Vendor support… If more people used FOSS, there would be more demand for vendors to provide drivers, rather than relying on the community to make them.

Funny, cute, and wrong

In reply to You just don’t understand

A) Linux is PnP…as a matter of fact is support hardware better and more often than Windows. Rarely will I need to dig up that driver disk because Linux just “knows” what my devices are. If it doesn’t know it has a good generic that will make my device work WELL out of the box.

B) I can install an “everything” install of Fedora Core 5 (~7 gig) in about 1 hour. It is just clicking next and choosing things like timezone and root password. WAY harder than Winders…jeez

C) I’d rather have a choice of window managers than be forced to use a kludgy, ugly, and HEAVY one. Hell I can use everything from TWM (the old unixish GUI) to KDE or Gnome.

What it boils down to is this: Why wouldn’t you want choice?

I’ll take a shot at it at your “choice” question

In reply to Funny, cute, and wrong

“Why wouldn’t you want choice?”

I’ve tried this before, but I rarely articulate it clearly. Please note that I am not saying choice is bad, either explicitly or implicity.

Choice is confusing. From the choice of disto to GUI (or lack of one), assorted office suites, this package manager, that installer, etc, the variety can be overwhelming to someone who is used to “one size (trys to) fit all”. If you don’t have any background experience to draw on, it becomes intimidating. The constant arguing between distro factions adds to the confusion.

Choice reduces transportable skills. If I learn the Windows GUI and the Office suite, I can be reasonably certain the skills I learned will apply at the next company that uses Win / Off, or when I go to Cousin Bob’s. If I learn to use one Linux GUI and one OSS suite, that doesn’t mean they’ll be in use the next place I work, or that Aunt Sue will have the same distro.

installation and choice

In reply to Funny, cute, and wrong

jmgarvin:
B) I once did a Debian install in less than twenty minutes and less than twenty keystrokes. That’s tough to beat.

Palmetto:
You’re right, sometimes choice can be confusing to the newbie. Your discussion of that confusion seems to extend beyond the state of being a neophyte, however, and I think your point falters there. By learning some basic Linux skills (use of manpages, how a package manager works, et cetera), you can then transfer skills from one toolset to another very easily. For instance, package managers all tend to have functional interface characteristics in common, and learning the differences between them is typically as easy as skimming a couple of manpages.

This is one of the reasons I advocate learning to outgrow the Windows-indoctrinated cliphobia: with the exception of a couple of filesystem quirks that can vary slightly across two or three major families of Linux distribution, Linux system administration at the command line interface is pretty much exactly the same across distributions, and pretty much the same set of basic tools will always be available — assuming the owner of the machine didn’t decide to really customize the hell out of the system to the point where it’s pretty much no longer recognizable as Linux. I’ve been known to reconfigure my Windows systems in the past in ways that made it exceedingly difficult for other people to accomplish basic tasks, simply because the Windows defaults are so obtuse that I was able to get something like a 20% productivity boost by making such custom configurations. Linux is more flexible than Windows, so of course it’s possible to make it even more different, and even more difficult for a low-skill user to make his way around, but it takes a bit of real work to get to that point. The CLI is, short of seriously perverse desire to just be different, fairly constant across installs.

more on the choice issue

In reply to Funny, cute, and wrong

Mainly to Palmetto, but no reply button there.
You say Choice is Confusing. Yes, it can be. Especially if you’re a support provider/helpdesk. But it’ really comes down to skills, and how applicable they are. Ya think a Ford trained mechanic could fix a Chevy? Probably – the concepts are close enough. segue to…

Choice reduces transportable skills. Excuse me? How does learning multiple options make you less valuable? Agreed, Win/Office will remain in demand for the forseeable future. But how is knowing OpenOffice or other going to hamper you? When you learn multiple methods, you start working on a different level – you expect this product to do this function, you just have to find the ‘how’.

ScouterDude,

In reply to Funny, cute, and wrong

When the Reply button is missing, go to the message on the next-to-the-last level and Reply to it. This results in a bunch of entries at the bottommost level, so be sure to put the name of the intended reader in the subject.

“Especially if you’re a support provider/helpdesk … ”

I’m not looking at the question of choice from a support point of view (although that sucks too; that’s why companies try to standardize on one app for each purpose), but as an end user.

“Ya think a Ford trained mechanic could fix a Chevy? Probably …”

The auto repair analogy is nice. Imagine that same mechanic is not already trained on Fords, but is new to the field. He’d like to start learning skills, but there are over 100 different car models (representing distros in this analogy). Where to start?

“But how is knowing OpenOffice or other going to hamper you? When you learn multiple methods, you start working on a different level – you expect this product to do this function, you just have to find the ‘how’.”

It won’t hamper you at all, but it may not help. Let’s say you take the time to add OpenOffice to your MS Office skills. But in a “choice is everything” world, how do I know I’m going to wind up working with OpenOffice when I’m job hunting? How do I know which GUI I’m going to be looking at? Do I have to learn them all? Even if I know what I want to do, I’m still going to lose some productivity every time I have to learn how to exercise those old skills in a new app. A common standard app makes it easier to transport my knowledge.

I’m not opposed to having choices, but along with the good that comes from it there are negatives that many pro-choice advocates seem to be unaware of.

re: the “negatives” of choice

In reply to Funny, cute, and wrong

Palmetto . . . those of us who are worth addressing on the issue (since there are people only worth ignoring in every camp — even mine), even as advocates of greater choice, realize that there are always trade-offs. In the matter of whether or not to have more (good) choices, however, the negatives are pretty much confined to a largely imagined increase in convenience. Even if these convenience costs were all completely relevant, the things you have to trade away for that convenience constitute a far greater cost.

There is a convenience cost in learning a new application’s way to do the same old things, of course. In the real world, as it commonly exists, that cost comes when learning a non-Microsoft office productivity application like OpenOffice.org Writer instead of MS Office Word. There’s a downside in convenience, however, in that because MS doesn’t play nicely with others, there will always be people who are inconvenienced by your choice, and you’ll be inconvenienced whenever you deal with them. This is the sort of thing the Open Document Format (ODF) is meant to solve.

With a common, standardized document format that is maintained independently of any corporation trying to leverage everything under the sun for market dominance, free to be implemented by any office suite, you can use whatever application you like to read and write documents. Unfortunately, this sets long-term convenience against short-term convenience: since many people have to use MS Word at work at this time, it’s sort of a necessity to learn to use it. It becomes inconvenient in the short term to learn to use something like OpenOffice.org or Star Office as well. In the long term, continuing to support the Microsoft near-monopoly on office productivity suites by refusing to learn how to use a competing application, thus ending up having to get more copies of MS Word everywhere you do word processing, continues to support Microsoft in its efforts to marginalize everything else by fighting compatibility at every turn. If MS Office were dragged into the realm of fair competition so that it would have to support the same document formats as everyone else (by way of actually making competitors popular enough that MS can’t just ignore them or try to shut them out), people would be able to pick whatever office productivity suite they liked and use it always. Once again, we’d be in the position of only really needing to learn one office productivity suite for most purposes, but your documents would now be fully portable across all major applications, and the vendor of your application wouldn’t be trying to “embrace, extend, and extinguish” widely compatible document formats.

In other words . . . yes, we’re (where “we” means “most advocates of greater choice”) fully aware of the “negatives” of increased choice. We just also realize that, overall, those negatives are mostly illusory and shortsighted.

Choice…

In reply to Funny, cute, and wrong

Choice is good, no argument there, I want choice in flavor of Soda, Color of Car…
On the other hand, I don’t want a choice in the arrangement of the Gas, Break and Cluth pedals in my car. I want them to be in the same place, no matter what car I get in.
I wish there wasN’T choice when it came to credit card transaction handling at stores. I get really annoyed trying to remember which procedure to use in which store (swipe the card first, push the red button first, push the credit button first, give the card to the cashier…).

I don’t want a choice of a dozen different GUI’s. I just want one that works.

Choice for the sake of choice… just not a compelling argument.

If you don’t like choice, then don’t choose

In reply to Funny, cute, and wrong

Pick an install and go with the defaults. OO mirrors most of what MS Office looks like. Gnome (and I’m sure KDE) can be made to look EXACTLY like XP.

Linux doesn’t “rearange pedals” as you would state. MS does this with every “new” product.

The FLOSS world tries to make it easier to move to *nix by creating tools that look like the tools from MS. But MS never did design anything properly. Apparently nobody at MS has read “The Design of Everyday Things.”

So, if you don’t like the choice, remove it from YOUR install, not mine.

jmg, FLOSS?

In reply to Funny, cute, and wrong

We’ve gone from OSS to FOSS to FLOSS. What’s the ‘L’ stand for?

Hopefully FLOOZIE is next. You open source people generate acronyms like Windows generates Blue Screens of Death 🙂

FLOSS and GUI choices

In reply to Funny, cute, and wrong

Palmetto, regarding FLOSS: Free/Libre/Open Source

shardeth, regarding GUI choices: If you want a GUI that just works, and don’t care about how it’s arranged, then use whatever’s put in front of you. I don’t care. What I do care about is the GUI that I — not you, I — am using. I use a window manager called WindowMaker. Most people don’t — most people are happy with GNOME, KDE, XFCE, or IceWM. There’s a fairly strong contingent that likes the various *box window managers (Fluxbox, Blackbox, et cetera). There are some who prefer FVWM, and some who like really obscure options like PekWM. Enlightenment is really popular with a particular subset of Linux users. I’m still happiest with WindowMaker, though.

Your lack of imagination shouldn’t interfere with my options. The fact that I am more productive with a window manager that doesn’t get in my way shouldn’t prevent you from having a crufty, bloated thing like KDE or Windows Explorer to satisfy your desire for clicky buttons and animated little whirligigs.

Something a lot of people seem to be missing is this:
Open source software (like many of the available window managers for Linux and other unices) is created because somebody wants it. All that choice you say is unnecessary exists specifically because someone wanted it. It’s not gratuitous or redundant. It’s something someone wanted and needed.

About 98% of distributions default to either KDE or GNOME, though. Is two choices too many for you, shardeth?

Choice (clarification)

In reply to Funny, cute, and wrong

Easy there fellas, no one is trying to take away your specific desktop floral arrangement. I am not talking about removing choice. I am talking about unnecessary choice. A physical example.
Let’s say I don’t like the Black,Brown,Red,Orange,Yellow,Green,Blue,Violet,Grey,White Coding scheme for Resistors. I Think it makes so much more sense to just do the primary and secondary colors in order around the color wheel: Red, Orange Yellow Green Blue Purple (and then finish up with Black,Brown,Grey,White). It is easier to remember that way. So what happens if I start producing my own resistors with my choice of color scheme? Now you have to test every resistor to see if it really is the value you think it is.

There is no value in having a choice as to whether the RC files are in /etc or /etc/rc.d

and I don’t think I really need a choice as to the appropriate place to stick various binaries (/bin /sbin /usr/bin /usr/sbin /usr/local/bin /usr/local/sbin). I would much rather be able to depend on a specific binary being in a specific location so that I don’t have to go hunting for it.

You want 2 billion ways to organize your icons, play your music files, or display your scantily clad girlie pictures, be my guest, but why not standardize the underlying API so that what works here, works there? (Gnome and KDE are making progress in this area, so apparently I am not the only one who thinks so)

That has nothing to do with the GUI.

In reply to Funny, cute, and wrong

The underlying filesystem hierarchy (to which you inexplicably refer as “the underlying API”, even though that’s not even vaguely the right term) is pretty much standard for everything except the big RPM distros — which all do some things their own damned ways without regard for common sense or standardization. As for the various different binary directories, they exist to separate user binaries, system binaries, root binaries, and so on, for ease of system administration. If you don’t understand how they’re organized, don’t assume that means they shouldn’t be organized.

jmg, “Pick an install”

In reply to Funny, cute, and wrong

“Pick an install and go with the defaults”

Hell, picking an install is the hardest part!!!

If that’s the hardest part . . .

In reply to Funny, cute, and wrong

. . . it shouldn’t be any difficulty at all to install and use Linux.

I am aware…

In reply to Funny, cute, and wrong

That FileSystem and API are different things. I offered the filesystem discrepancies as an example (like the resistors, which by the way also have nothing to do with the API, just to clarify) 😉

Yup.

In reply to Funny, cute, and wrong

What you said is pretty much what I’m saying…

” is pretty much standard for everything except the big RPM distros — which all do some things their own damned ways without regard for common sense or standardization”

Various Binary Directories: “Organized” (yeah right)

In reply to Funny, cute, and wrong

“If you don’t understand how they’re organized, don’t assume that means they shouldn’t be organized.”

If they actually were organized/consistent, it wouldn’t be a problem. I have seen the same app wind up in different directories, from one distro to the next. Evidently the folks making it are struggling with the definitions too.

different locations != disorganized

In reply to Funny, cute, and wrong

There are a couple distros (Fedora and Mandriva come to mind) that can’t keep things straight, but in general the filesystem hierarchy is quite well organized across different distributions. You just need to understand that, for instance, the same application might appear in /usr/bin on one install and /usr/local/bin on another, depending on whether it’s part of the standard configuration in a given network. The differing locations indicate differing purposes within differing networks.

Here:
http://www.pathname.com/fhs/pub/fhs-2.3.html

Read about the Filesystem Hierarchy Standard.

OK Palmetto I’ve just finished building my most recent White Box

In reply to Funny, cute, and wrong

I’ve got about 12 Different Cd for each piece of hardware in it and I want to install XP which of the 7 versions should I pick?

Should I go with OEM or Retail?

What is Volume License and it’s advantages?

All my new hardware is MS Certified and it’s still [b]Plug & Pray[/b] not [b]Plug & Play![/b]

If you are only interested in buying off the self systems with the worst combinations of things installed in them then [b]Dell Hell[/b] would be ideal for you but personally I like to chose what goes into my system and have Decent Hardware that I know is going to continue working for quite a while unlike the Dell Box that I got delivered here Sunday as a urgent Repair that just had to be done now because it was 3 days out of warranty and the PS had failed because it was so underpowered I’m surprised that it lasted that long. Even them the 480 W Antec True Power Supply that I used was still cheaper than the Dell 250 W propriety unit that came with the computer.

If you think that all you need to install Windows is one Dell Box and the recovery CD you are living in [b]Ga Ga Land[/b] as very few real Windows Installations are achieved by just dropping in the Windows OEM CD and running it. After you finish the Windows Install you then start on all the hardware that Windows doesn’t have the drivers for. Little unimportant things Video Cards, Sound Cards and Capture Cards not to mention Printers Scanners and any other USB Device that you plug in that needs it’s own drivers.

MS isn’t that easy to really live with unless you have the most basic box incapable of doing any real work and without an attached Printer or scanner and a LAN connection that has Windows Drivers which the higher speed ones don’t.

Col

Whatever…

In reply to Funny, cute, and wrong

“I’ve got about 12 Different Cd for each piece of hardware in it.”

Complete bull and utter FUD. I’ve never seen a retail system sold with a 12 CD set to install. That’s Linux you are confusing with. Do you even have 12 components in your system that require drivers?

“Should I go with OEM or Retail?”

Like the average user ever comes across this problem. Buy a prebuilt system, get OEM. Build your own or upgrade later, go retail. Now that was a simple answer.

Plug and Pray is so over used. Stop using Win 95/98 and use Win XP you’ll see what Plug and Play is and how well it does work for the most commonly used components.

Open your Dell PC and I’d venture to say you’ll see many of the same parts you buy retail to build your own system minus hours of work. They use Maxtor, Western Digital, Intel, Broadcom, ATI, nVidia, etc. Unless of course you buy the $299 system.

The only difference is they buy millions at a time thus save money and pass some of that onto you.

Dell also has one of the best warranties out there. Better than having to keep track of the various part by part warranties of a custom built system. With Dell, you can get a 3 year, all included warranty. Custom built you get some 90 days, some 1 year, some 3 year, some no year.

Every HP system I have purchased in the last 2-3 years only requires 2 CD’s to reformat. One is the Windows CD and the other is the drivers and misc crap the manufacturer puts on there. I reinstall using the Windows CD only, download a current drivers, and skip the crap on the second CD.

The only part of your rant I would agree with is printers and that is the printer manfacturers problem. Most printers now have a CD full of about 400-500MB of crap. I don’t make T-shirts, I don’t want their crappy software, I don’t care about photo editing (I use Photoshop), etc.

Rikk, it’s not FUD, truth

In reply to Funny, cute, and wrong

“Complete bull and utter FUD. I’ve never seen a retail system sold with a 12 CD set to install. That’s Linux you are confusing with. Do you even have 12 components in your system that require drivers?”

Let’s see. I need CDs for my wireless drivers, my video card, my sound card, oh and don’t forget Nero so I can burn CDs, along with my DVD viewing software (ala Interwin), and my DVD burning software. Oh, and the OS and application disks. Plus the plethora of other CDs vendors ship just to get your system running…

“Plug and Pray is so over used. Stop using Win 95/98 and use Win XP you’ll see what Plug and Play is and how well it does work for the most commonly used components.”

I just plugged my Hawking wireless card into my laptop…Why doesn’t XP recognize it? I also bought this new video card, XP doesn’t see that either…Oh and my USB devices aren’t so universal either, I need a driver just to use them.

“Dell also has one of the best warranties out there. Better than having to keep track of the various part by part warranties of a custom built system. With Dell, you can get a 3 year, all included warranty. Custom built you get some 90 days, some 1 year, some 3 year, some no year.”

A lot of parts come with a 3 year warrenty. So part by part, for free, I get the same warrenty as Dell. ‘Course some only come with a 1 year, so I’ll have to pay the extra $20 or $30 for the extented. While Dell makes managing your user desktops easier, I wouldn’t say they produce a quality product. And E270s? 10 to 1 you have serious power supply issues….We do

jmg: Dell

In reply to Funny, cute, and wrong

I have to say, I’ve always been extremely happy with the machines I’ve bought from Dell – I’ve worked in organisations that are exclusively Dell, organisations that are IBM, organisations that go with smaller online vendors, etc, etc…
I’ve never found a company that provides the kind of after sales support I get from Dell, and some have been down-right awful… I’ve waited for 30 mins on some calls just to report that the hardware is faulty and needs to be replaced.

I’m also consistently impressed with the suite of diagnostic tools they ship in their utility partition. I have a fairly good set of tools myself, but I don’t always know which is going to be the best one in any given circumstance – with their diagnostic tools, Dell ask you what errors you are experiencing and then run the appropriate tests. I have to say it really impressed me first time I saw it…

Ok, Dell may not be bespoke, but for most of the companies I’ve worked with, that don’t have limitless IT budgets, I would recommend Dell every time.

(Even if afterwards I install Linux over the Win XP, a lot of the time, even with the cost of the license, the cheapest boxes work out cheaper than I could buy the parts for separately…)

Jmgarvin, Stop Being Stupid

In reply to Funny, cute, and wrong

Sure, you can easily get to 12 CD’s to install a “base” system if you start counting all your programs that did and didn’t come with the system.

I’d bet it takes about 50 CD’s to get my “base” system at home up and running.

Here is Hal’s quote though:

“I’ve got about 12 Different Cd for each piece of hardware in it and I want to install XP which of the 7 versions should I pick?”

Nowhere in there do I see anything about DVD viewing, Nero, and manufacturer crap. He was pretending to make it sound as though it takes 12 CD’s to install Windows and it’s related hardware, nothing else.

And what is this 7 different versions thing? Utter nonsense. Not to over simplify but here’s the choice for 99% of the world…Win XP Home or Win XP Pro. That’s it. Pretty simple.

Sure, it can get more complicated from there for an admin, but 99% of the world aren’t network admins.

99% of the world does either Home or Pro, OEM or retail. Done. End of story.

OK Rick please explain :D

In reply to Funny, cute, and wrong

The system is for myself and I need a bulk amount of processing power so this is what in it.

1 X Intel SE7501 HG2 M’Board with build in SCSI

2 X Intel Xeon 3.2 GIG CPU’s

1 X Video Card ATI Radeon 256 MEG

1 X Soundbalster Audigy 2

1 X Aver Media Studio 3 Video Capture Card

1 X SATA Controller Card

1 X DVD Burner/Player

Then there are the accessories that I’m using

1 X Creative Vista Web Cam

1 X Canon USB Scanner

1 X Samsung CLP-500N Laser network Printer

1 X Canon i965 Bubble Jet Printer

1 X XP Pro OEM CD

Now by my count just for the necessary drivers that is 12 CD’s all of which are required to actually load the machine. Once Windows is loaded.

Windows Installs and the following [b]Do Not Work[/b]

The Gigabyte LAN Connections on the M’Board both of them, The Video Card unless you are happy with the Default drivers supplied by MS, the sound Card not at all, the Video Capture Card not at all, the SATA Card not at all, The DD burning Program which just isn’t there, The DVD Player sort of if you will accept Media Player as the Default DVD Viewer which isn’t really up to scratch, Both Printers require their own drivers and they are not supported in form for by the Native OS without supporting drivers, the Scanner doesn’t work, the Web Cam doesn’t work and most of all while the M’Board will work sort of it’s much better once you install the Intel Drivers for all the bits on it and there is a [b]Really Cool[/b] monitoring program that comes with the M’Board so you can monitor both the Voltages and Temps.

It’s in an Antec Server Case with a mix of several different HDD 2 PATA, 4 SATA, and 15 SCSI. I didn’t fit the RAID controller as that would have been another CD required to install the proper RAID Configuration.

Could Dell make that for me? Well actually yes they could but not with my preferred Case and certainly not with all the HDD’s that I have and they wanted more that what I actually spent on this unit to build it for my out of inferior parts with a smaller Case fewer HDD’s and smaller SCSI’s as well.

For $300.00 AU under Dell’s quote I got this unit just as I wanted it and there are certainly more than just 12 CD’s involved without the MS OS or any Software other than DVD Burning & Playing Software. If you include the Windows CD and Office CD there are another 2 to add to the count.

Now all of the Plug In cards have the Plug & Play Logo on them but not one of them will actually Plug & Play the only one that sort of works is the Video Card all the rest have these little Yellow Circles beside them in the System Manager and need their install CD’s to actually work otherwise they are all just a waste of money if you where to rely on MS to provide the necessary support.

I’m also not including the Monitor or Case CD’s in the list or some of the others for devices that sort of work but work properly when the correct drivers are installed.

Now that you have the Facts [b]Who’s Full of It?[/b]

The Aver Card had to be used because the Life View one wouldn’t allow the system to boot and even that if used doesn’t load the necessary 7 drivers from the Windows CD and then you need to think about the actual program which is another load & reboot.

Col

[i]Edited[/i] for Rick. At the last MS Partners Meeting MS specifically states that they have 7 versions of XP currently on sale and these are available in both OEM and Retail forms. In Volume License Forms that only have XP Pro but for the others there are currently [b]7 versions of XP Available[/b] and while you may only think of Home & Pro there are others that you just haven’t considered as XP available like Media Centre & CE just off the top of my head so that’s 4 without even trying to look up all the currently available Windows XP derivatives Versions available. You should really [b]Keep Up To Date With MS Products. [/b] :^0

I also forgot to add to the list of components the Digital Video Capture Card another Aver product. but that just makes thing even worse from a setup point of view. :p

rickk, HAL

In reply to Funny, cute, and wrong

“I’ve never seen a retail system sold with a 12 CD set … ”

rickk, HAL was not discussing a retail system, he’s talking about a “white box”.

HAL, I’ve never build a machine from scratch although I don’t doubt I could do it if I tried. Like using Linux, it’s just something I’ve never had a reason to do. But, c’mon, get real. Someone capable of doing all the research to select the best parts going into a system, making sure they’re compatible, etc. isn’t going to have any trouble distinguishing between OEM or retail versions of Windows, or between Linux distros.

Yes, we do buy Dell here, recently switching to them from HP / Compaq. We don’t have the time to build systems and prefer to have one point of contact when a hardware component fails. I wipe the drives and install XP from a CD provided under our enterprise license. I pull the latest drivers off the web before installing our basic apps and creating a Ghost image.

My point was that I personally am confused by the huge number of Linux distributions. Your point appears to be that Windows is at least as confusing and that you don’t like Dell. Don’t look to me to defend Windows or Dell, but your post does nothing to clear my distro confusion.

Hal…

In reply to Funny, cute, and wrong

I was quoting you.

You mislead just as much as others on here.

How many people have a system like yours? You can’t compare Windows on a custom built system and then generalize that to the rest of the world.

I have recently purchased 26 new PC’s from HP and all of them came with 2 CDs.

And, just how many CD’s or downloads does it take to get that sucker up and running with Linux?

You describe issues with that equipment under Windows, just curious…issues with Linux?

Palmetto for that system

In reply to Funny, cute, and wrong

I didn’t have any trouble choosing the parts except for one of the Video Capture Cards the Free to Air one which was a bit of a nuisance and I also have 25 CD sets some have 4 CD’s in them for Windows Programs to install on it after it’s actually loaded. So it isn’t a [b]Short Install Time[/b] and not something that can be expected to be Ghosted for the Initial Install though one of the removable SATA drives, is now a Clone of the Boot Drive of Windows but only the 32 bit version as I’m not bothered with the 64 Bit one as it’s just a development platform.

As I’m running several different OS’s on the same system Win XP Pro, Win XP Pro 64 [that ones a nightmare as there just are not the drivers available for it] Debian and SUSE.

I’ll leave a few drive partitions clear to install Test OS on when I get around to needing to test something though but they will be the Cheap PATA ones that are partitioned to 50 GIG from the 200 GIG that they are.

But this is the main difference between the US and AU in the US I’m told at the MS Meetings almost every computer is sold by the Big Makers and here in AU most are sold by the small system builders who have the advantage of fast delivery times with the newest hardware available. I actually wanted a Quad Processor M’Board but there is no Windows Desktop product that will work correctly on it so I just settled for the Dual Xeon’s and I’ll put up with the slower performance when I’m running in XP.

The point was however that there are currently 7 versions of XP or its derivatives available from MS so there is a fair choice there as well even if only two are actually thought of being used [b]In Bulk.[/b]

s for what you might like to consider as a suitable Distro from a Nix supplier that really depends on what it is you need as they don’t aim their product in an attempt to have [b]One Size Fits All[/b] which is the MS way of doing business.

If you just want a desktop that’s easy to install Corel’s Linux will suit you perfectly, it’s so good that MS killed it off and though now dated is still brilliant for a new user, if you want a server OS then something like SUSE which ever is the Latest now or Red Hat again the latest and both are cheaper than Windows 2003 ES and have greater capacity less overhead and better scalability. Both have direct support from IBM who claim that they can have fixes available within 48 working hours for any of these products installed on one of their Servers. IBM has their own teams working on both Distro’s as well as direct contact with the makers.

MS on the other hand doesn’t allow IBM access to the Source Code so if you use any MS product on an IBM Server you’ll be stuck waiting for MS to come up with a fix as IBM is not in a position to help you out. That’s probably why IBM claims that their Server Sales are 60% Nix and 40% MS and when you start loooking at even the small Blades like the 500 CPU ones I can not think of many people who can afford the MS Licensing for one of these as the cost would come very close to the Hardware cost and IBM isn’t noted for being cheap. Then if you start looking at one of the really big Blades with several K’s CPU’s that is a thing that just isn’t worth thinking about with MS Licensing.

Col

Rick

In reply to Funny, cute, and wrong

Currently I’m still installing the apps for XP Pro 32 and I haven’t even thought about the 64 Bit version as there are not enough drivers for it to work properly, but on that system Debian installed without a problem from the 15 install CD and while I did install just about everything except Server or Domain items from Debian I think that I only needed something like 8 of the CD’s and then drivers for the Sound card and Video Capture Cards. Less than 4 hours to have it up and running perfectly with Debian and I’m still installing XP Pro although the initial Install and loading the necessary drivers and software that came with the hardware took about 4 hours as well.

The difference is that with the Debian Install I have all the necessary programs that I want and I’m still installing and rebooting the XP Pro one which dictated the hardware that I could use as XP will not support a Quad Processor M’Board let alone one with HTT on each CPU. Even now it’s only running each CPU as one without HTT so it’s actually slower than the Nix install.

After I finish the XP install I’ll throw the latest SUSE that I got from Novell at it and see what happens. But the one that I’m not looking forward to is the 64 Bit XP version that MS gave me. I can see a lot of problems cropping up there even if the CPU’s do have the 64 Bit Extensions in them. There just isn’t mush software available and even fewer drivers so I can see most of the 32 Bit drivers being used for the time being at least and if the 64 Bit ones ever become available I’ll install them then.

Col

Apotheon. I am familiar with the ‘standard’.

In reply to Funny, cute, and wrong

But I haven’t seen consistent application of the standard. Sure all (well, most anyway) of the debian derivatives use the same strategy, and all/most of the redhat derivatives are fairly similar. (I am guesing you are a Debian guy, as you seem fairly caustic in your views of the ‘rpm crowd’. Well, so long as you stick with the officially approved packages anyhow.

Choice:Pick an install

In reply to Funny, cute, and wrong

Okay, here’s my choice:
I want Fedora’s slick install front-end
Debian’s more consistent install back-end
Knoppix’s reliable plug-n-playfulness
and OpendBSD’s security mindedness
With Microsoft’s organized and more mature, GUI admin tools/control panel(I wanted to select this from a distro as well, but I couldn’t think of a single one).

I fail to see what’s so difficult

In reply to It’s a pain in the butt

about opening up a package manager, typing in the name of what you want to install, checking the box next to it, and clicking OK.

Or, if it’s something you downloaded in source form, unzipping it and typing
./configure
make
[and possibly, as root] make install

Or, if it’s an RPM, right-clicking on it and selecting “Install with Foo”, with Foo being the name of your distro’s package manager.

Come back when you’ve actually used a distro that’s come out in the last two or three years. The 2.6 kernel and improvements in ALSA solved a large percentage of sound problems quite a while ago. Thursday is the release date for openSuSE 10.1. May I suggest you play around with it over the weekend? I know for a fact that SuSE 10.0 handles sound cards (and all my other hardware, including my Treo 650, for that matter) effortlessly.

Hopefully some insight

In reply to I fail to see what’s so difficult

I’m going to assume ds4211 is speaking from a Windows background. If not, I’m sure he’ll correct me.

Some of these tasks look difficult simply because they aren’t done the same way as in Windows. Windows users expect to perform a task by applying their existing skills may experience frustration.

“…what’s so difficult about opening up a package manager, …
Or, if it’s something you downloaded in source form, …
Or, if it’s an RPM, …”

You specified three different ways to install a program, including at least one that requires the command line. Can you see how this would seem difficult to someone used to inserting the CD and having the installation process start by itself? (I sincerely hope I’m not incorrectly interpreting ds4211’s skill level. If I am, I apologise.)

Even if everything in your last paragraph is true, you haven’t provided a reason to spend time learning an alternative to an already operational system. Why play with SuSE 10.1? His Windows setup already works.

Linux != Windows

In reply to Hopefully some insight

You’re absolutely right: people who are just in a rut in terms of rote memorization of computing habits think anything outside that rut is “difficult”. As a result, many people find some of the easiest computing tasks “difficult” due to unfamiliarity with them. Of course, there’s the famous “Linux != Windows” essay to help people grasp that their difficulty is unfamiliarity, not actual comparative difficulty of the system.

http://linux.oneandoneis2.org/LNW.htm

Even that is getting a bit dated these days, as Linux developers are going out of their way to ease transitions for Linux newbies from the Windows way of doing things.

Of course, I’ve learned how to do pretty much everything in both Windows and Linux, and in my experience it’s a lot easier to get almost anything done with Linux than with Windows. I’m not typical, though: I am not wedded to a particular set of habits. I’m judging not by level of familiarity, but by ease of use when equally familiar with each option.

Different mentality

In reply to Hopefully some insight

First off, I believe you can create auto running CDs for Linux (I could be wrong on that as it’s not the sort of thing I really pay much attention to)

Secondly, the key reason for such a different approach to installation is that without having to pay for licensing (most linux compatible software is freely available), and with a readily available internet connection (which I agree, not everybody has), there’s not that much need for CDs.

If you look at models like Direct2Drive (an online service where you can legally purchase licenses to download and run software), you’ll see that they work by similar principles.

Liken the (GUI based) package manager to the Add/Remove Programs applet in the Windows Control Panel. Imagine that it can also search for and download software for you, including any other pieces of software that the one you’re after might require.

I see that as being simpler and more powerful than having to man-handle a stack of discs. That said, it was quite an alien concept when I first started using linux.

It does?

In reply to I fail to see what’s so difficult

Your Palm Treo works with SuSE 10.x? I’d like to hear about that. It makes me want to go out and buy one. (ooooh, that’s not good :0 )

Sure.

In reply to It does?

Just use Kpilot. There’s a different package–I believe it’s multisync but I can’t be sure right now as I’m at work and stuck using a legacy OS–that will work if you’re not a KDE user. Even if you use Gnome, Kpilot may work if you have the right libs installed.

Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to figure out how to get it to transfer my pictures, as the media conduit seems to be different from everything else, but it does everything else (like app installs, etc.).

—Update—
Now that I’m sitting in front a non-brain-dead machine, I find that Gnome users would use a package called, duh, gnome-pilot.

I hate how OSS developers use such nonsensical names. Why can’t they use normal names like “ctpazxx.ini” or “csrss.exe”? [I didn’t make these up; they’re two files in %SYSTEMROOT%\System32 ]

nighthawk you went wrong awefully

In reply to I fail to see what’s so difficult

Nighthawk according to google and all anit-MS guys, changing the search option in IE7 which is nothing but a drag and drop software is too difficult for most of the computer users. I am sure you are aware of that. I dont understand how such people can type all these commands. And words it might have some dependency and most people get lost there. RPM does not install all the software as most of them still come as source files. And I am sure that if the proposed European patent law gets passes then seeing movies in linux will be officially illegal. The sound problem is just not solved. I use fedora and i have some stupid problems occasionally. To use linux you unfortunately need to be a little (a lot )more efficient with some terminal commands. And most home users just dont want or are not capable of doing it. Yes now dont ask me to use SUSE for only fedora is available in the university. And I am not novice either. I have been using it every since redhat6. And linux has not changed much. Some GUI enhancements are done but they are not stable. Support for games, music and movies is awfully low. Windows will continue to rule the home pc market for many years to come.

I don’t know where to start

In reply to nighthawk you went wrong awefully

1) Ok, why are you still using rpms? Why not yum (or god forbid, up2date?)

2) What “stupid problems?”

3) Gaming is Linux is possible with Cedega
http://www.transgaming.org
http://www.transgaming.com
http://www.transgaming.org/gamesdb
http://cedegawiki.sweetleafstudios.com/wiki/Main_Page

Now jmgarvin I really must tke exception to your answer

In reply to nighthawk you went wrong awefully

You said Gaming on Linux is possible and refered to a well known site that produces a great Windows Emulator which in itself is fine.

But you should have said [b]Windows Gaming[/b] is possible on Linux as there are quite a lot of Native Nix games available it’s just that a lot of people say [i]”I would switch to Linux in a Heartbeat but I need Windows for XYZ Game”[/i] :^0

Col ]:)

Ha! I’m getting lazy ;-)

In reply to nighthawk you went wrong awefully

I’ve explained it so many times, I think I’ve started to get lazy 😉

Neverwinter Nights runs natively in Linux as well as a HUGE amount of FLOSS games and non-FLOSS games (RtCW: ET comes to mind as well).

What are you talking about?

In reply to nighthawk you went wrong awefully

“And I am sure that if the proposed European patent law gets passes then seeing movies in linux will be officially illegal.”
That is one of the most ka-ka based statement I’ve heard in a long time. Europe is the most Linux friedly place in the Universe. You don’t realize just how many ‘Holywood’ movies and American TV shoes are Produced over here, and with Linux!

Sheesh.

In reply to nighthawk you went wrong awefully

In the US, watching movies with Linux is already illegal. I’m a criminal because I use DeCSS to watch movies I legally own. And the MPAA wonders why I only have six movies in my collection, yet none on my HDD.

How is the greed and shortsightedness of movie studio executives and bought-off legislators Linux’s fault?

I work at a help desk. I know all about the level of competence of the average user. And yet I still have a higher estimation of their abilities than you do. Not everyone is stupid, and even stupid people use Linux.

I’m not anti-MS, I’m pro-computer. M$ is bad for the computing world.

You don’t know how to check dependencies? Fedora doesn’t have a tool to do that for you? I don’t know much about Red Hat because I dropped them like a hot potato after the way they handled splitting up Fedora and RHEL. In fact, the only RPM-based distro I know well is SuSE, and YaST is unbelieveably helpful (usually). I’ve also used many Debian-based distros, and they are justly legendary for their package managers.

And you do understand that a source RPM is something that you compile into a program, yet a typical RPM is something that has already been compiled and is ready to install, right? Sure, there are source RPM’s too–they’re intended for convenient access to the source and/or for advanced users to build for themselves. Just because they exist doesn’t mean you have you have to use them, and it certainly isn’t the case that they’re the way most programs come. Fedora isn’t Gentoo or LFS, and it’s not supposed to be.

As for this quote: “I use fedora and i have some stupid problems occasionally”. Isn’t that a bit like saying “I drive a Yugo and I have problems getting it up to 120 MPH”? But seriously, how is that different from this quote: “I use Windows XP and I have some stupid problems occasionally.” Are stupid problems somehow limited to the Linux world? I’d much rather have a stupid problem that crashes Konqueror than a stupid problem that turns my machine into a spambot.

Sound problem? None of the six different sound cards or integrated audio chips I’ve used in Linux have had a problem. Sound problems are so five years ago. Viva la ALSA!

Afraid of a shell? You can go months without ever having to drop to a command line if you don’t want to.

As I’ve said before:
Thanks for your post, but come back when you’ve actually used Linux. If, as you claim, you aren’t a novice Linux user, you’d know better. You haven’t spewed out any tired old FUD we haven’t all heard 42 times before.

I use linux because

In reply to It’s a pain in the butt

it removes my dependency of Microsoft
it installed with thre clicks of the mouse
it’s a piece of cake to install what I installed
updates are easy stuff
all the apps I need are available.

I am not even a techie anymore. I was years ago, but now my job is tailoring IT systems to fit organisations, and finding IT systems that will fit a specific organisation, and we don’t even talk product names untill the map is drawn.

Any office package is like the other, and users don’t need to know what OS is under the hood of the device they use.

Hmmm….

In reply to Ten words or less: “I don’t use Linux because…”

….I don’t want to have to work that hard anymore.

I don’t use Linux because…

In reply to Ten words or less: “I don’t use Linux because…”

…I never needed it.

I’m bill gates

In reply to I don’t use Linux because…

and I spend all my time fixing Windows.

I don’t spend time fixing Windows…

In reply to I’m bill gates

…but [b]using[/b]Windows.

I don’t need linux.

In reply to I don’t use Linux because…

“…I never needed it. ”

You don’t need a BMW or Mercedes Benz
if you have a Yugo or Trabant.

Exactly

In reply to I don’t need linux.

I will buy a BMW or Benz when I am [b]in need[/b], or when I can afford it.

You can’t get much cheaper

In reply to Exactly

than free.

BMW for free

In reply to You can’t get much cheaper

🙂 that is good. But if I am in Venice, probably I would not get it even if it is given for free. When I visit Rome, maybe then I would [b]need[/b] it 🙂

I don’t use linux becuase

In reply to Ten words or less: “I don’t use Linux because…”

Jay told me it was to hard to install and get working. :p

I’m also terrified of Penguins. 😀

http://tinyurl.com/nyeem

Col ]:)

OH do URL’s count in the ten words?
http://tinyurl.com/fz854

Feel the love.

In reply to Ten words or less: “I don’t use Linux because…”

I don’t know if they still do it, but at one time all of the machines that duplicated the CD’s for software distributions at Microsoft were running Linux. Windows was just to slow and buggy.

I have used windows and I have used linux and the only reason that I use windows is because the application that I need to run does not run on Linux.

Don’t let that stop you…

In reply to Feel the love.

I haven’t managed to find my way through Wine yet, but VMware ought to let you run your Windows app just fine and let you use Linux for everything else.

MS belief in own products

In reply to Feel the love.

At a time all their administrative system was IBM AS/400 – the system still to beat when it comes to reliability and security.

… the 10,500 other users at this company …

In reply to Ten words or less: “I don’t use Linux because…”

… aren’t ready to switch overnight yet.

13 … WHoopsie

Too old for IT ?

In reply to … the 10,500 other users at this company …

My mother is 77, and she uses IT. She uses SuSe9….

My mum loves her old MAC

In reply to Too old for IT ?

She is 79 years old and uses MAC OS 7.9. She’s even upgraded the memory by herself. She’s a retired minister.

lucky you

In reply to Too old for IT ?

I switched my mother to Thunderbird (still on windows) She didn’t speak to me for a week.

Two questions here

In reply to lucky you

Why did you need to change the Mail Client?

Would your mother have acted this way if you had of used Thunderbird initially as the default Mail Client?

It’s not the fact that the new Mail Client is bad it’s [b]change[/b] that your mother doesn’t like along with the majority of end users. :p

Col

EOL

In reply to Two questions here

Because her previous Email client app was a lashup of An older version of Netscape communicator and Corel Address Book, which was made for Widnows 3.1, but we had managed to keep it limping (until recently) in Win9x. It wasn’t going to handle the move to XP, so we grabbed something new for her. Thunderbird seemed a good choice, free, Fairly friendly GUI…

Yes, the issue at hand was Change aversion, no doubt about that.

Of course some people proably read the part about my mom not talking to me, and thought I was lucky.

That’s part of the reason that my Mom’s

In reply to EOL

Latest computer went there loaded with Nightmare 8 as well. :^0

While there is something to be said for your mother not talking to you for any period of time when this ends you’ll find that you have a much bigger problem that if you had of been able to talk her through it along the way. My mother always seems to ring up and demand why it’s no longer working? After I do something that she doesn’t like and she still insists that [b]It’s Stupid[/b] to click on the Start Button to shut down the computer.

She insists that she has to use Windows and has all the trouble in the world with it and when I leave my NB loaded with Debian she never has a problem with it and I constantly find her playing Solitaire on it while she will not open the Windows Box unless it’s absolutely necessary.

Col

?:| when you think about that…

In reply to That’s part of the reason that my Mom’s

“and she still insists that It’s Stupid to click on the Start Button to shut down the computer.”
You have to admit that your Mom has a good point there. And a sense of humour too. (got me to laughing anyway) -d

I can’t fault her logic but

In reply to That’s part of the reason that my Mom’s

I just wish I wasn’t the one who had to show her how to use a Computer.

What gets me though is that she insists that she has to have Windows and then insists that when the computer gets changed she doesn’t want massive changes made [Read that as a Different Version of Windows]so I’m stuck with 98SE on it and even then she complained bitterly when I changed it from 98 to 98SE and I really can not see any differences but she insists that there are and I’m just changing it for the sake of changing it.

But she had me totally stuffed when she hit me with the Why do you click on the start button to stop it? I really didn’t have an answer for that one other than [b]It Just the Way That it Works[/b] and while she can accept that with here Video Player and DVD Player both have the same button to turn off and on none of them reads [b]Start[/b] when she doesn’t have her glasses on. The TV is OK though as it says [b]Power[/b] so she can understand why it turns on and off but with Windows she is most insistent that it’s crazy to need to click on the start button to close it down. And it’s really hard to disagree with her on that one.

Col

Thirsty?

In reply to Ten words or less: “I don’t use Linux because…”

I don’t use linux because…

For fun:
“I drank the magic Microsoft Kool-aid and I really like the jumpsuits.”

For real:
“My office and customers/clients are all wintel based.”

and Oh wait…I do use Linux!

Speaking on behalf of Steve Ballmer’s kids

In reply to Ten words or less: “I don’t use Linux because…”

“I don’t use Linux because Dad will disown me” 🙂

Actually Steve does tell his kids not to use Google or iPods, so I’m just improvising here 🙂

Steve Balmers Kids

In reply to Speaking on behalf of Steve Ballmer’s kids

Dont use linux under the threat of a chair.

hmm

In reply to Steve Balmers Kids

and linus would be teaching his kids how to include patented software into linux and yet escape any possible lawsuits..just because they are against MS

Before you know it,

In reply to hmm

Linux will be bundling in their own browser (whose default start page is Linus Torvalds’s personal website) and intertwine it so thoroughly with the rest of the system that it’s impossible to uninstall. They’ll also bundle in a media player, messaging client, and a gazillion other Linux-branded applications that are cheap knock-offs of whatever app is dominating that particular niche at that particular time. And, if you want to sell a computer without Linux preinstalled, Linus Torvalds will personally double the price (fortunately $0 x 2 = $0) or forbid you from installing it on any of the machines you sell. This is, of course, AFTER he has thrown a chair at you.

Clues here! Get your fresh hot clues here! Can I offer you one, sir?

Be careful with your sarcasm.

In reply to Before you know it,

That one might just be ignorant enough to believe you meant that literally.

You have a good point.

In reply to Be careful with your sarcasm.

And we may also have people out there who don’t realize that I didn’t make any of that up, I just changed the names to protect the guilty (and for comedic effect).

Maybe I should start putting disclaimers on posts like that one. Here’s a first draft:

WARNING: The Surgeon General has declared this post unsafe for the humor-deficient and/or extremely gullible. Read at your own risk. The author disclaims all liability for aneurism, apoplexy, extreme bewilderment, or you looking like a fool after you took it seriously and responded with a semi-illiterate flame to said author. By reading the above post you have agreed to these terms. Have a good day.

Because…

In reply to Ten words or less: “I don’t use Linux because…”

fixing Windows keeps me in a job!

If everyone used Linux I’d have more time to fish!

I’m not paranoid

In reply to Ten words or less: “I don’t use Linux because…”

It seems everyone uses Linux for a similar reason, mainly because it’s NOT Microsoft (and why would a loner with no social skills follow the pack, they need to be estranged to feel secure)?

I don’t use it, anymore, for many reasons. I dn’t have anything on my computer that you are not 100% welcome to view, steal etc. This isn’t MY computer anyway.

MY computers have Win2KPro, I ditched my MAC and Linux boxes when I moved back to Vancouver, I couldn’t care less if they are unstable, I just don’t transmit anything that I wouldnt share anyway.

My boxes run well, are patched as much as possible, have Python guarding the front door and that’s about it.

Bottom line, I am not paranoid that someone woul dwant MY info for anything, have it, if it is useful in anyway all the power to you.

I think most people that are so paranoid about their personal info are actually just flatterng themselves. Why the hell would I waste time hacking some JOE BLOW computer when there are corporate networks and REAL money scams to target. Dont flatter yourselves, nobody wants at your crap.

No paranoia with dial-up

In reply to I’m not paranoid

Nobody seriously hacks a dial-up box. Why bother when the IP address changes every time I reconnect, and I disconnect when I’m not actively using it? Paranoia is for unprotected broadband users.

AHA

In reply to No paranoia with dial-up

but dial up is for remotely situated folk who haven’t seen a city in a decade. poke poke touche! LOL 😉

Have at thee, base scoundrel!

In reply to AHA

You forget, dial up is also for cheapskates.

you really must

In reply to Have at thee, base scoundrel!

be a tightwad if the minor cost of 24 a month is to much for broadband.

or is that tightassed tightwad? 😉

$24 a month? Maybe in Canada

In reply to you really must

I can’t get it here for under $45, and that’s just an introductory price for three months. I’m paying $16 for dial-up. I’m on the box at the house less than 10 hours a week. Why bother?

Also, there’s a phone jack beside my computer. There is no cable connection on that side of the room. I refuse to look a piece of coax snaking around the corners of the room; I’m not going to let the Bubba from Time-Warner knock a hole in the floor; and if I’m too cheap to pay $45 a month, you can also assume I’m too cheap to pony up $150 for a wireless card and access point.

DSL

In reply to $24 a month? Maybe in Canada

How much is DSL in your area (if it’s available)? That uses POTS RJ-11, too.

yup..

In reply to $24 a month? Maybe in Canada

24 a month for lightspeed from the cable company.
4 gigs of data transfer and only bout 1 mbit/s speed.
for 40 a month it’s 50 gigs of data transfer and 5 mb/s for speed.

dialup starts at about 10 a month.

DSL comparable to cable prices

In reply to $24 a month? Maybe in Canada

It runs about $40. J.Ja. will tell you the property taxes in central SC took huge jump this year (over $200 on my house) and the difference between $16 and $40 looms large, especially for a luxury.

Up early in the Mountain Time Zone morning, are we?

Mountain time zone?

In reply to $24 a month? Maybe in Canada

naw, I’m on pacific time zone.

the same as california. :p

and nope, I’m always up most of the night, I sleep in the mornings, like any same human being would do.

J, MDT remark was for apo.

In reply to $24 a month? Maybe in Canada

I didn’t realize you had snuck in between his post and mine. Had I, I surely would have cracked on you instead.

What’s the exchange rate on hours? One U.S. hour must swap for about two Canadian ones 🙂

time echange rate

In reply to $24 a month? Maybe in Canada

24 us hours for one canadian hour..since people in canada are more efficient. :p

ouch

In reply to $24 a month? Maybe in Canada

Last I checked, I think DSL rates were under $30 per month here. Paying $40 for DSL has to be painful.

I’m using cable Internet service for $45/mo., but part of the reason I’m using that instead of DSL is simply that I don’t want to pay the extra money for landline telephone service that I’d never use except to convey my DSL carrier signal to my home. Since it’s worth having cable TV just to get the Cartoon Network and Sci Fi Channel, and $45/mo. is cheaper than about $28/mo. plus the cost of telephone service, I went with cable.

By the way, yes, my sleep schedule is hellaciously screwed up these days.

Wrong

In reply to I’m not paranoid

Do you do banking from your computer? Do you have tax or accounting software? Do you write private messages to your wife/husband/or significant other. Do you have any documents that contain your SSN or credit cards on your computer? …..

Most people have information on their computer that could cost them financialy or emotionally if it became common knowledge.

Very

No YOU’RE wrong

In reply to Wrong

I love people who use the title WRONG, and then don’t provide anything to suport it.

[i]Do you do banking from your computer?[/i] No, my accountant pays all bills from his Novell Linux system.

[i]Do you have tax or accounting software?[/i] No (my accountant does that too

[i]Do you write private messages to your wife/husband/or significant other.[/i] No, wello nothing I wouldn’t share or mind others reading, that’s just stupid. You know how many lawsuits I’ve seen lost due to people saving email?

[i]Do you have any documents that contain your SSN or credit cards on your computer?[/i] No.

So your witless retort now is……?

[i]Most people have information on their computer that could cost them financialy or emotionally if it became common knowledge.[/i]
That’s my whole point, people put too much trust in what is merely an appliance. Don’t put anything on your PC you wouldn’t freely share or are not willing to lose. PC’s crash too, hard drives die, people lose information. I always tell them, back it up, secure it or be prepared to lose it.

Hmmm

In reply to I’m not paranoid

Ever heard of zombie PC’s ? I saw one using up 5GB’s of broadband in 2 days whild the user was sleeping. He visited a P2P site ONE TIME visited a P2P site, and had his firewall disabled behind his back. They didn’t want his info, they wanted his bandwith.

yes, but is that you saying this?

In reply to I’m not paranoid

or a member of the virus communities that 0wN your boxes?

… of Linus Torvalds & a million distros

In reply to Ten words or less: “I don’t use Linux because…”

The Linux community is too dependent upon Linus Torvalds. If he got hit by a bus, I fear that the community would spend a lot of time and fork too much scambling to fill the void. The zillions of distros are another problem. The popular, well supported distro of today is the has-been of tomorrow.

It is for these reasons that I choose BSD for my OSS UNIX needs. I feel that the community is more mature (not in the “does not pull each other’s hair” sense, but in the “less fluid, more stable” sense) and that development is more about stability and security and less about the “cool” features. My needs for a UNIX are stability and security. Any box I put UNIX on is a server, so where Linux shines (cutting edge userland apps) simply does not matter to me.

J.Ja

I prefer BDS and/or Unix

In reply to Ten words or less: “I don’t use Linux because…”

I’ll get around to it one day, when I have no idea but I am fooling around with it.

[b]Dawg[/b] ]:)

~blink~…~blink~

In reply to I prefer BDS and/or Unix

“I am fooling around with it”

that’s just to twisted for colour tv ]:)

all my porn is saved to NTFS Drive.

In reply to Ten words or less: “I don’t use Linux because…”

and Linux doesn’t write to NTFS with out destroying my HDD. and I’m to lazy to convert everything to the Linux File System (LFS) or go backwards to FAT32 but if I could afford another 260 Gig Drive then I could save my porn to LFS and just read the old files of NTFS and write new files to new LFS as long as I could format the new-drive of a live Linux distro.

LFS?

In reply to all my porn is saved to NTFS Drive.

LFS doesn’t stand for “Linux file system”, it stands for Linux From Scratch. Linux filesystems are called things like ext3, XFS, and ReiserFS. Actually, they’re not even specifically Linux filesystems. Only MacOS and Windows tend to have OS-specific filesystems, for the most part. Other OSes and filesystems tend to mix and match quite well.

You must be kidding. Your entire post is full of bizarrities.

I bet

In reply to LFS?

he meant the linux native filesystem e2fs.

though that’s going the way of the dodo, since it’s not a journalised filesystem.

Not up on my LINUX terminology but up on my laziness

In reply to I bet

I just meant a file system that was Linux and not NTFS or FAT32 or MAC or BSD or whatever. I meant a Linux File System (LFS) which I was hoping would cover any file system that Linux has.

LFS is a distro

In reply to Not up on my LINUX terminology but up on my laziness

.

And a three letter acronym

In reply to LFS is a distro

that can mean any thing you want.

LFS

In reply to LFS?

I couldn’t remember the names of the Linux file system but it is Linux and it is a file system so I called it a Linux File System and acrynised it so I would not have to keep typing in Linux File System. I couldn’t remember the names ext3, XFS and ReiserFS so I called it LFS. I can read NTFS of a live Linux CD but I cant write to it which sucks monkey nuts.

write support for NTFS

In reply to LFS

NTFS write support from Linux is getting pretty good. I wouldn’t trust it enough to just use NTFS as a filesystem under Linux as a day-to-day thing, but it can be useful for things like resizing the partition or fixing some kind of catastrophic configuration issue on a Windows system by use of a Linux LiveCD.

Which Linux LiveCD Distro

In reply to write support for NTFS

already has NTFS write support? Or is it make your own?

Knoppix works.

In reply to Which Linux LiveCD Distro

Like I said, NTFS write support exists. It’s just reportedly a little sketchy. In other words, I wouldn’t recommend using it unless you have to — chances are good you won’t have any problems, but I prefer to avoid taking unnecessary risks with my data.

It also doesn’t help that every time there’s a new Windows release, the filesystem is different.

Why do you care about writing to that HDD anyway?

In reply to Which Linux LiveCD Distro

Do you edit your pr0n or something? Do you make your own? Why would you even need to write to it in the first place if it’s already there? I don’t know about you, but I can’t remember the last time I needed to write to my pr0n directory. That’s why I gave it (and the rest of my files that I almost never access but don’t want to delete) its own partition and called it /static .

No. No editing or creating

In reply to Why do you care about writing to that HDD anyway?

Writing to the disk is for the procurement of more.

I don’t use Linux because

In reply to Ten words or less: “I don’t use Linux because…”

the first time I installed it, it could not find audio and modem drivers for that particular computer.

Now I can’t be bothered, because I am so used to Windows.

Additionally I have HUGE library of Windows software (I am a software junkie) which presumably wouldn’t run on Linux.

Pre-emptive strike

In reply to I don’t use Linux because

I’m sure someone will point out that most of your Windows software will run under Linux using some form of Windows emulation software. That person won’t realize that being able to run Windows software under Linux isn’t a reason to switch.

Err, not quite.

In reply to Pre-emptive strike

I don’t think anyone even vaguely reasonable has ever suggested that the ability to run software designed for MS Windows under Linux is a reason to switch. The point is that the ability to run MS Windows software under Linux eliminates a reason to avoid switching OSes. When someone brings up a good dreason to use Linux instead of MS Windows, and the objection “But I have to be able to use Windows-based application Foo!” comes up, Wine usually comes up as a means of pointing out that this objection isn’t nearly as important and valid as some might think.

Not in Jules case though

In reply to Pre-emptive strike

A lot of his stuff goes back to the DOS days and will not even run on some forms of Windows so that one a bit of a misleading statement.

He also has a Mac with OSX installed so I’m preety sure he knows why he’s using Windows on that machine and why he isn’t using XP as well. :p

Col ]:)
http://tinyurl.com/fz854

runing OSS in windows

In reply to Pre-emptive strike

and the same guys will never accept the figure that almost all the applications that run in *nix can be run in windows as well !!!

That’s the point of OSS.

In reply to runing OSS in windows

You can use it when you want, where you want, how you want, whenever you want, and you can change it however you want. Congratulations on managing to make my point for me, even though you seem to have missed it completely.

Here are the first twelve lines of the Linux kernel’s (now there’s a redundancy) source code for handling big boo-boos:
/*
* linux/kernel/panic.c
*
* Copyright (C) 1991, 1992 Linus Torvalds
*/

/*
* This function is used through-out the kernel (including mm and fs)
* to indicate a major problem.
*/
#include #include

Now, go and show me the first few lines of code that control Windows’s BSOD. Go ahead; I’ll be waiting right here.

What’s that, you say? You can’t? Why not? Are there things you can’t modify in Windows that you can in Linux? Could that perhaps be because Windows isn’t OSS? And obtaining the source code for Windows is–I’m not kidding–a felony unless you happen to be one of their “Valued Partners”.

Would you like to add a fixed FIFO scheduling class to Windows? Sorry. You can’t. It’s not OSS.

I can do a better job managing IRQ’s than Linus Torvalds.* So, let’s see:
Opening up /usr/src/linux-2.6.16.13-4/kernel/irq/manage.c …
Fiddling around a bit with the code…
Compiling…
Oh, look at that: a spiffy new IRQ handler.

Now that I’ve done that once, I’m feeling ambitious and I think I’ll do the same thing in Windows. Oops, almost forgot–Windows isn’t OSS, so I’m stuck with what they gave me.

OSS isn’t just free as in beer, it’s just as importantly free as in speech.

*I can’t. This is just a hypothetical situation.

Post edited to correct glaring typo.

You Are Correct

In reply to That’s the point of OSS.

Up to and including:

“*I can’t. This is just a hypothetical situation.”

Give a real world one…preferably one that the average user cares about.

You are still missing the point. I appreciate that you like to look at source code. Most users don’t.

For those that don’t, Windows is a viable choice. For those that do, Linux is the viable choice. It’s that simple.

I don’t spend time looking at OS code, therefore, from that one point of view, that one Linux strength means nothing to me.

You’ve proven another point for “us”.

In reply to You Are Correct

The average user doesn’t have to be aware of the direct benefits of using open source software to benefit from the indirect effects.

Oh Man!

In reply to You’ve proven another point for “us”.

I actually sort of agree with you for once.

But it applies not just to open source.

You could broaden that statement and it would still be true.

I hate it when I actually agree with you 🙂

SCO IRQ handling was MS like

In reply to That’s the point of OSS.

When you changed the IRQs you had to reboot. If five cards wanted IRQ 3,5,7,and 11, you were SOL.

Plug and Play for Linux seems to handle better than MS from my experience. I usually make big systems, with multiple FC cards 2 Gig-E cards, and usually a kvm switch connection. RHEL Linux is far easier than 2k3 Enterprise Server…

“. . . I’m testing website compatibility in Internet Explorer.”

In reply to Ten words or less: “I don’t use Linux because…”

As soon as I’m done making sure it works properly with IE, though, I’ll go back to using Linux. This Windows stuff is too hard.

Here’s a rule of thumb:

In reply to “. . . I’m testing website compatibility in Internet Explorer.”

If you’re trying to find out what your page will look like in IE, test it in a standards-compliant browser, then stochastically cut and paste half-a-dozen snippets of your HTML into different locations. If you’re using tables, don’t forget to turn your monitor onto its side. And if you’re coding specifically for IE users, cater to your audience’s level by putting all your text in white and using a bright yellow (I recommend anythinig in the FF FF ** range) solid background. Those of us with 20/10 vision enjoy an occasional challenge. Alternatively, use an asymmetrical image approximately 50 pixels wide so it will tile at least 20 times at 1280×1024. Ensure that the predominant color of that image matches the color of your text.

Don’t forget to change the text color of text, hyperlinks, and visited hyperlinks to all the same color. I love cluelessly guessing as to what is a link and what isn’t.

Here’s an extra special bonus tip for those of you who use FrontPage: make sure the target on your “Back” button is “javascript:history.go(-1)” so if I found your site through a search engine, I’ll go right back to it instead of to your home page.

But wait, there’s more: while you’re misapplying JavaScript, have it disable my right-click context menu too. I didn’t want to open that link in a new tab anyway. Besides, if I don’t go to Edit/Preferences/Content and uncheck the “Enable JavaScript” box every once in a while, I’ll forget where it’s at.

Post editied because I left one of my biggest pet peeves out.

10 word answer

In reply to Ten words or less: “I don’t use Linux because…”

Active Directory is hard to understand; thus, pays much better.

hmm

In reply to 10 word answer

since when is AD hard to understand? 😛

What’s the Linux equivalent?

In reply to hmm

What’s the Linux equivalent to Active Directory?

well, naturally

In reply to What’s the Linux equivalent?

it’s nfs shares. :p

built right into the core of the os, if you turn the service on you have full netork shares..but the actual shares are controlled by user by default.

ldap is a server based option rather than os based means to do the same thing.

NFS + LDAP + Kerberos + DNS

In reply to well, naturally

Actually, if you use SMBFS instead of NFS, you’re using exactly the same technologies on which AD is built. Thus, if you use SMBFS + LDAP + Kerberos + DNS, you essentially [b]are using AD[/b], just without the intentionally compatibility-breaking “extensions” added to the system.

There are, in fact, other technologies usable on Linux that aren’t strictly equivalent to AD because they’re more advanced, more flexible, and more capable.

sssshhh!!!!!!!!

In reply to NFS + LDAP + Kerberos + DNS

don’t baffle them with the fact that everything they love about microsoft is based on technology first developed for unix and unix like operating systems. After all *x can’t be good, it’s only the source for everything Microsoft is selling. AD, SQL2005, Visual Studio, Server*, xp, office all are based on software originally developed for a *x operating system. They like using bad clones of software rather than quality original work. :p

MS innovation

In reply to sssshhh!!!!!!!!

I think Bill Gates created the 4-bit FAT table. This was obsolete almost instantly.

The rest is borrowed, bought, copied or outright stolen. Google for “Microsoft lawsuits lost”.

LDAP +Kerberos+DNS?

In reply to NFS + LDAP + Kerberos + DNS

why not use yp/NIS instead? that has all the same functionality.

Because NIS sucks?

In reply to LDAP +Kerberos+DNS?

Hah. I would have thought that answer was obvious.

Red Hat has Linux Directory Server

In reply to What’s the Linux equivalent?

This is pretty similar and does many of the same things (although I’m not a huge fan)

Nor am I.

In reply to Red Hat has Linux Directory Server

I’m not a big fan of LSD*, either, but then I’m not a big fan of AD — so I suppose it shouldn’t be a surprise that I don’t like LSD.

*: Yes, I know, it’s LDS. It’s a joke. Get it?

Sort of an homage?

In reply to Nor am I.

to Kirk’s description of Spock’s white robe condition in the “Save the Whales” Star Trek movie? ;\

———–
Warning: innocuous geeky reference enclosed.

Maybe.

In reply to Sort of an homage?

Maybe just a little.

Ssshhh, don’t tell anyone.

Since it was “invented”?

In reply to hmm

Let’s put it this way:
If AD isn’t difficult to understand, I’d like you to explain, in your own words, how the technologies actually work — and without putting it in terms of equivalent tools. Tell me what it’s doing behind that pretty GUI that obscures the underlying technology.

Answer…

In reply to Since it was “invented”?

That you will get from the majority…
Who cares? It works! 😉

sorta

In reply to Answer…

Sure, it “works”, if your definition of “works” is “I can plug it in, and it will limp along at half-functionality for a while, until it suffers a catastrophic failure from which I can’t recover it because I don’t understand the technology.”

In any case, the question I was answering was “Since when is AD difficult to understand?” As such, your response to me is irrelevant.

10 More words

In reply to 10 word answer

Microsoft operating systems provide me with such wonderful job security.

I don’t want to look like a zealot

In reply to Ten words or less: “I don’t use Linux because…”

I know this will ruffle some feathers; but, to me, the most vocal Linux advocates are just the same as Apple zealots. They love to tell you why your technology choice is wrong and why their choice is right (and that you might even be stupid for not siding with them). I’ve avoided using both Linux and Apple ’cause I don’t want to be lumped into that group.

Time to reboot my Windows machine… again.

So instead of jumping ship and going with something different

In reply to I don’t want to look like a zealot

You’ve stuck to the Zombie System from MS right? ;\

[b]Bad News Mate[/b] they are just as bad as the Apple and Nix crowds but unfortantly they don’t generally speaking actually know what it is that they are talking about as they gather all their Data from MS which is hardly a ballanced way to find the truth is it? :p

Don’t get me wrong it’s sort of [b]Easy Money[/b] if you can put up with knowing that you’ll be back in a few days time fixing exactly the same problem again. Now that will be $500.00 [b]Thank You[/b] very much. 😀

Col ]:)
http://tinyurl.com/fz854

some definitions

In reply to I don’t want to look like a zealot

Linux zealot (n.): a Linux user who is not afraid to tell you why he stopped using Windows, knows what he’s talking about, and doesn’t back down just because he’s outnumbered — and gets a bad rap for it

Windows bigot (n.): a compulsive avoider of anything that isn’t endorsed by Microsoft who appears reasonable simply because he’s in the majority

Mac-head (n.): the real zealot

And one more

In reply to some definitions

Penguinista (n): a Linux user who insists everyone will be happier if they install his or her favorite distro of the week (but without a GUI), yet responds to all questions with “RTFM, you puking n00b!”, and anyone who can’t follow MAN pages is just too stupid to have a computer.

Edited to remove content based on apotheon’s suggestion.

well . . .

In reply to And one more

Those people do exist, just as rickk, Rob Enderle, Steve Ballmer, and George Ou exist. I don’t think Penguinista is really the right term to use to combine all those different characteristics in one person. You’ve lumped intellectual freedom advocates in with obnoxious crusaders when, from what I’ve seen, the obnoxious crusaders usually don’t care about fighting intellectual protectionism as much as about being a rebel without a clue that views Microsoft in particular as the root of all evil.

Granted, and edited.

In reply to well . . .

I’ve edited my previous comment and removed the “proprietary Armegeddon” remark. Is that sufficient to remove the “intellectual freedom advocates” from the definition?

I don’t know what’s up with George Ou. I hadn’t heard of him before a few months ago, and suddenly he’s the regularly featured Blogger From The State of Redmond. His profile isn’t very enlightening. I don’t hang out anywhere but here, so maybe he’s a big wheel and I’m the only one unaware of his credentials.

the public face of George Ou

In reply to Granted, and edited.

He’s not exactly an industry trade rag heavyweight the way someone like Bruce Schneier (cryptography and security expert par excellence), Jakob Nielsen (best-known usability expert in the world), or Rob Enderle (most famous loud-mouthed buffoon in the IT industry) is. George isn’t an unknown nobody, either, though. He’s hosted panel discussions at major industry conferences, written some generally very good reports on goings-on in innovative subfields, and has a fairly extensive range of IT related knowledge. The man has almost five times as many directly relevant Google hits as me, and I’m not exactly an unknown either.

The trouble as I see it is four-fold:

1. He suffers from “not invented here” syndrome, at a step removed. Specifically, this means that he has a tendency to favor everything with which he is most familiar, and has an unfortunate tendency to denigrate things with which he is less familiar. There’s a specific set of psychological mechanisms behind this that are common to humans in general, I find, but I don’t really want to discuss that here as it could be perceived as insulting regardless of my intent (and it’s a bit long-winded and irrelevant).

2. Despite his admirable accumulated skill and knowledge, there are holes in his understanding, just as there are holes in everyone’s understanding. He tends to fill these holes with wild assumptions and rote-memorized half-baked marketing FUD that has seeped into his head from years of constant exposure to it. At least, that’s what I think is going on, based on what I’ve seen. Either that, or he’s malevolent and purposefully destructive, but I really rather doubt that.

3. He suffers from ego identification with his writings. That, too, is a common problem among humans: they create something, or say something, and develop an ego identification with their creations and/or statements so that anything that attacks the creation or the statement is perceived as an attack on the creator or speaker. I’ve seen this in action quite extensively here at TR, where about once every half-dozen posts he’ll start accusing me of being maliciously hurtful and insulting when all I’ve done is called his assumptions into question.

4. He seems intentionally positioned here at TR to stir up trouble in hopes of fostering high-heat discussion threads, which in turn generates traffic, which in turn generates more advertising revenue for TechRepublic. As such, he seems even more a lackey of Bill and Steve than usual to the members of the TR community.

As I said, I wouldn’t call him a heavy (or a “big wheel”, as you put it), but his name is recognizable to some measurable percentage of the pundit-reading IT industry.

I think he’s been positioned as the MS FUD peddler here at TR in part because Steven Warren (self-styled “Hot Button”) is so tremendously bad at it.

As always, thanks.

In reply to the public face of George Ou

I’m not a pundit-reader, so I didn’t recognize him (or the other names you referenced). John Dvorak’s column in PC Mag is about as close as I come. Thanks for the overview.

welllll

In reply to well . . .

intellectual freedom advocates?? So IBM which funds so much on OSS (just linux) does not have even one OSS software on its own. hmmm Sun which had absolutely nor market for office, release openoffice and made it opensource, YET java is not opensource. Hmmm and the great OSS guys, they all work for free for their employer..dont they. Its just not a concept of Open source. Its just that IBM,SUN,google want to get rid of MS and capture its place.

Since IBM made MS what it is today

In reply to welllll

WHY NOT?

Col ]:)

Bad Generalization – All Technology Zealots Do That

In reply to I don’t want to look like a zealot

That is hardly something that is limited to Apple and Linux.

Take a good look at this discussion board. You’ll find a much larger sized group of Windows zealots do the exact same thing:

Telling you why their choice is right and your choice is wrong, and implying that you are stupid for not doing exactly what they do and not using the exact same solutions that they use.

The sad thing is that too many information technology professionals generate their pride and self-worth through their belief in how adept they are in using a particular product, technology, OS or solution.

I had a Wang WP administrator a long time ago who was just as bad. I also heard endless technobabble arguments from the Novell and Banyan gurus I worked with, the DEC VMS people I worked with, the IBM MVS people I worked with, the OS/2 people I worked with, the accountants who preferred Lotus 1-2-3 over Excel, the COBOL programmers, the FORTRAN programmers, the CAD people who preferred CATIA, AutoCAD, the PowerBuilder folks I worked with, and lots more.

Nearly every technology has its place and every technology can generate value.

This latest hype on Mac and open source security is ludicrous.

We use different technologies because they generate value and they are cost effective, not because the majority of the market uses it.

We take security seriously for everything. Windows, MacOS, LinUX, Solaris, you name it, and it is not a significant burden to think beyond Windows.

We have a multiplatform, web client environment, because the solutions on different OSes and platforms create value to the company and users, and they are cost effective. It is not a significant issue to support more than one OS. As a matter of fact, or manpower and cost studies show that a selection of non-Windows platforms and solutions has actually consistently reduced our TCO and cost of operations when we look at what those costs probably would have been if we had gone with a Windows based solution.

Windows is an excellent OS, but it is not the best choice for all of our needs, just as MS SQL Server is not the best choice for everything, and just as any other OS or product you could think of is not going to be the best choice for everything.

If your people understand their business customers, know what they are doing, and have an open mind towards learning all technologies, it is not an issue to support any platform or solution.

Our open attitude about different OS and different platorms has also made us far more customer focused, and has bought us really good relationships with our customers — so good that suggestions that IT be outsourced have consistently been very loudly dismissed by our own users.

One recent outsourcing vendor was actually laughed out of the premises by every VP in the company.

The present buzz about MacOS and LinUX vulnerabilities is more anti-Open Source hype, probably promoted by Microsoft-only aficianados that are all too common in IT.

The hard reality is that Open Source is being very successful, and it generates cost effective solutions which create value to our company.

Even if your company PREFERS to stay 100% Windows, there is no longer a viable reason for absolutely EVERY COMPANY to stay 100% Windows.

Open Source offers a huge, compelling, very cost effective alternative in many, many solutions areas.

Are there issues? Absolutely, but there are issues with every OS and every technology.

Marketshare of computer products and technologies changes, and using marketshare as a “default” ruler to measure everything, is a stupid way of basing corporate decisions.

Novell Netware, FORTRAN, COBOL, MVS IBM Mainframes, DEC Minis, dedicated word processing machines, and hundreds of other products and technologies went bye-bye. Everything loses marketshare and becomes obsolete sooner or later.

It is foolish for an IT professional to adhere to something or some company so strongly that he or she refuses to have an open mind to anything else.

If someone else’s company wants to go 100% Microsoft, fine. Let them do it. But I don’t want to hear lectures from anyone about what is best for our environment and our company. We have tried that route in the past. It does not work. Someone across the internet is unlikely to know beans about my company, our business, our users, our customers, our partners or our environment. Their criticisms and suggestions are not worth beans.

We don’t consider the issue to be real at all.
Sure, it is a possibility. You protect by doing
the best you can.

From a strictly volume of problem point, from a disruption cost point, and from a support cost point, Microsoft Windows and Internet Explorer running on Windows cause us more grief and more cost patching, fixing supporting than either Solaris, LinUX or the MacOS.

On a cost basis and a frequency of violation basis, we could probably save more time and money and avoid a lot more unanticipated costs by throwing Microsoft Windows out of the company than throwing the MacOS or LinUX out of the company, but the issue again is that those solutions create some value to our company as well.

It is stupid to throw out anything that creates value.

We are always concerned about security, but we do not let this get leveraged into a political argument for one OS over another. We simply are committed to making sure that everything is as secure as possible.

Seriously, though, I just don’t have that many problems with Windows

In reply to I don’t want to look like a zealot

I know, I know. Stop laughing. I find that Windows meets most of my computing needs well enough that I am not willing to go out and learn another OS.

Since I am an XBOX 360 owner, I love the integration between Windows Media Center 2005 and the XBOX 360.

Sure I could use Myth TV or some other free media center app, but I like the simplicity and integration that is provided out of the box.

With that said, I realize that I don’t have to support Windows machines and their vulnerabilities as part of my job. I’m sure I would be singing a different tune if I did.

But for personal use, I find Windows meets my needs.

Big Prolem with Retailers

In reply to I don’t want to look like a zealot

It’s my opinion that when a person is buying a new Computer, the unit will always come out of the store with a fully functional system.
I feel that “the Client” should be the one to make that decision. Which system do they want? MS or Linux?
This nonsense of Microsoft being the only ones auto-installed on all the units is ridiculous and misleading.
It creates the impression that they are the only one out there and that the other systems are just MS wanna be’s.
This of course is wrong.
I feel quite strongly that the client should be made aware of all the facts and whatever system they choose is the on to be installed. Be it Microsoft or Linux.
As things are right now, this is the edge that Microsoft has and should lose.
The retailers should smarten up and start selling units that already come with pre-installed MS or Linux, all in the interest of fair play.
Something Microsoft knows very little about.
There is where the”Real” Problem lie’s with Linux, it’s not the product, it’s the fact that most people automatically get MS and don’t even know Linux exists or for that matter care..
Change this and get the retailers to stop pre-loading MS.
Then add to that, “Give us or Disks” instead of hiding all the info in an EISA partition and then we would begin to see an evening out of the playing field. The EISA Partition belongs to the client, therefore should not be used by the seller as a holding space out of the reach of the said client. This should be illegal.
But as long as MS is allow to Monopolize the Sellers market, they will always come out the winner.
Time for Linux to start taking them on in thier own back yard, on the bloody hard drive. 😉
Regards
Aaron 🙂

You’re not making much sense.

In reply to Big Prolem with Retailers

“I feel quite strongly that the client should be made aware of all the facts … ”

Who do you think should be responsible for making the buyer aware of these facts? The zit-faced kid behind the electronics counter? The one who was selling paint last month and will be transferred to lawn and garden next month? Few manufacturers and retailers of any products are responsible for educating the consumer as to their product options, at least not in the U.S. McDonalds doesn’t give out a copy of “Supersize Me” before taking your order for a Happy Meal. The consumer is responsible for educating himself.

” … most people automatically get MS and don’t even know Linux exists or for that matter care.”

Right. Since they don’t care, they won’t educate themselves.

“The retailers should smarten up and start selling units that already come with pre-installed MS or Linux, all in the interest of fair play.”

Retailers aren’t concerned with “the interest of fair play”. They’re responsible to their shareholders to maximize profits. Nothing requires a manufacture to carry every brand, version, or option for every product they sell. There is nothing monopolistic about choosing to stock only those products the retailer thinks are the most profitable.

” … get the retailers to stop pre-loading MS.”

Retailers don’t load operating systems, manufacturers do. Retailers sell those products they feel will bring in the most money. Right now they think the most profit can be made selling systems from manufacturers that pre-load Windows.

Misstated my intent, sorry

In reply to You’re not making much sense.

What I was saying was;
How do we create a level playing field. That was the bottom line question, however misstated.
I had indeed misstated when I said retailers instead of manufacturers but the bottom line doesn’t change, unless someone out there wants it to.
My point was and still is, what do you think would happen if the “Retailer” was in a position to offer one or the other?
What choices would there be, would the public address them.
For the most part, I found that general consensus to be, “just give me keys and I’ll figure out the rest later”.
Problem with this is by the time they’ve ” Figured out the rest” it’s usually too late.
It makes perfect sense to me. It starts at the core i.e. the manufacturers then move on to the Retailers.
Linux is still very much an underground program, or viewed as such by many and this is wrong.
This is due to naivety on our parts. We simply do not know enough about it in order to render judgment one way or another.
I know this may seem silly to people like yourself who are fully versed in Linux, but if you look at it from the Novices’ “My” 😉 point of view, you can see what I mean.
I feel that Linux should be installed in the same way as MS, i.e. right at the manufacturer then the retailer could offer a greater choice, point out the salient points on both systems etc.
But judging by what I’ve seen behind most counters today, I seriously doubt that this will happen.
For the most part, all you get is attitude, arrogance ad if you actually ask an in-depth and intelligent question, they turn into little zombies. It’s like they go into shock and then say, “Wait I’ll get someone who can help with that”
So you see, my point is not that Linux is Bad, it’s not. It’s just that a lot better job could be done to promote this product and yes you’re right, I still don’t know all that much about it and it frustrated the hell out of me, because I don’t know where to go to get the answers.
Not platitudes or “how great it is” but genuine answers to legitimate questions.
In the meantime, I’d still like to see an MS system setup and running and right next to it and Linux just as setup and also running .
I believe it would be interesting to watch the reaction and good for Linux.
Palmetto;
Apologies for being slow on the return,Just nuts right now.
Thanks for the comeback 🙂
Aaron

Ah, now we agree

In reply to Misstated my intent, sorry

This may surprise you, but most of the major manufacturers and even some of the big box retailers already make systems available with a Linux distro pre-installed.

Unfortunately, they are usually available only on those manufacturers’ / retailers’ web sites. It takes some digging on the manufacturers’ web sites to find a machine with Linus pre-loaded. I suspect they make it difficult to find for reasons related to their MS licensing agreements, but they will sell you one if you insist. For a while Wal-mart did stock a Linux box (running Lindows, I recall) in their brick-and-mortar stores but now they carry them only on the web.

But I DO use Linux….

In reply to Ten words or less: “I don’t use Linux because…”

But I DO use Linux.

I guess I’ll try anyway, with some reasons NOT to use Linux.

I don’t use Linux because…

1) I’m too busy reinstalling Windows to learn anything new
2) Rob Enderle said I shouldn’t
3) I hear they’re a bunch of Commies
4) It can’t be good if Bill Gates isn’t selling it
5) I hear you have to recompile the kernel all the time
6) I hear it doesn’t support any hardware
7) Rebooting servers gives me a warm glow
8) I must spend all my IT budget, or I lose it
9) I’ve already spent too much on Windows software
10) Don’t need it. My home mainframe works great.
11) I love my AS400 too much
12) I’m using xxx Unix instead (where xxx is one of FreeBSD, OpenBSD, AIX, HP-UX, Solaris, etc)
13) Might lose my Microsoft paycheck for writing “grassroots” anti-Linux letters

my favorite

In reply to But I DO use Linux….

Number 2 is definitely the funniest of those. Thanks for that list. It was a hoot.

not #2, #13 is funnier.

In reply to my favorite

~lol~

13 is easier to appreciate.

In reply to not #2, #13 is funnier.

Number 2 is something from which you won’t get full value unless you’re as familiar with the guy’s public career as I am. It probably also helps that there are a couple people with whom I’m glancingly acquainted who tend to respond to any article quoting Enderle by sending emails to the authors and editors of the articles in question telling them that they should stop quoting that FUD peddler, and they tend to name me and a couple other people as examples of thoughtful and reasonable sources of quotable information.

Thanks.

In reply to But I DO use Linux….

I wish we had a million posters here as funny as you.

As for number 11: IBM sells AS/400’s with SLES or RHEL preinstalled. I’d much rather have either of those than the OS/400 I have to deal with every day. There’s nothing more enjoyable than typing WRKSYSVAL QTIME just to find out what time it is. The scary thing is that after a while, the TLA’s start to make perfect sense.

because I haven’t had the chance…

In reply to Ten words or less: “I don’t use Linux because…”

… to learn.

I’ve really only had the chance to use Microsoft products, and since that’s what we have used everywhere I’ve worked, that’s what I know.

I’m always looking to learn more, but without a programming background, the concept of Linux is rather intimidating. I know there are people who are enthusiastic about all different systems, so I’m basing my thoughts on the opinions of others on both sides of the fence, hence the confusion and apprehension.

because…

In reply to Ten words or less: “I don’t use Linux because…”

I’ve never liked anybody named Linus!

“I don’t use Linux because…”

In reply to Ten words or less: “I don’t use Linux because…”

I don’t use Linux because my SCANNER, my INTERNAL MODEM and my WIRELESS card don’t work with Linux.
CT4ER

Bogus

In reply to “I don’t use Linux because…”

Your scanner may or may not work…but I can say (about a 99% chance) that your internal modem will work with community packages and your wireless card will work with either ndiswrapper or madwifi…

No go troll somewhere else.

Additional work required.

In reply to Bogus

” … your internal modem will work with community packages and your wireless card will work with either ndiswrapper or madwifi …”

Apparently they worked with Windows out of the box. For many users that’s important.

Strange

In reply to Additional work required.

You didn’t need to install any drivers?

Or do you have one of the Off the Shelf units that come from the big makers who [b]Slipstream[/b] only the necessary drivers for the hardware that they supply and to Hell with everything else?

I’ve yet to find a single WiFi card that will wortk the moment that you plug it into a Windows Box without first installing the drivers rebooting and then installing the necessary software. But as you claim that they work [b]Out of the Box[/b] I must be so removed from the current technology that maybe I should just give it all up and walk away. I’d love to but unfortantly my customers and staff refuse to allow me to do this so I don’t get to play with my [b]Play Toys[/b] as much a I would like and I certianly don’;t get to restore any of them, I have to pay others to do this as I’m constantly called away whenever I try to do the simplest thing. I even had to pay to have someone fit a CD/MP3 player to one of my Classic Mercedes because I just didn’t have the 20 minutes required to fit the thing available. :_|

Col ]:)

Probably

In reply to Strange

” … you have one of the Off the Shelf units that come from the big makers who Slipstream only the necessary drivers for the hardware … ”

I assumed that was the case when I made my comment, although I admit that was an assumption. If that is the case, I’m not defending the manufacturer’s approach. My only point is that some users aren’t comfortable having to do additional configuration to get the hardware to work beyond sticking in a self-installing CD, especially at the command prompt.

The Hardware that I use on Nix comes with a CD

In reply to Probably

That Auto Runs and has a GUI for the user to install from it’s really no harder than doing the same thing in Windows.

Of course any Digitally Signed MS Hardware doesn’t have a Nix driver supplied as this is part of the MS agreement with the Hardware Makers they are unable to support any different platforms for that particular piece of Hardware that MS accepts.

When you want to use these you need to find the right drivers and software but then again it’s really no harder than downloading some updated drivers and installing under Window. There really isn’t much command line work at all if you wish to stay in the GUI. It can be done or just like Windows you can run things from the command line if you want to. It’s really not something that I see as a problem.

If granny wants to buy some new hardware for her Win Box it’s going to require fitting and installing the drivers for so why is it any different with a Nix particuarly if it’s one of the Light Weight Ones which is designed as being User Friendly as apposed to the Full Multi User Capacity that a proper Nix offers.

If you want to see something really scary for the MS folk get a copy of Corel Linux and try installing it you’ll get the entire thing installed OS Software and everything in about 20 minutes and other than entering the time zone User Name & Password there is nothing else to do. This is probably why MS killed off this project as it would have killed the Windows Market in very short order.

Col

I don’t use Linux because…

In reply to Ten words or less: “I don’t use Linux because…”

(talking about my home PCs, one of which I use for work sometimes) I don’t see a reason to. I know how to run Windows XP securely so security isn’t really an issue for me. I know what the virus-infected e-mails look like, so I avoid them. I run the built-in firewall to prevent worm attacks. I get updates from Windows Update regularly and install them almost as soon as they come out.

I know there are lots and lots of Windows viruses out there. One time at work 6 years ago I got caught by an e-mail worm, which was harmless (all it did was e-mail itself to my coworkers–an annoyance but nothing to write home about). That was the first and last time I had gotten any sort of infection on a computer I was using. We easily prevented future attacks by turning off the preview pane in Outlook (later corporate policy with our parent company required us to switch to Lotus Notes, which obviated any auto-execute scripts).

Anything I need to run I can run on Windows. Even if I want to use an open source tool for something, which I do occasionally, very often I can find a version that runs on Windows.

One big difference with me is I’m not an IT administrator or sysadmin. I’m a software developer. So my priorities are different. I’m not so concerned about 9999.99% uptime ratings with the OS I use (though I try to shoot for that with the software I write).

I used Unix several years ago. It’s a nice, reliable OS, like Linux, but I got tired of it after a while. I find Windows to be better suited to what I use a computer for.

I think the only time I’d start using Linux by choice is if I was involved in some project and the software or tool I needed only ran on it, or if a part of the project was working with a client’s existing Linux system.

Beige Box

In reply to Ten words or less: “I don’t use Linux because…”

I only have 1 Beige Box

Its in there

In reply to Ten words or less: “I don’t use Linux because…”

I dont use Linux because …

I have a DVD player attached to my television. (over 75% of commercial DVD players are idiot linux boxes.)

I use a wireless router. (Many commercial routers these days have a bastardized form of linux inside)

Nope I dont use linux at all.

I like to set my $ on fire.

In reply to Ten words or less: “I don’t use Linux because…”

😀

I love rebooting

In reply to Ten words or less: “I don’t use Linux because…”

I love rebooting and several of my linux machines have been up for over a year with rebooting 🙂

Linux Ugh!

In reply to Ten words or less: “I don’t use Linux because…”

I like the intuitive interaction with my Mac.

Intuitive?

In reply to Linux Ugh!

I love it when people refer to anything in the IT field as intuitive. If you can find a person unfamiliar with computers, put three computers in front of him – a Mac, a Wintel box, and the Linux / GUI distro of your choice. Power up the CPU and the monitor and we’ll see how “intuitive” each of them is.

Oddly enough…

In reply to Intuitive?

Way back in the Bell Labs days there was a lot of research done around user interfaces. The MAC was brought out with the icons chosen so that (according to the rather expensive research) the users made the correct choice for what they wanted to do about 95% of the time. That is why they started the Mac out with the ad “The computer for the rest of us.”

Linux on Laptop

In reply to Ten words or less: “I don’t use Linux because…”

I love Linux I really do, but….. I still cannot get everything to work on my Fujitsu laptop. I keep reverting back to Windows for work after spending weekends trying to get everything to function. I think Linux still has a long way to go in order to make it more universally friendly, but hey, I am sure it’ll get there eventually!

What distro and what doesn’t work?

In reply to Linux on Laptop

NT

What a difference a distro makes

In reply to Linux on Laptop

I have only clunker of an HP laptop, according to the little sticker I just ripped off the case it was “made for Windows Me” poor little bugger.

Anyways, it doesnt have wifi or even a built in NIC so one of the big factors of which distro I use is hardware recognition. Download a bunch of Live CD’s, try em, and whichever one picks up most of your hardware, install.

To my surprise the best recognition to date hasn’t been Ubuntu, or Red Hat or Fedora or even Suse but PCLinuxOS.

Linspire picked it up too but I found it a mite slow.

So just because one disty dont cut it, try another. Not only do you get to experience a whole bunch of new installs, GUI’s and desktops but, in my case, I ended up with a laptop faster than the day it came off the production line.

Stick with it, there’s nothing wrong with MS and I have nothing against their products but the times they are a changing. And being Linux savvy will never harm your career.

practical reasons

In reply to Ten words or less: “I don’t use Linux because…”

The road to paradise is full of trouble. I have travelled from “terminals” to “PC”, from Unix to MS-DOS, and , just to write, make calculations, and play, it is too expensive to start again. Call it laziness. May be true.

I don’t use Linux because it is too complicated.

In reply to Ten words or less: “I don’t use Linux because…”

I don’t use Linux because it is too complicated.

My 1st thought when I saw your article. After a some further thought, I want to use my computer to carry out my requirements and not spend the required time to learn a new OS.

Lynn Beeler

How is it too complicated?

In reply to I don’t use Linux because it is too complicated.

What can you not do in Linux? What’s too complicated to do?

one example…

In reply to How is it too complicated?

Needed a security cam solution, a particular camera has alrady been selected, based on it’s feature set (BTW, the cam was an embedded linux device). Opted to use motion (www.lavrsen.dk a pretty incredible creation actually). unfortuantely, there was no package for it at that time (I see there is now), so downloaded the sources. make failed, had to browse the source to find an out-of-date lib and rename references to the new lib name, then make. Didn’t include an MPEG encoder, so had to grab and make Berkeley MPEG-1 Encoder (ran into a glitch on that too, but I can’t find the notes on it now). CAM not supported by motion, so we change the cam itself to push (ftp) the images to an upload repository onthe motion server. Then use a third party graphic program to create the mask file for each of the cams to restrict motion sensing. Every couple weeks we get calls because the system isn’t working (FTP goes nuts trying to handle the webcam connections). And have to restart the server.

We go and buy a $200 widnows program. Run setup.exe add the cam’s create the masks directly on the active cam screens, and voila. Thing has been running for two years, and never had to touch it once.

(I do realize that this is a fairly unique situation. I also do use Linux for some things My NTP server, for instance. I find it easier to configure and manage Linux NTP over windows. But I thought this was a worthy anecdote to mention).

Sounds like a vendor problem, not a Linux problem

In reply to one example…

Why go with a vendor that doesn’t support the OS of choice?

Or, sounds like a user problem, not a Linux problem

In reply to Sounds like a vendor problem, not a Linux problem

Why go with an OS that doesn’t support the hardware you purchased?

As you noted yourself, this isn’t a typical installation. It would have been much easier if the hardware, software, and OS compatibility had been checked before purchasing.

Sorry,

In reply to Sounds like a vendor problem, not a Linux problem

I am not following you. The camera was an embedded Linux System, with a feature set the end users desired. It was purchased as an observation cam prior to the wish to record, based on motion sensing. The first attempt at implementing motion sensing/recording was done using the previously mentioned package (a decent system, really. The author is to be commended for his fine work). The key point of interest is that the Linux solution was in fact more complicated. Yes, the system was not a planned system. No, the components were not checked for compatibility. But then, neither was the windows application.

Shardeth, it’s my week to go off half-cocked.

In reply to Sounds like a vendor problem, not a Linux problem

Apparently I’m having trouble remembering what said in a thread from one hour to the next. I confused some of the details in your camera post with different thread. I’ll just sit quietly in the corner for a while…

I’m Lazy

In reply to Ten words or less: “I don’t use Linux because…”

I’ve been promising myself…but it’s on my to do list still

My daughter wants to play SIMS2

In reply to Ten words or less: “I don’t use Linux because…”

One of the problems with getting the home user to use Linux (any flavour) is the lack of good quality commercial games. I realise the argument should be that PCs are not for gaming, but that’s what most of them are used for.

Cedega

In reply to My daughter wants to play SIMS2

http://www.transgaming.com
http://www.transgaming.org
http://www.transgaming.org/gamesdb

Wiki
http://cedegawiki.sweetleafstudios.com/wiki/Main_Page

I love this routine.

In reply to Cedega

Step 1: Uninformed Windows user says he can’t run his app (usually a game) under Linux.

Step 2: Linux advocate posts, “Yes, you can.” and points to what I’ll ignorantly call emulation software.

While the Linux advocate is 100% correct, compatibility with an existing app isn’t going to motivate a home user to start learning a new OS.

Actually

In reply to I love this routine.

That’s not entirely true Palmetto. As I’m one of them.

The only thing that was keeping me on Windows is gaming.

I saw his post on Cedega months ago, and wanted to try it out.

The problem now is hardware failure (not from Linux, I fried my vid card or something). If I could get my spare computer running Linux, and get Cedega set up, I’d learn the new OS in a heartbeat, and jump ship from windows.

But I had issues setting up Cedega in kUbuntu (pre-failure, but I think it was a vid card issue) so I’m a bit afraid to just switch my main computer over until I know it does what I want it to…

It now sets up, but I still get an error… I’ll futz with it this weekend when I have time to play with it and see what happens…

I just wanted to let you know that not every Windows home user is a happy user, and sometimes, (just sometimes!) we’re even willing to try.

Thanks.

In reply to Actually

Poor phrasing on my part, as usual. I probably should have said, ” … compatibility with an existing app BY ITSELF isn’t going to motivate a home user to start learning a new OS.”

So what?

In reply to Thanks.

I don’t think anyone claimed it would. The point here is that someone complained about the inability to run a given app on Linux as a reason for not using it. Pointing out how untrue that assumption about compatibility is does not constitute an assumption that compatibility is a reason to switch OSes. It’s just removing an obstacle. If, with all obstacles removed, you still want to stay with Windows, then do so.

Why do you keep reacting as though “metoo” compatibility is some kind of evangelical rallying cry? It’s not. It’s just debunking some myths.

For the most part, those of us (like me, jmgarvin, et cetera) who spend a fair bit of time telling people like rickk when they’re wrong do so not to proselytize for Linux, but to counteract the FUD that is doing a disservice to people who are made afraid to try something new.

No Fear Here

In reply to So what?

We aren’t afraid of trying something new.

We just don’t have time to mess around with another OS when the one we have works just fine.

If the “afraid of trying something new” were part of the deal, hell, why don’t we all just take a week off work per OS and test them all out.

Surely there are at least 52 different OS’s…I could go home and not have to work for a whole year.

After all, part of the Linux argument is customization and picking the one that works best for you.

Too bad it would take the rest of my freakin life to find the right one.

What’s this “we” crap?

In reply to So what?

You’re not one of the people having a disservice done to them by others sowing FUD and being made afraid to try something new by the spreading of anti-anything-not-Microsoft BS. You are, in fact, one of the people spreading FUD. Go back, reread my previous post, and notice that I very firmly separated you from the “afraid” camp, and placed you in the “FUD” camp instead.

You can stop playing this solidarity game now.

Your intent isn’t coming across in text.

In reply to So what?

“Why do you keep reacting as though “metoo” compatibility is some kind of evangelical rallying cry? … Those of us … who spend a fair bit of time … do so not to proselytize for Linux, but to counteract the FUD …”

I’m reacting that way becease -sometimes- the “Yes, you can run Windows apps under Linux” message is phrased in a way implies that compatibility is the only requirement to be met before the user makes the switch. I looked back at this particular thread of the discussion and see that isn’t the case. If I’ve stepped on any toes, I apologize. I’ll quit beating this horse in this discussion, and be more restrained about climging back on it (badly mangled metaphor).

Worry not.

In reply to So what?

I don’t think you stepped on anyone’s toes, Palmetto. I was just pointing out that mentioning Windows software can be run on Linux isn’t generally used as a tool for proselytizing, and wondering why you seemed to think it was.

Palmetto, you’ve given me an idea!

In reply to I love this routine.

I’ve been looking for a project to teach myself PHP and/or Perl with. I’ve got one: I’ll save us all a lot of trouble and write something that greps for phrases that contain “can’t” “run” “games” “Linux” in proximity to one another and automatically creates and submits a post with the title “Yes, you can.” and contains a link to http://www.transgaming.com. In tribute to my favorite autoresponding trollbot, I’ll call it rickk++.

That would free up a lot more time for me to tend to my LART.

On second thought, maybe I should write it in C#. After all, if you’re going to write a brain-dead application, you might as well use a brain-dead language.

That’ll teach my to keep my mouth shut and my hands off the keyboard.

In reply to Palmetto, you’ve given me an idea!

It’s a shame I haven’t done any programming in over a decade, and that was all FORTRAN and COBOL. If I had, I might have been able to understand your references to PERL, PHP, greps, LART, and C#. Oh well …

🙂

This one’s platform-independent.

In reply to That’ll teach my to keep my mouth shut and my hands off the keyboard.

LART: Luser Attitude Readjustment Tool. A cluebat.

Well, that would be easy.

In reply to Palmetto, you’ve given me an idea!

Grab some simple webspider script written in Perl, target it at TR, add a one-liner regex-centric statement, and graft an API onto it for dealing with TR. Voila. You’re in business.

The tough part would be getting the API specs.

Yes, but

In reply to Well, that would be easy.

if I wanted to slap together some random prewritten code, add some cruft on top of it, and then call it a program, I’d send my r?sum? to Microsoft. 🙂

I don’t use it

In reply to Ten words or less: “I don’t use Linux because…”

I’ll start with a statement and a ques