Anybody here use Linux?

Anon wrote:
"GlueGum" noooo wrote in message
. ..

You don't have to choose. You can use both on the same computer, if you
have enough hard drive space. If not, stick to XP. I used to dual-boot
linux (mandrake) and windows. It's easy to do if you install windows first.
Just leave part of your hard drive (4GB or so) NOT partitioned when you
install windows.

Simpler for a newbie to just buy a second disk drive. Office Max has
80G Western Digitals today for $20 after rebate.

In article ,
says...

Cheers on you decision to avoid French products. I started to go back to Red
Hat possibly due to the whole deal with the French/German/Russian thing,
but I thought I'd wait for Fedora to mature a bit before I tried it. Maybe
by Core 3 I'll give it a look. Besides, I really like SuSE...

"I started to go back to Red Hat possibly due to the whole deal with
the French/German/Russian thing"

.....err better forget SuSE then because its a German distribution.


--
Conor

"The vast majority of Iraqis want to live in a peaceful, free world.
And we will find these people and we will bring them to justice."
- George Bush

hmmm nvidia does have the advantage, as one driver nearly fits all...but not the 'latest' cards from the major suppliers have a
xinux' compatible driver that I have seen.... was window shopping the minimum requirements/supported platforms and they are not(at
least on the box) covering xinux. I also noticed that some hardware that claims 'xinux' compatibility, are supplying their 'version'
of nix that will work.


"Ruel Smith (Big Daddy)" wrote in message ...
on Sat January 24 2004 10:03 pm, JAD decided to enlighten us with:

Not to mention you don't get to put that state_ o_ the_ art vidcard
in either...

Why not? If it's nVidia, usually even the most recent cards will work. Ati
is a little behind on their drivers, but as Linux's popularity grows, so to
will Ati's commitment to it and the driver's will be better supported.



--
Big Daddy Ruel Smith

My SuSE Linux machine uptime:
9:33am up 48 days 18:19, 2 users, load average: 0.24, 0.74, 0.50

My Windows XP machine uptime:
Something less...

GlueGum wrote:
If I ask this question at a Linux ng, they'll say XP sucks. If I ask at an
XP ng, they'll say Linux sucks.

From what I've read Mandrake is the best for desktop apps and for newbies
(like me). I've been using windows since 3.11(currently XP home) and was
wondering if anybody here uses Linux, and how does it compare to XP?

* Don't believe anybody who says that running linux nowadays is easy.
* Linux inherits the 30-year-old unix designs that Microsoft is finally
starting to use lately.
* Linux is free and currently hard to learn, so its biggest advantage
now is in multiple-computer installations.
* The open source of linux leads to better security and reliability.
* As use of linux increases, hardware makers will lose sales unless they
provide good drivers for linux.
* It will take some more time (5 years?) for linux to become easy enough
for most people.
* Eventually (10 years?) linux will basically drive Microsoft out of the
OS business.

If you are under the age of 60, you will be using Linux someday. If you
are technically inclined, put in a spare hard drive and experiment with
a few different linux distros in your spare time, then decide.

Simpler for a newbie to just buy a second disk drive. Office Max has
80G Western Digitals today for $20 after rebate.


In other words, pay a hundred bucks for a sixty buck drive, mail in the
rebate, do EVERYTHING RIGHT, get the rebate rejected, end up paying forty
bucks more than you should. No thanks. -Dave

* Don't believe anybody who says that running linux nowadays is easy.

WTF are you talking about? Linux is only hard if you think running windows
is hard. In fact, a lot of hard-core linux advocates are really ****ed that
linux is so much like windoze now. Some of them are afraid that (gasp!)
computer newbies might start choosing linux as a primary OS.

Linux is harder to run if you want to customize things. But most major
distros need no tweaking to run just fine at the default settings. That is,
unless your hardware is a bit iffy. -Dave

hardware setup and knowing what hardware will work with what distro is still a big problem for an avg. user.

"Dave C." wrote in message ...

* Don't believe anybody who says that running linux nowadays is easy.

WTF are you talking about? Linux is only hard if you think running windows
is hard. In fact, a lot of hard-core linux advocates are really ****ed that
linux is so much like windoze now. Some of them are afraid that (gasp!)
computer newbies might start choosing linux as a primary OS.

Linux is harder to run if you want to customize things. But most major
distros need no tweaking to run just fine at the default settings. That is,
unless your hardware is a bit iffy. -Dave

"JAD" wrote in message
ink.net...
hardware setup and knowing what hardware will work with what distro is
still a big problem for an avg. user.


Well, maybe if you shop the gateways and dells, you've got a problem. If
you built your own, it's highly likely that linux will like it. -Dave

In other words, pay a hundred bucks for a sixty buck drive, mail in the
rebate, do EVERYTHING RIGHT, get the rebate rejected, end up paying
forty
bucks more than you should. No thanks. -Dave

What is this whole rebate thing? I live in the UK, I'm guessing its a US
thing right?

Steve

It's a marketing scam. Many consumer items in the U.S. (especially
electronics and computer components) are advertised as costing $____ "after
rebate". Let's say a DVD player is $30 US after rebate. So you pay sixty
bucks for it, and then you have to mail in for the rebate. To send away for
the rebate, you need an ORIGINAL sales receipt, and an ORIGINAL UPC CODE
(cut off the box). Plus, you need to fill in a form of course. You have to
send all this information away by mail. It's a scam, as most rebates are
rejected, even if they are claimed correctly. The most common scam is that
you did everything right, but the rebate processing company will claim
(incorrectly) that you didn't send in the UPC code. Thus the rebate is
rejected.

What it boils down to is that it is a way to trick U.S. consumers into
paying more for certain items by promising to give them a discount AFTER
THEY BUY something, and then deliberately failing to honor that promise.

You'll see lots of people claim that they have no problem claiming rebates.
These are the same people who SHOULD be purchasing lottery tickets on a
regular basis. When more than 50% of rebates are automatically rejected,
someone who's never had a problem claiming a rebate obviously has luck on
their side. -Dave

on Sun January 25 2004 2:17 pm, JAD decided to enlighten us with:

hardware setup and knowing what hardware will work with what distro is
still a big problem for an avg. user.

I think that putting Linux on proprietary systems like HP, Sony, Dell,
Gateway, Systemax, etc. can be a headache in some cases. Sometimes, there
are some proprietary twists to particular hardware. Take for instance the
Soundblaster Live! Value card. My Dell system has one that's compatible
with my Linux distro. Many, however have reported that later ones Dell
shipped had something slightly different about them (cost cutting?) and
it's not compatible with Soundblaster drivers for Linux. There's a thread
about this somewhere in alt.os.linux.suse.

Chances are, if you have mainstream components that there aren't any twists
like that, it'll run with Linux. Now, certain distros support some hardware
better and others support other hardware better. There is a distro out
there that will work on your system, be it Red Hat 9, Fedora Core 1, SuSE
9, Mandrake 9.2, Xandros 2.0, Gentoo, or whatever. There is a distro for
you.

I will, however, qualify all of this by saying that many of the
state-of-the-art hardware available isn't compatible with Linux, currently.
The problem is the lack of OEM support for Linux and Open Source developers
need time to often reverse engineer the product. You can't possibly blame
this on Linux (god knows they try!), just as you can't blame Microsoft for
a Macintosh product not working in Windows.

However, with that said, most consumers just want the product to work. They
could care less about the underlying philosophy behind Open Source, nor do
they care about what a spectacular job the developers have done. It just
has to install easy, and work. However, I've witness Window installs that
also didn't go well. Many have installed drivers for hardware, only to find
it still doesn't work. After Windows is installed, the Device Manager just
has a lot of unknown devices, and you can't even tell what they are and
have do some investigating to work it all out. It's no different than some
of the more difficult Linux installations.

My installation, on an older Dell, goes perfectly smooth. As a matter of
fact, SuSE's installation and setup went more smoothly than any other
distro I've tried.



--
Big Daddy Ruel Smith

My SuSE Linux machine uptime:
8:09pm up 49 days 3:47, 2 users, load average: 0.19, 0.10, 0.02

My Windows XP machine uptime:
Something less...