I have been a die hard windows fan for years while exploreing the
gnu/linux distros. Now, Microsoft windows seems to be losing thier mind
with thier new OS, Vista. It is awsome as far as the visual aspect, but
it took microsoft untill Vista to add additions to thier OS, that most
Linux distros have had for years. This isn't including all of the
digital rights that Microsoft is taking away from us. People didn't
realize it as much with Win XP, but now with Win Vista, Microsoft is
starting to show thier true colors. Me being a local OEM, in the town
that I live, even small things matter. Really they always do. I can say
this also, most of my customer support that I have to deal with are on
the Windows boxes that people have. With Linux things just work. When
will people really realize they should get what they pay for, and
realize that they should at least try something that is FREE that works
BETTER without restrictions??????

reserch link no 1

http://badvista.fsf.org/what-s-wrong-with-microsoft-windows-vista

reserch link no 2

http://badvista.fsf.org/

The best analogy that I have seen yet.

Ron Schenone said,
Wrote on March 12, 2007




“Microsoft is the best marketing company in the world. They could sell
you the worst toilet paper in the world and convince you to upgrade your
toilets each time they change the color of the flowers of the paper.”

LOL netuserlla, I followed your links and read several articles plus a
lot of blog posts. I agree that an OS Linux could/should be offered,
and pre-installed on new computers. Why shouldn't we have a choice? I
would dump Windows given half a chance.

I have been looking at getting a new laptop as mine is practically a
crank it to wind it up OLDER type. I have to jump through (several)
hoops to get files from it to this system and so wait until I have a gob
of stuff on it to convert any files. What a pain in the drain.

I have also been reading about Vista and the WOW factor hype. Just
because MS says it, does not make it so. I am not naive enough to think
that Windows is anything (all that) special. The last system to be super
stable was Windows for Workgroups 3.11(in my opinion) and XP has been
the bane of my existence for several years now. Reflecting on it, it
seems lots of things went away when Windows became prevalent and was
pre-installed on most consumer purchased pc's. I was also quite guilty
of selling gobs of pc's with win95 on them, back when.

I have never been taken with XP all that much and would jump at the
chance to try out some of the Linux systems. I might even wait long
enough (although sooner would be better)to get a machine with any Linux
OS system on it.

So many companies went by the wayside when Windows was not forthcoming
with source code back when (and all that). And plenty have been gobbled
up by the bigger corporations. Waking up to the fact that we are, and
have been for the last 10 or so years being led down a garden path to a
jail is finally coming to fruition. Choices and freedoms are
disappearing.

I try not to have my head in the sand but, just like everyone else what
are us little folks supposed to do about it? I voted for Linux! Do you
think it will make a difference? Let's hope Dell listens to all the
voters.

Have a great day tomorrow.

Verb

Thanks for your comments Verb. Dell has been the leader-of-the-pack
OEM for some time now. Since the joining of AMD and ATI, Dell is
starting to look at that side of the fence. They are thinking to change
thier whole architecture to AMD. I think that that is really something
considering that they flooded the advertising market with Intel. Intel
is a great processor, but AMD has a better architecture(having the
memory controler on the processor), but intel really does most of thier
ruling with mobo chipsets. I'm sorry for straying off, this is another
subject all together.
WalMart tried Lindows and failed, but I think that if dell started
pushing for Linux, it will at least start waking some people up. There
is a learning curve to learning Linux, but it is worth it,and if you
have dissected windows as I have over the years, the learning curve is
small.

netuserlla,

I've heard lots of scary things about vista, and recommend all my
friends buying new machines to insist on XP. I used windows 98 up until
2005, so I think there's lots of life left in XP; by the time people
*have* to leave XP (due to old age), the linux solution should be even
easier & better for them. We can sidestep vista altogether.

Verbatim, i'm really glad to hear you voted for linux on Dell's site. i
thought those votes were all coming from the die-hard linux users (who
are not really Dell's customers), but i can see now that many XP users
might really just want more choice.

If anyone wants to try a distribution of linux, you can do it on your
current PC without installing any software. Amazing, but true. Use a
'live CD' and the linux OS and applications will run directly off the
CD, and make no changes to your harddrive (unless you tell it to).
After your done, remove the CD and you are back using the same system
you had before.

You can get an older one for free from http://shipit.ubuntu.com, or you
can buy a newer one for less than $10 (shipping included) through ebay
or google a 'linux live cd' reseller. I like ubuntu and pclinuxos.

netuserlla - can you recommend a good live CD thats easy to use?

Thank You! Great info. I know zip about Linux but learning new things
is all we have to look forward to, right? LOL

I will get right on that Linux CD offer. Less than $10.00? sheesh.
What a drop in the bucket compared to the prices of other software out
there. I jumped from win98 to XP in a big leap a few years ago when I
bought my newest machine that I am using (mostly) now. I spent zero
time trying to learn XP because as soon as you learn a new system, BINGO
a newer one comes out. I am sick of that, too. (would you like some
cheese with that whine?)

Learning Linux will be a step forward, in my book. I know that is
probably not the usual answer from Windows users but as message knows, I
stumble around in XP all the time. I have no desire to be a guru on XP.
I guess I have set up a dozen systems (or so) on XP and have for some
years concentrated on learning other things (that could put a few bucks
in my pocket) instead of even the basics on XP. I know what I have to
know to GET BY! LOL When you get older you have to think harder too to
resolve things.

This morning my network here was down, all I needed to do was re-enable
the connection, but fumbled around a while THINKING about what went
wrong while I was sleeping last night (not enough sleep either).
Gremlins, I guess. ?

OK, off to other subjects for a bit, more coffee and the morning cache
of pills to down. Gotta get breakfast over and done with too.

Back in a bit. You guys have a great morning.

Verb

you might want to check out a program called XAMPP it will literally
install MySQL, PHP, Apache, filezilla on a windows based OS. When it is
all done you have yourself a pretty nice webserver and what is known as
a WAMP environment as opposed to a LAMP environment. Currently, Every
website I have ever done is on Linux servers and I am very reluctant to
take a job that requires me to work on a Microsoft webserver. Apache
just does it better faster and more reliably.

XAMPP and Linux are actually still free downloads if I am not mistaken
you only have to pay if you want them to give it to you on a CD.

I have tried many distros, and even still I think that I have a few
live cd/dvd around. I like SUSE Linux and even have a live disk for it
that I made myself. (Downloaded and extracted the ISO onto disk). I
think that I would have to say that the best live linux cd that I have
found for newbies would be KNOPPIX. I has most of the extras that you
can get, after an install version, already included on the disk. It uses
KDE GUI, and it even has Wine. (Witch is pretty good at running windows
only programs). It even has an earlier version of Open Office, witch is
comparable to and better in most ways than microsoft office. All of this
for free. Also if you really like Knoppix, you can even do a hard drive
install from the live disk.
I guess that my favorite distro, witch I use at present, is Gnu/Linux
Mandriva. This is an install disk only, but it comes with so many
drivers that works with even windows hardware. Not just that, but from
the welcome screen, you can chose witch GUI (graphical user
interface)that you want to boot.I like KDE or Gnome. Well I can ramble
on, but I guess that is a good start, so I will go for now.

Oh, and happy Linux digging.

Have you tried Ubuntu? It is the best one I have seen so far.