will just replacing the whole tower work i have a friend with an entra one. that i can get for twenty bucks

It would work for me; I'd just put a nice Linux distro in the tower, make it my primary and network it to the first machine. Once that is done, there are a lot of possibilities to explore.

Its a laptop and all I have to do is install a new Hard Drive. I managed to find a new 120 GB for $37 on Amazon with shipping. That's 40GB bigger than the original one.

The only time I advocate replacing the whole computer is it is A) WAY OLD, or B) The hardware issues are so great that fixing becomes more than the computer is worth.

Example, if you own a Mac Probook and its main board goes out, the part itself FROM APPLE is $700 not counting installation labor. The average Dell Laptop the main board is about $150 to $200 depending on the model. Mac sucks! They are over priced and any Linux Machine is the SAME DAMN THING!

I'm intrigued...Having been a Mac guy from way back, I'm inclined to agree with you on Apple products, but calling a Linux box the same damn thing prompts me to ask you to justify that accusation, especially in light of the fact that I'm totally sold on open source, free software.

And here it is, There is NOTHING ABOUT OSX that is any different from UBUNTU save ONE THING...

... the GNOME. Not the Garden variety. The way your desktop looks and behaves. If you look you will find a GNOME that will allow UBUNTU to look EXACTLY like Mac OSX in every way shape and form! To buy OSX it costs just as much as Windows. If you pay for Ubuntu you bought the disk and last I seen the disks were $7.00. Otherwise it is a free download. It is a big file so it takes a while! I have a laptop that is an Ubuntu Machine (12.10). It is an old Dell Inspiron B120. XP ran like a dog on it. It actually runs PDG for an old macine with a newer OS on it. I have the Mac GNOME on it but I prefer the Ubuntu GNOME. And if you get Ubuntu make sure to install Rootilus so you have super user privilege over all your files and folders. I almost hated Ubuntu until I found this one feature to give me the control I want over my machine on a deeper level! If I am the god damn administrator than I should have the file access of one!

ROOTILUS ALL THE WAY!

AFAIK, different linux distros have different means of obtaining root access. IMO it's unwise to give the admin root privileges unless you've created a less privileged user account for general use and even there, I have reservations about it. Not giving the admin root privileges by default can serve as a "fail-safe" doublecheck that you aren't inadvertently doing something you are about to regret (which I have done more than once as root!). I'm keeping my superuser, admin and regular user privileges as they are on all my machines.

I don't allow "general use" on my work machines. I have a "general access" machine should anyone need to use the internet here. Likewise there are places I will mess around and places (like folders) I will not mess with because I know what happens when you delete the wrong folder. Or worst modify the wrong folder. I grew up with computers. I fix them. I likewise perform exorcisms too! The demon Braviark is a tough one and each time he comes back each year stronger and harder to eliminate than ever. Braviark loves windows users. They are so eager to scan their computers for infections. But so far I have managed to break his back by going into the registry of Windows and doing the unthinkable... And I have yet (knock on wood) to actually BSOD a computer getting rid of Braviark.

Braviark is the Registry name of a particular "Extortionware" that goes by several names like Windows Defender 2012, Home AntiVirus 2012.

You have 236 infected files and for $50 we will stop the redirects to our web site...

Yeah, right...

So essentially, you're saying that 'mac' sucks, and then you tell us how you copied your Ubuntu installation to look and feel like OS X.

Um .. okay. Carry on then.

Sillyness aside. Linux distributions (like Ubuntu, Debian, CentOS, etc) and OS X have more differences than you think. OS X is based on a BSD code base, while Linux is an independent development of a unix-like system. This means that these systems are similar, but not binary compatible.
Linux is more like a cousin of OS X than a brother, if you will.

Furthermore, OS X has lots of applications that are not open source and are build on libraries that are not open source. It's debatable whether this is a good thing or not. Clearly if you're in favour of free and open source software then it's not ideal. But the quality, stability and (most importantly) availability(!) of applications on OS X compared to applications on Linux (whichever distro) is simply much, much higher.

I run OS X, Ubuntu, RHEL and Win7, by the way.


p.s.
"to buy os x it cost just as much as windows"
http://www.apple.com/osx/
$19.99 from the Mac App Store.
Oh, and an OS X 10.6 upgrade was $10 a while back.

Actually
hook it up to an true amiga and amiga classic as it is with amiga os 3.1 with the patch fix or amiga 3.5/3.9.2 it will format it with no problem then u format it with the Amiga as ntfs. Then you format it raw with your win 7 os or linux and go pclinuxos ubuntu sucks.

First of all try FINDING a true Amiga classic! Are we not talking an OLD computer here? I mean I just tossed a Toshiba Satellite CDS 2100 becasue I could not even get Puppylinux to load on it correctly! We are talking around that old, right? The computer itself was a SATA hard drive and not all that old. The new hard drive was only $37 with shipping and was 160GB to boot! The old hard drive was 80GB. Isn't the Amiga an old SCUSI computer? I mean it isn't even an IDE is it? Or am I thinking the wrong Amiga?



First of all having had my fair share of dealing with messed up Macs and Apple computers, And I have an iMac Pod computer sitting in my living room right now with real serious electronic problems and it never worked out of the crate. This one is not like I can just pull parts and replace the defective items, with that aside, and I do have an expert who can fix it but I am waiting to get the money needed for parts and labor... with that aside other items like a Macbook Pro with a known manufacturer defect took two months to get them to do a warranty repair after I hounded them mercilessly over their manufacturer recall on the particular model. Parts cost comparison, Bear this in mind, Foxconn does most of the work for Apple and Foxcon is the CHEAP (well, inexpensive) PC manufactures and I have used their Motherboards before on computer builds, (Elitegroup is CHEAP CRAPPY PARTS and guess who uses them? FRY'S for their laptops!). Now when you have to replace a main logic board the part from Apple is $699 plus $24. shipping to Los Angles. That was if I was going to have to replace the mainboard. I have never had to spend more than 300 on a Dell main board even for their top of the line computers! Better was when I had to send a computer in for Warranty service. I had a box sent to me the NEXT DAY and I didn't have to pay for squat. I did have to pay for shipping to get the Macbook to apple and back from them. The labor and parts were free but that took another six weeks to get it back. All over a defective graphics chip installed incorrectly and it failed on a lot of Mackbook Pros between 2008 and 2009.

Now about OS-X vs. Linux. Just becasue the software operations are Unix vs. BSD. The differences are in coding only. Function is the same. Linux is more watered down to prevent loading up older computers. it also tries to emulate XP more closely than other "free" OS's do. Having been around the park OS wise I do not see any difference in functionality. OS-X is more for people who d not like to go deeper into their system. There is sort of a learning curve you need to be on for Ubuntu though since some things are not bonehead like installing Java becasue you have to have it for a particular application to work properly. Likewise OS-X is a Software you have to pay for. With Ubuntu you still need to tailor it to your needs. It doesn't just dump an azzload of apps on your computer trying to be a Swiss army knife in a box.

Free BSD has a lot of charms as well as OpenSUSE. Puppylinux is what I fall back on for OLD computers. Heck, I have a OLD 428DXII 200MHz computer with Windows 3.5 and DOS 6 on it I want to sell since I do not do data recovery any more. Got an old 5 1.2 floppy with Data you need to retrieve? My laptop is an old Dell Inspiron B120 and I use Ubuntu on it with no issues. I have never had any. Getting Java on it was the biggest challenge to me. A friend of mine had me specifically build a box for him that had ISO Linux on it. Likewise I had someone hand me a disk and had me install Fedora on a computer fixed for that person. That computer was one of those, "I bet you can't," deals which I did. A fried 5V power bus on the power supply and a blown CPU fan can make your computer act all wonky!

And personally to me DOS is punishment! It always was!

Ebay and yes wrong amiga all amigas can run any form of hardrive as they where the first with scisi as well with first with usb and cd and blue ray and sata. The point is you cna get it off of ebay. I use mine(a1200/a4000) to unlock any hard drive. Really. It can be true 64bit . A1000 is true 16bit and can see any amount of ram and have had a true 64bit PArisc , true 64bit Alpha, and true 64bit sgi on the same system. The original 68000 cpu was automatically delegated to the desktop. Remember pc=macs are true 8bit.