Advanced users, usually don't using GUI much (and some of them are GUI-haters) answer newbie problems with console commands when usually it's possible in GUI. Thet's how GUI-haters make people think Linux is hard to use... I must say that it happens to me, too.

Well, this would be the 210th post, and all I have to add is Cool it guys (and girls)! This thread is in danger of overtaking my behemoth of a thread Anti Microsoft?, and we don't want that, now, do we?

and of course in the same vein as the other thread, nothing new or original (as far as the thread itself goes) has been posted for many pages....

Well, I've found something that Win2K can't do that Linux can! Play this game, which absolutely rocks, btw. Oh, I suppose you could run it under VMWare for Windows, but that'd be cheating!

Anyway, Chris. To keep this thread off topic... have you had your interview yet?

Nothing's wrong with hating GUIs. What's illogical is to both hate them and also want Linux to replace Windows on the desktop. Having a good ole', easy to use, point and drool GUI is the only thing that will make that happen.

Not easy to use apps? I admit that Gnumeric doesn't have quite the same functionality as Excel, but it's more than adequate for most day-to-day spreadsheet use. Konqueror? Mozilla? Any number of browsers? Sylpheed? Maybe thing like CD burning are 'a little more difficult' under Linux... but that's comparing it to today's 'Drag 'n' Drop into Explorer' culture... not so long ago it wasn't that easy to get a CD burner up and running perfectly under Windows! I have stated many, many times that I believe that Linux is ready for the desktop market! It's peoples' attitudes that need to change, not the software!

Oh, and hating Guis? There's nothing wrong with hating some Guis. I do think that it's a little short-sighted to hate Guis in general... but specific ones, well, that's a different story!

I am probably a good example of your typical non geek computer user. I have been running Linux for two weeks now. It took me about a week to get everything configured and running properly, which I was able to do without much trouble thanks to this forum. I am not a gamer so that is not an issue. I mostly use my computer to surf the internet, listen to mp3s, and write letters. I also have quite a few graphic files stored.

I wanted to get away from Windows for several reasons, mostly because of M$. I was also tired of dealing with virus attacks, anti virus software is expensive and doesn't work all that well.

I am finding SuSE 8 to be a nice desktop OS. On the surface it isn't all that much different from Windows. It does everything I want it too, some things much better than Windows. I use abiword and Star Office to open my old Windows text files, no problem. My MP3 collection plays nicely using xmms. I can open my graphic files. My cd burner works at least as well as it did in Windows, maybe better, haven't had a coaster yet. KMail works great for Email, and I don't worry about viruses. Mozilla works for browsing the web. And xkill is the greatest thing since baling wire, kill the problem app and keep right on trucking.

My point is that I think Linux is very close to being a viable desktop OS for non geeks. For people like me GUI rules, and KDE is easy to get the hang of. I hope to be able to work with a shell, command line stuff, eventually but for right now I want it simple.

yep... totally gone over to the overall pro-con... but the question was about capacity if i'm awake at all...

Linux has the capacity, that win2k doesn't, to do the following:

-- Boot from a rescue disk that is actually a full distro, runs in a ramdisk, and includes everything one might need to do emergency configuration repairs

-- Boot from an El Torito format CDROM that includes much more of a full distro and allows full graphical modes...

-- Boot from a floppy or CDROM into a mini-Linux that does nothing but discover your LAN, then autoconfigure and immediately surrender itself as a distributed processing node

-- Install any version, variation, or distribution on any architecture(e.g. PPC), not only IA-32 (486 and up) and IA-64 (itanium) as W2k and XP

-- (as i said before) Dire emergency low-level rescue by text editing that requires only read/write support on the FS of choice

-- Allow the admin to choose every single piece of the system, for optimization and/or minimization

-- allow choice of 5 individually customizeable runlevels, as opposed to:
1)Safe Mode - Command Prompt
2)Safe Mode
3)Safe Mode - Networking Support (Which, BTW, does not include modem drivers so if dial-up, no network after all!!)
4)Normal - Full GUI, all drivers, all services, all features

-- install, uninstall, reinstall, activate configurations, start and stop every feature without rebooting the machine... with occasional exception of changes to partitions (read about 2K/XP's dynamic drives and shudder)

-- read Macintosh partitons (somewhat), without installing some $30 shareware utility (good for backing up, handy on those floppy distros!! can we get SCSI and cdrdao on a floppy? probably!!)

-- and finally, the answer to the first question is in the asker's sig: "anyone know where I can find windows from scratch?"

Here are 4 reasons because I use Linux:
1) It is very fats, stable, secure!
2) It is interesting for me to explore it!
3) It is opensource!
4) It is Linux not Windows

I guess you kicked up your post count by quite a bit since you wrote this message, so it won't too seriously damage your "leadership" in posts if we write a bit here, will it? LOL

I think some of the messages written recently indicate many good reasons for using Linux. Personally, I am a UNIX enthusiast, but I find UNIX to be too expensive for my home budget, particularly in the past year, where the only work as been freelance technical writing every few months.

I find GNU/Linux software to contain many of the same GNU utilities that I generally download on my UNIX systems for maximum flexibility. We always used to have a "contrib" software area at work full of GNU utilities. These form the basis for Linux, on top of the kernel, so I'm right at home with them.

I find Linux to be stable, I find that I can use different distributions that are slightly different in character, yet similar in overall function. If all I want or need is a simple desktop system, then I use Lycoris Desktop/LX. If I want packaging freedom and flexibility, I use Libranet, a Canadian GNU/Linux distro. If I want serious performance, bleeding edge software, and want to tinker even more, I use Gentoo Linux. If I just want a good mainstream distro, I use Mandrake on the desk and Red Hat on the server.

Frankly, I have lots of choices, and I use many of them. So for me, choice, coupled with all of these other fine attributes, is what gets it for me.

I love Linux 'cause:
1. It's opensource and I can edit almost anything I want
2. It's free
3. It's stable,secure,flexible
4. I love to edit things by hand and Slackware has much to offer in this
5. Like nautilus said: "It's Linux not Windows"

I see there are ppl bragging about some OS called winbloze( I assume everything that starts with win can be abriviated win* - like we do with UNIX-like system *NIX - so I assume they are Windows-like family of software, I am not even sure if it is an operating system, but let it be, right?), where can I downlod an iso, I went to their homepage, I guess it would be http://www.microsoft.com and there are no ftp mirrors or anything like that ??? I'd like to try it

You know, I have heard of this thing as well. Apparently it's only for the "elitest" of folks. Costing upwards of $200 for not even a good quality version And then add on software for this so called win* simply to be able to use an office suite is somewhere between 300-700 american dollars! I too would like to see what this Elite operating system has to offer, because with prices like that, the CD's must be made of gold, the software must have support and have been written by the smartest of people, allowing no bugs at all and the source code on it must be amazingly clean.

So I too must ask, where can I get a copy of the source code for this amazing piece of software?

he he he

Oh, I have to pay for it, is it worth my money? I mean, when I bought Caldera back in 1998 I had a tech support for 30 days over the phone and 60 days by e-mail and they did their best to get me up and running, when I got my RH7.1 I think the same theme applied - even though I've never used it. And apps I run wihout any support needed, if I have a problem I go here, is there http://www.windowsquestions.org out there? Oh, I see it points right here!!! Oh, and one more question, will I have uptimes counting in weeks with this win* software?