heh, i use getright and filezilla as well as winrar without any real troubles ,in wine. so i got the download utility thing solved... it seems goldwave runs pretty well, although there is some intermittent communication breakdown between main window and control dialog... other than that, even the stupid shareware nag junk works great... and i've had great times with winamp...

I tell you what might make me get shot of Windoze:

Has anyone got any of the following programs/hardware up and running in Linux, or a decent replacement?

Serif Page Plus 8 (I've tried Wine)
Umax 2100U scanner (ie usable scans)
any means of loading Lotus Word Pro *.lwp files into OOo

Is there a patch for Gnucash so that files exported by quicken do not have "Split" transactions negated (ie credits become debits and vice versa!)

I use my DVD player to "rip" CDs but it only rips at 1x instead of about 13x in Linux.

There are a few other issues but I'm sure it's just a question of finding the software: ie converting all movie files to mpg for creating VCDs, my digital camera takes "clips" in with AVI extension but they are really mjpeg.

DAVE

With a big thread like this I gotta post to make it bigger.

Anyway. I just recently came to linuxquestions.org and I am learning stuff everyday from here.

I have been using Slackware for about 5 years. I have not used it exclusively until just last week. I formatted my Windows machine and put Slackware 9.0 on it. After installing 3 times I got it working(tried different file systems) The journaling filesystems caused too many error messages on my hard drive. Is there any way to test my HD with linux?

I got KDE running and my Logitech Wireless keyboard and mouse running in USB. I am going to install my printer this weekend, and probably work on getting my video card to work properly. ATI Radeon DDR.

I also have a CD burner I need to learn how to use and I need to find a better window manager than KDE cause, even though it is pretty it seems to slow my system down way too much.

All in all I am very happy that I trashed Windows. I had to reinstall it every 3 months(Win2k) in order to keep it running at a good speed. I ran all the tweak crap I could find and still it seemed to run slower than it should have.

Linux boots quickly, runs quickly, allows you to kill programs without problems or wasted RAM. There is countless support sites for linux, and you can do anything with it that you can do with Windows. It just requires you to learn a little more.

Being a computer geek I love learning about linux, and now that i have switched over I am having to read and learn a lot more. Windows could be ran by a monkey. Just give him a banana when he hits the right buttons and he's ready to go. Heck my 3 year old can install and run a Windows program Sheesh!

If you're not a 3 year old or a Monkey, then why would you want an operating system that wastes your memory, processor power just to make it easier to use. Read something, learn something. That's what you have a mind for.

Well, I am not a 3 year old or a monkey, but I do rely on WinXP for one main thing. My games.

I am an Americas Army addict. I am pretty sure it is not available for Linux. If it were, I would scratch my hard-drive tomorrow...er, next week Tuesday. Going out of town tomorrow.

I used to play Return To Castle Wolfenstein exclusively. I understand that it is available for Linux. But are all the updates? I know I will have to research that but if someone has the quick answer, that would be cool.

As a further note...based on some articles I have read on this forum concerning WinXP...other than my games, I am going to stop using it for the web at all. I will have an RH 7.2 workstation running here real soon and will just use that to do all my other internet stuff.

Gentoo has America's Army.

Get the CD here and you're set.

No way!!

Forgive my ignorance please, but is Gentoo another distro? I guess I would not mind that since I have not even installed RH 7.2 yet. How different is Gentoo to say, RH or MD?

BTW, I think the America's Army CD is a live cd, or it will run off the CD without installing.

Gentoo is a source based meta-distribution, IE sort of like Linux from Scratch but built with a package managing system called portage. Source code is downloaded and compiled specifically for your box.

It is a command line based install, so it will be a day or 2 before you can have an x environment built.

Gentoo install instructions

Oh great! What am I getting into! ha ha ha hah ha

yeah, I just checked out their site. You can download a boot image CD for the game. I would not neccesarily have to install Gentoo...at least that is what I got from it...

as for me, i do almost everything in SuSE 8.2 now... even tho i started my computer life (a very frustrating one - first day i already screwed up the boot sequence in win95, i guess it really was my fault but hey, it doesn't work, and that's that.) with microsoft products. If not because of games like warcraft3 and 3d accel games, i wouldn't run windows at all, considering that there are so many alternative programs in *nix that does the same job as windows programs, if not better.

All in all, i do not recommend it for beginners tho coz as sadly and quite truely, the world's circling around the sun with microsoft products. do have a year or two in computing and get the feel of it first i'd say. but of course, there's nothing wrong in taking the initiative and give it a try even if you're a n00b - who wasnt ever a n00b in linux after all?

so i guess, here's a little comparison chart in my brain -:>

xmms > winamp
xine > wmplayer
pico > edit.com
kppp > dun
konqueror / mozilla / opera > IE
staroffice > msoffice
ftp => ftp
wget > DAP
ext2/3 > ntfs (tho i like fat)
/usr/bin/perl > c:\perl\perl.com
tar/gzip > zip

ok i guess i am not really making much sense here now but u get the idea :P

WineX runs warcraft, and quite a few other games

i think i only lost one game in making the switch to being fully linux dependant

crossover office is good for running stuff too, photoshop runs great in it

*windows free for over a month now*

See message
Linux General -> Why GNU/Linux is Better than Windows

i'd say politics is an important reason for me. Microsoft-fascists they are.

anyway, just knowing that I do all my work in a more comfortable and reliable environment without paying a cent, compared to paying a hundred bucks for using something that always screws up and monitors your activity without you knowing and all that kinds of crap. MS is big brother man...

I also think that open-source software is a great concept, humane perhaps, i'd love to say marxist but it might be strecthing it a bit (although I admire Marx).

I think some of you are mistaken when you say most people who use linux aren't really using it. Don't forget that academics largely use unix/linux systems in their work, especially within sciences (and duh not only computer science). I, myself, use LaTeX2e for all of what I produce of paperwork that goes to printer or pdf/ps. very handy. and yes, as a desktop system. although we might have to work on our definition of desktop system. in linux, of course, most of what is to be done can be done in a shell terminal, which a lot of people, after having played around with the windows-like KDE and GNOME, figure out is more flexible, faster and in fact funnier.

and don't give me "there are some programs that I can't live without that aren't available in linux". fyi there is some pretty good software out there that allows you to install pretty much what there is of both Mac and MS-comaptible software. (only the best aren't free... but ridicoulously cheap when you look at the crap you get for 100 bucks from MS).

ok. maybe XP looks good, but I don't know. I mean, come on, buy a playstation instead.. it has less colors and stuffy things that 10-year olds love. it's like a fucking circus everytime you turn on your computer.....

hahaha, thats the funiest thing ive heard in a while

Hi, Havn't posted here in a while. But here is a How-to for installing AAO onto an existing Linux Install. I made this because I have played this game with a passion since it came out last year. If you visit the Americasarmy.com forums, you may recognize me as HA|(1VB)Hanzerik, I am a Moderator for the Forums. I have been using linux in one way or the other since 98, and always like to help out people with problems. So if you want to install to your Linux distro, here ya go: AAO Linux Client How-to

Its funny but my Internet conection is much faster under Linux than in win2000. Its the same modem(crappy linmodem), same ISP, same subscription. And the driver for Linux is an unofficial hack, while in Win2000 it has a factory driver. The conection is about 20% faster and it behaves like an ISDN, i.e. when maxed-out(stable 6 kBps) if another app tries to acess the net it simply increases the bandwidth(bursting up to 25 kBps). This way I can download huge files without other Internet functions being impaired. I don't know how it happens, but I love it
For me its the best reason for running Linux.