yeah, you're right, i'm sorry.... I was searching for nvidia without the the "ignore-case" feature.... THAT didn't return any results.

I think it is perfectly acceptable to have both Windows and Linux. Really, when you think about it, they are both an operating system with the same goal in mind, however both try to achieve these goals in different ways. I'm not the one to go around just blatently bash windows, though I will admit to have done that before a long while back, but now I have gotten past such pettiy details. Really, if there is a reason one would still need Windows, such as a hardware or software reason, by all means go for it, it's your choice, nobody else's. I myself dual boot windows 2000 and Slack, and I use windows and slack, though yes I find myself using Windows a little more often now and then, but because my canon printer is not supported under linux. Now, do I go and blame Linux for this descrepency? No, it's not developers of linux, or other people from the Open Source community's fault, and I don't exactly go around say why most people should at least hold on to windows. I myself would like to have two separate boxes, a dedicated windows and linux box, but thats far off into the future at the moment.

The point I am getting at, is that one must try to look at both sides, I mean really, Windows does have it's own advantage, mainly because there is already a great number of users on it, not that I am saying that there aren't a lot of Linux users, but what I am saying is that because you are dealing with a commercially distributed OS, such as windows, you are usually garuanteed 99.9% of the time, that the hardware you buy will work, and if it doesn't, the companies of 'said' hardware are writing drivers for that device. Now this is where one should really consider aiming their frustrations, is not entirely to Microsoft, but to the hardware companies, in my case, I blame canon for not having drivers for my printer in linux.

Of course you can say that there are a community of linux developers out there trying to include as much hardware support they can into linux, but now you have to see the cons of dealing with a freely distributed OS, and the obvious thing is hardware support, then on most occasions software too.

Going back to hardware support, also I know that there are some companies that are releasing drivers for their hardware on other platforms, such as linux, however with a slight issue, and one example of this is ATI. ATI does write drivers for their later cards, 8500 series and above, again, I place my frustrations at ATI, my card is an ATI 7500, and is not officially supported by ATI for linux, another thing is that the drivers ATI provides don't seem to take advantage of the graphics card's capability fully in Linux, or also if there are a source of Linux developers willing to write drivers for ATI products, ATI does not release certain details about their cards, thus not all features of their card might work under Linux.

To conclude this post, I would just reiterate that there is nothing wrong with having both windows and linux, either as two seperate boxes or on the same pc, as a dual boot setup, if there is a reason that one might need to use windows, go ahead, if you get accomplished what you need to get accomplished, then one cannot really feel guilty. Really, its just an OS.

After recently quitting a MMORPG (game) I realized that the games that I still play, all run on linux (nativly, for the most part).
I just reinstalled slack on my main machine, I'm still in the setup phase, but I'll be installing Doom3 and UT2k4. I'm excited to use linux as my main os (windows at work though) and I'm ready to start learning.
-username17

I guess I'd have to agree with Jeebizz for the most part. I'd like to make Linux my main OS, but there is no reason why I can't keep windows on my machine for backup. I have two 120 GB hard drives, so I'm not real concerned about hard disk space... and besides, if I want to run a program that REQUIRES windows, I'll always have that opportunity. Still, I really need to work on my Slack skills before I can make Linux my main OS. To be honest, my first Kernel Compile turned out entirely buggy, and ALSA didn't even work at all. YIKES. Linux is sleek, yes, and I'd have to say that it has really earned my affection. But it may be some time before I can configure Slack to just my liking. Thanks everyone for your input and I hope to be fluent enough in Linux one day to help other people with their questions.

Hey mrchaos

Just so that you know, we're using Linux versions of Matlab (R12 and R14), Maple 9 and Mathematica 4.1 here and they work just fine. Matlab and Maple seem to make heavy use of Java in any case. There are also Open Source alternatives like Scilab, Octave and Maxima, not to mention the GNU Scientific Library to save you rewriting some tricky math functions.
I use Dislin and GNUplot for plotting stuff, who needs $$$ stuff like IDL for that?

Don't wait for an excuse to dump Windows, it's only going to get more difficult to convert when your requirements become more sophisticated. Some of our students here are quite happily using Kile and the above software for doing stuff that would have otherwise have cost money and wasted research time. The others are still leaning on their Windows crutches because they're either in denial about the viability of Open Source, or just don't know any better.

thanks fskmh
after I installed an updated version of java VM, I was able to install Maple 8 using the installation CD. I haven't tried Matlab yet, but I am much more reliant on Maple, so Matlab will just have to wait.

The things that I have gotten to work so far:
-Maple
-Sound system
-Second monitor support (although still no full-screen video overlay)
-Bittorrent
-DVD/CD-writer

It's been three days since I've booted Windows XP (the longest duration yet). Though I think I'm going to leave XP on my system, I have now officially made Linux my main OS. Sorry Bill Gates, but I never really enjoyed your stuff anyway

Well, There's one reason for not removing Windows and that reason is called: GF.
Although she likes everything that's related to penguins she's still intimidated by using Linux since she's very used on working in Windows.

I'm steadily checking off the "to-do" list in linux of things that windows could do.

Been running Linux for 48 hours, just got sound working, tested out my CD player and DVD player, they worked and sounded awesome. Picked out a new window manager, etc.

I'm just so excited to keep working with my system, it's pure fun, and I'm learning!

Just set up something like KDE/ xfce for her or any windoze virgins (not refering to sexuality) and show them how easy it is to use Linux.

Most computer "users" do not need to know c ommand line, etc.

I dunno... installing packages and self-extracting files in Linux DOES seem more tricky then windows, and probably is far more intimidating for "computer simpletons". Once you get the hang of it though, you never go back I guess. The question is would she be willing to learn?

calcon --- I mean c'mon, there is even a window manager that looks just like windows!

Anybody found a decent file manager ?? Ive been looking for quite a while, only found kludgy,
ugly, crashing apps that dont compare to Windows Explorer Mostly a command line guy myself,
but the GF needs the Windows look so I can convert totally.

hmm... though one would think it's his fault.. it's probably ballmer's.
perhaps this. or this will give you an idea.

I think it's funny that people would rather blame the rich guy than the insane, bald, sweaty, fat bastard who, in reality does most of the stuff you think gates does.

The 'evil corporation' stuff, at least for the last few years, yeah, that's largely Ballmer's doing. But Billy's still head of R&D, so blaming him for faults in Windows is fair enough.

it's always a lot of fun to blame it on the rich guys though. Come on, let's all point our fingers at Bill Gates or Steve Jobs, it's more fun to put all our troubles on a scapegoat. Oh, but everyone love Linus Torvalds, right?

oh wait, it's also fun to blame the fat insane bald man.
again. linus is completely different. being a skinny, level-headed, who didn't go bald at the age of 16.