Why would someone renew this thread?????? It should have died months ago and did. Just my

Well all I can say is that it is so sad to see what Windows has achieved in the years it has been around.

Windows makes people lazy, and is making people completely unaware of anything to do with the system. Result:- Impatience. Rants. Calls to Helpdesks. So on and on, believe me, I know 2 or 3 people....one on Mac the other 2 on Windows. Soon as the tiniest problem arises they are on the phone with a major crisis on their hands. When you get there to fix it, its a molehill instead of a mountain and done in a few minutes.

Now the laugh is on me. I decided to try Linux 8 months ago or so. Coming from CP/M, Dos, Win 3.1/95/98/XP. I nearly gave up. I tried the hardest first like an idiot. SuSE 8.0, to my laptop, and of course I wanted everything to work, and it didn't, and like a spoilt windows brat I wanted to give up.

Well then I got Knoppix.

That proved to me even running relatively slowly from the CD, that Linux was something else.

That decided me not to give up. I tried Debian briefly. I liked it, but then I saw SuSE 8.2 in action, somehow I missed 8.1, I bought the 8.2 box came home fired up my desktop put the DVD in and said if this don't work I will scream. Guess what, everything works except for my pcmcia, but I got around that by using a card reader through usb!

Now that 8.2 works, for the past 5 months or so I am learning all the shortcuts and particularly shell commands.

I have bought 2 packages:-

1) MySQLManager
2) Bru Personal

Both packages allow me to do exactly what I want, manage MySQL and do tape backups that I feel confident with.

The rest works fine.

The update from OpenOffice 1.0 to 1.1 is superb I have updated to that package.

To anyone who is giving up. I would say, examine what you really want to do with the computer, see what is really a MUST, and what could be done in another way. Check out on the web first if your hardware is listed as working for your distribution. I am so glad I chose SCSI years ago. Perhaps that is why I have so few problems. Scanner, Hard disks, CD, Writer all just work.

How true, how true!

I have to agree. you want a "Big name" distro, go with Suse.

screw mandrake. works when it wants to, not when you need it to.

Maybe this is just my experience. I like Red-hat. Need to get a full distro of Suse.


How log is this thread going to go on, anyway? Didn't this start last spring? maybe this is a good place for us 's to vent our frustrations and triumphs!

Yippee to you, Jabbermancy! You gave us a place to vent! Too bad you don't use it as well!

No question, there are some scary obstacles. I gave up on RH 5, but at the time I was being paid to write for Windoze. Now it looks like I'll be spending more time with Unix and Java, so.... I'm baaaack.

If anybody is reading this and wondering whether they should give it a try, I think I would recommend 2 things. Try and get a doorstop PC to try it out. If you like what you see, then buy a bundled system from a Linux distributor. It's just too big of a task to take on a new OS AND funky hardware issues at the same time.

A cool resource is the IBM website, which tells you the Linux status of every bit of hardware. So you could find refurbished PC's or laptops on ebay for real cheap and know in advance if the distro will be good to go.

I wouldn't have been able to do it without this forum, that's for sure!

Hamster, I agree and disagree. Although I am curious about the system/hardware, I am not REALLY willing to give it my time. I am afraid, there are some people around who uses computers not because they are interested in the computers but in the results from their use.

I would tell anyone who reads this post: don't give up.

Linux is great. Why? Because you can customize it to fit exactly YOUR needs, without being a programmer whatsoever.

I always dreamed to adapt my computer to the needs of my profession. But I am not a programmer. So I gave up trying to write custom applications which would run under Winzoo$. They never run (this is ultimately my problem), despite my efforts.

Under Linux (two years after I started to use it, and after having read two little books on Perl and a few posts in this Forum) I wrote three simple applications which greatly improved my daily work and I am very proud for this. I would have never achieved this under Windows.

Of course, if you use your PC as an expensive typewriter and a waste-bin for digital media, you might be well off with Windows, if you don't mind the ethical issues...

Otherwise, don't give up.

Not true for many people. But, you can't expect to learn linux overnight. Were you a windows pro 10 days after you first started using it?

Linux is much more powerful than windows, you can customize everything (including the kernel) and everything is downloadable for free. Try that with windows.

This is no longer an "I am leaving" thread (the original poster hasn't been back since May 2003) and is now a Linux vs Windows thread and as such is being moved to General.

Or just close it...although I can't resist having my say, threads like these are a bit of a time waster/flame war starter...