my girls use linux Ubuntu too..and i guess she like it.althought she's getting a lot of trouble in linux, it is obvious that she will migrate to linux :)

Many!Too many!We are many now,so do not worry about it.

Choice of Linux -vs- Windows seems completely unbased on gender, at least to me.

Rather, it's a choice of convenience.

Males are generally geared more to a DIY, hands-on kind of lifestyle. We like to mess with stuff. We like to mess stuff up and fix it again. We like to get down and dirty and play with worms and bring home new bugs for our mother to scream about. That's why we love Linux.

Women, on the other hand, prefer the simplicity of not having to learn a new system, because they've got better things to do with their time. See, unlike men, women have actual goals and plans for their time, and they'd rather spend it fulfilling their goals than trying to figure out how to tweak emacs.

Of course, this entire post is tongue-in-cheek and completely sarcastic, and we must all remember that there are exceptions to every rule.

We, as linux users, are the exceptions. And we rule.

One of the top Linux people where I work is a good-looking female. I go to her for answers that others here don't have.

I'm not sure about the gender difference. In North American society, the perception is that men are more oriented to the mechanics of things. There are always exceptions, of course, but I'm not one of them. When I started using Linux six years ago, I did not like the idea that MS had taken away the choice to use any OS but theirs. This was before I joined a few Linux boards and found out that there were many others out there who felt the same way I did. I had been running IBM-DOS on an IBM PS/1 but the modem was becoming too slow to be of any use and I had to forgo the Internet experience. I searched for nearly two years before I found a technician to install Linux for me. Of course, the new computer I purchased had Win98 installed and it had to remain so as not to invalidate the warranty and I really didn't like that. I now have a P2 laptop with a customized version of Debian 3.0 devised by my Linux guru/friend with whom I keep in touch even though we have both moved since our first meeting. As far as ease of use is concerned, if I had not looked for Linux, I would have taken night school courses to learn Windows as I hadn't yet encountered the GUI. With night school not being an option with Linux, I did have some problems which I'm sure would have been comparable to what I would have encountered with Windows. I was fortunate that my Linux guru/friend was willing to help me with the transition from DOS and I'm quite content to let him worry about the technical side so I can enjoy being a Linux user. I believe that Linux has something for anyone who is willing to try it and find it heartening that it is becoming more mainstream.

Sorry, i couldn't help this:

(said to the girls in the forum in a shy bashful tone)
so.. you are like girls.. so.. um.. like...
you have a bf?
wanna go out some time... mabey.. like.. if you wanna

Seriously, girls don't belong around Linux. Not because they aren't capable or because for any reason girls shouldn't be allowed to use computers. Geeky computer OSs were the last vestige where socially incapable guys could escape the continuous reminder that girls exist and that they are way beyond the reach of many male geeks. Hot Linux chiks is just being cruel.

Nope. Geeky computer OS is just a proper toy for a real witch. Cats (esp. black ones) like computers, have you noticed? It means something.

Sorry, I don't pop into this section very often or you wouldn't have had to wait past the 30 views mark to get a response. I'm a geek, I'm a woman and I use Linux. 'Nuff said? Besides, who could ever resist that penguin? :Pengy:

bmk

Yeah, what bmk said. I've been too busy finding answers to start surfing the "General" topics but am glad I did.

I'm a female geek, IT pro of more than 20 years (whatever connotations you give to that term, you're right!) and--believe it or not!--fiction writer (SF romance, in case you were wondering...there are more of us around than you think!).

I also volunteered for the task of trying out distro's to find out which flavour of Linux to migrate all our home machines to. At the moment, my favourite is Kubuntu. The machine I do all my writing on is a Compaq laptop running Kubuntu 6.06.1 using OpenOffice. And my husband and I are currently trying to install a 64-bit version of *any* Linux on our AMD Athlon machine but running into heaps of issues...will search/post a question on this next. My desktop file server is dual-boot Windoze/SuSE-now-overwritten-with-Kubuntu. I'm also thinking of trying to install Linux on my iPAQ but that's a future project. And I'm proud to say our 4yo daughter is fascinated with robots, so that's a promising start.

Oh, and my other half is a geek too...ex-Uni researcher in microchip design and, later, database technologies. Life is sweet! :p

S_C

PS I'm trying to subvert some of my writer-colleagues to Linux but it's an uphill battle. If it came pre-loaded on machines "regular" folk can buy at K-mart or Target or someplace like that, I think it would help.

I discovered Linux only 2 years ago and am now thoroughly hooked. I have two quadruple booting PCs with two HDs each, both with two versions of linux and 2 versions of windows plus a laptop all of which a networked and can all share the internet. I have compiz working in the Suse partitions and am so in love with what it can do and the fact that I could do it myself. I use PCLinuxOS for my bootloader because Suse won't work with more than two HD's and also because PCLinuxOS bootloader is just so pretty even though I prefer SuSE 10.1! I have tried Mandriva, Ubuntu, Devian and a number of older versions of Linux and I wish I could just have one hundred percent linux. One day in my dreams. My kids think I am wonderful and they know more about IT operating systems and options than any kids they know. How's that for being a mum and a woman!

Huh? I have three disks (/dev/hda, /dev/hdb, /dev/hdc) and no complaints from SuSE 10.0 ...

Thank you for that.

Sorry I didn't mean HD's I meant copies of Windows OS's on different HD's which is my assumption of the problem I have had with some distros. I know that I am totally inexperienced in linux and would really love to know what I am doing wrong can you please advise.

I have two HDs one 160g (hda) and the other 20g. the 160 has 100gig with windows xp and the rest for suse. The other (hdb) has 10g Windows 98 and the other PCLinuxOS. When I set up the suse, the bootloader will not log into Windows 98 at all even though it picks it up and lists it in the bootloader automatically - it just won't go in. PCLinux on the other hand does without any probs even though I have to tell it where to look for the suse partition (hdb6). I have used Mandriva to access the Windows 98 with equal success. Ubunto, Debian, fedora core 4 & 5 and any other distros just won't log into windows 98. I love the PCLinuxOS bootloader but am not in love with PCLinuxOS as I am SuSE but it is nice to have more than one distro to play with.
Any help will be much appreciated.

OK it's not HD's that SuSE 10.1 has problems with setting up it's bootloader and my experience with linux is just too limited!
So I spent some time playing around with it trying to set up PCLinuxOS on it. I could set it up but couldn't log in. So then I made SuSE set up the bootloader from scratch and it just can't find pclinuxos (dev/hdb5)at all, no matter what - it can see all partitions in the partitioning tool though! And it can find windows 98 (dev/hdb1) but won't let you log in!

Does anyone know what the problem IS?

I see no problem with girls/women using linux. In a sense, you'd think more girls/women would be on linux for reliable/safety/security reasons.
Take my own mother for example. She has heard stories about my dad and I having problems with our computer (back when we both had Windows, now only he has it). She doesn't want others to touch hers and accidently damage her computer, being it seems to run smoothly.
However, after telling her the nice features of linux, a ton less viruses, able to repair a lot through text mode (in case it fails to load into a graphical workstation, this way, you can recover any personal/backup files), so on and so forth, she's quite eager into wanting to use a linux distro.

Men, yes, we tend to take things apart so to speak, fix it, study it, etc. I got sick of windows and the "activation" and the boring old skins and programs, and I wanted a change.
Both men and women, weather it can be catergorized in a gender form or not, can enjoy a linux distro.

Funny I was just telling my boyfriend this morning that it seems like few women are using Linux, if you can judge that by people's nicknames on the forums, that is.

But hey! I am a woman.

And I just converted my 70 year old mother's laptop to Ubuntu.

So...there are two more for you.