I'd keep that windows machine, and just drop linux on it. Use it as a firewall and router, plus have it do stuff like SETI@Home data units.

Hmm. I have 5 PCs here, 3 of them are rather old (noone a 486 though heh).
On four of them i am running Linux (varying distributions, Kanotix BH7, GoboLinux and Slackware 10 ), on the last a laptop i am still using the bought-from-store windows xp version.

I was thinking of getting rid of it too but then i decided against it.
The only reason was because of ripping Videos and converting via AviSynth.

This works really smoothly under XP. Under Linux, i have had some compile problems, and AviSynth aint currently available, so i continue to use XP.

"I admit the percentage is small, but we are growing."
I claim the percentage is wrong.
First, do you count the number of CPUs running on a Linux / *BSD OS, or just one user - on version?
Second, I am a Linux user nowadays, with my number of 4 Linux computers vs my 1 Windows computer - is that accounted?
Third, the office of my dad has 4 computers, all running on windows. But there is 0 internet connection available there. Do they calculate all the 4 computers in the statistic, or just one for my dad because he is "using" windows?
Fourth, see point 2 and point 3 combined, and query how do they come to this estaimte.
By objective measuring ? By paid estimation? Heh heh

But granted I completely agree that gaming under Windows is a lot easier - i mean the high end games like doom 3, I wonder if the few commercial porting subsribers will have an easy way to go to make it run on a linux box without using wine. But then again i hardly play games anymore.

Ah i recently added xebian on my old xbox so make that maybe 5 computers - none of them were state-of-the-art ever, but cheap computers add up sorta especially if you compile sth on another one and dont have to wait for it to finish, because you dont care... ah yes, trying gentoo ... :P

vitoal, are you sure your question isn't fake?

Oh boy, I've been working unter MacOS, unter Un*x and under this ridiculous stuff, too.

If you've ever been working with MacOS, oh boy, believe me, you'll forget all your Windows stuff in no time, because then you see how a REALLY userfriendly system works. And if you've ever worked unter Un*x, you'll see how efficent a PC may work.

About Gambling: Currently, the only "weak spot" of Linux, all others have been cleared. The funny thing about that ist, that under Linux you may run similar games with a higher performance due to better technical concepts and solutions.

The only reason why Windows is so wide spread is because Bill Gates is a clever salesman. Only people who have no idea about how computers or other systems, respectively, work, think Windows being great.

PS: Hey, why don't you try Cube? Or Alephone? Or tuxracer If you REALLY want to gamble, get a Play Station. Far better than eny PC could ever be.

PPS: Has anybody ever heard of industrial standards on Windows ???

generally, I can live w/o windoze.

tere are only two applications that I still need and that prevent me fom formatting the win-partition:
- capella, a music notation editing software. I need it because my friends use it. it has a proprietary file format...
- adobe photo shop. Gimp ist ok, but it does not have a CMYK-customization that print shops want from me.

I know plenty of people who never use windows. Myself, I'm a serious gamer, but thats all i do In windows, game. Everything else Linux does just fine for me. I'm also happy than Enemy Territory and America's Army are linux games also.

plus with like DOOM 3 coming out for linux, more attention is being placed on us.

i use linux to program, americas army and enemy territory work fine in it. got nvidia drivers installed properly and browsing and office is just the same as windows to me. Linux has much more open source games than windows and man, its not hard to install a brazzillian user to linux. LOL.

I still have to look at a solution for some games, probably with wine (or winex if it's free) otherwise I'll use windows for gaming if I can't in linux.

But I can live without windows for sure haven't done anything in there for a couple of weeks now and I just switched to linux (dual boot though)

hey vitoal

tell me how much did u pay tom get a genuine copy of windows and the games u r playing on them

and when u are free from playing all those games on windows and
wannna learn computers use linux ,

pl. also not forget to patch up ur windows operating system with latest patch appearing each week

also do install a genuine anitvirus,a genuine firewall .and keep waiting when u get a new versiioon of windows in 2007 after a gap of 7 yrs.

regards

mas, aint no 7 year gap. it'd be about 5.

win xp launches in 2001
longhorn expected not before 2007(cnet.com)

so that makes more tha 6 yrs

regards
gaurav

XP launched in end of '01, where as longhorn isnt looking to be that long, so I was figureing 5 and change. Plus if you concider 2003, its even less time between versions.

I have been living "without" Windows for a while now. I mean, I have Windows installed on a partition but I no longer boot in it. I shrank it's partition so much it is not appealing anymore.

Whether you can or cannot live without Windows depend on a few variables. If you use a specialized software you can't run decently on Linux, well of course you won't like the switch. If you don't like to work too hard, you won't like Linux either. Is it because Linux is fundamentally bad? Well no. Linux is incomplete (think of Wine) and grows slowly. It has however an enormous potential. I've been using it for 3 years, and I've seen it getting better and better.

I like to argue a computer does not need to be so easy to use. Say grandma likes to send emails to her family and transcript recipes in a word processor. Does she really need a pirated version Windows and Office to do that? Hell no. Is it really easier to do in Windows? Course not. It is easier because you know Windows and can explain her how to do it, not because Windows is better than Linux. What if grandma's os breaks? Is it easier for her to fix because it's Windows? Hell no! It does not make a difference to her. It's again easier to fix for you because you know Windows, not because Windows is better.

In the end it's a matter of choice. As a computer geek, I find learning Linux way more rewarding than playing with Windows.

the biggest deal for me on playing games is that i know that under winblows my ATI Rage Mobility P 8MB 2x AGP will run 3D acceleration, under Linux that doesn't seem to be activating.... even though a card very similiar to mine can do it, albeit it has alot more memory. Cannot complain my card under Linux is giving kick ass 1400x1050 graphics on my Dell Laptop. still without 3d hardware acceration kicked in it causes the cpu to max out and thats when the fans kick in.... i don't like that

found some source code on the ati drivers, the one that i have and the one that works.... don't know if i'll ever get it figured out....

- perry

Hey purplewurple, use Limewire in Linux. You need J2RE but it works great, way better than kazaa as far as im concerned....when i switched from hooking my comp directly up to my cable modem to hooking through a router, Kazaa wouldn't download anything, no matter what configurations I did. I switched to Limewire, and it still downloads fast, even through the router. Anyways, just a suggestion

EDIT: Typed this really fast. The whole router thing was before I started using Linux. My aunt uses Windows