Why not give this a try. It comes pre loaded with Linux. For 399.00 sounds like a great deal.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16834220246

You mean like trying to install Internet Explorer 7.0 on Windows 2000? How about Terminal Services? Or perhaps DirectX 10?

Oh wait...you need to *upgrade Windows* to get those!

My bad...

Guess the problem is a *software* issue (the company I code for doesn't support old configurations, either, by the way), and not a *Linux* issue?

One mistake quite a few folks seem to make is thinking that older software is better for slower hardware on linux, this is only true in the sense that the software was developed when systems were less powerfull.
A lot of linux software is developed specifically for slower systems. In a piece of software's development, speed and efficiency improvements are as important as bugfixes and extra features. Windows it's self is a good example of this, when XP was released it was a resource hog and would only run on the latest hardware but a lot of folks are finding it usable on low end P3's and even P2's now.
Things like KDE seem to be resource hogs too, KDE4 is running dog slow on my 1ghz while the developers are claiming significant speed increases. And they are right, turn off the eyecandy and previews of everything and the core of the software is fast and will get faster as development continues.
What I SHOULD be doing (but not gona' ) is using fluxbox or xfce (among many, many others) for the desktop enviroment and have a lightening fast desktop, dillo or lynx (among many, many others) for a browser etc. etc.
Here is where the terminal comes in though, I just took a folder with over 300 images at or around 600x800 and re-sized them to large jpeg icons for the phone and contacts list. It took 38 seconds, it would take longer than that just to open a gui and browse to the folder with a desktop app. Could have added a boarder to them all, inverted the colors, any number of effects on offer in a non-commercial image editing app but with a single command instead of hunting through menus.
That was using imagemagic, it's a very advanced imaging library that is used by may respected gui applications but there are thousands of little converters that don't warrant a gui and menu item. PDF's for instance can be converted to jpeg, html, txt, rtf, ps, doc and even flash animations with a few tiny command line applications. Pipe the output of pdf2txt into a text-to-speech program and you can have an mp3 version of a pdf file
That's only a very small aspect of the shell (my bad, virtual terminal is more correct), as mentioned earlier almost every command has its own set of options that are not always covered with a gui implementation, and system administration from the shell, once learned, rarely goes out of date.
cheers

Can you play football without learning the rules?

Why?

There are only social networks when there is internet and you need to get a connection for a PC as well. Xbox live requires a supscription? Welcome to capitalism; buy a PS3.

Playstation, Playstation, Playstation...

Only (ofcource) Microsoft consoles require you to pay for online stuff.

All PSTwo's have a ethernet port and for PS2's you can buy a network adapter for about $12,- .

Nintendo Wii, Nintendo Wii, Nintendo Wii...

'Windows' (or Microsoft for that matter) doesn't make the games, others do. And for the record: the best PC games all work on Linux, if not natively.

And for a reason...

Because if that 'awesome' GUI crashes you get a blue screen of death snd you're fucked. In Linux you are not. A lot of options cannot be combined. Only with a command line interface you can make your own rules.

I also heard people saw aliens. Seeing is believing.

It's a chip you solder to your PS2 motherboard that enables you to run backups of your games, play all DVD's from around the world, load the firmware out of your PS2 so you can play PS2 games with an emulator on your pc, it let's you run homebrew content such as media centers, etc...

Ok, thanks for teaching me such stuffs. Although you are right that GUI crashes more frequent (Lack of speed, RAM etc.) but it is true that command line breaks the whole system if you use it wrongly. 1 character might does it. (One word wrong, You try, installation , or configuration might just go wrong.)

I have seen a lot of Linux vs. Windows threads in different places, but I rarely post to them. However, I have been away from the computer for nearly two years and only in the last couple of weeks have been able to dive back in. I am a desktop user who probably fits into the vast majority of users in the world: I am not employed in the field, I use my computer for a little work but mostly for leisurely entertainment. I am not an expert but have probably just a tad more knowledge than the average home computer user simply because I enjoy learning about it. I first tried Linux in 1997 using Red Hat. I installed it on a Pentium 166 75Mz box. I played with it for several days and was fascinated by it, having never known there was anything for the home computer except Windows. But as I said, I am not an expert and I was never able to make anything work: no cdrom, no internet, no sound. Just a funny looking desktop to explore (I remember the cute little eyeballs that followed the mouse.) Eventually, I realized that I could not really use this for anything meaningful and lost interest. I went back to using Windows (Windows 95 at the time) because everything "just worked" with little or no effort or knowledge about software to make it work.

I didn't have any further experience with Linux until 2003 when I again tried Linux on old extra box I had (Pentium II 350Mhz.) and again it was Red Hat (8). I was really impressed by what had gone on with Linux in the past six years. Very attractive desktop, loads of software, and it looked like I might actually be able to use it this time! But, I came back down to earth when there was again no sound, no dial-up for the internet, no printer. I tried to configure these things, but as I said, I am just a home user. I became frustrated and went back to windows because it "just works." It was 2005 before I tried again, this time with Fedora (FC2, I think) with an AMD 600Mhz. Wow! this time I had sound immediately, CD and floppy worked with no configuring from me. But again, connecting to the internet was a huge problem that took days to work out, and I still could not do most of the things I could with WinXP: Printing, playing video and DVD and video editing. While many of you would say that these things are easy to set up with Linux, I just did not have the knowledge to do it. So, I went back to Windows where everything "just worked." But this time, I was so impressed with how far Linux had come in such a short time, I decided to stick with it as a "hobby." Eventually, I learned enough so that by 2006 I had stopped using Windows, built an AMD64 with Nvidia graphics and had six different distros dual booting with XP on this same machine.

As I said at the beginning of this post, because of illness and life changes, I was away from Linux and computers for almost the last two years. About two weeks ago, I fired up the computer and blew it up! My main desktop was gone, so all I had left was an old PIII stored away which I retrieved. With my main computer now gone, I had no access to Windows (did not have the install disk.) So I got a copy of Fedora 8 from a magazine cover and installed it on this old dinosaur of a computer. I didn't expect much, and I assumed it might not even install on this old machine.

The reason for my post is this: I want to share why I now believe that Linux is finally ready for the vast majority of the world's home desktop users as a truly viable alternative to Microsoft Windows:

1. Fedora 8 installed to this old computer on the first try with no issues at all. I included everything the OS had to offer in the install. There is only a slight (and I mean slight) difference in the speed of the software from the AMD64 with 2GB of memory. This machine has 512Mb.

2. ALL of the hardware was recognized immediately during the install. No configuring of anything was necessary. The broadband network worked right out of the box and configured itself.

3. Plugged in the USB printer and not only was it immediately recognized, but model of the printer was displayed and ready to use. No configuring necessary.

4. Sound worked immediately. DVD and CD writer immediately recognized with no configuration of either.

5. While DVD's would not play becuase of missing codecs, Fedora not only told me this but offered to download and install the missing codecs for me. I did this and everything I could play on Windows now plays with Fedora with no configuring on my part.

6. I am notified of available updates to the OS and installation is offered (just like windows). After two major updates, everything was installed for me, including dependencies, with no configuring on my part.

7. I plugged in a set of USB headphones with mic for using Skype and they were immediately recognized and available for use.

Having been away from Linux for two years, it is obvious to me that the development of Linux has been rapid and aimed for the average home desktop user (at least Fedora, anyway). Distro hopping as I did in the past served to teach me Linux better than I probably would have been able to do otherwise. But, I am so impressed with Fedora 8 that I will stay with this one distro. If all the average home user wants to be able to do on their computer is "point and click", Linux is finally there. The only thing that I can find left for Linux is in the area of video editing. I know of nothing in Linux which compares to the ease of use in Adobe Premier Pro (or even Windows Movie Maker, for that matter.) Aside from that, I can find nothing that would keep the average home user away from Linux because "it is too difficult."

Linux, it its current state and no-cost availability, has to be an issue that Microsoft must deal with sooner or later. How they will do that I have no idea, but I have no doubt now that Linux, as a percentage of home OS's in use, is about to rise incredibly rapidly.

Bob

Nice one Bob, enjoyed reading that. It's kind of hard to see just how fast the desktop aspect of linux is advancing but a 2 year break would really be an eye opener.
MS's response?... Vista. I really don't know what they are doing but it seems almost like they want to milk the market for what they can before giving up on desktop operating systems. If the SP1 holy grail doesn't make some serious improvements then they will loose a lot of customers, most big hardware makers and a lot of big software companies are already taking a serious interest in linux and a lot of vendors seem to be trying hard to get out of the MS lockin.

ussr_1991, when I first started using linux I got sick of logging in as a normal user and giving the root password when needed so logged in as root for a while instead. I think I was re-installing around once every 2 days when I did that, all due to me being stupid and all through the GUI.
The classic hose-your-system command is "rm -rf /". rm=remove, r=recursive (ie, follow the filesytem from this point for as far as it goes), f=force (ie always yes, don't prompt) and /=the top level directory of the root file system. Apparently it can get as far as /sys before crapping out, it has already deleted its self when it deleted /bin
Logging in as root and rightclick, delete on the top level directory does exactly the same thing and more than likely uses the same command to do it.
cheers

There are some common-sense best practices that nearly negate the need to worry about such things...

#1, before modifying a file, copy the file to a safe location (not the current directory) so you can restore it if something goes wrong.

#2, don't run stuff you find in forums without having at least one second opinion from a trusted source =) If you don't have a trusted source, get one.

#3, don't work as root if your non-priv account will suffice. If you must work as root, double check the commands you've typed in *before* you hit enter if you're about to make a major change.

#4, use a backup routine (common sense whether you're using CLI or GUI), such as g4l or other readily available backup tools (I admit, I learned this one the hard way after a *GUI* update on a LinuxMint box went wrong).

The bottom line in the CLI vs. GUI argument is this: do you need training wheels, or no? (and honestly, the GUI isn't that great of a safety net) I am comfortable not having a GUI safety net because I provide my own non-GUI safety net, so I use the CLI (I find it to be more efficient).

Welcome back to computers and Linux. This is exactly why Microsoft has been trying to make "partnerships" with major Linux vendors. Novell said yes. Red Hat and others have said no. Then they started the FUD about Linux and some OSS apps violating ~250 IP patents. By the way, has anyone heard anything about that since the new year? I sure haven't.

rocket357, you are so right. There's no substitute for a good backup plan. I try to tell people to keep backups of music, photos, documents, etc. Do they believe me? Not until viruses/malware kills their system. Then they want me to recover the files. And if the files are of any importance there should really be at least two copies - one local and one remote.

I cringe when I hear people typing about 120wpm. I also can't help notice how many time I hear BkSpc, BkSpc, BkSpc ... because they can't stop misspelling. Anyone who knows the power and risk of operating as the superuser shouldn't be having a keyboard race or clicking blindly. Common sense *should* dictate that when working as root you should double-check spelling or whatever your pointing at. Measure twice, mark once, cut.

I couldn't have said it better myself. And it helps to not be distracted with something other than whatever you're doing...I wouldn't attempt to rebuild the engine in my car unless I knew I'd have the time and space to accomplish the job without interruption...I remember "nuking" a Linux install a while back because of a distraction...I was building a 32 bit chroot and I linked in my /dev and /proc filesystems. I got distracted, and came back to it a bit later (forgetting I'd linked those in) and decided I'd start over. One "cd chroot && rm -rf ./" later, I found myself without /dev and /proc (not hard to fix, just restarted udev...but it *could* have been bad).

And the backups should be verified if the files are really important...can't forget that =)

Crashed due to lack of RAM? You (or your distro actualy) should have installed a swap partition on your hard disk.

Only root (superuser/admin) can do that. Never log in as root unless you have to change something important that you cannot change with a user account!

By the way, what do you mean by "and honestly, the GUI isn't that great of a safety net" ? If so, how dangerous can GUI (Graphical User Interface)be other than modifing regedit (Registry Editor). PS: I doubt there is one in Linux and Macintosh OS. (I mean the Gnome Interface, at least. Whether KDE, Xfce etc has Regedit or similar or not, I am not sure, never used before.)


Anyway, sometimes old stuffs are meant to throw away because PS1 has no ethernet port, Linux does not run any game during that time (At least 99%) other than OS built in games like Minesweeper or so. Therefore, Windows got a share. Now, as Linux starts running games (Still I think only at most 20% of the market available games because Grand Theft Auto etc had not heard in Linux. The MMORPG games does not work in Linux unless that's
web browser-based, if a client game, it is unlikely it works.), there is a chance for Linux to be a future OS if M$ being complacent.

Regarding about Backups. Some people till then still being "stubborn" to upgrade, still using an antique P2, therefore it is not strange to see other "stubborn" to use a "lousy" CD-ROM that doesnt burn. How to backup in this case if you did not get a thumbdrive , Portable HDD or having a Network disk. (I think home users arent likely to get a network disk)

PS: Not everyone in the world uses thumbdrive or Portable HDD. I got a thumbdrive only 2 months ago. SO it is still safer to GUI because in Linux, so long as you dont command prompt, 99% bad ending will not happen to you since it has almost no virus and malware. (Apart of uninstalling system packages, that is as good as commiting suicide.)

True, Linux had the inconvience of no video editor. Or to be perfect, even if there is one, there isnt support for popular format like Real,Windows Media or Quicktime (At least Windows Movie Maker supports one of them I listed, and iMovie HD, for the Macintosh Video editor, supports the other format that I listed above.)

I believe Linux Video editors supports only open-source formats like ogg etc. To me, I have seen their size can be twice as large as an MP3. So how can that be an efficent format. (Ok, this might be 1 of the reason for games to easily past 2GB of disk space needed. If they start using WMV instead of AVI, WMA instead of OGG, this is unlikely to happen..)

There is no registry in OSX/Linux or any other *nix based os. It is purely a Microsoft Windows idea/tool.

I guess I am one of those people. I am running a... well just look at my signature. It is pretty much a 9 year old computer, and besides, who said I had to upgrade? My very old computer does what I need it to do. I have a cd burner, thats enough, and if I need to burn a dvd, I use my notebook.

I wish I never got rid of my PS1. It ran all of my PS1 games better than PS2/3 ever did!
Sometimes things aren't meant to be thrown away just because they are old. I still have my 3D0 Multiplayer console, and my 8-bit Nintendo, I don't want to throw those away!

GUI is just as 'dangerous'. It is not the environment, but the user! The GUI is not responsible for the knowledge or lack there of from the user. It does whatever the user tells it to just like the command line.

That's correct. But why do you need a proprietary file format? Ogg is a codec you can use on Windows and Mac.

You make a mistake here. Ogg can be lossless and lossy. Lossless means that there is no compression and audio loss: pure, raw audio. Lossy means that there is compression and audio loss (like mp3). When you use the lossy Ogg you can either use the same audio quality as MP3, which is about half the size of a mp3, or, use the same size as a MP3 and get much better audio quality. When you choose lossless you get the best audio quality possible but with a size that is much larger than MP3.