haha some good old Window bashing in this thread. I love it!

The thing that really scares me (actually 'bothers' is a better word - 'scare' is a touch strong really) is that I still have only the one computer running Linux.

If this falls over, I have a real problem. I don't want to end up googling for answers with a Tosh Libretto running win98.

(now where did I put that Slackware boot disk? must get around to it some time)

The only other thing that scares me is the bright red desktop background when I log in as root on my main system (something i do as little as possible). It's designed to intimidate and it does

jd

Dual booting is a good answer here.
If you do not have more than one PC., leave room of another install next time. Either another distro or a "rescue" install.
Or, Knoppix. Learn to connect to the internet from a Knoppix CD.
Good Luck.

Pretty much been mentioned, but the following scares me:
* init scripts, specifically sysVinit style (bsd style make sense)

* ANY programming, even ULTRA basic bash scripting like "If/and, then"

* awk, sed, flex, and other programming related tools

* databases (like mysql) (not specifically linux, but still...)

* hardware drivers that need tweaking (I don't know jack about editing drivers files)

* Uh... Sometimes kernels scare me. If I'm on new hardware and build a new kernel for the first time, I sometimes twitch until the kernel boots successfully and everything works.

* mplayer. Yeah, I have a good idea of how to do things, but if I want to do something really odd, or just try other options than what I use, I get scared.

* Oh, and imap servers, mail servers in general, fetchmail, anything mail related really. I have no idea what an MX record is.

* DNS too. I don't understand why anyone who isn't an ISP would need to setup a DNS server, doesn't the ISP's work?



Cool

The thing I fear most about Linux is the floods of newbies who are absolutely clueless about their hardware, their distriburion, and asking questions with absolutely no information in the post so that you can give any help. I am amazed at the number who have no clue about netiquette as well.

I am slowly learning Linux and I have succeeded in what I have attempted so far (after tons of failure, I keep getting back on the hose that threw me), so I don't know anything else to fear.

I do have nightmares of Linux doing the Windows thing and hosing my system, but I wake up and remember that it is a Windows thing I am having a nightmare about, not really good ole tux, cause he is still sitting there purring.

Then I have to boot into Windows and Explorer crashes when I touch the start button.

I gotta get a supported TV card so I can leave Windows 98SE in the trash heap of history.....

fancypiper, I'd like to know more about TV cards. I'm not very savvy with hardware. What do they do exactly? Do they allow you to ummm..."borrow" things that are playing on the television? If so I'm in!

Keep me posted.

It lets you watch tv/AV input on your computer and my card LifeView has Windows software that will let you capture avi files from it.

I can't get it to detect any signals in Linux and I can't find anyone who has succeeded with it yet.

fancypiper - Definately have a look at pretty much any bt8x8 card with tuner. I've used a couple of ATI TV-Wonder cards and they've been fine. Stay away from the All-In-Wonder cards as they can be a royal pain to setup. I'm currently investigating some capture/tuner cards that have an onboard mpeg2 encoder, allowing me to use a lightweight CPU. Have yet to actually find one that will work...

I've even got a video capture card (no tuner) with four separate inputs (bt878), each with two channels. We use it for video security and it absolutely rocks.

Recently picked up a WinTV Go card (Hauppage) that uses the bt8x8 driver mentioned above. Works great, capture everything with mencoder, watch live with xawtv. BTW, the card was ~20 bux from OfficeMax, after mail-in rebate of course

Cool

what scares me about Linux is that I was killing several windows computers with my escapades, and that there was an awesome alternative.
Also, it looks like it's perfect.

regular expressions scare me. I don't yet know how to speak punctuation. For the same reason I seem to have a hard time getting my head around sed and awk.

man pages are kind of intimidating, but if you take it one step at a time, it will get easier( I hope )

What frightens me is the thought that I spent all those years from 91 on that I could have used Linux instead of that other OS. I am afraid that I discovered it too late. :-)

Actually mythtv, I hate and I love it.
It's the reason I lost my whole box and it's sitting dead @ home while I'm here at work. I got a brainy Idea.. hey let's compile a new kernel and tweak my TV card in it so I can get myth to run faster... we I blew out my good working kernel modules and could not even boot with my rescue disks.
Oh well, I pulled the HD and slapped it in my server and saved the data I can't loose and upgraded to mandrake 9.1... we'll see how long it takes me till I blow it up again.



Oh yea, Man pages are a joke... whoever writes them needs to realize it's not NASA Scientists that's reading them.. it's normally linux n00bs. .

There are several projects underway to "n00bize" the man pages written for Torvalds and maybe Alan Cox. I've seen a few, but haven't come across one that seems organized enough for me to assist.

Cool