i like the neat debian swirly better than the yucky window logo.

very 80's that windows logo is.

wait... maybe i do like it...

check back with me later...

p.s. devo is still king...

Now if only Lexmark would develop a Z22 Linux Driver that worked.

$h!t. I just got a Lexmark Z23 at a yardsale. So that's a no go too?

Nope, I got my z23 working, any problems, I can give you step by step instructions...

Cool. I appreciate that. Probably won't be messing with it for awhile yet, but when I get to it, I'll yell if I have trouble.

Calum,

So what you are implying is, if you can't afford to buy new hardware that IS supported, don't bother trying to use Linux, cos it won't work and no-one wants to help you.

OK, thanks for the advice.

Hardware supported under linux, new or not, does not have to be expensive.

Even the cheapest poo on the market is supported, the £10 soundcard, the £15 graphics card and the £12 hardware modem I used in my old system are good examples (built last year).

The reason why hardware that's not supported under linux exists is because there's suckers out there that buy it, remember: the industry will only supply what the market demands. It takes time and money for a manufacturer staffed by windoze lusers to write some linux drivers, and many won't even release the information needed for others to develop unofficial drivers.

software is developed for new hardware, not the other way around. If you have to own the latest and greatest in hardware your missing the point of owning a computer.
Just stick to buying SUV's and cell phonesand you should be fine.

1. Linux is not Windows.
2. I am in complete control of my system.

I don't need any more reasons than those.



Ted.

I really like Linux but I don't use it instead of Windows. I have been reading about Linux and watching it develop for about 5 years now, and in all that time it still sits on a spare partition that I boot into about once a week and play with for a half hour before booting back into Windows so I can do some work or play games.

If I had all my Windows software or even a decent clone of all of it, (some software I like better in Linux, I like open office better than MS office or Wordperfect, but most I really don't care for) and I had my few games in Linux, I would drop Windows and not look back. However game support is practically non-existant (please don't say wineX) and the software I use and love isn't available. So I stay with Windows, no point going to a superior OS with subpar software. To me the software is what's most important, not whether or not the OS can get viruses or stability. Also, Windows hardly ever crashes on me, I crash Linux constantly, though that is user error. I know I screwed it up and that's usually why it crashed, though it has crashed without me doing anything or suddenly doesn't see my cd/dvd drive or some other piece of hardware, still only a minor annoyance.

I would love to see more software and game makers supporting Linux, it would make life easier for lots of people, and others would still complain because it may not be free.

But like I said, to me it's the software that makes the difference, Windows has what I use and love, Linux has what I could probably make due with but it's lacking the features I'm looking for and for some software, nothing is available.

So rather than boot into Linux to use the software I like there and then have to boot back into Windows to use others or to play a game, I just stay In Windows.

Linux has come a LONG way since I loaded my first distro, I'm just still waiting on the support from the hardware and software makers. I'm also waiting for the day that some apps don't stop working when I install other apps because a lib was updated but I'm not holding my breath for either.

Sorry to have to tell you, but crashing linux is hard. Extremely hard. I've seen it happen once! Ok, excluding a few kernel panic's due to a misfunctioning network whilst trying to boot off a network block device (ltsp for those who really care - it had two cards, token ring and ethernet, probed the ethernet first and tried running bootp there, found a bootp server and "misbooted"). I've seen X (kde more specifically) freeze on me quite a number of times, but have always managed to recover from these (by either switching to a console and killing X, or in the worst case, by ssh'ing into the machine and killing X).

As for software, what are you talking about? Or is it just me who prefer superior software? Will you ever need any other development software than gcc/g++/gcj/make along with vim? For word processing there is Star/OpenOffice as already mentioned. For graphics there is GIMP (I'm still trying to figure out how any windows graphics tool work whilst I'm actually finding that I can manage to draw some usefull stuff with GIMP).

As for stability? I've got to admit that win2k doesn't crash on me as often as other people claim windows does (that may be due to some pretty standard hardware, for the most part, and not running all kinds of "speedup", "ramblah" and whatever else). Linux on the other hand has only crashed on me once. I've had to re-install it once (including distro upgrades) on a mandrake machine that refused to give me a root shell so I could fix the X config file (people that log in as root tends to annoy me - they break stuff by accident ...). I've seen one kernel crash (segmentation fault/buffer overflow/whatever) in the almost 4 years that I've been using linux, and I've got to add that the hardware for that machine is getting pretty old and is pretty much on it's last legs. Oh, and the kernel is a custom compiled kernel and I suspect I missed a few modules that would make life a lot easier for me (I don't use it that often so I'm not going to sit through an entire day to allow the thing to "upgrade" itself).

Hmm, I see my post was very misleading, and I really should know better considering I have corrected a few people on X and Linux. Ok, it isn't usually a Linux crash, though that has happened to me on a few occasions, it was more spacifically a X crash. Sometimes it just froze but other times it just entirely went down and wouldn't come back up, even with rebooting.

As far as the Linux crashes, I really have no idea what caused them, I know that at least two occasions it was after apt-geting a few things. Most often apt just causes something else not to work anymore, the crashes, if even caused by installing something were rather isolated incidents. On occasion I had Mandrake just go down and never boot up again, can't remember if that was version 8 or 9. I just chalked it up to possible hardware issues, though everything seemed to work fine, I don't really know enough to tell.

On to the software. GIMP is a great app, however, if I have a choice between Windows and Photoshop or Linux and GIMP, Win/Photoshop is going to win every time. GIMP is simular to Paint Shop Pro, an great app in it's own right as well or perhaps image ready, and though it can use Photoshop plugins..unlike GIMP as far as I know, natively it can't really compete with Photoshop. Part of that preference to Photoshop is the interface that I'm used to, another large part is the plugins I use often. Photoshop is king of the hill. I could list some other reason why I like Photoshop if anyone is interested, perhaps they can correct any misinformation I may have from my trials with GIMP.

Oh, one more thing on Photoshop and GIMP. This is nothing against GIMP as an application, just a huge perk to Photoshop. Just about every major manufacturer involved with digital imaging, hardware or software, has a plugin or driver to extend Photoshops capabilities with their product.

If I hadn't been spoiled by Photoshop I have no doubts I would love GIMP.

Ok, other software. Some others on the Adobe line of products I would love to see inn Linux. Illustrator, there was an app I tried using many times that was basically simular, can't remember the name (ideas?) and it wasn't bad, but the differences in performance and capabilities of it and Illustrator were very different. It was like using Illustrator 2 or maybe 3 rather than 10. GIMP and Photoshop are very simular but this and Illustrator were out there. I picked it after I asked on a forum about simular apps, this forum I think though I asked at a few. So I went with what I heard the best things about.

Adobe In Design... not sure of any Linux clone with this, I haven't really looked.

3D software. Linux doesn't seem to have much.. lots of those that are discontinued and several basic modeling apps, most with decent at best rendering capabilities. A few good apps for NURBS but I'm still learning those so it may not be such a bad idea to try them in Linux but I'd rather have one app to handle everything than several I have to keep going between. Linux does have MAYA but I can't afford it..Linux or Windows version. I got a copy of 3D studio max 5 from a software auction that I use.. beats anything Linux has except MAYA. I also use Poser 5, more of a 3D tool than anything else but nothing even remotely close in Linux. Bryce if I want to do landscape scene or a basic structure, much easier and quicker than cinema 4D or 3Dsmax.

I'm not an expert at 3D, more of a hobby for me, and I'm not even very good at it. Other than MAYA with it's huge pricetag, Blender is the best I've seen for Linux, great app but doesn't hold a candle to max, besides I could use it in Windows as well if I wanted to use it.

Image viewer, now this just comes down to preferance. I love Thumbs Plus. When I'm working on a 3D model I have it open so I can look through all the textures and decide which I want to use. I have yet to find one I like in Linux. I love the fact that I can click an image and it opens in a new window and can click another and it opens in a new window as well. Then I can compare them. I can have as many as I like. All the ones I've tried in Linux, it either opens in the same windows you view the thumbnails in or a new windows, if you choose to look at a new image it will use the same windows the other was in. Perhaps a setting I missed but still does no good to look at texture without the 3D apps.

Also haven't found a good newsgroup binary downloader. Newsgroups are a great place to find textures, though I may have to pull them into Photoshop and work on them a bit. Also a great place to find ideas for models and have a picture to work from. Just set it to download and then later go though and delete the stuff I don't want.

Also a preferance, I don't like any of the cd/dvd burners I've tried in Linux. Are there dvd burners? The ones I have tried are much slower than those I use in Windows though that may be just a setting I missed. (Alcohol 120% for images/dvds and Nero for a data disk, I know I could use Nero for both but Alcohol handles LOTS more image types..and without plugins)

These are the apps I use on a fairly regular basis. I often have a 3D app, Photoshop and Thumbs Plus open at once (at least until I render the scene) so I really need everything in Linux or it's pretty much worthless to me. No point in going back and forth between OSs when I can just do everything in one.

For lots of people Linux can do everything they need it to do. Some, in their hatred of anything Windows will rationalize that Linux has and has better, every piece of software anyone could ever use. For me, I would love to do all of this from inside Linux, though I would still need Windows for games, but at this point in time, it's not..I don't want to say possible, it is possible, it would be like using pre version 1 betas of everything.. except GIMP. Some simply just aren't available.

So when I say subpar software, I'm only speaking of what I would need to try to do all the same things. I'm not going to give up what I believe are better apps (as I said in the origional post, there are a few Linux apps I think are better than Windows) and apps Linux doesn't even have anything close to, for a better OS.

Oh, one other thing. Watching a movie. I really don't care for Xine, beside trying to get all the codecs is a real pain, and I cannot seem to get Mplayer to work right on my laptop. It only plays when you move the mouse, thought I had finally found a solution but it didn't work... hardware issue with some laptops. Any other multimedia players any good for Linux? Good DVD player? I've heard Linux is having some legal issues with DVD. Divx players?

Read this
http://www.hevanet.com/peace/microsoft.htm

Okay we can argue about this and that issue all day and night but there is still a bottom line to all this:

MOST PC USERS DO NOT CARE ABOUT THIS ISSUES AS LONG AS THE OS RUNS THE FIRST TIME THEY USE IT!

Until linux will be able to do this and mandrake is close(perhaps Red Hat but I have not tried it) then it would still be windows that will be dominant.
Who likes an OS that you have to spend hours just to have sound? And how will you get support if your modem is not working? All this issues are NOT a problem with windows. Okay you say that it is the manufacturers fault but can you blame them?They are running a business.

4 Years ago I tried Linux from a cd that came with a pc magazine. At that time my motherboard was not supported so I had no sound and my winmodem is useless. This year I found out that my motherboard is already linux compatible as of mandrake 8.2. That would be 2 years ago,I am not so sure of the date. So I decided again to try linux and after spending hours configuring it now runs linux. Yet I can't get rid of windows because my scanner is not supported and I cannot do internet telephony which only runs in windows. Maybe another 2 years wait?

I work in a University Hospital doing technical support and I have yet to encounter a medical equipment that is Linux based. Yes the computer system is UNIX based but this is not linux. Would a doctor want linux on his PC? At the present state of linux I very much doubt it.

Another reason why windows is popular? WINDOWS! That is one big reason. An ordinary person without typing skills would be put off with linux because of the amount of typing needed to do such thing as putting the pc off of to reboot. I still do not understand why a lot of people prefer Command Line to point and click.

A lot of linux experts here excuse themselves lately because of "final exams" preparation. What does that say? Most are students with a lot of free time to tinker with their linux pc. For most people, they just don't have that time.

Excuses Excuses, and some people just are to scared of linux they feel comfort in having windows do everything for them they like to support the corporations and let them invade our privacy. If you don't mind Bill Gates knowing more about you than the governments out there do. Then by all means stick with your windows but don't bash linux. All i know is i spent an hour to configure Linux. But then again i also spent days ridding my system of spyware in Windows XP