I have switched back and forth between Windows and Linux probably about 6 or more times now and I have found that each time I go back to Linux it is easier since I know more. This past time I installed Fedora Core 3 as recommended from a friend who knows much more than I and spends pretty much his whole life on computers and has about 10 computers at his house that are all his, anyway, he is a freak to me but I'm really the only one who understands when he talks computers. Everything was actually very fun because I was sick of Windows and ready to get the all-in-one for free benefits of Linux. I stayed with that for a few weeks and usually I have gotten too discouraged on a certain problem that I did not want to live without, so I would go back to Windows, which is exactly what happened this time with getting my graphics card to work (GeForceFX5200). The reason why I wanted this was to get my big games to work, mainly Joint Operations: Typhoon Rising, which I installed successfully with cedega but the game would not run. Anyway, so here I am now back to Windows and all the crap that you have to put up with.

I am really into Spanish so tonight I did some looking around on Microsoft's site and just got more and more and more frustrated at Microsoft's stupidity with restricting all their software with licenses and ****. I was looking for a way to turn all my windows and my whole interface into Spanish just for fun. I found out you have to have this MUI (Multilingual User Interface or something like that), and to have that you have to have a corporate license AND windows server 2003! I was so pissed at this and just the whole layout of Microsoft's site that has the worst navigation ever I think. So I went to some site where this guy was ranting and ranting about how much microsoft sucks and just how dumb the whole OS and how dumb Bill Gates is (that's the nice version of what it said) and it made feel a lot better.

So now I am seriously thinking that FC3 sounds like the best thing in the world and somehow I'll have to figure out how to install my nvidia drivers right or something so I can play the games I want as well, because I know you can change that whole thing to Spanish or just install the Spanish version from the beginning probably.

So anyway, sorry for the long post I just needed to share that mainly to vent out my great frustrations with microsoft and to praise Linux because I know most everyone here likes to hear stories about Windows being trashed and changing over to Linux.

Thanks for reading, hope you enjoyed somewhat at least,

Shaun

Well, I hope you keep going okay with linux and learn some more... And if you need any help with things you know where to look... Hopefully somebody can help

I multibooted for years tween linux windows and OS/2, for internet, games and work... These days I still boot windows on rare ocasions for games etc...

Thanks for the encouragement. I have done the dual boot thing in the past too, I guess I kind of forgot about that this time. I will definitely take that into consideration especially considering a full installation of Linux and all of it's packages still isn't that big.


Well, time for bed for me (Michigan, US),

I'll be back again sometime with questions

Download the latest nvidia drivers from here: http://www.nvidia.com/object/linux.html

Get into your kernel configurator (go into you linux src directory and type: "make menuconfig"). Go to the Graphics Drivers section and make sure everything is unchecked, except for VESA VGA (if you so desire).

run "make" then copy your image from ./arch to /boot.

Goto where you downloaded the nvidia drivers.
They used to make you run some install program but now there is a .run script I think. You can execute it with "sh NVIDIA_Blah_Blah_Blah.run"

Reboot and everything should be glorious. If you have already tried this then ignore me, if you need me to elaborate then just ask.

"The Devil will find work for idle hands to do,
So what difference does it make?,
So what difference does it make?,

But I'm still fond of yoOOOOoou,"

Part of a lyric, from "What difference does it make" by the smiths (currently playing on xmms ).

So, what difference does it actually make? Nothing, but everything!

I use linux for more social, moral and ethical reasons. I really, really dislike their "underhanded" business practices.

That doesn't make using linux any easier though. I use the app's that I'm familiar with quite happily, but I get very annoyed/stressed/angry/frustrated (etc etc) when I try something new, because I just can't get my head round the unbelievably poor documentation that's out there.

Sure there are some "valiant" projects like the linux documentation project but I can still find things to criticise there i.e. they are just putting the available howtos etc into one location and a common format.

Maybe I'm being greedy, by wanting things put into "plain english", rather than the "technoblurb" that most stuff is written in! Because as far as I can see, things written in that "plain english" would be much much easier to translate for those in the linux world who have a different language than english as their "first language".

The two main reasons I've ended up with gentoo for my distro are that I've escaped mandrakes 6 monthly upgrade cycle and that the installation handbook for gentoo seemed quite clear to me (though gentoo docs aren't perfect, most of them still seem to presume a lot of "prior knowledge".


Microsoft, well it's my belief, that they come from the "yeah, you can do that, but I'll have to set it up for you and that's only gonna cost you XXXXXXX". Ok fine, if what they're offering is unique, but if it's basically what you can do for free with something else (linux), then bollocks to it, I'll just have to continue shouting at my monitor when theres something that I don't understand (and yes I've come very close, on more than one occassion, to beating it to death with a hammer )!

Hey, also it's good to have a rant every now and again, because that's usually when you find that you're not the only one that's "fighting an uphill battle" (or maybe "pissing in the wind" )

regards

John

p.s. and yes "Heaven knows I'm miserable now" is also a relevant lyric!

A good rant can be cathartic.

I had a good chuckle the other night (at my daughter's expense ). She needed to print some photos to mount on display boards for my grandkids' science fair projects. So she plugged my wife's USB HP photo-printer into her WinXP laptop. Ahh, it recognized it, and is installing drivers. Good. <wait> Now to print. Oh, it's not printing. No real error messages, either. Maybe I need to reboot to have the drivers start. <wait> Hmm, still not printing. Let me see if there are better drivers on the net. <wait> Ahh, HP has some XP drivers available for it. Let me download one. <wait> Hmm, it won't install correctly. Oh, yeah, I have to remove the drivers Windows installed, first, and reboot. <wait> Okay, drivers installed, now to reboot, again. <wait> Okay, now it's finally printing (almost an hour after starting out).

I just laugh whenever she tells me XP is so much easier to setup and use than Linux.

http://www.fedorafaq.org/#nvidia

I used that to install my nvidia drivers, and it worked wonderfully.