It IS distribution independent. The howtos are distribution focused to make it easier for you.

A lot of times you can use your distribution's package manager to handle "installing" the source code. Sometimes it's easier to do it using the package manager than to use the tarballs.

I have been Windoze-free since 2003. After more than a decade of struggling to stabilise Windoze, I'd had enough. I abandoned the Micro$oft vision of world domination, and never looked back. Welcome aboard, PlantMan!

I had to vote yes on this because there was no option for "I haven't used Windows since 1993." All my work and home systems have run and will continue to run Linux (or occasionally some other *NIX flavor).

The question is moot... What really matters is what kind of apps you intend to run. MS Office is by far the best word processor there is, to make a specific example. There are eg quite a few addon apps for Word that is a must have that just won't work with OpenOffice (implied if running linux). To cut it shortly, linux does some things really good and so does windows. What OS is the best is so eighties (and slightly moronic to ask nowadays 8-) and as such completely of no consequence whatsoever. My two oere...

Heh. "What OS is the best is so eighties (and slightly
moronic to ask nowadays 8-) and as such completely of
no consequence whatsoever."

About as funny (or moot) as stating that Word is the best
word processor. I find it hard to use, counter-productive
and a major pain in the proverbial. As far as I'm concerned
people should be using LaTeX ;} and not bother with word
processors in the first place.


Cheers,
Tink

saying MS Office is the best is a matter of opinion, I could just as well say IE 6 is the best web browser invented

To each their own. 8-)

FWIW, I refer to pre-MS Office 2007 offices. The latest incarnation is, well to put it mildly, not that user-friendly and really rather clunky and cumbersome IMO.

You'd be surprised how many die-hard-linux users revert to MS Word when it comes to writing sci-papers with references using Endnote (although they probably won't admit to it). I work at a uni. I've seen it all. 8-]

I only know of one guy who claims using latex; he supposedly wrote his senior high final paper (this is a diffucult-to-translate-swedish school-level paper) using latex and linux v1.somethingorother in the mid 90s. Supposedly took him three times longer or whatever, including time to start over using Word, before giving *that* up and goinf back to latex.

Personally I prefer vi in both windows and linux... 8-)

Of course. That's what I tried to say. It all depends on what apps you plan to use, and that in itself is further split down to personal preferences.

To again use a specific example, I prefer using MS Word for my word-processing needs. I also use vi for my smaller editing needs in both windows and linux, which's another example.

And I've seen people despair over trying to write their thesis
in winword (1, ..., 97-2003) and happily modifying it in Open
Office after word garbled it.

And I know ones who needed to do Scientific papers and gave up
on Word quickly, and even learnt how to use LaTeX from scratch (and
being very happy with the move) because they didn't need to worry
much about anything ever after. Some of them love LaTeX so much,
they carry on using it after University, and some of them even
included LaTeX messages into their daily life, e.g. exclaiming
"Badness 2000!""


Good on yah.


Cheers,
Tink

I wiped the windows partition and installed my original copy of XPHome in VirtualBox on my Mepis 7 host.

linux is gr8.....windows lies nowhere