I <heart> Darwin.

On 2005-03-09, Teilhard Knight wrote:

of all I set configure to my taste and leave running and rarely gives me
headaches is Windows XP.

Then use Ubuntu to learn Linux. It is most similar in presentation, kind
of a blend between Windows and Mac GUI done in Gnome. But don't expect
it to work perfectly, it is only in prerelease right now.

All other OSs (distros in the connoisseur's jargon)
take ages to be ready.

You just need to pick the right ones for what you want to do. If all you
want to do is work on a GUI desktop, a distribution like Ubuntu can be
installed, reasonably secure and fully updated within an hour or two
depending on your connection speed. Try installing XP and doing all the
updates on it these days and then compare time on the same machine. It
will be 4 to 12 times longer depending on what is being compared to
achieve similar levels of functionality.

Nerdy distributions of Linux take forever to prepare and install because
they load pretty much everything but the kitchen sink onto the hard
drive. Even the distributions that have comprehensive packaging systems
seem to all install complete office productivity and software
development environments by default. That's not comparable to just
installing Xp, but to installing XP plus Office plus Visual Studio.

You cannot just go out and buy a piece of hardware because it is
almost sure the Linux or Unix drivers simply do not exist.

That works in reverse too. You're shopping at Windows-oriented
dealers and looking at products aimed at Windows users. Who supplies the
Solaris users in your town? Go there.

Why are you struggling with Linux anyway? It is a hobby or experimental
OS, the *BSD distributions are the serious ones. And as you are on a
faculty, you can get licensed for a copy of Solaris. Solaris is much
better than Linux.

Figure out exactly what you want to do with your computer and then
figure out which operating system and distribution does that best. Maybe
what you really want is Windows anyway.

On 2005-03-09, Teilhard Knight wrote:

of all I set configure to my taste and leave running and rarely gives me
headaches is Windows XP.

Then use Ubuntu to learn Linux. It is most similar in presentation, kind
of a blend between Windows and Mac GUI done in Gnome. But don't expect
it to work perfectly, it is only in prerelease right now.

All other OSs (distros in the connoisseur's jargon)
take ages to be ready.

You just need to pick the right ones for what you want to do. If all you
want to do is work on a GUI desktop, a distribution like Ubuntu can be
installed, reasonably secure and fully updated within an hour or two
depending on your connection speed. Try installing XP and doing all the
updates on it these days and then compare time on the same machine. It
will be 4 to 12 times longer depending on what is being compared to
achieve similar levels of functionality.

Nerdy distributions of Linux take forever to prepare and install because
they load pretty much everything but the kitchen sink onto the hard
drive. Even the distributions that have comprehensive packaging systems
seem to all install complete office productivity and software
development environments by default. That's not comparable to just
installing Xp, but to installing XP plus Office plus Visual Studio.

You cannot just go out and buy a piece of hardware because it is
almost sure the Linux or Unix drivers simply do not exist.

That works in reverse too. You're shopping at Windows-oriented
dealers and looking at products aimed at Windows users. Who supplies the
Solaris users in your town? Go there.

Why are you struggling with Linux anyway? It is a hobby or experimental
OS, the *BSD distributions are the serious ones. And as you are on a
faculty, you can get licensed for a copy of Solaris. Solaris is much
better than Linux.

Figure out exactly what you want to do with your computer and then
figure out which operating system and distribution does that best. Maybe
what you really want is Windows anyway.

On Wed, 9 Mar 2005 04:19:33 -0600, "Teilhard Knight" <teilhk@privacy.net>
wrote:

I have been testing Mandrake thoroughly in recent days. Do you say that
Linux do not freeze? That's a big lie. Do you say it is easy to use and
that
Windows sucks big time because instabilities? I do not nearly think that
Linux is easier to use and that is more stable, at least than Windows XP
of
course. If your Windows crashes, a reboot is the sure cure. If Linux
crashes, you might end in a panic condition only a guru of gurus can
solve.
You want to install something in Windows? If the damn program or whatever
we
are talking about is for Windows, it surely can live in Windows. If you
try
to install something made for Linux, and furthermore, even for the distro
you want to install it, 90% of the time you end with a dead, good for
nothing nuisance there which has bad signatures, the wrong prefix, and all
sorts of ailments. Mind you, you can get something out of the installation

You've just given a real world example of why Linux has not displaced
Windows as the home OS of choice.

x-no-archive: yes

I've heard very well of Mandrake, but I've also heard a couple horror
stories like yours.

I think I've been pretty lucky so far - only problems ever were a BIOS
compatibility problem with OpenBSD 3.0 and a chipset problem with
Solaris 8 x86. Everything else (Slackware, FreeBSD, Debian on x86,
Solaris on SPARC) always worked beautifully - for years and years :-)