Replies

I just installed the UBUNTU distro on one of our machines here in the office. WHAT A DREAM! Picked up everything on the machine, went out, looked at our network, (would you like to share this machine?), a FLAWLESS install!!!

I am running the following on crossover office

Microsoft Word Microsoft Excel Microsoft Outlook Quickbooks Internet Explorer

Why? Because some idiots we broker for have all these little activeX widgets on their website, making it necessary to us IE. Quickbooks is the standard for accounting. The office junk was just because I did not yet trust the alternatives (open office -- also for WINDOZE -- is superior to office in every way), and initiallly had a hard time configuring ximian evolution with my Palm Pilot (works like a breeze with Ubuntu).

Why not just run windows, if I have these MS apps? Simple. SECURITY. If you get a virus/worm/malware for windows, it doesn't go down to the "guts" of the machine the way it does in MS. It "bounces" when it tries to get into the guts of your operating system, because it is in a virtual box EMULATING windows.

Won't they just write malware for Linux? Sure they will. I have heard it said that you can "root" an unprotected linux box (log in as the administrator and take over the machine) in about 3 hours of attacks. It is child's play on a windows machine, The tools are out there so that some halfwit who has to ask "how do I compile" can write a script and zombie your windows machine. The difference is that 1) You operate in relative obscurity (why write scripts for Linux when all the idiots are already using Windows?...., just send em another email promising them naked pics of Kournikova)
2) The open nature of the software makes it a sure thing that the problems get addressed immediately, rather than sitting on a desk in Redmond with some jerkoff trying to do an analysis on whether it would hurt the company's reputation to admit that there are holes in the software and no patches written for it yet.

Excellent observations. A happy CrossOver Office customer here, too. I'm running it under SuSE Linux 9.2 to maintain compatability with a handful of customers/hardware/MSOS versions.

As for new users and Linux, it was almost totally transparent for my family. As the system admin, I had to spool up a bit - but trying to defend/maintain a multiuser Windows home network was starting to take way too much of my time and money. I couldn't compete with three other users shopping for malware while I was at work. I finally decided any of my dedicated computer time at home was going to go to learning Linux. Now I'm back in the black and have time for other things. Now I deal-boot to XP about once a month.

Very happy I made the switch.

Burnt the U Live CD yesterday and played a little on PI and PIII machines. Loaded and ran OK on both. Open Office and other packaged app's (graphics, web page editor, system tools) look pretty powerful at first glance. Has Firebird and Thunderbird, too. Can't really judge speed running from the CD. Definitely going to install U on an unused PI and learn it. Been having problems with an XPHome machine and fear the SP2 push, so it may well get U, too.

I need to check out moving user files: will U read Word, Excel, etc. files off a floppy or CD made from w98 and XP? I'm on the steep initial slope of a new OS curve; it's kind of cool actually, haven't played there for years.