Linux is free so long as your time is worthless.
Although development and research are not a problem I don’t see the unsavvy in this country adopting Linux. People who open .exe from their inbox are not gonna wrap their head around the command line interface, ever.
“I don’t see the unsavvy in this country adopting Linux.”
I guess us poor savvy people will just have to save 10s of thousands of dollars. I’m soooo hurt.
Depends on whether or not Linux can get its act together within the next few years. Distros today are light-years ahead of their predecessors.
With Microsoft fumbling Vista, and with things like viruses and spyware (both unsolicited and Microsoft’s WGA crap) I can both Linux making inroads in the business world at least (Macs will do better with consumers).
You don't have to. There are plenty of linux windoz style gui's available for those who want that windoz style desktop.
The old command line "dos" like interface isn't very hard to learn, and makes it a lot easier to fix your PC should you have problems. If windoz crashes on you, you still need to know how to get your pc running again through the command line in many cases. Not that many people know how to these days. If they can't get windows to launch, they take it back to store these days, which to me is the last thing I'd do.
Windows is expensive and it makes your valuable time worthless.
Most linux bundles that are now available load with no trouble and are trouble free, unlike windows which wants to crash or report errors, report errors and crash, or simply sit there and do nothing.
Learn linux here: http://www.linux.org/ You''l quickly learn the basics aren't hard to learn, then choose a bundle to your liking and install it on an old pc to play around with.
If it was an old windoz machine, you'll find it probably works better than it ever did with windows, and uses far less memory than windows memory hog programs.
You can download linux bundles for free (if you have a faast connection) or order them for cheap, anywhere from 10-20 bucks.
If anything you'll enjoy doing something different than windows, and relearning (or learning for the first time) some "dos style" basic computer operating system commands.
Many people don't even know what "dos" is (or was) these days.
{using shakey old man voice] Why in my day, we used to get a great big 5 1/2 floppy disk in 'computer class', sit down in front of some old Tandy x86 "computer" (they didn't even have hard drives back then, and the "x" in front of the 86 was a reserved spot for day far in the future where there would be perhaps a 1.) and practice dos shell commands and the simplest of "programs", like drawing a line, making a coin flip, etc.
So you’re saying it costs money to be ignorant?
Then I’d say you’re right! ;)
Somebody in Japan has created a script that will boot impressively fast, 7.39 seconds on my fx-55 machine.
It’s more a demo to show his work but it runs Firefox that is loaded with the boot.
It appears it’s written by a geek in Japan who wants people to test and let the system send the results back to him.
The fastest boot so far appears to be a P4 2.66 boot in 6.14 seconds per his website.
It boots OK on several of my machines but failed to establish an internet connection on 2 others.
I’m limited for time so I haven’t attempted to do any checking/debug & don’t care to either as I’m more a user than a techie.
The Website for info and download is www.machboot.com
Download is 250 MB and I had to also use mirror2 instead of the first choice.
It’s fun to watch it boot...well, it’s fun for my little mind at least.... and as a finance/accounting person I like the little graph and stat thing he creates/displays based on the boot.
the time you spend on Linux will be in setting it up and making it work - in the process you will have learned something about computers.
contrast that with the equal amount of time you *will* spent on a Microsoft machine waiting for it to reboot to install a simple configuration change? or rebooting it after it hangs or bluescreens? or learning a completely arbitrary sequence of folder pull-downs and keyclicks in order to configure something? does that sequence teach you *ANYTHING* about what is actually happening on the computer? its more like supersticious behaviour in my book
it is moronic to claim time invested in learning Linux is "worthless" -- putting up with Microsoft's poorly implemented products is a true example of wasted time...
Hi a Linux distro released after 2003, have we met?
Seriously you need a cmd line interface on an ubuntu box about as much as the ‘dos shell’ on xp...
So, you consider the time you spend eradicating worms/spyware/viruses as a benefit of using Windows?
I can't tell you how many threads we've had here with someone trying to recover a PC that has become corrupted due to worms, spyware, viruses, some combination of all three, or just the windows registry going whack.
Those of us who use Linux prefer to actually have our computers work for us rather than having to work for the computer.
That used to be true, but isn't any more. Besides, think about how much feed and care you have to give a Windows PC to keep it running. Viruses and mallware prevention and repair takes more time than you probably think about.
People who open .exe from their inbox are not gonna wrap their head around the command line interface, ever.
You don't have to on Linux, if you don't want to.