Replies

The author is either naive, or just doesn't "get out much". Everything software is "free". Er, let me rephrase that. Everything software is "downloadable". Bit Torrent clients and P2P ensures that.

He hit on something that is a definite issue against Linux. He speaks of "Linux" as if it's the entire package. In fact (as you know), Linux is a kernel. It's useless to us people at the keyboard without even a command line interface (the shell), and even then useless to over 90% of everybody remaining after that without a graphical interface.

Microsoft has done one thing right. They dumped millions of dollars into marketing. I won't debate the truth of that marketing because I personally think they'd sell their aging mothers to make a buck. But they are masters of marketing. While Microsoft is setting the "tone" for their products, Linux is either largely unknown, or perceived as being evil on account of Microsoft's marketing.

It's ironic given that "Windows" was X-Windows for years before Microsoft had a graphical front end on one of their operating systems. But now, Linux could mean -

- RedHat (Centos, and Fedora derivitives)
- Debian (Ubuntu, and Knoppix derivitives)
- Slackware
- DSL (Damn Small Linux)
- Yellow Dog Linux
- SuSe
- Mandriva

...and too many others to mention here. I don't know them all.

But mention Windows, and everybody pretty much assumes that you're talking about XP or Vista.

The author must hang out with old people, because upgrading people to Linux nowadays is very tricky if the person is a youngster (teens through early 30s). This is simply on account of on-line games. MS Windows OWNS the on-line gaming world right now. These games are CPU, memory, and video hardware intensive. With enough hardware, Cedega (http://www.cedega.com) is a GOOD solution.

But in all honesty, the only people easy to upgrade to Linux are very simple users who (as the author noted) only want to use the web, do e-mail, and document creation/manipulation (some sort of office suite) and printing.

I've got a friend who recently switched from Windows to Linux (Ubuntu). He's 40-ish, but has a 20-something attitude. He's got a mountain of high powered hardware running Ubuntu and needed me to sort some issues out. I'm one of those "command line" people, but I'm a network engineer and "command line" is my middle name (so to speak :-).

I sorted his problem out and then we "played". I was amazed at the performance. We played Battlefield-II in Windows XP (the machine was dual boot), and then we played it under Cedega in Linux. Then we had my 12 year old do the same thing. We all agreed that performance was better under Cedega! Go figure. :-) But then again, this guy has a machine with a 64 bit CPU (AMD), 4G of memory, and a high end NVidia graphics card. I don't remember specifics over that except to say that he had $5G in hardware sitting there in front of us....which is a lot of cash for a desktop PC in the home.

I still convert people from Windows to Linux once in awhile. The ones who worry me, are the ones who "might" step out of the normal bounds. For example, I converted my Mom over and a couple of months later she wanted to run some business inventory software that she bought at Walmart....ARG! So I told her to hang onto it and come visit grandkids and I would fix her up. I installed Crossover and FORTUNATELY, it ran O.K. Sorting out printing from the app was a PITA, but eventually, I got it sorted out.

He was talking about those people swapping a copy of Dreamweaver and I remembered that I use something called Quanta. Functionally, it does most of the same things. I've used Dreamweaver too though and I think Quanta is less friendly. But compared with the classic UNIX text editors (still included with Linux!) such as Vi and ed, even Quanta is a light years ahead jump forward! Even a few years ago, there was nothing like it available for Linux and we were typing out HTML and web content in everything from Joe, Vi, Pico, OpenOffice, and on-line HTML creators.

You know me well enough to know that I'm a Linux Bigot. I especially like Debian. :-) Windows just sucks and that's all there is too it. Life's too short to run a bad operating system, created by a dreadful company such as Microsoft. But I don't debate this with anybody anymore. It's like driving a 1980s Yugo (remember THAT?!). If people want to drive 1980s Yugos, then I'm good with it. A few actually do notice that my computing "world" is radically different and they want to know more...and out of them, a few do decide to switch to Linux. Sometimes though, I send them to my brother (a Mac addict), and they go with Mac.

I DO run Windows-XP on the odd occasion because we use Visio at work. But I run it in VM-Ware on a Debian Linux system and it's just another Linux application to me, which is where Microsoft operating systems should be. :-)

LOL........Good answer !

Part I didn’t understand must have been about New Mexicans !....:o)

As you state....if one wants simplicity, speed for surfing and basic documents in open office etc then Linux is the way to go.

Especially if one has an older desktop or laptop laying around. I snagged a new HP pavilion dv6436nr Entertainment notebook that has 2GB of memory, 160GB HD, Nvidia geforce go 6150 graphics card etc running Pista OS (sic) . It’s OK but when I loaded Ubuntu on my older compaq presario laptop with 50GB HD and 512mb of memory it out performs that new notebook in speed for surfing the net..........

My daily surfing notebook I use on the net is the old presario. It is faster, safer and no virus seems to bother it.......yet.