Posted on 12/09/2007 5:50:51 AM PST by Halfmanhalfamazing
Sometimes, several unrelated changes come to a head at the same time, with a result no one could have predicted. The PC market is at such a tipping point right now and the result will be millions of Linux-powered PCs in users' hands.
The first change was the continued maturation of desktop Linux. Today, no one can argue with a straight face that people can't get their work done on Linux-powered PCs. Ubuntu, PCLinuxOS, MEPIS, OpenSUSE, Xandros, Linspire Mint, the list goes on and on of desktop Linuxes that PC owner can use without knowing a thing about Linux's technical side. People can argue that Vista or Mac OS X is better, but when Michael Dell runs Ubuntu Linux on one of his own home systems, it can't be said that Linux isn't a real choice for anyone's desktop.
(Excerpt) Read more at desktoplinux.com ...
I tried Virtualbox out, and had issues with it. It just didn't seem like it is quite ready for prime-time. There were some things about it I liked better than VMware though, so I'll be checking back in on it periodically.
Actually, I was wrong when I said I use 7Tools Partition Manager. The last couple of times that I messed with my disk partitions I used either gparted or cfdisk. Gparted is a GNU open source variant of a graphical partition manager. cfdisk is not a tool that most people would be comfortable with -- seriously geeky -- but its disk partition manipulations are rock solid.
Which is to say ... you're making a good choice with Acronis.
I’ve used Acronis True Image 8.0 for my backups for about 1 year. I backup to an external 80Gb hard drive. It’s performed flawlessly. The one time I’ve had to restore my backup using their restoration CD, It formatted the hard drive, restored the entire image, and my PC was back up and running within 1 hour.
I began using it because of reviews I’d read over at TechRepublic. As you can see from the above, it was a good choice. I have to believe their partition software will also be a good one.
Thanks for looking into it. I appreciate that.
Not necessarily. I had a laptop with a Linksys PCMCIA WiFi card that had trouble in Linux, and got a different card (AirLink 101) for $20 and it worked like a champ. AND...the Linksys card WINDOWS drivers kind of sucked anyway, and even in Windows I liked the Airlink card much better, so it's not like a card that worked well in Windows was troublesome under Linux.
What the heck could Quicken be doing that would make it so finicky?? It’s a money management product, for God’s sake.
LOL. I've often asked the same thing. That Quicken won't easily run under Wine indicates to me either sloppy or hinky programming going on there.
Probably the effort involved in hiding the monthly transmission of your transactions and balance to BG’s email. ;-)
Except for the rather orphaned, always a couple releases behind, variant that Intuit provides on Mac's, they have been a Windows only client for a long time.
Such code grows like barnacles on the side of a ship.
As a long standing professional programmer, I wouldn't consider working on that code for less than about twice my going rate. I say that sight unseen. Of course, since I am not a Windows programmer, nor want to be, I wouldn't be worth a bucket of warm spit to them, so it's rather unlikely I will have any such job anytime soon.
The applicable word being 'product'. It's built for Windows operating systems. They have no interest in supporting Linux based systems. That's just more overhead for them.
Well, my point was that given the nature of the product, I can’t understand the program needing to do anything which would make it among the most difficult to run under Wine emulaiton. We’re talking about running Windows programs here, it has nothing to do with the author exerting effort to make the product Linux compatible, but with which Windows calls and resources he makes use of while running natively under Windws. Presumably, the authors of the Windows programs that DO run under Wine didn’t make an effort to make them compatible.
From what I’ve read, the Windows programs that DO run under Wine are very basic programs that call little in the way of resources. I have a couple; FileZilla and PowerArchiver that run fine. I’ve tried to install Family Tree Maker 8.0 using Wine and it doesn’t work. It loads, but during the boot process it reports a couple DLL errors and the screen comes up different than in Windows. And it doesn’t handle the go-to-CD feature that I need to pull up genealogy databases.
My guess is that the more elaborate the Windows application, the less likely it is it will perform well in Linux using a Wine install. And that’s why after the 1st of the year I’m going to upgrade to 1Gb RAM (or more) and install VirtualBox to see how that works.
Thanks for the word.
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
The Gimpshop download page indicates it’s available for Derbian Linux. Does this mean it won’t install/run under Ubuntu?
I run Ubuntu 7.04 on my laptop and have VirtualBox installed on there and have TinyXP installed on VirtualBox, and my laptop has 512 MB RAM and TinyXP runs very good on there.
Thanks for the info. What size is your Linux partition? Mine is 7.4Gb (the partition Compaq used for their reinstallation files).
Ubuntu 7.04 is what I’m running. But I found out through Compaq that I can put a single 1Gb chip in one memory slot instead of buying two 512Mb chips. That makes the upgrade less expensive. I’m going to wait until after the holiday then upgrade my memory.
I already have VirtualBox downloaded, so once I get my memory upgraded I’ll get a partition manager, adjust my partitions then install VirtualBox.
XP runs pretty slow on my PC. I have a lot of applications and pre-loaded processes. So my memory upgrade is something I need anyway.
My laptop has a 57 GB hard drive (they call it 60 GB), and Ubuntu 7.04 partition (partition is in the ext3 file system) takes up 55.5 GB and the swap partition takes up the rest. When I set up a virtual hard disk on VirtualBox, I set it up as a “dynamically expanding image” so it can increase its size when it’s absolutely necessary.
Now I’m confused Linux takes up your entire hard drive when including the swap partition. So why are you running VirtualBox when you don’t even have XP on your PC?
Does Virtual Box allow you to run XP in a virtual configuration without even being installed on a partition?
Linux is nowhere near taking over the low end. Be real. Until Linux (which I use on my servers, thankyouverymuch) has a unified kernel, graphics system, and package management system, it’ll always stay a server/geek/hobbyist OS.
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