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To: ShadowAce
Have been using Linux for about 15 years, and it is my main OS for personal use.
Currently using Fedora 20 w/KDE (have hit the end of supported updates, so will be upgrading sometime within next year).
LibreOffice.
Opera (web browser).
Evolution (email).
SMPlayer (videos).
Amarok (music).
PostgreSQL (database stuff).
Eclipse IDE (any dev stuff I want to mess with), or Geany for lightweight C/C++ console apps.
HP OfficeJet 8600 Pro

For most people, and most small businesses, Linux is definitely a low-cost alternative to the big money systems. The OpenOffice/LibreOffice suites are amazingly full-featured. I have to use Windows 8.1 and 10 for work, and my wife still has Windows 7, but I think Linux is desktop ready for the home user. Have tried Mint, Debian, Ubuntu, Kubuntu, DSL and several other distros over the years.

One great thing about Linux to which the article alludes is that you can take an old, end-of-life PC and turn it into a modern system just by installing Linux.
12 posted on 10/06/2015 5:01:27 AM PDT by Montana_Sam (Truth lives.)
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To: Montana_Sam; ShadowAce; NorthMountain; dayglored
One great thing about Linux to which the article alludes is that you can take an old, end-of-life PC and turn it into a modern system just by installing Linux.

Having tried every major and some minor Linux distros, that is what i have found. I have Xubuntu installed on an old laptop (dual with XP) , which distro i found to be the best for old HW, as other distros failed on wifi. And I installed Debian recently (instead of Mint this time) on a another HD. Rather than messing with my window partitions, i unplug that HD and connect another via a cheap sata USB adapter cable (and use the PC power supply) and install Linux on that. Then i shut down and also plug in the Windows drive and tap F12 (may differ on other PCs) to get a boot options screen, and boot from Windows.

By so doing i can easily save docs in my Windows drive, as well as Firefox profiles and LibreOffice (i still like Apache better). And Wine works to run BPBible, which is critical for me.

But despite the hype of some, Linux invariably has problems (often with a myriad of solutions proffered) and or fails to provide certain customization one can easily get with Windows.

Full or any functionality with printers and wifi can be buggy, and getting permissions over your own files, even if temporarily, can require opening up a terminal to learning what to code, while (depending on the Distor) things like simply right clicking on an icon and finding the source, and making a shortcut can be missing. I spent a lot of time on forums to no avail trying to find a way to remap the CapsLock key to ctrl+c, and Esc to ctrl+v, as that really helps me is my stiff arthritic fingers, and which AutoHotKey easily enables via adding to a script (CapsLock::^c Esc::^v mbutton::^x) . AutoKey simply is not on the same level. But which is why I am using Debian, as I found I can at least change the first two.

Then there is the lack of legal multimedia codecs (US) unless you buy them. Yet Windows is also messing with that model.

Posted under my W/10 (free upgrade), which with easy customization (such as classic shell is like W/7 but better. Thank God.

26 posted on 10/06/2015 6:47:27 AM PDT by daniel1212 (Turn to the Lord Jesus as a damned and destitute sinner+ trust Him to save you, then follow Him!)
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To: Montana_Sam

Re: Evolution. I used that for a long time when I needed the ability to connect to exchange (ugh). Do they have a GPG plugin for Evolution these days?


33 posted on 10/06/2015 7:44:55 AM PDT by zeugma (Zaphod Beeblebrox for president! Or Cruz if Zaphod is unavailable.)
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