Any Microsoft Fanboys Here!! !

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Well for enterprise users Linux is quite expensive for 1-Year Support. $179 for Red Hat Enterprise for a year of support.

Microsoft Windows Server 2008 Standard- $999, However support is for 10-years due to the 10-Year Plan released during Windows 2000 and XP. Most software will work for it. Microsoft will help you fix any problems. Easier to deploy complicated scripts over the network.

Example- You will have to learn a more complicated programming laugage to do anything in linux server. Where Else Microsoft even tells you how to program in the Server 2008 Booklet and @ technet.

From the consumer Point-Of-View

Paint is not an easy program to use in linux. You have to mount your flash and disk drives and its not even guarenteed to show up on startup.

I hope BG will download his mind as a version of windows

OK - not the most successful of examples - but an example all the same

Let me ask you this? Why do you dislike Microsoft

Or Hardware made by anybody but Netgear, Intel, Nvidia, Via, and SIS. Anything else in linux is a Heartbeat to even get working.

Did I mention Cisco made a attempt @ linux drivers but had a lot of issues along the way.

Your not alone, I hate that too!!

It's a shame, why paying for a dumb OS (Vista), when you can have a good one for nothing (Linux).
Well, I haven't chosen to have Vista on my laptop (it was there when I bought it), and my father does not want me to change OS.
Shame on him.

Vista is fine for me, just the desktop manager keeps crashing and it it much bigger then it need to be...and it takes to long to log in...I prefer XP or Linux Mint...

Yesterday I dragged out an old laptop which wasn't really running Windows XP happily at all.
In fact, it would take about 15 minutes to book.

I installed Ubunut Linux on it. (8.10).
From then on, it boots in about 30 seconds.

My cabled network capability worked without configuration.
Monitor, Speaker etc, worked "out of the box" too.
I could get to my iGoogle page (and thus all of my favourite online services) via Firefox.

After a bit of fumbling... I got VPN to work (to my work firewall).
A bit more fumbling and I got Remote Desktop to my work PC (WinXP).

Today I'm going to take Lotus Notes 8 for Linux home on CD and see how it goes.

Updates seem to be automatic too.

so... IMHO Ubuntu Linux is almost ready for mass consumption.

I couldn't get the laptop's old NetGear PCMCIA Wireless card to work because I couldn't find the drivers.
I couldn't watch DVDs out of the box... I found a downloadable extension but I think it only works on non-protected DVDs.

I found a "download" for a proper linux DVD Player (apparently) and downloaded it. It extracted into a bunch of files but no install routine. I think it expects me to go to a command line. This really isn't acceptable - hence my claim that linux isn't ready.

But it's really really close.

Wifi is generally the main hurdle. Was the download a tar.gz? Those are more of a hassle to deal with- I've yet to install anything from tar.gz files. Ubuntu likes the .deb files much better.

The download was a Tar.gz which seemed to be an archive full of files including a readme which suggested some sort of $ command line. The thing is that I downloaded the archive but it wouldn't let me save the extracted files anywhere. I had no idea where I should put the equiavalent of C:\program files in ubunutu. I may have to get a dummies guide.

The normal sequence is...

Download the tar file wherever you like (e.g. your home directory, or maybe create a subdirectory, just to tinker in).

Unpack the file with "tar xzf packagename.tar.gz".

Typically, that will create a subdirectory with everything in it... usually called "packagename". Go in there (with "cd packagename").

Type "./configure", which will actually allow you to make various choices about how the files will be built, but generally speaking, you probably don't need to be concerned - the defaults will be fine.

Type "make", which will perform the whole build. It make take a while. Hopefully, you'll see no errors.


Type "sudo make install". This is the only point where you need to become superuser, as it will copy the built files to the standard places about the system where they belong.

Get back up to where you started ("cd ..", once or twice) and delete everything.

Or maybe save the download, just in case you want to rebuild with some options. I.e. in the "./configure", they may be options to build just one specific driver (saving some clutter), compile for a specific processor (which my improve performance), or add some twiddly bits. There will be text files there that give some hints about this stuff. Look in things like "INSTALL" and "README".

============

mkdir scratch
cd scratch
wget www.somewhere.com/dir/dir/pakagename.tar.gz
tar xzf pakagename.tar.gz
cd pakagename # probably
./configure
make
sudo make install
cd ..
rm -rf pakagename
cd ..
rm -rf scratch

===========

OTOH, I can't say I've done one of the above in a long while. I just add repositories and say:

apt-get packagename

which does all of the above, and more.

Thanks Lau, I'll give it a try.

Whilst I enjoy tinkering with Linux, I still use Windows as my main OS. I wouldn't call myself a "fan boy", as I don't necessarily support MS's views on everything, and how they do things. Nor do I come up with reasons to justify them like some people do. If I don't agree with how they're doing things, I don't make excuses for them. I do what I need to do with my computers, and as long as I can do that, I don't really give a hoot.

The reason I use Windows over Linux (well, I have Ubuntu installed on this box as well, however it spends most of it's time in Windows) is so that way I am compatible with all of the major applications. That way, I don't have to worry about some app that I may need to run at some point not being compatible with my OS (or having to put up with a, in some cases, horrible Linux alternative (not saying Open Source software is bad, because it isn't by any means)). It just works better for my needs on my main box. The box at my feet I use as a server is running Linux, however, because that is what I feel Linux does best. It's great on servers, and so much more robust than Windows Server.

As somebody said previously, I wouldn't buy a Mac either. Not so much because of the stigma that comes with owning one, but just the fact that to me, the OS feels like a toy. I'm not into all the flashy crap that comes with it, nor the "attractive" designs. Not to say that Mac does a bad job with being a computer, because it doesn't, it's a fully fledged and very capable operating system. It's all about personal preference really.

I love the way since Windows 5 you are in no control of what extras are installed or not during the initial install. Seems determined to install to "Windows" considering the %windir% is used alot still...

Customising is the way forward...