Posted: 6/21/2005 9:56:22 AM EDT
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As I reinstall XP for about the billiointh time (and have to wait on the phone for permission to do so with the software I bought) I have FUCKING HAD IT with MS. What do I lose going to Linux? What applications can I not use? What about games? Whats the win. I can't fucking stand the MS Bullshit anymore. |
Well, you will have peace of mind from totalitarian reign. Linux is great, but not widely supported for the consumer market (ie. kick ass games) There are products for Linux that interperet all common document formats. And Gimp (photoshop equivalent) is pretty interesting to use as well (free) Oh yea, get used to /usr/bin/w4klr not c:\ |
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Hehehe... I'm in a Linux training class right now. I'd say, I could do 90% of the things I need to do in Linux that I can do in Windows. Games are usually the thing that won't work. Sometimes getting programs to work can be a pain, but if you get the newest version, all the dependencies should be there. I'm downloading Fedora Core 4 at home right now, and will be installing it later today or tomorrow. You can download ISOs (CD images) and burn them for free. If you just browse the web, do some email, work with some images... basic simple user stuff, Linux will do what you need... for free. |
Why eliminate Apple? The G5 is part of the best computers on the market, speed, sound, graphics and more. They hold their value, easily upgradable without much concern to numbers, better everything, and it has amazing games as well. Not to mention the virus/spyware issue is bascially gone. No market for it, since most people use windows coded browsers |
g5 is a decent machine but you will lose access to 60%+ of the game market. many if not most games are not poreted to it. for the non technical user linux can be a nightmare. it is not plug and play freindly <regardless of what they say> and some unix skills are needed. it's a fair OS on the server side but is no where close for the non skilled home market. i have a few older copies i will give you if you want to play with them. |
| With Cedega and Wine you can run some games and windows applications on linux. Check out the Transgaming forum and WineHQ. |
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Where is the linux version of <insert anything new>? Yeah, that's what I thought. Original Poster: There is a corporate version of XP that does not require activiation. Since you have a legit licensed copy of XP, I don't see a big problem with you using it. That would save a lot of aggirvaton. BTW, why are you reinstalling? I have done it....uh once I think, when I switched MBs. Even then it is not required, and I didn't need to reinstall. |
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I've got a better idea. Get a Mac. Seriously. If you want a viable, easy-to-use desktop OS that isn't made by Microsoft, it's pretty much your only other option. Don't let anybody lie to you and tell you Linux is easy to use. No distribution I have ever seen is easy to use to the point where my father could use it, which is my standard. |
Definitely true, it is a complex system. Besides, if you really feel you want the unix flavor later, OSX is chock full of it! Darwin baby 
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Linux=Liberalware Install XP for the X time???? What the hell do you do to your computer that causes that? I've never had to reinstall XP on one of my XP machines. I have to do it on one machine of mine but that cause of some shitty LINUX based software I installed on it that jacked up my HD. So I know what I did wrong. So umm yeah, just install XP, make sure you have the correct drivers for your hardware, and don't install gayware on your machine and your computer will run great. *flame suit on* |
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Only time I have ever had to wipe my hard drives and reinstall the operating system was when I loaded Red Hat into a secondary partition for use as a dual boot machine. Red Hat's loader fucked everything up and prevented Windows XP from loading, note: it wasn't Windows that messed it up, but the loader that came with Red Hat. Linux is fine and dandy, I know how to use it, but if you plan on going with Linux I hope you don't plan on doing stuff like playing video games. Also, be advised to get DVD movies to work on a lot of systems requires a lot of downloading and playing around with the system, as opposed to Windows which usually requires nothing more than just putting a DVD in the drive to make it work. ETA: When you are in Windows, use a limited account, don't log in as an administrator for day to day stuff. If you need to run something as an administrator for whatever reason, right click and select "Run as" and you can choose to run that program as an administrator. |
Sure it wasn't u that fucked it up, clicked to fast and decided to screw ur boot record? |
Pretty sure, did some research on it. It's a known issue with Red Hat. |
Hmm, that's odd. I retract my suggestion then. Never heard of RedHat doing that. Was it with the GUI installer or by command line? |
GUI. This happened a few years ago so it might have been fixed. I guess the issue was that Red Hat changes the size of the partition and does something with the last few sectors of the drive, and it confuses Windows since the record has been changed. At least that's what I gathered from the issue. |
Mepis.org I stayed away from Linux for about a 1.5 years, I used to play around with Mandrake but its DAMN RPM packaging system kept breaking it. I wanted to run Linux again, so I tried Knoppix but it just won't run on my home machine. I came across Mepis, it also comes on a bootable CD like Knoppix, and you can install from it also. I am extremely impressed with it, it blows Mandrake away and detected every device I have plugged in. Mepis is based on the Debian system, it uses APT packaging system which puts RPM's to shame. There are several really nice distro's like Mepis, Knoppix and Ubuntu come to mind. |
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Knoppix you can boot and run from the cd to decide if you want to go to linux without risking the data on your HD being lost in a format/repartition knoppix.com/ |
I know what you mean. A harddrive firmware update is the reason I had to reinstall XP last time. Microsoft intentionally lost the activation when the model # on the drive changed. Microsoft refused to give us permission to use the software we had already bought, so we had to buy another retail copy of XP. Even the owner of the company, that owns some Microsoft and a lot of Dell stock, is ready to get rid of XP for good. Microsoft has left us stranded too many times.z |
| If you're going to install a version of Linux, I've found Fedora Core is a good easy to use distro, with lots of built in goodies. I'm downloading Core 4 at home right now. Core 3 was easy to install, had lots of support for hardware, recognized many devices I plugged into the machine (USB). |
It is not necessary to reinstall because you have changed motherboards. Here's how. |
As mentioned in another post Knoppix is great since you don't have to commit to linux, just boot from the live CD and see what you think. I've been testing out CentOS 4, a free download of RedHat Enterprise Linux, on a box at work and I've been pretty happy with it so far. Dual booting is another way to go, I've got my laptop set up to run that way. CD |
NOW YOU TELL ME! |
That usually isn't true. That only works if Microsoft hasn't deactivated your copy of XP.z |
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LOL hold there value You must not have heard about the INTEL inside coming soon LOL
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DEBIAN is pretty easy.
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How do you figure? Isn't capitalism based on competition, and doesn't competion force companies to improve their product in order to survive? M$ lately has been doing alot to improve it's products, and a great deal has to do with people switching to Macs, linux/ BSD servers, and browsers other than IE. |
fdisk c: /mbr Red Hat's current versions are very dual-boot friendly, but when you installed it, it most likely over-wrote the mbr. Winodws won't boot without it, but if you start with the windows CD or recovery CD, and repair the mbr like I mentioned above, it will work fine. Jim |
If Linux is "Liberalware" because it is free, then IE (which Microsoft provides for free), is "Liberalware" too. Oh, wait, Microsoft only made IE free so that they could drive Netscape out of the business (which was mostly successful). I guess that's a good capitalist objective. Remember, people working together to make things better is only a Good Thing (tm) if those people are working for some company making an enormous profit. Jim |
Okay. Then install Debian on my laptop. I want my wireless card working, my video card working properly with the hardware switch for the external monitor and S-Video hookup working properly as well. Good luck. And, you can't compile anything. because 99% of people don't know how to type in ./configure, make , make install. Editing config files is also a nono. Everything has to be configured automatically or through the GUI. Get my point? |
www.linuxiso.org/ multiple versions and distributions |
A lot of viruses, spyware, adware, trojans. . . .
Most of them. There are Linux equivalents for many apps, and some Windows apps can be run in emulators.
You can play Frozen Bubbles and Netris.
May I offer a simple suggestion? Try Knoppix. www.knoppix.net It's a Linux distribution that runs from CD, so you don't need to screw around with repartitioning, and you can always go back to using WinXP whenever you need to, just by rebooting without the Knoppix CD in the drive. Now, Max_Mike is going to come on and start ranting that I support terrorism and that only losers play with Linux. The reality is, you don't have to give up Microsoft WinXP. You can use it when you need to use a particular application. By using Knoppix when you DON'T absolutely have to use Windows, you can save your computer from a lot of internet garbage. If you play online games (e.g., the shootemups with teams of people running around blasting each other) you're hosed, since those will only run under Windows and you have to be connected to the net at the same time. But if you play single-player games while disconnected from the network, and boot Knoppix while connected for browsing and looking at porn and hitting "lyrics" sites that invariably try to cram trojans onto your hard drive, then you'll be insulated from all that. It all really depends on what your usage patterns are. Personally, I only use the net for WWW stuff, no gaming or P2P downloading, so I can do everything under Linux (using Knoppix). When I have to edit some documents with MS-Word, I unplug from the network, take the Knoppix CD out of the drive, reboot, and I can do whatever I need to in Windoze. |