Microsoft: Legit Windows or no updates

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isoFlux Wrote:http://mc1soft.com/linux/

that guy has a lot of good stuff on the website.

however......

I knew you\'d love it

Well, I spent all the weekend installing and set-up (ing?) a couple linux distros on my 2nd HD: Mandrake and Ubuntu.

I had problems installing Ubuntu because of GRUB, it seems to be a bug to SATA/ATA configs like mine. So after 3 reinstalls and a bit of reading I just left Ubuntu for the next April\'s release, where I hope this will be fixed.

So I installed Mandrake. After a couple reinstalls (I have an ATI card, so you can figure ) I managed to make it work properly. Sadly my old adsl modem isn\'t supported and I had to download an obscure non official driver that I had to compile (heh, good welcome for a first time user ) but failed to make it work (anyway, no surprise there, almost 90% of people trying to use those drivers failed, it\'s a crappy modem anyway).

So, well, I\'m in the process of changing my actual adsl connection for a new company that offers a wifi adsl router for free (crappy too, but linux friendly). That means that I won\'t touch Mandrake again until I have that stuff.

Once I have my net connection running on Mandrake I\'ll need to install drivers for my Wacom tablet, 2nd ethernet built-in card, built-in sound card, and video card. It promises to be anything but a boring process Fortunatelly a guy with my same mobo posted an excellent step by step guide to have most of that stuff running.

I can\'t say almost anything about linux by now. The most obvious is that the lack of driver support in some stuff and compatibility with new hardware setups can make the (usually) quite easy install a pain when something fails. So, when this happens, having to mess with the command line thing for starters can be quite overwhelming for most new people.

The other surprising thing was the long wait for an application to start, as you and the guy at that url already said. Sure the application can be restarted really easily if it hangs, but that initial wait gives you a bad impression for a new user. It really looks like linux is really slower than windows (remember that I\'m talking about perception from a new user, that doesn\'t mean that it\'s *really* slower).

Quote:a switch to linux isn\'t like going from Win95 to WinXP

True, it\'s not like that.
It\'s more like a switch from a Mac to a WinPC.

The feelings (and level of frustration) I\'m having in my first steps in linux are being really similar to the times where I switched from Mac (being that the platform where I grow up in computers, that means for years) to a Windows98 PC.

Anyway, as I said, I like to go forward, and linux is a nice challenge. High enough from a window\'s user perspective but possible, with a bit of time and effort. I\'ve always been quite curious about the linux world, I think it\'s a really interesting project, and sooner or later I wanted to try it, at least. I don\'t know if I\'ll use linux at 80%, 50%, 30% or if I\'ll just give up, but I think it\'s worth a try.


And about macs. Most of us already know each other, our likes and dislikes, at least that\'s what I think, and my initial comment, the Pandora\'s box , was a \"reference joke\". I\'m sure that TJ catch it, for example, and probably many others. You like macs? Use them. You don\'t? Don\'t use them. But that doesn\'t mean that you can\'t joke about it, IMHO