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  1. a day late a doller short.so who here as linux and how easy is it to use.I have never used it but it has to be better then xp right?
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    Let the windows/linux battle begin! I have to say that linux is an excellent operating system. I'm currently in charge of a linux server at work. Although linux is a very good operating system it does have its weaknesses. Linux can be a real pain when trying to install drivers or software. If you are unfamiliar with unix then don't expect everything to work immedately after installation. It takes a lot of time to figure out (at least it did for me.) Linux is not for the casual computer user (yet.) Linux does a great job as a web/ftp/telnet server but has very little usable software available [by usable I mean widely accepted, user friendly general applications.] I use win2k at home for my video capturing and I can do everything that I want to on it. It's stable and the majority of good video capturing software is written for windows. For video editing/capturing/authoring I think win2k is better.

    jexster:
    I have never used [linux] but it has to be better then xp right?
    Both have strengths and weaknesses. I would stick with windows if I were you. In my opnion, I think windows 2000 is better than xp.
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  3. Well what about lindows im sure somebody has a beta by now of it.I have always been interested in linux but i dont know any one who uses this os.And trust me with the way windows xp runs dos almost has a chance of betting it.
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  4. Originally Posted by jexster
    Well what about lindows
    In my opinion, I think Lindows is somewhat overhyped, and the current state of wine somewhat underated. Linux has been getting enough into the spotlight latley that more and more companies are finding it to their advantage to help along in the wine project to get their own aplications running. I switched over to Linux about three months ago, and the only programs I'm still looking to find a Linux equivelant for are VirtualDub, winRAR and a third xnews simply because I like it's interface better than the equally full featured pan. Every one of them ran almost perfectly with wine. Though in a way I kind of consider that a bad thing, I would have written a frontend for the linux rar within a week of installing Linux if not for wine, but three months later I'm still using windows software. Still, I think Linux is all about options, and that's one of them, so.

    I have to second LanceSteel's warnings though. It's a very different experience going from windows to any kind of unix, no matter how much of the underlying system is wraped up. Installing programs really is my main reason I don't give 100% recomendation of linux for normal desktop use yet. Quite often you'll have to compile programs yourself, which I don't really mind, but I know a lot of people don't much like the idea of. Typing
    ./configure
    make
    make install
    is about all you'll have to do to compile and install a program most of the time. And the majority come in rpm files which can be set up to install with a mouseclick, like a windows executable.

    I think Linux is close, really really close but still not quite there for the average persons desktop. But if you're not average and willing to put some extra work in there to get a quality operating system 100% microsoft free. It's kind of neat to see weblogs and see amid the million and one listings of hits using windows with internet explorer your own hit as a fight to keep a single corperation controlling computing.

    If you want to give Linux a shot, there's the upcoming Lindows you mentioned. I'd 'hope' they work as hard on making the install easy as they are on modifying wine. But right now mandrake http://www.mandrake.com and SuSE www.suse.com are extreamly easy to install and set up. If you're using any recent windows except 2000 or XP both distros should give you easy options to partition the drive so you can have both windows and linux on the same drive, and if you don't like Linux you can easily then remove it and go right back to windows. Mandrake is probaly the best bet, as you can download it for free (though if you like it, buying future releases is a great way to keep them in buisness!), where SuSE costs around $60 I believe for it's distro. Both though offer very easy intalls, in fact I think mandrakes is actually easier than any windows install I've ever done.

    If you're running windowsXP though, you're in kind of a bad position. I don't know if there's any way to resize ntfs partitions for free without wiping all the data on it.[/url]

    All in all I think it's worth a shot, if you're willing to put some work into figuring out a new operating system. And really no matter how experienced in compuing one is moving from one to another is usually a very frustrating experience at many points. Luckily how pretty the liquid them for kde http://www.kde-look.org/content/show.php?content=48 is kept me going when I first was moving over.
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  5. Joe9999, you have been very informative on this subject i would like to say thank you to you and Lancesteel from the links you have given me i now have a broder range on what i want to do and your right about the ntfs its going to be fun there.If all else i think i will drop another hdd in my system so i can run linux.
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