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Scary Linux?

I

imported_Phil

Diamond Member
Hey all,

I dabbled with Manrake 7.2 a while ago, had my share of problems (soundcard & modem, namely), and have just seen KDE3.0.3 and Mandrake 9 available. Still considering switching from XP to Mandrake, not sure if I should- don't play games, just Internet, wordprocessing, music, etc.

Can anyone give me some good (non-biased please!) reasons to a) switch and b) stay? To be honest, Linux kinda scares me, I know all versions of Windows inside-out but this whole Linux thing is kinda daunting... help! 🙂

Cheers,
Dopefiend
 
Not a bad idea really, just need a bigger hard disk as mine are both full of .vob files (ahem) and MP3s. Oh, and pr0n, too....

Do you think it's better or worse than WinXP? That's a bit of a difficult question to ask really, but would someone who's running both like to give me an idea of what they find better, and why?

Cheers,

Dopefiend
 
I'm using Mandrake 9.0 at the moment. What I prefer in linux is, for example the GUI, you can make EVERYTHING to look the way you want.
 
Common between Both
KDE3 and winXP both eat a lot of ram
OpenOffice (my favorite Office Suite)
Staroffice


Windows ...
Since you know it well, Its gonna be Much easier to use for now
Microsoft Office
Compared to Win9X very stable
Games work and are easily installed
Installing stuff means double clicking an EXE and following the menus wherever thoy take you (or unzipping and then double clicking)

Overall, Windows is more of a click and Go type situation .. easy to use, and things generally work well

Linux + KDE3...
The appearance is Much better than that of any version of windows
Koffice
Multiple desktops .. no more taskbar clutter
Extremely Stable .... Ive been running linux for several Years, and KDE has crashed several times, However The entire Kernal Never has
some games work, others require lots of work to get working (WineX ... etc)
Many things install with the click of a button (thanks to RPMs) However, things all have dependencies .. and you end up having to go searching for libraries sometimes to install things. Then theres the preferred way amongst many of the More expierienced Unix peoples, Untar unzip, configure, make, make install ... blah ...

Linux is more of a , you need to read the README file first so that way you can install it and use it. Then it will take longer to learn. If you dont mind actually reading the documentation that comes with things, Linux can be very very usefull to you. As an added bonus, Its completely Legal to download the ISOs on the net.


I personally run Both win2k and Redhat 7.2 on my boxes ... and they both have their uses
Hope this was helpfull
 
Don't do a dual-boot. Just a waste of time. Kill XP, and get some Win emu's if you really need them. If you do wordprocessing, you'll like the StarOffice, and Koffice-suite. As for mp3s. It will be heaven for you. 😀
 
Thanks all of you!

Last post- yeah it's a good idea, something I was thinking about last night while exploring my bag o' herbs ;-) (living up to my name? Absolutely), Wine or Win4Lin looks pretty good. However, my poxy internal modem (Diamond PCI SupraExpress 2560) isn't supported because it's a Winmodem. Sigh. Gonna need a new external modem now, unless anyone knows that it works?

Cheers,

Dopefiend
 
If you want a cheaper supported modem grab a PCI Winmodem based on the Lucent/Agere chipset. They're supported and work beautifully under Linux (though installing the drivers might not be an easy task for a newbie. I'm threw with this though. I've got a T3 at college and for the summer I JUST convinced my parents to go to DSL last week 🙂).

As for your original question, if all you do is web surfing, email, and word processing, then Linux would work great. Just use OpenOffice and whatever web/email clients you want (there are too many to list) and go to town. Only one warning: the printing system in Linux is nothing compared to that of Windows. Linux, and Unix in general, is very sadly WAAYY behind in this respect. Granted, last time I used Mandrake (I think it was 7.0) it seemed to do a good job of configuring my printer, but the system would lock up if I turned the printer off (it was an HP Deskjet w/ USB connection. the problem is VERY likely fixed by now).
 
Thanks for that- I've just found an external 56k modem for £24 (over here, that's waaay cheap), do ALL external serial modems work? With or without drivers?

Do you know of any specific PCI modems that you can get over here in the UK with the Lucent chipset? I really wanna get this working and I might even consider LFS to teach me as I go... scary stuff for a Windows-a-holic for the last 6-7 years! 🙂

Cheers,

Dopefiend
 
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