what can't I do in Linux ?

[Vad3r]

I thought posting this question would be a shorter list than what I can do 🙂 . I've been thinking about using Linux more and more lately. I've read reviews and stuff on different distro's. I like what I read about Mandrake, and wondering what I will not be able to do that I currently do.
I have a dual boot right now of WinXP and Win98 (xp = infinite loop error / win98 is fine ). I've done my research on this problem, only thing I have not tried is changing from ACPI to Standard to fix this. If this is the case, will I have (don't even know if Linux has this problem) the dreaded infinite loop error in Linux. Can't be hardware, Everything works fine in Win98.
I'm not one for trying out alot of games, I'm more a "id software" gamer 🙂 so the Linux support is there.
Anyhow, a list of what I do:
WinXP:
1 - Net surf
2 - MP3's (I love my mp3 3d plug-ins - crashes XP) (I use WinAmp- do plug-ins have to be made for Linux separate or will they work)
3 - email (Outlook Express - will be glad to see this gone)
4 - CD Burning (Nero) is there a Linux version of Nero or something as good ? (with burnproof)
5 - Newsgroups (I use NewsBin Pro)
6 - Wife does on-line banking (makes me cringe her doing this on a microsoft product, can it be done in linux) (she loves this, pays bills, transfers money to different accounts and stuff)
7 - Microsoft Excel - My wife emails herself excel files to do work at home, is there a linux program that can read excel files, edit them, and send herself back to her work and Excel will still be able to read the edited files she has done ?.
8 - Once up and runnig, is Mandrake a pretty much a "point and click" O/S
9 - Video codec's, what works, what doesn't- WMV, RAM, Divx, AVI, MPEG,......

1-3 I guess I don't really need an answer, from what I've read, they just say, Linux my not be ready for all (yet). But maybe it's ready for me.

Win98:
Quake3
Serious Sam 2
Jedi Knight2

Hardware:
P4 1.6
512 DDR
P4S333
Leadtek TI4400
SB Live value
Plextor CDRW 12/10/24 (burnproof)
40 gig drive, (this could get thin with 3 O/S's)

I do plan on getting a Video Capture card and transfering home videos to cd, any software in linux for this.

I do want to try Linux, but if I can't do most of what I do now, then I prolly won't be using it enough to learn very much.

 

[mcveigh]

net--Konqueror, mozilla (my fav), opera, and more (even IE using codeweavers plugin)
mp3's--xmms identical to winamp
email--evolution(my fav), pine, kmail
newsgroups--pan (my fav)
online banking--wed access maybe through browser or quicken via codeweavers plugin (just announced today)
press release on that
excel--openoffice, many more
video--xine does most including dvd's, divx has codecs for linux and even a player

good luck!

 

[Nothinman]

7 - Microsoft Excel - My wife emails herself excel files to do work at home, is there a linux program that can read excel files, edit them, and send herself back to her work and Excel will still be able to read the edited files she has done ?.

Depends on how complicated the docs are, OpenOffice and Gnumeric can work on Excel files but have some issues with formatting.

8 - Once up and runnig, is Mandrake a pretty much a "point and click" O/S

You can't expect to use Linux and never touch a command line, it won't happen. But in the long run it's a good thing because once you get the hang of the CLI it's much faster and easier to do a lot of things.

I do want to try Linux, but if I can't do most of what I do now, then I prolly won't be using it enough to learn very much.

Most of what you want will work without issue, it's up to you to decide if it's worth learning how to setup the ones that won't work easily.

40 gig drive, (this could get thin with 3 O/S's)

Ditch Win98, it's a POS and needs to die. Get XP running and dualboot that and Linux.

 

[EmperorRob]

I find Gnumeric very good for Excel docs. Better than KSpread and I never liked OpenOffice.

Also the CD burning support is much better in Linux than Windows. I use this program:
http://cdbakeoven.sourceforge.net/

Kmail or Mozilla are good mail-reader programs. I also like Mozilla for the web. Konqueror, too.

There are 2 things I haven't been able to do in Linux: One is play .mov quicktime files and the other is access some .asp Windows IE specific intranet sites at work.

 

[AkumaBao]

I can't think of really anything Linux can't do. I can think of things Windows can't do that Linux can though. If you want to 'learn' Linux, you're going to have to actually do something more than point-and-click. Read this! I know Windows makes it easy, but sometime you're going to want to use something a bit more serious that takes some time to learn.