Building new, Advice please

[Matt]

funny its been 5 years and the only thing anyone can say is ' it comes
with an office program"

I was also able to tell you to make the live-eval CD and see for
yourself.

I can see why you aren't convinced. A lot has happened that isn't
reflected in Linux market share in the US. I'm not going to work real
hard to convince you. You would be very wrong to think things haven't
changed in five years. You have to look around for yourself and see
what is happening to the MS monopoly. I can afford a few more
semi-random hints about how things have changed. I only mention Linux's
superior design, its portability, its security, etc.---those things
haven't changed. Sorry I can't provide links to support every claim,
but you will be able to figure it out if you want to.

From September '03 to September '04, by one measure, MS browser share
went from 87% to 76%. In that time more than 10% of browser share went
to Mozilla, which is available for Linux.
http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp

IBM, HP, AMD, and a bunch of other very big outfits have joined to form
Open Software Development Labs and are paying Linus and others to build
Linux. By the way, Linus is a millionaire.
http://www.osdl.org/about_osdl/members/
http://www.osdl.org/

Small businesses and governments and schools in Asia and South America
are clearly moving to Linux. That will provide demand for more Linux
device drivers and improve hardware compatibility for Linux. In a while
, few hardware makers will survive without offering drivers for Linux.

Some big fraction like 2/3 or so of the world's fastest supercomputers
run Linux.

IBM and some other big orgs (Oracle?) are switching over to Linux for
internal use.

Nobody who knows about Linux believes that the situation is the same as
it was five years or two years ago.

You can find a lot of news articles in comp.os.linux.advocacy if you
really want to know about the trend toward Linux.

 

[BP]

So something like 2/3 (and growing) of the world's supercomputer users
are Linux enthusiasts, not computer users?

I was just thinking: how many super computer users are there? What would be
the ratio of super computer users to E-machine users? To I-Macs? Do super
computer users also post to help sites asking "how do I remove the password
box at startup?"? Audrey Farber? How do I make my voice do this?

 

[Ruel Smith]

funny its been 5 years and the only thing anyone can say is ' it comes
with an office program" do you have any idea how many times i have heard
that? You guys touting the same crap still. Have fun tinkering around, but

They usually ship with OpenOffice.org, which you can install on Windows
too and try out. Unless you have a need for some obscure feature that
Office has, OpenOffice will more than suffice. I use it both in Windows
and Linux, and actually prefer it over the over-featured Office 2003.
www.openoffice.org

remember there are some people that actually like to produce with their
machine, and then there are the gamers. how do those popular games play on
linux suse or whatever? do they have a something that works like -looks
like -behaves like DirectX? Granted that is are more sw producers adding

Yes, it's called OpenGL. Many games you use in Windows supports GL
instead of DirectX, though DirectX support is pretty wide.

Linux, admittedly, is not a gamer's OS for the PC. However, the PS/2
runs on a modified version of embedded Linux, so it is very conceivable
that Linux could be a great gaming OS. There are a few commercial games
available for Linux, and even some very recent ones. Other games can run
under Wine, too. However, if you want to do any commercial gaming, get a
PS/2.

support, but far from mainstream as its ever been. I stopped tinkering and
don't have anywhere near the desire to pull those case sides off or play
around with testing, writing kernels, trying to find a graphics program that
saves in a required way for production work. Has ICC color matching panatone
color charts etc. If those OS's were going to ever be mainstream they woud
have been so by now. Wish they were, but they are not, too late. AMD LINUX
SUSE DISTROS belong together. they are the 'Tinkerers dream'.

To each his own. I build my computers, but I'm not much of a tinkerer. I
don enjoy the stability and security of Linux, buy I also use Windows.
There's nothing wrong with choice.