Page 2 - Where Open Source Meets Big Bucks

Stable, now there's a good word. Heres' me going to reinstall Win2000 tonight simply because IIS has stopped and the right click in Windows Explorer has stopped working also. Loads of things go wrong with it. Question is... in another post.... the Linux forum area.

Ive heard a few nightmare stories about PHP and Windows 2000


Im hoping to get onto Linux very soon



Mark

i must be missing something.

Y does everyone always go on about how they will switch windows to linux. Ok, windows might not be that good? But how can u use linux for personal use? it might be good as a server, but otherwise, it must be the most useless thing ever. Surely windows kicks linux's *** in things like word processing, gaming and stuff.
And even in programming. Linux does not offer as many useful things as windows does that make it easier. The best editor i can think of it emacs or something, which is about at the level of qbasic, 10 years ago.

Please correct me if im wrong

LINUX has a better enviroment for developing native C++ programs


I would recommend anyone who develops on WIN to get a second BOX for LINUX, which is what im doing, don't install LINUX on a WIN BOX as i did sometime ago, then using LILO to boot into *NIX "it trashed my hard drive"


LINUX is just a progession from developing on WIN
Im slowly being converted



Mark
hdwt.com

dsm56:

U're wrong.


goto shop
grab "SuSE 7.3 Professional"
check_it_out


One of the best (freebsd, don't even say it, I know).


What is Windoze 2000, then? An anti-productivity tool?


Nope. While Windoze is still slightly superior with games, almost everything else is available in Linux, too.


Linux (I'm referring to the SuSE distro here) offers much more programming tools than Windoze (which offers none at all). There are also many good IDEs for Linux that can compete with any Windoze program.


There are many others. I use vi in the console and kwrite in X.


O yeah? You've used both QBasic and Emacs? Do so and day this again without blushing.

Marky_Mark:

You probably did something wrong.

No i didn't do anything wrong


I had it up and running on the two OS's for about a week booting into LINUX using LILO but the two different file systems didn't want to work together on that particular system, i think it was because i had a network card installed and it caused a conflict between the two file systems, but that has to come down to OS DEV nothing to do with the install


Mark

Hehe, sure. What about Photoshop, Illustrator, 3D Studio (no, the GIMP simply doesn't cut it for specific area's of professional use), DSP software like Cubase, Nuendo...And really, are you using Vi for large-scale projects within your development team? Not to mention KWrite. None of them even have project managing capabilities. Now while KDevelop is pretty cool and will definately be better in the future, it doesn't beat M$ VC++ imho. As much as I wish I didn't have to mention these things, I have to say that after using Linux for a while, it's still an OS from hackers for hackers. Nothing wrong with that, but it's surely not going to break through to the desktop that way, not all computer users are hackers. While the KDE group accomplishes great progressions, it's a long way from being able to replace the Windows desktop UI for Windows users nowadays. And Linux stable? As a server environment: definately. But I don't know about you, but surely X has crashed quite a few times on me, and I do not enjoy that when I'm coding... You gotta use the right tools for the right job, and for a server I'd choose a *NIX any day. For most desktop purposes I prefer using Win2k for now (although I use Linux occasionally, just because it's fun). It might change, who knows.

good post, it was what i was trying to say

Well, I installed Linux (Mandrake 8.1) but ran into problems with it wanting me to set up my network settings, I don't have any. I didn't want Mandrake to connect to the internet as I have a Windows only wireless USB modem, but no it wanted to set up my modem even if it couldn't (and I mean REALLY wanted to, 6 times!). Also the installer tried to install the components again and again. Wierd? So I had a play around with the Gnome interface, it's all very nice and usable. What I was impressed with is how easy it was to get the graphics card up and running (no rebooting, actually configured during install unlike Win2000).

In the end though I had to uninstall it and reload windows 2000 on as it's the only one that guarantee compatabaility with the equipment I have. The immediate thing to strike me is the number of reboots needed to install everything, and the fact that the installation process is really ugly compared to Mandrake. The resolutiuon, colours etc are all basic stuff whereas mandrake had me running from almost the start with a good display setting.

Also, the problem I had with IIS was still occuring with the reload, but I found a duplicate (one of many) service running that looked suspicious. Ending one of the processes made windows popup all over the place (ones that I had asked for earlier but recieved nothing). In the end, I don't think windows is great, but it's what I know.

The problem I have found (not just incomputing) is that everything is moving too fast, with nobody being given any time to catch up. Therefore people expect to take something new on and already be up to scratch, it doesn't happen like that. Earlier this year I was still finding new things in Win98 even though I grew up with 3.1 and 95. Don't expect to know Linux because you know Windows, just as you shouldn't expect to know Windows 2000 because you were very good with Windows 98. Also, just because you don't know how to use something shouldn't make you think it's not worth knowing, or is somehow inferior. Linux proves this point exactly, it's taken people 5 years to get to where they are with Windows while Linux for most has had 1 year if any near the front of the desktop market. Give Linux 4 years for people to get to know it, and then it should (but may) be a contender.

True, I do believe Linux will eventually be good for desktop usage. The question arising is, what would convince end users to actually switch from Windows to Linux? Because Linux is free/open? Do individual (non-corporate) end users really care about it?

A question that has been with me for a while, that one. I don't know what will get people using Linux. Just about every PC comes with Windows, I've said that before, and Windows does what most people want. Fairly competently too! So why would people want Linux?

Any answers.

all the software is free!


Y'all should buy yerselves a mac .. stick a second drive in it with linux on it .. best combo around, mac for graphics and concept stuff .. linux for development.

who's got time to play games anyway?

What I meant was the home sector, which is clearly indicated in "word processing, gaming and stuff". Btw, GIMP can replace Photoshop in most cases, even when ppl don't (want to) believe it. Unfortunately many Photoshop users virtually expect to see their Photoshop GUI when starting GIMP and are disappointed if it looks differently (i. e. has different menus, different names for functions etc., which sometimes leads Photoshop users to the wrong belief that their favourite functions aren't available). I can't name a replacement for Illustrator just at the moment, but 3D studio certainly can be replaced by Maya, which is available for Linux. While indeed neither is Open Source, this shouldn't even be expected, since both programs are targeted at the middle-high end users who are willing to pay.


Of course not, although some ppl may even do so. I just wanted to give a counter-example to dsm56's claim that Emacs is the best editor available for Linux.


Really? I think it does, simply because KDevelop allows a much better integration of third-party tools in the GUI than VC++6. I'm especially referring to the docs here.


Such things are usually due to misconfigurations or bugs in X or its drivers or the software you've been using. In the second and third case, a bug report is usually a good way to make sure the bug is removed. And Windoze 2k crashes (or hangs or freezes) far more than could be accepted for an OS that is intended for server use.


I had once a Windoze 98/Linux configuration on my PC. Then, I installed Win 2k and removed 98. Then I discovered that my favourite games (about one half of them being DOS programs) didn't run on Win 2k, so I tried to install Win 98 again. It didn't like my hardware and in 9 out of 10 attempts the setup program crashed even b4 the first reboot. Now, I've got it installed, but it's still too unstable even for games and doesn't like my sound card at all. I spent more time looking at my BIOS splash screen than with actual Windoze during that time.


Its stability and price. You can get the SuSE distro for ca. 60 bucks complete with development tools, office tools, docs and source code (for those interested). The same stuff on a Windoze system costs up to 60 times more (I'm not talking about freeware or shareware tools here).


Here's an example: some time ago it was announced that the defrag program for Win 2k would be provided by a company that has a CEO (or something) who's a Scientology member. Many users in Germany were quite anxious about whether the tool would spy on them and send data to Scientology. Of course, this is stupid, but since the code wasn't open, no one could make sure. This would never have happened with Linux.


Really? I often hear lusers complain about how they don't like it. That it crashes so often and that the [M$ Office] programs get things wrong etc. So Windoze is not the perfect OS and not even close to that. Although the contrary might be assumed from its price.


I think that the questions here can't be solved generally. Certainly there are cases where one of the OSs is definitely better than the other, but these are rare.

Free in the GPL sense does not mean free of charge. It means that the code is available. Non-corporate end users tend to not care about that.