dabooty writes “International Business Machines (IBM) may soon start packing its PCs with the open-source Linux operating system (OS). IBM’s Linux initiative has so far been limited to its servers and workstations.
Read it at Financial Express.” Yes, we all know Linux isn’t an OS – but a better comment would be ‘Is this Yet Another Linux Distribution or the sound of the the first stone of the Microsoft empire crumbling?’
IBM Mulls Linux For Its PCs
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This about IBM preloading Linux in India, where Linux is gaining ion popularity. Still, this might lead to IBM selling Linux PCs in the US and Europe.
‘Is this Yet Another Linux Distribution or the sound of the the first stone of the Microsoft empire crumbling?’
The Microsoft Empire has been crumbling ever since it was created. Apple, BeOS, *BSD, Linux, QNX – all these and others have made a dent and torn out a few stones.
This is like a car on a dark road, going 180mph, hitting random small animals in it’s path. The car will eventually have enough dents to make it stop. Or it might slide off the road somewhere. Either way, the car will stop eventually.
Personally, I’m still waiting for Zeta
ahhhh.. optimism.
that’s all.
IBM should install Linux on all of its PCs and include some sort of Windows Compatibility software like Win4Lin and Wine (perhaps they should buy Win4Lin and hopefully make it OSS) so users that were hoping wanting Windows would be surprised by an easy to use and Windows Compatible Desktop. If they still weren’t satisfied, then they could boot to Windows on a different partition (although a much smaller partition, most likely).
didn’t IBM discontinue selling desktops?
Or was that a rumour….
‘Is this Yet Another Linux Distribution or the sound of the the first stone of the Microsoft empire crumbling?’
IBM isn’t likely to pre-load PC’s with with Linux unless there’s already an existing demand for it. They aren’t the kind of company that’s going to try something like that on a whim just to see if it flies.
When IBM starts shipping pre-loaded Linux PC’s, you know a few stones have already crumbled.
You still need a Windows license to run Win4lin, so that won’t be a solution.
Something like Xandros, Crossover integration, seems like a good idea. I really think they need to include OpenGL support though.
You still need a Windows license to run Win4lin, so that won’t be a solution.
Something like Xandros, Crossover integration, seems like a good idea. I really think they need to include OpenGL support though.
I think you mean they need to include DirectX (or Direct3D) support. OpenGL is an open standard present at most modern operating systems these days and Linux support it through the Mesa package. Games like the awesome Tux Racer uses it a lot.
Happy New Year for everyone,
DeadFish Man
>>didn’t IBM discontinue selling desktops?
Or was that a rumour….<<
No. people just couldn’t read. IBM stopped selling computers in stores. They still sell lots of desktops through their website. IBM is still one of the top companies in sales of Desktops.
Sorry, I meant OpenGL support in Wine. This also enable the Direct3D support in Wine.
Yes, we all know Linux isn’t an OS
Oh, it isn’t?
I know i would buy a notebook if i could find one that came preloaded with Linux on it. I just hope IBM extends the preloaded linux to the US.
Linux can do a lot of things these days.. but because OEM windows is so cheap *very* few ppl will balk at around 80$ (sorry dunno how much it is) to get the best OS when they are shelling out $1,000 for a computer. Linux still has some hurdles to overcome and besides if your going to run linux… youd prob still just get windows as well incase u need it. This is not the start of the “changeover”.. i think .net and mono shows what will happen. Linux will become a free version of windows that will for a while yet be chasing MS windows. .net on linux is a great idea and is the way for linux to finally start to break into the desktop.
Yes, we all know Linux isn’t an OS
Oh, it isn’t?
Strictly speaking, no. Linux itself is not an operating system, it’s just the kernel. GNU/Linux is the operating system. It combines the kernel with all the other things necessary to have a funtioning operating system.
But, GNU/Linux sounds stupid so we all just say Linux to refer to the whole package.
I don’t like notebooks much because with every one of the two I’ve had, the battery started sucking. Before too long, I was able to almost boot the machine before the battery died.
However, I seem to recall adds in Linux Magazine or Linux Journal promoting pre-loaded Linux laptops.
I don’t know what happened, part of my post disappeared. It should have read:
I don’t like notebooks much because with every one of the two I’ve had, the battery started sucking. Before too long, I was able to almost boot the machine before the battery died. Therefore, I haven’t been following laptop availablility much lately.
However, I seem to recall adds in Linux Magazine or Linux Journal promoting pre-loaded Linux laptops. You may want to look there if you are looking for a Linux laptop.
You still need a Windows license to run Win4lin, so that won’t be a solution.
Excellent point.
Something like Xandros, Crossover integration, seems like a good idea. I really think they need to include OpenGL support though.
Don’t get me wrong, I really like Xandros. I think they did an excellent job. However, I can’t say that I thought much of CrossOver Office or CrossOver Plugin. It works most of the time, but it was a little bit flakey I thought. Especially with QuickTime. I also think it is the most difficult aspect of Xandros to configure and use for non-technical users. CrossOver is great in a pinch, but I personally wouldn’t use it full time in a production environment; or one that I had to support.
I work at a really large company, and most of our vendors either have Linux ports of their software or they are working on them.
And, yes, IBM is still really big on desktops, it is just that they do not sell them in stores. My work desktop, two of my workstations, and this laptop I am typing on were all purchased recently from IBM.
As far as Wine goes and running applications with Crossover – this is just temporary until more ports are finished. I seriously doubt that any company will seriously rely on Wine for an entire companies’ software (could be wrong though).
“Linux can do a lot of things these days.. but because OEM windows is so cheap *very* few ppl will balk at around 80$ (sorry dunno how much it is) to get the best OS when they are shelling out $1,000 for a computer.”
I can understand this argument, and the thing is, it used to be true. OEM’s charge $110 for their windows license. At least, that is what they give you back if you can wrangle a refund from them. No, that isn’t much when you are dropping a grand on a pc. 10%, could be better, but not bad. However, nowadays budget pc’s are coming in like gangbusters. These computers cost anywhere from 200-400 dollars. If you pick up a $200 job from wal-mart, and decide to throw windows on, you are doubling your cost. Now that OS license doesn’t seem so cheap.
Still, this might lead to IBM selling Linux PCs in the US and Europe.
Hopefully, they didn’t say anything about just doing it in one area.
I can’t say that I thought much of CrossOver Office or CrossOver Plugin. It works most of the time, but it was a little bit flakey
See it does work like windows hehe, anyway a good one for games would be the transgaming techknolelogy.
as a frequent ‘beta tester’ for Linux on the desktop, it is painfully obvious that there is no chance that the MS empire will crumble based on the desktop efforts of KDE and GNOME. Latency is still high, thanks to single-threaded Xfree86, and performance is still low (thanks to resource-hogging KDE/GNOME pigs) while in all other areas, Linux will remain irrelevant due to a lack of excellent GUI applications. Sorry guys, Koffice doesn’t cut it.. people don’t use WordPad either, and there’s a reason. OpenOffice takes a third of a minute to load on my laptop still, and shows no sign of lessening – it seems that the OO people still don’t understand the cost loading massive binary files all at once. The API’s are still changing with every kernel revision (check out 2.6! woohoo!) and soon will reach stability.. but dependency nightmare-inducing libraries aren’t going away yet, so I’ve got to keep three versions of Glibc and practically everything else. RPM still doesn’t work properly. Mandrake never quite makes it out of beta testing, but the package manager urpmi thingy seemed to almost work in the last Mandrake I tried (8.2? no wait, it was broken.. never mind).
One small observation, in fact, has led me to reconsider the whole Open Source development model. Why do the developers always assume that I’ve got nothing better to do than compiling a kernel just so my sound will work, or tweaking directory names just so my libraries won’t clobber each other, or other stupid things that are a complete waste of time for anybody besides a developer??? Don’t they know ANYthing about releasing “non-beta” software by now? I wonder if anybody in the crowd (besides the sound driver authors) even have working speakers attached to their machines. If it weren’t for Mandrake, nobody would have working sound without a non-trivial amount of tweaks. Speaking of tweaks…..
Most of all, though, I just want automount to work right. Windows has had that feature for – oh, about 8 years now. Is this so much to ask?????
Case in point: Linux is a pain. Linux is a server OS. Forget about dethroning MS, it ain’t gonna happen.
“Games like the awesome Tux Racer uses it a lot.”
Haha, needed a good laugh today. Sorry, but TuxRacer is _not_ an awesome game.
The important thing about Crossover with Xandros is, you can just run Xandros File Manager (which looks a lot like Microsoft Windows Explorer) and doubleclick on a Windows executable and the program will just start up in many cases (like is does in Windows). Crossover’s/Wine’s compatability is pretty good these days. Also autorun.inf is supported.
Installing and running Windows apps is exactly the same in Xandros as it is in Windows. I really believe that is important for many people. Most ‘popular’ apps such as p2p and im are supported in Wine.
I know i would buy a notebook if i could find one that came preloaded with Linux on it.
http://www.terrasoftsolutions.com“>Terrasoft sells
http://www.terrasoftsolutions.com/store/index.php?submit=hardware&s… iBooks and Powerbooks with Yellow Dog linux pre-installed.
“In the last three quarters we have sold around 63,000 units which is a 10 per cent growth on the 53,000 units sold in the same period of the last calendar year,”
IBM once sell an OS with Windows Compatibility. It failed.
Now you want them to sell LINUX with WIndows Compatibility. It will Fail too!!
Repeating a stupid mistake.
But you got to admit that Linux has come a long way. With Microsoft you are forced to pay for a new license to upgrade your software and keep up with industry support. With Linux you have a lifetime of free support and updates, with most distros. In my experience I have gotten 80-90% of the functionality out of my hardware using this OS that cost me nothing. Now maybe I can get 85-95% of the functionality out of my hardware from Microsoft, but at what cost. Often I am forced to use a GUI that lacks features, stability or security and given an excuse that it opens in 3 seconds so it must be better. I’m one of the many people who just aren’t willing to pay for that ease of use. Computers aren’t really that hard to figure out, specially if you know what you want to use them for.
It’s time to say the truth ! I Don’t understand those guys who are on dual booting and say that OO is awesome and Linux rules…when actually they are writing on a pirated copy of Office and watching videos and playing on XP.
Let’s stop saying Linux is superior to Windows, we need a lot of auto-critic so all the things that are a complete mess for people really working full time on Linux get a solution.
A long way to go but really nice work already done.
> IBM once sell an OS with Windows Compatibility. It failed.
No, it morphed into Windows NT and Win2k. Do you think MS could have written that?
What? Windows NT was written by some UNIX programmer who Microsoft hired. It was completely written in-house, it wasn’t bought off IBM at all.
IBM once sell an OS with Windows Compatibility. It failed.
Now you want them to sell LINUX with WIndows Compatibility. It will Fail too!!
Repeating a stupid mistake.
As haiqu brought up, a lot of that work is in Windows. That aside… IBM didn’t cause OS/2 to fail; neither did OS/2 itself. End users caused it to fail.
I think that there were a couple of factors in why OS/2 never caught on. First, by the time OS/2 was released, DOS had a strong foothold in business and was what came on your computer when you bought one. People were familiar with it. Windows 3.1 also enjoyed this ubiquitous nature. I thought OS/2 was great. However, it wasn’t what people were familiar with and so it never caught on. In fact, a lot of technical companies evaluating both OS/2 and Windows 3.1 chose to develop for OS/2 because Windows 3.1 was far inferior, only to lose a lot of money and in some cases go bankrupt because Windows ended up being more popular. Everything should have worked, but customer’s unwillingness to try something new caused OS/2 to fail.
The second reason, and the one with the biggest impact on OS/2 I think, is that people who wanted to run OS/2 had to pay for it and also had to pay for the applications to run on it. It was far cheaper for people to just use the pirated version of Windows, WordPerfect, etc. that the computer guy in their neighborhood had given them.
I would wager that if Microsoft had figured out a way to do product activation back in the Windows 3.1 days, Windows would have died and something else would be the forerunning desktop OS today; possibly OS/2.
Today, many businesses and other organizations are tired of being tied to Microsoft. They are now willing to accept an alternative. If IBM can provide an outstanding customer experience with Linux, then perhaps it will start to succeed with the non-technical users and replace a few Windows boxes. Who knows.
What? Windows NT was written by some UNIX programmer who Microsoft hired. It was completely written in-house, it wasn’t bought off IBM at all.
No, when NT first came out, it included a lot of OS/2 code in it. OS/2 was a joint venture between Microsoft and IBM, then Microsoft took its toys and went home to release Windows NT. There is some Unix stuff in their as well.
You’re right, Microsoft isn’t going away anytime soon. Linux isn’t going to take the desktop away from Microsoft, either, especially not while Microsoft is able to terrorize hardware manufacturers into not supplying native Linux drivers. A desktop PC needs multimedia, and it needs to be not a big fat pain to do the most basic tasks, like print, manage fonts, add hardware, etc.
A large part of Linux’ popularity is due to its low cost. Don’t underestimate how large a factor this is. (pop quiz: how much money do you pay for your Linux software?) Features like superior performance and stability don’t matter to most decision-makers, they want swag, suckup, and trips to hooter bars.
I think the original poster was talking about OS/2 not “Pink”. IBM sold OS/2 for many years with Windows 16bit compatability. As for NT being fully “in house” I am not so sure.
Erm, dude;
modprobe es1371
voila! after this amazing amount of ‘non-trivial’ tweaks, my sound works!
That said, I use slackware. IMHO its *easier* than the automatic distros like mandrake, because it does what I want it to do. Nothing else.
Have fun
Think of windows nt/2000/xp as forks of OS/2. I have read that ms hired a lead developer or programmer or something to work on nt. The Unix that it was was VMS.
Mopar owns Honda.
But for PR, it’s good to mention that some PCs will be sold with Linux. We’re probably talking of 0.1% or less.
Microsoft hired Dave Cutler from DEC who was a lead engineer on VMS. VMS is not UNIX, nor is it UNIX like. The design of NT was based on the experiences of Cutler and his team from Digital and is the reason Digital sued Microsoft in the early nineties.
I think it would be great if IBM did do this, but for one issue. Linux is a mess. Hey, I use it, but I don’t fully like it. It’s not ready for the mainstream, and something tells me it never will be. For the end user, Mr. Joe-User sitting at home, wanting to buy little Joe a xmas present off amazon, it just doesn’t suit. It is far too fragmented for the average user, there needs to be ONE GUI, working as simply as possible, next to the “guts” of the OS. There needs to be easy install wizards, sure, RPM and apt-get are great, but are still not for Joe-User.
“You’re right, Microsoft isn’t going away anytime soon. Linux isn’t going to take the desktop away from
Microsoft, either, especially not while Microsoft is able to terrorize hardware manufacturers into not
supplying native Linux drivers. A desktop PC needs multimedia, and it needs to be not a big fat pain to do
the most basic tasks, like print, manage fonts, add hardware, etc. ”
I doubt if a computer for routine office uses needs “multimedia”.
The question is: A Linux based computer will be cheaper. Will it be
good enough for routine office tasks? Will it be an adequate
replacement for the Win 95 (or even 3.1 or DOS) computer that is being
thrown out? Will it read all the old files?
If so, cost-conscious businesses will buy them. A penny saved is a
penny earned.
They will still need a Windows computer for accounts, but not for
typing etc.
A large part of Linux’ popularity is due to its low cost. Don’t underestimate how large a factor this is. (pop quiz: how much money do you pay for your Linux software?) Features like superior performance and stability don’t matter to most decision-makers, they want swag, suckup, and trips to hooter bars.
Cost is not measured solely in the dollars spent on an OS.. it’s measured in hours and hours of frustration and wasted effort too. Time is free when it’s worth nothing. I have better things to do with my computer than compile software all day, or apply patches by hand. Debian has an upgrade feature that’s supposedly quite nice, but I can’t vouch for that because the installer is designed for people whose jobs involve server installations. That precludes more than 99% of people in the world right there. I shouldn’t have to know which family my graphics chipset (it’s a Mach64) belongs to, or the closest thing to it that might just work. I don’t like pissing around with things like USB mouse detection – in Windows it’s automatic. EVERYTHING that plugs into my fricking USB port should auto-detect and support hot plug/unplug. If I waste ten minutes trying to get a mouse working (intellimouse explorer, for those who care) then by the current rate of reckoning Linux has just cost me $10 more than Windows would for the same task. If I had hours to kill I’d tell you all about my USB webcam
Superior performance is another thing near and dear to my heart, and another reason why Linux has no place on the desktop in its current state. Xfree has been shown to operate with modest latency in certain specialized applications that basically circumvent the whole ridiculously crufty Xfree API set, but let’s face it.. Xfree is slow by design. It’s a relic of the early 80’s. It’s single-threaded, so all your GUI apps wallow in a single thread that is NOT guaranteed any degree of latency, low or otherwise.
Stability? I’ve had kernel panics under Linux, but no blue screens under Win2K. I’ve done EVERYTHING under Win2K, from audio editing (with custom kernel drivers) to games. Under Linux, I’ve basically been interested enough to check email, browse the web, and play some small games. Win2K is hundreds of times more stable than Mandrake 8, 8.1, 8.2 and Red Hat (from 6.4-7.1) and Slackware 8.0 have been in my experience.. Without any tweaking, Linux in its various guises have been proven unreliable at best on my machines.
I doubt if a computer for routine office uses needs “multimedia”.
Maybe not. It’s nice to have the option readily available.
The question is: A Linux based computer will be cheaper. Will it be good enough for routine office tasks? Will it be an adequate replacement for the Win 95 (or even 3.1 or DOS) computer that is being thrown out? Will it read all the old files?
Why replace Win95? It runs better on old hardware than Linux with [insert your choice of GUI window manager here]. You obviously haven’t seen KDE v.1 (or, heck, just for laughs, try 3.0 sometime. I’m verrrry curious) chugging away on an old P133 laptop with 16MB of RAM. Even Blackbox isn’t very much quicker. Enlightenment won’t even run on my trusty P133, and it crawls (compared to Win2K) on my P4-1600 with 512MB RAM. If you want to keep an old machine around, reinstalling Win95 or DOS or what-have-you is still the best bet unless you want to recycle the machine into a router or super-slow file server.
…cost-conscious businesses will buy them. A penny saved is a penny earned.
Go for it. Good luck. Saving a penny in OS costs and then losing $400 when your printer driver malfunctions isn’t exactly cost-effective. Saving money the way you propose only works when your time is worth next to nothing.
“Why replace Win95? It runs better on old hardware than Linux with [insert your choice of GUI window
manager here]. You obviously haven’t seen KDE v.1 (or, heck, just for laughs, try 3.0 sometime. I’m verrrry
curious) chugging away on an old P133 laptop with 16MB of RAM. Even Blackbox isn’t very much quicker.
Enlightenment won’t even run on my trusty P133, and it crawls (compared to Win2K) on my P4-1600 with
512MB RAM. If you want to keep an old machine around, reinstalling Win95 or DOS or what-have-you is
still the best bet unless you want to recycle the machine into a
router or super-slow file server.
”
I’m talking about replacing a worn out old computer with a new one.
If it is basically a typing machine, will Linux with OO.o or Hancom
Office or whatever do the job well enough?
As for printing, most offices use laser printers. A Postscript laser
printer should work reliably with Linux. I agree that buying a printer
without drivers is a false economy, however cheap the printer.
I live in Bombay, India. I sell PC’s for a living. Till date, I have installed a legal copy of Win98 on just one machine. Every other PC i’ve sold has a pirated copy of either Win98 or Win2k. And most people dont know that they have pirated software because they are either misinformed by the vendor or they think that software just comes along with the hardware. Heres my point. In a place where piracy is so common and goes largely unchecked, Linux will have only a very minor impact among desktop and corporate users. Only super-huge companies like Infosys, Datamatics, etc use legal software. Everyone else gives a crap because they know they will never get caught. IBM and Compaq might succeed. One can never tell. But I fear that Linux or even windows based Open Source software like OpenOffice (which I love) will remain geek software for a long time to come. Hope i’m proved wrong.
what is freedom from ms worth?
lots to lots of people for lots of reasons.
things do not always “just work” in windows . read the windows newsgroups. so many problems there.
this doesn’t work. that doesn’t work. I can’t install this or that. windows a dream. sure it is . a bad one.
within a year or two linux will_ cross the useability rubicon.
why?
cos Tux marches on.
oh, as for P166 systems try icewm with rox-filer for desktop icons. faster than kde.
Oh and kde and gnome be resource swine ,but they will fly on the hardware MS will require you
to run xp and especiallly longhorn on.
Linux is happening.
Get used to it.
hey
, happy new year.
sorry for off line message
“Linux is happening.
Get used to it.”
Get used to ugly fonts, long wait on openning a DOC and freedom to waste your own time.
I guess you have never copied files from c:windowsfonts or downloaded something with verdana* inside
I admit, if you are new to linux, yes, you do waste a LOT of time configuring a system, but once you get used to it, i think it uses less time than windows. You do it once, and its done, you should never have to redo it again. Even if you’re upgrading the kernel, just copy the .config file over, and go. Sure in Win2k+ you dont need to do anything in general, but it still suffers from the “its a 2month old installation, lets redo it”.
On a side note though…i’m really impressed with XP’s stability on this Dell box, i’ve only seen it crash once so far.
once ? hehe, what if the hdd/partition crashed ???
what if you want something out of spec ??
Windows is not only about reboot 98 times, bluse screen very now and then, it is also about a huge amount of man/hours by many companies in testing various configs. on different hardware/software combinations.
Why Solaris is solid ? Part of the story is that it runs mostly on a limited hardware configurations, and the same thing could be said for Mac.
You save on the OS licenses, but after that there is the support headace – you tweak it at home, it is fine, but anything beyond that is another story
Say you’ve got a NEC SuperScript 870 and try to use it with Linux, then you might find you can only do 300 dpi vs. the claimed 600 dpi, as there is no Adobe PrinterGear driver that works under linux and the PCL4.5 emulation would only do low resolutions – if it is your personal printer, you would find the fact on the web, and that’s it; If you are doing commercial support, you probably will end up repeating the samething to thouands of customers – and this is only a simple “no go” situation, not something that requires customers to edit something – should you tell them to use vi or emacs ? where is the config file – /etc/something.conf or /usr/local/etc/something.conf ? what about you tell a customer to do rm -rf ~/.opera/*.ini and the other end did a rm -rf * /.ini
Linux uses far less memory than windows and still does. But you have to understand the context of this. It is being said about servers not the desktop.
When this mantra was origionally said there was no real Linux desktop. Back when people used fvwm95 and netscape 4.7 was the only real browser. There were no easy word processors or spreadsheets for X.
For instance. I have a machine that acts as a file server for several PC’s and a mac and also a print server. It also acts as a internet gateway. It runs for 6months or more at a time until the hardware stuffs up or it runs out of disk space. What sort of machine is it?
It is a cyrix chip with 16Mb of RAM
The install is on 500Mb hardrive and the filesharing uses 2GB
It has no floppy, no monitor, no CDROM, no mouse and no keyboard.
Try doing that with a windows server.
This is why the statment is true of Linux servers but not of the desktop. Modern Linux desktops are memory hogs just like windows are.
BTW anyone who uses windows 95 with 16MB of RAM will go crazy waiting for it to stop file swapping.
Get used to ugly fonts
XFT2 + FreeType 2 + Microsoft fonts (not included = much more beautiful than Mac OS X and Windows. Can be found on Red Hat (some say SuSE 8.1 with updates can experience this too).
long wait on openning a DOC and freedom to waste your own time.
I never actually experience a slow down because of them…
XFT2 + FreeType 2 + Microsoft fonts (not included
I think it is ghostscript that really needs the FreeType 2.
I started to play win95 on a 386/25 with 8 MB (motto: The Netware compatible shell is not available) and actually wrote a freeware program that later on used by quite a lot of guys out their.
To do a fair comparison, windows shell should set to one of the following: command.com winfile.exe or progman.exe
XP needs only 37 MB if tweaked to the equivalent of Linux kernel + Xfree86 + Xft with AA fonts + KDE or Gnome, or less than 35 MB if you taskkill the desktop – windows equivalent of twm on top of X.
If IBM does decide to use Linux as its OS, wouldn’t it be in IBM’s interest to fiddle with Linux and make it easier to install, use? Just a thought from an Amigan.
XP needs only 37 MB if tweaked to the equivalent of Linux kernel + Xfree86 + Xft with AA fonts + KDE or Gnome, or less than 35 MB if you taskkill the desktop – windows equivalent of twm on top of X.
But can you actually run anything with that. Its all a pointless argument unless you can use it.
I’m using 114MB at the moment just with the webbrowser and all my background services. How much does that take in Windows XP?
Besides XP won’t work on my 486 but Linux does work on it. Even if I can’t use X I can still use applications like minicom.
Recently, there was font tutorial on theregister.co.uk on how the make your fonts look good on linux. It was easy as pie and the end result was amazing. No more ugly fonts.
Currently, my redhat desktop looks even better than my windows desktop.
That will be good – however it will take time – about 10 years for M$ and the rest PC industry to get win3.1 to winxp. What is the current state of Linux desktop ??? Win95 + winword 97 ???
Erm… did you remember to fully discharge your battery before plugging your notebook in to prevent the NiCad battery memory effect? Newer lithium ion batteries, i hear, are not as susceptible.
Linux desktops all run on Xfree. No matter what you do, it doesn’t get very fast or responsive.
Linux makes a freakyfast server, but desktop? don’t be silly. Think about it – Window manager passing messages to Xfree passing messages to Linux kernel and back again. Windows (and AtheOS and BeOS etc) avoid this mess entirely, at the expense (or is it? not really) of being restricted to the local desktop shell. XP has RDP builtin though so that argument isn’t entirely as effective as it could be.
I’d rate Mandrake 9.0 w/KDE 3.x as equivalent to Win95, but with a way slower interface, worse hardware support, a much better kernel, and skins. Also I hate the directory layout. Linux developers would fix the horrible legacy file system layout and partition schemes if they cared about end users. They’d also fix automount if they wanted desktop users to fiddle with it.
Linux was made for servers with no GUI interface. Get used to it.
“XP needs only 37 MB if tweaked to the equivalent of Linux kernel + Xfree86 + Xft with AA fonts + KDE or Gnome, or less than 35 MB if you taskkill the desktop – windows equivalent of twm on top of X.
But can you actually run anything with that. Its all a pointless argument unless you can use it.
I’m using 114MB at the moment just with the webbrowser and all my background services. How much does that take in Windows XP? ”
Because you haven’t tweaked it – I uses a low end notebook with 64 MB for web browsing, winword 2002 typing and light programming using VC++ 6 under XP on a weekly basis, and it is a much better experice than on StarOffice with 256 MB – almost 1 minute just to start and another 3 to 5 seconds when hit the Enter key first. Why such a low end setup ? The notebook doesn’t have a fan
It takes about 40 MB for winword to open a short document, 48 MB to start Visual Studio 6 with a small project, 50 MB to open two IE windows, 58 MB for one IE window and MSN messenger – not a setup that you can run along with any anti-virus software, but if ActiveX scripting is disabled, there isn’t a lot of danger to begin with.
“Besides XP won’t work on my 486 but Linux does work on it. Even if I can’t use X I can still use applications like minicom.”
XP won’t do it, but win95/98/nt4 works just fine – minicom is not KDE, huh ?
“Recently, there was font tutorial on theregister.co.uk on how the make your fonts look good on linux. It was easy as pie and the end result was amazing. No more ugly fonts.
Currently, my redhat desktop looks even better than my windows desktop.”
There is no denying that there is huge advances on linux desktop in terms of font rendering in recent years – the only problem is that vendors can’t enable all the nice features out of box – where do they get the fonts ? Is the FreeTpype lib byte code enabled ? How do they tell average users these great features ? through a toll free support line ?
On a home DSL line with 128k upstream, remote X is useless except for the like of xterm, open a mozilla or opera, you would be luck to see an open menu in 10 seconds.
X is basically limited by the font dealing between client and server, so anything depends on more than a few fonts would not fly on anything less than a 10Mbps connection.
RDP on a dialup wouldn’t be practical for media rich web browsing, but it is more than acceptable to do some routing work, like editing text files/word documents, configuring some setting either in a console or through GUI.
Too sad that KDE/Gnome, XFree86, Mozilla, StarOffice these days are almost universally associated wiht Linux.
“I’d rate Mandrake 9.0 w/KDE 3.x as equivalent to Win95”
Pretty accurate, it was on win95 that guys started to play with anti-aliased fonts using that M$ add-on extension. Remove those fancy skins, you probably couldn’t find a xterm screen shot on the web that has a font as good as the one offered in win95 on up – lucida console.
Yeah FreeType can do 256 gray levels on AA font rending, beats the 5 offered by XP, however that theoretical joy probably will end as soon as you hit the print command – ghostscript’s font rendering is just terrible, even with authentic Adobe Type 1 fonts.
Just a thought, if the rumours are true then IBM would be prudent to use its own CPU. After all, it makes sense for IBM to get a return on its R&D. Plus, I don’t think Oracle has its database running on PPC Linux yet, so DB2 might have an edge.
Then IBM compatible would take on a whole new meaning! Provide us developers with a 64 bit alternative to x86-64. And give the blackdown.org folks an incentive to finish their PPC hotspot port too.
Plus, it might help with the economies of scale re Apple boxes.
Because you haven’t tweaked it
No I haven’t and I shouldn’t have to either. As Eugenia says its the defaults that count not how much someone can tweak the machine. I am also running apache as well
minicom is not KDE no. It is an application, a comms program. Linux is usable without X but that is not the default either, in most cases. As someone else pointed out these are new machines not your 64MB laptop or my 20MB one.
I wasn’t trying to start a argument about memory usage just trying to clear up the story behind linux using less memory as a server.
Following this thread is a little embarassing. Instead of being anywhere near on topic it becomes a wailing wall for installation difficulties and OOo on low end hardware. IBM vends to businesses. If you have a large number of machines you have some kind of organized deployment. Users shouldn’t be installing or configuring anything. All of the teeth gnashing about installation and exotic peripheral configuration is moot. You buy machines for a premium price from a vendor because you want uniformity in hardware so you can clone hard drives instead of doing individualized installs. When you have a stable hardware configuration with a purposely limited array of available software it’s actually advantageous. Most office grunts use their machines as glorified typewriters, adding machines, and email appliances. Whether or not a default install of a given distribution enables anti-aliasing is not even worth sniggering at in this context.
rh8 defult wouldn’t play MP3, drives Eugenia’s big monitor in VGA mode ??? and the default nVidia driver locks too many guys tight.
I run a rh7.2 server, so I have no argument as to its memory footprint – but shrinking the diskspace down to 70MB did take a lot time, before I realizing that glibc is not stripped.
IBM wasted too many of their internal research projects; Or they would not do OS/2 with M$.
hehe, yes, you are right – but when something as Holy as Linux is on the table, it is just too difficult to discuss it without noise
I find the situation you described is better served with a linux termianl server. I played LTSP a little bit, and the result is pretty impressive.
I’m actually embarrased to say that I read comments on this site, it doesn’t get much worse than this. You guys need to get your facts straight before you post. I have yet to read even *ONE* accurate post about anything from Win95/XP *OR* Linux!
XP is very bloated
Linux w/ KDE is quasi bloated
Linux w/ Gnome is less bloated than KDE
Linux looks great out of the box with RedHat 8, and it’s FAST.
Windows 95 has shit for hardware support. If you think you can run modern hardware on Win95 you are a fool. Let me laugh as you plug in a USB device.
Windows 95 will run on a 386DX w/ 4MB of ram, but who would want to? I tried it once, went back to DOS.
X over dialup is just as fast as RDP if it’s configured properly, if you can’t figure out how to make it work you shouldn’t be using RDP either, PERIOD.
OO is slow to start, but I have no problem using it once it’s up.
Verdana is great, just copy it to ~/.fonts and WOW there it is! Seems much like installing missing fonts on a Windows system huh?! ( http://www.geocities.com/andrew7005/verdana.jpg )
Any Windows OS pre XP would not do MP3’s either, WAAH. The software takes less than 3 minutes to download and install, WAAH.
I have yet to see the NVidia driver crash anyone’s OS though I’ve heard about it. We’ve never seen Windows drivers cause crashes either huh? WAAH.
Eugena’s monitor was stuck in VGA mode? Well I’m sure you haven’t ever seen that on a Windows computer either. If she had gone into the monitor panel she could have fixed it. ( http://www.geocities.com/andrew7005/monitor.jpg )
You guys are whining about things that ARE NOT PROBLEMS. Quit making shit up just so you have something to cry about. TTY, you should especially know better since I sucessfully refuted every single complaint you spilled here less than a week ago. I’m starting to wonder if some of you are lost slashdot trolls.
I always only dabbled with Linux because of the lack of an MS Office caliber application as well. My family simply expects a certain way for their spreadsheet and word processor to work. Even if they didn’t, I need to be able to effectively share my files with the rest of the world. StarOffice until now was not up to the task, but that has changed with latest version I’ve tried.
Besides the long load times, which can be lessened by selecting the pre-load option under Windows, I see very few deficiencies. The interface is as intuitive as MS Office applications, although it does take a bit of searching to find things. It is so good in fact that I now use OpenOffice at work in place of Excel and Word for most of my day to day tasks. The only time I jump back to Excel is to work on a spreadsheet with pivot tables, which isn’t supported in OpenOffice.
MS Office is hardly a killer app, but not having a parallel kills the chance of widespread acceptance of an alternate platform. Now Linux has a chance of going head to head.
Um, I hate to break it to you Aitvo, but your statements are a bit wrong too:
“Any Windows OS pre XP would not do MP3’s either, WAAH. The software takes less than 3 minutes to download and install, WAAH.”
That is wrong. Windows 98 SE had MP3 support natively and every version of Windows supported MP3 since (can’t vouch for NT4, never tried to play MP3’s on it).
“Linux is quasi bloated”
Oh, I’d say Linux is jussst slightly less bloated as XP when you count libraries compilers and what not that you’ll need. I suppose if you cut down on all the apps you get when you get a Linux distro then yeah it is less bloated, but that’s what the loudest of Linux people chant is “choice”.
Okay, I agree that this topic has been derailed, is leaking fuel and is in need of a hazmat crew. While my post doesn’t add to the topic what so ever, I just had to chime in and ask: why is it when Linux is mentioned and someone posts about Windows it the thread degrades to an OS pissing contest with many having Linux/Windows envy? Can’t you people be secure with the OS choice you made and not defend it every time?!
>Um, I hate to break it to you Aitvo, but your statements are a bit wrong too:
Not the first time, if I’m mistaken about MP3 support in Win98 then hey I’m mistaken, will admit to being corrected, and won’t make the claim again.
>”Any Windows OS pre XP would not do MP3’s either, WAAH. The software takes less than 3 minutes to download and install, WAAH.”
>That is wrong. Windows 98 SE had MP3 support natively and every version of Windows supported MP3 since (can’t vouch for NT4, never tried to play MP3’s on it).
My bad, if I’m incorrect then hey. I’ll load up a 98SE machine at home tonight and will try to play MP3’s without installing anything.
>”Linux is quasi bloated”
I didn’t say that. I said KDE was quasi bloated.
>Oh, I’d say Linux is jussst slightly less bloated as XP when you count libraries compilers and what not that you’ll need. I suppose if you cut down on all the apps you get when you get a Linux distro then yeah it is less bloated, but that’s what the loudest of Linux people chant is “choice”.
Linux is much less bloated, used drive space does not equal bloat if that were the case Linux would still win. I’ve had Linux installs down to 400MB with a full suite of applications installed. RedHat 8.0 requires 1.4GB for a personal desktop with a full suite of applications. Take that 1.4GB and remove all documentation, and any applications that you don’t need and you can probably get it down to 700-800MB. XP uses 1.4GB just for XP!
>Okay, I agree that this topic has been derailed, is leaking fuel and is in need of a hazmat crew. While my post doesn’t add to the topic what so ever, I just had to chime in and ask: why is it when Linux is mentioned and someone posts about Windows it the thread degrades to an OS pissing contest with many having Linux/Windows envy? Can’t you people be secure with the OS choice you made and not defend it every time?!
So it’s ok to blast any OS you want, but not defend against the blasts? I see how that makes sense (not).
>why is it when Linux is mentioned and someone posts about Windows it the thread degrades to an OS pissing contest with many having Linux/Windows envy?
A. simple, cos in it’s current state’GNU/Linux desktop’ is being pissed on and pissed/blown away by a superior product making a lot of serious money.
would be nice to see an MS v IBM bare knuckle fight tho, the average joe might benefit
current GNU/Linux on the desktop just does not cut it, copying/imitating MS products wont get it there, MS has been there, done it, selling lots of T shirts too.
“current GNU/Linux on the desktop just does not cut it”
pfft.. You may not be capable of using it, that doesn’t mean it doesn’t cut it. It means *YOU* don’t cut it.
Linux DESKTOP user since 1997, uptime:
11:00am up 77 days, 52 min, 2 users, load average: 0.31, 0.19, 0.10
None of it would stop IBM from bundling Linux. These machines are targeted to corporates, and sold in bulks. Your grandma wouldn’t buy it. IBM never meant for her to buy it.
These machines would be setted-up by trained system administrators. Not someone who bought RedHat Linux at a store, read the manual (or maybe not) and decided to do tricks with it.
Besides, tty, the county of Largo uses thin-client terminals connected to a Linux server using XFree86 and KDE. If remote X was so slow, I’m sure Slashdot would be all over it. Trust me. Fact is, it isn’t slow. Heck, it is the only thing that isn’t slow for some X11 implementations.
If there is anything X11 was designed for, it is remote access. That was its main use, in dumb UNIX terminals.
But just to point out, XP’s Remote Desktop is technically very different from X11. Windows XP, GDI+ specifically, wasn’t designed the same way as X11. GDI+ was designed to provide performance on that machine, X was mainly design for the purpose you mentioned.
Besides, FYI, Red Hat has XFT2 and FT2 installed and running by default on Red Hat Linux 8.0. And any distribution using GNOME 2.0 has it. And any distribution going to use KDE 3.1 would have it too.
“X over dialup is just as fast as RDP if it’s configured properly, if you can’t figure out how to make it work you shouldn’t be using RDP either, PERIOD. ”
With RDP, you don’t need to configure it – just put in the IP/hostname.
X over dialup is just as fast, if all you need is xterm – the problem there is X server and X client need to exhange fonts back and forth, so an app that uses a lot of fonts just doesn’t going to fly.
“I’ve had Linux installs down to 400MB with a full suite of applications installed”
Hehe, my redhat 7.2 uses only 70 MB of diskspace – that’s how you tweak an installation vs the default minium – 360 MB, IIRC.
For MP3 on barebone windows, Start | run one of the following:
mplayer.exe
mplayer2.exe <=== Media Player 6.x since win98/win98se ???
wmplayer.exe <=== Media Player 7/8/9 since win2k
USB for win95 ??? that’s win95 OSR 2.5
It is true that WinXP needs 1.4G out of box, but can you do voice chat behind a firewall on any Linux distro with the default installation ????
“OO is slow to start, but I have no problem using it once it’s up.”
As if you have any other better choice, huh 8-)))
Back when JD first played anti-trust card with MS on DOS tax/OS monopoly, M$ had already set its eyes on desktop app.
This time around, when IE/Office is under justice examination, M$ is thinking of network/DRM domination.
Linux is playing catch-up on yester-century’s game
>>”X over dialup is just as fast as RDP if it’s configured properly, if you can’t figure out how to make it work you shouldn’t be using RDP either, PERIOD. ”
>With RDP, you don’t need to configure it – just put in the IP/hostname.
If you are not configuring it then you are leaving yourself lots of room for improvement. Yes, you have to work for some things in Linux, it’s not an OS for idiots.
>X over dialup is just as fast, if all you need is xterm – the problem there is X server and X client need to exhange fonts back and forth, so an app that uses a lot of fonts just doesn’t going to fly.
It is just as fast for anything that you can do with RDP if you set it up right, you are arguing with someone that does these things for a living, you won’t win so drop it.
>>”I’ve had Linux installs down to 400MB with a full suite of applications installed”
>Hehe, my redhat 7.2 uses only 70 MB of diskspace – that’s how you tweak an installation vs the default minium – 360 MB, IIRC.
I have a linux distribution that I built myself which lives in 16MB of flash, I am talking 400MB for a full featured OS with TONS of applications.
>For MP3 on barebone windows, Start | run one of the following:
>mplayer.exe
>mplayer2.exe <=== Media Player 6.x since win98/win98se ???
>wmplayer.exe <=== Media Player 7/8/9 since win2k
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;195707
>USB for win95 ??? that’s win95 OSR 2.5
Yeah it’s there, but try to USE it.
>It is true that WinXP needs 1.4G out of box, but can you do voice chat behind a firewall on any Linux distro with the default installation ????
Can you write an office document, spell check and print it while chatting with your friends on yahoo and aol, and burning a CD? Uhh no. I can do all that, while voice chatting using gnomemeeting and much more out of the box.
>>”OO is slow to start, but I have no problem using it once it’s up.”
>As if you have any other better choice, huh 8-)))
Huh? I have MS Office, OpenOffice, KOffice, Abiword, Hancom Office, and several other packages available to me so I am excercising my CHOICE.
Damn, you really *ARE* a lost slashdot troll.
Here, this is what you get when you DO use it (If you can manage to find a device driver).
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;181499
OK.. the guy who thinks it’s hard to get my USB shit going on Win95… I have two copies of Win95 OSr2 and they both work nicely. I have Red Hat 8, Mandrake 8.0/1/2 and about ten other distros, and they ALL (unfailingly) suck for USB support. Hot-plug? Nope. Drivers? Maybe. Fix that and we’ll talk some more
“ALL (unfailingly) suck for USB support.”
Uhh no, all of my USB devices work fine when hot plugged, including my mouse and camera. (Using RedHat 8)
You hotplug in Win95? WOW, how did you do it? ( http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;181499 )
Who makes USB drivers for Win95? Oh, my Linksys USB wireless works too.
LOL Spare me.
In response to Aitvo’s “You hotplug in Win95? WOW, how did you do it?” (no, I’m not attacking you, as I’m responding to another of your posts)
Notice the support sheet says that there “may” be a hanging problem with Win95 and USB devices. It doesn’t say that it “will” hang with USB devices. There’s probably more issues at work that cause the USB devices to hang than just USB support. Could be the drivers for those devices, could be the devices are way too new to function properly in Win95. Hard to tell. I’ve gotten USB to work in Win95 OSR 2 on one machine and I couldn’t get it to work on another no matter what I did. With different hardware, different drivers, a multi task OS it’s sometimes hard to trace problems and make things work even though the should.
I’ve found that Linux and Win2k (not enough time with WinXP to comment) have roughly the same level of hardware compatibility. Assuming a good amount of experience with either OS, you can usually plug something in and then expect to spend 10 minutes to 10 hours depending on the device to make it work properly.
The difference I’ve really found is that when something breaks, it tends to be much more easy to adjust settings to fix the problem _permenantly_ in Linux than in Windows. Good example: setting a device order to multiple ethernet cards. Windows sometimes has a high and unholy cow when you try to do something like that, requiring hours of loading and unloading drivers to get things “just right”. With Linux, I can simply add a few lines of modules.conf to adjust the load order to my needs.
Another good example: a friend and I are using an Atmel wireless device to share our internet connection. On my computer (Linux), I download the driver, screw with it for a few minutes, and it works. He installs the driver from the CD. No dice. Tries it from online. Still doesn’t work. A few weeks later, we _still_ can’t figure out why the thing isn’t working.
And, of course, let’s not forget the superior hardware compatibility of WinXP – plug in an ISA card, and watch what happens ;-).
-Erwos
That was my point actually, I was making the same claim that most people do about Linux. It doesn’t work for me, so it doesn’t work. HAHA USB support on 95 was TERRIBLE! Instead of fixing it, Microsoft chose to point you to the latest $99.00 fix.
“It is just as fast for anything that you can do with RDP if you set it up right, you are arguing with someone that does these things for a living, you won’t win so drop it.”
I wrote software dealing with fonts for many years, not on the same boat as you are, but at least I know something – you probably have a high degree of tolerance for sloooow apps, I don’t
“Can you write an office document, spell check and print it while chatting with your friends on yahoo and aol, and burning a CD? Uhh no. I can do all that, while voice chatting using gnomemeeting and much more out of the box”
No big deal – if you can’t do these on windows, you haven’t pay enough attention to it or you are using something with a V i A logo
“Huh? I have MS Office, OpenOffice, KOffice, Abiword, Hancom Office, and several other packages available to me so I am excercising my CHOICE. ;-)”
And you choose the slowest, speaks for your preference.
Exactlyt how a troll would react. Have a nice day.
Sorry, it would make a bigger difference. OS/2 qualifies Select and Open customers for an upgrade. If IBM sold computers with OS/2, we wouldn’t have to pay for the Windows Preload *and* Select upgrade rights. Of course, we would just format the hard drive anyhow and load Win2k or XP, but save whatever the OEM license cost is…
“Exactlyt how a troll would react. Have a nice day.”
You can’t disbute with the fact, so ….
What if your boss wanted a setup in which he would like his Office startup within seconds after he logged in vs StarOffice’s 40 seconds + performance ? How would you set this up ? Accuse him as a troll ?
What if one of your user comlained that faxes sent by a linux box don’t looks as good as those sent by a windows machine ? Accuse her as a loser ?
Linux has its great strength, however it is far from every thing. Office didn’t beat Wordpect/Lotus 123 by starting up in 1 minutes, IE didn’t beat Netscape by offering poor quality fonts – igoring the fact that windows was coming and plain arrogance that how those old day top dogs lost the game.
You asked for it.
“It is just as fast for anything that you can do with RDP if you set it up right, you are arguing with someone that does these things for a living, you won’t win so drop it.”
>I wrote software dealing with fonts for many years, not on the same boat as you are, but at least >I know something – you probably have a high degree of tolerance for sloooow apps, I don’t
No, I know how to tune my computers so they aren’t slow apparently you don’t.
“Can you write an office document, spell check and print it while chatting with your friends on yahoo and aol, and burning a CD? Uhh no. I can do all that, while voice chatting using gnomemeeting and much more out of the box”
>No big deal – if you can’t do these on windows, you haven’t pay enough attention to it or you are >using something with a V i A logo
Uhh what was it you asked? OH YEAH! Can you do these things out of the box. I replied with that and more, so you changed the subjedt to “if you can’t do these on windows”.
“Huh? I have MS Office, OpenOffice, KOffice, Abiword, Hancom Office, and several other packages available to me so I am excercising my CHOICE. ;-)”
>And you choose the slowest, speaks for your preference.
Slow? My ass, only the 20 seconds it takes to start.
“Exactlyt how a troll would react. Have a nice day.”
>You can’t disbute with the fact, so ….
I am tired of shredding your lies so ….
>What if your boss wanted a setup in which he would like his Office startup within seconds after
> he logged in vs StarOffice’s 40 seconds + performance ? How would you set this up ? Accuse him
> as a troll ?
He wouldn’t need to log out, so where’s the problem? OH THERE IS NONE! (see my 77 day desktop uptime noted in a previous thread.)
>What if one of your user comlained that faxes sent by a linux box don’t looks as good as those
> sent by a windows machine ? Accuse her as a loser ?
What are you talking about, a tiff is a tiff is a tiff LOL!
>Linux has its great strength, however it is far from every thing. Office didn’t beat Wordpect
>/Lotus 123 by starting up in 1 minutes, IE didn’t beat Netscape by offering poor quality fonts –
> igoring the fact that windows was coming and plain arrogance that how those old day top dogs
> lost the game.
It’s only that slow the FIRST TIME, if you close it and reopen it will be open within 5 seconds, unless you are using a Windows desktop and must reboot daily it’s a non issue. You have to come up with a real argument because application start time is shit. I can export the application from a dedicated box that does nothing BUT OO, you can’t do that unless you invest in metaframe.
Have a nice day TROLL.
“He wouldn’t need to log out, so where’s the problem? OH THERE IS NONE! (see my 77 day desktop uptime noted in a previous thread.)
”
You didn’t answer the request, start it in 2 to 3 seconds right after login. If he didn’t need to logout, why set the password ?
“>And you choose the slowest, speaks for your preference.
Slow? My ass, only the 20 seconds it takes to start. ”
Hehe, on a pentium 233 w 64 MB running XP, winword 2002 will open in 8 seconds, 2 to 3 seconds on second try or anything better with a desktop hard drive and 128 MB RAM.
Fast has different meaning for different people.
[
“>What if one of your user complained that faxes sent by a linux box don’t looks as good as those
> sent by a windows machine ? Accuse her as a loser ?
What are you talking about, a tiff is a tiff is a tiff LOL!}
How do you get the tiff from a text file/SO document ?
Using ghostscript as the RIP, right ? That’s when you get the low quality font rendering problem, even with commercial fonts from Adobe installed.
Out of box, XP will do UPnP enabled firewall/internet sharing, so MSN voice/video chat will still work, on its self or the subnet in which it act as the gateway, burn CD by drag n drop, play MP3, WMA format media files, burn music CDs …. All these without the need to use a mouse; Try that with KDE/Gnome ??? I heard even with a mouse RH 8 wouldn’t do its job as intended, so that the uptime last a little bit longer, huh ???
>You didn’t answer the request, start it in 2 to 3 seconds right after login. If he didn’t need to logout, why set the password ?
The request:
“What if your boss wanted a setup in which he would like his Office startup within seconds after he logged in vs StarOffice’s 40 seconds + performance ? How would you set this up ? Accuse him as a troll ? ”
The response:
“He wouldn’t need to log out, so where’s the problem? OH THERE IS NONE! (see my 77 day desktop uptime noted in a previous thread.”
Let me add that since he didn’t need to reboot if he logged out and back in OO (or SO) would start within 5 seconds on a reasonable system.
>And you choose the slowest, speaks for your preference.
Slow? My ass, only the 20 seconds it takes to start. ”
>Hehe, on a pentium 233 w 64 MB running XP, winword 2002 will open in 8 seconds, 2 to 3 seconds on second try or anything better with a desktop hard drive and 128 MB RAM.
Uhh yeah..
Here’s What You Need to Use Windows XP Professional
* PC with 300 megahertz or higher processor clock speed recommended; 233 MHz minimum required (single or dual processor system);* Intel Pentium/Celeron family, or AMD K6/Athlon/Duron family, or compatible processor recommended
* 128 megabytes (MB) of RAM or higher recommended (64 MB minimum supported; may limit performance and some features)
* 1.5 gigabytes (GB) of available hard disk space*
* Super VGA (800 × 600) or higher-resolution video adapter and monitor
* CD-ROM or DVD drive
* Keyboard and Microsoft Mouse or compatible pointing device
— http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/pro/evaluation/sysreqs.asp
You are so far into your swapfile that you won’t be opening anything in 8 seconds. Even on a well tuned system, 64MB and P233 just doesn’t cut it.
>Fast has different meaning for different people.
Yeah, and that meaning is apparently a moving target. Everytime I shoot down something you say you quickly change the subject.
>>>What if one of your user complained that faxes sent by a linux box don’t looks as good as those
>>> sent by a windows machine ? Accuse her as a loser ?
>>”What are you talking about, a tiff is a tiff is a tiff LOL!”
>How do you get the tiff from a text file/SO document ?
>Using ghostscript as the RIP, right ? That’s when you
>get the low quality font rendering problem, even with commercial fonts from Adobe installed.
Uhh I think you need to read up on ghostscript.. http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~ghost/doc/faq.htm#what_is_gs Ghostscript has nothing to do with FONTS, it takes postscript and converts it to raster so your regular printer driver can print it.
>Out of box, XP will do UPnP enabled firewall/internet sharing, so MSN voice/video chat will still work, on its self or the subnet in which it act as the gateway, burn CD by drag n drop, play MP3, WMA format media files, burn music CDs …. All these without the need to use a mouse; Try that with KDE/Gnome ??? I heard even with a mouse RH 8 wouldn’t do its job as intended, so that the uptime last a little bit longer, huh ???
Out of the box, RedHat Linux will to Firewalling/internet sharing (UPnP with a 5 second download), ICQ, Yahoo, MSN, AIM, Internet Voice Chat, burn CD’s, play OGG (and MP3’s with a 5 second download), rip and burn music CD’s at better than a 56K bit rate, allow you to manage projects, create complex documents (Spreadsheets, Charts, Word processing), Manipulate photos (touchup, and otherwise edit), view PDF documents, Scan documents with your scanner, download files with graphical FTP, read usenet articles, create complex diagrams, write and compile programs (if you so choose), and much more RIGHT OUT OF THE BOX, I’d really like to know what job it wouldn’t do “with a mouse” since you are changing the subject before I even reply now. You keep your pathetic firewall, your fabulous WordPad, that GREAT solitaire program, and best of all your wonderful MSN while I use a REAL OS with REAL applications not Monopoly marketing oriented virusware. There’s not much more to say now is there, WAIT THERE IS, you get all this in *1.5GB*! That’s right, in the same FOOTPRINT AS YOUR WONDERFUL OS YOU CAN DO ALL YOU CLAIMED AND 10x more to OUT OF THE BOX!
I don’t know about the rest of you, but I find generic USB hardware rather fine on RH 8.0 and Mdk 9.0. The best way to know whether it can possibly work right out of the box on Linux is to see if it can work on Windows without driver installation. For things like mouses, keyboards, some webcams (the generic ones) etc., they all work fine.
Seasons greetings, despite the arguments.
if ghostscript has nothing to do with fonts, why you need to install ghostscript fonts package ?
I suppose Ghostscript uses fonts when creating postscript, however having used a Linux print system for years I have yet to see quality any different than a Windows print job.
RIP – Raster Image Processor
gs takes a postscript file then produces a bitmap that’s compatible with the targeting device – a screen, a G3 fax image, or a non-postscript printer. During this process, gs need to render postscript fonts as raster image if those fonts are not embedded as bitmap inside the postscript file.
I have played with gs for about 10 years and there seems to be no major progress in its font rendering part. Some guys hope gs could use FreeType to do a better job, but even FreeType still has something to improve. That said, this is another very subjective matter.