Rumor has it that Dan Williams may have mentioned these words:
>On Sun, 9 Jan 2005 13:28:55 -0800 (PST), Tom Jennings <tomj_at_wps.com> wrote:
> > On Sat, 8 Jan 2005 gordonjcp_at_gjcp.net wrote:
> >
> > > I'm *amazed* how many people on this list still struggle on with Windows.
> > > I would have thought most people with the geeky proclivities that would
> > > lead them into playing with old computers would all be running one of the
> > > many free OSes.
>
>As the other's have sometimes you have to run windows.
As I have to, at both work and home. Work: Peachtree. Other than that, I
SSH into all of my linux servers. ;-) Home: MPEG transcoding software from
my TiVo to SVCD. Linux just doesn't have the (inexpensive) software yet.
Good stuff is $$$$$, free stuff isn't worth dealing with.
>Openoffice can't deal with
>some excel files and last time I looked any powerpoint documents.
OO 1.1.x has opened every excel file I threw at it so far; but that's not
saying much; I don't deal with very high-end spreadsheets. And now that I
have my serial cable & floppy emulation software set up for my Tandy 200, I
want to see how well it opens SYLK files from MultiPlan... hehehe -- It's
interesting how it opens more MicroSoft formats than M$... ;-)
It's *supposed* to work well with powerpoint, but I never use them, so I
can't say how well it does it.
OpenOffice 1.9.(mumble) is out in beta form - it's supposed to be even
closer yet, and has a GUI database as well. I don't know if it supports
Access databases... haven't installed it yet. (Tonite at home.)
>That's without even speaking about games.
That's why most people still run Winders.
Win2K, all security patches, no firewall, running Mozilla Firefox & Eudora
(but sometimes use Mutt directly on the servers) -- scan for spyware every
2-3 *weeks* (only come up positive every 3rd scan or so) and have no
problems at all. Granted, I wouldn't recommand a "non-geek" do this. ;-)
=-=-=-=
Everyone's talking 'distro' (this 'Ubuntu' sounds interesting -- methinks I
need to check it out) -- if you want to use a distro that *runs* from CD,
try Knoppix. It boots, you try it out, make sure all the stuff works, then
pull the CD & reboot -- no changes to the system.
[[ and I certainly don't want to 'war' about it either - they all have
their strengths and weaknesses! ]]
For my laptop, I went the "Other Way." www.linuxfromscratch.org -- I
compiled *everything* for my Crusoe processor, and lemme tell ya, it's
*fast*. From boot, including FVWM 2.5.(mumble), Apache, Coldfusion 4.5 (I
need to support it), PostgreSQL, and total memory used is under 80Meg.
Granted, it took me a month of spare time to get the way I like it... but
damn, do I like it. ;-) If you want to speed things up and have multiple
Linux boxen available, check out distcc -- distributed compiling across
several boxen; it works well, too.
The wife runs linux -- despite the fact she's the "Anti-Geek" (I installed
a basic RedHat 9 - she couldn't install Winders either if she tried...), my
next door neighbor just installed it & was surprised how easy it was - He'd
heard the horror stories, but thought it was just as easy as installing
windows. ;-)
It's getting there...
Laterz,
Roger "Merch" Merchberger
--
Roger "Merch" Merchberger | "Profile, don't speculate."
SysAdmin, Iceberg Computers | Daniel J. Bernstein
zmerch_at_30below.com |
Received on Mon Jan 10 2005 - 14:07:28 GMT