Linux, I hear, is an absolutely amazing era of computing.

I hear it has the potential to become the worlds most widely used OS on all systems including Macs, PCs, Custom built machines, cell phones, mobile devices etc..

I hear that you can do just about anything at all with Linux. Run Windows apps, Mac apps... and the millions of Linux apps, which are becoming more and more popular.

People often say Who is best, Mac or PC? but really... neither of them are best. Linux is best.. am I correct?

I have seen some gorgeous user interfaces for Linux, such as the Vista theme on GNOME... etc...

I hear Ubuntu is more popular than OS X.

I am wondering if to get a lovely ultra-mobile laptop.. and purchase the CD for the latest Ubuntu system... shall I jump on the bandwagon??

- James

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Linux, I hear, is an absolutely amazing era of computing.

I hear it has the potential to become the worlds most widely used OS on all systems including Macs, PCs, Custom built machines, cell phones, mobile devices etc..

I hear that you can do just about anything at all with Linux. Run Windows apps, Mac apps... and the millions of Linux apps, which are becoming more and more popular.

People often say Who is best, Mac or PC? but really... neither of them are best. Linux is best.. am I correct?

I have seen some gorgeous user interfaces for Linux, such as the Vista theme on GNOME... etc...

I hear Ubuntu is more popular than OS X.

I am wondering if to get a lovely ultra-mobile laptop.. and purchase the CD for the latest Ubuntu system... shall I jump on the bandwagon??
- James

I think it comes to whether or not you are comfortable using Linux. Me, I am a Windows guy, used a Mac once in my life. Linux I have 2 machines currently running, but still don't understand it. I would not be considering what you are. If you do it, good luck!

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I am sitting in front of my lovely Apple MacBook Pro .. waiting for Apple's Bootcamp software to finish downloading over by 512k connection, and I am wondering when its finished, if to install Ubuntu.

James

LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX BABY!

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On my desktop I have dual-boot Windoze XP and openSuSE 10.2, and my pretty old laptop (a Thinkpad T22 with a 40GB hard disk drive) runs marvelously with openSuSE 10.2 also. IMHO this is the best distribution for someone who changed from Windows to Linux, ad yet it has a lot more programs and apps already installed right from the beginning than Windows will ever give you in bulk. GIMP (for free), for example is as effective as Photoshop (650$) or Corel Draw (400$). The cost-free OpenOffice - what can't it do what the expensive Microsoft Office can do?
Or what's about all the other programs which are already on the Linux installation DVDs you can get for free - or which you can buy including support for about 60€, having the right to copy it as often as you want - and to adapt it and change everything, even the OS kernel (as long as you make a note in the script what you changed)? Compared to this, you get almost nothing with Windows where you have to pay hundreds of dollars for, and having the right to install it just on ONE single computer??
I wonder why Linux is not in the leading position already.
This, by the way is my Linux desktop:


and this my Windows desktop:

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Account frozen...

Compared to this, you get almost nothing with Windows

'cept for a 'minesweeper'... ;)

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It may not be 1984 but George Orwell sure did see the future . . .

"Bootcamp has successfully been installed" my MacBook Pro is saying excitedly LOL...

Now I am ready to install Ubuntu!

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Compared to this, you get almost nothing with Windows

'cept for a 'minesweeper'... ;)

Oh, and don't forget "Solitaire"

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Account frozen...

Compared to this, you get almost nothing with Windows

'cept for a 'minesweeper'... ;)

Oh, and don't forget "Solitaire"

I've often wondered why it is called Windows. I think it should be called "FrontDoorWideOpen".

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My Vista picture of Thorin's Linux picture of...

...okay, this might get a little confusing...

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Pure mathematics is, in its way, the poetry of logical ideas.

Albert Einstein

Compared to this, you get almost nothing with Windows

'cept for a 'minesweeper'... ;)

Oh, and don't forget "Solitaire"

I prefer 'pinball' myself... ;)

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It may not be 1984 but George Orwell sure did see the future . . .

SNIP...
I hear that you can do just about anything at all with Linux. Run Windows apps, Mac apps... and the millions of Linux apps, which are becoming more and more popular.

Depends on what 'everything' and 'popular' means for you...

I have a great belief in the old advertising adage: "you buy the hole not the drill."

I think it doesn't really matter whether it is a linux, windows or mac app' as long it is easy to use, does what you want and does it efficiently at the best price.

I am wondering if to get a lovely ultra-mobile laptop.. and purchase the CD for the latest Ubuntu system... shall I jump on the bandwagon??
- James

The laptop manufacturer will most likely make sure all the parts have their specific drivers (windows or mac). There is no guarentee Linux will support it fully.

I think whether you go for linux, windows or mac software depends firstly whether your machine is supported, secondly whether the OS supports what you want to do and thirdly whether you have the skills to bend the OS to your will.

I have an older ultra-mobile Vaio C1VN Picturebook and run it off Win2K but can also quad boot into Win98, DSL (Linux) and a tiny version of BusyBoxed ZipSlack I retro-fitted (Slackware for FAT32) all off the same partition. Of all these only Win2k is able to use all of the C1VN's devices.

For me it's a matter of functionality first - only then do I worry about the aesthetics.


Just my thoughts.

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Happy to hear you're giving it a try! I think most of the hardware on the macbook pros should be fairly well supported by now. I see they have a wiki page about it. (here in case you haven't seen it already) Please let us know how it goes.

Linux is by far the best OS for the things that I do on a regular basis at work. I used windows for almost a year when I started and found myself having to work around windows to get things done. Instead, I often used my vmware installation of linux until I finally decided to flip them. Now I run windows in vmware the few times I need it for something.

That being said, I am never quite sure how to reply to people who ask if linux is a good choice for them. My initial reaction is "yes!" but I realize that I am so used to it and familiar with its internal workings that it is hard for me to give an objective opinion to someone who isn't. So I usually offer them a live CD and tell them to try it out and see.

While there are a lot of applications available for linux there are some things that aren't quite there yet. Gimp is a perfectly suitable image editor for the things I usually need to do and would probably suffice for most people but for a serious graphics person I'm pretty sure photoshop still wins out in functionality and feature richness. OpenOffice is also a very good suite but I have found a few things that MS Office still does better like mail merges. But then again there are a few things that OpenOffice does better too so it just depends on what you need it for.

Anyway... good luck! I'm afraid I tend to ramble whenever linux is mentioned so I'll just stop right there for now :)

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A member of The Knights Who Say NI!
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That being said, I am never quite sure to reply to people who ask if linux is a good choice for them. My initial reaction is "yes!" but I realize that I am so used to it and familiar with its internal workings that it is hard for me to give an objective opinion to someone who isn't. So I usually offer them a live CD and tell them to try it out and see.

Good comment, and that's probably the best approach.

I had a lot of enertia to trying Linux due to being very deeply into developing systems using Windows. When I did finally take a look at Linux when considering for further developments, it was a question of why I'd not looked earlier!

I found Linux to be so greatly easier and 'better' that Windows for me is not even a question other than as very easy money for support for Windows workarounds (if I could avoid getting bored mute and dumb senseless with that). For a user whom has no interest in computing and just wants to 'get the job done', then I still think that Linux systems work well enough for that. I consider that Linux is certainly a lot less problematic than the Windows licensing and malware nightmare! However, whatever system is used, it (and IT) needs a certain 'sympathy' from the users to work well. I think that for most people, Linux can work much better and much more easily than that certain other OS.

Better still, Linux (and FOSS) promotes good standards and sharing of documents and data. Microsoft operates a very deliberate policy of lock-in and "DRM" to restrict sharing data, regardless of whether it might be 'owned' by you. You can argue that perversely Windows also allows for more 'unwanted' sharing of data due to all the known and continuing regularly discovered security holes and exploits. (No other OS has ever offered such poor security.)


Yep, it is rather easy to enthuse too far about your favoured OS! :-o

Happy crunchin',
Martin

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Life on earth is the global equivalent of not storing things in the fridge.

Well said Martin, well said indeed.

I have had people ask me which is the best distro. ick that is such a loaded question, I usually tell them try them all, pick the one you like the most and that also does what you need it to do..my fav is SuSE. That's just me.

I don;t place any distro over another, although Debian is sexy.

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