Vista retail not sellling - surprisingly..

PROLIANT

I am a hardend fan of windows, I also like linux because it gives greater technical insight in to an operating system/computer function and allows more avenues to explore.

anewman

Linux is certainly much cheaper than Windows. Linux is better coded than Windows, but Windows just has mass market appeal. You can use the software other people use, and the interface is usually more intuitive for getting things you want done.

If anyone was just using a PC for *ONLY* internet browsing, word processing and e-mail, a Linux system would be ideal.

robt_2

anewman wrote: »

Linux is certainly much cheaper than Windows. Linux is better coded than Windows, but Windows just has mass market appeal. You can use the software other people use, and the interface is usually more intuitive for getting things you want done.

If anyone was just using a PC for *ONLY* internet browsing, word processing and e-mail, a Linux system would be ideal.

Exactly - and the new £99 thing from Elonex is designed for exactly that, and runs a flavour of Linux too

BillScarab

anewman wrote: »

Didn't know that. That's a shame. Obviously going for the mass market. Will put the price of the eee pc up by quite alot I'd rather have it without XP myself.

The new version of the Asus Eee will be available with XP OR Linux. The Linux one will be a fair bit cheaper though.

FWIW Lnux isn't built around the Unix platform, it was built to be Unix compatible. It uses a lot of components from the GNU OS which was a similar project but Linux doesn't use any actual Unix code.

wolfman

tomsolomon wrote: »

I'm sorry but you couldnt be further from the truth.....

OK initially when you install Linux you have to do a little configuration. But after that it couldnt be any simpler.....
You dont have wizards to install programs and apps you just add the programs you want and Linux installs it for you.

No, no, no. Linux can require a lot of time and learning. How simple it is depends upon two things. What you want to do, and what hardware you have.

It is getting much better. But I've still yet to come across a system where (and take your pick) power management (hibernate and suspend) work, wireless, odd scanners and printers, mobile phones, sata/raid cards, widescreen monitors etc...

I'm not saying that it's not good. I use it. I'm just saying how easy it is depends upon your pc and what you intend to do with it.

PROLIANT wrote: »

Linux is built around the industrial strength UNIX platform, and because most divies who write viruses compile them to win32 construct you will find Linux/Unix very secure and not as such bullet proof but less vulnerable to attack.

It's not actually built on UNIX but takes it's design from UNIX. Often described as "Unix-like". Made up of the Linux kernel and GNU libraries, hence often referred to as GNU/Linux.

anewman wrote: »

If anyone was just using a PC for *ONLY* internet browsing, word processing and e-mail, a Linux system would be ideal.

Yep, I quite agree.

tomsolomon

wolfman wrote: »

No, no, no. Linux can require a lot of time and learning. How simple it is depends upon two things. What you want to do, and what hardware you have.

It is getting much better. But I've still yet to come across a system where (and take your pick) power management (hibernate and suspend) work, wireless, odd scanners and printers, mobile phones, sata/raid cards, widescreen monitors etc...

To be fair Ive only realy had problems with Wireless and Audio but then you sound like you've use Linux alot more than I have...

wolfman

tomsolomon wrote: »

To be fair Ive only realy had problems with Wireless and Audio but then you sound like you've use Linux alot more than I have...

Not loads, on and off since uni years back. But I use it full time now on about 7 different pc's.

It can be very easy, easier than Windows by a long way. On my Dell XPS it works without a single problem. It just depends what you've got. I keep an install script for every system, so that if I need to reinstall I can do and get it fully setup by running that one script.

SATA cards can sometimes be a problem. I'm hoping the card I've got in the post will be ok. I used to have loads of strange kernel panics and freezes with my Core 2 Duo desktop. No idea why, it just stopped happening once Feisty came out.

And so on etc... My advice is, if switching, or buying any new hardware always google it to see how it gets on with Linux. Stick with nVidia graphics cards, and known wireless cards if possible.

superscaper

Every single piece of hardware and peripheral I have at the moment (in use and spare) works with my installed XP. Yet I've tried numerous linux distros and not been able to get a single one of them to work with just the minimum hardware I wanted them to. The reason I gave up on them was because it was such a pain to mess about with and taking up far too much of my time (which just ended up in dead ends anyway with hardware) when things go wrong, at least it's relatively easy to fix something going wrong in XP. What it could do in its limited form was nice and neat but I saw no glaring advantage over Windows other than I could install it on as many machines as I wanted but that's a bit moot if it doesn't do what you want.

turbobob

superscaper wrote: »

Every single piece of hardware and peripheral I have at the moment (in use and spare) works with my installed XP. Yet I've tried numerous linux distros and not been able to get a single one of them to work with just the minimum hardware I wanted them to. The reason I gave up on them was because it was such a pain to mess about with and taking up far too much of my time (which just ended up in dead ends anyway with hardware) when things go wrong, at least it's relatively easy to fix something going wrong in XP. What it could do in its limited form was nice and neat but I saw no glaring advantage over Windows other than I could install it on as many machines as I wanted but that's a bit moot if it doesn't do what you want.

How long ago are you talking though?

I first tried Linux a good few years back (Redhat 6? I think). Its hardware support was not good. OK I could get in running but it wouldn't support my sound card, modem etc.. Just printing in something other than plain text or installing true type fonts seemed to be a mammoth task. I stuck at it for months learning stuff like how to re-compile the kernel, but never did get all my hardware working properly. Eventually I got bored of it and wiped it.

I left Linux alone for years then. Recently I decided to install Ubuntu 7.10. And to my surprise it pretty much just worked. It installed, it found all my hardware, found my network, asked me if I wanted to add all the latest updates... All without having to find a driver disk for anything. Adding programs is a simple matter of choosing from a drop down list and having it download and install them for you automatically. So basically its moved on a hell of a lot since the early days. I've only had to compile one thing from source so far (VMWare) but not that many people will need to use that I guess, and it was fairly painless. Theres also a huge knowledge base on the online forums for Ubuntu so most problems are not insurmountable...

Will it replace Windows for me totally? No not yet. I do play the odd game and I use lots of video encoding stuff in Windows which doesn't really have a decent equivalent in Linux yet. But its not that far off.

What advantages does it have over Windows then? For me my main issue with Windows is not the OS itself (since they've been based on Windows NT) but all the crap that almost inevitably gets installed with third party software. E.g. a printer driver these days is not just a driver but a 300mb download which installs an auto updater, adware... Everything seems to want to install an updater, and a service which runs on start up. You also have to install anti virus, anti everything else, firewall.. Very soon your nice new Windows installation starts to chug along. Its very hard to avoid.

Linux simply does not have these issues. Its not to say it couldn't happen if it were to be specifically targeted but in general it doesn't for now.. One thing is that to make any system changes you have to use the administrator account. By default on Windows you *only* have an administrator account. This simple protection goes a long way I think.

BillScarab

turbobob wrote: »

What advantages does it have over Windows then? For me my main issue with Windows is not the OS itself (since they've been based on Windows NT) but all the crap that almost inevitably gets installed with third party software. E.g. a printer driver these days is not just a driver but a 300mb download which installs an auto updater, adware... Everything seems to want to install an updater, and a service which runs on start up. You also have to install anti virus, anti everything else, firewall.. Very soon your nice new Windows installation starts to chug along. Its very hard to avoid.

Linux simply does not have these issues. Its not to say it couldn't happen if it were to be specifically targeted but in general it doesn't for now.. One thing is that to make any system changes you have to use the administrator account. By default on Windows you *only* have an administrator account. This simple protection goes a long way I think.

I'd agree totally about the bloatware that tends to get installed with Windows applications. I bought a Canon printer and ran there install disc. I think I ended up with five new icons on my Desktop! Nowadays where possible I just let Windows manage the devices if it can rather than installing all the crap from the manufacturer.

As for administrator accounts I use Vista at home which works in a very similar way as Linux regarding User accounts.

I've played with Linux at home but to be honest I really wasn't that fussed about it, it was OK and it worked but it didn't really make me want to ditch Windows.

I can't really see it taking over any time soon. Unless Game manufacturers start writing games that run on Linux there'll always be a market for Windows.