Linux

Very nice. I have used linux since late 1994. Works great for me. Selling on ebay especially is easy with linux, I do all my picture editing/uploading/listing with scripts.

i

What did you expect?

co

You immediately went UP a couple of notches, in my estimation, Gunner. :-)

OK, so I'm a Mepis lover too.

If you want to upgrade to 6.0-1, here is a guy that I have bought from several times, who has 6.0-1 on both DVD and CD:-

(and NO, we're not related, I've just found him to be VERY affordable and honest)

Kind regards.

Lewis.

*****

But can you insult Liberals as well with it?

My rather old Linux computer at work has been up for 407 DAYS, now! That is mostly due to a long stretch of really reliable power, here, we don't have it on a UPS, even. When I run Windows CAD applications, I run them under Win 2K Pro under VMware, which is an excepional product, but not free. Win 2K apps actually run FAR more reliably with VMware isolating the OS from the horrors of the real world. I often leave Windows up in the background for weeks at a time, flipping back and forth as needed. So, I have NO dedicated Windows computer at all, now, I do both on the same box.

Power isn't as relaible at home, so I usually don't stay up more than a couple months at a time. I have even kicked hackers out and tightened up the security without rebooting Linux. No need to, you can restart network components easily without a reboot.

Email is quite secure as long as you don't do something foolish. But, hackers CAN get in. I've been successfully hacled twice. One time they did a LOT of damage, the other time they just loaded a port scanner, and I killed it and tracked down how they got in and closed that hole. I now have "denyhosts" that watches for too many failed login attempts from the same IP address and shuts off access from that IP for a week. Unless a new vulnerability shows up in older Linux kernels, I think I'm pretty much immune to these games, now.

Jon

I haven't booted into the small windows partition I left on my laptop in months. You can download the free vmware player for linux, then download the browser appliance and edit its config file to point to your w2k cd (or an .iso of it) and reformat and reinstall w2k on it and run it that way without needing to purchase vmware itsself. It was asked many times on vmware's support forums if this is legit and they are fine with it. I'm going to spring for the full workstation next year after setting up a dual boot on a spare hard disk, then installing the player trial under each os and creating a virtual machine using the raw drive and was able to boot either os inside the other so I can dual boot and run the other os at the same time. Sort of having your cake and eating it too. I played with linux years ago and came back to it a couple years ago when I needed to reinstall xp for the second time in less than a year. I was amazed at the number of things that used to work fine in windows 2000 that stopped working in XP and was further amazed at how well a free "hobby" OS can run espicaly when compared to an OS by a multi billion dollar company.

I also have a small win2k partition on my linux laptop, I use it only to program my welding machine.

igor

Eugene wrote: I was

Yes, this is TOTALLY amazing. If MicroSoft WANTED to make the system reliable, they could certainly do so. Of course, they are hobbled by needing to run boot-from-floppy, no OS games from the early 1980's, and other insane decisions they made.

On the other hand, people who do this for a living, and have the $13,000 a year Microsoft developer's library subscription, can actually do as well. I'm glad Linux support is more reasonable.

Jon

======================= My older laser printer [Winwriter 400] and flatbed scanner that worked fine on w98 shot craps on W2K and I had to replace them. These still work fine on a backup box running w98.

Last windoz upgrade for me --

Unka' George (George McDuffee) .............................. Only in Britain could it be thought a defect to be "too clever by half." The probability is that too many people are too stupid by three-quarters.

John Major (b. 1943), British Conservative politician, prime minister. Quoted in: Observer (London, 7 July 1991).

buy it now works for me..at a total of $2.27

Particularly when Im on dialup. Thanks!

Now..a big question..freeing up disk space. Simply uninstall the packages I dont care about or dont use?

Gunner

Rule #35 "That which does not kill you, has made a huge tactical error"

I did rather well over the weekend. Shrug. Though Im using Agent 3.3 under Wine..so its something Im comfortable with. And the sig files transfered just fine.

Gunner

Rule #35 "That which does not kill you, has made a huge tactical error"

Not for me :(

Say what you will, I think xp works significantly better, and is significantly more stable than 98. I do think however, that each major upgrade has delivered only what they promised to deliver in the previous version.

I am interested in Linix, but stuck on the work side for the forseeable future.

I also wonder how many times you can issue a security patch due to "a buffer overflow issue" before you have your programmers check each buffer they create for over flow as a policy. Apparently several thousand times is not enough.

jk

What's a windows box?

That sounds familiar. I think I had a computer one time that had MS-DOS 5.0, which I quickly upgraded to DRDOS. Also, note that assumptions we never give a second thought are often proven wrong.

That race was over so long ago nobody in the 'nix world even remembers when it was run... though the fact that msn.com ran Unix as late as '99 might be some indication of the ability of NT in the server world. On my desktop, Windows never even showed up for the race.

Just a given for millions of people.

Are you familiar with

? Mepis is at #4 and losing ground. Knoppix is #11 and also dropping.

Yoper sounds like something to try, eh? Holding steady at #91. ;-)

============== The suits have heads denser than depleted uranium.

Think of the number of times Intel tried to patent/trademake a number and were told they couldn't do that in the US.

4004,8080,8088, 8186,8286, etc. I don't know if this finally penetrated, or their trademark guy retired or died.

Unka' George (George McDuffee) .............................. Only in Britain could it be thought a defect to be "too clever by half." The probability is that too many people are too stupid by three-quarters.

John Major (b. 1943), British Conservative politician, prime minister. Quoted in: Observer (London, 7 July 1991).

the hot newbie distro at the moment is Ubuntu. Knoppix is pretty good too.

Distros (OS distributions) come in two versions these days. A Live version..the entire operating system is on a CD, along with all manner of useful programs, and an Install version..where you actually install it on your computer. Sometimes "dual booting"..allowing you to run a version of Linux AND Windows. At boot up..it asks you which you want to run.

A Live distribution is exactly that. You boot with the CD in the drive..and it runs the OS from the CD. Most ask if you want a small swap file on one of your hard drives, and in the OS..it will ask you if you want to save your settings, for when you boot from the CD again. Very safe, very civilized

The big advantage of Live distributions..is the ability to check out all the various flavors, by simply booting from the CD. When you log out..it goes away until the next time you want to play with it. You simply remove the CD from the drive..reboot and you are back to Winblows again.

Some of the distros are so small..they will run on a mini cd, or a memory stick or memory card. Some will allow you to take that old 386 laptop and turn it into a Linux box and actualy do Stuff with it.

Boot from floppy drive.

Simply Mepis

Is a decent distro..and has the Live and the Install both on the same CD. So after playing with the live version...you can simply install it on the box.

Knoppix is at least as good for a newbie..maybe even better for the Live cd.

Best thing Ive found, is pick up an old 450-800 mhz pc, with at least

512meg memory and a 3-6 gig hard drive, and use it as a learning box. Said boxes are at most...$25-30 at yard sales or surplus computer places.

Get down and wrestle with it. you arent gonna hurt anything.

The one caviat Ive found with most versions of Linux..is the modem. Winmodems...internal windows operated modems..may or may not work with your version of linux. For that reason..Ive snagged all the US Robotics 56k external modems I could find at the Salvation Army etc (no more than $5 each) and plug em into a serial port.

USR is probably the most supported modem in the Western World,,and ALL versions of linux will work with 99.99999% of them.

Same with your basic network card. Ive only found one that all the various versions didnt identify on their own..and it is a wierd bastard that requires its own driver.

If you have broad band..you can go to the Distrowatch link above, pick a version of linux you want..and click on the download links..and download the ISO file. Which is kinda sorta a ZIP file. Use your cd writer to make a working copy of the OS..and have fun..and frustration and fun and frustration and fun learning it. Most are about 650 megs in size..so if you burn it to a cd..use a 700 meg cd, rather than a 650 meg CDR-W.

Ive found..that if you are a heavy windows user..it may be a tad more difficult to learn Linux than if you are a total newbie. Windows users are used to things working in such a way..and Linux can be quite different.

My wife is a "end user" with no interest or ability to putter around with Windows..and she had far far less trouble adapting to Linux than I did. And she is both blond and Polish.......

Course she wasnt networking 5 boxes 4 of which were various flavors of Windows, two Stacks of Disks and a proxy server. Chuckle

Try it..you will like it. Sooner or later

Gunner

Rule #35 "That which does not kill you, has made a huge tactical error"

Or you can have a mobile rack, and use a separate hard drive for any installed OS you want. The motherboard senses which drive you're using. Quick and safe, but you can't access files across systems of course.

...

Hey, can I check my paradigm? I've never looked at Unix because it won't run the software I use. Mastercam, Autocad, Rhino, NCPlot, Camsoft, etc. I have enough trouble with computers that I don't need to add trouble with running software on an OS it wasn't developed for.

Correct?

Karl

Having worked with Windows since 3.0 I would rate W2K as most stable and least annoying. 98 although I have seen it stated by MS as being 32bit still had large amounts of 16bit code in use and no where near as stable as the proper 32bit Windows OS. Although I find XP stable I find a lot of the new features introduced since W2K just give it an overall more annoying feel.

This buffer overflow issue always seemed like laziness to me. I have worked with several programmers that regularly produced them but one in particular springs to mind. He would regularly have potential buffer overflow issues and other faults in his projects and would fix them when they were picked up in testing but he would do it all again in the next project so the message didn't seem to sink in. In the software in question to problems were trivial to code out he just didn't bother to do it in the first time around.

No idea. run a live CD, dowload and install WINE..and try

Gunner

Rule #35 "That which does not kill you, has made a huge tactical error"