THIS JUST IN: VISTA CAUSES MIGRAINES, POSSIBLE BRAIN DAMAGE

Wallet damage is another side effect of Vista; at least M$ did not get your money.

Checkout PCLinuxOS I will be installing this weekend.... so cool.

"Unstable" ????

I'd have to ask why. I installed Vista Ultimate and it's been the pinnacle of stability. Better than XP which wasn't bad at all. I'd have to suspect a poorly written driver.

Ah ! You must have a lot of time to waste then.

No, I ran the Live CD and believe its worth my time to install, but I'm willing to listen why PCLinuxOS will be a waste.

If you perfer, please PM.

Oh I don't mind posting it to the boards.

I've run nearly every popular version of Linux (see below) since RH 4.0 and none of them offer the ease of configuration, driver support, application availability and speed of a finely tuned Windows system.

Red Hat, Fedora, SUSE, Mandrake, Mepis, Slackware, Ubuntu, Foresight, Vector, CentOS, Scientific Linux, Xandros, Zenwalk, KateOS, Damn Small, Feather, Puppy, Turbo, Gentoo, Debian, Ubuntu, Peanut, FreeBSD, NetBSD, PC-BSD and several others I can't even remember anymore !

I do like DS for the ability to run completely in such a small amount of RAM without a CD or hard disk in place. Now, if it would just recognize all of my hardware I would use it as a small home server.

In most of the places I've worked, an implementation of Unix/Solaris for Oracle databases, Linux webservers (for most web apps) and MS for desktops and domain controllers is really stable, cost effective for most business functions, and pretty easy to manage because only 1 OS has to be known by the different IT departments as they are usually broken down by management.

I think Linux is more customizable _if one wants to put the time into it_ but the last time I loaded one up it took more system resources to run than XPSP2 and in fact was quite comparable to Vista. As to stability, the differences are minimal on comparable "good' systems. Linux will run stable on any system though and under any load for any length of time making it perfect for inexpensive servers. Note that I had previously made the comparison of a 4X4 truck (Linux) and a sports car (Windows) and it still holds true. For workstation use Windows is at least as good as long as the cache hit doesn't go over 3GB. Linux simply doesn't care about load. It will work and work until the hardware fails. It's not particularly quick nor as efficient at most tasks as is Windows, but it's not about to take a BSOD break.

Right on the money !

[EDIT] P.S. Whoever in bloody Hell got the idea of starting every application name with a freakin "K" should be stood up at attention and given a Max Wedgie until their eyeballs roll back !

I've tried making the switch time and again. It just never works out. Slackware was close as was Ubuntu. Zenwalk was pretty good as well. Here's my advice for anyone considering Linux :

1) Backup all your files to an external hard drive and I'd include a disk image of C:.

2) Don't expect applications even close to being as well developed as those using the Windows environment.

3) Check all of your hardware for compatibility.

4) Plan your personal schedule to allow you a lot of time on the system.

5) Expect to be disappointed.

That is exactly how I feel. If Dell had a PC configured with Linux (no hardware driver issues) that had an easy way to get software on it without command line requirements, I really think more people would go to it. BigIron and VMWare are nice to play with as a VPC, but for me to really begin using Linux, it needs to be able to run many more MS programs or have apps that very closely resembles it with all the functionality like OpenOffice, for example, which is one of the apps that did it right the first time by allowing for you to convert information in both directions.

It would be interesting to have an OEM selling something like SuSE or Ubuntu installed however something tells me that the cost of their licenses for Windows would go up as the result of selling less Vista installations. 8O

As to VMware, I would have hoped they saw this coming when MS bought Connectix last year.

Regarding Linux, the diversity that has made it virtually a household buzzword is also its major weakness. Linux development would have outpaced Microsoft tenfold if the distro supporters would have rallied around a common program and driver management tool that could be ported to KDE, GNOME and Xfce. Without a good, well-developed foundation, applications are difficult if not impossible to develop and hardware manufacturers certainly aren't going to re-write their drivers for every distribution that simply feels that it has a better way of handling hardware. Particularly when distributions changes their structures so frequently as to make updating/legacy support beyond 18 months wishy at best. For those that are really bored, here's an example of these problems from my not too distant personal experience.

So I was thinking one day how I'd like to try my hand with a new distribution. I hadn't tinkered with one in a few months and there was a new kernel and some new players around that whispered just the right things to peak my interest. Things like "fast","effecient" and "clean". There's Zenwalk, Vector and Xubuntu which are all based on XFCE. Supposedly the light-weight alternative to Gnome and KDE. So I download the latest version of Xubuntu via FTP and burn the iso to disk. I shut down my system and turn off the power to my Winderz drives so I won't accidentally screw them up. I proceed to install the Linux and everything goes smooth as silk. I get up to a working desktop and start trying to figure out how to get Xorg to manage my dual-monitor configuration that's connected to my slightly outdated ATI PCI-E X600 video card. First I have to update the driver to the video. I get an ATI driver from the Ubuntu repository and somehow it managed to get installed incorrectly. I have garbled video after I rebooted the system. I made a few feeble attempts at salvaging the OS however I eventually decided it would just be better to wipe and reinstall the OS as there was nothing on the drive and a full reinstall only takes about 20 mintes anyway.

So I reinstall the OS and then reinstall the driver for the video card. This time everythings working and I'm on a GNU high ! Then I go to reconfigure Xorg.conf to address that dual-monitor issue. Can you see where this is heading ? Yep, it took me the better part of three hours to get Xorg.conf to work with a dual-monitor setup even though I had the right video drivers installed. So I get my desktop finally working and then I take a look at that sad excuse of a file manager and the only thought that came to mind was that Midnight Commander didn't have a whole lot of competition. I copied some MP3's that I have on DVD-R back to a folder I created in my profile and then attempted to play them. Yeah. That didn't work. Seems that the only format supported out of the box is .ogg. Not that there's anything wrong with that ! So I fire up that one wonder that *buntu's are known for and by golly I downloaded me a MP3 player! Specifically XMMS which is a WinAmp clone ! Well, it will play MP3's after you install the plugins so I did and then it did. After I configured my sound card using ALSA. Well I'm cooking with gas now ! I've got Firefox and XMMS working so I'm happy ! How about email ? Nothing installed ? Oh that's OK, I'll just download another one. So I download/install Sylpheed which reminds me a whole loit of Eudora Pro 4.X which was one of my favorite clients. Except the installer evidently went somewhere other than into the OS. I couldn't find hide nor hair of the program no matter where I looked. Well I'll just download it again and pay more attention this time. Afterall i should be paying more attention to these tasks shouldn't I ? Well I finally get it installed and configured for one email account. It's getting better ! OK, so now I need to burn a CD. Rot row ! The application has some kind of hopefully unique combination of licensing and configuration tool. I waded through it but then it told me that I didn't have the necessary backend components installed for the frontend to operate. And on ... and on .... and on ! After wasting the better part of two nights, I pop in a little CD that I made with a few HDD utilities and DEBUG'ed the hard drive until it was sterilized !

Sorry, I'll clarify.

Nope but the tone in their article seemed to indicate that they were surprised (and outraged of course) that MS would take this tack.

Dell and other OEM's could back Ubuntu which has the best development team in the world. I wish I knew how they pulled it off but they really rocked the Linux world. Also note that Dell to some extent and HP to a much larger extent both have significant backgrounds in developing UNIX variant. HP is probably sitting on the proverbial gold mine of information after buying up Compaq which had previously bought up DEC.

If Apple has proven anything it's that a company that has a monopoly can certainly loose it. MS charges a pretty penny for their OS and softwares and the prices are going up significantly. If I were in charge of a OEM I'd certainly be considering something like a customized version of a Linux distribution for sale on budget PC's here in America and definitely overseas. Also, definitely on a laptop which isn't going to have a lot of peripherals (drivers) to be concerned with.

Wow, you crazy! Tested every Linux version!? WOW.

photographer,

I hear what are you saying. Just wish there was a little competition in the industry and microsoft would let at least some compititors exist --- like vmware as they have an excellent product (not trying to market their product just saying its better than vpc 2007).

Cant blame microsoft for wanting to make money --- i hope microsoft does not break adobe as then the dominance would be all but complete --- just think that fierce compitition helps the consumer --- however microsoft solution is not to compete by giving a better product --- but just eliminate compitition --- there is difference.

The primary issue for me is that Microsoft wields great power in the Nation's economy. Its policies, software, and standards influence numerous business consumers and developers of technology , and, may result in economic prosperity or economic failure, for a number of businesses of all sizes throughout the country, as well as entire segments of an industry. The purpose of the antitrust laws is to refrain from one company controling an entire industry and to encourage compitition; however, in this case microsoft is eliminating all compitition and can control or effect all industries that rely on the pc in addition to the pc industry itself. Thus, the decisions and policies of microsoft can have an economic impact on the entire nations economy.

I am business owner -- Dont necessarily disagree with what your are saying -- just think the microsoft monopoly is starting to become a different type of animal that has not been seen before in the history of industry. The company that controls the pc can have an effect on all industries even if not directly related to the pc industry. I do not mind microsoft having a monopoly but great care should be taken so as ensure this power is not abused.

photographer,

just posted a topic in forum that relates to following article--

http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut [...] _cost.html

i dont know what to think but would like hear from you --- would just like to get all around opinions. If interested, my topic can be found here:

http://forumz.tomshardware.com/sof [...] 34784.html