Supporting MS products for about 10 years... now that's going to be a switch.

I was one of those luddites most of you guys have had to help check their email or find apps deeper then the desktop. About 4 years ago I had a P1 200 running win98, I used yahoo for mail and occasionally played whatever games its weak little Mach64 could handle, not like I knew what video chip was in it back then. Hell, I have a liberal arts degree.

Then I moved into this decrepit house with two other jokers and we got a DSL line. This was back in the days when those blue box hardware routers from Linksys were still in the ballpark of $200, and as I was in the middle of buying a new machine by components (with help of course, remember... idiot back then), I decided that the P1 200 would be the house router. So, with RedHat 7.1, a lot of ghetto-riffic ethernet cable and an 8-port 10BaseT switch I perma-borrowed off of a friend, I somehow (again, with help), cobbled together a house network. Then the build of the new machine got delayed... so I played around on the RedHat box. Later I turned the new machine into a dual-boot, win98 and Slackware 7.1, then 8.0... etc... Read Running Linux, finally got a kernel to compile, started posting on LQ, moved and had to create a really bizarre double-NAT wireless LAN set-up, then there was LFS, the UltraSparc, we moved clockwatching.net to a software raid array; I think I made a penta-boot once around the winter of '01.

Anyway, four years passed, probably 2-3 dozen distros and versions ago. I've since tried Solaris, all three BSDs, and Irix too... I never really knew much about what windows was like. I had to support it quite a bit while I was learning Linux (not like that process stops), and I really can say I have no use for a Windows box.

*Nix has a learning curve, and a pretty unforgiving one... there's no Recycle bin, nothing like, if you do something stupid, its been done. The operating system does exactly what you tell it to do, and makes no assumptions from there.

An example to think about, Windows, Start->Run->cmd->ping somedomain.tld

It pings 4 times.

*Unix, open a terminal, Xterm, aterm, Eterm, Konsole, Gnome Terminal, why am I assuming X is running, just log in on tty! ping somedomain.tld

It pings until you tell it to stop... the machines power is pulled... or some time in 2030-ish something when the max date integer is reached on 32-bit architecture, and then its questionable what happens.

If you issue rm -rf /*

The machine will delete the whole filesystem, entirely. I've done it because I was bored once, you end up with one directory in /dev (can't remember which offhand) and the /proc mount point.

Cheers,

Finegan

At first it was the cool desktop backgrounds and fancy themes for KDE GUI. Then when XP started the dreaded cd key code for every new install I got a bit tired of spending 100-250 on the latest OS from Billy Boy. Once slack 10 came out that was it for me

This is exactly what I was hoping would come out of my original post. This is great stuff. Perfect explainations as to why anyone would switch.

As for the learning curve, I'm up to it. Since I've been working with computers since about 1983, I feel sure I can handle learning Linux. Will it be a challenge? Of course, but is anything worth learning not a challenge?

Thanks for all the responses.

F_M

kde has a recycl ebin just FYI, but you have a choice of trashing a file or deleting it completly in the right-click context menu(or shift+del).

in windows, you can set the recyclebin to auto-delete files as well.

Fritz_Monroe - I have merged your thread into the existing, longer, thread. They both cover the same question.

Portability, Price, makes old Hardware usable again, fun to tinker with, and has way to many free software titles to choose from

I agree with you Crashmeister

But I also think that using Win or Nix is also a question of what philosophy you feel you are best aligned with. One of the reasons that makes me use Linux the most is because I simply like the community. Simple as that. Sure, one can never disregard the fact that Linux can be a bit of a hastle sometimes even though it is getting better and more user friendly every month. We've all come across webpages that arent properly view unless you are using IE. And we all DO appreciate the old "double-click the setup.exe" file logic. But hey, if one has a slightest interest in computers as such (like I happen to do), then Linux is a brilliant sollution.

To further add to Crashmeisters philosophy. It is proven beyond doubt that Windows has a lot of dodgy things going on in the background that can be a bit scary, especially if you have a cracked copy of their OS. But I think we all have to keep in mind that performing these background dodgy things on a Windows machine also serves the purpose of helping the average user to use his or her computer easier. It isnt like MS put went through all the trouble of making complex background processes just to find out who you are, where you surf and such and such. At least part of these activites are there to help you have an easier ride and a more helpful environment when you sit in front of your computer. If you dont like that, then have a look at the alternative that made this wepsite possible.

Everyone with some basic computer skills can download a copy of MS Win from DC or whereever and make it work without paying for it Im sure. Is it right? No. I dont want to be seen as some copyright pro cause Im not. But it does cost money. It is netiher a matter of being tight or cheap. A legal copy of MS Win doesnt cost a fortune does it. Again -- I like the philosophy and spririt that surrounds Linux and the whole comunity and I am prepared sacrifice a little bit of userfriendliness and time in order to be part of that.

Does anybody agree with me here?

Do you have a reference for this? If so, please share. As far as I can tell, the dates are valid until 2099. So that gives you a few more years of breathing space.

finegan, well, thats why you should use the -c operator along with some number, so you tell it how many times to ping. Its not our fault you didnt use it correctly.

Windows XP doesnt crash with my TV card but Overlay mode sucks up 60% cpu and slow the system immensely . if i open something that requests a sudden HDD bandwidth jump(hashing) it closes

TV card Works ideal in linux. even better multidisplay support then windows
I like the customisability in linux
Native hide border, always on top, multiple INDENDeNT desktops (one program only shows on task bar on its desktop)
Runlevels so i can use p2p in lower levels and dont impede on my work and hog CPU with massive GUIs. easy hardware insatll.
I dont mind bloat as long as i can control it. i cant stop windows using IE and WMP no matter what i do to set Firefox and winamp as default.
but i can remove everything linux has KDE Gnome etc
And the bloat in linux doesnt get fragmented like Windows.


Windows boots the GUI faster but auto start in thregistry and start menu add anoth 30s-5mins to start and be usable

my mandrake10.0 takes about <1min s to KDE (i turned off restore session i hate it lol) booting without an X server is even quicker
my windows from power to Fully working 1m30s



The final straw for me was Windows XP hanging reading certain CDs and DVDs that were burnt.
Windows refused to boot if there was a burnt DVD in my drive during boot just sits there reading it like mad. until i eject it (WHY DOES IT NEED TO READ IT AT ALL GGRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)

Absolutely. Nuff said infact. I can only add to the part about who has a serious use for linux ... students. After you by your copy of windows ... you have to buy office - even if you pay for a copy of SuSe as a student, the OS and Open.Office are still less than half the cost. Can you say: free, ease of use, utility??

Man what a great thread!!

(no more delete *.* huh?!)

I used (and will use) Linux because I wanted to learn something out of it. Plus, one day I plan on having my own server.

Uhm, I dunno about you burzmall, but on my system debian with KDE3.3 boots faster than Win2k does, and win2k is a fresh install, no crap on it.

if you take out the downtime i get with a soon-to-be-fixed bug in the boot process in the yoper devel, yoper boots much faster than win 2k. and it helps that i dont get 3 error messages on bootup either.

"cant find a wav device" - it says this while correctly playing hte startup wav file

i get that one every day. and then i get another one or two "errors du jour"

Compare times from pressing the on button until you can launch an application for a better boot time idea.

Windows presents the desktop before it can be used, you can launch an app when Linux presents it.

In fact, my gentoo install is much faster than Windows (I have total control over what starts up when booting) or any other Linux distro I have used.

My total Linux box that uses half as much of the slower memory (it has 512 MB RAM) of my XP box (it has 1 gig DDR RAM) take within 5-10 seconds of each other (linux taking slightly longer).

What is the problem with boot time anyhow, I just turn off the monitor and let Linux run. I boot with a new kernel or new hardware.