Thats the #1 reason i switched to Gentoo. Also i have yet to come across a "bug" in Gentoo other than it being user error.

I've noticed in my brief experience with Linux that, while KDE is pretty, it isn't nearly as stable as Gnome. Mozilla, for instance, routinely crashes when running java chat applets. However, the same Mozilla,running on Gnome, will run the same Java chat applet for days on end.

Paul

Well, by software I mean Jbuilder, kylix, framemaker, borland application server .......... and the likes. All these major software are developed for Redhat first. The rest come later, if ever.

It seems like there are 2 seperate groups that use linux. Those who love to type several lines of script to find a cookie recipie and those who simply want to get on with the job. The biggest complaint about linux by windows users, is that it is usually so damn hard to configure. I fully understand that that is the attraction to a lot of people, but to the average joe using a computer, point and click is much more appealing.
Mandake 8.1 comes about the closest to being anywhere near user friendly for the average person who does not dabble in programming.
I personally think linux closed a large gap with the release of mandrake 8.1. It actually converted me!!

Just curious.. What the hell are you doing in windows (any version after 95) that you keep crashing all the time?? Ive run an audio editing computer using 98se, 200 pro and lately,xp and I dont think ive crashed or locked up seriously any more than 2 or 3 times in 2 years. I am really enjoying learning with mandrake 8.1, but linux, unfortunatly has a long way to go before it becomes a OS that most any computer illiterate old granny can use. Not much point bashing Bill! How many of us are sitting with several billion in the bank because we came up with an idea that was perfect for the time? Idealism is great. Reality is something else!

I don't agree with that... not going to start a war or anything, but I disagree Bill came up with what he has today. First off, he bought DOS to present to IBM, then he got the gui ideas from Mac who in return got from Xerox... So yeah, he didn't totally come up with everything he has, he just built on top of it.

-trickykid

Well, I can tell you what I do that makes my Win box crash so frequently. I open up 'My Computer'. No, honestly! For some strange reason, if I double click on 'My Computer' or 'My Documents' on the desktop the bloody thing goes cock-eyed. I will very shortly (once I've got the courseworks out of the way - the courseworks that I'm doing under Linux for this very reason ) be starting afresh with the lot.

Well, if Windows didn't have the manufacturer's support by writing drivers exclusively for Windows, then Windows users might find that configuring anything to work under Windows was equally as hard - if not more so because you're given virutally no configuration tools! I've got an old scanner (it is sort of a parallel scanner, but it comes with its own powered ISA parallel port card) at home that doesn't have any drivers for it, and guess what - it doesn't work under Windows either! Now, how do I get it to work?

Ok guys, let me tell you. Windows 9x sucks ass. I don't care if its ME or 98 SE it still pretty much is garbage.

Windows XP is awesome though, never crashed on me in a while... just as stable as linux. The problem is your running too old versions of windows on somewhat newer hardware probably. Try running RedHat 6.2 on an Athlon XP 1800+ and we'll see if you have any luck.

just my two cents.

It could be that they're trying to run old versions of Windows on new computers, or it could be that Windows sucks. Both of which you yourself have stated. Oh, and I don't think that WinME is too old for a KT7A (non-Raid, I don't believe in it) with Athlon 1.4GHz (why did they ever start to call them Something XP?), even if it is a crappy OS.

Whats there not to believe? its a fact that RAID improves hard disk performance by a whole lot. I could see why you couldn't afford two identical hard drives though.

I understand your frustration with older hardware Thymox. I have a few old items, sound cards ect left over from win95 days
that are totally useless to me now because no drivers to be found anywhere. Linux or win 200 or xp. I have never personally seen the problem you are having with "my computer or my documents" strange.....
As far as the supply of drivers on Linux is concerned, versus windows, my point exactly. If a person cant run a lot of their hardware on Linux because of not being able to find a driver that works, they are probably going to run it on windows. I have only been using Linux (mandrake 8.1) for a very short time so im not sure what I can or cannot find with it. You should have heard the swearing when I attempted to get my soundblaster 5.1 platinum working with Mandrake!! With windows, download the driver, point and click install and away it went. Linux is proving to be fun to play with and learn from. Perhaps I will get to the stage where typing several lines of script and going through........
To install you need the fred patch.. to install the fred patch you need the lois patch. to install the lois patch you must modify the kernel. to modify the Kernel you need the ralph patch.. on and on and on. Maybe when I get used to it it will be fun....I hope so.

Ok. First of all, if you're using striping then fair enough, but since the size of harddisks is getting so big now, who needs to stripe? Mirroring - only really good if you're going to be doing intensive disk stuff where you really do need a backup should one of the drives fail. If I were to ever use RAID (which, BTW, I do consider to be Redundant Array of INEXPENSIVE Devices, not independent devices) then I would probably go for the striping option - but then I'm quite happy working with multiple partitions both in Linux and in Windows, why would I ever want a single partition that appears to be >40Gb?

I started with redhat4 moved on to rh5.6. then jump to mandrake 7.8 suse 7 then tried out slackware8 and yo know what I liked most of slackware? that you have full control off everything, thats right.
mandrake is cool if your a beeginner but I recomend suse for are starter is easy to setup as mandrake and most powerfull distro

and guys i tried hard on my small networls every most known distro ass the ones mensioned above plus turbolinux caldera conectiva and debian (argggggggggggg!!! I hate debian even it has the best update system)

This is an amazingly long (as in time and length) thread. Go Mandrake!

I have (and still do) used Redhat 7.2, but moved back to Mandrake because I have a dual boot with XP and was hoping Mandrake had support for NTFS in the kernel. Well, it doesn't seem like it does, but I am having much more luck installing programs and transitioning over to Linux with Mandrake. With RedHat I always wanted to go back to XP to look at or run something, but with Mandrake I enjoy the GUI and *drake utilities.
Mandrake!
Mandrake!
Mandrake!

Dude masterc every distro with a 2.2.x 2.4.x kernel reads nfts partitions the only problem is they don't recomend writing on ntfs parts, because you could trash the file system.