Overwhelmed ..... Not so impressed

[hiwired]

I went out and bought a copy of Linux Mandrake last night. On a whim slapped it on the Desktop and installed it with few problems. Didn't quite understand how the graphical partitioning worked and thought I was creating a New partition and would be able to run Windows also. To make a long story short, I now a have Linux box and windows is bye bye. Messed around a bit (it was late) and figure out how to use a few programs, I am using gnome whatever the hell that is. Keep reading about the command prompt and backslash this mount this unmount that oh and by the way there are very few good games that Linux supports and getting your dial up connection to work requires a 2 year degree. What is the big deal? I am very bored with windows and have always heard that Linux is so much more stable and secure and there is so much more you can do with it.
Seems to me it is extremly limited in the amount of software you can use and not so user friendly. I just cant see studying for months to figure this out with out a good reason to keep going. Can someone explain to me what Linux can do that windows can't? Please set aside the oh Linux is much more stable, Windows very rarely crashes on me.

[jscott]

Then quit; reinstall Windows and go on with your life ;)


Seriously, this is for general Linux questions. Maybe you want the Rants (http://www.linuxnewbie.org/cgi-bin/ubbcgi/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=forum&f=6) messageboard.

[eagel]

Hi there,

I started a couple of days ago with linux also. I already knew some stuff about linux so maybe that makes things easier for me..

The only thing I can say from experience just hang in there!! Once you get it, you won't want to go back to Windows anymore.. Trust me!!

Hang in there ;)

[hiwired]

Okay let me restate as a General Question, Other then stability what are the advantages of Linux over Windows?

[a556789]

Actually,

I find different uses for both. There are tons of good FREE apps out for Linux. Check out freshmeat.org or run rpmdrake and look at the amount of applications that just came with the mandrake CD's. There are lots of useful ones and some that are not so useful. Linux is very cool in the way that you can install the software and get a web server, ftp, telnet, news, samba, and just about any other sort of server you can think about and set it all up yourself for free. There are lots of applications that require Windows to run though like I use Photoshop a lot. Gimp is the open source answer to Photoshop and is a VERY nice program (especially considering it's free) but it's just not as good as Photoshop to me. Lot's of die-hard Linux guys won't run Windows (at least they tell you they don't) but I run both for different things. I find Linux and Windows to be useful. Now if they made certain commercial apps for Linux that I like to use, I probably wouldn't use Windows anymore because Linux is just more fun.

[carwyn]

Its free!!

It's extremely configurable, for example I can choose from a range of window managers/desktop environments, whatever.

I can dig around in the source code and perhaps learn something.

Theres a load of great free software available to download.

It doesn't think it knows better than me!!

I wont be tied to proprietary formats (ie. WMP), playing around with OGG-Vorbis at the mo.

Its got great development tools, GCC et al.

GIMP - don't need to pay zillions for Photoshop!

Great online community. LNO has helped me on numerous occasions.

I'm not forced to use a windowed environment having the option to use the command line for extra speed if I need it.

Can write flexible shell (bash, csh..) scripts to carry out frequently used operations, ie. backing up X or dialling the right ISP according to time of day.

etc.. (Can't think of anything else at the mo but I think you get the point!)

[jscott]

Integrated free development tools -- C/C++, perl, bash, asm (The list goes on and on)

Network standards that actually follow the specs. Very little of this embrace/extend/extinct ****

Infinitly customizable -- Even if the config file does not change something you want, you can alter the source. (Compare this to any MS product)

Gob of documentation, support, forums and other help available -- ALL FREE.

But the best things are: you'll be cooler, grow 4 inches, lose that flab, dress better, smell better and get piles of worship...


...err something like that.

[twofoolish2b]

You have to crawl before you can walk, Linux is the same way. Think about it. :cool:

[ 28 June 2001: Message edited by: twofoolish2b ]

[hiwired]

Good Point, Now got a stupid question (must be no one will answer in tech support forum)
I play a game called everquest which requires windows, sooooo, I need windows on my system. Mandrake is supposed to have a feature that will automatically install on an unused partition. When I first installed it the unused partition was to small so installed right over windows. What I am thinking about doing is just formatting my hard drive and repartitioning. Can I just use the windows format and fdisk off a floppy or is it more complicated?

[twofoolish2b]

Use the Windows format & fdisk off a floppy, if you know how. Another thing try not to post easy questions about game related stuff in the Tech Support Forum, the Tech Support Forum is for questions like "I have a Compaq Smart Array Controller with three SCSI drives running RAID5, How do I make it work with Linux?" and stuff like that. Just thought I would let you know. ;)

[njcajun]

I gotta say that from my experience with lin4win type apps, they all suck. At best, it's got crappy performance. More often than that, there are so many headaches just getting it up and running that it defeats its own purpose, which is to enable the user to test linux without devoting a whole box to it.

It's much easier to dual boot. The best alternative I've seen, if you don't want to dual boot, is VMWare, but it costs a bit more than an off the shelf distribution.

As for the 'General Question', there are so damn many things I could totally go off on right now - Memory management, OS design, customization, access to code and coders, networking stacks, modular vs. integrated, security, protocol support, filesystem support, blah blah blah - the question is almost TOO general. You would really need to specify a bit more what you want to accomplish with your box.

If you wanna surf the web, Windows, by default, has more fonts and wheelmouse support and stuff - but that's really the only advantage it has over Linux, and you can actually load those fonts, along with wheel support into Linux if you want.

Pretty much anything else you wanna do is done as well or better in Linux. Where Linux falls down (if you could call it that - it rarely falls down) is that you really can't rely on a Linux 'Office' product to create '.doc' or '.xls' files. Honestly, that's more of a Windows problem - it's a result of their being closed source and refusing to play nice with others. They take away your choices that way (cool huh). You really have no choice when it comes to business correspondence but to use M$ (unless you do business with Sun, who uses StarOffice as a standard).

If you're gonna run ANY kind of NETWORKED SERVICE - be it a web, mail, file, NFS, NIS, print, fax, DNS or proxy server, Linux is a bazillion times better than windows on every level. You can read pretty much anywhere and come to the same conclusion.

Suit yourself, and just pick the right tool for the job.

[BryanD]

Originally posted by hiwired:
<STRONG>I went out and bought a copy of Linux Mandrake last night. On a whim slapped it on the Desktop and installed it with few problems. Didn't quite understand how the graphical partitioning worked and thought I was creating a New partition and would be able to run Windows also. To make a long story short, I now a have Linux box and windows is bye bye. Messed around a bit (it was late) and figure out how to use a few programs, I am using gnome whatever the hell that is. Keep reading about the command prompt and backslash this mount this unmount that oh and by the way there are very few good games that Linux supports and getting your dial up connection to work requires a 2 year degree. What is the big deal? I am very bored with windows and have always heard that Linux is so much more stable and secure and there is so much more you can do with it.
Seems to me it is extremly limited in the amount of software you can use and not so user friendly. I just cant see studying for months to figure this out with out a good reason to keep going. Can someone explain to me what Linux can do that windows can't? Please set aside the oh Linux is much more stable, Windows very rarely crashes on me.</STRONG>

[BryanD]

I don't know about any one else, but I like the fact that with Linux I don't have to reboot every time I add an app or need to adjust a particular service.