What, no Linux talk?

[MrBobVilla]

OS X is based off of Unix, not Linux. So it's not really a Linux flavor, but rather a Unix flavor.  

[Johnarra]

Skye.mu

As you can see from this screenshot and the fact that it's date is really old; I'm a linux user XP (yes that's right; I can't be bothered to go through the long process of print screen, taking it from my clipboard; pasting it into KWord and then saving it. Far too long) And of course I am an obcesser of having more than one desktop; so I have five. Not really much point since I don't have the new features on my Suse; but still...I like having lots of Muse-Matt photos pasted around 3nodding

Oh and yeah; I use KDE 3.4 too...A little out of date...I need to get the new version of Suse or something...Perhaps I'll wander over to KDElook and get a new change of icons... rolleyes

You know I've always thought about moving to mandriva...but...meh. I like my whole way of things now 3nodding Although I wouldn't mind having some kind of windows partition...just so I could use all of my old art software...but then again...I kind of hate windows now rofl too slow... cry

try openSuSe 10.1 wink it's very nice  

[Johnarra]

MrBobVilla

Well I like Trillian as my instant messenger, and in my personal opinion it beats out any other program except for maybe Adium for OSX. Adium is pretty nice too..

I think the real problem with Linux is that it is just so rough. It is like they have this elitest attitude that if you don't know how everysingle little thing in your OS works then you shouldn't be using it. I am a Software Engineer and I do have experiance with Linux. But I really hate that elitist attitude that is prevalent among Linux users. In my opinion Mac OSX is a cleaner, nicer system anyway.

Microsoft doesn't allow you to do anything in your own OS. i don't know what's more elitist. almost the same goes for MAC but i believe they allow you to do more.

MrBobVilla

As for fragmenting, that is really up to your file system format. The ones out there that do auto format, like XFS, are really cool. Though XFS has its own problems, mainly when you have 32 bit systems working in coordination with 64 bit ones.

just use a (64 bit) linux version, every fragmenting problem is solved magically ^^

MrBobVilla

As for spyware and that kind of thing, that is an invalid arguement. If a Linux version was the most popular OS, there would be tons of spyware and spam for it too. It would actually be probably worse as most people wouldn't be smart enough to know how to properly prevent such problems on an enviroment as complicated as linux.

a linux distro which is setup good doesn't allow spyware or virusses to change system files or destroy the kernel.
in contrast with windows which can be crashed quite easily by crashing the graphical interface.

MrBobVilla

My favorite thing about windows is actually the integrated browser. I think having an IE window that automatically switches seemlessly to a file browser window when I type C: into the address is just awesome. I use this feature all the time and until some other operating system makes an integrated browser that works just as well, I definitally won't be switching anytime soon.

one word: Konqueror.

MrBobVilla

And of course I need my games. smile Thats the whole reason I spend so much time in making my PC work as fast as possible and have the best hardware I can justify/afford having. Which actually isn't that great at all, but I am happy knowing that whatever I get, I will make it work as well as it possibly can.

install windows, install linux. game on windows. do everything else on linux wink  

[Johnarra]

it's not linux based, it's unix based which is almost any OS
probably they used some idea's out of linux just like windows does.  

[MrBobVilla]

Gaim doesn't work very well, and gives you medoicre gaming performance at best. As far as Microsoft supposedly not allowing you to do anything in your own OS, I don't see how that is the case. It's not as hackable as most linux variants maybe but still whenever I want to change my look and feel or how something works I am able to do some. Could you provide an example of something you wanted to do in windows and were unable to do?

And 64 bit linux only works if you have a 64 bit processor of course..which not everyone does.

Linux distros allow just as much spyware and junk as windows, in fact out a misconfigured linux flavor can do much more serious harm to you than windows can. And of course linux is a lot easier to misconfigure than windows. The real fact is that linux isn't popular enough to attract spyware and viruses. If the average person adopted linux or windows it would be even worse, because the average person wouldn't know enough to configure whatever linux version they were using to avoid the problems.

I am not a big fan of Konqueror myself. It is a little bit of a windows wanna be in my opinion and doesn't really have much going for it. But I admit I have only use dit in passing. I haven't spent a week configuring ita an dtesting it all out.


And I wouldnt do everything else on linux because a lot of my favorite programs are windows based or just plain work better in windows. Nero, Trillian, Photoshop, WinDVR, and Word/Excell are all examples of that. And almost all the best software that is open source works on windows as well, so in my opinion it is a far superior solution.


I am very curious though. Could you tell me what you like about your favorite linux flavor that you couldn't do on windows? Also, I am even more interesting in what your weekly life is like in using your os. What do you use it for on a daily basis? What kinds of things do you do?  

[Johnarra]

newest gaim works like a charm, and gaming.... for gaming you should go work in windows and never let your instant messnger on when your gaming...
trillian uses even more memory than windows live messenger so i wouldn't let it running when i'm gaming ^^

as far as changing things in your linux?
there are really no limits to what you can change with a little time to find out how to do it...

it's true that securing your linux takes a bit of work, at least it has to be done only once in contrast to windows which has only patches to solve the real serious problems, but they are like a small patch on a enormous fleshwound.

and a lot of problems with the linux security can be solved by forcing people to set a strong root password ^^

comparing how windows programs work on linux is really not fair as the way both OS'es work is totally different...
but linux has some pretty good burning programs as well, newest Gaim works like a charm, photoshop is being developed for linux wink , and openoffice gets better by the day and supports file encryption. (Microsoft is even being forced to support openoffice fileformats from now on.)

and i likethe fact that SuSe and a lot of other linux distro's have an openGL rendered desktop with some pretty nice effects. it's even faster then the original desktop.
let's see how fast Windows Vista is with their nice 3D desktop working on directX (which has a 250 MB library by the way ^^, instead of the 250 kb library of OpenGL)  

[MrBobVilla]

I think flashy desktops are just useless. I'd rather go back to the command line at that point. Trillian on my desktop uses 9 megs of ram. Out of 1024 total on the computer I am not too worried... But really I have two comptuers on a kvm and I run Trillian on the server computer while I play games on the more powerful pc.

As for changing things in linux, of course there is a lot you can do. Really I was asking you what you wanted to change in windows that you were unable to. That would be interesting to know.

I don't compare how programs physically work, I compare their ease of use, and efficiency. What burning program do you use for linux? I have always had trouble with them. = Open office is still trash in my opinion compared to Microsoft office.

As for security, here is an Excerpt from an artical at Techworld.com:

"Windows XP Professional saw 46 advisories in 2003-2004, with 48 percent of vulnerabilities allowing remote attacks and 46 percent enabling system access, Secunia said.

Suse Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) 8 had 48 advisories in the same period, with 58 percent of the holes exploitable remotely and 37 percent enabling system access. Red Hat's Advanced Server 3 had 50 advisories in the same period - despite the fact that counting only began in November of last year. Sixty-six percent of the vulnerabilities were remotely exploitable, with 25 granting system access.

Mac OS X doesn't stand out as particularly more secure than the competition, according to Secunia. Of the 36 advisories issued in 2003-2004, 61 percent could be exploited across the Internet and 32 percent enabled attackers to take over the system. The proportion of critical bugs was also comparable with other software: 33 percent of the OS X vulnerabilities were "highly" or "extremely" critical by Secunia's reckoning, compared with 30 percent for XP Professional and 27 percent for SLES 8 and just 12 percent for Advanced Server 3. OS X had the highest proportion of "extremely critical" bugs at 19 percent.

As for the old guard, Sun's Solaris 9 saw its share of problems, with 60 advisories in 2003-2004, 20 percent of which were "highly" or "extremely" critical, Secunia said. "

http://www.techworld.com/security/news/index.cfm?newsid=1798

I think its safe to say windows has a lot of vulnerabilities, but is also the one being scrutinized the most. The only real reason you are so secure in linux is because nobody bothers to try hacking it as it just isn't popular enough and a lot of the hackers have a vendetta against microsoft. And of course security analists focus their efforts on windows as well.