Re: [SLUG] another reason for linux - part two

From: Tim Wright (t.wright1@mindspring.com)
Date: Sat Aug 14 2004 - 22:59:59 EDT


On Saturday 14 August 2004 14:20, you wrote:
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
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>
> On Thursday 12 August 2004 10:01 am, Steve Szmidt wrote:
> > On Thursday 12 August 2004 06:52 am, Robert Foxworth wrote:
> > > Another reason for linux ...
(Snip)
> > Which brings up an interesting question. How many here use XP, or
> > anything past w2k SP 2?
(Snip)
> This brings it into the second interesting question.
>
> How many here ONLY use or rely on Linux?
>
> I.e. you can have it but only use it strictly for amusement, and would be
> none the worse if it disappeared.
> - --
> Steve
(Snip)

I've been MS-free at home since 1999. After I replaced my winmodem with a
hardware modem, the only reason to run Windows was the once-a-year TurboTax.
When my NT 4.0 partition went bluescreen, I stopped using anything that
touched Microsoft. This is an all-Linux environment. I've been crash-free at
home for five years and spoiled rotten because of it.

At work, my NT 4.0, SP6 system, a PII HP Vectra with 128M RAM was recently
replaced (The old box died from excessive disk fragmentation) by a PIII Dell
with 256M RAM running XP, and it's slower than the 32M Win95 P1 Toshiba that
preceded the Vectra. These things still hang and freeze about once a week
and I have to yank the cord from the wall to restart.

I've run Knoppix from the CD on the company's Dell (and the Vectra before
that) at work, and XP's slow speed has nothing to do with the hardware. I
think Windows XP is yet another defective piece of sh** from the Microsoft
Monopoly. The 1999-vintage Caldera eDesktop 2.4 (kernel 2.2.14) on my IBM
300GL at home with only 96M RAM still outperforms my at-work NT and XP boxes
in speed, efficiency, stability, security, and general reliability. When I
upgrade my home machine to SuSE 9.0 with KDE 3, the 2.6 kernel, etc, plus
more memory, I'll leave anything from MS on the far side of the horizon.

While my home has been a Microsoft-free zone, I have to use Windows at work
because things like CircuitCAM and the Baan ERP desktop are locked into
Windows. The trainer Aegis sent to teach us CircuitCAM was particularly
opinionated and obnoxious over anything that didn't originate in Redmond. The
only thing he hated more than Macintosh was anything from Adobe.

As soon as I figure out a way to move the NTFS partition on the hard drive,
the Dell I use at work is going dual-boot. If I can get CircuitCAM and the
Baan software to run under WINE, my cube could also become a MS-free zone.

If anything, Microsoft Windows in its many flavors and incarnations has
helped me to better appreciate UNIX/Linux and all its variants.

Oops, this was not intended to be a screed, but the change to Linux-only at
home was something like trading a Yugo for a Mercedes, and after finding
something better than Windows, I can't keep it a secret. At work I get daily
reminders as to why I switched. I installed Knoppix on my girlfriend's
cheapie Acer when its Win95 went down in flames six months ago. She uses it
primarily for e-mail, and KMail had her sold the first time she used it.
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