Re: Fw: [Hampshire] Killer Apps for Linux

Vic wrote:

> I've just (within the last hour) rebuilt this machine. I upgraded from an
> Athlon XP to an AMD64. I changed the motherboard, the network card, the
> video card - in fact, all that stayed the same was the drives, the memory,
> the MPEG2 decoder, and the video capture card.
>
> So how much farting around with drivers did I have to do? None. Not a bit
> of it.
>
> When I booted, Kudzu noticed that about a dozen devices had gone missing
> from my system, and about a dozen had appeared. It asked me whether I was
> bothered or not - I told it I was, and that was the end of it. My system
> is now up.
>
> Does anyone believe this would have happened with a Windows system?
> Because I've yet to see an upgrade of this magnitude that doesn't require
> a gazillion drivers to be found and installed (with all the requisite
> reboots along the way). Indeed, with XP or Vista, it wouldn't surprise me
> if I'd need to phone up Microsoft just to be allowed to continue using my
> machine. Guess what? I didn't have to phone anyone tonight...

Nice :)

>From bitter and personal experience, an upgrade of that magnitude to a
box running XP would blue screen on boot very quickly (even Safe Mode
couldn't cope with such a drastic change).

But as other people have so far pointed out, pretty much any PC bought
from a dealer/distributor/manufacturer will already have had the choice
of OS made for you.

Personally, I am writing this from a machine that is running Windows XP
and I have a laptop running Windows Vista - however anything that is
directly facing the Internet or has important stuff on it is running
either Ubuntu or FC5 (soon to be FC6 when I get round to downloading the
ISO)

My work desktop is running FC5, even though the OS de jour for most
people in the company is Windows - and I have no problems connecting to
the AD server, using my Exchange mailbox and calendar via Evolution.

So, for some things Windows is "good" and for other things Open Source
Software and Operating systems are "better" - it all boils down to
personal choice, and choice is something that M$ want to keep down by
their OEM strategy meaning that it is a struggle to buy a pre-built
machine that is running anything other than another addition to their
market share.


Cheers,

Phil