Windows Is Free

Tokyo Linux Users Group ^ | 15 August 2007 | Dave Gutteridge

[shorty_harris]

Pretty interesting. I didn't that think many people were using 'cracked' operating systems. I don't, and frankly, I don't know anybody who does.

Right now I have a difficult decision to make. I use windows 2000 for games. Recently, though, I bought a couple of games that won't work on Win2K. Do I buy a copy of WinXP Pro ($140 on ebay for an OEM copy), and risk getting locked out of using it because of the activation mess (I'm always swapping hardware)? I guess I could buy the full retail version, but I'm having a hard enough time trying to justify $140 for the OEM.

I'm actually considering selling the two games I just bought, and just accepting the fact that I can't play modern PC games.

[Bloody Sam Roberts]

I’ve enjoyed using Ubunto and would migrate to it at home if I could resolve the lack of broadband support.

Try Simply Mepis. It is what Ubuntu is based on. I used to use Ubuntu Feisty Fawn and dumped it because of the problems getting wireless to work.
I loaded Simply Mepis and it connected instantly with my wireless access point.

[postaldave]

lol. i agree with him, windows is free.

but i’m still not getting vista.

[postaldave]

“Its much easier than compiling the driver with Ndiswrapper”

oh come on!?! you open ndis, it ask for the windows file and click ok. how hard is that. i’ve never heard of linuxant and it probably is good. just give ndis some props, it works pretty dang good.

[TruthSetsUFree]

Thanks!

My main hesitation in going with Linux is some of my Windows programs. Is there any way I can run programs like Adobe InDesign in one of the Linux versions?

[Nailbiter]

read later

[Golden Eagle]

I use it exclusively.

Don't you ever get tired of posting these foreign articles, and being called on the fact you still run Windows virtually on your laptop? Apparently not.

[stainlessbanner]

Looks like In Design is "untested" at crossover.

[Golden Eagle]

Examples:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1858749/posts?page=10#10

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1780241/posts?page=141#141

[ShadowAce]

It is possible, if you use a product like VMware to run Windows under Linux. There may be other solutions as well, I don't know if Wine would run it, but it would be worth the attempt.

[TruthSetsUFree]

That site looks like a good resource. Thanks.

[TruthSetsUFree]

Thanks, I’ll check it out.

[zeugma]

I’m currently on Fedora 8, having gone through all the versions back to Red Hat 0.9 in 1994. That is the main reason I stay with it—I know it pretty well.

Dude, I'm only on Fedora 5 and 6. It's too much of a hassle to keep up to date on the Fedora releases IMO, because they seem to come out so fast :-) By the time I have my desktop working =exactly= like I want it, it's time to upgrade to the latest version. I've been giving moving to something else a lot of thought, because I am really annoyed by the codec issues with Fedora.

[Squantos]

Well this is just awful............:o)

[Tainan]

Very very good article. It hits on a number of salient points in the "normal user" computer world.
I've been giving serious thought to switching to Linnux - but I still can't justify it. I've been running XP Pro for years and have never seen a BSD. I keep the box clean w/CCleaner, do a defrag and run heavy duty (but compatible) security progs and things just keep on ticking.
Oh...and another thing...

All Hail Torrents.

[ShadowAce]

I must say that F8 is the best Fedora so far. Wireless “just works” (first time ever, for me), sound “just works”, video “just works”. Once you install the livna RPM, everything is available and you just need to install mplayer and xine stuff. It’s definitely worth checking out before you switch distros.

[ShadowAce]

I thought so, too. It’s touches on several points the user feels about Windows.

[Tarpon]

Interesting article.

It’s a web centric world, and becoming even more so everyday.

In a web centric world, this will become more common -- Walmart $200 PC with gOS (Ubuntu flavor) installed. It does web browsing, word processing, photo storage, printing, what more do most people need today. That is becoming the real problem with the value proposition for selling the OS, most don’t need it, don't want it, and don't know how to manage it -- Today, software has zero value, unless it's a game, then it has 'trading value' -- web connection is everything.

I use Ubuntu 7.10 Linux because of what it can do without having to pay for it ... Costs were just getting out of hand and upgrades were just too expensive. I also grew up with UNIX so it was easy. I settled on Ubuntu 7.10 everywhere, because the wife likes the games available on Ubuntu. As long as her browser browses, her bookmarks don't disappear and her online email works, the rest is just a nuisance. Ubuntu also runs really fast on her 5 year old AMD 3000.

[BuffaloJack]

One of the serious major faults with windows is PC manufacturers who feel compelled to park their company logo on the startup screen and install all sorts of unneeded software because they can. Windows is a monster of an operating system to begin with and needs to be initialized in a very controlled and orderly manner. When manufacturers put other stuff in it messes things up.
My daughter’s HP Pavilion was the worst piece of crap I’d ever seen until her hard drive finally and mercifully broke after 3 years. With a new 49 buck hard drive and an off the shelf non-OEM copy of windows XP, it now is a dream machine. Faster then when it was new and never a crash ever and everything work without all the aggravation and hassle.

[hiredhand]

The author is either naive, or just doesn't "get out much". Everything software is "free". Er, let me rephrase that. Everything software is "downloadable". Bit Torrent clients and P2P ensures that.

He hit on something that is a definite issue against Linux. He speaks of "Linux" as if it's the entire package. In fact (as you know), Linux is a kernel. It's useless to us people at the keyboard without even a command line interface (the shell), and even then useless to over 90% of everybody remaining after that without a graphical interface.

Microsoft has done one thing right. They dumped millions of dollars into marketing. I won't debate the truth of that marketing because I personally think they'd sell their aging mothers to make a buck. But they are masters of marketing. While Microsoft is setting the "tone" for their products, Linux is either largely unknown, or perceived as being evil on account of Microsoft's marketing.

It's ironic given that "Windows" was X-Windows for years before Microsoft had a graphical front end on one of their operating systems. But now, Linux could mean -

- RedHat (Centos, and Fedora derivitives)
- Debian (Ubuntu, and Knoppix derivitives)
- Slackware
- DSL (Damn Small Linux)
- Yellow Dog Linux
- SuSe
- Mandriva

...and too many others to mention here. I don't know them all.

But mention Windows, and everybody pretty much assumes that you're talking about XP or Vista.

The author must hang out with old people, because upgrading people to Linux nowadays is very tricky if the person is a youngster (teens through early 30s). This is simply on account of on-line games. MS Windows OWNS the on-line gaming world right now. These games are CPU, memory, and video hardware intensive. With enough hardware, Cedega (http://www.cedega.com) is a GOOD solution.

But in all honesty, the only people easy to upgrade to Linux are very simple users who (as the author noted) only want to use the web, do e-mail, and document creation/manipulation (some sort of office suite) and printing.

I've got a friend who recently switched from Windows to Linux (Ubuntu). He's 40-ish, but has a 20-something attitude. He's got a mountain of high powered hardware running Ubuntu and needed me to sort some issues out. I'm one of those "command line" people, but I'm a network engineer and "command line" is my middle name (so to speak :-).

I sorted his problem out and then we "played". I was amazed at the performance. We played Battlefield-II in Windows XP (the machine was dual boot), and then we played it under Cedega in Linux. Then we had my 12 year old do the same thing. We all agreed that performance was better under Cedega! Go figure. :-) But then again, this guy has a machine with a 64 bit CPU (AMD), 4G of memory, and a high end NVidia graphics card. I don't remember specifics over that except to say that he had $5G in hardware sitting there in front of us....which is a lot of cash for a desktop PC in the home.

I still convert people from Windows to Linux once in awhile. The ones who worry me, are the ones who "might" step out of the normal bounds. For example, I converted my Mom over and a couple of months later she wanted to run some business inventory software that she bought at Walmart....ARG! So I told her to hang onto it and come visit grandkids and I would fix her up. I installed Crossover and FORTUNATELY, it ran O.K. Sorting out printing from the app was a PITA, but eventually, I got it sorted out.

He was talking about those people swapping a copy of Dreamweaver and I remembered that I use something called Quanta. Functionally, it does most of the same things. I've used Dreamweaver too though and I think Quanta is less friendly. But compared with the classic UNIX text editors (still included with Linux!) such as Vi and ed, even Quanta is a light years ahead jump forward! Even a few years ago, there was nothing like it available for Linux and we were typing out HTML and web content in everything from Joe, Vi, Pico, OpenOffice, and on-line HTML creators.

You know me well enough to know that I'm a Linux Bigot. I especially like Debian. :-) Windows just sucks and that's all there is too it. Life's too short to run a bad operating system, created by a dreadful company such as Microsoft. But I don't debate this with anybody anymore. It's like driving a 1980s Yugo (remember THAT?!). If people want to drive 1980s Yugos, then I'm good with it. A few actually do notice that my computing "world" is radically different and they want to know more...and out of them, a few do decide to switch to Linux. Sometimes though, I send them to my brother (a Mac addict), and they go with Mac.

I DO run Windows-XP on the odd occasion because we use Visio at work. But I run it in VM-Ware on a Debian Linux system and it's just another Linux application to me, which is where Microsoft operating systems should be. :-)