Sorry, it just sounds like a crazy idea for me …

When he got the new printer home, he had all kinds of grief getting it installed and working in Windows, so he switched over to Ubuntu, and low and behold! It was auto-detected and worked w/out any configuration.

He hasn’t booted windows since.

I love that my non-geek father-in-law is using linux because its ‘easier’.

Funny article — thanks for the reminder why I don’t run Windows on any of the many systems on my home network!

-H0bb3z

Anyway, I found the article amusing and relatively true to my experience. Windows XP on my wife’s computer seems to run OK. I’ve got it behind a firewall and keep it patched, and she’s not running an email program on it– she uses web-based email through her office if she ever needs to email from home. So it’s performed pretty well. But whenever I have to use it, it always finds a way to annoy me.

The old Win. ME machine is now a file server running Libranet 2.8. I bought Linux pre-installed (SuSE, but now Ubuntu) on my current workstation and it is always a pleasure to use. Hardware stays installed. Programs uninstall or install easily with synaptic. I use the Gimp, OpenOffice, Firefox, Thunderbird, xemacs, gaim, gramps, picasa, bzflag, etc. and they all just work everytime. My machine never crashes, and Ubuntu has a fantastic update service.

It was definitely worth the effort to learn about Linux. Thanks for the laugh.

– Killick

http://www.realtechnews.com/posts/3379

Thank goodness that I’ve finished school now. I used to have to use some version of windows at school (I think it was 2000) and it caused me almost physical pain every time I started it up. It just seemed like a bad hack of windows 95. I mean come on, what really are the differences between win95 and 2000? As far as the UI is concerned, not much! Let’s just say that it was a relief to go down to the sixth form centre and use the Linux computers there. Granted, they were on ten year old hardware, none of the programs ran in the GUI, the printer didn’t work and you couldn’t even access your own home directory - but still, I had my freedom, and at least my heart could beat naturally.

Unfortunately I still have to use my Mum’s WinXP computer from time to time. Bear in mind that I usually use KDE on my Suse box. The voice in my mind usually goes something like this: “What do you mean it’s only got one desktop?” “Fer crying out loud, I’ve only got three programs open and the taskbar’s already full!” “WTF’s this stupid little bubble doing?” “You know having massively rounded edges and stupid 3D squisy effects on those buttons really uses an excessive amount of space…” “Stop truncating my freakin’ menu! I know what I want!!!” And so on and so forth.

Mind you, I haven’t quite got my Linux box as smoothly running as yours. Mind you, I haven’t really tried that hard yet. I still need to configure WINE, for example, because it didn’t seem to work too well (at all, in fact) when I first installed it… But hey, at least I know it won’t slowly consume my entire system .

I just think it’s funny the way that Vista will probably be exactly the same as XP but “squishier” and slower, with more “user-friendly” annoyances. Not to mention that by the time it comes out it will already be out of date… Haha, I’ve an idea. The day Vista comes out, I think it should be pronounced an international day of mirth for Linux users. Vista promises so much, yet will no doubt give so little…!

Anyway, yeah, good article. Made me chuckle .