🚀 go-pugleaf

"Folk" <Folk@folk.com> wrote in message
news:on5003du79sa8b9lhn0tjlr3s9la91h345@4ax.com...
| On Tue, 20 Mar 2007 00:21:04 +0000, mark <marknot@thisaddress.com>
| wrote:
|
|
| >Enjoy Ubuntu I bet that in 6 months or so you will be wondering why
on
| >earth you bothered with the all the problems that windows has to
offer
| >like Viruses, trojans, worms and the nightmare that is installing
| >windows software (just wait until you use Synaptic to install
stuff).
| >Anyway with a dual boot you cant loose.
|
| I've been on Windows platforms since 3.1.  I'm a software developer
| and gamer.  I've never had a virus, trojan or other nasties.  If
| you're geek enough to install Linux, then you're probably geek
enough
| to practice safe computing and should never get a virus either.
|
| Oh yeah, I also don't have any form of anti-virus software
installed,
| nor do I have a software firewall.
|
| And because I'm a gamer, I wouldn't touch *nix with a 10 foot pole.
| Yeah, Epic is nice enough to provide ports, but most games don't.
It
| would piss me off to the n'th extreme to be sitting on the sidelines
| and not able to play some game because it hasn't been (or never will
| be) ported to *nix.  Sure, I might be able to run it (poorly) under
| emulation like Wine, but what's the point in that?
|
| I won't even bother with my need to run all MS office apps and
various
| other pieces of software in order to support my clients, none of
which
| have ever been ported to *nix.
|
| And I'm a software developer who did a fair share of work on Unix
| based systems, although my main thrust is the IBM midrange platform
| (which uses a proprietary OS).  So I'm not afraid of alternative
OS's,
| it's just that I'm not going to torture myself trying to use them in
a
| gaming or business support environment.
|
| There's certainly nothing wrong with Linux, but recommending it to
| gamers seems counterintuitive, unless the only game you ever plan to
| play is UT.
|
| So there.  :P

What he sed, yeah!  I agree entirely with these observations.

Only 1 virus ever experienced here, and that was my own stupidity, I
ignorantly rebooted with a floppy in the drive that someone else had
brought over to my place, and the floppy had a virus.  I run no
anti-virus software, and only a software firewall on my net
connection/sharing machines.  Of course, the wife has done her part in
getting spamware/adware installed on the machines, but such nuisances
are not difficult to eliminate.

Unless the user is a total geek, then any flavor of Linux will present
serious challenges in understanding how to accomplish objectives with
the OS.  I also am a geek from way back, I've written my share of
software in a dozen languages (gross estimate, could be more), even
written device drivers for DOS/win9x/win2k and Linux, and I like
tinkering with Linux, but I can't tell you the endless pain I
experienced getting UT to work (getting the ATI drivers installed and
working correctly was a large portion of the pain), and I still could
not overcome the limitation on UT game FPS that happened with my setup
(Nforce2 mobo and ATI 9800 pro vid card).  In essence, UT ran at 50
FPS when I connected to online servers, no matter what I tinkered
with, game net settings, vid settings, Linux settings, sync settings,
you name it, I tried it.  An off-line or local game would give me
unlimited (well, vid card limited) FPS.  Installing UT was not the
problem, getting Linux setup to work right was the most difficult
aspect of gaming on Linux.  Maybe newer distros make the problem less
painful, it's been a couple of years since I fiddled with it.

The availability of games for Linux is also a distraction, not that
many have good ports to Linux.

Now, from the other perspective, I think the Knoppix live CD is one of
the best tools around as a troubleshooting tool or temporary OS setup,
and perhaps an example of where computing may be migrating in the near
future.  The worst problem with Linux is getting vid card drivers to
install and work properly, and until the manufacturers provide fully
automated install/uninstall for their Linux drivers, pain will ensue
with Linux and gaming.

Another sad fact is great software is quite cheap for MS OS's, and
such facts are simply a matter of economies of scale, more sales of
software products for the more widespread OS means lower prices for
all.  I recently bought a CAD package that just wows me at what it can
do, Turbocad 12, and the price was under $100.  In a matter of a
couple of days learning to use Turbocad (I'd also used earlier
versions) I had created a 3D model of a client's product from 2D
drawings.  In the days of old, such software might cost $50,000 and
require VAX systems to run.  So today's computing world is a dream
come true for us oldy moldy types.

And, in agreement with Folk, when a client is already "tied in" with
MS apps and file formats and other miserable MS standards, pain is
greatly reduced if I also run MS apps and OS's, tho I give hi marks to
OpenOffice as a great alternative suite.  Linux is still gaining
momentum, but the gains are still slow to materialize.
-- 
Best regards,
Kyle