Munich now Open Source

[runderwo]

Sorry, I cut the post off early.

Anyway, I was just saying with the beer analogy that I don't see a reason not to be supportive of projects that help others and don't hurt you. I get a greater choice of glasses to drink my beer out of, like with the success of the WINE project I would get a greater choice of applications to run on my systems. That's all.

[Gurm]

Umm... beer = bad analogy.

Of COURSE I would have a problem. Heineken, while not in origin a totally terrible beer (some might argue that it is), is shipped exclusively in green bottles.

Thus it is GUARANTEED skunked by the time it reaches anyplace more than 50 miles from the brewery.

The point in fact is that Heineken drinkers drink skunked beer, have gotten used to skunked beer, think skunked beer is good... and pouring that swill into a Guiness glass would be offensive to anyone.

- Gurm

[dbdg]

But say some people were going to make a plastic insert (the WINE project) that would allow me to drink my Heineken beer (*nix) out of a glass (the application) that was originally made for Guinness (Windows). Would you have a big problem with that? If not, what's the difference? I get what I want, and you lose nothing.

Just drink Guinness, don't bother with that heineken crap. Guinness (Windows) is fine and the Glass (Apps) that are made for Guinness (Windows) are class and can't be improved on. lol

Edit:If Linux ever did take off your piece of plastic would effect windows users as developers would spend time making their apps for Windows and Linux together and not just Windows.

Face it, Windows is the only way to go.

[Technoid]

Lets clarify a few things :

------
No Gurm is not on MS payroll

Bill has been begging him to accept the position as Head of their Troll divison for years, But Gurm has always declined since he fears that if he left Murc it would be overtaken by "Minis using Linux" in days
---------

MS never conquered the computer world becuse they was superior, they came bundled

The reason PC "killed" of the competition from Mac, Amiga, etc etc was that their was (and is) numerous companys that sells a "compatible" Computer that could use the same software

MS and Windows just went along with the ride

MS nowdays LIVES on the fact that they controll the platform

If they had to compete one the same terms as everyone else they would have the same fate as IBM

Why do people chose Windows/MS Office/IE?

Cause it Comes Bundled


-----------------------

UNIX and LINUX are not the same animal

Sharks and Dolphins and Icthysaurians have the same basic design
Does it make em the same animal? No way!!

Besides If SCO wins then Apple should get an apeal against MS concerning Windows
-------------------------

Usability of linux?

Well the install of latest Mandrake is Lightyears ahead of WinXP install

And they manages to cram in over 10 different languages

Everything else was a breese down to making it print on our network printer

I admit that they had hidden the Mixer but if i had RTFM id found it faster

------------------------------

About WINE, CYGWIN:

WINE and Cygwin is doing a great job of suplying "platform" independence, And platfor independance is something that scares the pants of MS
----------------------------------

oh and what about emulators then?

Well, Gurm mentioned that he had been in the Emulator sceene wich Gives Us a clue on who coded Nesticle

------------------------------------

Pirating and Windows?

Well, MS is one of those companys that flourishes through Pirating
If you exclude Bundled, more than 70% off all MS products are Pirated

I for example Saw a Pirated XP Pro Corporate on a customer maschine a Whole week before I could order it from MS

-----------------------------------

MS and Windows "Bashing"?

We Will Stop the day no one Bashes Linux

----------------------------------

"Linux Will never be a Desktop OS"

Yup, Since most of us have towers

-----------------------------------

[leech]

Thank you, Gurm. You made me laugh

What do you guys all think of this?

http://aaxnet.com/editor/edit029.html#choices

Leech

[leech]

@ Technoid

Another point to add to why PC's are the way they are today.... the Amiga's, Atari ST's, Macs all had different reputations than the "IBM compatibles." A lot of people bought the compatibles because they used the same machines at work. Even though back then they mostly only had CGA graphics and no sound card. (I remember a friend of mine who, while I had an Atari Mega STe, had an 8088 and thought it was so cool that he could spend $250 on a Soundblaster card. )

Back then the programs were smaller, the CPU's were faster and imagine that, a GUI was built into ROM, you didn't even need a harddrive to have it. The full Atari ST OS ran from a 256k (later a 512k) ROM and was quite nice. I still miss being able to hold down control to move a file and hold down alternate to copy and rename a file, and/or you could hold down both and copy/move a file. I think someone should impliment that into Gnome/KDE. The other thing I miss about using the Atari ST was that there wasn't ever a billion files on your harddrive. (My windows directory ALONE has 11,217 Files and 600 folders) The only file the OS itself used was a Desktop.ini (Newdesk.ini in the newer versions of TOS) And that file held the Icon placements, the file associations, and the boot up files. It never became the size the windows registry is from the very beginning of a fresh install. (in the past, I've had that registry file get up into the 500's of megs!) I had a 50 meg harddrive, and it took forever to fill it up (though considering the size of the programs and the fact that I only had a 1200 baud modem at the time, and a console based internet account, you can see why )

Aaaahh, those were the days...... Now computers just aren't as fun. We have the behomoth of Microsoft looking over our shoulders all the time. People are more paranoid about Virii than ever, and we have a HUGE bloated operating system called Windows XP.

Gurm earlier stated that he thought it funny that Linux users complain how bloated XP is and yet most linux distros come on 3 CD's. Well the problem with that is that the base Linux system (without a lot of apps and everything) can easily fit inside 100-200mbs. Windows XP, after you first install it, is about 1.2gb. That's with only Wordpad, notepad, windows media player and some basic games. Not much you can really do with that. On the other hand, last night I installed Libranet 2.8 on my computer. It installed 1.7gb. Ok, 500 more megs than WinXP, and it came on two CD's. BUT, it installed Gnome2.2, KDE 3.1, IceWM, Fluxbox, XFCE, etc. (Tons of stuff, that frankly I could have/should have unselected before it started installing, but figured what the hell....). Also it came with a COUPLE of different Office Suites. (Gnome (Abiword, Gnumeric, Gnucash, etc.) KDE (KOffice) and OpenOffice.org).

Now, if one to purchase either of these operating systems, who would get more bang for their buck?

According to Price watch:

Windows XP Professional: $130.

Straight from Libranet's website.

Libranet 2.8: $69.95 (if you order CD's and you're not a student, $5 cheaper if you download it through the net)

Leech

[runderwo]

"The point in fact is that Heineken drinkers drink skunked beer, have gotten used to skunked beer, think skunked beer is good... and pouring that swill into a Guiness glass would be offensive to anyone."

Hmm... speaking of beers... is it time for another MURC poll?

[runderwo]

Hey Technoid:

"The reason PC "killed" of the competition from Mac, Amiga, etc etc was that their was (and is) numerous companys that sells a "compatible" Computer that could use the same software"

Don't forget that the PC's architecture was torn apart and inspected closely by all the cloners, which contributed to low prices and great expandability in the clones. That was a pretty key factor and it's anybody's guess as to what would have happened after that point otherwise.

[runderwo]

Leech:

What's your opinion of Libranet? Being a base Debian dev & zealot I don't really have much opportunity to examine the "other" Debian-based distributions. I booted up Knoppix a few times as a rescue disk in the shop and it came in fairly handly at the time, but I never actually bothered installing it onto a machine. Libranet looks damn cool as far as the installation/configuration wizards go, but it's hard for me to pitch it to people looking for a Linux distribution without knowing how easy it is to get along with.

Specifically I am curious about configuration stuff such as installing new hardware, changing settings, installing fonts, etc, and is everything installed and accessible in a logical fashion.

[leech]

Think of standard debian, but with a few tweaks to the hardware detection, and with Xadminmenu. Xadminmenu just kicks butt. Need true type fonts? Just click the button and it'll install them. Need to recompile the kernel? Just click on that and then select any changes you'd like to make, then hit enter, it'll compile, then modify grub for you, etc. Pretty cool. Also it has the button for compiling alsa for you as well, all within the GUI (or just adminmenu which is Ncurses based, I think) Also click a button and you'll have Java installed (theoretically, haven't done that one yet either was too busy trying to get the Parhelia drivers working....)

I am a debian nut, love apt-get. Of course with me, I changed the default repositories from Sarge to Sid. But it hasn't given me any grief so far. Libranet does come with XFree86 4.3.0, so you can also turn on the transparent cursor, if that's your thing.....

Leech

PS I may even write up a more detailed comparison later on if you'd like. The install is a bit different than standard debian, but not quite as nice as some distros, like Mandrake 9.1 or Xandros.

[runderwo]

Sure, that would be cool. Might put it in the Alternative OS section so it doesn't get buried here

[Pace]

Originally posted by runderwo
Pace

"I never have to reboot to play a game."

That's nice. (?) After all, that is one of the convenient things about using the most popular operating system. Unfortunately, it's not so rosy for me because if I want to play a game that doesn't work well with WINE or doesn't have a native port, it's either reboot into win98 or nothing.

I thought you meant rebooting Windows to play games, not switching OSes, apologies

"Define a low-cost OS. I can have a fully working Windows 2000 box up and running well within 2 hours. That is what I call low cost"

Cost is for example a $200+ operating system license spread across 500 computers. For some, that is worth it, but it is nice to actually have a choice in the matter and not have it be dictated by the API that your application developers chose when they coded their crappy, but essential for your uses, program. If that $200 x 500 is worth it to you for the convenience then go for it! On the other hand, educational institutions and government rarely can afford it, especially when they have people working for them at typically fairly low rates that can work around the inconvenient parts of the alternative choices.

For a home user (especially one that most likely pirated their copy of windows) the cost argument is somewhat hollow.

I said "2 hours" - as in a time cost

You jumped onto the initial cost of purchase and, while it is marketed too heavily, the total cost of ownership (TCO) often has little to do with that cost.

Personally, the setup time is a big problem - Windows does most of what I want by default, and I can quickly change the rest. Linux and derivatives take me much longer.

[Gurm]

MUCH MUCH longer.

I can have a fully functional Windows _SERVER_ in production and running every service and daemon I want in a morning. I can have a ghosted server up and running in 20 minutes.

The MINIMUM time for install of a new Linux _WORKSTATION_ is a couple hours, and after that there's tweaking and tweaking and tweaking and...

- Gurm

[leech]

I endlessly 'tweak' Windows myself... well, I put tweek in 's because you can't really tweak windows unless you do registry hacks, what I mean by that is downloading all the things that are pretty much REQUIRED to have a full system. Like Drivers for hardware that doesn't come with it, Archiving software, Mozilla (which I know you love so much ) ... Etc. For me, a working WinXP system, freshly installed, from beginning to end, takes about 3-4 hours, depending on the internet connection I'm working with. (If with a dial-up, it could take MUCH much longer, with SP1, etc.)

Leech

[Pace]

Originally posted by leech
I endlessly 'tweak' Windows myself... well, I put tweek in 's because you can't really tweak windows unless you do registry hacks, what I mean by that is downloading all the things that are pretty much REQUIRED to have a full system. Like Drivers for hardware that doesn't come with it, Archiving software, Mozilla (which I know you love so much ) ... Etc. For me, a working WinXP system, freshly installed, from beginning to end, takes about 3-4 hours, depending on the internet connection I'm working with. (If with a dial-up, it could take MUCH much longer, with SP1, etc.)

Leech

You are speaking from personal experience obviously. I have all software across the network, makes installs speedy. As for needed drivers....let's see.

Sound? No. Graphics? No. NIC? No. Modem? No. Printer? No. Anything? No.

Windows comes with every driver I need. I do have drivers installed, but do not really need them - I will always probably install the Matrox drivers for instance, and the HP drivers for when I want to do fancier printouts. From a fresh install Windows is very usable, I quickly bung in my dialup number and I am quite happily working away