huh, never had a problem with it

 

Oh yeah? Install Red Hat Fedora and see what you think. My Fedora Install requires more RAM than my Longhorn install, and runs slower.

 

well, maybe the fendora but i like mandrake, it seems to do good, even on my slower systems.

 

windows HA HA HA, linux all the way. i've been a computer dork for a while, anyone remember the commodore 64 ive still got 2 of them bad boys. As for windows a new version comes out everyone has to buy it, a week later a new bug comes threw and wipes everything out. my old computer runs windows 98 se and yellow dog linux, on my new computer i run windows xp profesional and red hat linux. lets face it you have to have windows to run almost everything. but compainies are catching on and releasing linux versions of their software, sone the day will come when i no longer need windows i cant wait.

 

I have had no issues with Fedora. KDE is a resource hog yes, so I use GNOME.

 

You know I haven't even tried it with GNOME, I prefer KDE. I'll try that.

 

You won't go back to KDE, I can almost garauntee it.. I used to prefer KDE as well, until I used the new GNOME.. I'm actually installed FC4 on my server now... MY sis's kids got ahold of the cds and ruined 3 and 4 so I'm havin to download them again.. Also the INTEL chips are optimized for Windblows... So Linux does run a little slower... AMD seems to have better performance, even the XP chips..

 

Where do you get Linux from?

 

its a free download

 

Do a search, if you are new my suggestion is to start with Red Hat, maybe one of the older versions? www.redhat.com THere are a lot of other "flavors" out as well, Debian, Mandrake, etc. All are free.

 

Mandriva (Formerly known as mandrake) is the best for beginners, it's got the easiest installation, almost windowsesque... I prefer Fedora Core from Red Hat.. It's a better "power user" distro.

<a href="http://www.mandrivalinux.com" target=new>Get Madriva here</a>
<a href="http://fedora.redhat.com" target=new>Get Fedora Core here</a>
<a href="http://www.redhat.com" target=new>Get Redhat here</a>
<A href="http://www.linux.org" target=new>Linux.org home page</a> There are a lot of useful links and articles here.
All links will open in a new window.

On Edit:
I appears that redhat no longer offers the older FREE versions of their distro. The only one I could find from them now that is freely downloadable is Fedora Core.

 

http://www.linuxiso.org/

One of the best sites to read about and download Linux distros.

I have nothing against Microsoft other than it's real expensive to put XP on more than 1 machine. Vista will have the same license as XP and will have even more built in DRM (digital rights management) Put that together with the DRM that will be built into hardware and now you have severe limitations to what you can do. Software and hardware is going to tell you what you can and can't record, save, download, copy, even if Fair Use laws say otherwise.

Yeah I know it's all in the name of "piracy" but these schemes are assuming guilt for everyone inspite of Fair Use laws. Windows XP has been a great OS for me. Reliable, stable, easy to use but I'm not going to support MS with their idea that everyone is guilty and you must validate your copy of windows continually.

While they are not all networked, I have 7 systems. The 4 that are networked are duel boot with Windows and "some" version of Linux. When the wife and grandma are comfortable enough with Linux the disks will be wiped and Linux will be the only OS on the machines. I'll keep one system with XP for those just in case things that can crop up.

 

mistakenID -7 PCs in a home is quite a few. You use more than one of those for yourself? You might consider looking into VMWare, it's the best PC purchase I ever made. I have 1 host (real) computer na dabout 10 virtual systems, 5 of which run at the same time on the host. Best of all VMWare costs less than an XP license!

http://www.vmware.com/products/desktop/ws_features.html

 

linux will be a competitor to microsoft, but not for a long time. I know the geeks like linux, but the average user at home will not use it. I like microsoft products. I have a network here at work with 12 2003 servers and a few old novell servers and 1000+ pc's all with xp on them, I have had no problems.

the people that bash microsoft are just jealous. they make a great product that 95% of the world uses. If it was as bad as everyone says, they would not have the marketshare they currently do.

 

the only reason they have the marketshare they do is because advertising, and the fact that up until recently there hasnt been as many easy to find software for unix/linux distros. lately theres been lots of upgraded insoftware for these systems and its getting better all the time.