[digitalradio] There really is no flame war from my perspective
Hi Stelios, The reason you may not have heard from others with their difficulties with Linux, is that they there are few who have even tried and those who have may not talk about it. I take the middle path, where I see the value of both OS's, but the value of Microsoft is still very large, at least here in the U.S. As Andy can tell you, I had a lot of trouble for several years with Linux not able to run my 22 Samsung SyncMaster 225BW, particularly with my higher end AMD/Nvidia HP computer. I have been able to run openSolaris from a live disk, not that I would plan to move toward that OS, HI. They always tell you to make sure that you try the live disk so everything can be checked out to work properly. Then when it does not, they tell you to install the OS and do the various configurations, downloads of software, etc. to get it to work. Most people have no interest in doing that and never will. I have spent many, many hundreds of hours with Linux, partly because I was going to figure this out and get it to work. It has been quite expensive compared with Microsoft products because of books and some commercial software that I have bought to try and get a better understanding. But after considerable interfacing with support groups and even to the point of getting a commercial product sent to me from the company, I could not match Microsoft. I eventually realized that if techy types like me are having this much trouble, it just is not going to go anywhere with average users, and that includes ham users too, if they can't get something to work well. Not just getting by, but with good usability. More recently I have tried live disks of Mandriva One 2009, Ubuntu 8-10, openSUSE, fedora 10,and others and found that although I could get the resolution correct for the monitor from some (not all), on my lower end emachines computer (2.4 GHz/512 Meg RAM), the font rendering of all Linux that I have seen thus far is inferior to WinXP and Vista. And I have also found that Vista is better than WinXP. Some will outright deny it, but I have had some agree that, yes Linux is not quite as good with font rendering, but that doesn't bother them because they want the freedom from MS, etc. I don't have any problem with MS at all as long as the product works well and supports what I am doing with computers. I have a brother who is an administrator for a well known University system and he runs many Linux and MS servers and has no problem with either. When I mention the desktop, he laughs and says that he would never use Linux for that, although he might use Apple Mac OSX. For me, (not others perhaps, but for me), if I switch to another OS, there has to be a reason other than I hate someone. It just has to work as well as what I am currently using and have additional advantages. Linux may have advantages in terms of viruses and malware, however a prudent person will still run security software on any system. But most all the programs that people like to use on Linux, which are generally free as in beer and free as in speech, are also available on Microsoft OS's too. For casual users who need mostly the web and an office suite, they could use Firefox and Open Office on either platform. For those who have specialty interests, especially ham radio, then MS has the edge since the best ham software is often only available on Microsoft OS's. Sometimes the only software. Since Microsoft OS's are typically pre-installed on computers here in the U.S., I don't see any change coming soon where you would buy a computer without an OS. Even the eeePC which Linux had a lock on the market for many months, is now mostly MS. If it can not beat MS on that platform, when will it? I see Linux gaining momentum in developing nations and since they make up the majority of the world's population, that has to eventually cause the tide to shift toward Linux. But that could be a decade or two away here in the U.S? For PSKmail, my expectation is that you need a sort of critical mass of users. That can not happen here without running the client on Microsoft OS's. Even then there are competing systems depending upon what you want for capabilities. Even for those who are Linux averse, it is not unreasonable that someone who wants to run a server could get that to work. I know that I could do it, as at one time I had fldigi running under Linux. (It did take quite a bit of effort and tremendous help from Dave, W1HKJ who is simply outstanding with his support). One area that you mention with the use of ARM based computing, or other low cost, low power systems, has to be the strongest value of Linux at this time. It can scale up or down as needed and Microsoft can not match it on the low end. It will prove to be very interesting to see how things play out. Maybe by the end of this year we will have a better idea of the direction? 73, Rick, KV9U Stelios Bounanos wrote: Rick, I must say
Re: [digitalradio] There really is no flame war from my perspective OT OT OT OT TO
So, is this discussion off topic or what? This must be the 50th time that I have had to delete this same discussion. What say you give it a rest? Please? Chuck AA5J Rick W wrote: Hi Stelios, The reason you may not have heard from others with their difficulties with Linux, is that they there are few who have even tried and those who have may not talk about it. I take the middle path, where I see the value of both OS's, but the value of Microsoft is still very large, at least here in the U.S. As Andy can tell you, I had a lot of trouble for several years with Linux not able to run my 22 Samsung SyncMaster 225BW, particularly with my higher end AMD/Nvidia HP computer. I have been able to run openSolaris from a live disk, not that I would plan to move toward that OS, HI. They always tell you to make sure that you try the live disk so everything can be checked out to work properly. Then when it does not, they tell you to install the OS and do the various configurations, downloads of software, etc. to get it to work. Most people have no interest in doing that and never will. I have spent many, many hundreds of hours with Linux, partly because I was going to figure this out and get it to work. It has been quite expensive compared with Microsoft products because of books and some commercial software that I have bought to try and get a better understanding. But after considerable interfacing with support groups and even to the point of getting a commercial product sent to me from the company, I could not match Microsoft. I eventually realized that if techy types like me are having this much trouble, it just is not going to go anywhere with average users, and that includes ham users too, if they can't get something to work well. Not just getting by, but with good usability. More recently I have tried live disks of Mandriva One 2009, Ubuntu 8-10, openSUSE, fedora 10,and others and found that although I could get the resolution correct for the monitor from some (not all), on my lower end emachines computer (2.4 GHz/512 Meg RAM), the font rendering of all Linux that I have seen thus far is inferior to WinXP and Vista. And I have also found that Vista is better than WinXP. Some will outright deny it, but I have had some agree that, yes Linux is not quite as good with font rendering, but that doesn't bother them because they want the freedom from MS, etc. I don't have any problem with MS at all as long as the product works well and supports what I am doing with computers. I have a brother who is an administrator for a well known University system and he runs many Linux and MS servers and has no problem with either. When I mention the desktop, he laughs and says that he would never use Linux for that, although he might use Apple Mac OSX. For me, (not others perhaps, but for me), if I switch to another OS, there has to be a reason other than I hate someone. It just has to work as well as what I am currently using and have additional advantages. Linux may have advantages in terms of viruses and malware, however a prudent person will still run security software on any system. But most all the programs that people like to use on Linux, which are generally free as in beer and free as in speech, are also available on Microsoft OS's too. For casual users who need mostly the web and an office suite, they could use Firefox and Open Office on either platform. For those who have specialty interests, especially ham radio, then MS has the edge since the best ham software is often only available on Microsoft OS's. Sometimes the only software. Since Microsoft OS's are typically pre-installed on computers here in the U.S., I don't see any change coming soon where you would buy a computer without an OS. Even the eeePC which Linux had a lock on the market for many months, is now mostly MS. If it can not beat MS on that platform, when will it? I see Linux gaining momentum in developing nations and since they make up the majority of the world's population, that has to eventually cause the tide to shift toward Linux. But that could be a decade or two away here in the U.S? For PSKmail, my expectation is that you need a sort of critical mass of users. That can not happen here without running the client on Microsoft OS's. Even then there are competing systems depending upon what you want for capabilities. Even for those who are Linux averse, it is not unreasonable that someone who wants to run a server could get that to work. I know that I could do it, as at one time I had fldigi running under Linux. (It did take quite a bit of effort and tremendous help from Dave, W1HKJ who is simply outstanding with his support). One area that you mention with the use of ARM based computing, or other low cost, low power systems, has to be the strongest value of Linux at this time. It can scale up or down as needed and Microsoft can not match it on the low end. It will
