I use free software for everything at home and as much as allowed at work. You can see what my home software looks like here:
http://www.hillnotes.org/fixit/screenshots/screenshots.html Those shots are getting old, but my desktop looks about the same. Getting hardware that works is just a matter of researching what you buy. Advertisers and Microsoft are busy trying to destroy Google, but it still works and so does the LUG, but it's getting harder. You have to be more and more specific with your searches. When free software works with hardware, it usually blows Microsoft out of the water. While I might not get 3D acceleration for my pathetic 8M 1xAGP video card, X delivers real virtual screens in a real multiuser environment that's extremely flexible. I routinely run 10 virtual desktops with consoles and GUI applications from or so other computers. The work I'm doing is segregated by task and cut and past works across the computers as well as it does locally. This works just as well when my wife and little brother are also using the same machines at the same time. A tiny subset of these features are only available for Windoze on higher end video cards and the performance is terrible. At work we are looking at a Microsoft virtual PC thingy to put two keyboards and two monitors on one windoze machine. It's full of bugs so far and I'm sure it would not work with Nvidia's multiple desktop software. So much for Microsoft "standards" unless that standard it the pop-up infested single screen monstrosity known as XP. To me, this is a clear case of free software delivering what ordinary users want while commercial software falls flat on it's face. Does the secretary want to have blazing fast DNA helix rotations on her screen or one screen for her boss's big report, one for email and her calender and one to hide her browsing? Free software can usually be used with other free software and the product is much greater than the sum. As for China, I hope they try to use all that source code Bill Gates sold them. On 2004.02.05 20:50 Phil Waring wrote: > Who, if any of you, rely on linux as a desktop machine? It has been > represented to me that some hardware, i.e. certain modems and printers, > only run on Microsoft windows. While I accept the statement on its face, > I wonder why.... > > How about China and its purchases of linux packages? What might China do > with such? And it seems that few are afraid. Perhaps minimal fear is > good, but Iraq did not scare me. I did appeal to a linux users group for > help. Do you think that I should have asked IBM? >
