More Linux rants…
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More Linux rants…it’s working so far. I can do most of what I want to do. Web surfing is fine with Firefox; haven’t run into any problems so far. I’m running Amarok as my media player and it also runs pretty well. Ktorrent is a decent bittorent application though it seems slower than Utorrent on XP. Networking is still an issue that I have problems with and I have to say that I’m not pleased with all the steps required with Linux. Networking with XP is a breeze and my friends who have Macs say the same thing. Linux is just not user friendly to me when it comes to trying to talk to the other computers. It’s working and then a few minutes later it isn’t. That is quite frustrating. I’m also not too impressed with Open Office. It works but I’m a power user with MS Office 2007 and it just doesn’t measure up for the things that I do. For basic things it’s ok but that is it.
So what is my take so far? Linux is a learning experience but I don’t see giving up on XP or Microsoft anytime soon. I certainly wouldn’t put Linux on my parent’s computer and leave them alone. I’ll keep playing and keep posting my thoughts.
[tags]Linux, XP, Open Office, Microsoft Office, Amorak[/tags]
2 Comments
marc klink
April 9th, 2007
at 6:44pm
What version of Linux are you using? I know part of what you are talking about, in that sometimes networking is not easily set up…on the other hand, my experience has been that once it is set up, almost nothing takes it down. Linspire [or Freespire] is very good at setting up a computer on a Windows network. Usually when I set up a machine in this situation, the network shares all come up and are easily seen after the 1st restart of the system.
As for Open Office, to each his own. I, for example, long for the days of Wordstar, as nothing has ever worked as well for me, and I really hate Word. I learned on dBase III+, and Access just annoys me. Excel is ok, but I still miss Lotus 1-2-3.
As for your parents…well, if they are used to Windows then they should probably stay with it, but if they are new to computers, they just might surprise you. I think that some of us [yes, me too] need to remember how ingrained some things become, and if we can just unlearn some of our bad Windows habits, we could do much better. I know that I was amazed how badly I thought Windows worked, compared to the Mac OS, when I was told it was copying most of the ideas. [As anyone who remembers Win 3.0 versus Mac OS, it is no wonder DOS extenders like DesqView did so well!]
eldergeek
April 13th, 2007
at 10:02pm
The first word app I ever used extensively was Word Perfect on Windows 3.11 which I lost when the computer suffered a catastrophic crash. I started using Abiword, on Windows 98 SE, with release 0.7 (as best I recall) and while it was often erratic there was just something about it I liked. Today I’ve got Abiword and OOo on both my Windows 2000 Pro machine and my Debian Etch machine. I can’t say I dislike MS Word because I’ve never used it.
I taught a woman in her 60’s with no prior computer experience how to go online via dial-up connection, surf the web and manage two email accounts using Debian Sarge with pon, poff, Firefox and Kmail. She couldn’t afford to buy anything so the only legal version of Windows I could offer her was Windows 98 SE which, given her level of computer know-how, would have been setting her up for trouble. As it stands, I can legally upgrade her to Etch, switch her to a more user friendly distro like SAM or a leaner, faster distro like DSL/DSL-N at no cost (I don’t charge her for service). Upgrading Linux systems is virtually impossible on a dial-up connection but I pick it up every so often and bring it home, where I have a fast connection, for an evening (returning it the next day).
When it comes to Linux, people who want to do a lot of different things on the computer won’t be intimidated by the learning curve. They’ll learn whatever they must and take later pride in the possession of eclectic knowledge. People who don’t want to do anything complicated won’t have a lot of trouble learning and will later gloat over the fact that they don’t have to jump through as many Security hoops as Windows users.
Don Crowder