haha i only got win 98 SE so thats why. Site doesnt work

(Vomits) Wow, I feel sorry for you, no self respecting Jedi or Sith uses 98.

now if she'll only let me reformat her HD...

I blame Darkness for talking me into running programs I didn't know anything about

Its better then ME, 2000, and XP Home!

so ya XPpro is the only way to go if your bound by the windows virus...

...If you are looking for an OS save your self alot of time, money and furestation and go with a linux distro.

Gentoo took me three days to install, and after that, there was still much customization to be done.

Granted, a newb can run Mandrake, but even then, there's much hardware tuning to be done, specially if you're someone that has an SiS video card / soundcard. Not everyone is computer literate, and it's posts like yours that makes them think that Linux is easier to setup and maintain than windows, this is untrue.

Windows, on the other hand, Installs in 15 minutes, and works right out of the box. I created my own customized Windows install disk, which reduced the installation time, auto-fills my info into the dialogues (It's totaly automatic), and comes pre setup with the current ATI / Sound Blaster drivers, AVG Anti-Virus, SpyBot... ohh, and It's slipstreamed with SP2... completely up to date.

Once I installed linux I realized my video card, sound card, and ethernet card would have to be replaced. On top of that, being new at the time... I opted to run KDE as my desktop environment, due to it's direct similarities to Windows' Explorer. Here's the kicker... KDE takes up around 140 MBs of RAM to run... I had 256 RAM at the time... meh, time to get 1024. Yes, the operating system is free, but would your average Joe sixpack really want to sit down infront of his computer and have to deal with all these issues when he could just install Windows?

This statement deserved a very bold: "WTF?". Windows does provide various flavours of frustration, granted. But so does linux... I don't have spywars problems, virus problems, hardware problems, and the likes with Windows... why? Because I know how to avoid all that (router, anti-virus, SpyBot, ect)... When you can't get X to work, and you have to surf around in Lynx in a fullscreen console on linux-help forums asking how to get it working again, does that not cause frustration? When you seem to be doing everything right, yet wine won't run Warcraft III at full speed, does that not cause frustration? When there's an app you need to have to do something, but it's in source-code, and provides little to no explination as to how to compile it... does that not cause frustration? Hell... waiting 6 hours for some huge app like KDE to compile when updating, is that not inconvenient?

I say if you are looking for an OS save yourself a lot of time, money, and frustration and go with Windows. If you are computer literate, have patience, a few extra bucks to screw around with, and feels like playing around with an Operating System a lot go with Linux.

they are, well they are if u get a distro that is user frendly. Suse is extreaml easy to install and get wroking. it atacly found more of my hardware then windows did and instaled most of it better then windows did with out my help or even prodiving drivers. Idk what u mean abou mandrake i tryed that on one of my comps and it was also very easy to install and found all my hardware. Shure there is some distros that are hard to install but not all of them.

well idk about you but windows xp did not work with all of my hard ware out of the box, i had to install drivers for things like my wifi card, netwrok card, sound card and graficks card to get it to work with them or to let them use all of there feruaters. But with SuSe linux it found them all and even was easer to congier them. For exmaple with my dial up modem, after it instaled the dirvers for it, it gave a list of isp in canada, ont and i could pick sympatico from it and it whould list all the infromtion for that isp witch makes it alot easer to get the info you need.

I am geting the fealing that you did somting horbley wrong when u instaled linux b/c i have one of the most unlinux comable computers and hardware and yet i was able to get almost all of it working with SuSe incuding video card, 3d sound card, ethernet and wifi cards. Also saying that linux has gerater system requerments then windwos may be the dumested thing i have ever hured.

As i side b4, i think you ether had a realy bad distro or you did somting horbly wrong when u instaled linux b/c the worst that has ever hapend to me in linux invaing X is when i tryed to upgraed my vid card drivers and it whould not load X. But then i just typed in yast and it borugth up the sytem confgi and i cahged the driver back very easly and it wroked agaen. Also about emulation of windows progmes on linux, how is this a fualt in linux? 1st of all the progame u are using to emulate them is not linux it is wine and 2nd if we are making a comaperson you whold have to try to emulate and linux progam on windows and see how that works out. Also my guse whould be that you could get it to work if u put the time in to reading some wine how tos. As for the sorce code thing, almost every import app has a rpm verson for most distros, in fact there are many sites full of 10000s of rpms for your disrto. agen if we are going to comper this faeraly you whould have to try to comple the same progme on windows witch whould probly be just as hard or if not harder. If you installed all the need/recmened apps when u installed linux you should be able to tpye in make, then make install as su root and it whould install the code. 6 hours for KDE to updated? how slow is your computer???

I am starting to wonder if you have ever realy used linux, it makes no scen to say it cost "extra bucks" to use linux over windows and if you are buying new hard ware b/c you can not read the how tos on how to install drivers in linux then may be you should not be using a computer?

SuSe is great, if you want a distro that's as customizable as windows and have to wait for it to install over the internet from an FTP server. I really don't find this convenient... and if you want to buy SuSE, and avoid that trouble it's $90... it's just easier to stick with the one that already comes with the computer.

Well, that's why you make your own custom Windows CD, which is what I did... if you read further on you would have noticed this... now if I could only do that with linux... I'd be set.

And about sympatico... isn't that what the "Internet Connection Wizard" in windows is for?

"What type of connection do you have?"
"DSL"
"Please enter password and user name"
"Done."
"Connecting."
"..."
"Connected."

I don't need a list of ISP's... I know what ISP I have... just connect me... anyways, if you do need to list of all the ISP's in your area.. windows does that aswell.

And if you want the specs on your connection, I believe that's what the "net" / 'ipconfig" commands are for.

SiS chipsets are extreamly uncompatible with linux... they work, but never well. And there is no Hardware Graphics Acceleration with SiS video cards in Linux, and the SiS sound card gives no sound in lots of apps (ie: quake, ut2k4.. ect).

Read the fûcking post, I never said, implied, nudged, stated, or alledged that linux has more system requiredments than Windows. Hell, you can install linux on a gameboy with some hardware hacking. I said that KDE uses more system resources than Windows. Explorer uses about 32 MBs, KDE uses (in total) 140+. So if I want to run quake, I need to boot into X with blackbox so as to free up some RAM... which is really inconvenient. GNOME uses the same resources as KDE, actually, all desktop environments for linux use more resources than Windows' Explorer.

I think there are thousands of people that would disagree with you on the fact that gentoo is a horrible distro. This happened to me as a newb, and with my SiS chipset... this really is discouraging to the newbs... Windows isn't discouraging to the newbs, I wonder why...

You can emulate any linux application in Windows with cygwin, just as easily, if not easier, than with wine on Linux. Not to mention, that cygwin provides all the tools... and after that, absolutely any linux app can be compiled as a windows' ".exe" binary and run from any windows box.

I've read all the Wine How-Tos... That's why I don't have those problems anymore... but your average Joe SixPack won't want to. What user-friendly app makes you read 300 pages worth of documentation?

Not all Linux distro's are RPM based, and "alien" only does so good of a job.

Lots of programs require different compiler flags and manual configs, and simply doing a "./configure && make && make install" won't do.

Install KDE from source, not update.

My computer is 3.2 GHz slow.

I've been using Linux since I was in grade 6. I'll always prefer to use linux over windows, but you're saying that Linux is a lot easier to use than windows... and that your average joe sixpack will be able to run it right out of the box and have no issues with it what-so-ever, which is entirely false.

Try installing any video card from SiS on linux. I dare you, try, read every single mother fûcking how-to in the world... you still won't be able too, unless y ou write your own.. which is still impossible since they completely refuse to reveal any key driver specs that would allow open source developers to make one. Don't you think people would have made an SiS video driver by now for those who couldn't upgrade to nVidea or ATI cards? So far, they've managed to make them work, without hardware acceleration... which is pretty much useless.

Don't fûck with me when it comes to linux... I was installing "linux from scratch" before you even knew what turing was.

What are u talking about? i download the ISO file from there site and instaled via a cd. I also have insatled via a hard driver. SuSe can be instaled just as many ways and for free as any other distro of linux. It even has a live verson....

mm, i am prity shure there are drivers for them now....even if they are in the eraly stages.

Ethere way u look at it there is somting wrong with your agument, 1st if u are saying u are not talking about linux then what is the point? We where debating linux no KDE. Now if u say all linux desktops are more resources then windows you are still wrong b/c they can be custimzed for your computer just like linux can be. Expolere alone may take up about 32 MB but if u add in all the apps windows starts by defatl that M$ put in it is up to the 140s as well. (at least on my comps).

I hope you are not implying that i think gentoo is a horrible distro, i find it fine. Just that it is NOT MADE FOR NEWBS, poleop who are newbs to linux should 1st try a live cd to find a SIMPLER DISTRO they like and then try to install that.

Yes, just as easy. witch was my point Rolling Eyes

Windows? or anything eltes M$ makes?

I know that but some are, any how i do not think compleing them is that hard if your linux is set up right and u read the read me files

Then there is somting wrong, b/c it should not take 6 hours to compile a file. I am thinking you did somting wrong if it toke 6 hours on a 3.2GHz.

It can be just as easy if not more so, may be the avg joe sixpacks in your area are alot dummer then mine?

May be this is the fault of SiS and not linux??? I mean if u are making PC parts they should work with almost any PC OS. This is not the fault of Linux but as u mentioed SiS.

....You are making many asumptions, you know nothing about when i used linux or when i used turing.

For a newb, KDE is linux (either that or GNOME). Even if you're not a newb, but prefer a fully working desktop environment as opposed to a basic window manager, you'll still feel the difference. I booted into Windows and ran: WinAMP, Fireworks, FireFox, ThunderBird, several dozen windows of explorer, and had them all display on the screen... explorer was up to a whopping 60 MBs, whereas KDE upon loading, showed a miniscule 133.7 MBs. There are no better desktop environments out than the two forementioned and the average Joe Sixpack, won't want to learn how to work soley on the shell just to avoid high resources, all he'll say is: "Why is my computer so slow?"

Windows runs at it's optimal state without much configuration (not that you can anyways), with a pretty much automatic self-installer. And even the simplest distributions (see mandrake or redhat) require at least minimal knowledge of partitioning, and you need to know things such as your monitor's vertical / horizontal refresh rates, what software packages to install (which a newb will not be familiar with)

and if you install everything, you're looking at the 3 GB linux distro, which is hardly more space efficient than windows. And after all that, the whole installation is very generic, meaning, you'll have to do a lot of tuning afterwards anyways. All I ever needed to do was go to windowsupdate, download about 20 MBs worth of updates, and done; now I can do what I want.

Let me rephrase that. It IS easier... you download the ~300 KB exe, install it, install the apps off the internet... done.

You don't have to configure X, the soundcard, mouse, ect... just compile, and run the apps you want. No configs to write, font packages to hunt down, libraries to satisfy, ect.

The documentation microsoft provides for it's apps are on how to use the application, not how to get it working, they work pretty well once installed, never had an issue with office in my life (never had to read the documentation either).

It's not compiling a file... It's compiling many, many, files. up and around ~400 MBs, which is pretty much the size of my entire gentoo install (if you don't concider KDE and GNOME as part of the OS).

Don't under estimate the Average Joe SixPack. By "AJS" (Acronym), I'm not reffering to the 16 year old kid that likes computers and doesn't mind reading up on it. I'm reffering to the air heads that only want a computer for pr0n, MSN, and internet. I'm reffering to the girls that don't want to learn how to compile stuff on the computer just to get aMSN to work; these same girls who most likely don't know what the word 'compile' even means. I'm reffering to the average person that hasn't read a book out of geniune want for reading in their life. I'm reffering to about %70 of the population. . It was hard for me to believe that there was such a thing as someone that didn't know how to do such a trivial thing as how to setup/install a printer. But these people do exist, you just don't know it because you're too naive to think they do, don't socialise with them to know they exist, or have been lucky enough to grow up in a place where there aren't any of these people. There ARE people that think the CD bay is a coffee-cup holder, I know some.

I'm merely deducing your experience with computers in general, pretty much how you were asuming my level of experience with linux due to my statement that linux costs "extra bucks".

Topic was wayout of topic so i siplit it no clue what title to give it oh well