Is Linux cool?

[!!tio!!]

1,Is Linux cool?
2,What games are there? (like any mine sweeper)
3,Macromedia, Adobe software userable? (like Flash, Photoshop)
4,Plug n Play USB support?
5,Gfx card useful in Linux?
6,Does Capture card, Creative sound card drivers work?
7,Support Palm?
8,Does most of the win programs support or not support?
9,Recommend programs?
10,Better than Windows, Mac or BeOS?

[rugby]

http://www.linuxnewbie.org

start here, sniff around. it's a great website to learn lots from.

[klosters64a]

Linux is kewl, but only if you want it to be. Yes, there's a Linux version of Minesweeper, included with KDE 1.1. There are lots of games available in Linux, but maybe only 15% as are available for Win OS's. Yes, Macromedia's Flash prog is available for Linux, as well as Acrobat Reader. USB support is supposed to be available with kernel 2.4, but I use an older kernel and hate USB, anyway. Brain not work, I don't remember what Gfx is, sorry!

I can't vouch for a Video Capture card. Linux drivers that work for SBLive! Soundcards are available from Creative Labs. My SB PCI 512 works just fine. Modern Linux's will install the emu10k(SB PCI 512/SBLive!) driver automagically.

I have no clue about Palm. Modern Linux's may well support Palms.

Linux is an offspring of Unix, via Minix. Unix doesn't grok Windows. There are progs that act as an interface between Linux and Win9x OS's. Many Windows progs can be run by "remote control."

Recommended flavors of Linux? I love SuSE. After using Red Hat, Caldera and Mandrake, I find SuSE to be what Linux is all about. Rock solid, no cutesy road apple quirks. As many distributions of Linux are available for free DL, I suggest trying a few. If you don't have a fast connection to the Web, GPL editions of all the major distro's are available on CD for nearly no cost.

"Better," exactly how? If you have no interest in learning more about your machine than you may believe is possible, Linux isn't better.

If you don't mind belonging to Billy Bully Boy and his cast of thousands, Linux isn't better.

If you don't want to see all the unbelievable amount of work that an OS does, and simply are happy to have this knowledge hidden behind a pretty face, Linux is not better.

If you want to declare your independence from the richest man in the world(Not. But he's getting there) Linux is worth the effort.

If you REALLY want to learn what an OS has to do, Linux is for you.

If you're tired of paying a LOT for OS's with bugs that are NEVER fixed, Linux makes much more sense.

Of course, Hong Kong is famous for ridiculously over priced software. How do you poor souls even afford Win3.1? Nudge nudge, wink wink.

[mcrites]

1. No, Linux is KEWL!
2. Theres nothing better than controlling a penguin down a 3d slope!
3. Flash can be downloaded for use with mozilla, netscape and konqueror. Check out the gimp from gimp.org for a photoshop replacement.
4. Dude, linux is a lot better at using my usb mouse than windows is. Sometimes when I pull it out in windows and put it back in, windows locks up, linux doesn't. Just make sure you have usb compiled into the kernel, and its plug and play. You also have to do some fun stuff with your mouse to work with X, check out groups.google.com for info on that.
5. Nvidia supports their cards with their own drivers, and a lot of other cards are supported as well. Check www.xfree86.org for more info.
6. If by capture cards such as wintv, it works, so does my creative live. Check out alsa and xawtv.
7. Check for jpilot on freshmeat.net for the palm.
8. Check out vmware at www.vmware.com, and wine at www.winehq.com.
9. Freshmeat.net, all programs listed!
10. Depends, depends, and depends, on your needs. You can always quintuple boot, and run vmware, thru linux thru windows thru the vm that runs windows on the mac!

[dcarrera]

To answer your questions:

1,Is Linux cool?

Yes, definitely, very much. It's very powerful, flexible, and has all the things that I want.


2,What games are there? (like any mine sweeper)

Definitely mine sweepen (2 or 3 versions :)
You'll find tons of simple arcade-style games (more than I can count). You'll have more trouble with "real" games. Checkout lokigames.com, they sell most high-level games for Linux.

3,Macromedia, Adobe software userable? (like Flash, Photoshop)

I don't know about macromedia. There's a free program called GIMP, which is very much like Photoshop (I like it better). It's very powerful, I use it all the time and I love it.

4,Plug n Play USB support?

Should be fine.

5,Gfx card useful in Linux?

Yes, I'm using one right now.

6,Does Capture card, Creative sound card drivers work?

I don't know. I'm not into media.

7,Support Palm?

Yes (again, I don't know the details).

8,Does most of the win programs support or not support?

The program "wine" can run many windows programs, but don't count on it.

9,Recommend programs?

I could think of a hundred programs that I'd recommend (I'm not kidding, I did once). It depends on what you want. Go to tucows.com to find a few.

10,Better than Windows, Mac or BeOS?

I have no experience with BeOS.
Much better than Windows and Mac. It can be just as easy to use if you want it to be, it's more powerful, more stable, and has a huge ammount of good software that simply doesn't exist elsewhere.

[Vryce]

Penguins..north pole...coooooooool.....
_COLD!_

ok..that was bad..slap me


seriously: linux can be *very* nice if you're willing to put in a little work to get it all goin the way you want, you won't have 'not enough access' errors with linux if you're root, you can customize things beyond what you'd even dream of with windows

I haven't used most of the hard ware/other stuffs to answer most of your questions..but I've never had a lack of built in games with KDE (you can very likely d/l whatever you may want that isn't included)

[G-PHoRCe]

did you ever think about building a linux pc with all the best hardware out there??? that wut i'm thinking about...cause i like xp but it **** me off in a lot of ways that linux doesnt...but i'm scared to buy some hardware that won't be compatible with linux...
http://primeminista.free.fr/Images/HeroVsZombie.gif

[White Star]

[QUOTE=G-PHoRCe]did you ever think about building a linux pc with all the best hardware out there??? that wut i'm thinking about...cause i like xp but it **** me off in a lot of ways that linux doesnt...but i'm scared to buy some hardware that won't be compatible with linux...[QUOTE]

I wouldn't be scared too much anymore. I've been going off of all the old skool people talking about how Linux can handle anything from a 386 on up to the most recent of processors.

That day is quite dead. Linux's support for legacy is really about as bad a joke as one can find these days. Remember Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade? Linux == Teh Holy Grail. Athlon Thunderbird/Pentium III Coppermine == Teh Great Seal. Do NOT take the Grail past the Great Seal. It's not a good idea.

Moving FORWARD however, Linux seems to support all kinds of new hardware as soon as it's available. Example being Athlon 64. The 64 bit extensions were ready to roll almost immediately when the A64s shipped. Your only problem after that is finding programs. Programs are few and far between. Not documented. Not advertised. Just quietly developing themselves in their own little corner of the internet.

In the end if you're looking for a really flexible, multi-purpose OS to put on top of your top of the line hardware, take a step back from XP and go back to Windows 2000. It's a lot easier to find programs for it, it's just about as flexible as Linux, despite what most people think, and hot damn, there's all those games. :)

[idunno246]

http://liflg.sourceforge.net/ has installers for retail windows games. Also, http://happypenguin.org/ is a great resource for gaming.

Just about anything in windows can be done in a similar program in windows, except games are limited. The biggest advantage is customizability, and its mostly free.

[rogerdugans]

Linux is pretty cool, but mainly it is those of us who use Linux that MAKE it cool, by association. ;)

WE are cool+ we use Linux=Linux is cool. :D

But I'm not arrogant at all, lol.

Seriously: linux in all its variations is a very good operating system.
Like any other OS, it does have both good and bad points.

Whether it is Cool for you is something that only YOU can say.

[Cjwinnit]

I'm a big fan of SuSE (when I can get it installed, don't ask ;)) and I can vouch for it certainly being chic if not cool.

P.S. Holy thread resurrection?

[G-PHoRCe]

I’ve run through all my programs; I am amazed that most are compatible and have support with red hat Debian and Suse... but what about Mandrake...not a single program talk about being compatible or support for Mandrake. I just happen to have one of my friends CD of MANDRAKE 10 but don't want to install unless you guys tell me that Mandrake will work fine with those programs as Suse, Red Hat and Debian would...?

[Christoph]

G-PHoRCe, keep the forums clean. I can hardly even read your post. The animation is distracting in the extreme, and your poor spelling and punctuation don't help. In general, 500k animated gifs don't have a place in a technical forum. Posting the same one twice doesn't make it better.
Don't bump old threads with half-coherent questions. Use the tools at your disposal to write a readable question and start a new thread for it.

[ObnoxiousFrog]

G-PHoRCe, keep the forums clean. I can hardly even read your post. The animation is distracting in the extreme, and your poor spelling and punctuation don't help. In general, 500k animated gifs don't have a place in a technical forum. Posting the same one twice doesn't make it better.
Don't bump old threads with half-coherent questions. Use the tools at your disposal to write a readable question and start a new thread for it.


You're completely right, but it was a cool little animation. :santa2: