Dear Microsoft, I am breaking up with you

Okay so maybe this is harder than I thought

But it is all great fun. I am really enjoying the Linux world. Simple things like no viruses etc. and no activation and easy upgrade make it all worth it...

aja said:

Okay so maybe this is harder than I thought

But it is all great fun. I am really enjoying the Linux world. Simple things like no viruses etc. and no activation and easy upgrade make it all worth it...

Click to expand...

Its hard, but you will understand all how it works if you keep at it. Also its nice skill to have, not to many people can do linux. Some say they can but are using Live CDs and other easy distros. Nothing against them, thats were I started, but its hard to compare ubuntu to LFS, Slack, Gentoo, etc.

Did you end up going LFS or some other route?

aja,

why don't you try gentoo or slackware before you try linux from scratch, or even along side? it will certainly help you learn much faster. I go to school in Pittsburgh and a couple of my comp engineering buddies at Carnegie Mellon started with slack or gentoo before they built their first LFS system. I think it would be a better transition, going straight to LFS is pretty abrupt. I recommend slackware, gentoo's portage is unique, and with slack you'll get a feel for a wider variety of distros and a good understanding of linux as a whole. One bonus with gentoo is the documentation. Their wiki and text documentation is superb. slackware has a die hard following, and the community is less supportive, but it happens to be my distro of choice.

Archer36 said:

Its hard, but you will understand all how it works if you keep at it. Also its nice skill to have, not to many people can do linux. Some say they can but are using Live CDs and other easy distros. Nothing against them, thats were I started, but its hard to compare ubuntu to LFS, Slack, Gentoo, etc.

Did you end up going LFS or some other route?

Click to expand...

dipspit said:

aja,

why don't you try gentoo or slackware before you try linux from scratch, or even along side? it will certainly help you learn much faster. I go to school in Pittsburgh and a couple of my comp engineering buddies at Carnegie Mellon started with slack or gentoo before they built their first LFS system. I think it would be a better transition, going straight to LFS is pretty abrupt. I recommend slackware, gentoo's portage is unique, and with slack you'll get a feel for a wider variety of distros and a good understanding of linux as a whole. One bonus with gentoo is the documentation. Their wiki and text documentation is superb. slackware has a die hard following, and the community is less supportive, but it happens to be my distro of choice.

Click to expand...

Thanks for the replies guys!

The "harder than I thought" was referring to erm, *cough* ubuntu *cough-cough*. Yeah, You never heard me say that....

I grew up with DOS, so the command line thing is fine for me, very natural. It is driver support that is killing me here. At the moment I am running on the PC in my sig, because no other PC's I own seem to want to play nice with Ubuntu.

I am used to my toys - wireless mice, X-Fi sound card, HP iPaq PDA, PDA cellphone etc... And these seem difficult to get to work. But I am patient and understanding, so I will work at it.

My last exam is wednesday, then the fun starts when I will try LFS, as well as Gentoo as you guys suggested.

I am a PC tech and if I can get a grip on Linux I can make myself much more useful at work. It is one of the best skills to have these days IMO. The company I work for kinda hate Linux and are real Microsoft fanboys. (Hmm, I wonder if I should break it to them that their main firewall protecting the entire call center, every other PC and all 9 servers is running Linux? hehe...)

I am a fast learner, but this will take time. I also have to learn Solidworks CAD software and C programming these holidays for university, so I will be busy

I think I will definitely go the gentoo route, especially because of the documentation factor...

one of the reasons I dropped slackware was that whenever I searched google for information, it would point me to the Gentoo wiki...eventually i said "why not just use Gentoo?" and i haven't looked back.

the FreeBSD handbook is very well written too.

linux will never dominate just because there are bagillions of distros. if the larger distros came together and made something good with DX emulation that isnt a crapshoot with configurations, we might have something.

im on my xp pro install for 2 years now and i neverever bsd. got stable ?

I <3 windows, always will (just not ME or Vista)

ben333 said:

I <3 windows, always will (just not ME or Vista)

Click to expand...

Thanks for your astute contribution to the thread!


aja,

If you are looking for support for all of those devices, gentoo will work, but it will require a significantly greater amount of work than using a beginner friendly distro (ubuntu). For simplicity sake, I would go with a distro like that, but if you did work on getting all of those devices to play nice with gentoo, it would be an exceptional learning experience, and from the sound of it, that's what you're going for.

Side note: one great thing about linux is that you'll have the latest and greatest OS available running on a p3. I'd like to see vista do that.

I love the fact that you can install Ubuntu (or equivalent) and switch it on. Yep thats right, just switch it on

No phoning and typing in stupidly long CD-keys. No stolen activations. No lost CD-keys. No lost CD's. No accidental deactivations. No "is your software genuine..." check. No "you have activated too many times"

Just switch it on

Click to expand...

This is the real reason I use Linux. Windows would be a perfectly decent OS if they didn't bog it down with all the DRM, activation, licensing, etc in an attempt to squeeze every customer for more cash and in the process inconvenience all the legit ones. I didn't used to believe that open source was necessary, but now I do, because I've seen how Microsoft has abused the consumer out of greed. I prefer to work with Linux because the people that develop it are altruistic individuals who want to make the world a better place for all of us, while Microsoft is greedy and only wants to line its own pockets, having absolutely no concern for anyone else.

MRD said:

This is the real reason I use Linux. Windows would be a perfectly decent OS if they didn't bog it down with all the DRM, activation, licensing, etc in an attempt to squeeze every customer for more cash and in the process inconvenience all the legit ones. I didn't used to believe that open source was necessary, but now I do, because I've seen how Microsoft has abused the consumer out of greed. I prefer to work with Linux because the people that develop it are altruistic individuals who want to make the world a better place for all of us, while Microsoft is greedy and only wants to line its own pockets, having absolutely no concern for anyone else.

Click to expand...

Exactly.

The customers permit this abuse. It's all in Microsoft's business model, they have the entire world convinced that their product is a necessity. From a business standpoint, Microsoft is what every business wants to be. They're brilliant marketers, but awful to their customers. Those who make money in Linux (RedHat/Novell) sell support, not the software. If Microsoft had any incentive to give equivalent support I'm sure they would, but their business model has the money in the software, not the support.

I have just recently converted my dad to Linux. In the beginning it did not look good, we tried Ubuntu and it was a total fiasco to say the least and he was ready to disown me for putting him thru this install hell (I know close to zip about linux as well). In the end however we had much luck with Fedora and he now absolutely loves it and actually thinks it is really cool to be *different* let alone give a big F.U. to Micro$haft.