Got a new computer with W7 installed. No email client. Bait-and-switch offer to upgrade to 7 pro wasn't interesting.

Let's see. So far, Eudora, Outlook, Outlook Express, and Thunderbird will not work with my ISP on the W7 computer. All, however, work faultlessly with XP.

W7 Home Premium will not support the virtual XP app, so hardly any old apps will run on the computer. I evaluate Windows 7 as somewhat useless.

The computer (dual core 64 bit with 4G memory, 1T drive, and awesome video) is potentially useful, so I have a couple of flavors of Linux coming on CDs. My ISP has download limits, so the free versions would take about three days and $40 bucks to pay for the downloads. Gotta love the prez for trying to put broadband into the rural areas.

I can't imagine why people might put up with Windows any longer. I hate to have to learn the lore of Linux, but at least the OS might prove useful.

 

I like to try anything but windows. Windows creates problems at the most inconvenient times.
What should I try
Ubuntu, or Suse ...these are linux ..right?.
A bit of explanation and ur experience will kick me out of windows for good

 

I use Windows 7 and before that XP Media Center. I have found that the Windows problems can be kept working or they can be left to turn into useless junk.

It is not worth it to me to always be working on the OS, because that is not what I bought the computer for, and eventually they will go creaky or you will do something regretable.

So I just grunt and keep a good support package subscription, because it will save me a few hours of cursing and swearing every month or two and I have the hopefully realistic hope that a professional troubleshooting and maintenance package is worth the extra overhead it uses on the computer and the dollars spent every year.

If you wanted to take the time to stay ahead of Hackers and general performance frictions then you should be a highly paid pro. Or else you can just subscribe to their services.

It defrags my Hard Drive, polices my firewall, warns me of hacker haven websites, cleans my registry, checks my computer and any files that I download for viruses or virus activity, updates itself about 6 times a day, and a bunch of other stuff.

It isn't perfect but I think it helps and if it keeps the computer running smoothly it is probably worth the overhead.

Without the that yellow bb in the corner of my screen windows would be no fun. The hours of cursing would make me want to switch to Linux. I have used some UNIX in my year or two of Uni and didn't mind it at all - Heck I also used DOS and it was fine so Linux would have to be okay.

 

I use Windows 7 and before that XP Media Center. I have found that the Windows problems can be kept working or they can be left to turn into useless junk.

If you can suggest how to get any email client running on Windows 7 over a satellite link to work, then my current replacement computer would not be a paperweight.

All clients install and run. All have identical settings (identical to my XP computer), but none can get the ISP mail server to accept my login. Every one of them works faultlessly when installed on the XP computer. I has to be W7 - so far as I can see.

 

There are some excellent sites similar to this one for computers. My favorite is Major Geeks. Actually Studiot turned me on to this site from there. You can keep everything running smooth on any OS with a little help from your friends.

My favorite computer of all time is still the Commodore 128. It was completely understandable, and they didn't try to screw you over with tech speak. I really loved that old machine. I put it about equal to the XT spec wise. What killed Commodore IMO is they had managers that were milking it like a cash cow, and didn't want to keep up on the tech front. Eventually they would have merged with the mainstream. They had their meetings in the Bahamas to keep their shareholders at a distance, it worked. It allowed them to do a lot of questionable things. That and the folks who did make it were often escorted out of the meetings if they proved troublesome.

 

Hello,

Most computers delivered with windows have 2 partitions.
A rather small C partition and a very large D partition.
A lot of linux distributions offer the possibility to schrink the D partition to make place for the linux installation.
You need to make three partitions for the linux distribution.
A "root" partitiion, / about 10-15 Gig.
(here all programs and the bootprogram will be placed)
A "swap" partition 2 Gig.
(this is the partition need for swapping if the memory is full (like the paging file of windows)).
A "home" partition, /home the rest of the space made free.
(Here the user data will be stored).

When you need to re-install or upgrade a linux version, you only have to format the "root" partition, all data on the "home" partiotion will remain.

There are several magazines that (sometimes) also carry cd's or dvd's with complete linux distributions:
http://www.linuxformat.co.uk/
http://www.linuxjournal.com/
http://www.linux-magazin.de/
http://www.linuxtoday.com/

As you see they come from several countries.
Just take a look in the local bookstore what is available at your place.

Bertus

 

Hello,

On the dutch site of startnederland I found a page with a heap of links in linux:
http://linux.startnederland.nl/

Bertus

Note:
Keep in mind that I did not make the page.
Some links are old and/or not working.

 

I downloaded ubuntu ISO image.

Will try it on a new computer.
@ rectched.
I will need ur help on speed bumps

 

Something else to look for, Linux has some excellent Window's simulators. Look for software labeled WinE (short for Windows Emulators). That might be the way it goes long term. I think the guys who write applications love to tweak M/$ nose.

 

I use Windows less and less. I dual boot Windows 7 and Ubuntu but only find myself in windows when I want to play the occasional video game or need a specific program (like for my EPROM or PIC burner).

Switching from Photoshop to GIMP was a little rocky but once I got used to GIMP I found it worked fine for my needs. There is also a lot of great circuit design and programming software that is one search away in synaptic.

You guys may be interested in a program called "ktechlab", an IDE for microcontrollers and electronics simulation.

Look for software labeled WinE (short for Windows Emulators).

No no no, WINE is not an emulator, its a compatibility layer that substitutes Windows DLLs with their own versions. They basically re-wrote components of windows XD

In fact wine actually stands for "Wine Is Not an Emulator"

 

I downloaded ubuntu ISO image.

Will try it on a new computer.
@ rectched.
I will need ur help on speed bumps

Not a problem.

That goes for anyone. If you need any help with ubuntu, lemme know.

That is correct Blackcow. Wine is in fact no emulator.

Wine works seamlessly with ubuntu.

You simply double click the windows program, and it loads as it always has on windows.

One thing I find fun, is if you have a program that does not work well with wine, posting it to one of their forums is quite helpful.

The reason it is 'fun' is how folks consider it a challenge. They typically dont stop until it works.

Bill, Ill check if MSPaint works with wine.

 

Wikipedia says both, but here is what it says on http://www.winehq.org/ , under About Wine/Common Myths about Wine .

Wine's not that kind of emulator

When users think of emulators, they think of programs like Dosbox or zsnes. These applications run as virtual machines and are slow, having to emulate each processor instruction. Wine does not do any CPU emulation - hence the name "Wine Is Not an Emulator."
Some people argue that since Wine introduces an extra layer above the system a Windows application will run slowly. While technically true, Wine is no different from any other software library in this regard; even newer versions of Windows must load extra resources to support older applications.
Importantly, the combination of Wine and Unix can sometimes be faster than Windows itself. This is especially true when the system has good drivers and the application isn't exposing any Performance Related Bugs.
See also: BenchMarks

Virtual Machines

Some argue virtual machines are better. This is true if you don't mind:

• purchasing a full copy of an operating system just to run it under a virtual machine,
• purchasing VMWare (or similar technology) to make it work,
• using much more memory and disk space, and
• taking a performance hit.

A virtual machine is just like a separate machine - you end up with 2 start menus, 2 system trays, no drag-and-drop or copy-and-paste between Linux and Windows, separate filesystems, different network settings, and other issues. Wine integrates with the desktop and filesystem, and makes Windows applications first-class citizens. Now you can start your Windows application straight from your regular desktop environment, place that application's window side by side with native applications, copy/paste from one to the other, and run it all at full speed.
However, having said that there are instances where emulators are quite useful. Developers can create sandboxes to run applications in, test other operating systems without rebooting, etc. But having a full-blown emulator just to run a word processor probably isn't the best solution.

Furthermore, here is a screen shot from Ubuntu,

Note the "MicroSoft Windows Compatibility Layer (Binary Emulator and Library)" in the description.

An emulator is that what emulates, which is what Wine does. The exact mechanism isn't that critical, it is semantics.

Or in the words of Wiktionary.

2. (computing) A piece of software or hardware that simulates other hardware.

While I'm don't use Linux my boy, TheFox, does.

 

I'm an Ubuntu convert.

About 3-4 years ago I just got sick of XP. It was so slow on my laptop. And the hardware was modest; Pentium M 1.8 GHz, 512 MB RAM. I kept getting mysterious error messages, crashes, and glitches. I got so frustrated I set up an errors gallery: http://www.tgohome.com/Windows%20Errors%20Gallery/ (this is quite old.)

So I tried out this "Ubuntu" thing. On my old Dell Inspiron 1300.

Wow. Call me a convert. I had a few bugs with Ubuntu, and not all my programs would work, so I went back to XP for a few months.

But I found Ubuntu again when XP became inevitably slow after reinstalling, so I stuck with it. Typing this on Ubuntu right now. I now have a new laptop, a Dell Studio 15. Core 2 Duo 2.0GHz processor, 2MB L2, 3GB RAM, 256MB dedicated ATI Mobility Radeon Graphics, slot-loading optical drive, keyboard backlight, LED lit screen. A great computer all around.

Things I love:

• Immunity from viruses. I don't use a virus scanner and use the default firewall (iptables) which makes all ports "stealth".
• Desktop effects. Although pointless, these do make the desktop feel more fluid. And I might as well use that dedicated graphics card.
• All my hardware works. And no drivers. The graphics card (even 3D acceleration), SD card reader/writer, DVD±RW drive, everything works with Ubuntu. I don't have to go hunting for drivers. The only trouble you *might* have is with some graphics cards, you have to install the manufacturer's drivers, but this is rare and usually Ubuntu works out of the box.
• Software installation is MUCH easier. Instead of going to some dodgy site for shareware, just double click something in the Software Centre, and a minute later and it's installed, completely secure from the repositories. (I actually prefer to install from the command line; it is faster and easier.)
• EDA tools: gEDA is a fine, free, open source suite for electronics design. Highly recommended.
• Open source: I like how it is open source. A community project. Directed by corporations and individuals alike. While something like Windows is directed only by Microsoft.
• I like how I can separate Ubuntu's root, boot, swap and home drives. All my personal data is stored on an 85 GB personal partition (/home), all my programs on /, GRUB on /boot and swap in /swap.
• I also like Linux's memory allocator where it prefers to use up almost all the RAM before starting swapping. I normally don't use any of the 3GB swap space. Windows always seems to balance RAM and swap using half of each which is annoying because it's always paging.

For running Windows programs (like MPLAB and LTspice), I use a virtual machine of Windows XP. VirtualBox has almost no overhead because it doesn't emulate instructions individually - it executes them directly on the processor, except for a few special priveleged instructions.

One of the things that irks me about Windows is the ever increasing system requirements list. Why do I need so much memory, so much disk space, so much processor performance? I can run Ubuntu 9.10 on my Pentium III / 256 MB RAM, but Windows XP SP2 is so slow!

As hardware gets faster, software gets slower.

 

My point exactly.

When It got to the point where my gigahertz machine was on pace with an old XT, Thats silly.

Windows just bloats the crap out of everyones machine. If it all worked back then, off of a 360K floppy disk, Why does it need 1.4gig of memory for the OS?

ack.

 

My point exactly.

When It got to the point where my gigahertz machine was on pace with an old XT, Thats silly.

Windows just bloats the crap out of everyones machine. If it all worked back then, off of a 360K floppy disk, Why does it need 1.4gig of memory for the OS?

ack.

Microsoft is in collaboration with Intel and other makers.

So that if you want the MS OS to run smoothly, go buy the latest quad cores with 8 gig RAM. Period

 

Intel is not in bed with anyone. Actually, they support Linux a lot more than you think. For example, Intel often submits optimizations to gcc, the main compiler for Linux, and their graphics drivers are some of the best. A Core 2 Duo will likely run Linux better than Windows.

Windows will run fine on the same hardware as Linux. However, the problem with Windows is that it slows down due to crap building up in the registry. A quad core machine will not make it much faster.

 

I have a tall tool cabinet with fancy wheels, and in one of its many drawers is a plethora of screwdrivers. Each screwdriver has a purpose; I cannot use one screwdriver for all tasks.

Operating Systems could be thought of in the same manner.

Yes, you can cuss when you reach for a phillips and grab a torx, but usually you just reach for the correct tool.

I can safely say having more than one screwdriver (O/S) to do a job correctly and efficiently is pretty handy. More than handy – invaluable!

joe

 

That's why I have a virtual machine with XP in it.

Windows XP was one of the best operating systems from Microsoft. Perhaps that's why 56% of people still use it. I honestly wish Microsoft would just continue improving XP instead of branching off with Vista which frankly sucks.

 

I can safely say having more than one screwdriver (O/S) to do a job correctly and efficiently is pretty handy. More than handy – invaluable!

joe

I would have to agree.

The point is at boot time never allow any OS, be it Windows or Linux, to control ("let you choose") which OS to boot.

Use a separate boot manager to select which OS to boot. In this way, one can move several OS around to different partitions, and back them up with the minimum fuss.

 

XP Pro for me!
Bought my laptop specifically last year cos it came pre-installed. Vista (like all new mircosoft products) was still too buggy and unstable for my liking.
By the time it comes round to updating my lappy Vista will be up to it's 3rd or 4th service pack so should be more stable by then.