Re: Help me choose

From: Morningdew (yahooaddyismorning42dew_at_spam.free)
Date: 01/31/05 

Date: Mon, 31 Jan 2005 01:54:22 -0600

I.C. Koets wrote:

> Now I have to choose a new OS, and so far everyones' opinions are
> running counter to each other. I have a few choices, all have their own
> disadvantages:

Yes, true... opinions are a dime a dozen and everybody has one. Can't
be helped. Given time, you'll have made your own opinions I am sure...

> I could go with:
>
> * Windows XP. It is the current standard, so drivers and program
> compatibility shouldn't be a problem. My new machine should run it easily.
> Running with the masses makes a lot of things quite a bit easier.
> However: I tried it some time ago, and I wasn't impressed by the amount of
> overhead running.

I have steered clear of XP, but my friend has tried it and has had
plenty of headaches. New isn't always best, even in the 'main stream'
world of Microsoft. I worked in IT for years and years, and most places
I worked, including a few Fortune 500 companies, would not upgrade their
Windows operating systems until they had time to become "stable". XP
was becoming available before my last employer was finally ready to
start putting Windows on more than a few tentative systems.

I knew how to strip 98 down to its bare minimum, but XP
> proved very resistant to such measures, and after it sat on my machine,
> smugly unperturbable, without me being able to stick my hands in the
> workings, I wiped it off. Not only that, but I have loads of DOS, W3.11 and
> W98 programs that I want to be able to run, and that didn't go smoothly at
> all. Also I got the distinct impression that XP is as open to hackers as a
> drunk whore is to sailors. If I go with XP, I'd have to find ways to get
> past these issues.

No direct personal XP experience here, but my impression is the same.
It seems that you are less and less able to "stick your hands in there"
as you say. MS operating systems have become almost logarithmically
more difficult to support over the years, in my humble opinion. But
hey, they get to charge us techs hundreds of dollars a year to buy tons
of training materials to keep up with their entire new world vision
every year, not to mention the test fees. Yeah, I'm kinda jaded... but
I get to have my opinion like everyone else, right?

If something goes wrong, it is really important to be able to get your
hands in there and muck around. Especially when the support sucks.
Last place I worked paid M$ millions of dollars a year. Millions. And
they still sucked when I needed technical details or help with hard
problems. Getting structural details about, say, Exchange Server was
like pulling teeth from a walrus. Tech net or no, I always seemed to
find myself faced with the dark shroud covering whatever it is I really
needed to know.

Besides that, you say that getting your hands in there is appealing.
Well, that's what I think too. Sometimes it's intimidating, but it can
be really fun and rewarding. Even those small successes. Computing is,
after all, a tinkering hobby at it's heart.

You are also probably right about the security. I have very little
faith in Microsoft with regard to security holes. They also would
rather ignore them than fix them. Often it is public pressure that
forces them to finally deal with an issue. There is more than a little
truth to the fact that Linux security issues get fixed fast. The people
using the systems care about the problem, and given the ability to fix
it they do. No waiting on the benevolence of your disinterested
profiteering vendor.

> * Windows 2000. Not standard, but still supported, perhaps not for long.
> Stable, businesslike.
> However: I never tried it, so I have cold feet. I heard its DOS support was
> even worse than XP's, which would disqualify it. I also heard it doesn't do
> games very well, and even though I don't game a lot, that doesn't sound
> nice. Furthermore, I have been warned that W2k is 'difficult', although I
> don't know if I'd mind that.

Win2k has been around a while and has become fairly stable.
Businesslike... not candy-coated like XP. XP can be slick but it is
also very "Fisher Price" at the same time. Win2K can be more
complicated (in ways) than Win98 but it is also a different animal. I
don't know what areas of DOS support you'd have issues with. It will
run some dos programs but most the ones I've had experience with were
more business and utilitarian, so they didn't do anything really
"unexpected". Honestly, you should check with user groups or support
forums for the products you use or in your industry to find out what
mileage others have had with your specific programs.

Surprisingly, though, I know that it can be a successful platform for
many games. Both of my brothers that have computers use Windows 2000 as
a desktop operating system. They run several games including Halo,
Doom3, UT2004, and such like that. So far as I know they have not
really run into any major problems with any of the games they play.
Both of them are fairly turned off by XP, and I don't blame them.

What really gets my ire about Microsoft is the way they sneak crap in on
you, like with the Media Player upgrades or the Service Packs.
Microsoft is it's own worst spyware.

> * Some flavour of Linux. Finally free from Redmonds' shackles, open source
> software by the shipload, often for free. Great choice in different
> flavours, active community.
> However: I tried SuSe 8.2, and it really annoyed me. Buggy, complex, help
> system was useless for a novice like me [if it didn't crash on me!], I never
> got any work done on it. The only thing I ever got to work was OpenOffice.

Good news, things have been coming along quickly in Linux-land. I use
the Ubuntu distribution and have had a lot of success. Many
distributions are getting a lot slicker and very easy to install and get
running with. Knoppix and all the LiveCDs since are truly slick little
packages. I think people are even making similar boot-and-go installs
on their USB memory sticks and jump-drives. Best part with the Linux
distros is that you can get them all for free, so you can try a few out
and see what works best for you. Ubuntu and MEPIS might be good to
test. Mandrake is a popular starter Linux and I tried it first, too.
Though I know what people mean by "RPM Hell" and am much happier with a
Debian derivative. The APT package management has been much kinder to
me. Go look on Distrowatch to see what is out there and check in with
each community's hangouts on the web or IRC to get some feel for them.

> Hurrah. The Linux newsgroups, forums etc. weren't very helpful at all. Half
> of the scarce answers I got were of the order "That's weird. Never heard of
> it doing that before." and the other half was "RTFM". So I'm sceptical. I've
> seen other peoples' systems running well, but I don't feel like having to
> become as involved in Linux as them in order to get it to run. Knoppix
> impressed me, when I saw it on a friends box, but I am wary. Not only would
> I have to know that it has good emulators for my old software, but I'd also
> have to choose a distro, which is not trivial for a newbie like me. And then
> there is the problem that my job requires me to work with certain standard
> programs, which might not have a Linux edition...

Well, on the one hand you say you like to get your hands in there but on
the other you don't want to. Well, I can understand that a whole new OS
can be intimidating. And Linux really does let you touch every nut and
bolt if you want... so... That's not a bad thing, though it does make it
easier to swim out to deep waters. Think of this: It probably took you
quite a while to get as proficient at tweaking DOS and Windows 9x as you
are. You can't expect yourself to learn Linux as well overnight. But
there really is a lot of help out there. I know what you're saying
about the brush-offs or the RTFMs. Some people don't seem to have
enough patience for their computers AND people. But it is in the Linux
community's ultimate interest to be helpful and open to newbies. If you
test the waters at a few different forums, newsgroups, and IRC
servers/channels you will find friendly and supportive folk. But
remember nobody is being paid to help you so be kind enough to at least
try yourself, search google, etc. If you do, it helps to start your
questions by telling what you already tried and failed with, so people
don't flame you or tell you the same easy answers that didn't help you
the first time. You get a lot more respect for trying to help yourself
at least a little. "Come hold my hand and read my mind, too" is usually
flame bait.

> So here I am, stuck without enough knowledge to make an educated decision. I
> just need to get my machine running, being able to run DOS, Win 3.11 and W98
> applications (mostly CAD, Algebra software, MatLab, FEA, graph generators,
> office apps, other miscellaneous engineering and scientific software), but
> also a few games, some video and audio, and web browsing as well as a bit of
> data pumping on P2P networks. That's about it.
>
> Advise me, please!

I am not into the math software, but I do know that Unix/Linux is very
well used in the engineering, mathematics, and scientific communities.
If you maybe check in on newsgroups or other forums related to the
industry you're in you can get some better first-hand accounts from
people that are similar to you in your use. I have no specific
recommendation as I have not been around the block so much with Linux
myself. I have only been using it for about 3-4 months now, but have
been enjoying it. That is something I have not been able to say about
M$ for a long long time.

I have been using a program called MLDonkey for multi-network p2p, and
there are others including Gnutella & Gnutella2 clients, and other
eDonkey clients. Bittorent is of course available stand-alone as well.
   MLDonkey is not "slick" on the user-interface end but is powerful.
And I think it's slick how it will run in the background and email me
when my downloads complete. I have had good luck with XMMS for most
every audio format once I got all the plug-ins, and it will be very
familiar to you if you are/were a WinAMP user as they are both derived
from the same original project. Video is tricker to get working but it
can be done. Most any distro you will need to tweak it or load
"non-free" stuff manually to get the video working fully. Could be
easier but it is not impossible.

I have not tried many games yet, though Doom3 and UT2004 and Wolfenstein
do have Linux support. Both NVidia and ATI have recently released
driver updates. Now either one will work with XFree86 and X.Org
x-servers in 32-bit or AMD64. But you'll probably get better mileage
out of an NVidia card. They have been a bit better with Linux than ATI.
  I have an ATI Radeon 9800 Pro myself, so I have been both frustrated
and grateful with ATI. Frustrated they are so slow with support,
grateful when they finally do a release. One day one of these companies
is going to realize that opening up their hardware APIs is going to be
in their best interest. They can let the open source world innovate
with software and they can concentrate on just making kick-ass hardware
GPU engines.

Performance with either is not on par with their Windows drivers from
either vendor, though NVidia is getting closer. You can always
dual-boot to a small Win9x partition to run games, too, you know.

Try several LiveCDs. I know Ubuntu has one coming... I think you can
download a preview of it (have not checked recently). There are others.
  Go play.. test the waters, and see what works for you. It won't cost
you anything more than a few CDs and some time to play.

Good luck, and I really hope you find something that works well for you.

Peace,
Morningdew

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