Re: [tlug] Japan Times Linux Article

["Jim O'Connell" <oconnell@example.com>]

I suspect that if you made it through windows, you'll become proficient in using Linux even quicker - that might sound like a snide comment, but I do believe it.

To me, the difference between Linux and Windows is like the difference between a restaurant and a party at someone's house.  If you'd prefer to hang out in the kitchen at a party, watching, helping, tasting, interfering and generally having a good time, Linux may be for you.  
If, on the other hand, you like to be seated in a restaurant and have things brought in a supposedly finished state, you might want to stick with windows.
There's nothing wrong with either option, as long as you know what the deal is:
You can't expect to hang in the kitchen at a restaurant and you can't expect to get waited on hand-and-foot at a party with friends.
It all depends on what you're in the mood for...

You do raise an interesting point about compatible software though - good idea.  It would be nice to have a list like:  
	"If you use XXX in Windows, try ZZZ in linux (from ZZZ.sourceforge.net)"  

(There probably *is* such a list somewhere, I just don't know of one...)

Ideally it would have some kind of voting to keep it current and also allow for unresolvable conflicts such as KDE vs Gnome or VI vs. Emacs.
I wish sourceforge had some kind of rating system beyond the very general 'Most Active' list.

When you're a beginner, the thing that will probably frustrate you most is getting and installing software.  
Learn how to use a package manager like apt or rpm at first, depending on your distro.  This will help you get productively using the most common applications out there.  Then you may want to learn how to install new stuff from those dreaded tar.gz files. (Or you might not - many people never do.)

Another common thing I see is beginners using old distros - don't.  Recently my friend told me he spent a day trying to get RedHat installed on his PC for the first time and he came away with a really bad experience - as it turns out, he had grabbed a CD set from his office that was RedHat 6.something.  Needless to say, RH 7.3 was a bit less painful to install and configure.

Anyway, good luck with it - 
Cheers,
Jim

On Fri, 24 May 2002 17:46:35 +0900
"Martin Arballo" <martin@example.com> wrote:

> Sorry folks,
> I still hate LINUX as much as I hated WINDOWS when I was in the beginner stage.  
> It took me time to understand windows, and I don't expect to learn linux quickly as well.
> It doesn't matter what it says in the article.
> Sometimes I think that I need 2 friends to switch to LINUX, one is an expert in Linux (I have a friend with that characteristic),
> and the other is a psycho-analist to help me manage my anguish when 
> I can not go anywhere with my Linux system to solve my problem of the moment 
> and I want to destroy my new laptop.
> I am not the kind of person who have chosen computers for fun or personal interest, 
> just to find a suitable job and to perform it better.
> What is also a big problem now is that I am tight to all the stuff I did in windows environment,
> and most of it is impossible to use in Linux.
> So, here is my question: Where can I find a list of file compatibility between softwares of windows and Linux,
> because I want to jump once and forever to LINUX and to get rid of Windows as fast as possible,
> doesn't matter how painful it will be.
> Regards and thanks,
> Martin
>  
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "Charles Muller" <acmuller@example.com>
> To: "Tokyo Linux Users Group" <tlug@example.com>
> Sent: Thursday, October 24, 2002 4:58 PM
> Subject: [tlug] Japan Times Linux Article
> 
> 
> Oh, what the heck, why mess around here with individual requests for the 
> article. Here it is:
> 
> -------------------------------------
> Linux Takes on Windows: Challenger has its charms, but still suits geeks best
> 
> By MICHAEL JAMES The Baltimore Sun 
> (Carried in the Japan Times, Thursday, October 24, 2002)
> 
> Contrary to popular belief, the cops will not arrest you if you don't use 
> Windows. There are some interesting alternative operating systems out there  
> --  and with perseverance, you won't go crazy trying to use them. Chief among 
> them is Linux, the largely free, enormously geek-popular system that hardline 
> anti-Windows users rave about, which has Tux the penguin as its mascot. The 
> core of Linux was written by Linus Torvalds, 32, a Finn. There are others, 
> including FreeBSD, which has been around for more than 20 years in one form 
> or another, and BeOS, which has such a hard-
> core following that "Be" fanatics stuck with it even after the parent company 
> folded last year. 
> 
> I tried out a free version of Red Hat Linux on my computer and found that it 
> worked reasonably well once installed. But let's get one thing straight up 
> front: Installing any Windows-alternative operating system is not for the 
> technologically squeamish. Unless you're a somewhat advanced Windows user, I 
> wouldn't try it without a geek or doctor present. Even for an advanced user, 
> getting a new operating system to do everything we take for granted with 
> Windows can be a time-consuming and daunting task. Surfing the Internet, 
> sending e-mail, and looking at digital photos require a labor-intensive setup 
> with Linux and its brethren. (If you're really dying to get a Linux system 
> without the hassle of installing it, you can buy a Linux-based computer "out-
> of-the-box" at www.dell.com.)
> 
> Another major stumbling block is software. Most of today's high-end and oft-
> used applications  --  Adobe Pho-
> toshop Elements, Microsoft Word and PowerPoint, Roxio CD-burning software, 
> and just about every cool game  --  are written for Windows or Apple's 
> Macintosh computers. Sure, there are Linux-based alternatives, like the free 
> Microsoft Word-emulating program OpenOffice, but in many cases they don't 
> have the ease of use or firepower of Windows-based software. So why do it? 
> Why use a different operating system in this Microsoft-controlled digital 
> world?
> 
> There are several reasons. First off, there's the moral reason offered by a 
> growing handful of Windows dissenters, who have turned to another operating 
> system in a virtual protest of Bill Gates' iron grip on today's PC. Another 
> reason is financial. Linux, FreeBSD and BeOS can be downloaded free (although 
> Linux, which requires about a 1.6 gigabyte download, can take a while). You 
> also can buy registered versions of Linux and FreeBSD at most computer stores 
> starting at about $70. The big difference between downloading Linux for free 
> and paying for it is that paid versions come with nifty software and even 
> access to a tech support line that will help you set everything up. Linux 
> also ranks high in stability and network security. You're much less likely to 
> see your system lock up or crash once Linux is installed, and the networking 
> environment is generally considered much more secure than Windows, keeping 
> hackers out. 
> 
> Last, but not least, there's the programming angle. If you're someone with 
> such proficiency that you're comfortable learning to compile or write your 
> own software, the programming environment is more accessible in Unix-based 
> systems like Linux. My wife's 17-year-old nephew, for instance, is an 
> aspiring programmer who loves Linux and can't live without it. Of course, he 
> works for a government computer think tank and scored 1460 on his SAT, so 
> he's not your average computer user. The uber-geeks that love Linux often 
> point out that it and most of the programs written for it are "open source," 
> which means the language of Linux is free source code available for anyone to 
> understand and use. With lots of developers manipulating the code, the 
> reasoning goes, programs will be more useful and bug-free over time. 
> 
> To find out just how well Linux worked, I set it up as a second operating 
> system on a 733 MHz Pentium III computer. Windows remained on the computer as 
> the first operating system. I recommend that you keep Windows on your PC if 
> it's already installed and run the alternative operating system, whether it 
> be Linux, FreeBSD or BeOS, on a second hard drive partition. This takes a 
> little doing, but it's not too difficult and the documentation for all these 
> systems spells out what you need to do in step-by-step instructions. If you 
> want to go the free route, you'll need to download three huge Linux 
> installation files. Even on a high-speed Internet connection like a cable 
> modem or DSL line, this will take eight to 10 hours. So start the download 
> and go to bed. Hopefully you'll check in the morning and it'll all be done. 
> 
> Of course, you could just go to a computer store and buy the registered 
> version on disc. Linux has many different versions, or distributions, to 
> choose from, and which one you pick depends on your individual taste. The two 
> most popular versions are Red Hat ($150 if you want the technical support), 
> generally the top choice, and Mandrake ($70 with technical support), which in 
> many ways closely emulates the look of Windows. They are cantankerous 
> installations, to say the least. You'll need to make a 3.5-inch boot floppy 
> from a file you've downloaded. Then you'll need to burn CDs from each of the 
> three giant files you've downloaded (Nero and EasyCD Creator are good burning 
> programs that should do the trick). Once you create the CDs, place the first 
> disc in your CD-ROM Drive, place the boot floppy in your 3.5-inch drive, and 
> reboot the computer. The Linux installation program starts and, hopefully, 
> nothing will go wrong. Unfortunately, something always goes wrong. 
> 
> In my case, Red Hat Linux didn't like the configuration of the hard drives on 
> my computer, causing the installation program to lock up at the "partition 
> check" phase. That was Greek to me, so I headed to another computer in my 
> house and surfed the Internet until I found a likely solution: I had to give 
> special instructions to the installation program  --  specifically, typing 
> "linux ide (equals) nodma" at the installation command prompt. Once I did 
> this, Red Hat Linux took another 45 minutes to smoothly install itself on my 
> computer. As soon as I tried to log on, however, I hit another snag. I was 
> prompted for a log-on ID and password  --  which came as a surprise to me, 
> since I had specified a password during installation, but not a logon ID. So 
> it was back to the Internet to solve this issue. It turned out that the 
> default log-on ID for Linux is "root," or, in some cases, "local 
> host.localdomain."  That makes perfect sense, right?
> 
> I logged in successfully this time and was pleasantly surprised by the smart, 
> crisp look of Linux. I also was surprised by the Windows similarities  --  
> there's a program menu in the bottom left-hand corner much the same as the 
> Windows Start menu; a handful of basic icons on a desktop, and the usual 
> assortment of basic utilities, such as a CD-burner, Web browser (your choice 
> of Konqueror or Mozilla) and an e-mail client. Once you've installed this 
> alternate system, you'll need to get used to a whole new host of programs you 
> may not have used in the Windows environment. In Windows, for example, I 
> perform photo retouching with Photoshop. But, Linux's image and photo 
> manipulation program is the GNU Image Manipulation Program, or the Gimp 
> (which does have an obscure Windows version). Using Linux is like being in a 
> foreign land, sometimes trying to learn a foreign language. But if you're 
> patient, have a modest degree of computer savvy and like to tinker off the 
> beaten path, you can get a new operating system to function at most levels as 
> efficiently as Windows. Just remember to have a lot of aspirin handy. 
> 
> 
> 
> ------------------
> Charles Muller <acmuller@example.com>
> Toyo Gakuen University
> Web Resources for East Asian Language and Thought
> http://www.acmuller.net
>  
> 
> 
> 
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-- 

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Jim O'Connell
Global Dining System Support
jim at global-dining dot co dot jp
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