Luvvie here

Blue Screen of Death that Fisher-price Windows users are so familiar with



...usually caused by memory mismanagement.

you do get some fantastic error messages within windows. My personal favourite has to be the error on statrtup when it says "no keyboard detected, press the F1 key to continue"


Brian ;D

or FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, QNX....

Also, there are 1000s of linux flavours to suit everyone. You just need to dip your toe in the water. And there are usually Live evaluation CDs that run without installing anything, so you can try them out without getting rid of or altering what you currently use.

Unfortunately, M$ have managed to convince everyone that there is no choice, that a PC is totally synonymous with windows. It's a heap of junk that locks you in, forces certain choices on you, comes with nothing and you have to use software you have to pay for or rip off illegally. Free software is the best because there is no commercial intent. You get all the features right out of the box. It crashes every 10 mins, is terrible at multitasking, uses all your RAM for M$ apps and prefers Virtual Memory to RAM you have paid for. It's all hidden, you can't kill hung processes properly and you only get 1 desktop so using multiple apps totally clutters your desktop.

And boy is it clunky, just wait until you have to install Windows Vista.....

Hi Luvvie!! We all know you already ;D I use a mac as well.

Val

I agree with some points, but you should be able to get emulators for MacOS, you just need to compile from source, since MacOS is really just a FreeBSD core with a Gnome style Front-end.

I simply don't have anything other than linux now. I use the Gimp to edit images which does everything I ever did in Photoshop, there is other programs like vector image stuff, and sound apps are growing massively. I like Macs but though they've borrowed massively from other OSs, I think they lack some things. And Macs are set to morph into PCs now with Intel's arrival on the scene. I see a future merge with Apple and MS, where MS move into home entertainment and away from desktop stuff, and apple provide more personal entertainment. Because call me a purist, but when is a Mac not a Mac? When it's Intel architecture. I toyed with the idea of buying a mac for the much better architecture and installing linux or FreeBSD but not now.

Theoretically though, because you can get GCC for MacOSX, you should be able to compile a lot of linux/freebsd software. I'm sure there must be sites about this because GCC is standard over a wide plethora of platforms and architectures. And that is the only real difference, which GCC solves by having support for so many processors and architectures.

Couple of links for you that you may have seen:

osx.freshmeat.net/

sourceforge.net/

On linux you can use Wine, Win4Lin and VMWare for running windows stuff you can't live without and with non-games apps the power is there.

You are right though, games are the key. Games companies get subsidies for writing games exclusively for windows. I think that will change though. Already you can get quite a lot of linux games, exact ports of Windows ones, it's just most new releases aren't around. There's no reason why commercial games and apps can't be written and profitted from on linux. People misunderstand what open source actually is, thanks in part to deliberate misinformation and fear spread around by certain parties. If you look back at the 16bit wars, all new games were for the Atari ST and then were ported to the Amiga, exactly the same. In time, people realised the capabilities of the Amiga and the situation throughly reversed, with trim-down ports appearing for the ST.

It's all about market share. But I always think that you can dual-boot and run windiz for games only. In time you'll not want it soiling your harddrive and you buy a console And as people do that, oddly enough commercial developers will start their mass migration.

M$s entry onto the server market is purely on the strength of windows being so viral on the desktop. Bill Gates was quoted once saying he didn't give a toss about piracy. And it's obvious, people copy and use it, it becomes the de facto standard by virtue of those same people getting into to work and wanting something they know a little bit about. A case in point is a company my mate worked at, who got linux over freebsd because the directors had heard of it, not because the entire devlopment staff who they hired for this exact task wanted it. I hear crazy propaganda by Windophiles and it always makes me laugh, because 9 times out of 10 that is all they have ever used. I'm not a Linux evangelist in that sense, I love bits of VMS and Unix.

I like the ethos, I think the software is better written, better maintained for the good of the user. Windows have tried to go to far with user-friendliness also, and that annoys me because in my experience it doesn't really help anyone. At the end of the day software should be aimed at the people who use it the most. They don't stick you on any other piece of equipment without at least some basic training, and they certainly don't set it up to run for first time users all the time. MS follow the idea that when aliens land they should be able to get right into it. But they miss the mark and make a wildly confusing OS. And people get taught specific things instead of fundamentals so when there is a change of version, it's time to relearn. Crafty as...

I think other OSs represent a steeper learning curve but one that provides you with a much better understanding of what it is you're doing and why it is the way that it is. Transferable skills. My girlfriend had little experience of computers in general when we met, so she had no prejudices and now she uses Linux at home and Windows sometimes at work. She finds windows debilitating and really can't see what all the fuss is about, and why people think Linux is tricky.

I can confidently say I can use practically any piece of software because they are all the same. Even brown goods like DVDs, stereos etc. all change the controls every time you get a new one. Computers are old hat in truth. I've been programming since I was 11, so thats now 18 years and nothing has changed, except bells and whistles.

Have a look here:
developer.apple.com/tools/

sourceforge.net/

Obviously all of the above makes it beyond perhaps even a fairly knowledgable user but obviously that is something MacOS perhaps will develop more in time, to make it less techie.

As a Amiga user turned to PC by force, I fell out with computers and barely touched my PC beyond work because there was so little you could do. I'm not slagging off people who use windows, there is some cracking software out there, I'm just saying that in this day and age, no-one needs to be so restricted because there are better alternatives and those software manufacturers also don't need it.

Also, there is a masive social element to it. The Internet has largely developed because people give so much for nothing, from the software to run the majority of it to the information users populate it with. Where else do we see real collaboration like that without which. it would ultimately fall into the hands of the profiteers as it is likely to do so with the near advent of the "Internet2"? Research it.

All I'm saying is why not invest your time and usership with people who care or are simply willing to give stuff away. Because you'll be repaid with a much richer experience where you know you aren't being diddled, locked in, marketed to or left in the cold with something useless every few years. And where software isn't feature creeped and bugs aren't "features".

One of the worst things to happen recently (besides Internet2), imho is the pressure on the EU to implement Software patents. Our obscure European MP voted for it, and when questioned afterwards was found to not even know what they were. We are holding it off so far, just. But it needs support because the far-reaching consequences are really hideous. It's really just a last ditch attempt to kill off the last vestiges of free enterprise and to monopolise information by the technocrat global elite. Have a look who the special interest group is comprised of. M$ are amongst there number. One of a whole crop of people who would love to be as ruthless as M$.

We don't even have a minister specifically for IT and infrastructure, and we need to ask ourselves why we entrust our medical data, amongst other things to a company who has a long and frightening track record of anti-trust convictions and cases pending, who have been caught spying on us, to the tune of billions of pounds a year? A deal which contravenes the data protection act as I understand it, since they cannot prove to the public what the software does with our data because they can't verify the code. The only server OS company who have consistently been refused even the lowliest Security Certificate by the various governing bodies and who have been involved in massive attempts to trap developing places like Brazil, India and Africa.

Anyway, I hope that some of that gives food for thought. I'll get off my soap box now. I used to talk about things like this a lot, but you kinda feel hopeless sometimes when you see how things continue to develop.

When I ran windows, it was bloated, buggy, and slow, due to all the stuff I had to run in the background to keep things nice and safe (3rd party apps). Then I dualbooted with Linux, and played around with a UNIX machine a friend had.

Now I run an Intel P4, 1024megs OCZ ram (High end) and 2 @ 250G HDDs, one with OS/X 10.4.5 loaded on it, and the other with WinXPpro SP2. I just go into the bios and change a couple of settings to be able to boot into the OS I desire. So far in the 3 months since I built this machine, I've booted into Windows exactly twice. I much prefer a Drag/Drop that actually works, software that's easy to install, without jumping thru hoops and without weird error messages. All my existing hardware like Scanner, Camera, webcam, mouse/kb, printer, mp3 player, worked as soon as I plugged them in. So did the DVD burner, and azureus runs way better in this environment than it ever did with Windoze. The only major headache is that my iPaq PPC won't sync/charge with the Mac side, and there isn't a good stable Universal Binary app out yet (gotta have Universal Binary with IntelMacs, as PowerPC stuff runs incredibly slow and is a resource hog). PocketMac is dragging their heels with getting the UB version out *argh*

I do miss a couple of the Powertoys I had installed, but the workaround is easy now that I figured it out. I still use Firefox as my browser, and Thunderbird as my Mail application. I've NEVER used IE or OE.

Most companies with savvy IT people that want SECURE servers run UNIX. M$ has certainly bamboozled the vast majority of the general public into thinking they're the only game in town, when in fact there are soooooo many more OSes that are stable, and that just "work" the way they're supposed to.

I know I was insanely frustrated working on my Mom's machine the other day, trying to find stuff, and trying to drag/drop, and install stuff for her. It just seemed so slow and tedious.

That said though, there's nothing wrong with XPpro if you don't use the default programs like IE and OE, and if you use 3rd party apps to make your surfing environment as safe as possible.

LOL and to think that all this chatter started because I mentioned the dreaded BSOD (thanks for the screenie, by the way! As I said, I've never seen it ).

Don't worry Mike,you're not alone.....i feel as if I'm just been hit by a verbal tsunami lol

I think thats almost point proven as to why windows will continue as the major OS without even close competition from linux or unix clones.

Interesting though.

Id say thats changing Arno, but people havent taken up with the change.
A little research goes a long way, but I will admit some forums and interest groups do seem like a closet club, you can find a wealth of information on how to remove yourself from MS without venturing that far.
You can buy suse boxed, with instructions and starter software and everything.. and its no different than trying to get windows sorted out of the box.
You dont have to download a freeware iso which alot of people wouldnt know how to burn let alone install to get away from windows.

Oh by the way, all the stuff I listed above is FREE.

Here's what FFx looks like with the Noia Extreme Theme applied:


And here's a desktop screenshot of FFx, ThunderBird, and the extension list for FFx, and the Theme list for TB and FFx.

It looks and works the same in Windows. Tabbed Browsing rocks!