One last Linux Wine
iDRMRSR
my high MS Horse. OK, so in this humble MS user's calm and considered
opinion, yeah, a modern distribution of Linux is probably a decent
replacement for a Windows business desktop box...maybe not XP Media Center,
though.
It falls short in the graphics and sound categories. I see I'm not alone
here, as Google searches reveal, either. Reasonably, that's because I'm
trying to run Ubuntu on a "designed for Windows" box. If I were to swap out
my video card and audio card for more well supported models, it'd probably
work. Same thing for the webcam.
It falls short in the USENET category, too. There isn't ONE program that I
can find which BOTH posts binaries AND unwinds multiple Yenc posts. Still,
I could use KNODE to read the text stuff and the non multi part posts, and
post binary attachments, and then switch to PAN to download multipart stuff.
Which is similar to what I do on Windows, alternating from Outlook Express
to Free Agent. Though, I COULD use Free Agent 100% of the time...except
personally I hate the quirks in the user interface (scrolling with mouse
wheel, won't display attachments like .jpgs INLINE). So I just use it to
download LeMur.
I finally did soup up the disk access to something better, though I have no
idea if it is OPTIMAL. I'm not going to crack open the HD enclosure and
look at the chips inside. But I found a couple of tweaks (like UltraDMA
mode 5) which put a charge in its shorts.
It excels in the desktop eye candy department, though. Even without Beryl,
which I wish Windows had now that I've seen it. Still, you can't set screen
resolution in KDE, so the fonts are always too small by comparison with
Windoze, whereas GNOME is spot on all by itself, but duller than KDE in the
eye candy department. And BERYL isn't helped by the particular video card
that I have there (nVidia).
So then I had this great idea to try out WINE, to see if I could simply
launch .EXE files off my Windows Fat32 partition!
I was going to spend an evening doing this when I
discovered...http://us.ubuntu.archive.com IS DOWN TONIGHT! Yup, that's the
main UBUNTU software repository. For some reason, I can't reach that site
all evening, so I couldn't even attempt to install WINE.
I'll have to make a note to myself to try this all out in another six months
or so. It's such a shame, it ALMOST worked for me, but 95% of a pie isn't
going to get me to cut away from Windows for daily use.
I'll prolly just fall back to plan A, which was to buy a new box next year
with Vista pre-installed, a $400 box which will probably be four times as
large as the last Dell I got in 2003. Aha, but then THAT Dell will be the
OLD machine, and prolly more than suitable for ANOTHER try at Linux!
From my viewpoint, Bill Gates is sitting pretty with no worries from the
Linux camp until he retires. Which won't be that much longer! And then I
think they WILL be in trouble. It's ALMOST there, and I'm SO dyed in the
wool M$ lover, it almost hurts to admit it.
[*]
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Leonard the Committed
> can find which BOTH posts binaries AND unwinds multiple Yenc posts.
Newspost is the choice for posting binaries. Sure, it's a command line
app, but does the job without a hiccup.
Pan wont decode multipart Yenc for you? Hmmm.... it's always worked for me.
Leonard the Committed
> work. Perhaps I might try that myself.
Ever watch two Monkey's try to fuck a Football?
Rev. Richard Skull
I think is was called "Planning for the Invasion of Iraq"
Only the football got the best of those monkeys