🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <35F3BC5C.FBAF6D84@pacbell.net>, Ken  <tylereng@pacbell.net> wrote:
>Matthew Vernon wrote:
>
>> an alternative is available, and it is: GNU/Linux.
>> you can have a powerful text console, which supports redirects &c. (unlike
>> DOS 7), is very stable (look at pick's uptime), and the GUI (X windows)
>> like the rest of the system is extremely configurable (see enlightenment
>> for example).
>>
>> Therefore W9* deserves no slack whatsover, and you won't find it
>> cluttering up my systems.
>>
>> SWITCH NOASBESTOS
>>
>> HTH,
>>
>> Matthew
>
>Ok ! Next question your reply leads us to is how many of the literaly
>thousands of programs available for W95 have been ported to run under
>GNU/Linux. Fortunatly POV-Ray has been but are there any others

A good number (Oracle 8 is the first to spring to mind). Furthermore there
are an impressive range of packages available (Debian has over 2,000 at
last count which was a long time ago). Furthermore, those packages are of
a very high quality. Another example: Adobe (makers of photoshop) when
asked about the possibility of a linux port said they had no immediate
plans for a port an referred the correspondant to the GIMP - I doubt you
would they would have made such a suggestion were they not seriously
impressed by it's capabilities.

>of it's type that have been ? I also believe, and I might be mistaken,
>that I heard linux is a freeware operating system. If this is the case there

It is indeed open source, released under the GPL (see www.gnu.org for
details).

>is no commercial support for it and the creators of the program are
>under no obligation to either support it or develop it any further than
>they have already. 

But the source code is realeased under the GPL, so that thousands of
programmers around the world can continue to develop it - the debian
distribution has over 400 developers, and that number continues to grow.
The fact of the matter is that the open source movement (of which
gnu/linux is a part) is growing daily (2nd fastest growing OS is linux),
with the result that development and bug fixes are produces at an
incredible rate.


As to support, you have clearly not researched the matter, and are basing
your arguments on prejudice. Take RedHat, for example. This is a
commercial company which produces a linux distribution. The source and
binaries are available free from it's FTP site. How does it make it's
money? by selling commercial support. If you don't want to pay for
support, then look at Debian - it is a community effort, where the users
and developers help each other. If something goes wrong, or you need help
and advice, then you post to the mailing list. OK, so the list gets a lot
of traffic (each question often gets many replies), but the posters are
helpful and know what they are taling about, which is more than can be
said of MS's support lines. I expect an answer within a matter of hours.

>What happens when the technology of computors
>change and your current computer harware dies/becomes obsolete,
>who do you think is going to be in a better position to keep up with
>these changes. MicroSoft or the linux developers ? 

That depends. It is true that some hardware is W only, but this is a
minority. As to keeping up with modern equipment, can Windows cope with a
parallel cluster of 64 pII 400s? No. 

Linux can. Go find the website. The machine is called the HIVE, and it is
not unique. I think that answers the question of new hardware.


>Don't get me wrong
>here as I am not trying to start a flame war, it's just that I believe even
>with the drawbacks of the MS OS the overwhelmingly availability
>of software and number of end users, climbing on a different bus at

Overwhelmingly available? I think not. Nearly all linux software is
available for download from an FTP site (of which there are many), and all
the distributions produce CDs if you have no net access.

>this time seems a little reckless.

Well, now that I have shown the common misconceptions on which your
argument is based, perhaps you would take a balenced look at

http://www.gnu.org
http://www.linux.org
http://www.debian.org

If you need any more help, then ask someone. possibly even me.. ;)

HTH,

Matthew

-- 
	    Matthew Vernon, Selwyn College Computer Support
	       Steward of the Cambridge Tolkien Society
		    "Elen sila lumenn' omentielvo"
http://www.cam.ac.uk/CambUniv/Societies/tolkien/  http://pick.sel.cam.ac.uk/