(Easy enough for a n00b to start installing. If only the power to his CPU hadn't shut off 1/10th of the way through the installation, knocking his hard drive out of commission.)
No, 'cause the hard drive on my 486 managed to completely go *kkssspppthhh* on me when the power cut out. I've got to take it home where I have more room and figure out if it's a power problem, a cable problem, or a actual drive problem.
I was actually installing the packages. Installing Slackware isn't -that- hard.
And I am -not- 'scared' of WinXP. It just suxx0rz for games. (Example: Morrowind players are having a rough time right now because they need an extra 128 MB of RAM to play the game in XP. Not a problem for me (I've got 384) but the game is slow enough already as it is. I'm not going with some program that got rid of DOS, the OS that I cut my teeth on, till it proves to me that it actually WORKS.
Linux from scratch is nice if you got lots of time <!--emo&:D--><img src="http://www.natural-selection.org/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif" border="0" valign="absmiddle" alt=':D'><!--endemo-->
Heh, so I've been told. I used it a tiny bit just before I tried installing. Once I figured out one or two things, using it was like gliding on air. Mmm... Command-line interfaces... Gotta love 'em. *shivers slightly*
[singsong]Molec is scared of wind-dows, Molec is scared of win-dows. Nee-ner, nee-ner, neeeeee-ner![/singsong]
Heh.
Not sure how much 'fun' Linux would be for gaming though. Unless you want to play Q3A or... Q3A.
And pssst. As I pointed out earlier, they got rid of DOS in NT 3.0 in '94. XP is a direct kernel derivative of NT. So, you and your old games are, well, 8 years out of date. Pass it on.
DruBoBack In BeigeJoin Date: 2002-02-06Member: 172Members, NS1 Playtester
yeah, slackware's nice. I like the <a href="http://www.ibiblio.org/peanut" target="_blank">peanut</a> iteration of it. In fact, just this morning I was pimping it to some people in irc.
on a similar topic, I downloaded <a href="http://www.gimp.org/~tml/gimp/win32" target="_blank">GimpWin</a> today and I heartily recommend it for anyone who wishes they could use photoshop but can't get it because of the exorbitant price.
Bah - just like Linux, the OS is as good as you make it. Tuning NT allows you to boot and shutdown in a few seconds. You just need to know how - the same way you need to know how to tune Linux to make it usable.
And as for cool games... well, no Half-Life. The coolest game ever made. Strike 3, Molec is outta there.
Personally, I have very little patience for OS tweaking. My system came with Windows ME and that's what it's going to have until I pitch it.
I do wish that old DOS games worked on it though. I really miss Day of the Tentacle and Sam and Max Hit the Road. The freakin' sound doesn't work and it's just not the same without Max's caustic remarks.
Aaaactually, you can get the sound to work a lot of times. You just have to go picking weird choices, like the Microsof Sound System one, or the MT-402 one. Sound Blaster 16 works a lot of times as well.
I have tried a lot of diferent OSs (DOS, win95,win98,winXP and a verry old linux version) I don't have a favorite and i think al have their good and bad sides so i think you must instal at least two diferent OSs. (And try them) So you get maximum out of your PC.
So - we've got NT and it's derivates, which're all very well useable if you know how to tweak them and won't support some games, on the one, and Linux which'll work smoothly after some tweaking and doesn't support all games either on the other side?
Excuse me, but what's the friggin problem <!--emo&;)--><img src="http://www.natural-selection.org/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/wink.gif" border="0" valign="absmiddle" alt=';)'><!--endemo-->?
<!--QuoteBegin--Moleculor+May 08 2002,17<!--emo&:0--></span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td><b>Quote</b> (Moleculor @ May 08 2002,17<!--emo&<!--emo&:0--><img src="http://www.natural-selection.org/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/wow.gif" border="0" valign="absmiddle" alt=':0'><!--endemo-->)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE"><!--QuoteEBegin-->That DOS is better, 'cause it does support DOS games, and requires no tweaking. Or Windows 98. That's good too.<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span id='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd--> Welcome to magical Molec fairyland, where he has never had to support 10's of thousands of machines in a business environment, only one on his desk.
And saying DOS requires no tweaking suggests that you never used it, or you would have spent countless hours in your boot files... tweaking them.
Windows 9x is the <i>least</i> stable of any MS OS. I don't know what your critera for good is, but 'explorer.exe caused a general exception fault at 0x0000001' every hour is not mine. It was neither 16-bit or 32; just some horrid unstable mess in between.
And not confuse anyone, but Win98 <i>does</i> use DOS - DOS 7.1. NT does not. So you can use DOS games all week long on it by booting into DOS rather than bootstrapping the 98 OS.
DruBoBack In BeigeJoin Date: 2002-02-06Member: 172Members, NS1 Playtester
<!--QuoteBegin--></span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td><b>Quote</b> </td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE"><!--QuoteEBegin-->And as for cool games... well, no Half-Life. The coolest game ever made. Strike 3, Molec is outta there. <!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span id='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
wrong! I was so psyched when I found this out.
<a href="http://www.transgaming.com" target="_blank">Transgaming</a> has released a directx emulator thingy called WineX that can, as the following <a href="http://www.transgaming.com/gamepage.php?gameid=1" target="_blank">link</a> shows, make Half-Life work in linux. I think a w00t is in order.
Nah Monse, when he hasnt felt ever being right, you cant feel tired of being wrong <!--emo&;)--><img src="http://www.natural-selection.org/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/wink.gif" border="0" valign="absmiddle" alt=';)'><!--endemo-->
2 points for Comprox! <!--emo&;)--><img src="http://www.natural-selection.org/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/wink.gif" border="0" valign="absmiddle" alt=';)'><!--endemo-->
I hope you're not getting an English degree, Molec... you can't alter the language to fit your argument. If you modify the way an OS operates via adjusting settings in order to make it function differently than the default, you are tweaking. Simple as that.
I recently formatted my hard drive and reinstalled windows on a smaller partition, for the purpose of having room left for other OS's. My first (and only, so far) has been Mandrake, first 8.1 and then, to my great annoyance, 8.2 when they released it a few days later (downloaded the ISOs, burned a CD, installed from that)
Mandrake installed fine, and ran fine. You could do everything already installed fine. But installing new software can be a pain, especially if you are using RPMs, which are known for erroneous dependencies (for example, a program I tried to install recently claimed it needed to install two versions of the same software to be able to run. I deleted the older version with no problem: it didnt need the old version at all, of course, but it saw the file and decided to include it. That file needed other files, and those files needed more files, and so on. And of course, if you uninstall one of the files, the rest have to be uninstalled too)
But, a hoot, holler, and tweak later, you can recompile your kernel, install new software (go source! die, RPMs!<!--emo&;)--><img src="http://www.natural-selection.org/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/wink.gif" border="0" valign="absmiddle" alt=';)'><!--endemo-->, and whatever you want to do. It definitely required a TON more tweaking to get Mandrake working than it did to get WinXP working (btw just make a DOS boot disk and you're fine <!--emo&:p--><img src="http://www.natural-selection.org/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/tounge.gif" border="0" valign="absmiddle" alt=':p'><!--endemo-->). But, its similar: if you want to just use Windows like it is, then it doesnt require any tweaking, but you can make it work better (in the end, at least) by tweaking it. In some cases, you have to tweak either one just to get them to work at all.
Which is what I love so much about it. I fancy myself as a computer geek, so digging around in folders and compiling kernels suits me just fine. My parents and my brothers are not. They would never get past a kernel compile. Despite my loathing for RPMs, that's the only way they'd really be able to install new programs.
Linux is definitely lacking in the Games department. I always jokingly tell people that Linux (or at least the community) is built on the backs of thousands of Tetris clones. I have had some limited success with Wine and WineX (for example, I can play single player SC at about 15FPS =P) but it just doesn't compare to running it in windows. It seems Microsoft could make a lot of money by offering DirectX for Linux. But, there are a lot of fun games to play (I'm constantly looking for someone to play a bit of [url=http://nil.sourceforge.net]NiL[/usrl] with me), but commercial games are few and far between, if any.
All in all, I'd say linux is not ready for the average consumer (or they are not ready for it), because it's difficult to set up, and doesn't offer much more reward than Windows, and if you are a gamer, it offers much much less. If you have a computer geek as a system admin, you can make it, but I don't see most people getting far on their own.
And Jacius finally brings us full circle to my original post. Nifty anecdote, Jac. Did you have any of the issues described in the original Register article at the beginning of this thread?
Comments
(Easy enough for a n00b to start installing. If only the power to his CPU hadn't shut off 1/10th of the way through the installation, knocking his hard drive out of commission.)
<!--EDIT|MonsieurEvil|May 08 2002,00:23-->
I was actually installing the packages. Installing Slackware isn't -that- hard.
And I am -not- 'scared' of WinXP. It just suxx0rz for games. (Example: Morrowind players are having a rough time right now because they need an extra 128 MB of RAM to play the game in XP. Not a problem for me (I've got 384) but the game is slow enough already as it is. I'm not going with some program that got rid of DOS, the OS that I cut my teeth on, till it proves to me that it actually WORKS.
<!--EDIT|Moleculor|May 07 2002,23:57-->
Heh.
Not sure how much 'fun' Linux would be for gaming though. Unless you want to play Q3A or... Q3A.
And pssst. As I pointed out earlier, they got rid of DOS in NT 3.0 in '94. XP is a direct kernel derivative of NT. So, you and your old games are, well, 8 years out of date. Pass it on.
on a similar topic, I downloaded <a href="http://www.gimp.org/~tml/gimp/win32" target="_blank">GimpWin</a> today and I heartily recommend it for anyone who wishes they could use photoshop but can't get it because of the exorbitant price.
Linux has a LOT of cool games though. Rogue, and all 20 or 40 or 60 of the rogue-likes come to mind.
And as for cool games... well, no Half-Life. The coolest game ever made. Strike 3, Molec is outta there.
I do wish that old DOS games worked on it though. I really miss Day of the Tentacle and Sam and Max Hit the Road. The freakin' sound doesn't work and it's just not the same without Max's caustic remarks.
Excuse me, but what's the friggin problem <!--emo&;)--><img src="http://www.natural-selection.org/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/wink.gif" border="0" valign="absmiddle" alt=';)'><!--endemo-->?
<!--EDIT|Nemesis Zero|May 08 2002,17:02-->
Welcome to magical Molec fairyland, where he has never had to support 10's of thousands of machines in a business environment, only one on his desk.
And saying DOS requires no tweaking suggests that you never used it, or you would have spent countless hours in your boot files... tweaking them.
Windows 9x is the <i>least</i> stable of any MS OS. I don't know what your critera for good is, but 'explorer.exe caused a general exception fault at 0x0000001' every hour is not mine. It was neither 16-bit or 32; just some horrid unstable mess in between.
And not confuse anyone, but Win98 <i>does</i> use DOS - DOS 7.1. NT does not. So you can use DOS games all week long on it by booting into DOS rather than bootstrapping the 98 OS.
<!--EDIT|MonsieurEvil|May 08 2002,18:03-->
<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span id='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
wrong! I was so psyched when I found this out.
<a href="http://www.transgaming.com" target="_blank">Transgaming</a> has released a directx emulator thingy called WineX that can, as the following <a href="http://www.transgaming.com/gamepage.php?gameid=1" target="_blank">link</a> shows, make Half-Life work in linux. I think a w00t is in order.
Pronunciation Key (twk)
tr.v. tweaked, tweak·ing, tweaks
To pinch, pluck, or twist sharply.
<b>To adjust; fine-tune. </b>
To make fun of; tease.
Do you ever get tired of being wrong?
I hope you're not getting an English degree, Molec... you can't alter the language to fit your argument. If you modify the way an OS operates via adjusting settings in order to make it function differently than the default, you are tweaking. Simple as that.
Mandrake installed fine, and ran fine. You could do everything already installed fine. But installing new software can be a pain, especially if you are using RPMs, which are known for erroneous dependencies (for example, a program I tried to install recently claimed it needed to install two versions of the same software to be able to run. I deleted the older version with no problem: it didnt need the old version at all, of course, but it saw the file and decided to include it. That file needed other files, and those files needed more files, and so on. And of course, if you uninstall one of the files, the rest have to be uninstalled too)
But, a hoot, holler, and tweak later, you can recompile your kernel, install new software (go source! die, RPMs!<!--emo&;)--><img src="http://www.natural-selection.org/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/wink.gif" border="0" valign="absmiddle" alt=';)'><!--endemo-->, and whatever you want to do. It definitely required a TON more tweaking to get Mandrake working than it did to get WinXP working (btw just make a DOS boot disk and you're fine <!--emo&:p--><img src="http://www.natural-selection.org/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/tounge.gif" border="0" valign="absmiddle" alt=':p'><!--endemo-->). But, its similar: if you want to just use Windows like it is, then it doesnt require any tweaking, but you can make it work better (in the end, at least) by tweaking it. In some cases, you have to tweak either one just to get them to work at all.
Which is what I love so much about it. I fancy myself as a computer geek, so digging around in folders and compiling kernels suits me just fine. My parents and my brothers are not. They would never get past a kernel compile. Despite my loathing for RPMs, that's the only way they'd really be able to install new programs.
Linux is definitely lacking in the Games department. I always jokingly tell people that Linux (or at least the community) is built on the backs of thousands of Tetris clones. I have had some limited success with Wine and WineX (for example, I can play single player SC at about 15FPS =P) but it just doesn't compare to running it in windows. It seems Microsoft could make a lot of money by offering DirectX for Linux. But, there are a lot of fun games to play (I'm constantly looking for someone to play a bit of [url=http://nil.sourceforge.net]NiL[/usrl] with me), but commercial games are few and far between, if any.
All in all, I'd say linux is not ready for the average consumer (or they are not ready for it), because it's difficult to set up, and doesn't offer much more reward than Windows, and if you are a gamer, it offers much much less. If you have a computer geek as a system admin, you can make it, but I don't see most people getting far on their own.
-Jacius