I'm in the market for a new computer and thought this would be a good
time to rethink my choice of OS. I use OSX at home and WinXP at work.
I much prefer OSX to Windows. I would, however, like the hardware
flexibility of a PC.

Linux appeals to me (particularly the open source philosophy), but I'm
wary of the perceived time demands. I don't mind a certain amount of
tinkering, but for the most part, I prefer not to fret about my
computer. Additionally, I'd like to keep the functionality of the
iLife apps as well as do some video editing. Are there user friendly
Linux options for these types of applications, yet? The video editing
piece is where I have the most concern. I've been trying to find info
on Kino, Mainactor, and Cinelerra, but most of what I've read has been
old.

I'm not trolling, and I'm not trying to start any flame wars. I'm
just curious and would like objective opinions. Thank you.

Bill

I'm not trolling either, but:

PROS
----

1) Linux is neat and infinitely customizable
2) Once installed and you are happy with apps, you won't need to fret
about it (however see Con #4)
3) Its free
4) Its harder to shoot yourself in the foot


CONS
----

1) There is a learning curve...like any new piece of software
2) Getting hardware to work with Linux _can_ be frustrating and time
consuming. Some stuff doesn't work at all. Do your homework...
3) I think you'll find your video options lacking. There is nothing in
Linux that compares to a commercial product such as Adobe Premier
4) Security problems happen in Linux so you will have to be vigilent in
updating your kernel and apps. Some distributions make this nearly
automatic (such as Debian). Windows Update has turned into nearly an
automatic process in XP.
5) Do you need other Mac/Windows-only apps such as Photoshop or MS
Office? Some will point you to Wine, but this is yet another thing to
figure out and tinker with.

However maybe you should burn a Knoppix CD. This is a bootable CD that
allows you to use Linux, in a useful way, without touching your hard
drives.

Of course before I get grilled, this is really a PRO for Linux as updates
are less frequent. I get sick of XP always rebooting on me when it
updates itself.

bill wrote:
I'm ignorant of those applications you mentioned but I'll try to provide
a little info to contribute. I'd try www.knoppix.org, you can download a
ISO image from them to burn to CD to try out risk free on a windows
system (not sure what your workplace policys are...). I think that would
be a decent introduction to what is a subjective topic.

The Knoppix distro is a *Live CD* affair which gives you a fully
opperational GNU/Linux using the CD as a HDD. Last time I tried it I was
on the net via PPPoE in under ten minutes and was posting to my favorite
forums.

Some other sites to get you started/informed are:
http://www.linux.org
http://www.linuxiso.org/
http://www.ibiblio.org/mdw/index.html
http://www.cheapbytes.com/

Your reasons for being interested in alternatives are common so I think
you are low risk for flames etc

bill wrote:

Iff you're not trolling, just do this:

1) Go to Amazon
2) Find Suse 9.0 Professional
3) Look at the /used/ selection.
4) You can order the disks for $6.95 (that's six dollars and ninety five
cents).

5) Try to install it...if it works for you, great. If not, bye.

Is cygwin a viable option?
Gives you much linux stuff
and still you have windows

--
---------------------------------------------------------------
Will Renkel
Wheaton, Ill.
REGISTERD Linux User: 300583

---------------------------------------------------------------
John Bailo <jabailo@earthlink.net> writes:

Will Renkel wrote:

You can get your feet wet with general linux commands, yes.

Well, sort of. After the basics there seems to be a lot of installing that
goes on. Also, you're not getting the benefits of the kernel, the file
system -- all the things that make Linux great -- just a emu.

For the readers of this newsgroup, that would be a negative.

Fearing a spontaneous XP reboot, Will Renkel mumbled this incantation:

If you have to use Windows all day, cygwin is a sanity saver. However, it is slow, since
everything has to go through the cygwin dll.

There are other minor issues.

But cygwin is a big help to this poor Linux user.

--
No, I won't fix your Windows computer!

xf367@yahoo.com (bill) wrote in message news:<2191399.0402251932.51895240@posting.google.c om>...
if you like open source, use open source software on windows xp or osx
.... if you like the flexibility [and price] of the pc, use open source
+ windows xp professional ... you don't need linux to run open source
software, linux is mostly for text mode command line servers, nobody
uses linux for any desktop work as clearly reflected in the linux
marketshare.

use windows xp pro, you can't go wrong with it.

Me wrote:
How could anyone possibly claim there is any stat for 'marketshare' when
I (a member of a huge non-profit ORG), download over 125 distros per
year, and hand out over 600 CDs FREE, each year, plus, serve distros out
on LimeWire!?

There are about 20 others, who are as zealous as I...in this ORG (of
about 400 members, so there might be more!) and they are in some Fortune
500 corps., with some power to move, which they have, over to Linux on
the desktops! We are talking 12,000 up to 380,000 Systems on desks!

The trouble with the business model for commercial, proprietary,
locked-in products is that they cannot think outside the box!

bill wrote:
desktop in KDE upon set-up! At the least, you should save the
Kmenu>KNOPPIX>Configuration of about 30kb to 50 kb, to a floppy, which
is good for ANY linux install! It will have ALL your system resources
mapped out for you! Then when it boots up, it will show you, also, any
conflicts or un-met resource dependancies... like video or FSB chipset
issues...

Cheapbytes.com now offers lots of Knoppix distros, as do the
http://knopper.net/knoppix sites, for very low prices, if you cannot
download from Limewire or http://distrowatch.com

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Mike <dev@null.com> espoused:
This is deeply disingenuous. Security updates have been automatic in debian
for years. Cron. Apt.

I've been automatically security patching for so long I've forgotten exactly
how long - I guess I could look at the ctime of the scripts to try to determine.

Windows Update has a wide reputation for leaving machines in a dreadful, broken,
vulnerable and/or unusable state. The only person I know who used it switched
it off some time ago due to the problems.

Having said all that, security problems are orders of magnitude greater in
MS Windows anyway, so no sane person would be using MS Windows XP if they were
really concerned about security.

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--
| Mark Kent -- Take out the ham to mail me. |
Be careful how you get yourself involved with persons or situations that
can't bear inspection.

On Fri, 27 Feb 2004 00:57:05 +0000, Mark Kent wrote:

Suse has automatic updating and its very simple to set up and let it do
it's job.

--
W '04 <:> Open Source

Travis 'Bailo' Bickel wrote:

So does Gentoo. All you've gotta do is put "emerge sync" as a daily
cron job. I prefer to do it manually, though.


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Donn Miller wrote:

I have this in my /etc/cron.daily/:

#v+

#!/bin/bash
# Sleep because updatedb doesn't play nice with emerge sync
/bin/sleep 10m
/usr/bin/emerge sync >/dev/null 2>&1
/usr/bin/emerge -Dupv world |\
/bin/grep -q ebuild &&\
/usr/bin/emerge -Duplv world |\
/bin/grep -v "Calculating world dependencies" |\
/bin/mail $ADMIN -s "Updates for `/bin/date -I`"

#v-

It sends an email with detailed information about any pending updates to
$ADMIN. Then I can just do the updates when I feel enough important
stuff has accumulated.

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--
PeKaJe

A closed mouth gathers no foot.

So anyway, it was like, 12:06 CET Feb 27 2004, you know? Oh, and, yeah,
Peter Jensen was all like, "Dude,

I do believe all the cron scripts are run sequentially and not in
parallel, so you shouldn't have to do that at all.

Unless you have streamlined your setup. *g*

--
Time flies like an arrow, fruit flies like a banana. Perth ---> *
12:14:08 up 5 days, 18:50, 1 user, load average: 2.09, 2.10, 2.09
$ cat /dev/bollocks "echo y | format c:" Registered Linux user #261729
deliver frictionless models

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Johan Lindquist wrote:

Odd ... It *used* to be set to run in the background, but now it isn't.
It would seem that something I did made it overwrite my own setup. Oh
well, I might as well pull out the pause now. Not that it matters that
much, since this *does* run at 4 in the morning :-)

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--
PeKaJe

"I am thinking you have the intelligence of a rock. An extremely stupid rock."
-- "Rick" responding to the kook "Alan Connor" in COLA

So anyway, it was like, 12:38 CET Feb 27 2004, you know? Oh, and, yeah,
Peter Jensen was all like, "Dude,
Well, one sleepless night^Wmorning when you're sitting there,
anxiously waiting[1] for the email to come, you will thank me.

[1] No, obviously you can /not/ run it manually. That'd ruin the
whole thing.. duh.

--
Time flies like an arrow, fruit flies like a banana. Perth ---> *
12:54:40 up 5 days, 19:30, 1 user, load average: 2.06, 2.06, 2.08
$ cat /dev/bollocks "echo y | format c:" Registered Linux user #261729
deliver frictionless supply-chains

Donn Miller <dmmiller@cvzoom.net> writes:

Yes, a cron job to upgrade the OS seems ill advised to me. There
will always be questions about overwriting configuration options that
I want to see the effect of before I make a decision about them.

--
"Too bad we have to ask people about that." -- Bill Gates

Linønut wrote:
Yes, Cygwin is a big help indeed. But I think the slowness is present
mainly on 95/98. XP, being NT-based, seems to work better with Cygwin.
The thing I dislike most is that I can't su Administrator on Windows
2003, as there AFAIK are some issues with Cygwin on 2003. So, I wind up
launching Windows Explorer (from my regular user account), find the
bash.exe in c:\cygwin\bin, and then "Run As"-ing bash.exe as
Administrator. I just leave that "Administrator" shell open from my
regular account. I know it's stupid, but since I can't "su
Administrator", it's the best I can do.

Cygwin is much better as an overall package than SFU. SFU sucked. It
wasn't a well-assembled package, IMO. And I hated the hoops I had to
jump through with the passport login to download it.


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