JPB wrote:
Welcome. I've been through a similar journey to yours. I nearly gave up
on my transition to Linux at one point because the learning curve was a
little too steep: it wasn't intrinsically difficult, but was taking more
time than I had available at the time. Now I'm glad I perservered. I've
got to grips with shell scripts and installing from tar files and cron
jobs and all that good stuff. I've taught myself a bit of Perl to
further automate tasks (my very first Perl script, of which I'm
inordinately proud, takes vcard info from files saved in a directory,
updates a MySQL database with them and then updates the Kaddress details
so that the info is also available in Kmail). I've got Postfix,
fetchmail and fetchnews/leafnode set up and have automated a lot of mail
tasks. And that's the thing I really like about Linux - a small
investment in learning new skills is repaid many times in vastly
improved capabilities and efficiency. My computer is not a toy, it's my
principal business tool (I'm a freelance journalist and photographer).
With Linux, it's a much more effective - and reliable - tool.

When I use my remaining WinXP machine now I find it annoyingly opaque.
It really does seem like a toy - flashy, brightly-coloured, but hard to
do anything really useful with it.

Walkaway Renouf wrote:

This is something which I was conscious of straight-away - as soon as I had
Linux running, Windows _felt_ like a toy OS by comparison.

I'm a computer professional anyway, so a new OS in itself doesn't faze me,
and for my sins I'm also Microsoft Certified, something I picked up along
the way. Yet even so I was immediately impressed by Linux, and even where I
had a problem to solve it didn't seem any more difficult than Windows - for
all the much-vaunted wizards and supposed ease Windows has for novice/home
users, solving Windows problems frequently involves delving into details
for which there is no wizard, and searching the support database to find
out how to deal with something.

--
JPB

On Sun, 29 Feb 2004 10:37:50 +0000, JPB wrote:

Yet Linux is supposed to be the 'hobbiest'[sic] OS.

Not a computer professional here - just a home geek, but experimenting
doesn't faze me - the way I started learning about computers was with an
old computer and a hammer.

Often I find Linux is much easier to troubleshoot and work with - the
Windows wizards save about 30 seconds when all goes well, but Linux saves
hours when something screws up. It's error messages are much more
relevant, it keeps detailed logs, and in general is much more reliable. If
something goes wrong, there's usually a good reason.

If it's there at all... Often enough, I've come across many undocumented
.... uhh ... features in Windows.

On Sun, Feb 29, 2004 at 04:24:35PM +0000, Ori Bernstein wrote:
Well, naturally, GNU/Linux revenues were only 1$ billion last quarter,
the *pros* at micros~1 made *4 times* that much.

--
It's no longer a question of windows or GNU, it's a question of *Unix* or GNU.

Billy O'Connor wrote:

Bet those "pros" are shaking in ther boots that the "hobbiest" os is biting into
another possible 20% of revenue.

On Wed, Mar 03, 2004 at 11:14:03PM +1300, os2@www.com wrote:
Yes, this SCO debacle is micros~1's version of the infantry tactic of
dry-firing empty rifles in battle to make it appear that the fight's not
over. A desperation move.

--
GNU/Linux revenues last quarter: $1 Billion.
micros~1 revenues last quarter: $4 Billion.
It's no longer a question of windows or GNU, it's a question of *Unix* or GNU.