Slashdot Mirror

GnuWin springs to mind.

Actually I was genuinely curious. I'm not out to dehumanize people who are stuck with Windows. I just feel sorry for you, that's all. :)

Why feel sorry for me? What I do with Windows works for me. If I were to use Linux as a replacement for my main Desktop as opposed to just using it on my secondary machine, then I would be severly limited. And then you could rightfully feel sorry for me.

Your mention of a M$ Flight Simulator is an excellent example that I hadn't considered...

M$? Does it make you feel more "leet" to use a $ in place of the S? Sorry, I don't mean to be confrontational but saying M$ or Microshaft or Winblows seems about as childish as Mac users who call PC's Pee Cee's.

Hmm... I wouldn't buy an iPod myself, I've got an MP3 CD player that works just fine and is infinitely expandable. (And well-supported by Linux!) You didn't get the VW Beetle with that iPod, did you? (In which case I will debunk everything you say and dehumanize you.)

No, I don't have a VW Beetle. I drive a Jeep. I spent days researching MP3 players before I finally chose the iPod. At the time, it was the only one that met my criteria of a small physical size, long battery life, a decent warranty, and large storage capacity. And even then I wasn't going to buy it except I ran into a deal that I decided I couldn't pass up. A double discount from Dell.com which in effect was a $100 instant off coupon. There is a new MP3 player out now by creative labs called the Nomad Zen NX that I would seriously consider buying now though if I were buying now instead of several months ago.

Okay, this one I agree wholeheartedly with. Print/Scan/Fax in Linux varies between great and absolute shit. I've never gotten a scanner to work in Linux. (I tried a couple, but gave up.) HP DeskJet printing tends to waste ink. (Black text should be black ink only, damnit!) It's not quite a show-stopper for me, though.

It's not really a show stopper for me either but it is just one more thing that reinforces why I still can't personally make that jump over to Linux for my *main* Desktop.

[(The list goes on - but since I doubt you'll read this anyway I'm not going to waste my time with anything more.)]

You were wrong. :)

Indeed.

To an extent, I agree with your sentiment... but I guess the main thing is our divergent interests. I can say that Linux has worked well for me, but I've been conscious of what kind of hardware I should buy and what kind of software I actually need for years.

To some extent I do take Linux into consideration when considering a new hardware purchase. And when it comes to software, I'm always on the lookout for Open Source or just really good free-beer programs. I think more often than not that free or Free software works just as well, and sometimes better. This is a good site for Open Source Windows programs.

Right now, I can say that my machine runs well, and Linux supports all the hardware I currently use. I guess I got the better mileage.

Uhh.. ok? My machine does what I need it to do just fine.

Windows Toolkit looks interesting... I haven't completely RTFWS (the Web Site), but how does it compare with GnuWin ?

As for management authorisation, I was lucky - my manager was cool, he said if I wanted some GPL software to give him a copy of the licence and install the sw, which would then prompt him to read it. That was 18 months ago and he hasn't said anything yet. Oh, I forgot two , perl from either ActiveState or Indigo Star depending upon your particualr OS (Indigo works on older versions and includes Apache) and Regina Rexx because I like rexx (I used to be a mainframe guy) and it's the macro language for the Hessling editor. Of course Cygwin has the option of including perl there too, it's a matter of what you want to do. I went for ActiveState instead of Cygwin when I set up my work box as it was a later version - I should have checked which was the more stable. As cygwin is under continuous development (join the mailing lists) it's probably superceded ActiveState now.
HTH. (i'm sorry if anything is broken, as preview has done just that, if there's a problem I correct when /. allows the next post).

You press start to stop the computer.

The graphical shell lacks some things. Does it have a way to search for file names by regular expressions, by exact substring/phrase, or even by all the words? I can't get Windows 2000 to search by anything other than any of the word stems.

http://www.gnuwin.org/index.html

Not really. There are tons of free programs for Windows. If they aren't being actively ported from Linux as is the case with the various projects indexed in the GNUWinII Project then it is part of the free/shareware market. Just do a search at download.com or something.