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Can I develop Windows applications from within Linux now?

You'll still want to have windows around to test the results every once and awhile, but WxWindows might be worth looking into. I don't know if it would have everything you need, but I've been very impressed with it. In theory, you should be able to compile your code for Linux, Mac, or Windows, and have the results look and run as a native application on all platforms. I wouldn't recommend doing a crosscompile and never checking out the results on windows, but for the most part I've been quite happy with the crossplatform development WxWindows opens up. For me, the end result is just having to reboot into windows to do a little tweaking every couple weeks, and I've never really ran into any major problems. I've also been using python wrappers around it (wxpython) for a few months , and have been even more blown away. After wxpython was installed on my windows partition, it was as simple as copying over my code and watching as it ran, with no changes, on a totally different operating system than I'd done the development on. The reverse should be equally true though. Get a handle on WxWindows development in windows, and your programs should only need a little tweaking to work in OS X or Linux.

You might want to take a look at Knoppix , to see how you take to Linux. It's basically a Debian install which runs entirely off of a CD, never touching your hard drive. Mandrake or Suse would have a lot more in terms of configuration utilities, but Knoppix should at least give you a good idea of where Linux has gone in the past few years.

"Where can I get a CD that I put in my computer, click the appropriate "Yes/Ok" buttons a few times, and have Linux on my computer, with a web browser and a word processor, that all my hardware automatically works with, including my internet connection through my router to my cable modem, as well as my video and sound cards, that automagically downloads any updates I need, and works with anything I happen to plug into the USB port?"

Knoppix.

You can purchase Linux For the Rest of Us from bn.com.

Per BN.com: "A new copy is not available from Barnes & Noble.com at this time. A used copy may be available from our network of book dealers."

You can however buy it from Amazon.

What no one here has mentioned, and what doesn't appear in the reviews is whether or not it comes with a Distro on CD-ROM. I'm assuming from the low price that it doesn't, which is a shame, as it would seem the perfect vehicle for distributing a copy of DemoLinux or Knoppix. Without an included disk, I can only assume the guidance is kept very distro-independent, which is good if you are technically oriented, but I think the people that consider themselves technically oriented and that are interested in Linux don't consider themselves part of "the rest of us". The people that I would put in the category of "the rest of us" are people that would love to try linux, as long as they can do so without downloading an ISO image, burning it to a cd, and then partitioning their harddrive - or alternatively shelling out $20 - $99 for a commercial shrink-wrapped distro.

One quick option: Check out Knoppix. It's an ISO image, bootable Linux version that's a great demonstrator. It never touches the hard drive, so you can demo it on any X86 workstation that can CD boot (well, any might be going too far). Take out the CD and reboot, and voila, you're back to Windows.

And that's exactly the way it ought to be. I feel so sad for these guys here who feel like they're being taken advantage of.

I liked Paul Graham's observation about italian teenagers in his article on nerd unpopularity. The italians don't have as many seriously disturbed nerdy teens, in large part because their families support each other and become the most important part of their lives.

Of course there's always Philip Greenspun's guide to Java Monkeys to support those of us who are being taken advantage of.

I helped my Fiancee buy a used laptop for her mom. Yes, I've spent several hours on "tech support" over the phone from 3000 miles away. I just feel that it's more than enough to repay them for the way they treat me when I fly out for holidays, and the interesting things I learn from them.

I also think it's worth it because they obviously get a lot out of internet access. Her mom is a library fiend, constantly checking out books on myriad topics, now she also has access to a world of information that doesn't require reserving books, or driving out in 3 feet of snow.

If you're really getting steamed about tech support, perhaps it's time to take more control over how it works?

there's nothing that beats Knoppix for ease of use, easy recovery, and local and remote administration.

Good: Knoppix CDs that boot themselves and then let you write to a small section of the CD, so that you can keep a permanent record of the files you write in the computer lab.

Bad (and the likely goal): CDRs that have DRM features written at the beginning of the disk to keep you from writing "untrusted" content to the rest of it. Watch these replace normal CDRs and hurt the CD remixing industry. (While the RIAA collects a higher piracy tax on them anyway.)

I'll keep the intro brief. I started using Linux in May of '97 and it was some ancient Slackware distro. Anyways, it was mainly used as a server but I thought it was cool anyways. The server (upgraded several times of course) is still running today. I've always read people talk about Linux on the desktop etc. etc. but I was like, yeah whatever maybe someday I'll put time into it and make a neat desktop out of it (remember, I'm still thinking in terms of the ancient Slack distro).

About a month ago I found Knoppix and I was really blown away. It runs Debian actually. Anyways, even my dad loved it so much he got an old pc and threw Debian on it. I learned how to get around dselect/apt-get and I was really impressed. Admittedly, I had never used a packaging system before. (Knowing where everything installed on my old Slack server is a *skill*) Anyways, I still play with Debian adding/removing packages and I haven't come across a problem yet.

I think my favorite part was upgrading the kernel from 2.2.x to 2.4.x and Debian was told me "hey modify your /etc/lilo.conf", so I did it, then went back to dselect and finished the install. I rebooted. It was magically in 2.4.x. Anyways, I like the packaging system hopefully you will too.

I'll be impressed if anyone actually finished through this boring tale of mine.

In the Under the Hood section of the KDE 3.1 New Feature Guide, there's a small blurb:

... and smarter thumbnail generation.

So I'm holding out some small hope that this got addressed.

I'm a bit leery about upgrading to the Mandrake 9.1 beta, but I really want to play with KDE 3.1. Hopefully Knoppix will come out with it Real Soon Now - apparently Klaus is waiting for the internationalization stuff.

Knoppix is a great way to get familiar with Linux without the effort of installing a distro.

Maybe we ought to write Open songs and publicise them.

I'm not going to try to defend the notion that a Linux desktop has a lower TCO than a Win 2K desktop, because frankly I doubt that it does. Linux requires admins which, unlike MCSEs, aren't churned out by the dozens by your local community college.

The problem I see here is that most of these Linux vs. Windows TCO studies hinge on the idea that you are replacing a Windows 2000 desktops with a full-fledged Linux desktops, and that's the wrong way to do it.

I'd like to see a unbalanced TCO review of what the City of Largo, Florida has done. Basically, they've got 800 very cheap thin clients (230 concurrent) running X-Windows applications (KDE, etc.) off of a couple big-ass terminal servers. Very similar to the Linux Terminal Server Project, and very cool.

There are so many businesses paying $200 for Win 2K Pro and $350 for MS Office just so their employees can send email and dabble in Word or Excel. It's insane. They could be saving $550 per machine in software costs alone! Not considering the fact that the thin client hardware costs much, much less than the average desktop. And there's essentially zero administration costs on the clients. Let's see a TCO comparison on that.

I'm starting to get off-topic, but I'm excited about the project so what the hell. I'm currently doing a little in-house pilot of the same thing at my employer. I've customized the KNOPPIX bootable ISOs to basically be X-Windows thin clients. You just pop the CD in a machine, reboot, and you get a KDM login box for our terminal server. Very, very cool. Even free server licenses from Microsoft couldn't persuade me to drop this project.

knoppix

I should have let you know about my success with Linux and USB about two years ago then...

And if you're tired of dependancy hell, try Debian. I got pissed off with RPMs and switched. I've never looked back.

Give Knoppix a shot and you'll be pleasantly surprised.

You could also try burning a linux bootable CD, something like Knoppix [www.knoppix.org] then boot up using the CD.

If you get some PC's with enough RAM, and 'young' enough, I suggest you run Knoppix. It's a CD-ROM distro, and lives from ROM. It doesn't need to be installed, and doesn't need a hard-drive. It can save your settings on a flpppy though. (And it supports burning CD's). It has lots of niceties like autodetecting most if not all hardware, kde, openoffice and alike.

... is called Xandros or Lindows or even Knoppix. There are probably others. I say let the Debian developers make their distro how they want it and let those concerned with money-making worry about making it user-friendly for J. Random Luser.

This distribution autodetects a tonne (I'm Canadian) of hardware. It runs off of the CD, however, you can set it up to store configuration settings on the hard disk. Thus, if you have any problems, you simply reboot.

I would take a look at LFS 4.0 in combination with the sources for Knoppix. Roll your own distro based on them. An added benefit of doing things this way: you can redefine the default settings so that nothing ever needs to be written to the hard disk.

If you've got a Knoppix CD with you, just boot from it and cast your fears aside about locally installed software snooping on you.