There are millions of people who use Linux. These millions do not think it sucks.
This is my story.
Once upon a time in year 2000, when the office I do computer haltura at, did not have a CD writer yet, I tested a purchased Linux distribution that was made by a small company from a neighbouring country by developers from another neighbouring country. This distro was very unstable and sucked big time. Adding to that, I managed to render a particular hard drive's MBR unusable, because I didn't know how the GRUB bootloader worked at the time (v0.53 or v.0.57 or something). I later had to go through a very long and boring MBR recovery process with Windows Me. That distribution had a 2.2.14 kernel, KDE 2 and was RPM-based.
After this incident, I was very disappointed with Linux and dropped the idea of using it.
In late 2004, one old computer's hard drive with Windows started showing bad blocks, i.e. failing. Since I had a spare hard drive that I did not use, the same one, where I tried the distro with that 2.2.14 kernel, I tested the hard drive with its manufacturer's tools, the tools found out that the drive was usable and fine and I installed Debian on it. That install help was thanks to the great Debian #IRC channel. Their support is very good and quite free. They actually helped me go through the installation process of Debian 3.0. I think at the same time of Autumn 2004, I burned myself a Knoppix 3.6 LiveCD and since it was a LiveCD, I think it may also have sparked my interest.
I got the hard drive back to that old computer in Spring of 2005 and from then on I learned and used Linux for over a year, until I moved and lost the net connection in mid-2006. For about a month or two in that Spring of 2005, I had to get used to using the console and learned a few ropes of it in Linux, until I got X working with the great help of Debianistas.
During that yearlong time, and also with the help of mostly friendly people (once you learn to know them better) who frequent the Debian IRC channel, I slowly became one of the millions of people who realized that after all, Linux didn't suck and many things were way better and more convenient in console (knowledgably editing a config file and making things work) than with any graphical frontend in X. Of course, the computer's resources were very limited, so it was just more reasonable to make changes in console than with unreasonably resource-intensive graphical frontends in X. Perhaps the best part was that I could otherwise in X browse the net, IM and even work within the limited resources that I had. I guess trying free, new and different possibilities was a very liberating process.
At the time of moving, I had problems with more data gathering on the hard disk, probably a log file, but I couldn't resolve the issue, because I moved to a new place. Had I not moved out of my old place into a new place with no Internet, I would have probably solved the issue, with the help of people at #debian.
There are millions of other people who will try Linux but coming from a Windows perspective. The majority of these millions will give up. Linux is not for them because they have to learn something different. They do not have the right attitude - the attitude that they may have to learn something. Some, however, will stick with it.
Concur. Linux is indeed nice once people actually learn to use it. People who think that Linux sucks are those that are not really familiar with it and I do admit that it requires a good learning curve for this. People who think that Linux does not suck, are usually those that have been raised with it or who have dedicated their time to familiarize themselves to it.
Perhaps the real problem is that the people who could learn to use Linux (or any other *NIX), have learned not to study by the time they have reached their adult life and reached a certain educational milestone (a degree in some discipline or field, for example).
Actual MSOffice formats in Windows versions of Office have changed little:
There were the
* Word for DOS 3.x-5.x format;
* Word 2.0 (probably since version 1.x);
* Word 6.0/95;
* Word 97/2000/XP
* Maybe Word 2003 has its own format;
* Word 2007 has XPS probably, based on Microsoft's Open Document XML format (not the space between 'Open Document').
All in all, I don't think that formats change, but how the user perceives the document in a different version of the same software title. For example, AFAIK, margins are set individually in each Word app depending on paper size.
AFAIK, margins are also differently set in OpenOffice.org and Word apps. In addition, OOo uses a different font than MS Word, which means that people who may have long-time experience with MSWord, but still no real experience in proper document formatting, may discover that their document looks different in another word processing application. Then also there are the hopeless and hapless people who whine just about everything that does not look in OOo exactly as it would in MSWord.
Oh yes, I've seen at least two 486 machines with Windows 95 in them. One was a very old machine from father's office (it somehow ran Netscape 4.77) and another one was the one I set up with very a similar configuration to yours: A 486sx25, 8M RAM. I remember it could even run Word95 normally. Netscape 3 was awful slow, then I used a DOS version of PKZip and LPAGE was an image processing program. And that was pretty much all that I could used on that machine until it died completely.
If you look past all the changes you have experienced, then there are not too many overly shocking changes in order to keep familiarity: I strongly assume that you have always gotten a hang of all the changes.
Thing is that large user interface (and architectural) overhauls in Windows have taken place only every 7-9 years: 1985-1994, 1995-2003 and 2003-2011; The interface is kept consistent and changes are implemented little-by-little and step-by-step.
My idea is that all improvements in Windows were always subtle over the major versions and all added features were always sorted in a right way and put in all the right places.
Getting from Windows to Linux is like a cultural shock, because almost everything is different and instantly inconsistent.
IMHO, A beginner has to learn using Linux longer than Windows or Mac and most people want to begin their work right away and not after two months when they are advanced users of some system that has an inconsistent user interface.
As a longtime Netscape user since version 3 and continuing with 4, I didn't use IE unless utterly necessary. Once circumstances led me to use IE more frequently, it was IE5 that I was going to use, when the browser had reached the point of high maturity at the time.
But both programs had consistent user interfaces and in both cases it was easy to find what I wanted in terms of configuring and setting up these applications. I brought this parallel in order to show that Linux differs alot.
While the look and feel of the Linux GUI can match and outmatch Windows and even Macintosh, then performing tasks is a completely different story.
Depends on what one wants, but to do something on Linux requires more time and a very steep learning curve than with Windows or Mac. Not everything that you can do Windows or Mac will actually work in Linux.
Because Linux or parts of it still are and remain cryptic: things like setting up a network, audio and video availability, possibility of connecting Windows hard drives to read from and write to them (without having the disks ruined).
Yes, there are a gazillion of programs that are useful and usable. But if you want to boot a Windows hard drive (primary master) by default and by choice boot a secondary master or primary slave Linux hard drive, when you want to connect to a network in the first day of installation and
when you have a system that is unable to boot a hard drive and competently connect to the Internet and the interface really is unable to tell in plain English what the real and not cryptic reason is to why accessing the network is not possible, then why do I have to have a system, usability of which is immature, cryptic and arrogant to beginners?
"As it is, if you were to go to live and work in Sweden, the laws of that country would require you to speak
Danish."
Correction:
"...the laws of that country would require you to speak Swedish."
Initially I put Denmark as an example, but in relation to "Interdevochka" ("Intergirl"; film info lacks a plot description as of 11.07.2003.), I decided to put Sweden as an example, forgetting in the process to change the word Danish to Swedish.
The Americans already were on the moon, which the popular myth suggests, with plenty of good material to back the claim up.
I wonder why none's been on the moon since when they last were there... So much time has passed between now and then that people are beginning to think that it never happened, because none's doing it right now and there is no U.S. programme to go to the moon again.
Or is it now a space race to reach Mars?
And btw, Yuri Gagarin was the first man to return safely and in a relatively healthy condition from having been in outer space.
I've always thought that he was straight. But he is not as cute now as he had been before, although he is physically fit.
Dave Benton was denied citizenship possibly because he didn't speak the language, but Western EU ppl are more eager to learn languages though...
There is a gay guy, who won a Eurovision contest for impaired people and then later became very scandalous with relevations like which pervert he had had sex with. The local gay community had to do a hard job persuading him not to make any more revelations.
Thing is, that because Estonian women are IMO highly emancipated and are very well educated in my view, then the number of splits in relationships and marriage divorces is also very high.
You should consider yourself lucky to get a long-term relationship with her.
The decision to let the Soviet army in was not made by the people, but by head politicians in these countries (Although the countries were all relatively prosperous, there was not enough democracy there). Because the SU was already picking on them, they decided to let the armies in and decided to let them create their bases in favor of evading later reprisals, had there been any resistance.
The local Soviet/communist ppl then with the armies there enforced their way and basically occupied the countries (via means of clever orchestrations), leaving local rulers in limbo. The elections were all orchestrated, hence these elections took place at same times. All this happened almost simultaneously in the Baltic countries.
The performed elections did take place (at least in Estonia, but no doubt in Latvia and Lietuva, too), but they were inconsistent and rigged in many ways, intimidation was used, for example; as the outcome of these referenda was already predetermined.
And *it was and remained to be occupation,* without quotation marks.
We might have gotten the technology by ourselves, too and the countries were not agrarian junk yards. We might have gotten even better technology than what we had to live with for 50 years.
When Estonia announced its independence in 1918 and through the 1920 Tartu Peace treaty with the SU it got some areas behind the Narva river and the whole of the Petseri county, then mostly the Russian people there were discovered to be mostly illiterate -- once passports had to be issued and census data collected.
Tallinn and Helsinki are 84 kilometres (~50 miles) away from each other.
During Soviet times, we didn't have serious food shortages in Estonia. At least we didn't have this "no stuff in shops" until the end of 1990's came. But the deficit situation was there regarding some products, as many people bought stuff in advance, believing that in the future there would be less products available (which at some point was true).
Some trivia stuff...
"Norma" produced and still manufactures and supplies seat belts for both Russian and Western cars, the main customers being Saab Automobile AB, Opel Poland, Renault V.I., Van Hool (or Van Tool??), Inka and a few others that were not listed.
The "Kalev" confectionery produced and produces great sweets and chocolates and is famous for inventing the sweet and mild kama chocolate, which became very famous (especially during the cocoa crisis:).
During Brezhnev's rule, when at some point sweets were a deficite in most of the USSR, "Kalev"'s sweets had to be smuggled to all or some of the highest officials in Moscow.
We also produced listening apparatus for the hearing-impaired people and we still do.
"Soviet-own" CD-players were manufactured in Estonia under the like-named trademark. AFAIK, the company manufacturing these dissolved:/. The manufacture/sale of these players began near the end of 1990's, so the product was quite short-lived.
/Muideks, kas keegi teab, kuidas Tallinna (vürtsi)kilud -- pigem sõna 'kilu' -- inglise keeles käib? Mul pole sõnaraamatut kuskilt käepärast ja peale selle pole ma Interneti sõnastikest kah midagi leidnud:/. Tahtsin neid muide kah mainida. Sest sprotid ja ansoovised ei ole päris see õige definitsioon kilude kotha.
Russian language is not supposed to be an official state language, as it has already been a tool of russification. Estonian language is the official state language of Estonia, as is the case in Latvia and Lietuva (Lithuania), with their own national/native languages, respectively.
The stringency of these laws is possibly a logical backlash at russification, which we have had to endure for half a century.
Everyone is not required to pass tests on national language, nor is it IMO forced on other people to speak it (like do or die). There are non-Estonians who don't even bother to learn the language, even if they had an ideal age to do it.
The 'overnight' argument may seem quite rash, but it is the requirement in some jobs to speak Estonian at least in a minimally satisfactory manner, to ensure that the person can interact with other Estonians, some of whom only speak his/her native language.
Some jobs and positions do require the full ability to speak Estonian, and some require that a person be an Estonian citizen (members of parliament and the government, for example).
As it is, if you were to go to live and work in Sweden, the laws of that country would require you to speak Danish. If it's not exactly the laws, then interaction with local officials requires that you speak the language, as it is the official language there.
I suggest you see the film "Interdevochka" ("Intergirl"), where in one scene the main character is told by an official in Sweden that if she wants to get a decent job, she has to go through local high education and fluently speak Swedish.
--- These supposed WWII veterans who "fought Nazis" also deported thousands of people from Baltic countries to Siberia, just because they were better well off. Many of the deported died en route, many perished in harsh conditions and many never came back.
Germany has a shameful Nazi past. The Baltic states just don't have this much a shameful past, although some groups of like-minded people like sticking it to the country.
Either way we were caught in a crossfire between the Soviets and Nazis, as during Nazi rule the conscription took the young to that side and during Soviet rule the conscription took the young to their side; in both cases forcefully and both occupied the three countries.
But this is what I concluded and deduced. Since I am not a programmer, then these are just a user's observations, therefore it's impossible for me to say where a program uses most resources when it shows that it's slow.
Check the system requirements for Mozilla to see if your computer has enough system resources to run it. Mozilla does takes up many resources (mainly RAM and swap space), so if it's slow for you, then consider having Mozilla Firebird instead. That one is based on Mozilla 1.4b's Gecko code, but is way less bloat.
I've also written a page with your situation in mind.
I am using Windows, too and have always been (Linux has bad usability). And my main browsers are Netscape 4.08, Mozilla 1.2.1 and M. Firebird 0.6. And sometimes I use IE to perform software updates for Windows.
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There are millions of people who use Linux. These millions do not think it sucks.
This is my story.
Once upon a time in year 2000, when the office I do computer haltura at, did not have a CD writer yet, I tested a purchased Linux distribution that was made by a small company from a neighbouring country by developers from another neighbouring country. This distro was very unstable and sucked big time. Adding to that, I managed to render a particular hard drive's MBR unusable, because I didn't know how the GRUB bootloader worked at the time (v0.53 or v.0.57 or something). I later had to go through a very long and boring MBR recovery process with Windows Me. That distribution had a 2.2.14 kernel, KDE 2 and was RPM-based.
After this incident, I was very disappointed with Linux and dropped the idea of using it.
In late 2004, one old computer's hard drive with Windows started showing bad blocks, i.e. failing. Since I had a spare hard drive that I did not use, the same one, where I tried the distro with that 2.2.14 kernel, I tested the hard drive with its manufacturer's tools, the tools found out that the drive was usable and fine and I installed Debian on it. That install help was thanks to the great Debian #IRC channel. Their support is very good and quite free. They actually helped me go through the installation process of Debian 3.0. I think at the same time of Autumn 2004, I burned myself a Knoppix 3.6 LiveCD and since it was a LiveCD, I think it may also have sparked my interest.
I got the hard drive back to that old computer in Spring of 2005 and from then on I learned and used Linux for over a year, until I moved and lost the net connection in mid-2006. For about a month or two in that Spring of 2005, I had to get used to using the console and learned a few ropes of it in Linux, until I got X working with the great help of Debianistas.
During that yearlong time, and also with the help of mostly friendly people (once you learn to know them better) who frequent the Debian IRC channel, I slowly became one of the millions of people who realized that after all, Linux didn't suck and many things were way better and more convenient in console (knowledgably editing a config file and making things work) than with any graphical frontend in X. Of course, the computer's resources were very limited, so it was just more reasonable to make changes in console than with unreasonably resource-intensive graphical frontends in X. Perhaps the best part was that I could otherwise in X browse the net, IM and even work within the limited resources that I had. I guess trying free, new and different possibilities was a very liberating process.
At the time of moving, I had problems with more data gathering on the hard disk, probably a log file, but I couldn't resolve the issue, because I moved to a new place. Had I not moved out of my old place into a new place with no Internet, I would have probably solved the issue, with the help of people at #debian.
There are millions of other people who will try Linux but coming from a Windows perspective. The majority of these millions will give up. Linux is not for them because they have to learn something different. They do not have the right attitude - the attitude that they may have to learn something. Some, however, will stick with it.
Concur. Linux is indeed nice once people actually learn to use it. People who think that Linux sucks are those that are not really familiar with it and I do admit that it requires a good learning curve for this. People who think that Linux does not suck, are usually those that have been raised with it or who have dedicated their time to familiarize themselves to it.
Perhaps the real problem is that the people who could learn to use Linux (or any other *NIX), have learned not to study by the time they have reached their adult life and reached a certain educational milestone (a degree in some discipline or field, for example).
Since there are
Actual MSOffice formats in Windows versions of Office have changed little: There were the * Word for DOS 3.x-5.x format; * Word 2.0 (probably since version 1.x); * Word 6.0/95; * Word 97/2000/XP * Maybe Word 2003 has its own format; * Word 2007 has XPS probably, based on Microsoft's Open Document XML format (not the space between 'Open Document'). All in all, I don't think that formats change, but how the user perceives the document in a different version of the same software title. For example, AFAIK, margins are set individually in each Word app depending on paper size. AFAIK, margins are also differently set in OpenOffice.org and Word apps. In addition, OOo uses a different font than MS Word, which means that people who may have long-time experience with MSWord, but still no real experience in proper document formatting, may discover that their document looks different in another word processing application. Then also there are the hopeless and hapless people who whine just about everything that does not look in OOo exactly as it would in MSWord.
Oh yes, I've seen at least two 486 machines with Windows 95 in them. One was a very old machine from father's office (it somehow ran Netscape 4.77) and another one was the one I set up with very a similar configuration to yours: A 486sx25, 8M RAM. I remember it could even run Word95 normally. Netscape 3 was awful slow, then I used a DOS version of PKZip and LPAGE was an image processing program. And that was pretty much all that I could used on that machine until it died completely.
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Thing is that large user interface (and architectural) overhauls in Windows have taken place only every 7-9 years: 1985-1994, 1995-2003 and 2003-2011; The interface is kept consistent and changes are implemented little-by-little and step-by-step.
My idea is that all improvements in Windows were always subtle over the major versions and all added features were always sorted in a right way and put in all the right places.
Getting from Windows to Linux is like a cultural shock, because almost everything is different and instantly inconsistent.
IMHO, A beginner has to learn using Linux longer than Windows or Mac and most people want to begin their work right away and not after two months when they are advanced users of some system that has an inconsistent user interface.
As a longtime Netscape user since version 3 and continuing with 4, I didn't use IE unless utterly necessary. Once circumstances led me to use IE more frequently, it was IE5 that I was going to use, when the browser had reached the point of high maturity at the time.
But both programs had consistent user interfaces and in both cases it was easy to find what I wanted in terms of configuring and setting up these applications. I brought this parallel in order to show that Linux differs alot.
While the look and feel of the Linux GUI can match and outmatch Windows and even Macintosh, then performing tasks is a completely different story.
Depends on what one wants, but to do something on Linux requires more time and a very steep learning curve than with Windows or Mac. Not everything that you can do Windows or Mac will actually work in Linux.
Because Linux or parts of it still are and remain cryptic: things like setting up a network, audio and video availability, possibility of connecting Windows hard drives to read from and write to them (without having the disks ruined).
Yes, there are a gazillion of programs that are useful and usable. But if you want to boot a Windows hard drive (primary master) by default and by choice boot a secondary master or primary slave Linux hard drive, when you want to connect to a network in the first day of installation and when you have a system that is unable to boot a hard drive and competently connect to the Internet and the interface really is unable to tell in plain English what the real and not cryptic reason is to why accessing the network is not possible, then why do I have to have a system, usability of which is immature, cryptic and arrogant to beginners?
Your figure is wrong by a zero, where you have written how much the RIAA assumes a small webcaster produces a year of revenue per year.
I calculated the given $2600 x 12 = $31.200,00 (thirty-one thousand two hundred dollars).
The Americans already were on the moon, which the popular myth suggests, with plenty of good material to back the claim up.
I wonder why none's been on the moon since when they last were there... So much time has passed between now and then that people are beginning to think that it never happened, because none's doing it right now and there is no U.S. programme to go to the moon again.
Or is it now a space race to reach Mars?
And btw, Yuri Gagarin was the first man to return safely and in a relatively healthy condition from having been in outer space.
I've always thought that he was straight. But he is not as cute now as he had been before, although he is physically fit.
Dave Benton was denied citizenship possibly because he didn't speak the language, but Western EU ppl are more eager to learn languages though...
There is a gay guy, who won a Eurovision contest for impaired people and then later became very scandalous with relevations like which pervert he had had sex with. The local gay community had to do a hard job persuading him not to make any more revelations.
Thing is, that because Estonian women are IMO highly emancipated and are very well educated in my view, then the number of splits in relationships and marriage divorces is also very high.
You should consider yourself lucky to get a long-term relationship with her.
The decision to let the Soviet army in was not made by the people, but by head politicians in these countries (Although the countries were all relatively prosperous, there was not enough democracy there). Because the SU was already picking on them, they decided to let the armies in and decided to let them create their bases in favor of evading later reprisals, had there been any resistance.
The local Soviet/communist ppl then with the armies there enforced their way and basically occupied the countries (via means of clever orchestrations), leaving local rulers in limbo. The elections were all orchestrated, hence these elections took place at same times. All this happened almost simultaneously in the Baltic countries.
The performed elections did take place (at least in Estonia, but no doubt in Latvia and Lietuva, too), but they were inconsistent and rigged in many ways, intimidation was used, for example; as the outcome of these referenda was already predetermined.
And *it was and remained to be occupation,* without quotation marks.
We might have gotten the technology by ourselves, too and the countries were not agrarian junk yards. We might have gotten even better technology than what we had to live with for 50 years.
When Estonia announced its independence in 1918 and through the 1920 Tartu Peace treaty with the SU it got some areas behind the Narva river and the whole of the Petseri county, then mostly the Russian people there were discovered to be mostly illiterate -- once passports had to be issued and census data collected.
During Soviet times, we didn't have serious food shortages in Estonia. At least we didn't have this "no stuff in shops" until the end of 1990's came. But the deficit situation was there regarding some products, as many people bought stuff in advance, believing that in the future there would be less products available (which at some point was true).
Some trivia stuff...
"Norma" produced and still manufactures and supplies seat belts for both Russian and Western cars, the main customers being Saab Automobile AB, Opel Poland, Renault V.I., Van Hool (or Van Tool??), Inka and a few others that were not listed.
The "Kalev" confectionery produced and produces great sweets and chocolates and is famous for inventing the sweet and mild kama chocolate, which became very famous (especially during the cocoa crisis :).
During Brezhnev's rule, when at some point sweets were a deficite in most of the USSR, "Kalev"'s sweets had to be smuggled to all or some of the highest officials in Moscow.
We also produced listening apparatus for the hearing-impaired people and we still do.
"Soviet-own" CD-players were manufactured in Estonia under the like-named trademark. AFAIK, the company manufacturing these dissolved :/. The manufacture/sale of these players began near the end of 1990's, so the product was quite short-lived.
And not 1600 years ago ;))))
Russian language is not supposed to be an official state language, as it has already been a tool of russification. Estonian language is the official state language of Estonia, as is the case in Latvia and Lietuva (Lithuania), with their own national/native languages, respectively.
The stringency of these laws is possibly a logical backlash at russification, which we have had to endure for half a century.
Everyone is not required to pass tests on national language, nor is it IMO forced on other people to speak it (like do or die). There are non-Estonians who don't even bother to learn the language, even if they had an ideal age to do it.
The 'overnight' argument may seem quite rash, but it is the requirement in some jobs to speak Estonian at least in a minimally satisfactory manner, to ensure that the person can interact with other Estonians, some of whom only speak his/her native language.
Some jobs and positions do require the full ability to speak Estonian, and some require that a person be an Estonian citizen (members of parliament and the government, for example).
As it is, if you were to go to live and work in Sweden, the laws of that country would require you to speak Danish. If it's not exactly the laws, then interaction with local officials requires that you speak the language, as it is the official language there.
I suggest you see the film "Interdevochka" ("Intergirl"), where in one scene the main character is told by an official in Sweden that if she wants to get a decent job, she has to go through local high education and fluently speak Swedish.
---
These supposed WWII veterans who "fought Nazis" also deported thousands of people from Baltic countries to Siberia, just because they were better well off. Many of the deported died en route, many perished in harsh conditions and many never came back.
Germany has a shameful Nazi past. The Baltic states just don't have this much a shameful past, although some groups of like-minded people like sticking it to the country.
Either way we were caught in a crossfire between the Soviets and Nazis, as during Nazi rule the conscription took the young to that side and during Soviet rule the conscription took the young to their side; in both cases forcefully and both occupied the three countries.
But this is what I concluded and deduced. Since I am not a programmer, then these are just a user's observations, therefore it's impossible for me to say where a program uses most resources when it shows that it's slow.
I've also written a page with your situation in mind.
I am using Windows, too and have always been (Linux has bad usability). And my main browsers are Netscape 4.08, Mozilla 1.2.1 and M. Firebird 0.6. And sometimes I use IE to perform software updates for Windows.