XFCE is a big favorite of the old PII/PIII crowed. It helps keep the older hardware useable while still getting a decent GUI.
I like Novell's NLD (Novell Linux Desktop); it's got all of the SUSE goodness coupled with Novell's slicker desktop feel. And it's about as easy to setup as Ubuntu except it takes three CD's and has a bunch of extra's I wouldn't need but for a Windows replacement it's coming along very nicely.
So why didn't you buy her (or have her buy) a Linux friendly printer? It's not like it's the Kernal Dev's or the Distro Dev's fault that the proprietary printer bastards won't provide decent Linux drivers. And it's not like it's hard to find a good list of Linux friendly printers,
has a nice list and that took me only a minute to google. Keep in mind your easy to buy Wal-mart specials are going to be HP or Lexmark inkjets that have no Linux support, funny how that works.
"Has Sun ever made so much as a wooden nickel on "Java"? They've been giving away [for free] the virtual machine, the "compiler", and the libraries since Day One.?"
Correct, but I can see a point were they start suing over IP/Patents just like SCO. It's not like they are making money, Sun is loosing $100mill a year. The only reason they made a profit this year was due to the Microsoft settlement.
They've been slowly pushed out of the Data Center first by IBM and now Linux in general to the point that they drooped Sparc for Intel. And for some reason they have completely drooped the ball on there JDS project and have no idea how to market themselves.
That's what makes Java and SO/OO.org a risky deal.
That sounds more like pie-in-the-sky wishful thinking.
While I would love to see something like that happen myself the likely hood of McNealy turning the ship around let alone keeping it afloat is less than likely since he's the problem not the solution.
I can see a future where Sun's hardware business dies and Java is bought be another company which makes Sun the next SCO.
" I don't know why they expect others to read this crap when they can't even be bothered..."
Because they have people like you who will read there duplicate crap and bitch-&-moan? Seriously without Timothy what would you do all day but set around and bemoan him?
"FF, like Safari, looks like it's trying to be IE."
That's the point, create an open source browser that looks similar to IE and then do a better job than MS. That's the real strength of the Firefox team. They've made the Windows version the primary development product over the Linux and Mac versions. Once the Window version is at an acceptable level work on the others (not that the Linux version is worse, but the same can't be said of the Mac version).
Once the common home users start making the switch in mass it's easier to show them other projects like OpenOffice, etc. Then after they are accustomed to looking for and using Open Source projects it'll be easier to move them to a Linux distro.
That depends, how do you 'spot' the energy signature of a Magellan Meridian Platinum Mapping handheld? (A very nice GPS unit that has seen action in Iraq). The other big item would be personal cell phones. Anything else is probably supplied by the military and will be shielded (sat phones, laser finders, etc) so it's not that big of a deal.
I was the idjut during desert storm that had to repair most types of the electronics and crypto units used in the field and never ran into a problem with anyone 'spotting' any soldier using military spec equipment. Granted soldiers are caring more non-spec personal items but it's not like you can get a thermal or low light image of a cell phone in use, you're going to pick up the solider first.
"Further sidebar: I saw one of those Mac 30" monitors - talk about drooool! Trouble is, I'd hate to turn into a Mac fanboy:-) That, and I don't have an extra three grand."
The 30" module is PC compatible so it would work on your system but it requires a NVIDIA GeForce 6800 GT or Ultra DDL Card to work. The upside is you could use two of these bad boys with the ultra card for 60"'s of monitor and two 2560x1600 windows.
Cool I've been using Evolution on Suse Pro/Novell Desktop Linux for awhile now and I really like it. I've been hoping they would release a Windows version.
You were lucky; Lotus Notes is an excellent package if you can afford the price tag.
I would recommend it over GroupWise except for the big price tag (your also getting the IBM services and the DB backend for that price).
Both of those packages blow's Exchange out of the water on the backend but MS has a much slicker front end via Outlook.
- Brad
"They're more likely just going to continue pushing GroupWise"
Exactly, I've managed large Exchange and GroupWise rollouts and I'll pick GroupWise *any* day over Exchange. I've been in love with the NetAdmin backend for years; Active Directory+Exchange is simply a poor step cousin.
I would also love to see Novell open up parts of GW so that we can get a decent front end that competes with Outlook if they would port NetAdim to their new Novell Linux Server product (Consule1 is Java based and at the mercy of Sun). - Brad
My isn't that the "kittle calling the pot black"? How do you think I learned to manage networks?
I've learned over the years that a well designed network is centered on the user not the hardware or edge-to-edge services. The leading cause of admin headache is the users not the desktop or server OS's.
A good Admin is required to be a good 'user' or your network will always be buggy. Any IT person that gives you a line about "I work on computers all day long so I hate going home and even looking at one" needs to change carrier paths because they are lousy at IT.
That's the around about answer, the short is: Unlike Programmers or Helpdesk a Network Tech or Network Admin has to be a good user or they will always struggle to keep the network working seamlessly with a minimum amount of effort no matter what OS they are implementing.
Try going to TOOLS | EXTENTIONS | "Get More Extensions" click the "Bookmark" link on the left side and look at a extension called "Bookmarks Synchronizer 1.0.1" for syncing your bookmarks. That took less than a minute to find at the mozilla extensions website and I won't have to put up with the extra Yahoo bloat.
You've got me on the Yahoo mail notifier; no one seems to think that's important enough to write an extension for (unlike the Gmail notifire I'm running along with Adblock, ForcastFox, and deskcut). I normally run Trillian or Gaim for that.
My point is that it only takes a few minutes of searching to learn how to use the tools at hand without resorting to complete lazy-mode and except malware tools from Yahoo to do your work for you.
So my home network of six computers setting behind a Slackware SpamAssassin box and a Cisco PIX 515E is a "potentially-hostile network".
And how exactly am I supposed to "configure" a game machine? I already shutdown every process that's not absolutely necessary for it to run properly play the games I want and connect to the LAN. I install a minimum of software besides the one or two games I'll be playing that weekend (things like updates, Symantec AV Corporate v8.1, Spybot, Ad-Aware)
I'll be more than happy to here your jewels of wisdom but more likely it's XP's inability to free up system resources gracefully and the huge amount of memory the Svchost.exe process needs (a generic host process name for services that run from dynamic-link libraries) that's contributing to my problem. Try doing a "tasklist/svc" at a command prompt to see how many DLL's your running and Google on how many of them go you really need.
I have no problem with WinXP in general I support it all day long. It's defiantly the best desktop OS MS has put out, hell it's finally stable enough that BSD's are normally user errors now. But it's just not in the same class of OS as the Novell Linux Desktop (repackaged Suse) or Debian due to their unwillingness to complicate things with better security and memory management.
It can be changed fairly easily by editing the source code. Anyone like SBC would want it set to their homepage instead of mozilla.org, gotta keep the norms reliant on only their brand.
Sure it does just like the bloat ware in the IE toolbar. Why would I want a dozen more bookmarks to delete? And I can do all of the other stuff already without the Yahoo logos and ads.
The point is that when dealing with real end-users in a professional environment you have to reduce as much bloat as possible and actually teach them how to use the tools given. There's more to IT than a few geeks or wannabe college Computer Info Major's
It seems this is oriented (along with the Amazon toolbar) to the non-IT end-users flocking to Firefox that thing it's just another IE clone.
At least the ones I support have no idea what the little bar at the top right does or that they can add engines.
- Brad
"I'm also typing this on a 5 year old Athlon 800 w/ 384MB RAM and a GeForce2. I have a games machine which obviously I update a lot more, but this thing is great with Ubuntu on it and a copy of Glade, Firefox, Thunderbird and GEdit:)."
Sweet, I'm in the same boat. My "main" computer I use the most is an old Compaq Ipaq 500mhz, 384MB Ram with integrated everything, it runs the new Novell Linux Desktop with Firebird and Evolution without any hitch I love that box.
On the other hand my game machine is a P4 3.2Ghz, 1Gig Ram on an Abit IT7-MAX2 and running WinXP that I need to rebuild nearly every time I finish the current LAN Party due to a buggy OS.
Can I ask why you haven't converted all of that to your favorite music/video format and store them on a decent SATA drive or array?
I'm streaming all of my music/TV/movie files from a dirt-cheap EPIA 1Gihz music server that is backed up to a separate NAS box along with all of our other 'must keep files'. I can't remember the last time I had to pull my CD collection out of the closet.
Sorry no offence but I'd rather believe a funny goggle myth over any statement Sun puts on their website. Take a closer look at that statement; it's just an advertisement for Solaris and an overpriced Sparc e-mail box
At least Novell has never stooped that low that I know of.
It happened because 'her' SO did not take the time to prepare her for a broadband connection. He should have never let her connect a Windows box (or a Linux/BSD/Mac box) to an unfiltered high-speed connection.
He should have ran down to Best Buy/Circuit City or Newegg.com and picked her up an easy to install Firewall/Router. He should have showed her how to install it, run windows update, install Ad-Aware, Spybot and AVG and set them all to automatically update themselves and run scans.
As is usually the case it's not the OS that defines the problem, it's the person between the keyboard and chair.
The problem with this is Gaint's software (the company MS bought to make this tool) has always found lots of false positives and MS rushed the beta out far to early to have a stable product.
Wait a few more months for the final release before you start reading reviews, it's always possible they may fix several of the current problems.
Slashdot Mirror
XFCE is a big favorite of the old PII/PIII crowed. It helps keep the older hardware useable while still getting a decent GUI.
I like Novell's NLD (Novell Linux Desktop); it's got all of the SUSE goodness coupled with Novell's slicker desktop feel.
And it's about as easy to setup as Ubuntu except it takes three CD's and has a bunch of extra's I wouldn't need but for a
Windows replacement it's coming along very nicely.
- Brad
So why didn't you buy her (or have her buy) a Linux friendly printer? It's not like it's the Kernal Dev's or the Distro Dev's fault that the
proprietary printer bastards won't provide decent Linux drivers. And it's not like it's hard to find a good list of Linux friendly printers,
funny enough: http://www.linuxprinting.org/
has a nice list and that took me only a minute to google. Keep in mind your easy to buy Wal-mart specials are going to be HP or
Lexmark inkjets that have no Linux support, funny how that works.
- Brad
"Has Sun ever made so much as a wooden nickel on "Java"? They've been giving away [for free] the virtual machine, the "compiler", and the libraries since Day One.?"
Correct, but I can see a point were they start suing over IP/Patents just like SCO. It's not like they are making money, Sun is loosing $100mill a year. The only reason they made a profit this year was due to the Microsoft settlement.
They've been slowly pushed out of the Data Center first by IBM and now Linux in general to the point that they drooped Sparc for Intel. And for some reason they have completely drooped the ball on there JDS project and have no idea how to market themselves.
That's what makes Java and SO/OO.org a risky deal.
- Brad
That sounds more like pie-in-the-sky wishful thinking.
While I would love to see something like that
happen myself the likely hood of McNealy turning
the ship around let alone keeping it afloat is
less than likely since he's the problem not the
solution.
I can see a future where Sun's hardware business
dies and Java is bought be another company which
makes Sun the next SCO.
Hence the reason you can not do FTP installs from the website since Novell finished the restructure and website merge.
- Brad
" I don't know why they expect others to read this
crap when they can't even be bothered..."
Because they have people like you who will read
there duplicate crap and bitch-&-moan? Seriously
without Timothy what would you do all day but set
around and bemoan him?
- Brad
"FF, like Safari, looks like it's trying to be IE."
That's the point, create an open source browser that looks similar to IE and then do a better job than MS. That's the real strength of the Firefox team. They've made the Windows version the primary development product over the Linux and Mac versions. Once the Window version is at an acceptable level work on the others (not that the Linux version is worse, but the same can't be said of the Mac version).
Once the common home users start making the switch in mass it's easier to show them other projects like OpenOffice, etc. Then after they are accustomed to looking for and using Open Source projects it'll be easier to move them to a Linux distro.
- Brad
That depends, how do you 'spot' the energy signature of a Magellan Meridian Platinum Mapping handheld? (A very nice GPS unit that has seen action in Iraq). The other big item would be personal cell phones. Anything else is probably supplied by the military and will be shielded (sat phones, laser finders, etc) so it's not that big of a deal.
I was the idjut during desert storm that had to repair most types of the electronics and crypto units used in the field and never ran into a problem with anyone 'spotting' any soldier using military spec equipment. Granted soldiers are caring more non-spec personal items but it's not like you can get a thermal or low light image of a cell phone in use, you're going to pick up the solider first.
- Brad
"Further sidebar: I saw one of those Mac :-)
30" monitors - talk about drooool! Trouble
is, I'd hate to turn into a Mac fanboy
That, and I don't have an extra three grand."
The 30" module is PC compatible so it would work on your system but it requires a NVIDIA GeForce
6800 GT or Ultra DDL Card to work. The upside is you could use two of these bad boys with the ultra
card for 60"'s of monitor and two 2560x1600 windows.
The downside is it would cost $6,600.00 (US).
- Brad
Cool I've been using Evolution on Suse Pro/Novell Desktop Linux for awhile now and I really like it.
I've been hoping they would release a Windows version.
- Brad
You were lucky; Lotus Notes is an excellent package if you can afford the price tag. I would recommend it over GroupWise except for the big price tag (your also getting the IBM services and the DB backend for that price). Both of those packages blow's Exchange out of the water on the backend but MS has a much slicker front end via Outlook. - Brad
"They're more likely just going to continue pushing GroupWise"
.
Exactly, I've managed large Exchange and GroupWise rollouts and I'll pick GroupWise *any* day over Exchange. I've been in love with the NetAdmin backend for years; Active Directory+Exchange is simply a poor step cousin.
I would also love to see Novell open up parts of GW so that we can get a decent front end that competes with Outlook if they would port NetAdim to their new Novell Linux Server product (Consule1 is Java based and at the mercy of Sun)
- Brad
My isn't that the "kittle calling the pot black"? How do you think I learned to manage networks?
I've learned over the years that a well designed network is centered on the user not the hardware
or edge-to-edge services. The leading cause of admin headache is the users not the desktop or
server OS's.
A good Admin is required to be a good 'user' or your network will always be buggy. Any IT person
that gives you a line about "I work on computers all day long so I hate going home and even looking
at one" needs to change carrier paths because they are lousy at IT.
That's the around about answer, the short is:
Unlike Programmers or Helpdesk a Network Tech or Network Admin has to be a good user or they will
always struggle to keep the network working seamlessly with a minimum amount of effort no
matter what OS they are implementing.
- Brad
Try going to TOOLS | EXTENTIONS | "Get More Extensions" click the "Bookmark" link on the left side and look at a extension called "Bookmarks Synchronizer 1.0.1" for syncing your bookmarks. That took less than a minute to find at the mozilla extensions website and I won't have to put up with the extra Yahoo bloat.
You've got me on the Yahoo mail notifier; no one seems to think that's important enough to write an extension for (unlike the Gmail notifire I'm running along with Adblock, ForcastFox, and deskcut). I normally run Trillian or Gaim for that.
My point is that it only takes a few minutes of searching to learn how to use the tools at hand without resorting to complete lazy-mode and except malware tools from Yahoo to do your work for you.
- Brad
Really?
/svc" at a command prompt to see how many DLL's your running and Google on how many of them go you really need.
So my home network of six computers setting behind a Slackware SpamAssassin box and a Cisco PIX 515E is a "potentially-hostile network".
And how exactly am I supposed to "configure" a game machine? I already shutdown every process that's not absolutely necessary for it to run properly play the games I want and connect to the LAN. I install a minimum of software besides the one or two games I'll be playing that weekend (things like updates, Symantec AV Corporate v8.1, Spybot, Ad-Aware)
I'll be more than happy to here your jewels of wisdom but more likely it's XP's inability to free up system resources gracefully and the huge amount of memory the Svchost.exe process needs (a generic host process name for services that run from dynamic-link libraries) that's contributing to my problem. Try doing a "tasklist
I have no problem with WinXP in general I support it all day long. It's defiantly the best desktop OS MS has put out, hell it's finally stable enough that BSD's are normally user errors now. But it's just not in the same class of OS as the Novell Linux Desktop (repackaged Suse) or Debian due to their unwillingness to complicate things with better security and memory management.
- Brad
That would be CCIE (Cisco) and CNA (Novell) I never bothered with MS certs and I have people like you changing toner for minimum wage ;)
- Brad
It can be changed fairly easily by editing the
source code. Anyone like SBC would want it set to
their homepage instead of mozilla.org, gotta keep
the norms reliant on only their brand.
- Brad
Sure it does just like the bloat ware in the IE toolbar. Why would I want a dozen more bookmarks to delete?
And I can do all of the other stuff already without the Yahoo logos and ads.
The point is that when dealing with real end-users in a professional environment you have to reduce as much bloat
as possible and actually teach them how to use the tools given. There's more to IT than a few geeks or wannabe
college Computer Info Major's
- Brad
It seems this is oriented (along with the Amazon toolbar) to the non-IT end-users flocking to Firefox that thing it's just another IE clone. At least the ones I support have no idea what the little bar at the top right does or that they can add engines. - Brad
"I'm also typing this on a 5 year old Athlon 800 w/ 384MB RAM and a GeForce2. I have a games machine which obviously I update a lot more, but this thing is great with Ubuntu on it and a copy of Glade, Firefox, Thunderbird and GEdit :)."
Sweet, I'm in the same boat. My "main" computer I use the most is an old Compaq Ipaq 500mhz, 384MB Ram with integrated everything, it runs the new Novell Linux Desktop with Firebird and Evolution without any hitch I love that box.
On the other hand my game machine is a P4 3.2Ghz, 1Gig Ram on an Abit IT7-MAX2 and running WinXP that I need to rebuild nearly every time I finish the current LAN Party due to a buggy OS.
Can I ask why you haven't converted all of that to your favorite music/video format and store them on a decent SATA drive or array?
I'm streaming all of my music/TV/movie files from a dirt-cheap EPIA 1Gihz music server that is backed up to a separate NAS box along with all of our other 'must keep files'. I can't remember the last time I had to pull my CD collection out of the closet.
Sorry no offence but I'd rather believe a funny goggle myth over any statement Sun puts on their website.
Take a closer look at that statement; it's just an advertisement for Solaris and an overpriced Sparc e-mail box
At least Novell has never stooped that low that I know of.
It happened because 'her' SO did not take the time to prepare her for a broadband connection. He should have never let her connect a Windows box (or a Linux/BSD/Mac box) to an unfiltered high-speed connection. He should have ran down to Best Buy/Circuit City or Newegg.com and picked her up an easy to install Firewall/Router. He should have showed her how to install it, run windows update, install Ad-Aware, Spybot and AVG and set them all to automatically update themselves and run scans. As is usually the case it's not the OS that defines the problem, it's the person between the keyboard and chair.
The problem with this is Gaint's software (the company MS bought to make this tool) has always found lots of false positives and MS rushed the beta out far to early to have a stable product. Wait a few more months for the final release before you start reading reviews, it's always possible they may fix several of the current problems.
The first time around was a fad, this time around it'll be sad. Let me guess at the prices if they ever develop a real product, $500(us) a piece?