Some people have no taste.
Yes 3PO's whiny, the costumes can be funny at times and Luke's a big complainy-pants before he matures into his Jedi persona in SW:ROTJ but this is all part of the fun IMHO.
We watched the HD remastered version last night as we are watching the six movies chronologically, one per day, leading up to when we'll be seeing SW:TFA on opening night (Empire tonight!).
As ever that 1977 movie, now turned into as multi-time-remastered classic is still one of the best movies ever made.
Despite being slightly marred by the now dated-looking CGI Lucas slapped on top of it (why walk a big CGI creature right infront of the Luke & Ben in the "These are not the droids you're looking for" scene?), the imagination, tension and (still) wonderful imagery in crisp HD with DTS-HD Master audio makes it one of the movies to own if you have a decent system to enjoy it on.
Maybe watching it compressed to death through an Apple TV wasn't the good idea.
You're assuming that Windows is here to stay in the PC games arena. Really Microsoft Windows has only been the choice for gamers because of Microsoft's tight monopoly and control of the PC industry for the past 20 years with mega-dollar deals with hardware & software makers and adept lock-in tactics.
Valve and others companies who are invested in the PC industry know that Microsoft's stranglehold on home computing is dying, Microsoft have only themselves to blame by releasing bad software on a glacial release cycle whilst more recently pissing off developers. The writing has been on the wall for Windows for a some years now, the explosion of iOS and Android devices show that Windows is over in the eyes of the general public, now it's just that shitty OS you have to use for work, even that is becoming less relevant.
For the x86 PC architecture to survive, i.e. to remain mainstream in 5 years time, Linux is the logical next step and it is a big step that the big software players have been putting off for years. Compared to consoles high-end PC hardware is still the most performant and continues to evolve but the platform is held back by one thing, Windows and sales are falling drastically, PCs need to become sexy again and with sexy read uncomplicated.
Your comment about Windows games is short sighted, in 3-5 years time, when all the new PC titles could be available for Linux, Mac & Windows who'll care about those old Windows only titles? Especially those ones that won't even run in Wine for a bit of nostalgia? not me.
I have a low power Atom/ION PC connected to the TV running XBMC serving up all my stored, over-the-air & streamed content. The TVCatchup XBMC addon is a good alternative to over-the-air Freeview although max quality is not as sharp as over-the-air TV, but our TV reception is sometimes sketchy so it comes in handy sometimes and has more channels than pur ariel picks up. The advantage of XBMC is that you can unify all media sources including local files, network shares, 4od, Demand 5, iPlayer, SportsDevil (live sports streaming from multiple sites/feeds) and live TV (with a TV tuner and TVHeadend backend), live TV recording, the list goes on.
http://zorin-os.com/Zorin-OS is an Ubuntu derivative design precisely for this purpose.
Personally I think presenting users with a mock-up of Windows that isn't Windows is counter-productive because IMHO Windows' desktop environment is continually flawed and year's behind the current crop of open desktop environments. Personally I prefer to show those who are interested the popular DE's such as Gnome3, Cinnamon, Unity & (less so) KDE in their unaltered glory as these show really how backward the whole 'Windows way' is nowadays.
I do agree that IOM TT racers are insane and the danger is extreme but I think you're underestimating just how difficult and scary driving an F1 spec car is, not to mention an F1 car would cream any motorbike on a racetrack.
Yellow Dog Linux is sooo buggy and is based on the now comparativley ancient Fedora 6, why don't just install Fedora 10 for PPC on the PS3 instead,. There plenty of emulators in the Fedora repos and Fedora works fine on the PS3.
Why are you sending these out with Windows XP? Are they legitimately licensed copies of Windows XP? Are you allowed to transfer ownership of the license to the recipient?
Considering you've gone to the trouble of individually downloading and installing your choice of FOSS applications on these Windows boxes and you're even distributing Ubuntu CDs with the PCs why are you even bothering with Windows in the first place?
The majority of gaming suggestions on this thread are FOSS or shareware games available on Linux anyway.
Comparing a striped disk array with a SSD is pointless. mikkelm pointed out "extremely low seek times" with a RAID array, I'm sorry but you're never going to get under the initial seek time of an individual drive (approx 10ms on a 15k disk) without some form of prefetching or cacheing going on, whereas seek times on decent SSDs are usually measured in microseconds, not millseconds.
I'm a senior HP-UX & Linux sysadmin now purely thanks to free software such as GNU/Linux, BSD, HTTPD & MySQL which enabled me to start learning the concepts of Unix style OSs, databases and their benefits without having to shell out for expensive software packages and courses. These skills then easily transferable to the other Unix OSs such as HP-UX, AIX, Solaris etc. which you're unlikely to ever touch unless you're paid to do so.
But that's the point.
The major Linux distros are now reaching the point where they DO 'just work' on the majority of PCs, there's no farting around with driver discs like in Windows. There are a few thorny hardware vendors that are making it difficult for those distros who value software freedom and open licenses to support 'out of the box' (Broadcom possibly being the most notorious).
You PC with one or two hard drives may have trouble getting to 4.8Gbps transfer rates but how about RAIDed disks?
Current SCSI over FC SAN adapters only go upto 4Gbps so maybe this could be the beginning of USB SANs?
I agree, no usability issues here either. As a long term user of OOo I haven't properly used MS Office for a number of years and insist of using in work (perk of the job of sysadmin/sw analyst) as each time I attempt to use MS Word nowadays I find it really cumbersome.
...and don't get me started on MS Word's bloody stupid way of dealing with styles!
'Linux' will never play MP3s on it's own as Linux is a kernel and there are no built in kernel modules that play media files.
Then again there are plenty of Linux distributions that play MP3s on a fresh install, my personal favorite being Linux Mint which is a reworked Ubuntu distro with non-free software included by default.
If it's such a "deal breaker" he could do as I have done and buy a legal codec pack from Fluendo for properly licensed, good quality MP3, Windows Media, AC3 & MPEG support for GStreamer.
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Some people have no taste. Yes 3PO's whiny, the costumes can be funny at times and Luke's a big complainy-pants before he matures into his Jedi persona in SW:ROTJ but this is all part of the fun IMHO. We watched the HD remastered version last night as we are watching the six movies chronologically, one per day, leading up to when we'll be seeing SW:TFA on opening night (Empire tonight!). As ever that 1977 movie, now turned into as multi-time-remastered classic is still one of the best movies ever made. Despite being slightly marred by the now dated-looking CGI Lucas slapped on top of it (why walk a big CGI creature right infront of the Luke & Ben in the "These are not the droids you're looking for" scene?), the imagination, tension and (still) wonderful imagery in crisp HD with DTS-HD Master audio makes it one of the movies to own if you have a decent system to enjoy it on. Maybe watching it compressed to death through an Apple TV wasn't the good idea.
Skyrim (Linux/Wine)
Diablo 3 (Linux/Wine)
Gran Turismo 6 (PS3)
Metro Last Light (Linux)
Not really looking forward to anything, Star Citizen looks promising but another total time vampire and I already got Skyrim for that.
Skyrim works just fine on Wine.
You're assuming that Windows is here to stay in the PC games arena.
Really Microsoft Windows has only been the choice for gamers because of Microsoft's tight monopoly and control of the PC industry for the past 20 years with mega-dollar deals with hardware & software makers and adept lock-in tactics.
Valve and others companies who are invested in the PC industry know that Microsoft's stranglehold on home computing is dying, Microsoft have only themselves to blame by releasing bad software on a glacial release cycle whilst more recently pissing off developers.
The writing has been on the wall for Windows for a some years now, the explosion of iOS and Android devices show that Windows is over in the eyes of the general public, now it's just that shitty OS you have to use for work, even that is becoming less relevant.
For the x86 PC architecture to survive, i.e. to remain mainstream in 5 years time, Linux is the logical next step and it is a big step that the big software players have been putting off for years.
Compared to consoles high-end PC hardware is still the most performant and continues to evolve but the platform is held back by one thing, Windows and sales are falling drastically, PCs need to become sexy again and with sexy read uncomplicated.
Your comment about Windows games is short sighted, in 3-5 years time, when all the new PC titles could be available for Linux, Mac & Windows who'll care about those old Windows only titles? Especially those ones that won't even run in Wine for a bit of nostalgia? not me.
Seconded..
I have a low power Atom/ION PC connected to the TV running XBMC serving up all my stored, over-the-air & streamed content.
The TVCatchup XBMC addon is a good alternative to over-the-air Freeview although max quality is not as sharp as over-the-air TV, but our TV reception is sometimes sketchy so it comes in handy sometimes and has more channels than pur ariel picks up.
The advantage of XBMC is that you can unify all media sources including local files, network shares, 4od, Demand 5, iPlayer, SportsDevil (live sports streaming from multiple sites/feeds) and live TV (with a TV tuner and TVHeadend backend), live TV recording, the list goes on.
http://zorin-os.com/Zorin-OS is an Ubuntu derivative design precisely for this purpose.
Personally I think presenting users with a mock-up of Windows that isn't Windows is counter-productive because IMHO Windows' desktop environment is continually flawed and year's behind the current crop of open desktop environments.
Personally I prefer to show those who are interested the popular DE's such as Gnome3, Cinnamon, Unity & (less so) KDE in their unaltered glory as these show really how backward the whole 'Windows way' is nowadays.
I do agree that IOM TT racers are insane and the danger is extreme but I think you're underestimating just how difficult and scary driving an F1 spec car is, not to mention an F1 car would cream any motorbike on a racetrack.
One of Lewis Hamilton's lap of Instanbul for y'all...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9_z2fWNMcmE
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6015621370324169356&hl=en
Yellow Dog Linux is sooo buggy and is based on the now comparativley ancient Fedora 6, why don't just install Fedora 10 for PPC on the PS3 instead, .
There plenty of emulators in the Fedora repos and Fedora works fine on the PS3.
Why are you sending these out with Windows XP?
Are they legitimately licensed copies of Windows XP? Are you allowed to transfer ownership of the license to the recipient?
Considering you've gone to the trouble of individually downloading and installing your choice of FOSS applications on these Windows boxes and you're even distributing Ubuntu CDs with the PCs why are you even bothering with Windows in the first place?
The majority of gaming suggestions on this thread are FOSS or shareware games available on Linux anyway.
Comparing a striped disk array with a SSD is pointless.
mikkelm pointed out "extremely low seek times" with a RAID array, I'm sorry but you're never going to get under the initial seek time of an individual drive (approx 10ms on a 15k disk) without some form of prefetching or cacheing going on, whereas seek times on decent SSDs are usually measured in microseconds, not millseconds.
Huygens: Oveerr Heerre... HEY HEEEEYYYY!
"Amen. Know vi, and know the bourne shell, and you're good on close to 100% of the unix machines you'll ever touch.
Apart from HP-UX & AIX which use the Korn shell by default.
Let's not forget the additional confusion caused by this as MUMPS is a language that has been around since the late 1960s and is also referred to as M
Likewise on the UK site there's no Ubuntu option, only Windows XP.
Link
I'm a senior HP-UX & Linux sysadmin now purely thanks to free software such as GNU/Linux, BSD, HTTPD & MySQL which enabled me to start learning the concepts of Unix style OSs, databases and their benefits without having to shell out for expensive software packages and courses.
These skills then easily transferable to the other Unix OSs such as HP-UX, AIX, Solaris etc. which you're unlikely to ever touch unless you're paid to do so.
But that's the point. The major Linux distros are now reaching the point where they DO 'just work' on the majority of PCs, there's no farting around with driver discs like in Windows.
There are a few thorny hardware vendors that are making it difficult for those distros who value software freedom and open licenses to support 'out of the box' (Broadcom possibly being the most notorious).
You mean like ReactOS?
You forgot to mention that the minimum spec for the DNF Linux client will also require a 2.7.x kernel.
You could at least start practicing on the Enemy Territory:Quake Wars demo on Wine in prep for the full Linux version when it comes out.
You PC with one or two hard drives may have trouble getting to 4.8Gbps transfer rates but how about RAIDed disks?
Current SCSI over FC SAN adapters only go upto 4Gbps so maybe this could be the beginning of USB SANs?
I agree, no usability issues here either. As a long term user of OOo I haven't properly used MS Office for a number of years and insist of using in work (perk of the job of sysadmin/sw analyst) as each time I attempt to use MS Word nowadays I find it really cumbersome.
...and don't get me started on MS Word's bloody stupid way of dealing with styles!
"Which of course contradicts the other lemma of Linux popularity: Linux can not become mainstream if I have to pay for it."
I meant non-free as in freedom, it is still free as in gratis (zero-paid).
'Linux' will never play MP3s on it's own as Linux is a kernel and there are no built in kernel modules that play media files.
Then again there are plenty of Linux distributions that play MP3s on a fresh install, my personal favorite being Linux Mint which is a reworked Ubuntu distro with non-free software included by default.
If it's such a "deal breaker" he could do as I have done and buy a legal codec pack from Fluendo for properly licensed, good quality MP3, Windows Media, AC3 & MPEG support for GStreamer.