Swap a Video Card. Linux drools and Windows XP Rulez. 3440

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On 2006-03-10, Richie Spano spake thusly:

First of all, I can't imagine anyone buying a ford. I'm a GM man myself #:-)

Actually, it's a poor analogy. Mike is right; there are as many distro's as there are specific needs. It's one of the great strengths of Linux; the great range of choice that it affords it's users. It is also (relatively) easy to customize it's behaviour. I have not observed this attribute in windows to any extent with the exception of batch files and "quick" languages. I actually like and at one time used, quick basic and quick C. They were good tools for folks (like me) who have a relatively limited knowledge of C, or need to easily write good GUI based basic, and compile it.

This said, even the simplest Linux scripting languages-files, such as a bash script, is quite a bit more powerful and versatile than *.bat files (does windows still support this? I haven't used it for a while). As a matter of fact, Bash scripts can be considered a language in their own right. The vast kitchen cabinet of powerful, and often, easy to use, programming languages (ie. python), don't carry a hefty price tag along with thier power.

If programming for cutomization isn't a user's thing, they have the choice not to do it, and still retain the ability to personalize their work environment. This is due to the many Graphic User Interfaces that are available as the front end to the X windows system. It also has to do with the excellent range of software available in the typical distro. In many cases, the distro is free * and often better than the paid version.

Setting up choices of this kind is quite easy nowadays via very easy to use, robust, installers.

Example: The first distro I ever used was mandrake. I was dissatisfied with it; no, make that downright frustated because so much was either difficult to use, or didn't work at all. This was many years ago, and they may, or may not have corrected the problems. Frankly I don't care. I won't use it again because of the bad experience I had.

Mandrake is a commercial product which dosen't make it inherently good or bad. In this case, it was just bad.

On the other hand, I am now using Fedora Core, and *love* it. It works so well that I have found myself using my linux box exclusively and delegating the eMac to my wife (she likes it anyway, so no love loss). As you may know, Fedora is the free project that forked off from Red Hat.

My point is, it really comes down to choice. Like my wife, there are users that may prefer to use another system. That's fine. To each their own. And the "distro swicharooooo" is a good thing, which you seem not to realize or are unwilling, for your own reasons, to acknowledge.

May you enjoy the privilege of choice,

Mathew

* There is a culture of atbreastude that many people have been accepting for so long, it is very difficult to change these thinking processes.

I refer to the almost subliminal ingrained notion that anything free, is automatically devoid of any worth. For many, it is inconcievable that "you get what you pay for" may not be the case in all situations. In this respect, it is likely that Linux would be more excepted to the mbuttes if a (small) fee was charged for all the software and the OS itself. I don't by any means advocate this, I simply comment on the significance of the phenominon.

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