Working with Linux on a PC 1637

On Sun, 06 Mar 2005 15:01:34 -0700, Snit

On my box, I get a bios screen, then moves to the bootloader (which is graphical), followed by #2.

But then I'm running Mandrake.

Yes, pretty standard.

That's X11 starting up. Sort of essential if you want, you know, the GUI on Linux. X11 has to be started before the DE can be loaded.

Yes, that's possible of course.

The intent there, is that when you open up a graphic, that you feel it's just another part of what you're currently working in. No intrusion, no feeling like you've started up another application, just that you've opened another window...this time with a picture in it.

That sounds like a speed-configuration issue. Especially if you're using LiveCDs.

Oh yeah, I'm always impressed by Live CDs.

That's odd. I can certainly do that here. I just *did* it in fact.

LiveCDs often do get the short end of the stick when it comes to themes.

If you want to look at some cool GNOME themes you could try out, go take a look at www.gnome-look.org you'll find plenty of really nice themes, iconsets, and wallpapers there.

And I've certainly seen transparencies with GNOME.

As for the fonts, perhaps you are used to looking at the way OSX displays fonts...which is different. And not necessarily better. Of course, I'm not using those distros so they may lack good included fonts...

Yeah the screensavers are great!

Indeed.

Yes, that's the important part...it's free. And as I point out all the time, there *are* commercial Office suites for Linux as well, if Open Office isn't up to anyone's particular taste.

Driver issue?

This issue I can mostly address. While Eye of Gnome and Evolution are pure, 100% GNOME compliant applications, most of the others are not. Firefox has it's own dialogs, as does Open Office...simple as that. Now GIMP on the other hand, it is a GNOME application, but it was felt they had certain needs on their open and save dialogs...hence they are not 100% consistant with the first two.

But still....you have a mixture of compliant, and non-compliant apps as the issue. Open Office tries to integrate well with GNOME (and KDE), but they demand their own design. And Firefox...well...is Firefox.

I thought you were *fairly* positive about Linux...but then suddenly started hating on account of a couple of app's having different save dialogs... It's not all that bad. Heck, I've seen worse. :-)