Mail Archives: djgpp/2000/02/18/15:32:24
On Thu, 17 Feb 2000, Chris Jones wrote:
>
> > And playing a MP3 is not that CPU intensive as far as a pentium
> > is concerned.
>
> Well it takes about 12% of the CPU on my computer - I'd call that quite
> intensive.
A unoptimized MP3 player can also take a large amount of CPU. BTW what is
this MP3 player in question?
> Ok, well can some linux guru answer these questions:
Although I don't claim to be a Linux guru I'll have a go...
> 1. Where can I download linux?
Actually Linux is the kernel. There are many software companies which
bundle the kernel together with GUI's like KDE, GNOME and other software
like netscape as there distributions.
Redhat <http://www.redhat.com> is a well known company. It's site gives
you deatiled instructions about how to download linux. But please be
warned the download size is about 600MB. I think it would be a better idea
to get a CDROM (there are quite a lot very cheaply available, just look
in any store) and install from it. I suppose you could get the CD from one
of your friends even?
> 2. How easy is it to install?
Earlier Linux used to be pretty hard to install. Now however Redhat 6.1
and other distibutions are _very_ easy to install. I have heard that
DEBIAN/linux is another very easy to setup distro.
> 3. Will it install on a FAT partition, or does it need its own type of
> partition?
Linux needs it's own partition. However there was a company which sells
winlinux (IIRC) which can be started up from windoze.
However there are standard utilities (FIPS) which can shrink your FAT
partition _without_ losing data so that you can allocate space for the
Linux partition.
And also linux can acess fat32 partitions so you can read and write to
your windoze partition from linux without any problems.
> 4. Does it dual-boot gracefully with DOS/Win2000/etc?
This is automatically setup for you by the Redhat install program. I have
had no problems with the dual boot so far.
>
> > Well A _good_ 32 bit OS should be able to handle and terminate any badly
> > behaving program gracefully. And gracefully doesn't mean crashing ;-).
>
> Yes, ok, but I was comparing it to Win9x - and in comparison with '98,
> Win2000 is a beacon of stability. :-)
IMHO win97 was the most stable of them all. I am thinking of "downgrading"
my win98 to win97 because of stability problems :-(((
>
> Yes, but RHIDE isn't a graphics-mode program. Doom/Duke Nukem 3D will run
> full-screen under win2000, just without any sound. In fact, I couldn't get
> any DOS program to use sound under win2k.
Could you please see whether your sound card has sound blaster
compatibility (most cards do). If so you can get it to work with dos
programs. Please feel free to mail me privately if you want more help on
this matter.
> > Please try running products from different companies (not just microshaft)
> > and see whether your system survives it). I'm sure you'l run into at least
> > one of the 64000 bugs that m$ has acknowledged.
>
> Practically speaking there's no real alternative to Windows. I hate it
> myself, would much prefer to use DOS. But all applications and games these
> days are for Windows. Ok, so there are linux versions of a few, and WinEmu
> or whatever it was can run some Windows progs - but at the end of the day
> you have to use Windows.
There are linux versions for almost all the software that you will need.
Ie mail clients, browsers (netscape). There is a super free distro from
Sun called star office. It is a free replacement for that utter thrash
Microsnoft office. It is very good and free cdroms are availabe. It also
runs on windoze and linux and a lot of other OS's.
>
> > BTW when one user complained to M$ about how often windoze crashes he
> > was told that "We acknowledge that problem and our solution to that is, we
> > are working on reducing the reboot time for windoze"!!!! Typical of M$
> > won't you agree...
>
> LOL ;-)
;-)
>
> > Anyway playing a few games and running word processing can be done in
> > DOS also..
>
> That's true, but until someone writes a DirectX emulator for DOS, and
> printer drivers for recent printers into DOS word-processors, we're stuck
> with Windoze.
I hope you install linux and give it a go. I think that you wont be stuck
with windoze ever. (just maybe to play your directx game once in while)
Enjoy,
Grendel
Hi, I'm a signature virus. plz set me as your signature and help me spread
:)
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