Linux OS.: Technical questions Message Board

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Pastimes : Linux OS.: Technical questions

Public Reply Prvt Reply Mark as Last Read File

Previous 10 Next 10 Previous Next

To: g_m10 who wrote (145)	1/11/1999 5:25:00 AM
From: E. Charters	of 484

Asus boards do work. And they are better quality than most. PCI is no problem. Perhaps some PCI stuff had problems with some chipsets but there is a kernel workaround for the only PCI problem that I have heard of. USR modems work as long as they are not called a winmodem. The 28.8's work. I believe the 33.6's work. Don't ask me about the 56K's. Go on the usenet sites for Linux of which there are about 25 and ask or search dejanews for modems/linux and see if it has been solved. Drives all work for the most part and SCSI controllers do too. I run a SCSI and IDE together and its no problem in slackware 3.5. I run straight SCSI in another system and no probs either. All speeds of boards work. The only drivers that do not work are things like USB and some new cards from 1998. That is not too say there are not drivers on the way. There is parallel support for parallel devices too! You can look it up on the web. Linux has a load of peripheral support. That is evinced in the many late hardcopy books on Linux. Its support way surpasses other flavours of UNIX like BSD and QNX and Solaris. "Linux Undercover" Lists a lot of hardware compatibilities and not too many incomp. Linux is very much a read-the-funky-manual system. If you partition correctly and install correctly it will go well and basically trouble free. My experience is Red Hat for all the hoopla about its RPM's and upgradeability is NOT the most robust system at all! Rather buggy actually compared to Slackware. As a matter of fact unless you have a hardware or Gnome thing to support there is no reason whatever to go to things like the latest kernel or the latest compiler (egcs etc..) Some rock solid versions of Linux use very old kernels and old versions of software! (Debian, Stallion) Linux is very very poor on printer support and drivers.. you can see the vaunted free writers are not into hardcopy. Unix is Post Script Adobe machines. want to drive your fave printer in graphics? Got to go ghostscript and make a postscript file! oh yah! talk about crippled. Want a commercial driver? Got to go to Alladin and pay like 100 bucks. Ghostscript can be got free but I warn you, the support for things like a canon 4000 BBJ are limited. I got gray scale to work. oh well. Ok. If you want true word processing you have to go to Corel or Applix. Their printing may have drivers.. Web surfing the new way? Half decent mail collection from your ISP? Got get Netscape 4.X and put up with its problems. (address book system sucks, it uses its own mailfiles.. memory hog supreme. Like I would not run Netscape under X windows with any serious intent unless I debugged it AND had 64Megs of RAM!) Want trouble free configurable X windows guaranteed to not burn out your monitor? (that is rare if you know what you are doing.. but it is possible I have done it!) Well you have to go to a commercial X GUI. There are a couple of them out there.. So what does true non toy usability cost he average guy who is not a Unix programmer or hacker who can easily fix library problems in buggy compiling software? Well here is the plain Unvarnished: L ? Linux Slackware 3.6 30 bucks 125 Commercial X system 100 -- Applix Office or Corel 130 350 Linux Secrets Manual 75 75 Linux Network Administrators Guide 30 50 Other Good Unix Manual (don't ask) 75 50 ^^^^ Second good Linux manual that covers the things not covered in any of the above.. 50 50 Alladin Ghostscript 100 125 Your time.. 100 hours.. you cost it.. ---------------------------------------------- That will be 690 US plus applicable.. taxes.. So is Linux cheaper than windows? Well actually yes.. the figure on the right were for comparable necessary MS windows products that I have had to acquire.. and I actually spent 12,000 on MS software from MS and other companies in the past 15 years... and SOME of it actually works.. Lets not get into this free crap.. Linux is not free if you are not a unix viglante and want a system to work now. IT is more time consuming and fusutrating than microsoft a lot of the time.. but bottom line is it is in many ways more capable. MS systems are not robust set it and forget it multi tasking Linux is.. That alone is worth paying for.. It's what you get when you get there.. and where you can go from there.. with MS all too often you are boxed in a very expensive corner.. with Linux at least you can write your way out.. Linux consulting is more expensive than MS but at least there is some hope that if you pay there is a solution.. EC<:-}

Report TOU Violation

Share This Post

Public Reply Prvt Reply Mark as Last Read File

Previous 10 Next 10 Previous Next