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Technology Stocks : All About Sun Microsystems -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Beachbumm who wrote (9571)	5/5/1998 9:31:00 AM
From: Bob Drzyzgula	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 64865

> So where do I get Linux? At finer bookstores everywhere. Borders, B&N, B. Dalton, Crown, etc., all should have copies on their shelves. You can get it either bundled in a book about Linux ("Linux for Dummies" comes bundled with Red Hat 5.0) or as a premium distribution package from one of the larger Linux companies such as Red Hat, Caldera or S.u.S.E. Caldera's latest release comes with more support than the others, but I've had trouble installing it and I've seen reviews to the same effect. Red Hat 5.0 is very nice, however they've moved a little toward the cutting edge by basing the OS on glibc 2 (this is a major rewrite of the GNU C Library). I think that the best release right now for novices is S.u.S.E 5.2, using the Beta 3 release of KDE (it is only beta in features... it is very stable and very nice to use. Beta 4 is out but you'll have to download it). S.u.S.E comes with a huge number of pre-compiled packages (something like 600 on three CDs -- the fourth CD has source code) and it has a very nice administrative tool that will keep your window manager menus in sync with your installed packages. The manual is also excellent and they run a very friendly and active mailing list to ask S.u.S.E-specific questions. The main downside (or upside, depending) is that S.u.S.E is a German company and you will ocassionally (or always, if you prefer) be confronted with error messages in German. If you need an office suite, try ApplixWare (also available in bookstores) or Star Office (free for personal use but you'll need to download all 43MB of it). Star Office gets somewhat better reviews. S.u.S.E is at suse.com, and the KDE people are at kde.org. ApplixWare can be found at applix.com, and Star Office can be found at stardivision.com. If you need a database, there are several SQL packages free for personal use, including ADABAS D from Software AG (the personal edition is included in S.u.S.E, but the workgroup server version costs about $300 for 10 users). Netscape 4.0.5 - Java, javascript and all - works very well, and the PPP dialer software is built in to Linux (the KDE front end on the PPP software is very easy to use). Still, you would probably want to keep part of your hard drive configured with Windows 95 until you are fully functional in Linux. This is quite straightfoward to do and is well documented. You can read and write a DOS/Win95 FAT partition from Linux, but you won't be able to read the Linux side from Windows 95 Before embarking on this, you'd probably do well to study up. Spend some time at linux.org, and especially study the Linux Laptop homepage at cs.utexas.edu before buying your laptop. Stay away from laptops with NeoMagic graphics chips, the C&T chips work much better. Also the Linux documentation project at sunsite.unc.edu is worth some of your time. --Bob

To: Beachbumm who wrote (9571)	5/6/1998 10:07:00 AM
From: Thomas Haegin	Respond to of 64865

Beachbumm, I was at the newsstand during lunch break today: The German edition of PC Magazine (PC Professional called here) has a special this month on operating systems. While LINUX was quite well reviewed technically and stability-wise, etc., they said that you may have trouble finding application software for it. One office suite seems to come from Star Division (or so it's named). Anyway, depending on what you want to do with your PC under LINUX, you may wish to make sure that you get a fitting software. My best, Thomas