I won't say much on this, but a few points: First I do agree with you on the
games thing. If you need new games *that* much, stick in a second hd or make a
second partition to put windoze on. (As I think you already have done).
Second, are you a developer, as that is IMHO where linux comes into its own,
as it is built around the developer. (And you don't have to pay a stupid amount
for the compiler, unlike vc++.)
Third, the linux archives from cheep bytes have a lot of the programs on. This
saves on your phone bill.
I can't be bothered to go on any further...
To sum up, I think if you are an avid game player then stick a win95 partition
on and have the best of both worlds, keeping linux for everything it is good at.
just MHO.
Peter Allen
Charles Collicutt wrote:
>
> Hi,
> Before I start I'd like to make clear that this is *not* a flame or a
> troll, I genuinely want to know the answer to my question as I would quite
> like to continue using linux.
> Could someone tell me why I'm using linux not Windows 95? I've been
> told that linux is much better and I believed it and have been faithfully
> using linux (apart from the occasional trip into a win95 partition to play
> games) from then on. I've come to the conclusion that yes, as a server on
> a network, linux is much more stable and you don't need to reboot often.
> But for the home user, why bother? Linux is so much harder to set up
> (it may not be incredibly difficult but it is still much much harder than
> "stick the cd in the cd-rom drive and click on "next" until it's
> installed, possibly changing a few values on the way" which is all you
> have to do for windows). It's a complete bugger to install new things -
> dependency problems, compile problems, configuration problems. Oh whoopee,
> it's Open Source, it's free. So what? There's plenty of free Windows
> shareware and freeware - it just isn't "free" in the Open Source sense,
> should the average home user really care? Besides, all these developers
> working together on Open Source software has had no major effect that I
> can tell other than making me install new versions of everything all
> the time to enable the installation of something else and getting huge
> phone bills because of that. In windows if I want to install something new
> I stick the cd in and away I go - done. In linux I download the source,
> fight for hours with Makefiles and header files - or if I'm lucky
> ./configure will show me all the problems I need to fix in advance. OK, I
> can install .deb files (or .rpm files or whatever) instead but then I have
> to hope the package maintainer has kept everything up-to-date and hasn't
> mucked up - the number of times gzip complains about not being able to
> uncompress .deb files is amazing - and then I find someone's mucked up the
> dependencies and have to spend ages mucking around on ftp.debian.org (or
> mirrors) looking for stable-ish versions that will work and let me get on
> with it. Besides, most packages are optimised for a 386... As far as I can
> tell the following summary is true:
>
> Windows
> -------
> *) Complete ease of use - a GUI even an utter luser can understand.
> *) Plenty of support for developers at MSDN - with plenty of free
> downloads of SDKs.
> *) Piss easy installations.
> *) GAMES - is there a single good game on linux apart from ports of Quake?
> *) Oh look, is that *another* cover cd with free demos and software? Guess
> I won't be spending ages downloading like I would with linux then...
>
> Linux
> -----
> *) Astronomical phone bills after downloading new software.
> *) CDs from CheapBytes may be cheap - but they're not free and they get
> out of date very quickly.
> *) Basic installation is easy - but from then on installing new software
> is not what I'd call easy.
> *) Great community of people ready to help - but should I need help?
> *) Not a single good game in sight :(
>
> Please help, I really don't want to give up something that is apparently
> so good - but I can't see why it is good for a home user...
>
> --
> Charles
>
> --
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