A few thoughts I've had...

kona0197 · #1 13th May 2005, 08:04 AM

I recently recieved a private message from a fellow FedoraForum user. In the message he apoligized for some harsh remarks that were made in a few of my previous threads. He also hoped that his remarks had not scared me away from using FC3 as my OS instead of Windows XP.

Well rest assured - no comments on any thread on this site was the reason I quit using Fedora Core 3. I quit using FC3 for other important reasons. Here are a few:

No support for my Digital Camera - Samsung Digimax 420 (very important)
No support for some of my most favorite games
No good writing programs such as Nero
No "All-In-One" media player that can compete with windows Media Player 10
Boot up time is painfully slow - Anything over 30 seconds is not good
The fact that programs are much, much easier to install in Windows
The fact that FC3 has no email program that works like Outlook Express and can handle Hotmail
The fact that trying to figure out how to install tar ball install files is a pain in the neck
Compared to NTFS, the Linux file system is slower
The general learning curve is steep - but I expected this
The fact that honestly i like Internet Explorer and I dislike Firefox

Don't take me wrong - If nothing else I would switch if my Digital Camera would work on Linux. I have nothing against linux.

tejas · #2 13th May 2005, 08:20 AM

No support for my Digital Camera - Samsung Digimax 420 (very important)
-- Are you sure about this? You can probably stick it in and say mount /dev/sda, and see the files

No support for some of my most favorite games
-- Maybe, I agree about this

No good writing programs such as Nero
-- K3B was voted better than nero. And Nero has already switched over to Linux, under the name NEROLinux [what a surprise]

No "All-In-One" media player that can compete with windows Media Player 10
-- XINE? Mplayer? Even XMMS can play videos if you know how to do it. XMMS plays everthing

Boot up time is painfully slow - Anything over 30 seconds is not good
-- What? Maybe you have some services on that you don't need. If you are not looking, your Linux box might try to become a server for local bluetooth devices or something like that. You got to tell it NO!

The fact that programs are much, much easier to install in Windows
-- Have you ever tried apt, yum, synaptic? Everyone says it is easier

The fact that FC3 has no email program that works like Outlook Express and can handle Hotmail
-- Ever heard of thunderbird? OE doesn't support hotmail anyway, MS removed the support for free hotmail. Use thunderbird with gmail instead. PM me if you need an invite.

The fact that trying to figure out how to install tar ball install files is a pain in the neck
-- Who need tarballs. Thank you redhat for RPMS [redhat package manager] and YUM [yellowdog update manager]

Compared to NTFS, the Linux file system is slower
-- Hmmm, I haven't been able to compare

The general learning curve is steep - but I expected this
-- Que? It's not so bad.

The fact that honestly i like Internet Explorer and I dislike Firefox
-- Like IE? The only thing good about IE is you can play Media Player files in it [which you can do in Firefox, with tweaking]. But IE is so much slower than Firefox, and is full of Spyware. Have you tried XP recently?

Hope I'm not being to harsh, but you really should't have quit

kona0197 · #3 13th May 2005, 08:58 AM

Tejas -

I need a "all-in-one" media player that can handle EVERYTHING from one console.

You are WRONG about the fact that Outlook will not support Hotmail. I use Outlook Express everyday and it handles my Hotmail account just fine. Apparently Microsoft is allowing Hotmail to be checked and used from Outlook. Thunderbird will NOT handle Hotmail.

Just to let you know I have never gotten a virus from using IE while employing a proper virus scanner and usually my ad-ware and spyware scans don't come up with anything because I am cafeful on the net.

And YES I have tried Windows XP recently - I am using XP now.

nephila · #4 13th May 2005, 09:09 AM

No support for my Digital Camera - Samsung Digimax 420 (very important)
Can't help u on this one...

No support for some of my most favorite games
Agreed, but I have most of my games running on linux using WINE!!

No good writing programs such as Nero
Nero Linux

No "All-In-One" media player that can compete with windows Media Player 10
Agreed, I also Like Media Player but linux does have some good media tools, VLC is awesome for movie and XMMS is pretty much a winamp clone.

Boot up time is painfully slow - Anything over 30 seconds is not good
You can tweak this if you know how and I have heard reports of people getting linux up and running in under 10 seconds after some heavy tweaking. Alas this requires knowledge which granted, many newbies don't have.

The fact that programs are much, much easier to install in Windows
RPM is easy as hell. But you're right, the windows installer point and click thing is still easier by far.

The fact that FC3 has no email program that works like Outlook Express and can handle Hotmail
Honestly, you should ditch Outlook Express. It's bad. try Thunderbird, you may find it works nicely.

The fact that trying to figure out how to install tar ball install files is a pain in the neck
You don't need to if you use RPM, apt or yum.

Compared to NTFS, the Linux file system is slower
Have you tried resiserfs? Its way more stable, secure and faster.

The general learning curve is steep - but I expected this
True, but that's why I prefer linux, learn something everyday and be challenged everyday. Windows is for brain-dead people.

The fact that honestly i like Internet Explorer and I dislike Firefox
Again you should not use IE. It's bad. But if you insist, I have IE running under FC3 using WINE.

Shadow Skill · #5 13th May 2005, 09:29 AM

You only think you never got a virus.
Seems like Microsoft came to their senses on the outlook thing, I thought it was really dumb of them to even think about removing hotmail support.
As for the file system being slower there is more than one file system for Linux and it [performance]probably depends very much on what you intend to do with it I've never done any benchmarks but none of my systems ever ran noticeably slower or faster between ntfs and the linux file systems I have used.

I highly doubt you are able to boot Windows xp in thirty seconds unless you tweak the hell out of it [and have a sata or scsi hdd with at least 10K rpm.] which goes back to Tejas' point about you probably having some useless services running in the background with Fedora. I can tell you that it takes me about thirty seconds to boot Gentoo mainly because very few services are run at startup.

I don't think it is any easier to install software with yum when juxtaposed to the Windows method the windows method is indeed much more consistent, since virtually everything will have a binary in Windows as opposed to Linux where depending on how obscure the app you may not get so lucky, then there is the multiple binary mess...

I would also suggest xine-lib based media players if you want an all in one media program there are a great many frontends available for this library and it does play virtually anything with little user effort, I do believe Kaffiene has a konqueror compatible browser plugin as well [Konqueror is a very IE like browser for the KDE environment.] not so sure about Mozilla and Firefox though.

tejas · #6 13th May 2005, 09:41 AM

OK, maybe they aren't letting people use it publicly, thats all

http://help.msn.com/!data/en_in/data/HotmailPIMv10.its51/$content$/PIM_TROU_NOFREEDAV.HTM?H_APP=MSN+Hotmail

Tell me what the pop3 address is for your Outlook Express, if you've somehow gotten it to work, it must work in ThunderBird as well

And have you tryed using MPLAYER? It plays everything I cn think of. Even wma/wmv/divx's latest stuff.

Shadow Skill · #7 13th May 2005, 09:46 AM

Tejas it wont work without some sort of hack Hotmail uses some proprietary protocol which is why Thunderbird doesn't already support it which still annoys me to no end.

kona0197 · #8 13th May 2005, 09:53 AM

Nephila - I will NOT use anything from Mozilla. I have tried everything they have to offer and I much prefer using the stuff Microsoft gave me. As far as resiserfs I might have to try that sometime. how do i use it when the times comes?

Shadow Skill - I know for a fact that I have never gotten a virus while using proper protection. And YES my installation of XP boots in less than a minute. Maybe not 30 seconds but no more than a minute.

Tejas - I don't have a MSN subsciption and my Hotmail works fine using Outlook Express. Of course Shadow Skill is correct - OE uses some kind of special server or method to check Hotmail.

By the way - to anyone that tries to tell me to refrain from using Internet Explorer - well your preaching to the choir. I love IE. For me nothing works better.

tejas · #9 13th May 2005, 09:56 AM

Ah, yes, I retract my statement

The Evil empire has thought of a way to prevent us from using Hotmail from linux,

The two standard mail protocols are
POP and IMAP
M$ seems to have introduced a 3rd protocol [HTTP?], and preconfigure OE so that no one will know the address of the mail server.

Oh well, I'm sure that someone would have thought of a fix if many people used hotmail.

Why do they have contradicting statements on help.msn.com though

Ah well. Thank God I switched to Gmail

tejas · #10 13th May 2005, 09:58 AM

AT least no one will stop me from getting in MSN messenger.

Thank you guys at KDE for Kopete [I love this App! It is amazing]

GAIM is also pretty good I guess tho

Why do you think that IE is so great anyway? Some feature it has that I'm not aware about? Even windoze users have given up on IE and transferred over to the Fox

AndyGreen · #11 13th May 2005, 10:00 AM

Weird thread... it's like posting in a forum for one football team about how their team sucks and they went back to supporting another. And then a demand for support for J Random Hardware "or the bear gets it".

How can OE support Hotmail but not Thunderbird? Thunderbird does POP3, OE does POP3... What happens when thunderbird tries to talk to Hotmail? What did you try? Does MSFT actively discriminate the client platform and disable thunderbird? (unlikely I would think) Of course if thunderbird does not work with hotmail and it is not necessary to explain further, you're right: you should be using XP.

No explanation of what is meant to be wrong about Firefox, just that IE is better. You're right: if IE is better and no reasons are required, you should be using XP.

K3b is nicer than nero. Please explain why free K3b "cannot compete" with paid-for Nero. Nero is on XP, if nothing can compete and no explanation is possible, I guess you should be using XP and Nero.

Mplayer plays video in a nice way across all the formats I throw at it. WMP does less video formats , but does DRM and stupid outline windows. But, since you "know" there "is no" better player, or if you prefer DRM and stupid outline windows, you are right, you should be using XP.

On your camera, you should look into if it is a USB mass storage device or not. You can do this with tail -f /var/log/messages as root and then plug in your camera. If you see messages about Mass Storage and a device allocation like /dev/sda then it's a USB mass storage device and can be made to work. If however you just want things to work automatically and cannot stand asking questions or googling, then you're right: you should go back to XP.

In short, Linux is meant to be on the user's side, being there for use when it makes sense. If you evaluate it and it doesn't make sense, just go back to XP. Neither Linux nor anyone here loses or gains anything by you choosing the best platform for your needs. If that is XP, go for it and have a nice day.

kona0197 · #12 13th May 2005, 10:17 AM

AndyGreen - Let me enlighten you!!

To tell you the truth I'm a bit of a computer geek myself and I love trying out new things. On the flipside I don't much care for XP. It seems every week I am scanning for ad-ware and spyware and malware. If nothing else I find myself updating my virus scanner and defragmenting my hard drive. It gets to the point that life with Windows really is boring.

Don't mis-judge me. I am no Linux hater or basher. If I come across that way I am truly sorry. I just found in my experience that Linux can not offer me what I want: perfection. XP is as close as I have gotten although I have YET to try OS X. I am not rich enough to try a Mac yet.

People often ask me why I dislike Firefox. Well to be blunt I don't like the way it displays certain web pages. I don't like the way it organizes favorites. And I have found that IE is much faster on my system at starting up (cold start) and faster at displaying web pages. Keep in mind Firefox has it's problems with security as well. Hopefully some of the Firefox crew will come back to IE land when IE7 is released this Summer.

I disagree with you on your statement about Mplayer. All I need is a application that plays MPEG and DVD movies, and plays MP3 and WAV and WMP music files. All in ONE application. NOT 2 or 3. Is that asking to much? I guess so.

My camera comes up as a USB mass storage device in XP and shows as a extra hard drive under "My Computer" so maybe it could work under Linux.

AndyGreen · #13 13th May 2005, 10:31 AM

Quote:

I disagree with you on your statement about Mplayer. All I need is a application that plays MPEG and DVD movies, and plays MP3 and WAV and WMP music files. All in ONE application. NOT 2 or 3. Is that asking to much? I guess so.

Disagree away, but you guess wrong. Mplayer does all these things "in the one application". It sounds like you did not try it.

Quote:

Hopefully some of the Firefox crew will come back to IE land when IE7 is released this Summer.

Well shaking my head at that one. Why should I or you "hope" that people go back to the instrument of enslavement that was used by a mega-rich American corporation to try to destroy and pervert the Open standards-based web? I guess if you hold shares in MSFT you have a reason to "hope" for such a thing. Otherwise you are the victim of it, and a turkey "hoping" for Thanksgiving.

Quote:

My camera comes up as a USB mass storage device in XP

Well then you should be all set for Linux with it, not using it as Exhibit A for why you are going back to XP.

tejas · #14 13th May 2005, 10:36 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by kona0197

All I need is a application that plays MPEG and DVD movies, and plays MP3 and WAV and WMP music files. All in ONE application. NOT 2 or 3.

Are you not listening? Xine Plays all the Above. Mplayer Plays all the above. XMMS plays all the above with the exeption of DVDs.

Quote:

Originally Posted by kona0197

It gets to the point that life with Windows really is boring

Then Why aren't you using Linux?

Maybe I'm wasting my breath here, but XP is a lot of things. Perfect is not one of them.

If you don't want to buy a MAC, why on earth would you spend money to buy Winders.

Quote:

Originally Posted by kona0197

Hopefully some of the Firefox crew will come back to IE land when IE7 is released this Summer

God Forbid!

kona0197 · #15 13th May 2005, 10:41 AM

I tried Mplayer. I could not even get it to play a regular audio CD. I had the same result with Xine with DVDs and XMMS with regular audio CDs. As far as Microsoft - I don't look at them or the products they make as "enslaving" rather I look upon them as easy to use and funtional products. I am a victim of nothing.

As far as the issues I have with Firefox - let's agree to disagree on those points. I have no reason to argue about it.

I never said I didn't want to buy a Mac - I said I am not rich enough to afford one. Maybe someday. I would glady give up this machine and a few more to obtain a Mac.

Why am I NOT using Linux? Simple. I don't know. Maybe I fear change.