> As a longtime PC user, I agree that Windows could be a better OS. > But I'm not sure about switching to Linux. After checking several > years ago, there were a lot of things that I have been accustomed > to using Windows that I couldn't use with Linux.
Anyone who uses any particular OS for more than a couple of months gets used to the way that OS works. If you expect another OS to work exactly as your previous one, you will be disappointed. With a new OS, you have to get used to the new way of working. If you install the new OS as another bootable OS in the same machine, you will probably spend most of your time in the OS you are more familiar with and won't get used to the new one. That's just my two cents. As for the supposed story (that page had corporate ads linked to the words such as "compute" and "operating system" ... I wouldn't put too much stock in that "story"), I think HP might put out a line of PCs with pre-installed Linux in order to grab a piece of the desktop market from the corporate and government accounts. ie: Show the big customers a way out of the Windows license fees, the DLL hell, virus problems, etc. and instead get them to pay for supplying a customized linux desktop image. I seriously doubt HP will offer a desktop solution aimed at the home users. When there are completely free distros like Debian, Ubuntu, Gentoo and Supported distros such as Red Hat and SuSE, I don't understand why HP would spend any capital on building its own linux distro. HP can, instead, offer support for, say, RedHat or Ubuntu. A couple of years ago, Oracle (not a small company) said that it is going to put out its own Linux distro. Nothing much happened, AFAIK. > Is there a comparison between Windows & Linux on the web? What > would I do with essential software that is supplied to me via a > site license from my employer that offers only Windows versions? > One such is Matlab, an engineering application. Perhaps, not the best example. Matlab offers a Linux version. You just install the Linux versin, copy your company's license.dat into the matlab's etc directory and go about your business. The Matlab desktop will look exactly the same. Some claim that Matlab on linux runs faster (compared to Matlab on Windows) for certain operations. http://www-math.cudenver.edu/~jmandel/matlab/matlab_benchmark.html You can also run an emulation program like WINE to run your windows binaries from within Linux. But the trick is to find the linux way of doing things rather than trying to do things the old way. ************************************************************************* ** List info, subscription management, list rules, archives, privacy ** ** policy, calmness, a member map, and more at http://www.cguys.org/ ** *************************************************************************
