Let me remind anyone lurking that, indeed, we will happily discuss anything you wish to about our main topic of Colloidal Silver! All that is required is for you to pose a question to the gathered members.
When such traffic is light, however, I do not prohibit excursions into other areas of alternative health, particularly, or even the occasional thread about Operating Systems! I've been in the process of "switching to Linux" for going on four years, I think. It was the cost of four or five copies of Windows XP to replace increasingly decrepit Windows 98 installations that got me looking at the alternatives. Meanwhile a couple of copies of XP came into the house courtesy of my sons' interest in gaming and my wife's laptop, which has kept us going while I slowly climbed the Linux learning curve. I first installed a copy of Libranet 3.0, a now defunct Linux distribution based on Debian Sarge, on a spare computer that wasn't being used very much. This gave me the chance to evaluate just how hard it would be to work with compared to Windows. After a year or two of tinkering with that, I wiped the drive and installed a copy of Debian Etch. This I am running today on what is gradually becoming my primary machine. In fact, as of this week, I need only to translate my extensive e-mail archives to Unix mailbox format for compatibility with Thunderbird and I will be able to stop booting the Windows machine I'm using as I type this. So far, I can fully understand why Dee finds herself intimidated by Linux and her son less than thrilled with the notion of helping her. When you buy a computer with Windows pre-installed, all the really hard work has been done for you -- at least until the wretched thing starts to crumble under the weight of Microsoft's notoriously poor software engineering and the onslaught of malware. Linux is still young and growing out of being a nerd's specialty into a legitimately useful alternative for everyday computer users. While vast swaths of the process of setting up and using it are now clean, elegant, and smoothly functional -- often superior to Microsoft products! -- it is inevitable you'll still run into a few glitches that require a lot more digging into incredible technical minutia than most "normal" people would be comfortable with. The trade-offs are becoming clearer by the day... Windows has a familiar, admittedly well crafted user interface, comes pre-installed by default, and still carries the day as the "standard" way of interacting with computers. Software availability in all major genres is good, with the possible exception of a few multimedia-related applications where Apple has always held the lead. Windows is also expensive, resource hungry, often challenging to install on new hardware, and comes with myriad risks due to Microsoft's inadequate security framework design. It takes a great deal of effort to get all the security-related add-ins working together without bringing your machine to its knees, and keeping a Windows installation running well over time requires constant diligence. Many people resort to wiping and re-installing every few months, or else limp along with a crippled machine until they can't take it any more, and then buy a new one, complete with the newest version of Windows pre-installed. And so the cycle repeats. Linux has its problems, too... When things go wrong you'll often find yourself dealing with relative chaos trying to get answers, since most open software projects are run by volunteers and supported by users, rather than big corporations with toll-free tech support lines. Too many Linux users are techno-weenies who've long forgetten, if they ever knew, what it was like to be a complete beginner with computers or Linux. That's frequently the kind of documentation they write and tech support they give. Linux also throws a lot of choices at you. Too many, usually. Ask, "How do I do this?" and you'll get dozens of answers, ranging from editing configuration files and typing in command-line recipes to slickly packaged graphical applications. Figuring out which ones to focus on often requires a deft touch with Google and some familiarity with the culture to know where the support really is. There are still a few areas in which Linux and open source development is lagging, most notably in gaming and some aspects of multimedia, and sometimes there is a wait of weeks or months before the newest hardware gets complete support. Over the last year that I've been running Linux, however, I've been impressed with just how *solid* it is. Things stay set up the way you left them and don't spontaneously seem to *AGE* like they do under Windows! All this time I've had automatic updates configured and downloaded dozens of patches and updates, and never once has my system broken down or been compromised by mal-ware. Each time I've decided to tinker with something new, I've always typed 'Debian' or 'Linux' and the type of software I'm looking for into Google, and usually within 15 minutes I've run across the application that I end up settling on. Every time I've needed to ask questions on forums, I've eventually gotten the help I needed, though I'm always prepared to give the process a few days. It's a lot like getting help from this list, in fact! Yet, above all, I think it is the *spirit* of the thing that has gradually won me over, more than anything else. To have literally all the software I could possibly want available at my fingertips at little to no cost is simply amazing. It is so *liberating* to know that thousands of ordinary people, not just a few large companies, are seeing after the development, reliability and security of it all. At the very core, I see that the kind of world we create for our kids to live in is going to hinge, in part, on the choices we make in what software and operating systems we run on our computers. You do realise this, I hope? If I look at where Microsoft and the powers-that-be want to take us, I see computing and an Internet that are more expensive, more controlled, less free, with less privacy. Open source software and Linux shows me a different vista entirely; where quality software is within the reach of everyone, anyone can get involved in making things better, and no central authority can impose its will on us. Yes, there are problems with Linux, but then there are problems with Microsoft's Vista as well. I know which future I'd like to live in. Peace, Mike D. [Mike Devour, Citizen, Patriot, Libertarian] [mdev...@eskimo.com ] [Speaking only for myself... ] -- The Silver List is a moderated forum for discussing Colloidal Silver. Instructions for unsubscribing are posted at: http://silverlist.org To post, address your message to: silver-list@eskimo.com Address Off-Topic messages to: silver-off-topic-l...@eskimo.com The Silver List and Off Topic List archives are currently down... List maintainer: Mike Devour <mdev...@eskimo.com>
