Hi :) I think this mailing list is often quite helpful about wider issues than it is meant for.
This mailing list has been quite supportive of people with questions about various versions of Linux. I really like it when someone who has been a huge help to others about technical issues in LibreOffice is then supported by others in return. My history with Linux ... It took me a few goes before i found which version of Linux suited me most. I'm very much a point&click user so i went with "Gateway" (or user-friendly) distros to start with. Mostly they are all good and so just settling with anything is good but sometimes trying a different flavour makes things feel more comfortable. Mageia (formerly Mandriva in the same way that LibreOffice was formerly OpenOffice) felt magical to me, fresh from Windows, but i didn't like the blues in the default theme at the time. Wolvix was a really friendly and tiny team. I could imagine meeting them at certain types of gigs and enjoying beers and moshing. But Slackware is not hugely easy for point&click users so i tried a few others and settled on Ubuntu as being my main distro while still doing a bit more distro-hopping. Something i really liked was that during that stumbling around distro-hopping stage nothing i learned was wasted. Even just using Wolvix and it's excellent installer helped me learn how to use Mageia and others better. The biggest step was from Windows but moving around between different distros felt like everything stayed the same except the wallpaper and other fairly trivial bits&bobs. Over the last 7-8 years i have accidentally learned a few command-line things so i would have to remember to use different names for a few things but the basic grammar of the commands remains the same and most of the commands are identical in all versions of linux. I have also accidentally learned how to ssh into remote machines (at least ones i've been given passwords for!) to do a bit of systems administration on multiple machines at once and i can rsync or scp to rapidly upload stuff to the company's web-hosters or between desktops or between servers - all with the same commands regardless of which version/flavour of linux they use. I've also learned how to create virtual machines to use Windows inside Linux gaining the advantage of Linux solid foundations and minimal use of resources to abstract-away some of the typical problems of installing Windows. Plus i would have never learned about powerful tools to clone drives and many other things that i would probably never have learned, or that having learned once would have to keep relearning new tools in order to keep doing the same thing. Wine and "Play on Linux" and Crossover and others are all great ways of running Windows programs within Linux without needing an extra layer(s) for emulators or virtual machines. Some versions/flavours of Linux can be installed within Windows, such as Ubuntu's "Wubi" and Puppy-Linux but that seems to be an odd way of doing it. Using Windows as the base and then having another OS within that either as the Wubi or the Puppy-Linux way or inside a virtual machine seems a bit weird to me. Windows is not really a good stable foundation plus it tends to be quite heavy in it's use of resources and doesn't have a reputation of "playing well with others". Linux is much stronger on bare-metal so you'd be missing some of the key advantages of Linux and really kinda combining the worst aspects of both types of OSes. However, many people have a lot of success with it and it might be a good way-in. So, anyway, i hope that people do ask more questions about how to use Linux on this mailing list and that we are able to help signpost people to the best places to ask questions or even just quickly help directly solve the problem. Regards from Tom :) On 18 July 2015 at 16:00, Gary Dale <garyd...@torfree.net> wrote: > On 18/07/15 04:31 AM, yahoo-pier_andreit wrote: > >> On 07/18/2015 09:32 AM, Thomas wrote: >> >>> On 2015/07/18 6:50, Jack Wallen wrote: >>> >>>> Thank you for sharing that, Charles (I'm the author). Glad to know it >>>> resonated. >>>> >>>> Jack >>>> >>> Thank YOU, Mr. Wallen, for your article. >>> Although I know, this does not belong here, just a word. >>> I have been trying (STRUGGLING) to move away from MS and get friendly >>> with Linux for 7-8 years now! >>> So far with little success. Yet, I still keep trying. >>> >>> >> many thanks jack, :-) >> I'm not an expert, I start to use linux, basically opensuse, in 2000, and >> I agree with thomas, my son, my sister, my nephews uses linux, but, if I >> didn't install it and configure it and solved the problems that rised up >> and sometimes continues to pop up, they never started to use linux. too >> complicate... :-) >> > > The same issue afflicts Windows. It's just that Windows usually comes > pre-installed. Having performed a lot of installs of both types, I've found > the Linux installs to be simpler and a lot faster. Windows may get to the > login screen a bit faster but then you've got interminable updates to > install with reboots needed between most of them. > > As for needing assistance, I find a lot more problems cropping up with > Windows than with Linux. And yes, most end-users aren't equipped to deal > with them but that isn't dependent on the operating system. However fixing > Windows problems is more difficult and sometimes even fruitless (e.g. > Windows Updates that mysteriously fail). > > I've used Linux pretty much exclusively (except for an income tax program > that I haven't got to work in wine) for 18 years. I find Windows to be > awkward and limiting. And after looking at Windows 8, it seems to be > getting worse, not better. > > -- To unsubscribe e-mail to: users+unsubscr...@global.libreoffice.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/users/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted