Thread: Linux users

Originally Posted by gugi

Well I wanted to use the MS book reader, but no luck thus far. The only way is to boot full windows and do it from there - rather stupid I thought.

I had a lot of success with VMware for running any winXP software on linux

+1 on using Wine and VMware for really bad cases.

I've tried several RedHat and Mandrake-distros a while back and at the end of last year I installed Mandriva Spring 2007 on my university-notebook. Until then I was a full-blood windows-user that only looked at Linux once or twice a year to look at the progress. Soon after Mandriva I installed Ubuntu 7.10, at the end of march I migrated on my main machine at home to Ubuntu 7.10 too and got rid of Windows. Never regrettet that step and immediately felt "at home". In the meantime I got a new old notebook which is now my main working machine (due to the far lower power consumption of 5-20 vs. 250 watts...) and am running Ubuntu 8.04. I never want to go back to windows again and the few windows-apps I need run perfectly fine with Wine

yeah, vmware, is what i meant booting windows - i am not dedicating the full computer resources to windows. not that it can't be done, it's just too painful. i guess there's always the sony book reader or the kindle.

Originally Posted by gugi

Well I wanted to use the MS book reader, but no luck thus far. The only way is to boot full windows and do it from there - rather stupid I thought.

I'm not familiar with MS book reader, but I'm going to make an assumption and say that there is a Linux equivalent which is better any way. Okular, maybe?

Linux user since 1997 - started on Red Hat Linux 4.2 I think it was.... Anyway, used Unix before that. Nowadays I stick with Fedora - this machine (Dell Latitude D820) currently dual boots XP (required for work) and Fedora 9. Fedora 9 is ok, except for the small inconvenience of the distibution containing a pre-release Xorg (1.5), so that my Nvidia card had no proprietary drivers for a while, and even now there's a "known regression" in the current Nvidia kernel module. But 3D effects are over rated anyway. Most of the software I need that runs in Windows works under Wine, with the notable exception of a couple of stats packages (and this may just be me - I haven't given it a lot of time).

On my home machine I run gentoo, fedora 8 (haven't got around to upgrading that yet) and windows. I'm about to, in the next few weeks, check out Win4Lin - if it works out I may just buy it (it's only 50 bucks). If it doesn't I can always fall back on trying out KVM. As I mentioned, IT at work requires all work assets to have a physical install of XP on them, so I'm stuck there.

James.

Originally Posted by Presently42

I'm not familiar with MS book reader, but I'm going to make an assumption and say that there is a Linux equivalent which is better any way. Okular, maybe?

Well, the .lit format seems proprietary, so you need to get their software. And I'm already too old to be purist/zealot. I use iTunes even though I'm not happy there isn't flac support - i just use apple lossless and if i can ever switch to flac i will.

Originally Posted by gugi

Well, the .lit format seems proprietary, so you need to get their software.

Ebooks .lit reader for linux? - Ubuntu Forums

May be of aid.

Originally Posted by gugi

And I'm already too old to be purist/zealot. I use iTunes even though I'm not happy there isn't flac support - i just use apple lossless and if i can ever switch to flac i will.

The best audio player out there for any OS is Amarok. And it certainly can handle FLACs.

thanks i'll give it another shot - i'm pretty sure i tried that a while ago, but of course wasn't as determined as i used to be in the 90s when linux was new and getting x to work was almost magic

I have yet to make Visual Studio work under wine, until it works correctly, I'm afraid I'll need to run windows. also, when your company's VPN checks what OS you are running before letting you in... not much you can do. with linux was a viable replacement, but I'm stuck waiting for that day.

PClinuxOS on the main machine downstairs and, if I just can't get a win app to behave under Wine, I'll fire up VirtualBox with a copy of XP inside... So far I seem to have to do that about once a year at tax time, just because none of the tax apps I've tried are willing to run under Wine yet.

Upstairs for the missus and meself I'm still using Mandriva Free 2007, I keep laughing every time my wife comes running because she got some email warning about viruses etc.... I just keep telling her to not worry and carry on as usual.

By the way, I'm really impressed with Virtualbox over VMware... it's just so easy to set up and get going... VMware is downright ugly in comparison but I guess once you figure it out it's probably just fine. I also find XP boots faster in VB that it does native for some reason and it's so stable I don't bother with dual boot anymore... I just make a shared drive so I can transfer stuff back and forth between linux and the VB OS.

Regards

Christian