Re: I Don't Have to Use Windows

[Doug Craigen <dcc@ESCAPE.CA>]

"Paul O. Johnson" wrote:
> I regretted my decision for the two years I used Win95. It crashed
> weekly and I had to reinstall it every few months. But when I switched
> to WinNT 4.0 I discovered better stability than I ever knew on the Mac.
> Now I use Win2K and it's even more stable.

I concur that Win 95 is a nightmare both for stability and for the lack
of ability to control much if anything.  I'm using NT and Win2K at work
and it has at least picked up my opinion of Windows somewhat, mainly due
to the stability.  I'm still mystified by many things, such as why we
can't run more than 256 colors in a terminal window.  This means among
other things that we can't run OpenGL applications on the servers and
its impossible to edit PowerPoint presentations on the server as well
(the graphics look too horrible, you can't tell whether you need to
remake the images or not).  However our MS Office license is for the
server.  A few of us have gotten around this by installing Star Office
on our own desktops.  We make our presentations in Star Presentations
and save them as PowerPoint for the sake of others who are stuck on MS
products.

I believe that in many ways the home stream of Windows peaked in 3.1.
Not to deny how nice it is to have many of the new features, but at that
time a person could reasonably hope to know and maintain their own
system without too much effort.  Dip switches weren't fun, but I could
always get a device to work.  When "plug and play" doesn't work you have
virtually no recourse.  I believe the "play" part is a reference to all
the hours you will spend pouring through documentation, altering
settings and rebooting before it finally *might* work.  Windows 3.1 had
provided a programming tool - only Qbasic, but it was at least
something.  It also provided a simple word processor that could
accomplish 95% or more of what most people ever want when the buy MS
Word.  In Win 95, when they switched Write to WordPad they managed to
severely mangle the useful with one small omission - it was no longer
possible to insert page breaks.

> I hate to say it, but I really believe the remaining Mac afficionados
> are fighting a losing battle. Even though Mac OS X has gotten good
> reviews, I'm afraid the Apple line is dying out.
>
> This is not to say that I have a great deal of love for Microsoft. I
> plan to switch to Linux whenever I can get up the nerve.

It doesn't take any nerve, you can leave Windows there, nothing needs to
be lost except some disk space.  You can boot to either system - detail
depending on which distro you choose.  Many of the Windows programs
still run fine under Linux using the WINdows Emulator (WINE).  This is
now up to a beta version of 1.0.  It runs more than trivial programs
too.  Recently our company signed a deal to integrate our products with
an electronic circuit and drives emulator - CASPOC.  Although this is
purely a
Windows product with no guarantees elsewhere, I downloaded the free demo
version at home (restricts you to smaller models) and tried it out under
both Windows and WINE.  Aside from the Gnome desktop in the background
there was no discernible difference in my trials.

If repartitioning your drive sounds ominous, try WinLinux.  It installs
from Windows using the usual InstallShield.  It gets most information
about your hardware by reading the Windows registries, and puts a pif on
the desktop.  Clicking on the pif shuts down Windows and reboots to
Linux.  Next reboot you're back in Windows.  You can also de-install it
from Windows.  Repartitioning the drive isn't an issue because it shares
the disk space.  I tried it last year when they were at WinLinux 2000.
It seemed a very average distro to me - but a lot less intimidating to
try out.  I deleted it after playing for a while as I have no need for
another Linux distro.  For more see http://www.winlinux.net/2001/

\_/^\_/^\_/^\_/^\_/^\_/^\_/^\_/^\_/^\_/^\_/^\_/^\_/^\

Doug Craigen
          http://www.dctech.com/physics/about_dc.html