I've just been told that my Vista based machine will have to be sent back to the factory for warranty repair. The computer guru at work suggests this is the opportunity to try a linux computer full time for a few weeks. I get my choice of Debian, Unbuntu, Kiwi and Puppy. I think I will try the Kiwi first. I get the feeling I will not miss Microsoft... I'm hoping.
Kiwi is loaded. You might be overwhelmed. When the Debian instal informs you 'this may take a long time...." [or something like that] those guys MEAN WHAT THEY ARE SAYING. Debian can, if you chose certain options for setup, take a coon's age to get installed. I mean, by a coon's age, a really long time. Last time I chose the Stupid XWindows Setup that I did, I was sleeping in a bed next to my pooter and listening to it hum all day and all night. Yep. Ubuntu is also loaded. But beware, it IS NOT FOR POWER USERS. Doing little things like shrinking a partition or, uh, editing grub are hard to do using Ubuntu's chosen GUI. But, everything linux CAN be gotten and used. The user is kept out of a lot of stuff in ubuntu and this is explained and is explained reasonably. But I still don't like being powerless to do something and then having to look through ENDLESS PULL-DOWN or POP-UP MENUS... Puppy: VERY VERY GOOD. Very powerful. Slackware based. Everything you want to do from within the GUI is explained as if the designer anticipated your needs. I think Puppy is the best of the choices you have....... ONE MORE THING: [was it Exec???] Some guy here recomended a Linux that works in a Windows [OR DOS!!!!!!] Partition and, if used in real mode, has nothing to do with the Windows. The windows is visible, yep. BE CARFUL what you do in The Windows directories. ANyway, the Linux I am bragging on is something that fuckin guy, who I can't remember, recomemded. In real mode, it is a juy and I NEED NOT FEER THE UBUIGUITOUS GRUB. And too; called a linux called Topologilinux..... It uses some 'squished' file system and decompresses on the fly and is a slackware box and has all the neet shit a slackware can be made to do and IT ALSO COMES LOADED and it ISN'T the fuckin Ubuntu, whitch is seeming to me, to be like the WIndows of Linuxes. I never liked to walk with a herd. [I don't mind a HURD - look it up] Bye. and good luck Loose.
Run the windows 98 inside a virtual machine in your newver box. . Is FAST. I mean FAST. Stick it in VMware and it fuckin roars, I swear it is faster emulated than it is in the machines it is designed for [I ran it for years on a THEN top of the line IBM compat PII]. VMWare is cool, but I wish for COMMITMENT in a relationship, see? Being able to just boot the fuck out of a bad OS and be as if it never happenned is the same reason I don't like cheap women.
Just a little note about Kiwi Linux; No big deal really but it is sort of interesting. I discovered that there is no consideration to use/access a floppy drive in Kiwi. Not on the device list. I guess this may present a problem for those unfortunate few who still use floppy drives.
Grub - which is the default bootloader in pretty much all the distros nowadays - handles multiple OS with joy.
If it linux it's linux. All the same software is there to be installed no matter what distro you use. linux kernel + some preinstalled apps = distro If you know what you want you will end up with almost identical system no matter which distro you start with. Only thing that really matters (makes life easier) is what package manager the distro uses and how well the packages are maintained. Popularity of Debian and it's derivates might have something to do with that.
All that is needed is a software to read/write to floppies. A driver module loading at boot time... That is in the realm of The Possible. The current Linux kernels don't support floppies anymore??? No, I don't know, I ask. Backwards compatibility is one of the better things about Linux. What I have a hard time with are finding floppy disks. I don't bother. They aren't sold in shops around here. I am not sure if floppies are made anymore. Are they? There comes a time when doorstop hardware is truly, a doorstop hardware.
You should start prayers for Linux to stay same uninteresting to major public then. Otherwise all virus-writing community will finally attack Linux. Now they do ignore it: when you are going to white "Fuck", you will never choose a wall of an abandoned underground dead-end siding.
There's another reason why Linux is seemingly secure from viruses. It's used almost exclusively by very computer savvy folks who know how to stay safe from the various threats posed by the net. That's because using Linux or any of UNIX flavors and associated apps is so fucking complicated, most average computer users just can't be bothered.
You are saying that exploits in nix are not proportional to those of some others are because of consumer conseptions and branding? HAHAHA marketing? If a software/hardware exists it will be attacked. The reason there are few nix exploits compared to some other systems is not for lack of trying, it is in spite of it. FOSS and GNULinux is an ecology bult to grow and not fail as a service. GNULinux rocks. Open Source software, the code is open to be examined. polished, perfected without any influence from bankers. If a commune wants to make a software, it will. It does. Community and tranditional unix methods and millions who use [Li]nixes And millions and millions who connect with each other and exange ideas and information.... how can a Goliath like that be pulled down????? This is bigger than ice cream.
They do. /dev/fd0 /media/floppy auto umask=0,users,iocharset=utf8,noauto,exec,flush 0 0 or $ sudo mount /dev/fd0 /mnt Password: ********* $ cd /mnt $ ls -a $ sudo mkdir /media/floppy
Yeah, I have seen those devices plenty of times in /dev, but not for a long time in /mnt..... I haven't for some time mounted one. A guy never forgets how to mount a device, but he can not mount what is not hard
On the server side windows isn't as big player as on the desktop. It's very likely that youre also using linux without knowing it as most of the web infrastructure are linux/unix servers. Wouldn't it be very benefical to make viruses for those? There is something else in that than popularity on the desktop. Probably it's combination of large mass of clueless users and ease of executing malicious code on Windows system that is not configured properly. I guess newer variants of Windows (Vista/windows 7) are on default much more secure than... say XP. Ofcourse any windows system when well configured used with care is nearly immune to viruses. I'm not saying that there wasn't clueless Linux users. My mum who has no clue about technical stuff uses linux and so do many others now that Ubuntu and 'easy' distros alike have got popular. It's just that most Linux distros are configured safe as default so clueless user cannot do as much damage as he/she would on Windows. All above that applies to linux applies well to OSX too.