Has Ubuntu Replaced Windows on Your Box?

[ruscook]

On Thu, 2006-05-04 at 06:48 +0100, cwhamsun wrote:

> Replaced windows 2000(AMD Athlon 1.2ghz 512mb ram) on a machine I had
> not been using with dapper, was planning to set this machine up as
> server for home network for awhile just havent had time. Have had the
> machine booting fedora and suse and maybe RHEL 3 at different points in
> the past, but like ubuntu much better, may dual boot it with ubuntu and
> fedora and RHEL since I occasionally do some side work for ex employer
> with RHEL machine of theirs. They had RHEL 3 for about 2 years and no
> one installed it on machines their besides the server I set up as far
> as I know, but I gave them a copy of dapper and they have installed it
> on at least one machine AFAIK and seem very impressed with the ease of
> install and whole distro overall. Have put it on my thinkpad and would
> use it as the sole OS on that If I could but need some XP functionality
> for some things. Also plan to install on my main desktop at home when I
> get a chance (AMD Sempron 2.0ghz socket A, 512mb ram) but will have to
> dual boot with xp on that also, although I'm sure I will barely use
> windows. Also installed it on my brothers machine (pentium II 350mhz(?)
> 256mb ram) he is only an email/websurfer type, and has no complaints so
> far, unlike with win 98 he was always complaining about something. He
> is pretty much an all around non-computer user but not totally computer
> newbie, and he seems to like it and has had no questions so far about
> how to use it, that is what is impressive to me, I can set up a box for
> someone like that and not have to mess with virus/spyware/firewall
> software maintainance. I think alot of people I introduce it to will
> now be linux users, I haven't had this kind of interest or willingness
> to try something new(non windows) from suse or fedora/redhat in the
> past.
> 

Instead of the dual booting, you could look at the free version of
VMWare (or Qemu) and load Windows as necessary in a virtual machine. I
do that for the MYOB account and POS packages as I need them for my
business. Everything else is Ubuntu Linux. I look after 2 machines @ the
shop and 4 at home. Only 2 have Windows. The POS machine as it is a
dedicated POS/Cash Drawer, and my daughters PC as she uses a bunch of
Windows games that won't run on anything else. My other machines
(desktop and a server for mail, samba and web), the shops internet PC
and my fathers PC are all 100% Ubuntu.

VMware is a great alternative to dual booting because you can just fire
up a windows session when you like. You can even isolate it from your
network if you want, or let it have access to the net if you wish.

The most ironic thing I find is my DLink ADSL Router. This box runs an
embedded Linux with a web enginge to manage configuration and firmware
upgrades.DLink ONLY supply the firmware upgrades in self-extracting
Widnows executables and some of the web functionality (like saving
config changes) ONLY works with IE in Windows.  So whenever I need to
tinker with this box, I need to fire up Windows in VMware and run IE to
talk to a Linux device!!! How dumb, but form their perspective 96% of
the users they'll sell this to have Windows, so even though the company
understands and uses Linux, there's no incentive to make this other
stuff work with Firefox and Linux......


Kind Regards Russell
==================
www.windsorcycles.com.au
sales at windsorcycles.com.au
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Linux user #369094
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