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Painless Linux (TECHWR-L)
A technial writer's publication known as TECHWR-L
looks at Linux for a technical writer's platform.
"The truth is, most of what you think you know about Linux is outdated. Today, most types of Linux have a graphical install, balk only at hardware that specifically requires a copy of Windows, and (depending on your choices) can be installed in as little as fifteen minutes. And, once you're up and running, you can use Linux applications for almost all your work-related computing. Diehards can use a distribution like Slackware to install the old-fashioned hard way, but installing and using Linux is only slightly harder than doing the same things under Windows.
The program names, unfortunately, are still with us. You can't win them all."
Thanks to Bruce Byfield.
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Painless Linux (TECHWR-L) Posted Oct 25, 2002 3:16 UTC (Fri) by ArmedGeek (guest, #6458) [Link] To some of us, this just simply is not news. I've been using Linux (various flavors) for quite some time now and it's been interesting to watch it evolve. With the latest offerings from RedHat and Mandrake, it's nice to see a lot more of the 'bits and pieces' coming together. When installing RH8 and Mandrake9, both found every single piece of hardware and configured them properly on the first try. Both even had no problems at all with my HP laptop. To me, that's the real test of hardware compatiblility (Laptops). On the negative side, Gnome seems to be stumbling around a bit. The latest has been bad enough to switch me (for the first time) over to KDE which I was VERY impressed with as I had not even looked at it in quite some time. The developers of Gnome really need to spend more time on fixing what they've got, rather than adding features. Oh, and DROP NAUTILUS. Nautilus is WAY to resource-heavy for what it provides. All in all, I think the outlook for Linux is shifting from "in about 5 years" to "right now or maybe the next versions".One more note: PCMCIA WiFi. Linux-wlan-ng really needs to be smoothed out and rolled into distros. (Just My Opinion). I was never able to get the built in wireless components to function with either of my 802.11b PC-Cards (Linksys WPC-11 and a NetGear MP-401?). After building and installing wlan-ng modules, everything worked without problems. Now I know hard-core linux-geeks can't stand such pretty distros as Mandrake, RedHat, and Suse, but those will likely be the ones to move IEU's from win to linux. ArmedGeek
Painless Linux (TECHWR-L) Posted Oct 25, 2002 14:34 UTC (Fri) by tjc (guest, #137) [Link] Oh, and DROP NAUTILUS. Nautilus is WAY to resource-heavy for what it provides.Are you referring to Nautilus 1.x or 2.x? The performance of 1.x was pretty bad, but I found 2.x to be much better. In general Gnome 2.0 seems to be faster than Gnome 1.4 except on slow systems. They both crawl on my P2-300, but 2.0 is snappy on my P3-933.
redhat 8 ships only gnome2 Posted Oct 25, 2002 23:45 UTC (Fri) by scottt (subscriber, #5028) [Link] So the parent post is apparently unhappy even with the performance of nautilus2 ,which I would agree is indeed still resource heavy for the functionality that it provides, but konqurer isn't much better in this department.Perhaps try rox filer at http://rox.sf.net ?
Painless Linux (TECHWR-L) Posted Oct 31, 2002 5:58 UTC (Thu) by Peter (guest, #1127) [Link] In general Gnome 2.0 seems to be faster than Gnome 1.4 except on slow systems. They both crawl on my P2-300, but 2.0 is snappy on my P3-933. Windows 3.1 was very snappy on a 486/66. If any GUI isn't snappy on a P3-933 (14x clock speed and RAM, 2.5 generations faster CPU, several generations faster graphics card, significantly faster hard disk), all I can say is, Bob help that GUI. I know that nature abhors a spare-cycle vacuum, but nowadays, there is no excuse for a GUI that doesn't respond instantly to any interaction whatsoever. Even considering 32-bit color, alpha channels, vector icons, or the rest of the long list of "improvements" to today's GUIs, none of that explains (to me) a slowdown of the magnitude we've seen in recent years.
Painless Linux (TECHWR-L) Posted Oct 26, 2002 2:57 UTC (Sat) by fastduke (guest, #7034) [Link] Mandrake and Redhat do a good job becuase their installs are pretty. If we all want Linux to thrive on the desktop it has to be pretty and fast. As for all the hard core Linux users, If they are so hard core(text based install, oooh)? Anyone who knows how, can turn Mandrake or Redhat into exactly what they want. Anyway I would like to see more and more people using Linux on the Desktop and MDK and RH are helping. At work I have people excited when they see my linux workstation. Mainly because they didn't know Linux had a gui.ps I also Don't like Nautilus. Fastduke
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