directorblue.blogspot.com— Doug's Discount Paints uses only open-source software. Here's what happened when a traditional vendor showed up.
Mar 10, 2006View in Crawl 4
this would be practical in a small business situation. The costs saved would be a great benefit. however in a large business the costs alone to train the staff in linux would render this scenario useless.
(@ second poster)Wll duh... You just edit /etc/X11/{xorg.conf, XFree86.conf}, find the mouse InputDevice and add the "ZAxisMapping" option with a value of "4 5". Here is how you do it:# ed /etc/X11/xorg.conf2634/InputDevice InputDevice "Mouse0" "CorePointer"a Option "ZAxisMapping" "4 5".w2676qI mean, that sorta thing is tricky for you... Maybe computers just aren't your thing. Get a mac?[/humor]
For all those folks saying "Linux is harder than Windows!!!", you might very well be right. Usually, it works pretty well out of the box. Some times it dosen't. The real question here is "Have you ever had to install _Windows_ on ugly hardware?" Let me tell you... it makes verbose error messages very nice...But, seriously. If I were running an office with a bunch of people in it who had to read e-mail and go on the internet, it doesn't matter if they don't know how to reconfigure GDM or make a broken mouse wheel work -- thats my job. If they are running Linux, it means it is mighty hard for them to break things. No more viri, worms, etc, and if something breaks all I need to do is SSH in to fix it (none of this fussing around with VNC or Remote Desktop -- although why an office would run WinXP Pro on the client machines is beyond me).[/rant]
Google is your friend :)Now, I know you've probably heard that a million times, but take it seriously. If you learn how to google properly, it makes finding things much easer. For instance, a gentleman above complained of spending two days trying to get his mouse wheel working. I'm not exactly sure what he was doing, but I just searched for: mouse wheel linux OR xorg and the fourth link was exactly it.Another good way to get support is by using a popular distribution. If you use Linux from Scratch, its going to be a _lot_ harder to find support then if you are using, say, RedHat or Ubuntu. In fact, there are Ubuntu tutorials out there for just about everything.
//======="Actually, yes, a properly configured Linux install is just as usable as windows, just as easily (depending on the distro.)An old girlfriend of mine knows NOTHING of computers (as in I had to show her how to set up a myspace account when she wanted to see her friends myspace accounts). When we walked into the local coffee shop we always hung out at (we're good friends with the owner and employees, great people,and techies) she sat down a the computer that was set up for the customers to use. She sat there, hanging out, surfing the net, and checking her mail and myspace.About half an hour later I went over to see what she was up to. I noticed that it was a new computer she was using (since we had another one already, and that was a second that wasn't there before). Asked her what it was running and she was like "oh, it's just windows." On closer inspection (i.e. I actually looked at the computer) I noticed that it was Gentoo Linux.Gentoo isn't known for being the ultimate user-friendly linux distribution (unlike Lindows or Linare, and other similar ones), as such I think this is a great example. Someone with little to no knowledge of computers, let alone Linux, sat using a well-configured machine for an extended period of time, and all the while, never realized it wasn't windows (though personally the fact that it didn't crash at any point would have given it away to me :P)"//========um, no, simply surfing the web and check webmail is not enough support linux is usable as a desktop. Even if you let her use solaris with firefox(or any decent browser), she can still surf the net and check webmail BUT you can't conclude "solaris is ready for desktop use". A better comparison would be let her use a linux box for day-to-day operations.
@Virak: Oh, yeah, every once in a while you have to edit the registry. Of course, you have to edit text files to change any but the simplest things in Linux. And you are right that detecting my mouse isn't the end all in be all of an operating system, it was just a particular egregious example from my own experience from two years ago, I do notice that it finds it automagically now. Linux is indeed getting better, but it still has a way to go.
calabriaMar 11, 2006
this would be practical in a small business situation. The costs saved would be a great benefit. however in a large business the costs alone to train the staff in linux would render this scenario useless.
woleverMar 11, 2006
(@ second poster)Wll duh... You just edit /etc/X11/{xorg.conf, XFree86.conf}, find the mouse InputDevice and add the "ZAxisMapping" option with a value of "4 5". Here is how you do it:# ed /etc/X11/xorg.conf2634/InputDevice InputDevice "Mouse0" "CorePointer"a Option "ZAxisMapping" "4 5".w2676qI mean, that sorta thing is tricky for you... Maybe computers just aren't your thing. Get a mac?[/humor]
jasnmbMar 11, 2006
Did anyone notice that his "RSS" link was to an Atom feed?
woleverMar 11, 2006
For all those folks saying "Linux is harder than Windows!!!", you might very well be right. Usually, it works pretty well out of the box. Some times it dosen't. The real question here is "Have you ever had to install _Windows_ on ugly hardware?" Let me tell you... it makes verbose error messages very nice...But, seriously. If I were running an office with a bunch of people in it who had to read e-mail and go on the internet, it doesn't matter if they don't know how to reconfigure GDM or make a broken mouse wheel work -- thats my job. If they are running Linux, it means it is mighty hard for them to break things. No more viri, worms, etc, and if something breaks all I need to do is SSH in to fix it (none of this fussing around with VNC or Remote Desktop -- although why an office would run WinXP Pro on the client machines is beyond me).[/rant]
woleverMar 11, 2006
Google is your friend :)Now, I know you've probably heard that a million times, but take it seriously. If you learn how to google properly, it makes finding things much easer. For instance, a gentleman above complained of spending two days trying to get his mouse wheel working. I'm not exactly sure what he was doing, but I just searched for: mouse wheel linux OR xorg and the fourth link was exactly it.Another good way to get support is by using a popular distribution. If you use Linux from Scratch, its going to be a _lot_ harder to find support then if you are using, say, RedHat or Ubuntu. In fact, there are Ubuntu tutorials out there for just about everything.
kaosphereMar 11, 2006
//======="Actually, yes, a properly configured Linux install is just as usable as windows, just as easily (depending on the distro.)An old girlfriend of mine knows NOTHING of computers (as in I had to show her how to set up a myspace account when she wanted to see her friends myspace accounts). When we walked into the local coffee shop we always hung out at (we're good friends with the owner and employees, great people,and techies) she sat down a the computer that was set up for the customers to use. She sat there, hanging out, surfing the net, and checking her mail and myspace.About half an hour later I went over to see what she was up to. I noticed that it was a new computer she was using (since we had another one already, and that was a second that wasn't there before). Asked her what it was running and she was like "oh, it's just windows." On closer inspection (i.e. I actually looked at the computer) I noticed that it was Gentoo Linux.Gentoo isn't known for being the ultimate user-friendly linux distribution (unlike Lindows or Linare, and other similar ones), as such I think this is a great example. Someone with little to no knowledge of computers, let alone Linux, sat using a well-configured machine for an extended period of time, and all the while, never realized it wasn't windows (though personally the fact that it didn't crash at any point would have given it away to me :P)"//========um, no, simply surfing the web and check webmail is not enough support linux is usable as a desktop. Even if you let her use solaris with firefox(or any decent browser), she can still surf the net and check webmail BUT you can't conclude "solaris is ready for desktop use". A better comparison would be let her use a linux box for day-to-day operations.
nintiMar 11, 2006
@Virak: Oh, yeah, every once in a while you have to edit the registry. Of course, you have to edit text files to change any but the simplest things in Linux. And you are right that detecting my mouse isn't the end all in be all of an operating system, it was just a particular egregious example from my own experience from two years ago, I do notice that it finds it automagically now. Linux is indeed getting better, but it still has a way to go.