Ditching windows and saving money

[benca1]

Hi there.

Due to numerous episodes in the past, I've elected to ditch windows and windows software. It's too much money. Too much. If you don't cheat, you'll spend, easily, two to three times what your hardware cost you. Fortunately your hardware doesn't change it's licensing, requiring you to upgrade... among other problems. (sure, macs are cool if you can afford them)

Fed up, I've geeked out, and started right into Gentoo Linux http://www.gentoo.org. You compile your own system, custom to your hardware (read speed and optimization) from the ground up with easy to read instructions. It's real hell, but fortunately I have geeky friends, and there's gentoo forums where you can post questions and get them answered quickly (how does Dell support stack up against this?). I couldn't do this if I only had one computer. I coudn't do this if I didn't have a few hard discs sitting around.

I'm shocked that I'm doing what I'm doing now without purchasing any software. Indeed, I'm doing far more now then I ever did on Windows. It's simply amazing the price you pay for EASE OF USE. There's more cost to windows then the price, I know this now.

Being as you are a G3 user, you appreciate, on some scale, the benefits of doing you're own thing and learning the hard way. I only have to look at my families point-and-shoot images to see the benefits of learning how to use your tools. They don't care to learn, so there images, frankly, reflect this.

I, for the first time, am using secure tunnels to freely, without any charge, ssh into my home machine from behind my companies firewall, copy files to and fro (which before I needed a 50 dollar license for SecureCRT) and work on my images!

Yup! I look at my pictures, do what I want, right here from my office. I even fired up 'ee' (a linux image viewer), and showed some cohorts a few of my pictures - remotely from my home computer!

Anyhoo, I'm setting up the printer, gphoto2 for accessing my camera's CF card, and the GIMP which is the linux version of Photoshop.

I'll let you know how it goes. But as it is, I'm never going back to Windows.

What I'm losing is time needed to learn this. Nothing else, And honestly, this headache I'm going through is making one rather adept user, so I'm cool about it. ;-)

[jolv]

I've just bought my G3 and also run Linux (RedHat 8.0) at home (as well as windows).

I've justed started looking at the options under Linux, but if you're running Linux (or windows for that matter) you might find this interesting:

http://www2.primushost.com/~dcoffin/powershot

[Guillermo Freige]

If your idea is to shoot in RAW and convert the images in Linux, there is a RAW converter written for it. You can find it and a lot of info here:

http://geocities.com/piccolbo/dplinux.html

[new girl on the bloc]

I appreciate the article. i've been contemplating ditching windows for awhile now but i do not have more than one pc nor the geeky friends for the support.

microsoft is not a machine that i want to keep supporting. thanks for the inspiration and do let us know how things work out.

[sdommin]

benca1 wrote:
Due to numerous episodes in the past, I've elected to ditch windows and windows software. It's too much money. Too much. If you don't cheat, you'll spend, easily, two to three times what your hardware cost you. Fortunately your hardware doesn't change it's licensing, requiring you to upgrade... among other problems. (sure, macs are cool if you can afford them)


Well Ben, you're a braver man than I. But I have to ask - what brought all this on? I don't know much about Linux, my WinXP system works fine. I buy a new game every so often, but I wouldn't say the cost of software is going to bankrupt me. Is Linux software free? Since this conversion is taking a lot of time and effort, have you figured this into the cost?

[dtrayers]

I echo Scott's question. I don't want to contribute to a flame war but I had to chime in...

I work in an IT department, so I'm pretty skilled at putting together PC's and Windows software. When I was looking at getting a new PC for my home, I considered building one. But I found that I could buy a brand new Dell for the same price, and it came with WinXP and a basic Office suite, and a warrenty. At work, since upgrading to WinXP, I've experienced zero, nada, zip, issues. In my office, I'm have WinXP running on a laptop, an older Celeron, a Pentium4, and a very old PentiumII system and I've had no issues.

At home, I use Quicken, TurboTax, Photoshop Elements 2, Photoshop Album, Breezebrowser, PictureFlow ArchiveCreator, a bunch of PalmPilot apps, National Geographic TOPO! (for Geocaching) and an old copy of Visio (pre-MS). None of these contributed to the coffers of MS. I can't remember the last time I purchased a stand-alone copy of MS software.

I'll grant you that I've spent several hundred dollars on this software over the years, but I did it because I believe that these titles are the best at what they do. I could be using IrfanView, Zoombrowser, GPS Trackmaker and other well made freeware along with the software that came pre-loaded with the Dell or my G3, but it wouldn't be as useful or feature-rich as what I have now.

I believe that a low end system from Dell or Gateway or wherever, pre-loaded with WinXP and a simple office suite, is the most cost effective and hassle-free system you can get. You can get one of those PCs, use the software that came with your G3, and not spend another dime.

My $0.02...

[benca1]

sdommin wrote:
Well Ben, you're a braver man than I. But I have to ask - what brought all this on? I don't know much about Linux, my WinXP system works fine. I buy a new game every so often, but I wouldn't say the cost of software is going to bankrupt me. Is Linux software free? Since this conversion is taking a lot of time and effort, have you figured this into the cost?

Linux software is free, almost all of it. Bare in mind, I've been a systems admin for years, supporting NT, Solaris and now Irix. It's always been somewhat annoying to me that I needed to download and purchase software for windows that was and is always built right into any Unix OS.

But MS is doing some funny stuff, particulary in regards to licensing with .NET and Longhorn (the next OS). Some of it, contrary to the naysayers is good stuff for the average user. But I don't care to rent office applications, or my OS. MS doens't want you to own the OS, afterall people aren't upgrading like they should, and peope have the audacity to buy ONE copy and then install it on all of the computers they own instead of a separate copy. That annoys me that that annoys them. At the same time you lose ownership.... they RAISE prices!

It doesn't impact me too much as it is, but I do computers for a living. And when I spend my money, I vote for who I like. I just don't like how they do business (but I'm hardly one of those MS bashers, I admire Gates.) I feel that I have some professional responsibility in the matter, on some level anyway.

Another example: I purchased a very expensive CD-R three years ago when they were going for 300 bucks. It came with super bloated software (expensive) called Adaptec Toast. It became the standard. Then I upgraded to XP, Toast no longer works, but there's no update from the new developer, Roxio. I have to send them 50 bucks to have my software back, but it gets upgraded too. But I already paid for it! I already had the software. But no update. This is common, and not such a big deal, but my annoyance has developed from 95, to 98, to NT 3.5, to NT4, the service packs, to 2000 and now XP. I feel foolish now, having tolerated this for so long.

That's the just the business side of things, I could write on and on about my inherent geekiness and the problems with performance, security and stability. All of these issues are serious in the MS world, but not so much in Unix. (Security always is of course.) Another thing about linux is the infinite customibility. I have several GUIs to choose from for example.

Regarding my time... I'm literally paid for it anyway. Now that I have a secure and encrypted tunnel from my office to home I'm really getting paid for it! Doing what I do for a living, this kind of 'playing' is expected. This figures right into my job skills and the time I need to do this is probably 1/10th the time needed for others...

Ben

[benca1]

dtrayers wrote:
I believe that a low end system from Dell or Gateway or wherever, pre-loaded with WinXP and a simple office suite, is the most cost effective and hassle-free system you can get. You can get one of those PCs, use the software that came with your G3, and not spend another dime.


I agree! That's why I posted actually. I'm intrigued by this concept of 'hassle-free.' What does it cost besides the obvious expense of the initial purchase? Customability. Sure. Security, obviously. Speed, definitely, and all for ease of use. Doing what I do for a living, I don't know if I want to pay that price for ease of use, escpecially when you factor in that MS doesn't exactly encourage computer skills (the internals are all hidden!).

That's why this is sort of experimental to me and what this thread is about. Will it be worth it to me? I don't know, but so far I'm VERY pleased. Linux has come a very long way. Also, I mentioned my disks laying around, and geeky friends, so I hope I don't sound like a linux preacher (yet ;-). I don't think most people have spare 40GB disks and friends who are software or electrical engineers. So I'll take advantage of my resources, and will post the results here....

Ben

[kb244]

While there are alot of free linux software not too many of them are of higher quality, and most are what you can consider beta. But I guess it all depends on the type of software you are looking to get into.

[benca1]

kb244 wrote:
While there are alot of free linux software not too many of them are of higher quality, and most are what you can consider beta. But I guess it all depends on the type of software you are looking to get into.

That's what I thought. I've been supporting linux, among a number of OS'es in an engineering environment for along time. Linux has never been my desktop OS. I tried. But no way.

But that was in 1999 and earlier. Now there's gentoo which makes updates and software dependencies a dead concern.

And I'm finding the software to be less user friendly, but more robust, faster, and more feature packed. For example, mplayer beats the heck out of Media Player anyday. I can open several film clips at the same time without any degradtion is playback. Indeed, the playback is better quailty since I get to control what video driver is used. I can even select output for audio, and get this; it encodes anything like a champ. Free.

Then there's OpenOffice. Which I find to be as good as Office - that's a mouthful for a FREE office suite. Perhaps a professional researcher or writer would disagree. But it does all I need to, including PowerPoint.

Then there's the GIMP, which, supposedly does as much as Photoshop, albeit with a less graceful interface. I haven't tried it yet.

Then there's the slew of browsers, and various internet clients that are far better exceuted on linux then windows - i.e. no spyware, no bloat, no registration.

Not to mention the utilitarian aspects, such as being a home print server, file server, and firewall. I can even convert it to a homemade wireless access point with the right PCI card.

So, I disagree! :p

Like I said this is experimental for me..... but I'm more and more impressed.

Hey, aren't you developing on linux?