[Discuss] Last Night's VLUG Meeting

[Joan McIlmoyl Cleghorn]

You've raised an excellent point Alan. It is one of the most difficult
challenges in first moving to Linux - trying to choose a specific
distro.....<g>

As a Windoze user who is trying to migrate to Linux, I'm in the situation of
having a couple of programs that simply aren't replicated in Linux (and are
my primary programs) so I will find it necessary to use some vm-type
program. However, this doesn't concern me overly as my beginning in owning a
pc and using Windoze immediately morphed into becoming an OS/2 lover. Of
course, this allowed me to access Win 3.11 & DOS 6.2 in the same way.....no
need to reboot in order to access whatever program I needed in Win or DOS
and easy switching back & forth between GUI & command line. Sound
familiar?<g>

Your point in not switching between multiple distros is exactly why I'm
taking so long to decide on my preference<g>....I will have quite enough
challenge in keeping up with whichever distro I do choose as well as Win
whatever....... I have to say though that having access to vm-type programs
is what is going to allow me to become a primary Linux user and, will also
encourage others from the Win world.

8-)
Joan



> Date: Thu, 10 Apr 2008 09:25:38 -0700 (PDT)
> From: "Alan W. Irwin" <irwin at beluga.phys.uvic.ca>
> Subject: Re: [Discuss] Last Night's VLUG Meeting
> To: discuss at vlug.org
> Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.60.0804100754440.3309 at ybpnyubfg.ybpnyqbznva>
> Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed
>
> This whole thread has been most interesting from the POV of the best way
> to
> run multiple OS's if you _absolutely must_.
>
> However, I want to sound a note of caution; you potentially lose a lot if
> you spread your attention over multiple OS's rather than concentrating on
> one.  Computers are not toasters; each OS keeps adding lots of useful
> features (and some which are not useful of course for any particular
> individual, but those and the useful features all take time to evaluate).
> So
> getting absolutely the most out of a single OS is essentially impossible;
> nobody could keep up. For example, I keep learning new things about Linux
> all the time which I have previously missed, and I know I keep falling
> further and further behind.  The serious computer user ends up doing as
> much
> self-education about their OS that is possible, but it is never enough.
>  If
> you spread that effort over two or more OS's your efficiency on all OS's
> suffers.  That doesn't mean you are prohibited from changing OS's, but
> when
> you do so, you should try to leave that old OS behind as quickly as
> possible.
>
> So if, for example, you have mostly converted to Linux but there are one
> or
> two windows apps which you feel you must absolutely run, I would advise
> you
> think carefully about the above point about spreading your OS attentions
> too
> thin.  Also you should look closely at the costs of that residual windows
> habit, e.g., the initial time/effort required to figure out the best way
> to
> run multiple OS's (as in this thread), the on-going time/effort required
> to
> keep the windows OS secure and up to date, etc.  Of course, the costs are
> not all on one side.  There is an initial cost to changing from commercial
> to open-source alternative applications, and there may be some on-going
> costs as well (such as the open-source alternative may not be quite as
> convenient to run). OTOH, if you give an alternative an honest try, you
> may
> find your concept of what is convenient was simply dominated by old habits
> rather than real convenience, and you are likely to find some features in
> the open-source alternative that you really like.
>
> Sites to help you find good alternatives to windows apps are
> http://www.linuxrsp.ru/win-lin-soft/table-eng.html and
> http://www.osalt.com/.  The first is simply an extensive table of
> alternatives with no annotation.  The latter annotates both the commercial
> applications and their open-source alternatives.  The annotation
> emphasizes
> the positive aspects of all commericial and open-source applications
> rather
> than being negative about any.  That is fundamentally sound
> salesmanship/advocacy which I really like.
>
> Alan
>


-- 
Joan McIlmoyl Cleghorn, U.E.
in Beautiful Saseenos near Sooke & Victoria British Columbia
joansjoy at gmail.com or joanmc at joansjoy.ca
www.joansjoy.ca