Re: Why?!

[Mark Phillips <mark@ist.flinders.edu.au>]

> your questions: yes, I am a developer (not professionally) but I can get
> compilers for Windows from school so their cost doesn't bother me :)

Legally?  Anyway, what will you do when you are out of school?

> to an average home user. Some of you are obviously lucky enough to have
> many computers where networking - and therefore Linux - is viable. I have
> one desktop with no networking other than PPP to my ISP. 

You can now get a secondhand 486 machine for next to nothing -- find a
good cheap computer store that does upgrades and see if you can pick
up some cheap parts.  Setup a second machine and network it to your
existing one.  Then you can play all those networking games.  Xbattle
is my absolute favorite.  It's even better when you can get 3 or 4
players.

> You claim that linux is more configurable and that the disadvantage
> of Windows' nice GUI is that you lose the ability to configure
> it. I'd say this works both ways: you, as linux users, find linux
> more configurable but I others that I know of find Windows easier
> easier to configure - simply because they are more used to the other
> OS. Windows is as configurable as Linux, you just have to know
> different methods.

I don't accept this.  Yes you are able to do some amount of
configuration under Windows, but in my experience, far less than under
Linux.  Admittedly I haven't used Windows a lot in recent years, but I
have used it a bit and I've been very frustrated when windows programs
simply won't let me configure things that similar programs in linux
will let me configure.  I think it would be fair to say that, in
general, linux software gives you significantly more configurability
and flexibility than windows software.

> I started this e-mail with the intention of saying that I would wipe my
> partially broken linux system and reinstall Debian from CD, but now I'm
> not so sure any more... I'm getting an upgrade this Christmas which would
> be perfectly capable of coping with Windows bloatware....

If you're going to have a huge disk anyway, why not reserve some of it
for linux?

> no companies to my knowledge develop games for linux

My understanding is that there are companies who develop games for
linux, and in fact, prefer developing them under linux before they
port them to windows.  The developers of Doom and Quake are one
example and I believe there are others.  I'm not sure how many there
are however or what proportion of game developers do this etc...

I believe there are also a number of open source projects based on
linux for developing sophisticated games engines and tools.  I don't
know much about this however.

> If anyone can think of an excellent way to save my soul please let
> me know...

Well I think the book of John in the bible is the book to read for
that one.

As for convincing you to use Linux, all I can do is present the
reasons why I chose Linux over Windows (see previous email).  If these
reasons aren't sufficent then by all means go to Windows - it's a free
world (well maybe not everywhere, but in this context it is:-).

Cheers,

Mark.




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        "They told me I was gullible ... and I believed them!" 





_/~~~~~~~~\___/~~~~~~\____________________________________________________
____/~~\_____/~~\__/~~\__________________________Mark_Phillips____________
____/~~\_____/~~\________________________________mark@ist.flinders.edu.au_
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        "They told me I was gullible ... and I believed them!"