Re: Linux Functionality?
On Sat, Dec 25, 2004 at 08:33:50PM -0500, Curt Howland wrote:
> I view/listen all kinds of multimedia, but don't expect to get
> entirely away from the megahertz requirements. While Linux is much
> more resource friendly than Windows, movies still require at least
> 800MHz to be viewable while doing anything else at the same time.
It depends what type of movies. Normal not-too-big mpeg movies work
fine on a 200Mhz pentium mmx. mpeg4 / divx / dvd movies may require a
faster machine.
> There is no functionality of Windows that is not equaled or bettered
> in Debian Linux.
The only important thing Windows does better than Debian is implementing
the win32 platform. Unfortunately there is some good software that some
people find necessary that runs on Windows and won't run under wine. I
imagine business people with custom applications may find this a
compelling reason to stay with windows.
The are plenty of things that windows apparently does better than
Debian. But in my opinion there are vastly, overwhelmingly more things
that Debian does better than windows (the things that I think matter).
For example, windows XP and Max OS X have a user-interface for switching
between multiples users' desktops. We don't have such an interface in
Debian / under X as far as I know, but it possible to do the same sort
of thing from the command line, it's just that no one has gone to the
trouble to make a "click-and-drool" way to do this yet ;)
On the other hand, one thing that Debian does right, and windows doesn't
(or at least, hasn't in the past), is that if you download a program
from the web or receive it through email, your computer will refuse to
execute it until you explicitly give it "execute permission". This
makes it impossible to accidentally get a virus while reading your
email. Another thing is "rebooting" - in Debian when you install new
software, you never have to reboot the machine (unless you have
installed a new kernel). You can even install new device drivers
without rebooting.
The fact is that all the software in Debian is designed to be good
useful software rather than to make money off you, or spy on you, or
whatever. Whenever I am forced to use a windoze box these days I
experience almost constant fraustration.
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