stephane lepain wrote:
Hi,I have been using linux only since 2005. But these 2 years its been a wonderful experience. For my personal and official needs I *used ETCH, mighty one with no hassles, the only challenge I had was doing my reporting work with MS Excel somehow I could not get the same flexibility in Linux and ofcourse a Notes client as well (later got one). Some of the times I felt crippled using Linux at work 1) When the mail server for our client systems was MS Exchange. Though there are applications that support OWA, I just find things terribly slow. 2) When viewing Activex sites, we had one from our client fortunately it did not last long. 3) When using some of the new hardwares like a bluetooth headset or connecting the camera 4) When connecting a webcam for video conferencing 5) Getting JAVA to work was quite some task 6) To install and configure any app/service I had to read tons of online materials spend some considerable time testing things at home. When the windows folks goes boom!! 7) Adhering to company policies for Active Directory. To date I haven't got my PC to the domain. Somehow considering my adamant nature IT folks have given up on me. 8) Ahh...to bloody get my Xyzel USB ADSL modem working. Atlast ordered for a Ethernet one. times I felt great using Linux at work All the time, cause the above feeling of being crippled was temporary....i enjoyed working with my PC....tweaking things....experimenting...and learning..every day was an adventure and yet not compromising on work../ There is none in office who has spent all weekends working on making the PC better....and my limits were bound to only to how much I could devote....and not my the limitation of the OS itself..... So, there isn't a Best Distro for the consuomer market which would work out of the box. Linux as an Operating system has improved a long way but still needs to mature for the desktop community. Linux is my choice for any simple to mission-critical server (probably BSD has a little more edge here as well). I cannot expect my dad/mom/sis to use it as easily as they use their XP, quite unfortunate but that is the reality. However there is something I came across few months back and is quite close to being called my second favorite desktop distribution (nothing like Debian) and in my opinion probably might get the buy-in of the so called 'consumer' market.Mint (http://linuxmint.com/). Bipin Babu |