Admittedly mildly off-topic

Gary Roberts
Gary Roberts
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RE: OK, ( seated though

Message 82540 in response to message 82533

Quote:

OK, ( seated though ):

"I renounce the Redmonian forces of darkness and evil, and strive to join the forces of goodness and light. I will follow the Penguin, wherever he goes."

Not to be too much of a nitpicker here, but shouldn't that really be "Redmondian"?? :-).

I do realise you are just repeating Donald's mantra but that's still no excuse :-).

I know I'm entering the fray well and truly after all deceased equine flagellation has been completed, but perhaps there might be a stray lurker or two or perhaps you might be tempted to try out your new found skills by performing delicate surgery on one of your other Windows boxes if given sufficient motivation :-).

I've been really impressed with a distro called PCLinuxOS (a Mandriva derivative) with the KDE GUI as a suitable path for Windows refugees. They tend to release a new version about once a year. The current full release is 2007 which was done in May last year and the 2008 full version is anticipated "soonish" :-). Earlier this year they released a light-weight version called MiniMe 2008 which is extremely easy to try out as a live CD or even install if you have about 3-4GB free space in your Windows partition. It seems to handle the shrinking of the Windows partition (to make the space) very nicely.

One of the things I found impressive about PCLinuxOS in general is that I've now installed it on a wide range of architectures, PIII Coppermine, PIII Tualatin, P4, Athlon XP, AMD64, etc, (about 70 machines in total) and I haven't had a single failure to install and correctly identify the hardware, especially the graphics hardware. I was most impressed when it correctly identified and handled Compaq Smart Array RAID controllers in Proliant DL380 G2 dual Tualatin 1.4 servers. Windows XP wouldn't do that without using F6 and a floppy to provide the driver needed during the Windows install.

For a Windows refugee, PCLinuxOS is a very safe haven. It's so "Windows-like" that I often forget I'm using unix rather than Windows :-). The synaptic GUI front end to the package manager makes it a dream to keep up-to-date and to add whatever functionality you desire to the standard install regime. And once you tweak it all to your heart's content, you can remaster the whole deal very simply onto a CD or DVD to save it for posterity (or to clone a bunch more machines) :-).

Cheers,
Gary.

Mike Hewson
Mike Hewson
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RE: RE: OK, ( seated

Message 82541 in response to message 82540

Quote:
Quote:

OK, ( seated though ):

"I renounce the Redmonian forces of darkness and evil, and strive to join the forces of goodness and light. I will follow the Penguin, wherever he goes."

Not to be too much of a nitpicker here, but shouldn't that really be "Redmondian"?? :-).

I do realise you are just repeating Donald's mantra but that's still no excuse :-).

Heck, could we go for the 'Redmondian/Penguinian transference epiphany' ? :-)

Quote:
I know I'm entering the fray well .... very simply onto a CD or DVD to save it for posterity (or to clone a bunch more machines) :-).

Oh yeah, it just gets better don't it? I certainly like the idea of the only mistakes being made are mine ... :-) With Windoze one is so often wondering, and also wandering, whether 'what just happened' was :

(a) a feature OR

(b) no really, it's a feature OR

(c) just a covered-up stuff-up.

Cheers, Mike.

NB. Was that sarcasm? :-)

I have made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make it shorter ...

... and my other CPU is a Ryzen 5950X :-) Blaise Pascal

KSMarksPsych
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RE: NB. Was that sarcasm?

Message 82542 in response to message 82541

Quote:
NB. Was that sarcasm? :-)

Heh :-)

Like Gary said, there are times I forget I'm in Fedora. And on those rare occasions I'm in Vista, I'm always looking for my nice little terminal button so I can fire up mplayer. Even though I installed the GUI this time, I'm sticking to the CLI to run it. The GUI is horrid (IMNSHO).

Kathryn :o)

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Donald A. Tevault
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RE: RE: OK, ( seated

Message 82543 in response to message 82540

Quote:
Quote:

OK, ( seated though ):

"I renounce the Redmonian forces of darkness and evil, and strive to join the forces of goodness and light. I will follow the Penguin, wherever he goes."

Not to be too much of a nitpicker here, but shouldn't that really be "Redmondian"?? :-).

Yeah, I realized after it was too late that I made a typo. Mea culpa!

Gary Roberts
Gary Roberts
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Joined: 9 Feb 05
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RE: Yeah, I realized after

Message 82544 in response to message 82543

Quote:
Yeah, I realized after it was too late that I made a typo. Mea culpa!

I actually quite liked the ring of it in its original form - particularly if you had inferred the correct pronunciation and syllabic emphasis by spelling it as "Redmoanian" ;-).

Windows Vista - that beautiful, pristine arctic wilderness now filling with joyously copulating penguins ...

Cheers,
Gary.

DanNeely
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RE: I was most impressed

Message 82545 in response to message 82540

Quote:
I was most impressed when it correctly identified and handled Compaq Smart Array RAID controllers in Proliant DL380 G2 dual Tualatin 1.4 servers. Windows XP wouldn't do that without using F6 and a floppy to provide the driver needed during the Windows install.

I've always wondered what MSes justification for not including RAID drivers on the CD with XP and prior was (Vista appears to've added them to the gigs of drivers collection). Related to that is the question of why none of the RAID makers ever wrote a utility to slipstream the drivers instead of requiring a manual slipstreaming or the use of a floppy.

Netcell worked around it in hardware, masquerading any array on one of their cards as a single big, fast HD to the OS, but they appear to've taken their IP to the grave when they went splat a few years ago.

Mike Hewson
Mike Hewson
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RE: beautiful, pristine

Message 82546 in response to message 82544

Quote:
beautiful, pristine arctic wilderness now filling with ...


Just to slide totally off-base check this out. CGI is so shameless these days! :-)

Cheers, Mike.

( edit ) Of course that would be antarctic wilderness.... :-)

I have made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make it shorter ...

... and my other CPU is a Ryzen 5950X :-) Blaise Pascal

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