Odds and Ends

[braindamage73]

Now that I've found out my very expensive inkjet printer has no Linux file and I have to buy another printer, I've discovered so many new places to find files and I've learned a lot about ISPs, compatible software, various and sundry.

1. Your ISP will not support Linux and I don't care what they say. they want to sell you service.
2. Many of those printers don't do Linux and the sales departments of Best Buy and the online stores already know it and want your business.
3. Yes, you do indeed need an anti virus and the dangers are out there. I have AVG because it is free. but so is AVAST. The best anti virus I can find right now is BitDefender and its been king for at least five years. Nobody hacks it.
4. Many motherboards have great modem/ethernet built-ins. Why bother with expense. Load the OS. I bet it works.
5. Firefox is great.
6. Get a free AOL email account. I think its better than Verizon. I have Verizon, but its an odd sort of load and bump on my Ubuntu. Works though.
7. I got really friendly with my local small computer tech when I was building this, my third computer, alone. (gosh is this way the cheapest ever and I now have a screamer for the price of pocket change.) I bought my parts from him and he didn't charge me much, gave me a lot of advise with a lot of Chinese style criticism and threw in so much more hardware. He wiped three hard drives for me for $5 the lot. (You see there's this old book about bargaining that recommends this sort of realtionship. It works!)
8. If you get into Mensa- and I know most of you can- and its a great thing to be in where its near impossible to be depressed or lonely in- a lot of famous computer and software people are in it and they can help. They might want some kind of help from you. Then you all can go out and have scheduled events which are mostly parties and pub crawls But it has its serious sides, too, which you can learn about. No, we aren't stuck up prigs.
9. I found out: You can't buy a Red Hat distro, SuSe got bought, Mandrake is now Mandriva since they went belly up and the Enterprise Edition still runs slooow. Did you know that even Nepal and China have a Linux? (Ah. The Peoples Most Glorious OS. It had to happen.) the Nepal is strictly for the Nepalese and works in their ancient language.
10. Got wind that Microsoft will be pulling all XP and XP Vista distros off the shelves and putting something new, and way more expensive, up. Open Source is giving them fits and now has to do something seeing as how its had to deal with Unix, Solaris and Sun's Java for so long. Its also sick of getting sued and fined to the tune of $1 Billion + by the EU, the Aussies and getting caught in Intel's troubles, all for restraint of trade, monopolzing and unfair and nasty business practices. (AMD was so happy about the EU's decision against Intel they held this pseudo-dignified ruckus of a press conference).
Got questfions? I might, just might, be able to help.

[irlandes]

For those who want R*dhat, CentOs supplies the same binaries, except they are not supposed to say Redhat. I do not understand that statement about not being able to buy Redhat. I certainly could be out of date, but just a few weeks ago, I saw a Redhat sales listing for a copy.

CentOs would be for those who want a fairly stable distro, with very long term support. As stated, it might not be the fastest. I am trying it on my emachine in Mexico, and so far the only problems are no kuickshow, and I suspect no Kstars. Since I am multiboot, I can live with that.

I commented on another thread about your claim we need AV. Waiting for answer.

[cybertron]

Now that I've found out my very expensive inkjet printer has no Linux file and I have to buy another printer...

That stinks. I assume you've checked out LinuxPrinting.org (which apparently has moved). Unfortunately there are some that just don't work.

1. Your ISP will not support Linux and I don't care what they say. they want to sell you service.

Which is funny since a lot of the home routers actually run on Linux, so whether they intend to or not they do support it. Chances are the tech support people don't know that though.