Date: Mon, 1 Sep 1997 03:32:00 -0500 (EST) From: "John S. Dyson" <toor@dyson.iquest.net> To: jrasins@mindspring.com (J. Rasins) Cc: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Since the MicroSloth(tm) jokes have been flowing... Message-ID: <199709010832.DAA00347@dyson.iquest.net> In-Reply-To: <3.0.2.32.19970901002444.00716c0c@pop.mindspring.com> from "J. Rasins" at "Sep 1, 97 00:24:44 am"
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J. Rasins said: > > Admittedly, some of the products are good, and NT does seem to be a good > OS, but better than anything else? I just came back from a legal > conference and it was sad to hear how many firms are buying into the > everything Microsoft. <<sigh>> > > My personal goal is to see if I can eliminate all Microsoft products from > my PC, including the OS, yet still be able to use Windows 95 based > applications if necessary, or where replacements native to the new OS > aren't available or comparable. Linux / FreeBSD are first choices with > each loaded on a machine at home. Any pointers? > Actually, I think that the "best" solution is to put together a dual motherboard box. Network them together with a samba server on the FBSD/Linux motherboard. One day, the windows emulators might be good enough to "just work". However, this will give you the day-to-day reliability of a U**X clone providing file and networking services TODAY, with the ability to run MS-OFFICE (which is the real draw/virus onto the Microsoft platform.) You can even dual-boot the 2nd motherboard running the Microsoft based OS, since one often boots the NT or Win95 system anyway. Then you can run U**X and X by default, until you get that ugly Powerpoint file. One problem with running WindowsNT and U**X side-by-side, is that it is easy to get used to being able to heavly load a U**X system -- and then trying to heavily load NT, and seeing the system hang/crash or whatever (OS Behaving Badly.) Or worse (more often), being used to mouse focus on U**X (which I prefer), then getting frustrated using NT's click-to-focus. That little utilty that allows tuning the window manager to change focus method and other things never fully worked on NT for me (the 95 version worked on 95 though.) I have been using the Laola package for .doc files to read, decode them, and store them away in a more sane format. This at least gives some (a little) independence from Microsoft tools: http://wwwwbs.cs.tu-berlin.de/~schwartz/pmh/laola.html -- John dyson@freebsd.org jdyson@nc.com
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