I was explaining to a friend of mine tonight why I like Linux and open source. But how I still need to have a Windows XP box around for those last few things that I haven’t been able to do on Linux yet.
1) Rip & Burn DVDs (nero + dvdshrink)
2) Banking (quicken)
3) manage my iPod (iTunes)
Not to say you shouldn’t install Linux (give Gnoppix a try, it doesn’t require you to do anything except boot up a cd, it loads everything into memory. WOn’t install anything to your harddrive).
Reasons I love linux:
1) command line – ($cat access_log | grep -E ‘foo|bar’ | less) – DOS sucks
2) ssh from anywhere (shell in, with XP you need Remote Desktop, which is blocked my company and also requires a high speed connection).
3) Excellent file server (samba), web server (apache)
4) Totally free, including all the software you will use (GPL, etc.)
cool. do u bleve in aliens
Do i believe in Aliens?
Sure, I think they exist :)(
U can do several of those things in linux too
burning CD/DVDs — > k3b .
movie ripping — > try dvd::rip .
ipod interface — > gtkpod or amarok
banking software i am not sure, but i think there should be something out there.
The iPod thing I can do on Linux, but GnuCash sucks (compared to quicken).
and dvdburning/shrinking isn’t not good either.
I don’t know if u used k3b; i never had problems with it. In any case, Nero now has a linux dvd/cd burning software and u can use it if u have a valid windows serial number. i have converted DVD to divx files of 700 mb or so and thats worked fine for me too.
yep, i use amarok or listen to manage my ipod, and it’s totally sweet. (well, that’s what i was using until i got a new macbook last month, now it’s back to itunes for that.)
k3b for dvds, yep, and dvdrip for ripping. usually i just burn via nautilus / gnome, but k3b is a good tool.
all the banks in NZ websites work fine with regular browsers – i prefer pulling the data into mysql via their export, then working with the data in openoffice.
ok, with the final part, i’m a bit of a geek like that (and rolled my own crude billing system five years ago that i keep meaning to update … one day). neither quicken nor MYOB worked how i expected, and finance management is pretty easy math when it comes down to it. you could probably hack wordpress to do your accounts!
i haven’t needed ye olde windows since i ran win95. and i’ve been gladder and gladder with every new release since then :)
thx for your comments on my SVN workaround, btw!
You can use k9copy to copy your dvds to whatever container u like (e.g avi mpg….)
well, looks like an old blog… but what the hey? might as well update it. the above mentioned software in linux have had many bug fixes since these posts were made. as far as quicken goes… it never quite worked for me well enough in windows for me to bother with it in linux. but now its online… you can use it on any web-browsing computer. Now here’s something you really cannot do in linux: speech to text. granted, xp sucked at it. but at least the function is there…. no matter what computer system you are using you will not be talking to your computer like ironman talking to jarvis any time soon. The recognition tech just isn’t very smart yet. And of course people who refuse to use xbox or playstations will hate linux as none of their advanced games work. Still, using winne in linux permits me to play Doom. I have a 360 so I really don’t care. LInux runs great, looks amazing, and is bulletproof for web browsing the most questionable websites! just don’t waste your time downloading SPhinx (a supposed utility for speech recognition) as it is only in its infancy and won’t even handle basic commands. at least I can tell my xp computer to “close window” (works e out of 3 times).