3 Things You Can’t Do With Linux

Wed, June 1, 2005 — Category: Personal

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 […]

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.)

6 Comments »

Comment by Anonymous

June 4, 2005 @ 2:56 pm

cool. do u bleve in aliens

Comment by chovy

June 4, 2005 @ 2:59 pm

Do i believe in Aliens?

Sure, I think they exist :)(

Comment by Anonymous

August 19, 2005 @ 4:03 pm

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.

Comment by Anonymous

August 19, 2005 @ 4:11 pm

The iPod thing I can do on Linux, but GnuCash sucks (compared to quicken).

and dvdburning/shrinking isn’t not good either.

Comment by Anonymous

August 19, 2005 @ 10:01 pm

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.

135107

Comment by xurizaemon

September 17, 2007 @ 4:29 am

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!

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