Re: The Microsoft stranglehold on its users....



On Tue, 15 May 2007, BMJ wrote:

Straydog wrote:

<snip>

They were much cheaper, too. but, it would be nothing for Macs to run Vista now.

They can using an emulator called Boot Camp,

IIRC, Boot Camp is just a boot manager. System Commander (I use it on all of my multi boot boxes), Grubb (open source), LILO (pre Grubb), and several others.

I've got no idea on that as I don't pay much attention to anything concerning Windows.


though DOS/Windows emulators for
Macs have been around for years.

Softwindows was one of the Mac emulators and they said it ran like crap (very slow).

Yup.

All the emulators are resource hogs. And, some of them are
buggy, and some are very buggy.

I eventually gave up on SoftWindows because I had no need for it.


My G4 Mac started malfunctioning a few weeks ago, so I quickly got myself an iMac to keep going while the other machine was in the repair shop. I find the latter, which uses a dual-core Intel chip, a bit slow at executing certain commands but quick for others.

I called Apple about the G4 unit and was told that it's considered a "vintage" machine, even though that product line was first introduced about six or seven years ago. Maybe it's because it used PowerPC processors.

The "party line" BS is that anything 3 year or older is "obsolete" for whatever reason. Doesn't matter if it works and you are happy with it. THEY will tell you that YOU will be happier if you get something new (and give them a pile of money for it).

I certainly got the impression that both the shop and Apple customer support would have been pleased that I scrapped my G4 machine and bought a brand spanking new computer. That's a definite shift in Apple's policy as I was able to get assistance with my older PowerMac several years after I bought it.

The shop never did fix the problem with my beastie, but I wasn't surprised at that. The place was run by a bunch of smart-aleck kids who thought they could cow me into submission with their "superior" knowledge. Apparently, a new logic board didn't resolve it and new processors isn't available as spare parts, but I couldn't get a consistent story from anyone.

After all that horsing around, I decided I've had enough of this baloney and am making plans to build my own computer. I'm sure I can get the parts here in town, though it looks as though I'm going to have to go with an Intel motherboard. Each time I asked about installing Linux, I usually got "huh?" as a response.

At least if I build my own machine, I'll have a good idea of what's going on.

I've gone through this learning curve and the first thing is what are you going to do about a firewall. I had a linux box running and after a couple of months (I was lucky) it got hacked. My advice: read the book first about how to get your firewall going. Linux is not necessarily easy. Lots of different distros out there. harware compatibility problems. Yes, it is possible to get an install to work just fine.

I'd rather see you get an old junker box from a thrift store and start with that. Get one of the cheapo used books on Linux from Amazon.com and make sure that the description of the used book says it definitely has the CDROm disk in it and preferabley in a sealed envelope. All the new distros require high end spec boxes. Start low and learn. Then work up.

Your biggest goal should be to get something like Red hat 6.2, not befor. the best in the 7s was RH 7.3, not 7.4. 7.0 to 7.2 were buggy as hell. Better read up on the distros if you can. They had one where the whole thing would boot off a CDROM disk (it was pretty slow, but you could get an idea what you were getting into before you made a big leap).

Do you homework and you won't be displeased or frustrated.

.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: OT but very useful...
    ... emulators out there that work side-by-side with MacOS. ... "j" ganz @@ ... We could save a couple of thousand dollars and boot my Samsung NC10 netbook ...
    (rec.boats.cruising)
  • Re: Vmware + windows 98
    ... Oh heck I triple and even quadruple boot... ... I'm all through with emulators ... You don't have to convince me.. ...
    (alt.linux)
  • Re: RH 9.0 doesnt install: blank screen! (RH 8.0 & 7.2 do though)
    ... Tried 'linux text noprobe skipddc noapic apm=off noht'. ... I wanted to try on and so I chose 7 boot options: ... linux text noprobe skipddc lowres apm=off noapic nousb ...
    (linux.redhat.install)
  • Re: installation problems
    ... RH 9 had trashed my Linux partition and rendered my PC unbootable. ... >you can create the floppy from and can be created on a differnet ... >on the CD as the floppy boot image. ... and since flash drives seem to be listed in /proc as scsi devices, ...
    (comp.os.linux.misc)
  • RE: Linux hacked
    ... Subject: Linux hacked ... After you boot up into the OS running from CD, ... >> First let me say I'm a security novice. ... >> been unsuccessful in getting root back. ...
    (Security-Basics)