raymac46 Posted October 11, 2013 Share Posted October 11, 2013 Well, it's almost 6 years since I joined this forum at SueD's suggestion. And what a beautiful thing the Linux desktop has become in that time. 6 years ago you were pretty much compelled to use the proprietary video driver if you wanted good performance with ATI or Nvidia cards. Today the FOSS drivers (especially Radeon) are smooth and powerful. In 2007 wifi was a minefield with most distros - especially if you wanted WPA encryption. Today it's a point and click exercise. Back then you had to choose your hardware ultra carefully to get one that worked. Today virtually any adapter will plug and play. Getting a printer to work with Linux in 2007 meant choose HP or you're snookered. Today just about anything goes. There was a wide variety of desktop environments and window managers in 2007 and even more and better quality ones today. Back in 2007 it took a while to download and burn a CD and you got a lot of coasters (at least I did.) Now you download faster, you have methods to boot from a flash drive or just use the image in a virtual machine before you install. Linux is still free, secure and fun. What more could you ask? Something to be thankful for as Canada's Thanksgiving weekend approaches. 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
V.T. Eric Layton Posted October 11, 2013 Share Posted October 11, 2013 I somehow feel responsible. I'm the one who suggested that Sue come here. I knew her from the Go Firefox Forum over at Delphi. 6 degrees of separation and all that... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
securitybreach Posted October 11, 2013 Share Posted October 11, 2013 Very nice!! Yes, Linux has came an extremely long way in the decade that I have been using it and it will get even better as time goes!!! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
saturnian Posted October 11, 2013 Share Posted October 11, 2013 Wow. Kind of surprised to realize that I joined these forums over 7 years ago. I was using dial-up then, and getting Linux disks through the mail. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
raymac46 Posted October 11, 2013 Author Share Posted October 11, 2013 (edited) The scenario is just too good to be true I suppose. Here we have Microsoft jerking the chains of its old school WIMP customers & discontinuing the most popular O/S in history, millions of perfectly good systems out there with no perceived upgrade path, and a free, polished O/S like Linux Mint or Xubuntu just sitting there for the taking and installation. Linux has to be the best solution that nobody's ever heard about, sadly. :'( Edited October 11, 2013 by raymac46 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
réjean Posted October 11, 2013 Share Posted October 11, 2013 Just realized that I will have been here 9 years next month. Where does the time go? I suppose having fun and always learning new Linux stuff thanks to you guys and gals is the answer. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cluttermagnet Posted October 13, 2013 Share Posted October 13, 2013 (edited) Wow- nostalgic realizations as I thumb through the threads this morning. 10 years as a member for me on Scot's Forums. 6 years since I installed my first Linux Distro. It's been a fun ride. You guys helped me sooo much! Thanks! I love Linux. I just was given my 3rd old tower that's a Dell Dimension 8300. It basically seems to work. I'm slowly weeding through it. Both CD drives had issues and are getting replaced with old drives I had here. The PCI video card, an old ATI, seems to have come unseated in the connector. My buddy may have thought this one was another disaster. He has taken frequent lightning hits at his location in recent years. Anyway, another good 3.2GHz P4 computer for me, and he has long since moved on to better platforms and this old 'clunker' languished on a basement shelf of his for several years, abandoned. "Ask and ye shall receive". I asked, and it's mine now. I have another 8300 that works great- downgraded to 2.4GHz- I used the fast CPU in a better mobo elsewhere. The third tower is a junker for parts. The new box will of course get a copy of Linux, most likely Mint 15 Mate. BTW it has a working copy of XP on it now, pretty bloated and slow. I'll clean it up a little and keep it but never let it see internet. I have certain scanners or various little pieces of freeware that might bring me to open XP or Win7 once in a while. Those poor Win7 (and earlier) folks! Nowhere to go. Nobody has heard of Linux. Just as well- 'security by obscurity' is all right by me. A lot of us will probably not migrate to the hardware they intended Win8 for. For me personally, Win8 is about as undesirable as Win7 would be desirable (if that makes any sense). I'm old school. I'm used to thinking of the net in terms of desktops. Heck, it's amazing my ham radio mentor was able to persuade me, kicking and screaming, to get into computers in the first place. Just amazing. But computers looked attractive as an adjunct to the ham radio hobby. That's what won me over. Now I don't know how I ever lived without them. Go figure... Edited October 13, 2013 by Cluttermagnet 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
abarbarian Posted October 13, 2013 Share Posted October 13, 2013 Only been here for three years and time has flown by. It has been some ride, I have learnt to type and use the command line and I understand that Path does not mean the paved walkway to my front door. 99% linux user most of the time for real stuff and I can do everything I need.If Steam does manage to revolutionise the gaming world I may not need to fire up windows at all in the next couple of years. So ta to all the Scoties and the penguinistas for all the free software and help so generously given to get me to this state. Cluttermagnet I personally have no problem with Windows 7. It is very stable and seems a tad more responsive than XP. An it may be just a tad more secure, I have never had a virus etc whilst using it an I do surf in white water. Mind you I only ever had one virus in XP and that was in 2005 just six months after I became a fledgling geek. Mind you Windows 7 did have a fairly steep learning curve and is not as intuative to use as the M$ fudsters will have you belive. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
raymac46 Posted October 13, 2013 Author Share Posted October 13, 2013 Clutter if you get the old ATI video card reseated and working I think you'll really be happy with the open source Radeon/ati driver that now ships with Linux Mint. It has come a long long way and for most cards it will give you decent 3D hardware acceleration - certainly good enough to get desktop effects and a bit of eye candy. I'm using it on a fairly new build that has an A8 Trinity APU and I get full 3D hardware support. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sunrat Posted October 14, 2013 Share Posted October 14, 2013 Mind you Windows 7 did have a fairly steep learning curve and is not as intuative to use as the M$ fudsters will have you belive. Nah, Windows 7 is easy. You just install your game and click on the desktop icon to play. I hear you can use it for other things too. That may be harder, but it's beyond my experience. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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