First post! ... Well clearly not really but who cares.

They actually seemed to like my survey idea - or someone had one similar.

Anyway what do manufacturers have against linux anyway. It wouldn't take too much extra effort to make drivers / software for linux and people would be more likely to buy the product then.

well, if i was a software making company i would definitely think twice before making software for it. not very many people have it on their PC (like 1/10 of 1% or less)... but if i was TI, i would make one since they're all about education and equality and happiness. i voted yes.

GO TO MY SITE!!!

(1/10) 1% these two numbers are some what different you know. and I know that there are more than 1% of PC users who use linux. And I wouldn't be surprised that over 10% of users use linux.
Slightly off the topic - nearly all professional servers are unix / linux.
nearly all of Microsoft Computers (all the programing ones etc) run unix - not windows.

yes, they are: one tenth of one percent is what i wrote. i don't know what you're smoking. '1/10 of 1%'... and i guarentee you that there is less than 1% of linux users. and servers are NOT PC's, and you don't run TI connect software on them. keep in mind: the majority of computer users are USERS (meaning 99%) who do not code at all, and also 99.999% of USERS (who don't code) use windows.

I'm a programmer, I use Win98. All my friends use Windows, except one who uses a Mac.

I have just finished writting a bit of software for my current employers under windows 98 / DOS. And belive me trying to find some of the errors in there was damned painful. I took it home shoved it into linux - compiled it, it it told me roughly where I had the errors. Why? because it actually stops you writting data to random areas of memory - if it isn't defined you can't access that part of memory.

sounds like the software you're using... not the OS

No. Windows lets you do what you want with memory. Therefore if you go over the end of an array it will let you. Try just running a prog like that in linux - it ain't going to happen. In windows you can easily lock the whole machine.

It's easy enough to get windows development software to report errors in memory and stuff. Just a bit of research and you can straighten it out. And I could Probably crash linux.

Well, you could crash any machine you wanted to but I think what he's geting at is that it doesn't crash when you don't want it to, or something.

your kinda right there, in a way.
However, if there is a prog. that checks the code for tha thing - which I don't doubt one minute. then it would have been nice to have. Still you work with what you've got.

I did crash it, try opening 80 programs in linux, big ones, with only 64MB of Ram, no joke

Crashing Linux is difficult. Linux extensively used i386's protected mode.

I have very rarely locked up my Linux box in 4 years. Even if you develop driver and do a mistake, the kernel will stop you. Very robust !

Under Windows, you don't need to develop a driver for crahsing it...

The stability of Linux is dependent on which kernal you use (several different versions exist). But all Linux (and Windows, and Mac, etc.) computer can be crashed when overloaded (60 large programs running).

Personally I use XP, which has yet to crash on me in a year.

-Rejun2000
I code therefore I am... Superior to you

Is it normal that Windows XP use 60MB of RAM at startup when Linux only need 4MB for running ?

Is it normal that Windows XP requires a strong machine (P400° for correctly running ?

It's true that XP is more stable than its predecessor but it's still inefficient and resources consumming.

That 4 MB figure isn't for X and KDE though...It's not fair to compare a full-featured graphical environment to basic Linux.

Very true. But linux even with X doesn't need that much RAM. And there is little that can be done in X that can't be done in a pure bash interface anyway.

not fair?
wtf, just have a look around in your beloved xp and see how many of the functions you actually use

If a packet hits a pocket on a socket on a port,
and the bus is interrupted at a very last resort,
and the access of the memory makes your floppy disk abort,
then the socket packet pocket has an error to report.

If your cursor finds a menu item followed by a dash,
and the double-clicking icon puts your Window in the trash,
and your data is corrupted cause the index doesn't hash,
then your situation's hopeless and your system's gonna crash!!

If the label on the cable on the table at your house
says the network is connected to the button on your mouse,
but your packets want to tunnel to another protocol,
that's repeatedly rejected by the printer down the hall,

and your screen is all distorted by the side effects of gauss,
so your icons in the window are as wavy as a souse;
then you may as well reboot and go out with a bang,
'cuz sure as I'm a poet, the sucker's gonna hang!

When the copy of your floppy's getting sloppy in the disk,
and the macro code instructions cause unnecessary risk,
then you'll have to flash the memory and you'll want to RAM your ROM.
Quickly turn off the computer and be sure to tell your Mom!

this guy never mentions unix..
fuck windows!

http://www.msboycott.com/

^great page

Your comment on kernels is true but irrelavent. The kernels under developement are always marked. It is easy to tell which kernels are stable. So linux is a stable as you make it. Windows, well you use what your given.

Its almost impossible...

You can crash any computer with one line of code, just divide something by zero. Computers hate that.

Divide by zero is an error code. It means that the system recognisise that there is a problem - it has not crashed.
Is it true that there was a Pentium that got a value for divide by zero.

1/0= + or - infinity....

1/infinity = 0

Look it up if you don't believe me..or ask someone in Calculus 2....

That is only a convention, though taken as standard in maths, - it is not strictly true as something can not be diveded by nothing - share it around nothing and it can not exist afterwards. Also infinity is merely a concept again it does not really exist.

If you don't belive me actually try to figure it out.

I have two Windows machines at home, one with Linux also installed. I also have a Mac laptop with OS X (ten) - a mix of the older Macintosh OS style on a FreeBSD (UNIX) base.

Re: the post on "no one uses linx" - that is true, practically no one uses the Lynx text-based web browser. :-)

I do. Not as a main browser, but is useful for quick bits of info. And for checking how negotiable your site is.If you can use it in lynx then anyone can use it.

I am the same thing as that

You probably use Windows 98 because that is what you have. Windows is the worst modern OS.

Sorry. I miss read what you wrote there. Never was any good at english.
Okay, yeh you don't use a ti link cable with a server - obviously (hence being off topic), but that statement was there to kind of point out that the general stability / running of unix /linux is far superier then MS windows.
And over 25% of the people I know and that own computers use linux / are planing to install in the near future. (the majority of this number being current users and just a small number planing on installing). - obviously not this many world wide - but I am pretty sure that >1% of PC Owners have Linux these days - remember that ther is a huge number of people out there who don't own a PC but use only machines at work - and that doesn't count.

lol, sometimes when i'm tired i misread stuff... and even more when i'm not tired... % =96

Yeh, what's worse is that I haven't actually written much by hand for so long I frequently have to stop and think of how to form the letters, curse these computers
;(

do some research before making stupid comments, 99.99% of home users use windows, not even close to true, okay pretty close but far enough off to make you look stupid, 5% of home users use Macs, 1% Linux, 1% other, and the rest windows, well about, I could be slightly off. I happen to use Macs, Linux, Be OS, and Windows, and the windows machine is the only one with cob webs on it. So instead of following the redmond empire, how about you think different? and not through your ass?

Well, that wasn't very nice. :)

What's BeOS? I've heard of it before.

ya, it wasn't very nice
Be OS was another linux variant that was not compatible with all linux programs (don't ask how) but had an interesting GUI and kept track of everything via databases rather than normal file sorting methods. It happens to be one of my favorite OS's, but Be just got bought by Palm, so the free download isn't on their website any more, but if you can find a copy, I highly recommend downloading it.

The only reason people use windows is for games, or due to them not wanting to get off their butts to go get something better, or due to "cost"(yeah a windows PC is cheaper at the start but is a) going to cost more later, b) is cruddy, or c) is outdated when it was made.)

there is 1 reason for people using windows, everybody else has it, and micro$ofts standards arent compatible with anything else
.doc for example, can only be used by the latest version of word(r)(c)(tm)etc
this is why windows is still alive

" do some research before making stupid comments, 99.99% of home users use windows, not even close to true, okay pretty close but far enough off to make you look stupid, 5% of home users use Macs, 1% Linux, 1% other, and the rest windows, ..."

There is a problem with these number--they are based on operating system sales. I never paid for my copy of Debian (or any of the many distros I used before that before finding the one-true-distro ;-). So, Add one more user to that 1%. And the people that I lent my install discs to. And all of the people that do net installs. It is impossible to figure out how many people use Free Software because you don't _usually_ (hey, I'll sell you a copy of the GIMP on a CD for 10 bucks) pay for it (you can pay for it; nothing in the GPL says you can't--the GNU Project sells GNU software to fund itself for example). So all of these statistics should really be ignored. About the only thing you can say is that most desktop systems run Windows, where most is anything greater than half. And it doesn't really matter anyway.

wow you're an idiot. what research did you do? i happened to actually do it based on a survey including 100,000 users from all over the world. and macs are not PC's (even though it stands for personal computer, it isn't one) moron.

If the mac is not a PC why, when they were as strong in the market as IBM comp., amiga atari etc, were IBM compatibles not just called PC's. I belive the only reason People only refer to IBM compatibles as PC's is 'cos so few people use macs in comparison.

When he said they were PC's, he probably meant they were made by a company like HP or Dell.

No by PC I always mean Personal Computer - the general thing that people have in homes (ie not servers, sparc, etc).
When I was talking about servers I did make it quite clear it was off the topic - I think he just miss read it.

I don't think that even Microsoft likes Windows. Heck, its programs look better on a Mac!

microsaft has no soul

Oh BTW a lot of code cn be written to support both systems - in fact a lot of code is written to support both systems.
So apart from hardware intensive (ie directX driven games) writting software for linux just means a tiny amount of care when writting for MS.

And given most major programming is done on Unix (what Linux is based on) it is rather ironic that people think that writting code for this system would be such a hard task. -It would be easier to write Unix based codein the average company then writting for MS OSes.

actually, that is not quite true, as the libraries and graphics widgets are set up differently, so there would be a lot of porting required.

only for stuff that is using DX needs lots of porting as where the libraries are linked to in the prog the appropriete packages in linux can be link to. As I have said - porting DX is going to be a problem but for normal progs (work applications it is easy enough - there are a fair few out there all ready.

Yes, of course there's a lot of effort involved in porting a program written for one OS and one OS only. But the point is that writing the code originally is much easier if you're writing for a *nix system.

And if you use widgets and such things that are made for multiple OS's - GTK, to name a popular example - you eliminate a lot of the effort there. Case in point: last summer, a couple of friends and I wrote a 3D Snake game (see link) for Windows. It took about a month to port it to Linux, because we'd used Windows message boxes and such. But the newest Windows version was ported back, from Linux to Windows, in a few days.

You're right. It's easier to port a Linux program to Windows rather than porting from Win to Linux.
The reason: the Windows programming is too restrictive and use many M$ features.
Linux programming use common UNIX programming and POSIX features.

Moreover, it exists some toolkits for developping portable application:
- GTK+ (Gnome): GUI for UNIXes, Windows
- Qt (KDE): GUI for UNIXes, Windows, Mac OS-X
- SDL: SimpleDirect Media Layer: multi-platform games w/ OpenGL support
- OpenGL: the only 3D library which is really portable

Else, you can run your program into an emulator such as Wine (Windows Emulator).

I believe that DirectX has been ported but I'm unsure (WineX).

Linux rocks !

yeh. you can now get some windows based games under linux - can't wait til wine succeeds in that.

people are.... its called WineX

Hey, Wine Is Not an Emulator. (yes, another recursive acronym.) and i've run half-life, and it's mods (CS, DOD, etc) on WINE. and Starcraft. and other things.

Hey - I just got Deus Ex running under WINE (like halflife but better). But the system doesn't accept any keyboard strokes. Any ideas - or should I read a man / HOWTO for wine.

Well, Linux programs must be distributed freely, hence the term "open source". You can charge for the media it's printed on, or for any support services you provide, but you must make it available for a free download. However, WineX & WineHQ allow windoze programs to run under Linux.

Programs written for Linux do not have to be free in any sense. It's just that Linux is under the GPL and thus the GPL is a popular license for Linux software. Micro$oft, for example, can legally in every way write software for Linux. Knowing M$, the program would not be free at all.

I don't think anyone will read this anyway, so there.