From owner-freebsd-questions Mon Sep 1 01:32:11 1997 Return-Path: Received: (from root@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.7/8.8.7) id BAA14405 for questions-outgoing; Mon, 1 Sep 1997 01:32:11 -0700 (PDT) Received: from dyson.iquest.net (dyson.iquest.net [198.70.144.127]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.7/8.8.7) with ESMTP id BAA14398 for ; Mon, 1 Sep 1997 01:32:05 -0700 (PDT) Received: (from root@localhost) by dyson.iquest.net (8.8.6/8.8.5) id DAA00347; Mon, 1 Sep 1997 03:32:00 -0500 (EST) From: "John S. Dyson" Message-Id: <199709010832.DAA00347@dyson.iquest.net> Subject: Re: Since the MicroSloth(tm) jokes have been flowing... In-Reply-To: <3.0.2.32.19970901002444.00716c0c@pop.mindspring.com> from "J. Rasins" at "Sep 1, 97 00:24:44 am" To: jrasins@mindspring.com (J. Rasins) Date: Mon, 1 Sep 1997 03:32:00 -0500 (EST) Cc: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Reply-To: dyson@FreeBSD.ORG X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4ME+ PL31 (25)] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk J. Rasins said: > > Admittedly, some of the products are good, and NT does seem to be a good > OS, but better than anything else? I just came back from a legal > conference and it was sad to hear how many firms are buying into the > everything Microsoft. <> > > My personal goal is to see if I can eliminate all Microsoft products from > my PC, including the OS, yet still be able to use Windows 95 based > applications if necessary, or where replacements native to the new OS > aren't available or comparable. Linux / FreeBSD are first choices with > each loaded on a machine at home. Any pointers? > Actually, I think that the "best" solution is to put together a dual motherboard box. Network them together with a samba server on the FBSD/Linux motherboard. One day, the windows emulators might be good enough to "just work". However, this will give you the day-to-day reliability of a U**X clone providing file and networking services TODAY, with the ability to run MS-OFFICE (which is the real draw/virus onto the Microsoft platform.) You can even dual-boot the 2nd motherboard running the Microsoft based OS, since one often boots the NT or Win95 system anyway. Then you can run U**X and X by default, until you get that ugly Powerpoint file. One problem with running WindowsNT and U**X side-by-side, is that it is easy to get used to being able to heavly load a U**X system -- and then trying to heavily load NT, and seeing the system hang/crash or whatever (OS Behaving Badly.) Or worse (more often), being used to mouse focus on U**X (which I prefer), then getting frustrated using NT's click-to-focus. That little utilty that allows tuning the window manager to change focus method and other things never fully worked on NT for me (the 95 version worked on 95 though.) I have been using the Laola package for .doc files to read, decode them, and store them away in a more sane format. This at least gives some (a little) independence from Microsoft tools: http://wwwwbs.cs.tu-berlin.de/~schwartz/pmh/laola.html -- John dyson@freebsd.org jdyson@nc.com