Bombing of Dresden (was Plea for help: The detriment of using Microsoft products)

[smith at missioncriticallinux.com (Jeffry Smith)]

On Wed, 17 May 2000, David P. Greenberg wrote:
> Once upon a time, Mike Bilow spake thus:
> :-)Why do you want to run Linux?  Do you have a goal?
> Yes. My primary goal is to learn as much about computers in general as
> possible. I'm interested in Mac as well. Eventually, I suppose I'd like to
> network multiple machines with different OSs together. But, as I've said, I
> just want to learn everything I can. Anyway, do I need a goal. This system has
> been proffering itself to the masses as a replacement for Windows. My
> assumption would be that people who would want to migrate to Linux would
> expect a similar learning curve.   

Where do you live?  There's a BLU meeting at MIT tonight, and a GNHLUG
meeting at Martha's Exchange in Nashua tomorrow night.  You're welcome
to show up and ask questions.  for meeting schedules, check the websites: 
www.blu.org and www.gnhlug.org.

 I can say that I've gotten Red Hat,
Stormix, Mandrake, SuSE all to run out of the box by following the
directions.  Of course, I also never attempted to dual-boot, since I
don't have a copy of Windows.  What specific questions do you have?

> :-)Why would you expect to be able to run Debian packages in Mandrake?  
> Why not?    

I haven't done this in Mandrake, but I do download .debs, run through
alien to make into .rpms, then install on Red Hat.  mainly because the
Debian site seems to be one of the best collections of open source
software around.

> :-)Debian has the "alien" tool that
> allows RPM packages to be installed on Debian, but these usually require a
> fair amount of manual help.

Alien can work the other way too, but takes downloading some packages
from Debian, and can be a pain.  Hopefully, the vendors will start
work on improving it so you can go between .debs and .rpms easily.

------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jeffry Smith      Technical Sales Consultant     Mission Critical Linux
smith at missioncriticallinux.com phone:978.446.9166,x271 fax:978.446.9470
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Thought for today:  Chemist who falls in acid will be tripping for weeks.


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