[AMC-list] No Computer Savvy??

[Frank Swygert <farna@xxxxxxx>]

If you don't do a lot on your computer but e-mail and Internet, maybe some of the simple games and photo viewing/touching up, try Linux. I'm going to switch everything over to Linux in the next year or so since I found Mint. Linux has several distributions, all with distinct differences. Mint strives to be a "just-works-out-of-the-box"  solution. Most others are so adamant about open-source software that they don't include free but copyrighted codecs and such required to do certain things -- no Flash player, for instance (unless htere is an open source equivalent I don't know about). Mint includes all that stuff as long as it's freely distributable. It's the best of several I've tried, and I wanted something my wife could easily use (TOTAL user, no sense of how/why it works at all, and no desire to know/learn!). That way her computer gets to be the guinea pig/acid test machine! Only had on glitch, and that was my fault. Everything just works with minimal user input, and no tw
eaking is required. The start menu an just about everything is easier to use, once you get used to the filing conventions anyway (what folders are where). You can try it without installing or messing up your computer. Download the "Live-CD" image and burn it to a CD, then re-boot the computer (make sure "boot from CD" is active -- usually in the BIOS). Mint will load and run from the CD, creating a temp file on your hard drive, but deleting it when you shut down. It will be a bit slow, but you can use Firefox to get on the Internet and check things out. Can't set up your e-mail, but you can take a look at Firefox's e-mail companion, Thunderbird. Everything is less hassle, and no viruses! E-mail and networking works so much better and easier in Linux than Windows. I just plugged it into one of my network switches and started it -- lo and behold all computers on the network showed up, and all the others are running XP (well, dad runs Vista). Can get to the shared folders easil
y. Doing that on any of the XP machines requires running the network wizard, and we won't discuss that aberration dad has on his...

The only applications Linux seems to be lacking are the high end games, but there are quite a few first person shooters (think Doom) and arcade type games, and a bunch of Nintendo/Atari/etc. emulators to play those games. And then there is Wine, which isn't and emulator, but allows many PC games and high-end applications to run under Linux. The way it works is by re-writing the APIs and such that Windows programs talk to the OS through to work in a similar fashion under Linux. A few calls are almost emulation, but most are re-writes (or written from scratch) of the system calls/APIs. It works on a LOT of the big name games. A complete list is available at www.winehq.org. 

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Date: 18 Nov 2009 08:29:43 -0000
From: das24rules@xxxxxxxxx

i think thats exactly what it is. i only view/reply by amcyclopedia as the
list wont work on my computer since the big crash last spring. (tells me it
is nonexistant) and i have issues with my email always wanting to reply the
ENTIRE digest, even after i get it how i want it, it wants to send the entire
thing somehow. (not real computer savy here) so, i found what works for me, so
thats how i do it. 

--
Frank Swygert
Publisher, "American Motors Cars" 
Magazine (AMC)
For all AMC enthusiasts
http://farna.home.att.net/AMC.html
(free download available!)


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