Oluseyi: have you tried using LaTeX for your college papers? It's an excellent tool.

Apart from games (and i'm not a serious gamer too), i can do everything with Linux... for word processing there's OpenOffice and LaTeX, for chat there's LICQ, AMSN, for programming there's Eclipse (write Java code using Vim sucks, in my opinion...).

As for having dual boot Windows/Linux... at my job i have only Linux. At home i can't do that becase the whole family has to use the computer, and it's kinda hard to convince everyone to switch to Linux.

Victor.

EDIT: I said LaTeX is "an excelent tool". Actually, if you're interested in being more content-productive, LaTeX is *the* tool, much better than MS Word, IMO.

[edited by - -vic- on June 24, 2003 11:54:48 AM]

I quite enjoy using Cygwin under Windows at the moment. It gives me connectivity with other Linux computers, a more powerful shell, access to useful Linux programs and still lets me use Windows software whilst sticking to a familiar desktop environment.

quote: Original post by Sneftel
The linux kids here will flay me alive, but I really have to suggest Windows for you, unless you have some overarching reason not to use it. There simply is no better polished or functional OS out there (OSX is a close second, or perhaps first, but you said you''re not up for that).

The problem with Windows is all the minor irritations. Like apps stealing focus. I''m a bit of a control freak, so things like that irritate me to no end. The sensation that things may be going on behind my back - though that isn''t a problem in and of itself, but a problem because I don''t trust Microsoft to protect me - is the other major problem.

But I see your point. I''ll give it some time and then make a decision.

quote: Original post by -vic-
Oluseyi: have you tried using LaTeX for your college papers? It''s an excellent tool.

I haven''t tried it, but ins''t it a markup tool? Unless you can also recommend slick GUI word processors that do LaTeX, it''s just not going to meet my requirements. I want to focus on the content I''m creating, not the mechanism for creation. Anything that distracts me or burdens me and reduces the time I can spend focused on content is a Bad Thing™

I have RedHat 8 installed just for the heck of it. I wanted to see what the hype was about.

Now, I keep it around for two reasons:
1 - Free software! There''s more development software on the RH8 CD than I''ve had on my Windows partition. Also since I won''t waste cash on WinDVD and none of the free Windows players seem to work for me, I can only play DVDs on Linux - but that''s fine.
2 - Just in case I download code/binaries for Linux that I''d like to try.

But why don''t I use it for anything else? In a word: winmodem. I like to be online, I can''t use my modem under Linux. It''s not even supported by those hacked-together "Linmodem" drivers.

quote: Original post by Oluseyi

quote: Original post by -vic-
Oluseyi: have you tried using LaTeX for your college papers? It''s an excellent tool.

I haven''t tried it, but ins''t it a markup tool? Unless you can also recommend slick GUI word processors that do LaTeX, it''s just not going to meet my requirements. I want to focus on the content I''m creating, not the mechanism for creation. Anything that distracts me or burdens me and reduces the time I can spend focused on content is a Bad Thing™

Actually, that is precisely the reason why I use LaTeX -- I want to focus on the content and not the layout or the tool to create it. Usually when I begin writing something in MS Word, I end up spending half the time wrestling with it to make the document look like I want. In LaTeX, you just write the text, tells it where new sections begin etc, and let the LaTeX compiler worry about the layout (and the result is usually very good).

But of course, that''s just my opinion.

I have a dual boot system win Win98 on one hard drive and Debian on the other one. The reason I chose debian was because I dont have a CD burner and I could copy all the installation stuff onto 5 floppies and then get everything else using my broadband connection. If I ever had access to a CD Burner I would try red hat, my friend says the RH9 is really good...hmm, myabe I should hook up my girlfriends laptop while its here and see if I can download and burn RH. Anyway, the reason I put linux on there is mainly for doing school work. All of my programming classes use Red Hat and specify that any programming assignments have to be able to run on those computers. That leaves me two choices, go into the lab and hope there is a computer free or do a remote login and hope that my connection doest slow down to a grinding halt.

I finally got tired of doing the remote login so I got Debian and now I do all of my programming and debugging at home, upload it to my school account and do a quick test to make sure it still works and I am done. Much faster and a lot less stressfull.

"I may not agree with what you say but I will defend to the death your right to say it."
--Voltaire

[edited by - cmptrgear on June 24, 2003 1:58:56 PM]

quote: Original post by Oluseyi

quote: Original post by -vic-
Oluseyi: have you tried using LaTeX for your college papers? It''s an excellent tool.

I haven''t tried it, but ins''t it a markup tool? Unless you can also recommend slick GUI word processors that do LaTeX, it''s just not going to meet my requirements. I want to focus on the content I''m creating, not the mechanism for creation. Anything that distracts me or burdens me and reduces the time I can spend focused on content is a Bad Thing™

Actually, the idea of Latex is exactly to not care about formating. For example, supose you want to publish something at an event, or you''re writing your thesis; you don''t need to care about the formating of these documents (that is, font size, title, etc etc...), Latex will handle it for you.

Hm, latex is kind of a markup tool, yes, but it''s not like HTML... (although i think it''s a shame that it''s not an XML application).

As for GUI editors, there are some, such as this one, that seems to be good, but i''ve never actually tried it; and there''s also this XSL that transforms XML in Latex, in case you feel confortable with XML.

Victor.

quote: Original post by -vic-
Actually, the idea of Latex is exactly to not care about formating. For example, supose you want to publish something at an event, or you''re writing your thesis; you don''t need to care about the formating of these documents (that is, font size, title, etc etc...), Latex will handle it for you.

And as a result, all LaTeX documents look exactly the same and they are all incredibly dull. Bleh.


AnkhSVN - A Visual Studio .NET Addin for the Subversion version control system.

First off, I use Gentoo Linux (previously a Slackware fan boy until 9.0 came out...), and have tried various other distros (pretty much all the biggies). As others have said, I like the hobbiest aspect of linux, but I also use it for pretty much everyday general purpose stuff because the drivers for it don''t cause it to crash all the time (unlike XP). I use OpenOffice for word processing, the GIMP for graphics (I know there''s a GIMP for windows, but it never seems to work as well for some reason), etc., etc. So honestly, the main reason I use it over Windows is the lack of crashing. It''s as simple as that.

As for LaTeX... I love it. It''s mostly useful for mathematical/scientific papers that require a lot of equations, as that''s really what it was designed for to begin with. While I''m not aware of any WYSIWYG-style editors for it, the best LaTeX editor I have found is Kile, which is a KDE-based editor. That''s actually another reason for using Linux over Windows. AFAIK, there aren''t any Windows LaTeX editors (at least, none that are very good, as I haven''t found a decent one before).

quote: Original post by Arild Fines

quote: Original post by -vic-
Actually, the idea of Latex is exactly to not care about formating. For example, supose you want to publish something at an event, or you''re writing your thesis; you don''t need to care about the formating of these documents (that is, font size, title, etc etc...), Latex will handle it for you.

And as a result, all LaTeX documents look exactly the same and they are all incredibly dull. Bleh.


AnkhSVN - A Visual Studio .NET Addin for the Subversion version control system.

When you''re writting a scientific document you must follow some rules, so yes they look excatly the same because they are meant to look exactly the same.