yeah! I have Windows again. Three weeks of screwing around with Mandrake remided me too much of messing with an Amiga in 1991!
Windows= Flash plugin required. Click. Yes I accept. Starts running…
no obscure geekcodes, just plug in USB stick.
Put the foot down and remembered i have a computer store. So the 700MHz Linux box is going back and I’ll play with this here sempron 2400 and a new 17" LCD.
I’ll use Linux for servers, but it’s got a ways to go for a home OS still…
Perhaps you’d like Mac OS X. It gives you the best of both worlds…nice interface with the BSD under the hood.
Dude, Linux has a pretty good “point and click” Interface…
Point click, call up a terminal, su, urpmi, link, restart xserver…
as opposed to windows? point click install reboot? by the way having to switch users is a good thing not a bad thing 
I personally dont like urpmi i prefer apt.
If you dont like the terminal you can get gnome-apt which will let you search/browse for the flash package click the checkbox and then click install or apt-get install flashplugin-nonfree.
then restart your browser.
the only beef i have is with the stupid java plugin for mozilla other than that I havnt seen anything that cant be done with one of the gui tools.
oh and my flash disks open when i click on my “usb” mount point only difference is i have to unmount them instead of clicking safely remove hardware 
Windows is easier to setup than linux for a basic setup but if you want to customize stuff it becomes a pain in the ass.
on my laptop i dont have to do anything in the terminal but i prefer it. I still have windows on my laptop but i only boot into it to add ringtones/pictures to my cell phone because my phone isnt supported in bitpim.
Not trying to convert you thats just my opinion.
Jesus knows where it’s at. He didn’t die on the cross clicking on a fucking start menu.
Modern Linux distros are pretty simple stupid these days. The hardware support is very nice, the software is top quality, and there are plenty of gui config tools to wet your whistle.
I still spend most of my time in the terminal though. In the time it took you to click “Next” 7 times to install some POS software, my package is installed, spyware not included.
I haven’t done a fresh operating system install for a few years now, currently updated to FC3 level.
Mind you my favorite video game these days is a split between vi and gdb. So whatever works for you.
Need windows? Vmware + mscracks.com. Has full USB support too, which sounds like it’ll work for your cellphone.
Does vmware have full usb support now? the last version i used didnt support webcams and a handfull of other devices.
edit:
excellent full USB support in version 5
I should imagine if the USB stick was plugged in during the install, it would get autoconfigured. As for mozilla plugins, yeah they were ALL a pain in the ass. The Adobe plugin installed perfectly, but i had to save pdfs to a file, then open them. THey didn’t open in the browser.
The point is: you want to get rid of the terminal. That’s not been the way to run a computer since 1985 when Mac and Amiga came out. I used to think like that, when I first saw the Mac demo’d I thought it was useless, how could you really do anything without a command line? I went with Amiga, wrote nice little scripts & Rexx tools that loaded your entire TV station BBS into ram and never accessed a harddrive until you hit a key to update.
After 10 yrs in the biz, I know 90% of people are too fucking stupid to even run a point and click interface, Linux is like learning ‘high german’ to them. That’s the market to crack, and I thought Mandrake would be the first distro to crack it. Been checking it out since 5.2 and it is getting better.
Another part of the problem is ‘urpmi’, ‘apt’, ‘emerge’. standardize, standardize, standardize! That’s the mantra for mass marketing…
I’ll have to echo what Dave said…
If you want ease of use, plus unix (real unix) if you want it, then go for Mac OS X.
Most people will never use bash or X11 in Mac OS X either, but it is there if you want it. So is Microsoft Office and Photoshop and World of Warcraft and iTunes and iMovie and Shake and Garageband and Doom 3 and all the other good stuff.
I use the command line pretty much for everything, but man, the GUI in Mac OS X just rocks compared to anything on Linux. Linux is GUI by committee, which doesn’t always work very well.
Don’t get me wrong, I love linux and use it exclusively for servers, but it won’t be on the desktop until your average joe can run it. That’s the problem we geeks don’t seem to be able to see.
We are not average, we can compile something, run vi to edit a configuration file, whatever. 99% of users can’t, and really don’t care. To me, that’s the beauty of Mac OS X. You can do all the geeky unix stuff if you want, but if you just want to run Microsoft Word and Firefox, you don’t need to bother with all the crap.
If you want to argue price, then I just say that Windows and Linux is only cheaper if your time is worth nothing.
what i was saying…
Have my eye on the G5 at London Drugs for $1999. I’d crank it to a Gig, but $1999 isn’t an outrageous price to get a computer of that class.
Start with something small. Say a mac mini : O ) there fast too.
I used to be on a mission to convert everyone to Linux, but I’ve since realized that some people just don’t give a shit enough to wanna learn it. Which is completely fair. Everyone has different needs.
Myself I don’t dig the pretty graphical effects, fades, slides, and anything else that wastes 4 usecs. I don’t like clicking on things either. And I really really really hate file managers.
My GUI of choice is GNOME. But what I mean by gui, is a 24 pix high toolbar at the top with quick launch buttons, a clock, CPU load, and a task switcher. Oh, it’s also religiously choosing programs based on their widget library too.
My computer might be boring, but it does exactly what I want it to do, as fast as possible. Works for me, but it sounds like most everyone else would be pretty frustrated with it.
Good point! Here’s a short good read that states os advocacy (specifically openbsd, but one can substutite any os).
http://www.monkey.org/openbsd/advocating-openbsd.html
I like this “Stay calm. There’s no reason to get excited. If someone says something about OpenBSD that you don’t like, so what? It’s just computers, it’s not important” and “Don’t flame people because they use other systems. Ever.”
[quote=“Hey you East Coast geeks, here’s one fer ya all bye jeez’”]
mac mini’s mother made me make a mini mac…[/quote]
I was reading somewhere online about “Amiga persecution complex” and the writer indicated a lot of Linux people suffer from the same thing…
I don’t want a mac mini, i want the Big Mac full meal deal
supersize me!!!
My usb stuff wasnt plugged in during the install as a matter of fact i just got it for christmas.
funny my acrobat plugin worked fine once i installed it. Again I am not trying to convert you to use linux as your desktop but so far alot of the things you have said are false. Or at least in my experience hav proven to be false.
Linux is not for the average user but for those who want to get work done fuck yes its better than windows once its setup. which for some things can be a bit of a hassle
everytime I boot to windows I have some new update or clean some stupid spyware or other virus. As for choosing a standard package manager… what the hell for? different distributions use different software thats why they are different. I prefer apt and thats why i use debian based distributions others prefer urpmi or yum or emerge linux is about choice.
Personally I hope linux is never adopted as a mainstream desktop operating system. People clearly are too stupid to operate even windows which i will admit in alot of respects is “easier” but thats more so for the stupid user who needs a popup window and a next button to make them feel safe installing a plugin.
Personally i dont like the gui in osx its pretty and all but i spent more time disabling things that annoyed me than it takes me to setup gnome the way i like it. Oh and im too busy for any of those applications you listed including office closing clippy takes too much time 
ok well thats not it but MS office sucks anyway.
Seriously use what works for you but dont say linux doesnt make a good desktop just because its not for you.
Oh by the way linux doesnt cost much time once you have 1 setup the way you want it doenst take much to roll out a bunch of clones.
edit: the mouse made computing more inefficient in most respects.
BLASPHEMY!!!
Arrrgggh I bet you’re made of wood and float and must be a witch! Burn Burn! Call the Inquisition!
how you know what i’m doing?
The mouse sucks. I can’t wait until I can type with my mind. Leave it on while I sleep and clean up those stack corruptions…