The problem with free is...

[WanaBtux]

The problem with free is, we have learned, not to expect much. That being stated, I have asked "Julia" to marry me and she said Yes! I had been with Windows since 3.11 16bit in the mid eighty's, then 98 SE and on to XP Pro, which was currently on my Sony laptop and my Aria Antec desktop. Both machines are all Intel inside, you know, the little chip the Penguin eats and then starts having his own rave! The problem began with Vista (still makes me shiver). When Vista came on the scene our company decided to upgrade (later found that to be an oxymoron). After purchasing several Vista disk and licenses our IT department started to change the system over. Three months later after countless hours of work and several calls to Microsoft the team reverted back to XP Pro and had a Vista OS disk burning, literally, they burned all the disk and cheered. Needless to say, I decided not to follow the same path with my personal computers. Its one thing to get something free and it sucks, its another thing to pay quite a bit of money for it to suck, agree? Realising back in March since XP Pro service pack 2 was about not to be supported I knew it was only a matter of time that SP3 would be next, thus forcing you (courtesy of Mr. Gates) to buy another OS, or so I thought. I tried several distros and in May decided to dual boot my XP with Ubuntu 10.04 LTS. Ubuntu is not quite there out of the box and takes some work (which is no big deal, its free) I am grateful because I have learned a lot from that distro. As an example, you can break it. The beautiful thing about Linux is when something does not work it will let you try and fix it. Regardless of the fact that you have no clue what you are about to do, it will let you. And needless to say, I broke it a couple of hundred times trying to "fix it" (I consider myself a professional Linux installer now). Back in September I came across an article about Mint 9. It stated that it was a refined version of Ubuntu, so I tried it and indeed it lived up to that statement. Almost everything worked out of the DVD installation except for some reason, Java applets. And I could not "fix it" either. So now Mint 10, everything works, If I ever meet Clem I would shake his hand and tell him what a pleasure it is to run this creation, it is perfect in form and function. He has done an outstanding job and I no longer dual boot, I reclaimed the wasted Windows space for this new Distro. I have seen the light and am a complete convert, praise the Lord! Thank you Clem! You have shown that a free OS can give you much more than you would expect, even from paying out the nose for Windows 7.

[jokersloose]

AMEN!!!

Preach it brother

[TBABill]

Working as advertised is a wonderful thing

[tdockery97]

Welcome to Mint WanaBtux. I can totally relate to your post. I still merrily tinker with my system (even though it's already working perfectly) until I bork it, then start again. Thank goodness for Remastersys and Clonezilla! I've never had so much fun in my life. Well, maybe that one time...

[DrHu]

The problem with free is, we have learned, not to expect much.

I think that is less true of Linux and OSS than of windows: shareware/freeware and virus writers

For example, I am quite impressed with various OSS projects such as the desktop's for the underlying Linux kernel, some applications, such as Scribus (DTP) and office suite (OpenOffice)

[Oscar799]

Hello WanaBtux
Welcome to Mint Forum
There is a lot of useful information for new and not-so-new users here -> http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.p ... 58#p302358
We have a Community site http://community.linuxmint.com/
For real-time help and discussion there are IRC channels,open MintMenu>Internet>XChat and you will be automatically connected to #linuxmint-help and #linuxmint-chat
Have fun with Mint

[jesica]

welcome to the forum