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Re: [LUG] A rant in our favour

 

Alan Jones wrote:
> Its such a shame that computer users are so polar!  Worst seem to be the 
> Linux hard hats, who simply *hate* everything else! - As a Linux user 
> myself, I'm used to the flack from all the Micro-softies slagging off 
> Tux as “hard to install”, “impossible to learn”, or “just for geeks”. By 
> the same token, when Linux users see me booted into Vista on my laptop, 
> they start banging on with the unholy Microsoft speech! ... One of my 
> jobs involves a lot of video editing - which way do you think I should 
> go for that then? - Well, not surprisingly at all, the MAC way of 
> course! - I don't care how powerful your windows or Linux machines are, 
> they are just not going to cut it (excuse the pun) for pushing hours of 
> HD video about the place. 

Yeah I can see that, Mac's seem pretty well supported for media stuff. 
I vaguely remember the days when it used to be the Atari ST for music 
and the Amiga for video. :-)

> Don't get me wrong here - all the “day to day” 
> machines and those configured for friends and family tend to be built on 
> Ubuntu.

That's good.

> Its a clean, fast and simple OS that has vastly reduced my need 
> to constantly monitor, check and fix machines that are primarily in the 
> hands of kids or idiots!. After all, no amount of education on the 
> dangers of porn surfing, downloading and file sharing will actually stop 
> anyone going for it, especially when they are not the ones having to fix 
> things twice a week! - My personal laptop on the other hand has Vista on 
> it – yep - sorry, I'm a happy vista user! - but, in my humble opinion, 
> everything has a place.

Hmm, each to their own I guess.  I'm not a great fan of Vista myself. 
Not because I mainly use Linux, but because I don't like the way it 
takes a perfectly good machine and slows it down so much.  I have to 
support a combination of Windows XP and Vista at the moment and the 
Windows XP machines which are single core Sempron machines with 
512MB/1GB memory absolutely run rings around the Vista machines with 2GB 
Ram and dual core Core 2 Duo 1.8GHz CPUs (don't get me started on Vista 
on the laptops!).

I must admit, I do like the look of Vista though, I just wish it wasn't 
so bloated.

> Just because you prefer hammers, its still not 
> right to bang crinkly nails (screws) in with it – for that job, you need 
> a screwdriver. Computers are the same – they all excel at something, you 
> just need to apply them to the right jobs!

I agree.  I'd say that for the majority of jobs that a general 
office/home user would do, Ubuntu and other Linux distros do the job 
really well.

> P.S.  Anyone actually using Microsoft's Media Centre to watch and record 
> TV is really just *asking* for DRM trouble - BUT to be honest, when you 
> have a family to convince, even the best of the rest (Myth TV for 
> instance) still leaves a lot to be desired!
> 

Oh I dunno, I had a play with Media Center on my other half's PC in 
Vista.  It wouldn't play DVDs due to the damn DRM.  That was using HDMI 
to the TV too!
Now we generally watch videos on either Windows Media Player or Media 
Player Classic (with ffmpeg plugins).  I did try VLC but it's got an 
annoying bug where it won't output a Dolby Digital or DTS stream to my 
AV receiver properly.

Eventually though when I get some high enough spec spare bits I'll be 
building a MythTV box to plug into the telly.

Rob


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