> My industry sources tell me that Microsoft will NOT introduce another
> operating system like Win2K, WinXP, etc because the update costs
> (costs to keep the Windows OS from being attacked) are too high.
> So I am trying to make plans for a CAREFUL movement from Win2K to
> Linux, etc. Since many of us have Win32 tools, at least some part of
> the system should still be able to run .
>
> I was thinking that those of us faced with making the move should work
> together to keep the costs of such a change as low as possible. Any ideas
> on how/what we need to do? In this way, we can accumulate links and
> notes from those very satisfied Linux gurus out there.
>
> I figure we have about 2 years before MS drops Win2K support, maybe
> 5 before WinXP is dropped (Win98 was dropped last year).
>
> --Bob
>

> I don't believe your industry sources.
>
> There _is_ a new version of Windows already in the pipeline, code named
> longhorn. It is expected to be released in 2006.
> www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2004/aug04/08-27target2006pr.asp
> and,
> http://msdn.microsoft.com/longhorn/
>
> Since Windows is Microsoft's cash cow I doubt they will ever stop producing
> new versions.
>
> Windows 98 support via windows update was extended to June 30, 2006. See:
> http://support.microsoft.com/gp/lifean1
>
> The end of support schedule for the newer versions are:
> Windows 2000 Pro: 30-Jun-2010, Windows XP: Pro 31-Dec-2011, see:
> http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=fh;[ln];LifeWin
>
> Paul
>
>
>

>Bob Axtell wrote:
>
>  
>
>>My industry sources tell me that Microsoft will NOT introduce another
>>operating system like Win2K, WinXP, etc because the update costs
>>(costs to keep the Windows OS from being attacked) are too high.
>>    
>>
>
>Hi Bob,
>
>It is widely known that "Longhorn" is *slated* to be the next OS from
>Microsoft. Where did your industry sources get this information?
>
>I've read that Longhorn will ship with some original features omitted (which
>will eventually be added in later releases), but I have not read anything
>that supports the stance your industry sources are making (if I understand
>your quote correctly). Would you be able to elaborate further?
>
>Best regards and thanks Bob,
>
>Ken Pergola
>
>

>On Friday 12 November 2004 12:02 pm, Bob Axtell wrote:
>  
>
>>Any ideas on how/what we need to do? In this way, we can accumulate
>>links and notes from those very satisfied Linux gurus out there.
>>    
>>
>
>What you want to do is "gradually" convert versus going at it "cold turkey".
>To do this, you want to be able to make your computer dual-bootable so that
>you can easily switch from one os to another, then slowly ween yourself
>off-of one os and gradually switch over to the new one.
>
>What you DON'T want to do is drop everything off of your computer, install
>linux then find out you got yourself in a bind because you are still missing
>some "must have" windows applications.
>
>Expect this process to take months versus days.
>
>In my case, I've got a triple boot harddrive between os/2, win98 and linux,
>but my suggestion to anyone who has not used linux before is to simply get
>yourself a 2nd harddrive so that you have 2 harddrives on your machine.
>Your original harddrive, do nothing to it, it stays as win2k or xp
>Your 2nd harddrive, make 4 partitions on it, example 10g harddrive:
>If you have an older computer, you may want to put-off running linux. linux
>will run, but it would sort of like putting xp on a 100mhz computer....
>which means that it would run slow.
>I would say, a 200mhz computer is at the bottom end of tolerable if you
>decided to run the latest mandrake especially if you got ISA cards in it....
>A 300mhz+ machine with more than 128m of ram is way better.
>1)split as win32 vfat partition of say 1g so that youu can share files
>between windows and linux (linux is quite okay writing to vfat32... I don't
>know the status of writing to ntfs... it was a problem in the past, plus
>microsoft is going to hold the secrets of that filesystem as long as
>possible to keep out the linux guys ;-)
>2)next partition, make it your "/home", probably 2g+ is fine... most of the
>document stuff end up in your "/home"
>3)next partition is "/" for the rest of your drive... 6.75g, but leave a
>little bit for your /swap file.
>4)If you got lots of memory, you probably won't touch the swap file, however,
>leave 256k for it anyways.
>
>My suggestion is go with an easy to use "Desktop" freindly linux...
>http://www.mandrakesoft.com/
>I haven't used SuSE, but it is also a recommended linux.
>
>After you have setup linux on the computer and got dual booting working, then
>the next steps to conversion is to start choosing what you will start to use
>to ween yourself off windows.
>My recommendation, use the KDE desktop.
>convert your email and browser and internet to use the KDE equivalents.
>If you have trouble with KDE's browser "konqueror" you can always substitute
>Mozilla or opera, hoewver, for the techno crowd, konqueror does quite well.
>Setting up kmail is fairly straightforward too. this is rather dated now, but
>it does show how easy it is to setup...
>http://www.ehosting.ca/customerService/tutorials/KDEmail/KDEmail.php
>
>slowly... you'll start migrating more and more like spreadsheets and other
>whatnot.
>
>On the windows side, you'll also want to become more and more familiar with
>opensource apps so that migrating is easier and doesn't look so foreign when
>you run the linux os partition.
>to begin with, you start migrating to...
>-http://www.mozilla.org instead of internet explorer.
>-http://www.openoffice.org instead of using microsoft office.
>...and slowly start substituting open source programs for your current
>windows programs.
>If you slowly migrate, you'll eventually find yourself rarely running your
>windows partition.... you'll be down to a couple of must-haves, then a few,
>then one,...then none.
>
>  
>
>>I figure we have about 2 years before MS drops Win2K support, maybe
>>5 before WinXP is dropped (Win98 was dropped last year).
>>    
>>
>
>I believe Win98 support was reactivated another 5 years to keep the tail-end
>or home users from converting to linux (which is better than you can say for
>win2k or the business oriented versions of windows).

>On Friday 12 November 2004 12:02 pm, Bob Axtell wrote:
>  
>
>>Any ideas on how/what we need to do? In this way, we can accumulate
>>links and notes from those very satisfied Linux gurus out there.
>>    
>>
>
>What you want to do is "gradually" convert versus going at it "cold turkey".
>To do this, you want to be able to make your computer dual-bootable so that
>you can easily switch from one os to another, then slowly ween yourself
>off-of one os and gradually switch over to the new one.
>
>What you DON'T want to do is drop everything off of your computer, install
>linux then find out you got yourself in a bind because you are still missing
>some "must have" windows applications.
>
>Expect this process to take months versus days.
>
>In my case, I've got a triple boot harddrive between os/2, win98 and linux,
>but my suggestion to anyone who has not used linux before is to simply get
>yourself a 2nd harddrive so that you have 2 harddrives on your machine.
>Your original harddrive, do nothing to it, it stays as win2k or xp
>Your 2nd harddrive, make 4 partitions on it, example 10g harddrive:
>If you have an older computer, you may want to put-off running linux. linux
>will run, but it would sort of like putting xp on a 100mhz computer....
>which means that it would run slow.
>I would say, a 200mhz computer is at the bottom end of tolerable if you
>decided to run the latest mandrake especially if you got ISA cards in it....
>A 300mhz+ machine with more than 128m of ram is way better.
>1)split as win32 vfat partition of say 1g so that youu can share files
>between windows and linux (linux is quite okay writing to vfat32... I don't
>know the status of writing to ntfs... it was a problem in the past, plus
>microsoft is going to hold the secrets of that filesystem as long as
>possible to keep out the linux guys ;-)
>2)next partition, make it your "/home", probably 2g+ is fine... most of the
>document stuff end up in your "/home"
>3)next partition is "/" for the rest of your drive... 6.75g, but leave a
>little bit for your /swap file.
>4)If you got lots of memory, you probably won't touch the swap file, however,
>leave 256k for it anyways.
>
>My suggestion is go with an easy to use "Desktop" freindly linux...
>http://www.mandrakesoft.com/
>I haven't used SuSE, but it is also a recommended linux.
>
>After you have setup linux on the computer and got dual booting working, then
>the next steps to conversion is to start choosing what you will start to use
>to ween yourself off windows.
>My recommendation, use the KDE desktop.
>convert your email and browser and internet to use the KDE equivalents.
>If you have trouble with KDE's browser "konqueror" you can always substitute
>Mozilla or opera, hoewver, for the techno crowd, konqueror does quite well.
>Setting up kmail is fairly straightforward too. this is rather dated now, but
>it does show how easy it is to setup...
>http://www.ehosting.ca/customerService/tutorials/KDEmail/KDEmail.php
>
>slowly... you'll start migrating more and more like spreadsheets and other
>whatnot.
>
>On the windows side, you'll also want to become more and more familiar with
>opensource apps so that migrating is easier and doesn't look so foreign when
>you run the linux os partition.
>to begin with, you start migrating to...
>-http://www.mozilla.org instead of internet explorer.
>-http://www.openoffice.org instead of using microsoft office.
>...and slowly start substituting open source programs for your current
>windows programs.
>If you slowly migrate, you'll eventually find yourself rarely running your
>windows partition.... you'll be down to a couple of must-haves, then a few,
>then one,...then none.
>
>  
>
>>I figure we have about 2 years before MS drops Win2K support, maybe
>>5 before WinXP is dropped (Win98 was dropped last year).
>>    
>>
>
>I believe Win98 support was reactivated another 5 years to keep the tail-end
>or home users from converting to linux (which is better than you can say for
>win2k or the business oriented versions of windows).
>  
>

> [I don't want to start another WIN - Linux war.]
>
> My info was that MS would concentrate on making .NET applications
> and no O/S- a la Win2K, WinXP- will be released.  I never heard Longhorn
> mentioned at all. The story was that MS has taken a real beating having to
> rewrite Win2K and WinXP every week, in that O/S software no longer
> meets their target financial model. This is from private friends in
> high-tech
> industry. Nothing special. But plausible, nonetheless.
>
> Personally, Ken, I'm not sure I want to take any more chances with MS
> stuff. I've had two crashes in 3 years due to viruses on Win98 then Win2K,
> with several earlier crashes. So I'm getting ready to move on up- at
> least for
> Internet, email, and personal stuff- so I can isolate Win code from the
> outside
> world.
>
> My virus checker now identifies W32 viruses in normal Website advertising
> downloads now. As Monk says, "Its a jungle out there!".
>
> --Bob
>

> Bob Axtell wrote:
>
>> [I don't want to start another WIN - Linux war.]
>>
>> My info was that MS would concentrate on making .NET applications
>> and no O/S- a la Win2K, WinXP- will be released.  I never heard Longhorn
>> mentioned at all. The story was that MS has taken a real beating
>> having to
>> rewrite Win2K and WinXP every week, in that O/S software no longer
>> meets their target financial model. This is from private friends in
>> high-tech
>> industry. Nothing special. But plausible, nonetheless.
>>
>> Personally, Ken, I'm not sure I want to take any more chances with MS
>> stuff. I've had two crashes in 3 years due to viruses on Win98 then
>> Win2K,
>> with several earlier crashes. So I'm getting ready to move on up- at
>> least for
>> Internet, email, and personal stuff- so I can isolate Win code from
>> the outside
>> world.
>>
>> My virus checker now identifies W32 viruses in normal Website
>> advertising
>> downloads now. As Monk says, "Its a jungle out there!".
>>
>> --Bob
>>
>
> Bob, how familiar are you with Linux already?
> If I had to advise a new user who wanted to do it the "right" way I
> would suggest they learn Debian or Slackware [I'm a Slackware user].
> The other way is to learn RedHat linux. There are middle-grounds as
> well. If you are interested in knowing linux rather than just running
> programs, don't use RedHat [is it officially Fedora now?]
>
> Either way, get a basic "Unix Reference"
> Do not get the 4" thick book, I'm talking about the one that is 1/2"
> thick. It will cover things you need to know without being overly
> confusing. It won't hurt your hands trying to read it, either.
>
> RedHat is a top-down approach, Slackware and Debian are bottom-up.
>

>
>
> Bob Axtell wrote:
> >[I don't want to start another WIN - Linux war.]
> >
> >My info was that MS would concentrate on making .NET applications
> >and no O/S- a la Win2K, WinXP- will be released.  I never heard Longhorn
> >mentioned at all. The story was that MS has taken a real beating having to
> >rewrite Win2K and WinXP every week, in that O/S software no longer
> >meets their target financial model. This is from private friends in
> >high-tech
> >industry. Nothing special. But plausible, nonetheless.
> >
> >Personally, Ken, I'm not sure I want to take any more chances with MS
> >stuff. I've had two crashes in 3 years due to viruses on Win98 then Win2K,
> >with several earlier crashes. So I'm getting ready to move on up- at
> >least for
> >Internet, email, and personal stuff- so I can isolate Win code from the
> >outside
> >world.
> >
> >My virus checker now identifies W32 viruses in normal Website advertising
> >downloads now. As Monk says, "Its a jungle out there!".
> >
> >--Bob
> >
>
> Bob, how familiar are you with Linux already?
> If I had to advise a new user who wanted to do it the "right" way I
> would suggest they learn Debian or Slackware [I'm a Slackware user]. The
> other way is to learn RedHat linux. There are middle-grounds as well. If
> you are interested in knowing linux rather than just running programs,
> don't use RedHat [is it officially Fedora now?]

>
>
> Byron A Jeff wrote:
>
>>
>> I'm almost certain that there is a current version of SPICE that runs on
>> Linux.
>>
>> BAJ
>
> AFAIK Berkeley SPICE was written to work on UNIX from the beginning.
> (Therefore by chain rule hopefully working just fine on linux and *BSD)
> http://bwrc.eecs.berkeley.edu/Classes/IcBook/SPICE/

> On Sat, Nov 13, 2004 at 09:25:26PM +0100, Stef Mientki wrote:
>
>>>My advise is for novices to first use Linux in a user only style. That's
>>>why
>>>I hand out Knoppix CDs as they autodetect/autoconfig everything from a CD.
>>
>>I agree that's the way to go,
>>as I'm a novice too,
>>so I'm just waiting until someone builds Knoppics ;-)
> ???
>
> There are about 2 dozen Live Linux CDs including Knoppix. Hence the statement
> "I hand out Knoppix CDs".

> Get a copy from here:
> http://www.knoppix.net
> Burn it on a CD and boot away.
> BAJ

>
> It extends pretty nicely (before it falls apart like all metaphors eventually
> do) into things like, "With the do-it-yourself gardens, you can put the roses
> over there, and the chrysanthemums over here, and the dog run in the back
> corner if you like."
>
> The *ultimate* in Linux geekiness, would have to be the Linux-from-Scratch
> project.  http://www.linuxfromscratch.org  Want to have no social life for a year or
> so?  (Okay, I'm exaggerating...) If you want your computer to do EXACTLY what
> you tell it to, LFS is the way to go!  Pack a lunch, you're going to be at
> the keyboard for a while.  Most Linux folks consider LFS a good
> mind-exercise, but not a great way to build a solid working Linux system for
> themselves.  But the option is always there.
>
> Up from that level, so-called "source-based" Linux distributions like Gentoo
> are real close to LFS.  (Of course, I hate the term source-based -- all
> software starts out as source code somewhere, it's just a matter of who
> compiles it for you.  You, or someone else.)
>
> Binary-distributions (the majority of them) then compete with each other on
> package management and ease of installation.  Remember, when you get finished
> installing the system, the software is pretty-much exactly the same.  These
> distros are typically the ones people start with.  Examples are Debian, SuSE,
> RedHat, Mandrake... all the "big names" you've probably heard of.  Typically
> but not always, the older the distribution, the more obscure it may appear to
> be when trying to load/run it.  Slackware is old, very old, and hard for
> people without Unix knowledge ahead of time to understand.  But the flip-side
> of this coin is that Slack is extremely flexible.  Later distros like RedHat,
> SuSE, and Mandrake are much less flexible and tend to be "brittle" and break
> a lot if you try to highly customize them to your tastes.
>
> And finally "Live CD" distributions create a fully working Linux on CD and
> then actually RUN from the CD unless you copy the system to your hard disk.  
> You do have the option on most of these to automatically do that
> installation.  Now here's an interesting twist -- many of these are based off
> of the Binary distributions and can be morphed into one... An example is
> Knoppix.  It is a Live-CD that is based off of, but highly modified version
> of Debian Linux.  People use Knoppix to do the installation to the drive, and
> then change the package manager's configuration to pull further updates from
> Debian.  There's a number of sites that explain how to do this.  Kinda a
> nifty way to get past the pain of installing stuff, as many of the Live-CD
> distros are far ahead of their brethren when it comes to auto-detecting
> hardware and installation of appropriate drivers.

>
> A *very* good resource for looking at all the possible distros out there is
> http://www.distrowatch.com -- they list virtually EVERYTHING - even the podunk
> little distros some guy created in his spare time.  A good example of that,
> and a pretty highly respected one is MEPIS.  Some guy decided that he had
> some ideas on how to make a better version of Debian, so he did it.  He's got
> a small but loyal following and lots of volunteers now, helping him stay
> ahead of the (moving) curve.
>
> There's a linux distribution for every possible taste and preference out there
> - that's both the strong suit of Linux and it's frustration to new users.  
> Old linux users have often "tried them all" after a few years - window
> shopping their extra PC's through various distros until they really like and
> feel like they've had a good experience with one of them.  Then something
> turns a switch and some contentedly enjoy what they've found, while others
> get zealout-like tendencies to want to convert everyone to their way of
> thinking - similar to politics!  ;-)
>
> But the thing to remember is that at the end of the day, the kernel and
> toolchain are EXACTLY the same across all of the linuxes (we'll leave the
> special "hardened Linux systems" like the NSA Linux distribution out of this
> discussion, that's an advanced topic) and if you find a piece of software
> that your distro doesn't have available as a package or a source-based
> tarball and make instructions, you can download the source and build it with
> a simple make command.  The power of Linux is in having the source code of
> everything that you're using... don't like something about a particular piece
> of software -- open up the source and change it.  Or write a better one...

>
> Hoping to be more helpful than just hopeful with this post... one of the
> decent links for newbies to Linux to look for documentation on various Linux
> things is a collaborative effort at SourceForge,
> http://newbiedoc.sourceforge.net .
>
> Another thing that's NOT mentioned enough by people helping others get started
> in Linux who aren't close by - find out if there is a local Linux users group
> and go!  You find out a couple of important things... a) what distro people
> in the area tend to like and use... this is important if you ever need
> help... and b) who those people are.  In the two local LUG's here, there are
> not only regular folks using Linux, but at least ten Linux professionals or
> consultants who do Linux for a living hanging around, and you get to pick
> their brains for free.  They normally charge for this stuff.  (Myself
> included, although I'm more of a Unix generalist than a Linux specialist, but
> I track certain things I'm interested in within Linux very closely and can
> answer questions on those topics, mostly server-related stuff, with ease.)
>
> The "community" feel of Linux not only shouldn't be ignored by new Linux
> users, it should be embraced and enjoyed.  Finding people who are doing neat
> things with their computers and hanging out with them once a week or month or
> whatever, is always a good brain exercise.