[sdiy] OT: Give Linux a Chance (was: Screw Linux.)

[R. D. Davis]

Quothe Jeff Farr, from writings of Mon, Oct 03, 2005 at 07:49:00PM -0400:
> Yes, it has nothing to do with sdiy, but I've gotta vent this. I've spent
> the whole weekend trying to install linux on my laptop to work with some
> packages from CCRMA (Ok, so it has a little to do with SDIY). Long story
> short my laptop is now *physically* broken. No BIOS. Windows was never this
> bad, not even close. Makes me wonder if it's all just hype..

What distribution of Linux did you use?  I've installed a Debian Sarge
distribution with a low-latency 2.4.x kernel, on a PC for dual-booting
with Windoze 2000 Pro. (but using separate hard drives), and that
installation went reasonably smoothly...  didn't get ALSA working
right (works, but buggy!) with the on-board sound chip or an old sound
card that I was using, but am going to give it another try when my
Echo Mia-MIDI card arrives, which is supposed to work with ALSA (the
first Mia-MIDI was broken on arrival, so I had to send that back for a
replacement).  Of course... installing UNIX on systems is nothing new
to me, so it didn't seem all that difficult.  Still, Linux is not
hype, nor is FreeBSD, etc.  Linux, like other flavors of UNIX, is much
easier to work with than Windoze.

Personally, I prefer FreeBSD (installed on a laptop, dual-boot with
Windoze-95, with no problems, and on a PC by itself) - a very reliable
OS, but it's not as good for audio support when it comes to the latest
versions of everything and ALSA.

Now if I can find a very cheap copy of OS X, that will run on an old 
266MHz Power MAC, to play with... 

-- 
   R. D. Davis                The difference between humans & other animals: an
www.rddavis.org  410-744-4900    unnatural belief that we're above Nature & her
     Dangling Spiders              other creatures, using dogma to justify such
   Electronic Music Studio           beliefs and to justify much human cruelty.