[NCLUG] Living without windows? LONG

[BOF]

Rich Young wrote:

>I'm looking for advice on migrating to linux permanently, for all my computing  needs. <snip>
>
Hello,

After reading your requirements, I'm not so sure that converting to 
Linux as your primary OS would be the best thing for you.

The primary thing that would prevent you from using Linux is your need 
to run VB and Access. The only way that I know that you could do this 
would be to run one of the Windows emulators. I have run VMWare and have 
not had problems with it, but I don't know if it would run VB or Access. 
While there are on-line 30-day trial versions, to buy it is currently 
$300, and it does not look like VMWare is again going to sell a VMWare 
Lite that would run just Win98 for $99. Certainly once you bought it, 
you would be able to run almost any Win98 program, including MS Word and 
TextPad.

In regards to your wife's use of MS Word, how well the various versions 
of Linux Word-conversion capable products would work will depend upon 
how sophisticated her Word documents are. If she uses it to write pretty 
much straight documents, then the Linux products would probably do. 
OTOH, if she needs things like tables and many of the MS fonts, then the 
current crop may not serve her. I know that AbiWord currently does not 
handle tables at all. I believe that Applixware Office does, but costs 
$99. I was not impressed with Star Office because its on-screen display 
never looked as good as Word.

I have had great success with Netscape as a e-mail program and web 
browser. Unless you need Internet Explorer, it would be suitable for 
your use.

The HP810 printer should be supported under the Common Unix Printing 
project, if not with the LPRng program. You can check this under KRUD.

I don't know about the scanner, as I think scanner support is still 
pretty spotty. I have a parallel-port HP5200 that I have never been able 
to get to work.

Thus, given your needs, you would have to shell out $300 to buy VMWare, 
install it, and then do a complete install of Windows, VB, Access, etc. 
This would on top of the  time to set up Linux. So for you to convert to 
Linux and get it to do what you currently do under Win98 would get 
really expensive in terms of time and pretty expensive in terms of 
money. You'd probably be better off buying a new hard drive and 
reinstalling Win98. There are new HD's for as little as $80 - $120 at 
CompUSA. This would be the cheapest solution in terms of time and money 
given your requirements.

However, you might consider this: buy the hard drive, install it as the 
primary HD, and then install the HD you have Linux on as the second HD, 
and dual boot. KRUD 7.2 uses GRUB, so you could set this up without much 
problem. (If you do this, I would also suggest that you keep each OS on 
a separate drive, as I have had problems with them co-existing on the 
same drive).

This would allow you to have the best solution to your current needs. It 
would also allow you to practice with Linux until you can see if you 
like it, and determine how well (if at all) it could replace Win98 as 
you use it.

Much frustration in using Linux is from its learning curve. This can be 
very steep if you want to take the time to get into the nitty-gritty of 
running it. OTOH, if you can find someone to help you set it up, then 
you can avoid much of this frustration and gain some breathing room 
while you learn the hard stuff. At any rate, you will find that it is as 
easy as using Win98 at the user's level, but much more stable and in the 
long run, easier and cheaper to use. Your computing experience,once you 
got used to the Linux way of doing things, would be at least as good, to 
a whale of a lot better, as using MS products.

So I would urge you to try using Linux, but given your situation, you 
may want to stick with Win98 a little longer: it sounds like it meets 
your needs a little bit better.

BOF