[conspire] return to a state of grace

[Calvin Wong]

On Sat, 16 Oct 2004, Eric De Mund wrote:

> People,
>
> A brief note to announce that I've returned to a state of grace: I no
> longer have any Microsoft Windows systems here at home. I may need some
> moral support as my body cleanses itself of the 7 years or so of toxins
> that have accumulated.
>
> My main system at home is now running Slackware Linux 10.0. (I'm too new
> to the Debian packaging and system-updating scheme to make my main sys-
> tem Debian; over the next couple of months, I'll come up to speed on
> this with my secondary machine, which will be Debian.) From 1990-1997,
> after which I got hold of Windows 95 (or vice versa), I was running
> SunOS 4.1.1 on a Sparc 1, and it served me very well.
>
> The straw that broke the camel's back for me was another system-file-
> gone-bad under Windows 2000. Over the years, I'd become an expert at
> Windows 95, NT 4.0 (even managing to convert NT 4.0 Workstation to NT
> 4.0 Server, by extremely judicious off-line tweaking of the System
> Registry), Windows 2000, and Windows XP, however, far too much of my
> time, over those years, was spent tweaking and babysitting the systems.
> I have no idea how many man-days if not man-weeks I've spent getting the
> systems "just right". I'd gotten my expertise to the point that I could
> set up a Windows system for a friend or client and have it remain rock
> solid for one year without need of further tweaking.
>
> However, after that amount of time elapses, give or take, depending on
> the use of the system (past future mother-in-law system has lasted 3
> years; my systems never more than 18 months), the System Registry and
> system files invariably get into either a corrupt or an inconsistent
> state that simply cannot be repaired. And so a reinstallation is the
> only fix.
>
> This time, some system file went south, resulting in a blue-screen-at-
> boot-and-then-reboot cycle. And, as I wasn't put on this ball of rock to
> spend my life tweaking Windows systems, I finally said, "Enough. I'm
> through."
>
> I type this message to you from host chickamauga, that aforementioned
> Slackware 10.0 system, ssh(1)'ed in to my ISP, idiom.com, where
> ixian.com is hosted. And so my emailing capability was not affected. In
> fact, most of my capabilities have not been affected by this change. For
> some time, now, I've been doing my emailing via UNIX; my "word process-
> ing" via Emacs or OpenOffice; my IM'ing via gaim; my browsing via Opera
> or Firefox (cf. q1); and my IRC'ing via X-Chat. I probably only have
> about 6-12 things that I exclusively used Windows applications to do,
> and if you folks have pointers on Linux analogs, I'd be very grateful.
> Once these items are solved, I'll essentially be fully up and running
> again.
>
> q1:  Is there a (non-commercial) graphical web browser under Linux that
>      remembers all my open tabs from the last session? This is one thing
>      I like about Opera, yet would love to find a non-commercial solu-
>      tion, here.
>
> q2:  What application rips audio CDs, using error-correction? I used to
>      use Exact Audio Copy under Windows, which would read a CD sector
>      repeatedly until it was happy it had read the sector correctly. It
>      was a superb ripper, handling scratched CDs with aplomb. Not to
>      mention grace, and elan.
try
grip - GNOME-based CD-player/ripper/encoder
with
lame - LAME Ain't an MP3 Encoder

>
> q3:  Is CUPS now the preferred way to go, for printing? I need to figure
>      out printing. I have a NEC non-PostScript laser printer (NEC Super-
>      Script 870) directly connected to my system.
>
> q4:  What is an easy CD/DVD burning solution? Consulting my notes data-
>      base, I see that it was K3B that you were discussing and praising,
>      recently. Is that the way to go?
gui? gcombust is very easy to use and doesn't need gnome/kde libs
gcombust - GTK+ based CD mastering and burning program
gcdw - Tool for burning CD's - graphical version

>
> q5:  Is XMMS still king, for playing audio?
xmms is mighting fine, playmp3list or cplay for console are very nice too

>
> q6:  What do people use for playing movies (e.g. avi's, mpg's)?
vlc - multimedia player for all audio and video formats
xine - the xine video player, user interface
mplayer - The Ultimate Movie Player For Linux

>
> q7:  What do people use for scanning? Is SANE still the way to go? I
>      have an old SCSI scanner (ach! I forgot about this, and didn't se-
>      lect a SCSI-capable kernel at OS install-time), a Umax Astra 610S,
>      that as a Domex (DTC Technology) DTC-3181LE SCSI controller card in
>      the system.
xsane - GTK+-based X11 frontend for SANE (Scanner Access Now Easy)
pretty easy to use.

>
> Cheers,
> Eric
> --
> "Although plastic was brought into industrial use in 1909 by L.H. Baeke-
> land of Yonkers, it was not until after World War II that the modern
> miracle substance was used in a wide variety of consumer goods, among
> them speedboats, dentures and flamingos. Previously flamingos were made
> of cement. Before that they were made by other flamingos." --William E.
> Geist, The New York Times
>
> Eric De Mund              |   Ixian Systems, Inc.   | cell: 650.303.4336
> email: <ead at ixian.com>    | 650 Castro St, #120-210 |  fax: 240.282.4443
> http://www.ixian.com/ead/ | Mountain View, CA 94041 | Y!IM: ead0002
>
> _______________________________________________
> conspire mailing list
> conspire at linuxmafia.com
> http://linuxmafia.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/conspire
>

Early to rise, early to bed, makes a man healthy, wealthy and dead.
		-- Terry Pratchett, "The Light Fantastic"