Sigh, there are time I hate being stuck at work using web mail. I sent this Billie singly by mistake. I am forwarding it for everyone else just in case I'm insightful or something.
Just weeks before 9.1 was released I finally broke down and purchased SuSE 9.0. The decision to buy SuSE was made after talking to just about everyone I could find for over a year. I had been told by numerous people that SuSE was the best. I have to admit that installation was an absolute breeze. 9.0 found, and installed, everything in my box way better than Windows ever has.
Agreed but I will admit to having a windows box strictly for computer games and a few random rpg apps that refuse to behave well under wine.
Now I'm no computer idiot. My computer experience goes back to TI 99-4A and CoCo days. CPM and DOS were the operating systems of the day. However, I'm not a "programmer" and I think therein lies my problem with Linux. IMHO, for at least the foreseeable future LINUX will primarily be an operating system for "programmers".
I'm not a programmer either, not really... I'm more of the writer geek who does tech stuff for work. I've had almost no problems with my SUSE system since install.
When I was using DOS I spent an incredible amount of time writing complex "bat" files to make running different programs and keeping things going the way I wanted. If I still wanted to use a command line interface to interact with my computer I would still be using DOS 6. GUI's are just much simpler to operate.
Now don't get me wrong. I like Linux. It does things incredibly well. Most of the package applications work better than Micro$oft products. The problems I have/had are with adding things that I want that are missing from the package, and maybe a couple things that are included.
"So far" I haven't found any genealogy programs. I would like to use my Window$ program. For that I need Wine, or something equivalent. Wine comes
A quick search turned up a few possibilities.. http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&q=Linux+Genealogy&btnG=Search
packaged with 9.0 but there is no "intuitive" way to make it operate. By using KDE to search through every directory on the hard drive I did find something dealing with Wine. [A "search" using Yast couldn't return one hit for anything dealing with Wine.] There was also a "html" manual for it that I bookmarked for later. I went to the website and looked for detailed instructions. They talked about the versions that were packaged were sometimes not the latest and greatest so I downloaded and installed the "latest and greatest". Well the manual that I had bookmarked is GONE. Things are scattered all over the hard drive and I can't find anything that makes it run.
Did you try man wine? I haven't used it since I followed WinE's early development and was familiar with the workings I would need. I'm fairly sure there's a man page for it if you try though. In fact a quick look at winehq confirms this.
I absolutely abhor graphical HTML editors. They make pages that are FAR larger and bulkier than needed. I think I have found a Linux application that does things the way I want them done. It's called CoffeCup. No problem, just download and install right. WRONG. Download fine. Install???????? It comes with an installation utility that does nothing. It runs just fine. BUT it doesn't do a thing while it's running, then says installation went just fine. HUH!!!!
VIM works just fine for me, or Bluefish. The odd thing for me is most of what I see for CoffeeCup is that it is primarily a WYSIWYG editor. And in non crutch mode resembles Bluefish remarkably. Otherwise I would suggest making sure you have the Pro version of SUSE or you might be missing some packages needed for a successful compile.
Right now I just don't have the time to spend trying to figure all this stuff out. We are moving and setting up a new house on our acreage. It's just more trouble than it's worth right now so I'm back to running Window$ for the time being. *<[:o( In a while, when life settles down and I have more spare time I will get back to fighting Linux.
Total time this took to find ~15 minutes. Plus already knowing the part about needing Pro to properly install packages.
IMHO Linux has great potential as an everyday operating system. BUT, until it becomes much more intuitive to use, applications become much easier to use, and there is less reliance on "command line interface" it will NEVER become "everyman's" operating system. As a workstation in an office system where someone keeps it up and running, Fine. As a home operating system for everyday use, Ain't happenin'.
Current systems in my house - Mine running SUSE, My wife (A Computer User but by no means completely saavy) Fedora Core 2, My 8 year old and 5 year old play on my system as well. They are asking for their own computer and want SUSE on that as well (they like the lizard apparently)
Sorry - Just my $0.02 worth.
Sorta PS - Someone needs to write a book Linux For Dummies with just BASIC information on how to operate it. Step by step in baby language.
http://www.tldp.org/tldp-redirect.php?url=/
(o:]>*HUGGLES*<[:o) Billie Walsh The three best words in the English Language: "I LOVE YOU." Pass them on!
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About the only complaint I consider valid is software that require some wierd, out of the way package to install. It took me a good while to determine what final package I needed to krecipe up and running. Once done though I will say it installed smoothly and runs beautifully.