[S-99]

Yeah, my windows xp install went out the rats ass today. So i took the time to delete that partition and make a bigger mepis partition, then i learned how to run wine, and then i found out how few windows apps i'll actually be running with wine

Anyway, it's fun, not a single problem. I even bought a legal copy of windows xp. Not a bad release of windows in my opinion. But, if i learned how to run wine a year ago, that would have saved me 110$ on the computer i built and use now last summer. Oh well, i got another computer with a legal copy of xp to include with to entice customers since i do the no pirating windows thing (very hard to do when you sell full rigs including everything, somehow i manage to pull up legal copies of windows out my ass though).

Anyway to another person who has lost windows. And running fs2 in wine didn't seem too bad, it just asked for openal like windows did. Haven't gotten any further than that trying to run it though. Dvdshrink works like a champ though. and even though dvdshrink is a windows app, runs great in wine, it's good software, and is opensource. Oh hell yeah, i completely don't need to pirate nero for windows anymore, or any software for that matter But, yeah, pretty much everything imaginable is offered by linux, Gaim is a good instant messenger, kopete sucks, and if you're looking for full support of messenger features, there is aMSN, and Gyachi, as well as other stuff. Gyachi is particularly amazing at how good it is too, it supports everything except for yahoo games, and photo share, it's not shabby at all.

[Herra Tohtori]

It's not the software, it's the hardware that keeps me from leaping to Linux.

Specifically, sound. I have yet to see the day when all 6 channels are properly used either on my USB card (SB Live! 24bit) or onboard piss poor Realtek AC97 sound system. And similarly I have yet to see alsa soft mixing that truly, properly works without screwing the working two channels to a condition that actually requires some drastic package removal and re-installation to get working again.

Just out of curiosity, how's the sound support on your box? I've heard pretty interesting things about Mepis, I might try that one day...

[S-99]

Well for me, i have AC97 audio as well. And alsa is the sound server you want to use since oss is old, but oss works good too. My sound always works, the only exception i had was with the coupon i had to get an official version of linspire for free. Least to say linspire wasn't very good.

In mepis my ac97 audio works about as good as it does in windows. In fact i think it sounds better in linux, but that's probably because xmms pumps out better audio than winamp. Btw, don't use amarok, piss poor audio quality out of such a nice audio app.

But, mepis is interesting, it's based off of ubuntu dapper, but mepis is soooo cool, it's a livecd so you can try before you install. As a livecd it's able to have everything like audio working as well, so you could test with it first, in the meantime it's more useful than knoppix if you're looking for a good livecd. And as an installation, man i haven't turned my back on mepis since 2004 It's a nice distro

[Nuke]

what holds me away from linux is more or less software, like 3ds max and photoshop. then theres the whole line of ms flight simulators. theres of software id miss if i went with linux. the high end stuff usually just gets degraded to **** under emulation.

[S-99]

Not terribly so, windows progs either run, or they pretty much don't with wine. With wine it's all about having the microsoft requirements for the programs you want to run, it's not too hard. But really today i actually did see a screenshot of 3dsmax in wine on winehq.org. Take a look at their compatibility list as well.

[Nuke]

good to know.

wasnt there a complete and total photoshop clone for linux?

also how does wine deal with old dx5-7 era games? if it can run those it might be worth having just to play old games on. its the dx5-7 and sometimes 8 games which give me the most crap on xp, and most likely even more crap on vista.

[S-99]

There is clones of photoshop for linux. There's about two good ones, which are about the only ones
But, anyway, xara xtreme, and the gimp. Xara xtreme and the gimp are both compatible with adobe photoshop plugins and stuff and formats and brushes, etc. i recommend gimp, i haven't used xara, but it looks just as powerful. As to why they include both types of the same software on mepis is just beyond me. gimp and xara do like the same thing, why  have both, a little redundent, they could like save some space and get rid of ****ty kmplayer and put back kaffiene.

Dx7 was a recent development with something about it in wine's new release. Pretty  much wine can run half life2 for the most powerful games i've seen run on wine. Wine can also be a win98, winme, win2000, and xp environments as well, and you can change the preferred environment per app or game.

[Nuke]

that sounds rather useful. im probibly gonna stick both my sata drives in my new computer so i can have vista on one and linux on the other. between the two i should have more reverse compatability than i do now. and this machine will retain xp sence i have a good license. my ancient p4 machine will probibly be delegated to dunning dos and win 9x for a super-nostalgia effect.

[S-99]

lmao
xp is still good until 2009 or 2010, it has extended support.
Vista isn't too bad, but i rather if they're going to put in administrative restraints into windows, they could do a much better job.
Who the **** in the world needs to run dos for nostalgia

[Nuke]

 <---

[Ulala]

I wish I could still "restart computer in DOS mode" for some games/old time's sake. A much better trip down memory lane than just using DOSbox...

[Herra Tohtori]

Heck, I only wish my 7600GT actually had a functional VESA support...

As it stands, I can only run full dos games in fully emulated environment (like DOSbox) and with my CPU it ain't too great...

[Nuke]

I wish I could still "restart computer in DOS mode" for some games/old time's sake. A much better trip down memory lane than just using DOSbox...

this new mobo i got will allow you to load an os from a usb flash drive, sorta like the boot disk metod i used to play privateer 2. load up open dos and go

[S-99]

hmmm. yeah 7600gt vesa i have to say is there, it's the only way i can load livecd's and have my desktop in kde until i install nvidia-glx and then i don't need vesa anymore.

[Herra Tohtori]

Key word being functional.

Meaning that every single DOS fullscreen application fails to initialize on my 7600GT. It's definitely a card issue since with same drivers my GF6600 runs DOS apps such as Red Baron and Grand Prix 2 just fine, graphics-wise.

But that may or may not be due to a custom BIOS on the card from the XFX, I dunno... I may have to send an inquiry to XFX about that... but no way in hell or heaven am I gonna send this particular card away for replacement, since it already has pretty insane factory clocks and yet it clocks even more (defaults at 650/1600 MHz and it's extremely stable at 720/1700 MHz for core/memory respectively) and  seems to stay below 50 degrees Celcius practically no matter what I do...