This reminds me of a 'debate' I once had with a lecturer.. the students were wanting to run heavy weight programs like GIS and CAD and the usual image editing and word processing all at the same time...but were complaining about the speed factor. Tried explaining that you cant just keep loading stuff on a donkey forever ...theres a limit.
Yes, it's 80 euros for a perpetual, one-machine license.
As @lepidotós put it, it doesn't. It's just a piece of software that enables you to do things... many cool things, if you know what buttons to press, so to speak. Nothing more, nothing less. PPC machines are a niché so support can be sketchy, but for x86 there are numerous distros which are at least as easy-to-install and use as Windows or macOS, provided you don't have an exotic-but-crucial piece of hardware that plays hard to get. In fact, my first steps with Linux (SuSE 6.1 in 1999) already were much easier than I feared they might be: it had an easy-to-use (albeit text-based) installer that gave me a usable system with a nice (for its time) and functional GUI (KDE 1.1). There was no need to fiddle with the command line (to get up and running at least) at all. It wasn't any more difficult to install than Windows NT 4.0, which I used as my productivity OS back then.
Then you have to look for even more lightweight programs (or an older version of Lubuntu, such as 12.04 remix). This blog might be a starting point, as the author has documented the experience of running current (at the time of writing) Linux on machines as slow as... a 100 MHz Pentium 1 with 16 MB RAM, which is quite impressive.
This. I've always stuck to that rule when trying to learn a different OS... or language, for that matter. Expecting things to work the way you're used to is just asking for frustration when they don't, even though it's compelling.
..just been reading the comments on distrowatch re Netbsd..seems like folks either hate it or love it.
Off topic, I know...but may I suggest if you get a chance have a look at 'Foods that heal'. Found it on tubitv. Not your usual food diet whackos, but learned men. Gives health comparisons between older diets and modern. It's a long movie but ya can skip thru the cooking demos.
Are all of those available as binary packages, or do some of them have to be compiled from source?
http://tinycorelinux.net/14.x/x86/tcz/ lists more than 31 AFAICS.
Okay, I haven't actually tried all of the options in the blog post, NetBSD included.
@wicknix you are the shining exception
I'm not sure, Ame..thought they'd be ready to go, but still finding Linux a mysterious place.Are all of those available as binary packages, or do some of them have to be compiled from source?
http://tinycorelinux.net/14.x/x86/tcz/ lists more than 31 AFAICS.
Linux is tinkering, but it also gives us the tools to fight the big corporations who have written us off as just a bunch of cast offs.@wicknix you are the shining exception
There probably is not much you can’t do on it because you will find a way to port software “X” to OS “Y” (or is it software “Y” to “OS X”?)
For a newcomer, i think my advice holds water, but not for the regulars here who just love tinkering and rolling up those sleeves to lose blocks of hours at a time, often neglecting family and friends, to the ol’ Mac habit.
“I’m not an addict. I can quit any time.” Said every junkie everywhere.
nope..needs to be three lines with a five, seven, five syllable format for one of those.Is that a Haiku?
Honest question I myself don’t know the answer to: how much of it is “genuine” usability, and how much is being used to the way things work in OS X and wanting other GUIs to behave the same?
How does this improve usability if you’re not used to Apple keyboards?
Does it matter whether window controls are on the left (e.g. OS X) or on the right (e.g. Windows), as long as they’re together? I hate the e.g. “Windows 3.x way” with Close on the left — and Minimise and Maximise on the right. What’s the deal with that?
Are we talking about not displaying shortcuts, i.e. a purely cosmetic thing, or literally disabling them? In either case, how does this improve usability?
I am used to the way things work in Mac OS X. I don't want the GUI to behave like a Windows PC. After decades of using Windows PCs, nothing about Windows PCs has stuck with me. I tried WIndows 11 on a friend's PC and it is an absolute dumpster fire. For example, typing python at the command line opens up Microsoft Store. I find Windows deplorable. Not to single out Microsoft as I have a lot of disdain for Apple, Google, Facebook, Amazon, Intel, and other big tech companies. I would love to leave both Mac OS X (or macos or whatever Apple calls it these days) and Windows in the dust and use an alternative desktop GUI that respects user choice and customization.
Carpal-tunnel-speaking, stretching to use my left-pinky doesn't work for me. Mac OS X let's Windows PC users set these keys to how they want. There is no easy way on Windows and Linux to change these keys, but Linux does have a lot of options even if they are more difficult to set up.
Alt+space will open the Windows 3.x style menu on Windows and Linux! I would totally annihilate those Windows 3.x keyboard shortcuts. The weird Alt-key behavior with the menu bar is so annoying and yes cosmetically it is very unappealing.
OK, so usability in this context translates to "behave like Mac OS X".
Is there nothing in the free software world that ticks the boxes for you?
I've never given the display of shortcuts in menus a second thought, in fact, I appreciate it. Some shortcuts are unintuitive to me, e.g. on macOS Monterey (no idea when they were introduced):
Yikes. If I want to use something that looks-and-feels like Windows 98, I'll fire up Windows 98.
You are correct. And ...
Yes, the Linux desktop is working for me because I can customize a lot of things in Linux even if it isn't as easy as ticking boxes.
You are using the Option key? Are we talking accessibility or usability? If you turn accessibility on, on a Mac, you can navigate menus with the keyboard. On Windows and Linux, this is always turned on with no way to hide it: the underscores indicating which Alt+key or key to press in menus although cursor keys would work just as well. For usability, there are the control-key shortcuts that are almost always the same as the Command-key on the Mac: select All, Bold, Copy, Desktop/Don't .../Duplicate, Find, find aGain, Hide, Italics, New, Open, Print, Quit, Refresh/Run/Reload, Save, Underline, (V) paste, (W) close, (X) cut, (Z) undo. The row of Undo, Cut, Copy, Paste keys are my muscle memory on all of these platforms.
I meant the Command key. My bad.
Ah, that’s what you mean. At least on Windows XP and earlier versions, you can turn it off in Display Properties. I agree, those underscores aren’t pretty. I thought you meant the modifier key shortcuts displayed to the right of a menu option. Big misunderstanding on my part.