Originally posted by Eddy
Um - the first computer I ever got was running Windows 3.1, so no.
Huh, I first started using Win3.1, but I also learned how to use DOS when I was around 8... I liked digging through my computer in it to discover what treasures were hidden in the directories. Some of the best games are for DOS(Wolfenstein 3-D comes to mind immediately)
Redhat vs. Windows... Let's see...
Redhat is aimed at more business-type programs and such. It's like the IBM version of an Apple. In addition, most of its programs are free, and if they're not free, they're very cheap(OpenOffice is something like $50 I think, compared to MS's $200? for Office Professional). It is also geared toward people who don't use their computer solely for a gaming machine. If you need to run any windows program, Wine(the Windows emulator) will run most programs, many require tweaking I've heard, though...
The main pluses for Linux(this goes for practically all distro's of it) are that it's
a) cheap
b) secure(built-in firewalls, plus not many hackers break into Linux machines because Windows ones have sooo many more open ports)
c) portable
The only thing Microsoft has going for it is that other than all PC makers(Dell, Gateway, HP, etc) either have Windows as their primary OS(meaning you'll have to spend extra to get Linux, making no sense at all really...) or their only OS. Microsoft has veered toward being the gaming machines. Yeah, they have powerful office suites, but who wouldn't after 13 years or whatever of making them, plus having thousands of employees(Not volunteers) working on them.
I'm thinking about putting the latest version(Yep, the latest version, not some early version or older version) of Slackware on my P1 200mhz pc. It only needs something like 386, 8MB Ram and 100MB free space(recommended is over 1GB, really nothing by today's standards, so I'll dedicate my 3.5GB HDD for that OS if I can clear it out. If not, I'll just make a 3GB partition out of my 15GB HDD or whatever it is, and make a 128MB partition for swap space(They recommend twice the memory you have for your computer[at least, for Slackware], and my POS computer has 64, so it'll be fine, I hope.)
The only problem I had with RedHat7.3(I had it, but then I upgraded Win98[which I left on my PC as my backup OS incase RH got messed up], then got rid of it because my 200mhz was too slow for it to run effeciently) was that it wouldn't recognize my ethernet card. Granted, my dad gave me some crappy and old(although I was the first to take it out of its box) Ethernet card that had very little support by anyone or anything. Luckily, WinME(which constantly crashes on me) recognized the card, so I rid my computer of RH because it wouldn't see my card.
Oh yeah, RH never crashed on me, NOT ONCE! And it also lets you have multiple desktops at once, all you have to do is click on a little icon on the bar(whether it's on the top, bottom, left, or right) or hit Alt+F1 through Alt+F8 or something. So if that isn't multitasking, I don't know what is.
Oh yeah, 1 last thing: RH didn't support my soundcard. I think it was a SoundBlaster 16, maybe Pro, I don't know. All I know is that it is crappy and old. Your computer shouldn't have any problems, I wish you the happiest of times!
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