NVIDIA Plotting Open-Source Strategy?

[Svartalf]

Who knows maybe one day I'll get bored and put it on another machine (or hard drive) just to see what it's got. If I do, at least I own the license.

Don't do that... It's not worth it. I didn't even bother preserving the install image on my laptop- I've kept XP installs because they were useful at least to other people (and had it been more like XP, I'd have probably kept Vista as well for the same reasons...)- I wouldn't inflict Vista on my worst enemy or my ex-wife.

[shaidtan]

To reply to Redeeman:

I decided to purchase a laptop not too long ago (CPU died in the desktop, middle of a semester of school, not good times). I looked at as many manufactures as I could in the two days I gave myself before making a decision. IBM, Sony, Toshiba, HP, Dell, a local place that custom builds laptops, and even paid a visit to an Apple store.

My requirements were simple. Hardware comparable or better than the (dead) desktop with at least accidental coverage.

Dell offered all the specs I wanted at a decent price and quickly became the baseline. Others offered similar hardware (although often sacrificing video hardware or CPU performance) but at a rather large premium (Apple being the worst at +$800). Additionally only dell offered on-site next day repair. Should something happen I wouldn't be without a computer for 1-2 weeks again.

So in the end I went with Dell. I ended up with a copy of Vista but honestly it's never bothered me one bit. I got the exact laptop I wanted and that was the goal all along. I just happened to get a Vista DVD with it. Who knows maybe one day I'll get bored and put it on another machine (or hard drive) just to see what it's got. If I do, at least I own the license.

If this post sounds defensive (or offensive) that was not my intention. Sorry for throwing a loop into the thread's topic also.

[Thetargos]

My very first computer was an IBM compatible 4 MHz XT (yay!) and a whoping 8MB HDD!! running DOS 3 (I think) with the universal 640k of RAM, and an EGA (16 color) monitor display which then got upgraded to an 8 MHz beast and 40MB drive, yay! It lasted a good while, though. This was back then my father's computer, of course I was 7 or 8 years old, but I eventually inherited that machine , the my dad got for the house an AT i386 DX 25MHz MONSTER with a whopping 4MB RAM and an SVGA monitor!! I quite literally used the crap out of that computer case (it from then undergone two 486 DX and Overdrive upgrades, to a Pentium 100MHz to an AMD 300MHz AGP platform (with a Voodoo Rush 3D accelerator, where I first knew Unreal and Linux love ), then I moved onto ATX cases and that case had to go... straight to the trash. Boy this post brought some memories!

[duby229]

stupid double post sorry folks

[duby229]

XP was when you had it ruined for you? Heh... All the woes from Chicago did it for me, when I was an Developer Beta (who got the final Alpha cut before beta...) for Windows 95.

How do you excuse something that allows the OS to nuke the system from orbit if it got powered down (It would corrupt your boot records all to hell if it got powered down before it was "safe" to turn it off- PERIOD... Thankfully for most people, that little misfeature got removed in one of the final beta cuts...) or being able to BSOD the thing in the middle of the update, corrupting the hell out of the entire system?

Linux, even then, though it was clunky to use in at least some ways was vastly better than most of what Windows had to offer back during that era of computing.

Oh, yeah, I remember. r just ejecting a CD while it was reading it would BSOD the damn thing.

I actually got started working with computers on an old 25mhz 486SX on a Compaq Deskpro. That was my first computer. That was DOS5.0 it didnt have windows on it or anything. I installed Windows 3.11 for workgroups on it, and it sucked. Anything you wanted to do with it you had to do on the command line anyhow, and even the command line sucked.

The problem was that I never heard of Linux unti about 99' or so. And by that time I was happily using Windows 2000 Pro. I had tried Mandrake a few times, and Installed Redhat once o twice, but once it was installed I always found myself wondering "Now what?"

Anyhow once XP came out being the happy 2k user that I was, I jumped on it, and discovered that my brand new retail copy was blacklisted and MS refused to activate. They told me to go back to the retailer and request a different copy. Which I couldnt do because they had filed for bankruptcy and gone under. MS refused to help me. That was it, the very last straw, and I will never ever buy another MS product ever again

This was late 2003 mind you, and I was looking for a Linux distro to replace XP with and discovered that all the cool kids were installing Gentoo. From that point on I realized exactly what I had been missing all those years..... A functional command line..... That was exactly what it was, I just never realized it. I knew DOS sucked, and it needed to be replaced as soon as I started using it, but then over the years I just kinda forgot about it. But then when I started using Gentoo, and I started the learning curve for bash, I realized that was what I had been longing for from the beginning.;


Ah man, if only I had switched sooner.

(sorry for the rant guys.)

[Svartalf]

Then XP came along and ruined everything that I had ever enjoyed in computer technology, and so I switched to Linux and discovered something even better.

XP was when you had it ruined for you? Heh... All the woes from Chicago did it for me, when I was an Developer Beta (who got the final Alpha cut before beta...) for Windows 95.

How do you excuse something that allows the OS to nuke the system from orbit if it got powered down (It would corrupt your boot records all to hell if it got powered down before it was "safe" to turn it off- PERIOD... Thankfully for most people, that little misfeature got removed in one of the final beta cuts...) or being able to BSOD the thing in the middle of the update, corrupting the hell out of the entire system?

Linux, even then, though it was clunky to use in at least some ways was vastly better than most of what Windows had to offer back during that era of computing.

[yoshi314]

My girlfriend has been trying to downgrade to XP on her new Acer machine

i managed to pull it off on acer 5920 laptop i had to configure for xp, but it was very very difficult, to say the least.

funnily enough, knoppix 5.1.1 figured out all the hardware in the machine - i used it to download drivers for the network card, as xp didn't have them

and yes, i also second the opinion about win2k being the best windows version to date. it was decent release, just before the excessive bloat started.

if i could find an affordable copy with valid licence, i might go for dual-boot.

[duby229]

Indeed, they have. My girlfriend has been trying to downgrade to XP on her new Acer machine, but I was unable to find a single driver that would work, especially for the extra keys on the keyboard, and the wireless. If she had it her way, she'd be running Linux + Win2K (on her opinion the best version of Windows she used)

You'll find many people who share that opinion. Win2k --was-- the best windows ever made. It was lite and fast. It just worked. Dont have many drivers, but if you got the right hardware it was perfect.

Then XP came along and ruined everything that I had ever enjoyed in computer technology, and so I switched to Linux and discovered something even better.

[Thetargos]

They went out of their way to keep people from downgrading these things.

Indeed, they have. My girlfriend has been trying to downgrade to XP on her new Acer machine, but I was unable to find a single driver that would work, especially for the extra keys on the keyboard, and the wireless. If she had it her way, she'd be running Linux + Win2K (on her opinion the best version of Windows she used)

[Svartalf]

You could first boot instead from HD from CD and install linux

Uh, Kano, I do believe that's what I just said... I popped open the DVD drive with a paperclip, popped my Feisty disk in the drive, closed it and powered it for the first time and immediately blew away the entire partition table and then dropped Ubuntu and XP (had to have it for verification purposes- app was supposed to be completely cross-platform...) onto it. Ubuntu went on and fired up EVERYTHING. XP was this slow lurching horror of trying to find drivers that sort of worked the machine and vast numbers of reboots and all.

They went out of their way to keep people from downgrading these things.