Warning: somewhat off topic post (but important to Gnutella users)
No reason to run Windows anymore. No reason to keep paying Billy Gates his ransom. Mandrake Linux 8.2 is free and easy to use, not virus prone, doesn't crash and....
LOOKS AND WORKS just like windows, plus....
"SOT, a Linux-distributor is offering SOT Office, a free productivity suite partly based on OpenOffice, it is fully compatible with MS Office and StarOffice."
More and more games are available now from major companies, all the hardware out there is pretty much supported now, and Linux comes with a lot of software already installed, nothing to buy!
E-mail programs, web browsers and more are already installed! It's time to make the switch, and it's easy.
You can FTP the CD-ROMs for free from
ftp://ftp.uni-bayreuth.de/pub/linux/Mandrake/iso/
or other mirrors
http://www.linux-mandrake.com/en/cookerdevel.php3
(make sure you use binary mode in your FTP transfer)
KDE is "Windows" for the Linux OS, it's easy and is just like windows, but with all the software already installed for you.
And there's always the Lindows project, but it's not ready yet.
http://www.lindows.com/
The OpenOffice story is at
http://slashdot.org/articles/02/04/29/0411218.shtml or
http://www.sot.com/
And a good newbie site is
http://linuxnewbie.com/
Why is this important to Gnutella users? One reason is if the RIAA has their way, Windows will be forced to make any MP3 type players copyright protected. Your only choice for freedom will be with Linux and open source.
Windows always crashes and you get used to it. I remember when I ran Windows all the time I got used to the crashes and saving things every 2 minutes just in case. Now I leave things overnight and come back and it's still there. Even if a particular program crashes, the OS doesn't! I have seen Win 2000 crash blue screen too so it's not any better. $300 for NT isn't a good choice either.
I spend several hours a week helping my friends with problems from viruses and locked up IE (spamware popups and hidden registry startups) and have been slowly changing them over to Linux.
Linux doesn't get those viruses, I download them all the time just to look them over in a binary editor, people think I am crazy but they can't affect Linux. Viruses are very hard to make work on Linux, open source developers are security minded. What does that say about the Windows developers? Why run a OS that threatens your privacy and security?
"Wine" for Linux will let you run some windows software, it is what Lindows is doing, and DOS runs fine on it. When "wine" crashes, you restart the WINDOW! it's funny!
You have total control with Linux, you can run it 24/7 without worry, it's more hacker proof than any other OS and it's what the WWW is built on! Browsing and transfers are faster and the TCP/IP stack is designed better. Software RAID is possible and easy to do, hardware cards are supported. With Mandrake sharing a dial up connection over your private LAN is easy as pressing a few buttons.
You can relax now, no more worries about spyware, crashes, restarts, viruses, hackers, firewalls, strange popups and a screwed up registry. There is no "registry" required in Linux, what a stupid concept that was. Spyware would be very hard to sneak past people since it's open source.
Your "root" directory is protected, unlike windows, linux protects it's main "system" files from "user" files. No more calls to your "computer guy" in the middle of the night.
I have personally installed Mandrake on 3 laptops and many, many different PCs, old and new. It is very, very easy now that 8.2 mandrake is out. I haven't paid for a software program in over 4 years now. I used to buy one every few months for Windows.
After showing people Linux on my laptop they all want to try it out and are amazed at how easy the conversion was because it's just like windows!
Give it a try! Linux P2P programs are waiting for you to try them out! Spread the word! Pass some Linux CDs to your friends. It's time.
Tell us here about your experiences when changing over.