Vista v Linux
All the hype about Vista is really annoying and the cost of the stuff for a home user is so high if you're not planning on buying a new PC for the sake of it. My PC is so tediously slow with XP at the moment I'm seriously considering going back to Suse Linux.
Issuse for me are:
- Being able to create a vpn connection to the office and use a terminal server client so that I can work from home on the Windows based network at work. (I had problems with this last time I used linux).
- Printing to a network printer at home (I had problems with this last time I used linux).
- Being able to play the MP3 and WMA files from my networked music library.
- Getting my Nokia N70 to talk to the thing - mostly I'm concerned about getting pictures off of my phone. However, I do like Nokia Lifeblog on my PC and there doesn't seem to be any Linux equivalent.
- Erm, there might be other things.
When I ran it before, I liked the fact that it looked good but I found that if you just scratched the surface it just so incredibly technical that I struggled, and I'm pretty geeky.
Comments
It's great that you're considering coming back over to GNU/Linux! :-)
In my view, Vista really looks like the inevitable evil son that companies like Microsoft and Apple are destined to spawn. But anyway, I won't rant.
I thought I might have a go at addressing a couple of your concerns though.
1. VPNs are now very useable under Linux, including all the variants of Microsoft's encryption and authentication protocols. To my knowledge, they can be configured through text files (which I like, but I accept that others might not) or else using a nice little GNOME app called pptpconfig. Take a look <a href=http://pptpclient.sourceforge.net/>here</a>. We have one at uni, and there are some quite good instructions for connection to that <a href=http://supportweb.cs.bham.ac.uk/remote_access/vpn/linux.php>here</a>. I don't use that app, but it looks fairly straightforward to me.
2. This is *usually* fine these days using samba, which almost any distro will now support out of the box, and also usually with a nice little graphical configuration / setup utility. The only problem that I know of with this is that some printers still do not have good drivers for linux. So, a lot will depend on the make (and to a lesser extent, model) of printer you have. There is a wealth of info on the net about this though, and usually not too much fiddling - provided you have a supported printer. Check <http://www.linux-foundation.org/en/OpenPrinting/Database/DatabaseIntro>here</a>.
3. Not a problem for about the last two years. The only potential issue is that you might need to use proprietry drivers for some WMA (or WMV) files, though <a href=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FFmpeg>ffmpeg</a> is catching up very quickly.
4. I'm currently wrestling with trying to sync the contacts and calendar from my N80 to Kontact over bluetooth, which I haven't got to work yet. However, I can easily transfer files around. The problem seems to be with getting the phone to believe that I have PC Suite installed. :-) I haven't tried LifeBlog.
5. Well I hope you do give it a go. My local Linux User Group (LUG) is very supportive, as are the online resources for my distro (Gentoo). Linux has certainly come a long way since the "bad old days"!
As for choice of distro, SUSE is okay, but I got quite fed up with them lately. Their products are increasingly aimed at corporate users and it's not really a very good home OS any more IMHO. Ubuntu or Kubuntu are excellent easy-to-use-and-configure distros that are certainly worth a look. I actually have my parents using Ubuntu these days and my dad said that he could hardly tell the difference from Windows (only I know how slow Windows would be on that hardware!)
As a final point - I know you're an environmentalist, and this all seems incredibly wasteful. <a href=http://news.zdnet.co.uk/software/0,1000000121,39285038,00.htm>[1]</a> <a href=http://www.greenparty.org.uk/news/2851>[2]</a>
Hmmm... it seems that this Vox thing strips href tags... sorry for the HTML spam!
I'll be interested to read how you get on.