: I do know that Windows works.Correction; You don't know what "working" is with regard to a computer. You view is perfectly normal that you have to powercycle the machine every day and every time an application crashes and freezes the OS.
: Look, when people go to buy a new automobile do you really think they know anything about what happens under the hood? Nope. They care about the color and gas mileage.
Whereas you seem to be solely interested in the colour. Would you buy a car with a rusty chassis, shot suspension, a tiny engine, no brakes and no seat-belts?
No?
Then why did you buy Windows, which is pretty much the same thing on a computer?
An OS which has a maximum uptime of 49 days (although I've never run a box for more than 3 without it crashing hideously).
An OS which will allow you to run macros which will affect the core of the operating system without even warning you. So you can wipe your hard drive by accident...
Yup, that's Windows 95 alright.
: Unix may be better than Windows, I'll ask around.
It is. Linux is a 32-bit true multitasking operating system. It's also the first operating system to run on 64-bit chips like Merced (Windows 64-bit still won't compile and run anything useful on them).
: But if you think I'm going to scrap this thing after I paid for it your out of your Socialist mind.
Aha. So your claim "create something better than Gates' product and I'll buy it." was totally bogus; you never actually intended to and were merely lying through your teeth. Fair enough.
Fact remains; if you got a PC as a complete unit, you wouldn't have been given a choice to buy any other OS, because '95 is a monopoly product and you *can't* get a PC with any other OS loaded unless you're fortunate enough to live near a small Linux shipper.
The price you paid for your PC would have included Windows 95; regardless of whether you used it or not; you *had* to buy it, because Microsoft has deals with all the major PC suppliers; and any supplier (A) who sells a non-Microsoft operating system gets crapped on from a great height by Microsoft, which starts favouring their competitors (B to Z).
As such, you had no choice; you were effectively taxed by Microsoft for buying your computer; here in the UK, the tax is about £50 ($80). However, you *should* have gotten a binary CD containing Windows (most PC suppliers supply them with a new PC); as such, you would not be scrapping it; you could merely format your hard disk and reinstall.
Furthermore, as I said before, Linux costs nothing. You can download it from the 'net for free; which means you wouldn't be paying anything more.
It's what I run on my machine; I built myself a PC last December around a K6-2 350 and 128 MB of RAM; it runs Linux very smoothly and has run for 3 months continuously without a reboot. Since I didn't pay the Microsoft tax and bought the components myself, I paid half the price that I would have paid in the shops for an equivalent PC.
(Being a computer tech support engineer does have its advantages, I suppose.)
In the light of your previous remarks about the G'mint, you might care to know that Microsoft built a secret low-security backdoor into Windows for the NSA to access. In any copy of Windows 95, Windows 98, NT 4 or Windows 2000, there is a 40-bit encrypted NSA-key which is much easier to crack than the standard 128-bit key to access Microsoft's CryptoAPI. Which effectively means that the Government can access your Windows PC with ease and read whatever they like on it - or even take complete control. And since Microsoft accidentally publicized what the keys were (in NT Service Pack 5), anyone who wants to can effectively use this back door to break into your Windows PC.
Read the full story here.
Of course, since Linux is an international product, not a US one, it doesn't have the same requirements to build in an NSA backdoor in (to comply with US export laws) and is thus much, much more secure.
Of course, if you want to continue using an expensive, crappy, insecure and inflexible operating system that gives the NSA easy access to your computer, that's your choice...
Sweet dreams...
Farinata.
