Re: The cost of using Linux on a laptop

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At 17:36 8/1/2001, Ian B. Jacobs wrote:
>Arnaud LeHors reprimanded me for using Linux. He said that Win2k
>was stable and that everything works with Windows AND you can
>run your favorite Linux programs either by using Cygwin or
>some other emulator/server software (about which I remember little).

Win2K is a nice OS: however, the apps typically suck, are bundled to the OS
in nefarious ways, and are too proprietary. This is the why I want to move
off of it -- and I'm not proud as a user given MS's history as a monopoly,
nor attracted by its future (IPR control and format bundling in XP).

I see the picture from the other side of Ian who's already undertaken the
cost. I have a checklist of things that I need to get working before I can
make the move, and I spend a lot of effort trying to get them checked off,
and it's taken me longer than I expected. That's why I was happy to find an
encrypted file system for linux that met my requirements this week [1]. This
past year, Amaya has gotten to the point that it satisfies most of my
requirements for an HTML editor. Kmail is good enough as a Eudora user.
Unfortunately, Palm device synchronization (particularly over USB), with
various conduits (particular local KMAIL or pine/mutt folders) looks to be
one of the biggest/frustrating costs right now.

[1] http://www.jetico.com/index.htm#/linux.htm
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Joseph Reagle     E0 D5 B2 05 B6 12 DA 65  BE 4D E3 C1 6A 66 25 4E
MIT LCS Research Engineer at the World Wide Web Consortium.

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