Re: New to CentOS, and wondering about application availability

[craigwhite at azapple.com (Craig White)]

On Wed, 2005-07-27 at 17:55 -0500, Les Mikesell wrote:
> On Wed, 2005-07-27 at 17:36, ryan wrote:
> > > 
> > > i infer from some of your previous comments that you're looking to  run 
> > > CentOS on your desktop machine (since you're talking about DVD  drives 
> > > and Xine and so forth).  if you want a pleasant desktop  experience 
> > > where things Just Work, i'd recommend you buy a Mac like  Bryan said.  
> > > running Linux on the desktop is a painful and laborious  experience, and 
> > > is likely to be so for the foreseeable future.  it's  a different story 
> > > when you're talking about server applications,  though...
> > > 
> 
> > I have Linux running on a Desktop machine, and 2 laptops. Installing, 
> > updating and using Linux on them has been great and not at all a"painful 
> > and laborious  experience".
> > 
> > For the technically savvy, and those who aren't afraid to learn, Linux 
> > is an excellent desktop OS.
> 
> Yes, but for many things you take for granted under commercial OS's
> like playing music and videos you'll have to do some non-obvious
> and legally questionable things to do the same on Linux.
----
'legally questionable' is in my opinion overly dramatic. The fact is
that there is restrictive licensing issues which packagers don't
distribute with GPL and similar licensed packages.

Perhaps a better way of looking at these things is that the open
standards are supported out of the box and the non-open standards have
to be added after original installation for those that wish to use
proprietary and restrictive licensed software.

Craig