27-08-2024, 10:58 AM
The licences for Libreoffice and GIMP allow them to be sold, but for no more than the reasonable cost of providing physical media and carriage.
If you're using any software which is very much "Windows only" then you need to have Windows, either as your main operating system or in a virtual machine. Common things in this category include:
* Photoshop and other expensive Adobe products
* Some accounting software
* Some games
If you're only doing office things with Word, Excel etc, browsing the web, doing emails, scanning, printing and other everyday things then Linux will just work. Very little learning to do. I knew I was doing some more complicated things. I was already running XP in virtual machines for software that wouldn't work in W7. I knew I had awkward networking issues. I put off the switch to Linux for several years. The catalyst was when I managed to kill the motherboard on my main W7 PC.
My regrets:
* The scanning side of Irfanview doesn't work in WINE. I used it a lot. I've had to explore other scanning software.
* The Linux (CUPS) print driver for my A3 Epson printer/scanner has bugs with paper tray selection and page orientation. The Windows print driver had different bugs. I had to get used to a new set of bugs.
* Networking to old W98 and XP PCs turned out to be harder than I expected.
* Virtualbox stopped working recently. I needed some help from a friend here. This was actually a nuisance as the version of Vbox in the Mint repository wouldn't work after e Kernel update. The right answer is available online but it had tobe found
If you're using any software which is very much "Windows only" then you need to have Windows, either as your main operating system or in a virtual machine. Common things in this category include:
* Photoshop and other expensive Adobe products
* Some accounting software
* Some games
If you're only doing office things with Word, Excel etc, browsing the web, doing emails, scanning, printing and other everyday things then Linux will just work. Very little learning to do. I knew I was doing some more complicated things. I was already running XP in virtual machines for software that wouldn't work in W7. I knew I had awkward networking issues. I put off the switch to Linux for several years. The catalyst was when I managed to kill the motherboard on my main W7 PC.
My regrets:
* The scanning side of Irfanview doesn't work in WINE. I used it a lot. I've had to explore other scanning software.
* The Linux (CUPS) print driver for my A3 Epson printer/scanner has bugs with paper tray selection and page orientation. The Windows print driver had different bugs. I had to get used to a new set of bugs.
* Networking to old W98 and XP PCs turned out to be harder than I expected.
* Virtualbox stopped working recently. I needed some help from a friend here. This was actually a nuisance as the version of Vbox in the Mint repository wouldn't work after e Kernel update. The right answer is available online but it had tobe found
www.borinsky.co.uk Jeffrey Borinsky www.becg.tv
