endlessness

Arch Linux, Windows 7 and Ubuntu 12.04.

I'm happy with Firefox. Never really liked Chrome and Opera.

I don't miss the old OSes anymore, having moved to Linux as my main OS and sometimes using Windows 7 or XP.

My Dell XPS 15 has a Seagate and my Acer 5532 has a WD. I have an Hitachi in an external case.

Bauhaus – She's in Parties

I mostly use laptops those days (haven't had a desktop in quite a while), this is my current one.

"Menace of Vanity" by Epica.

It will work with any operating system as long as it supports your NIC; the modem is just another network device within your network. Conceivably, malware could toggle the network connection on and off, but I don't know any which does that. I don't know of a mechanical switch for Ethernet, though.

I remember upgrading Ubuntu 5.04 to 5.10 with dial-up. It took about 700MB distributed along a few weekends (at least here in Brazil, phone calls pay a flat rate on weekends, otherwise it is a small amount/minute - I don't remember how much, as I now use my landline only for ADSL). I also downloaded quite a few Linux ISOs and a good amount of music with dial-up.

Often I have a schematic on one screen and circuit board (or code, if I'm working with a microcontroller) on another. Or, when doing programming, an editor/terminal on one and a bunch of PDFs/documentations/papers on another.

None of the DOS/Windows versions are free. Save yourself the trouble and get some Linux distribution if you wish a free OS.

As said already, Ethernet modems will work as any network device, they need no device drivers. But most ones have a power button (at least the one that my phone company provided has), or as a last resort you can just unplug the power cord or the network cable from it.

My Dying Bride – Catherine Blake

Probably netcat is already available in the repositories of your distro... However, Fedora 9 is quite old now.

"The Obsessive Devotion" by Epica.

Even if this happens, I guess major Linux distros (Ubuntu, Red Hat, SUSE etc...) will be able to get boot keys. But smaller community-backed distros probably won't.

You might want to try Cygwin. Many Linux/UNIX applications will readily build on it, though they will not behave like native Windows applications (you will need X11, for example).

I like Geany. It looks and feels much like the old Dev-C++ IDE. http://www.geany.org

University is around 20Mb/s, but the bandwidth is limited in some pages (like YouTube).

Many... 1. My city uses 220V power, but I used my PC connected to an UPS which output 110V, thus its PSU was set to 110V. One day the PSU is making a lot of noise, I decide to disassembly the PC in a bench... and promptly plug it in 220V. The PSU seems to be dead silent now... except that it doesn't work anymore. 2. Some 15 years ago, I got my first PC. One day I started installing everything that was on its driver CDs (it was from a manufacturer which made quite a few different models), thus killing my Windows installation. 3. Wanted to delete a directory called 'home' in another HDD, but instead of 'rm -rf home' (I was at /mnt) I typed 'rm -rf /home'. 4. Did an insecure Linux install with easy passwords, enabled SSH and forgot about it for a while... until I remembered my router was forwarding all ports to me, and I had left weak passwords which were easily discovered. Too late: some random IPs had made their way in. I only realized this when I started getting banned from IRC servers for being an open proxy.

As I see it, Windows XP is still widely used, specially by businesses which stay a long time with the same OS (I have friends working in banks, in the government etc.. which still run Windows 2000) and in industry, where many legacy devices are in wide use. But eventually its usage will fall, since many computers (mainly laptops) don't have the drivers for it, and since all new computers ship with Windows 7. And XP is still the best Windows for running in a VM under Linux.

Hello, Just thought I might introduce myself here, after a while as a lurker on the forum. Even though I use Linux as my main system, at university I use/maintain some older Windows systems (some boxes running Windows 98, Windows 2000) for specific legacy applications (instrument control, automation, running older apps) and this forum has a good amount of interesting stuff. Thanks!