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Help required to escape the Windows dictatorship

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rparsi:
Hello all, I'm new to the forum.  I intend to switch to Linux.  I'm sick and tired of my Win98 crashing, freezing and running processes that had no business even existing.  My current PC is this:

P-II 333 Mhz MMX (yes I know that's slow)
ASUS motherboard
128 SDRAM
GeForce2 32 Megs
6.4 Gig hard drive (set as primary)
20 Gig hard drive (set as secondary)
WinShit 98

On the above old maching I can do Java/C++ programming, ordinary email/browsing stuff, and play Counter-Strike (plus other mods).  I plan on upgrading to a P-III/IV (depending on $$$) and adding a cd burner.

Therefore I would appreciate it if the members of the forums at fuckMicrosoft.com give me their recommendations for which Linux distribution, windows manager and additional software that can provide the following functionality:
(a) Do Java,C++ and Web (Apache, MySQL, PHP) programming
(b) Do XWindows programming with Qt
(c) Run Half-Life and other games
(d) Play mp3,video

My friends tell me that Red Hat and Mandrake are the best, but for some reason I see a lot of Mandrake bashing.  Is it really that slow?

Anyways let me know what you think (send emails to [email protected], put "Escape Windows" as subject line).  Thanks.

[ December 24, 2002: Message edited by: Calum ]

Calum:
it really pisses me off when people ask for email replies. in fact i changed your email address it pisses me off so much.

As for 'which distro is best', the answer is ANY of the major ones and most of the minor ones. Search the unix forum and you will see fifty or so threads identical to how this one will look in a few days, all people saying Suse's okay, red hat's okay, debian's best and so on and so on.

Interscope:
"P-II 333 Mhz MMX (yes I know that's slow)
ASUS motherboard
128 SDRAM
GeForce2 32 Megs
6.4 Gig hard drive (set as primary)
20 Gig hard drive (set as secondary)
WinShit 98"

I have about the same setup.

I'd recommend Mandrake. Yes, it is slow, but it is a nice distro for newbies. Use it for about a month or when you feel comfortable with it. The get Slackware. Yes, Slackware. Read the installation guide closely, use the partitions you made in Mandrake and I do not recommend using fdisk when you're a newbie. Slack is quite easy as long as you know what you want to install and what your hardware is. It uses a text based installation but this is no biggie.

(a) Do Java,C++ and Web (Apache, MySQL, PHP) programming
I'm not sure about this one but I think that applications for this are avaliable. Check sites like http://www.sourceforge.net
(b) Do XWindows programming with Qt
Neither am i sure about this one but in KDE on Slackware 8.1 it does have a development folder with stuff for Qt.
(c) Run Half-Life and other games
WineX. Get it from CVS. If you don't know how to do this or have problems with CVS go to this site:
http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?s=&threadid=3028

For Half-Life also check.
http://lhl.linuxgames.com
(d) Play mp3,video
This is possible in every distro I tried(Debian, Slackware, Red Hat, Ice Pack and Mandrake) with apps like XMMS and Xine.

cloudstrife:
i also have the same setup... but i cant believe u can run half-life decently  

Interscope:
Why not? I had a i740 4mb before this GF2 64mb and it ran decently at around 30-40 fps. Why would a GF2 32mb run it any slower?

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