jay pettitt on 11/6/2009 at 17:53
Quote Posted by dvrabel
Have you tried (
http://www.lyx.org/) LyX? It's more of a document processor that uses LaTeX as a backend.
Thankyou - I'm giving LyX a twirl right now...
Renzatic on 11/6/2009 at 18:28
Jay, you seem fairly well versed on Nix OSes. I've been in the mood to try out some new distros recently, mainly Fedora and Ubuntu, to see how much they've improved on the user experience front since I last tried them. Do the Live CDs give you a good representation of the actual thing?
nickie on 11/6/2009 at 19:25
At least have a firewall if you don't want an anti-virus. I have never had any major problems even without the stuff I use now. But my brother and my daugher were both hit on the same day by something and both of them lost everything they had on their pcs. Is it worth not using 'protection' (:))?
If you want to free up space then turn off all the Windows rubbish and stop all those programmes starting automatically. It's not necessary to have these things running all the time.
vurt on 11/6/2009 at 20:53
Some stuff i have in the Vista toolbar right now:
Gmail Notifier. Good together with an email adress that is used for only important stuff, very convenient if you need a notifcation directly.
FireFox with addons:
Dejaclick, to record / replay what i do on screen, i use it for some sites that are tedious to log in to (where i can't save password/logins/order numbers etc).
Adblock Plus. Can't live without it!
GameCommander. For voice recognition, a must in some situations (e.g laying in the bath while watching TV-series on the laptop hehe)
Excel. I do all my economy stuff there, basicly everything that involves math..
Cakewalk Sonar 8. For music (soft synths and guitar play) or if i create sounds, voices etc for a mod.
Alt.Binz. For usenet.
mplayer classic. Has taken me AGES to configure with codecs, filters and scripts, but VERY satisfied now with the picture. For stuff that refuses to work i use VLC.
ConvertXtoDVD. If i need to convert e.g a tv-series for someone who only has DVD, most of my friends/family arent very up-to-date ;)
uTorrent.
Soundforge. Sound editing, i like it much more than Wavelab.
Nero. The "Micro" version of it. I really hate the versions which includes a half OS.
Painter IX. I Use it with a Wacom Intous 3, i really like the brushes in this program!
Snipping Tool comes with Vista. Awesome program to take screenshots with.
TVersity. Streaming movies from computer to Xbox 360>projector.
Anti-virus, firewalls etc i dont use, except for what's built into Vista (Defender and the default Firewall). Defender is usually turned off though. NOT recommened for Noobs / those who surf on pr0n sites or generally have no idea what they're doing :P
Matthew on 12/6/2009 at 10:32
What would be a decent choice for video conversion software, can I ask?
Matthew on 12/6/2009 at 12:43
Thanks NV, VirtualDub may be what I'm looking for.
Brian The Dog on 12/6/2009 at 12:49
Quote Posted by Renzatic
I've been in the mood to try out some new distros recently, mainly Fedora and Ubuntu, to see how much they've improved on the user experience front since I last tried them. Do the Live CDs give you a good representation of the actual thing?
I've been using Ubuntu occasionally, and it's fine for users coming to Linux from Windows. Ubuntu only has the Live-CD version, so the version on the live CD IS what you get when you install it. Of course, you can then add packages and customise to your heart's content.
I tried installing Debian on a flashdrive for my desktop yesterday, and it installed OK but then got very confused when it found my PC wasn't on a network (the monitor went "out of range", while it waited for a login to a non-existant network), so I'm sticking with Ubuntu.
(NB - I was surprised that Ubunutu didn't have the usual C++ compiler stuff in it's standard install; things like gcc, automake etc are pretty standard in a Linux distro. I guess the target audience wouldn't likely need it much though)
Nameless Voice on 12/6/2009 at 12:59
Quote Posted by Matthew
Thanks NV, VirtualDub may be what I'm looking for.
For the simplest re-encoding, you generally need to do this:
* From the Audio menu, either leave "Direct Stream Copy" enabled to copy the audio track directly, or set it to "Full Processing Mode" to compress it (the Compression option then becomes available and you can choose MP3 for example.)
* From the Video menu, choose "Compression" to choose the codec to use (or press Ctrl+P)
* Go to File->Save AVI (or press F7).
jay pettitt on 12/6/2009 at 13:42
Quote Posted by Renzatic
Jay, you seem fairly well versed on Nix OSes. I've been in the mood to try out some new distros recently, mainly Fedora and Ubuntu, to see how much they've improved on the user experience front since I last tried them. Do the Live CDs give you a good representation of the actual thing?
Not really. While Live CDs
are copies of the real thing and let you check stuff out, see if your Internet still works, open up OpenOffice and go cooo! and make sure your printer doesn't explode, you'd probably not want to use them in anger or live with them for extended periods of time.
If you want to see what sharing your flat with Ubuntu is like, the thing to do is to let it move in and live with it for a while. Installing it alongside Windows is a breeze. My mum can do it (all by herself).
Ubuntu is currently the bees knees of desktop OSs. Part of me wants to note that there are still annoying niggles that shouldn't be, but the other part of me thinks Duh! - and lists the endless niggles in Windows and OSX. Give it a go.
