do you recommend? I am using SuSE currently on a “Linux” only Sotec machine but would love to dual boot the TR2A to maximize possibilites.

I am not meant to use Windows (Mac convert…the only way to go cold turkey from “blue screen” addiction) despite the XP advances over previous NT versions.

I now have a fractured toe because of a copy of Windows XP in a Nutshell I dropped yesterday.

It also irks the crap out of me, the lowly end-user, to be subjected to the activation anti-piracy tactics utilized by Microsoft. Too bad Microsoft doesn’t focus more on the MAJOR security issues they have created because of their laxity in that area.

Must learn to hack.  :wink:

Hopefully I can say this without starting a flame war but how often has your TR blue screened? How often have you ever seen a Windows 2000/XP box blue screen? Only time I see it is when there is a hardware problem or a driver problem.

Also people say Linux is more stable and I’m sure the kernel is rock solid, the drivers however in my opinion for a lot of devices are lacking which is why I believe overall it kernel panics on modern hardware where the drivers aren’t so solid more often than NT will ever bluescreen.

Also in my opinion XFree is not very stable either. Sure when it crashes the whole OS doesn’t go down and you can restart it but if your using the machine as a desktop then it might as well have all crashed because I’m pretty sure what you were doing involved using the GUI. This is only a mute point on a server which isn’t what you’d be using a TR for. Personally I think Windows is far more stable in this area. I’ve seen the odd Explorer.exe crash but all your apps are still running and it just reloads. Normally that is caused by poor quality third party plugins, I haven’t seen an Explorer.exe crash on a cleanish system.

You had to activate your copy of XP on your TR? I’m pretty sure it would have shipped to you pre activated as it will once you restore it because it will be tied to a Sony BIOS. Seeing as you cannot change the motherboard in the TR you should always have a Sony BIOS and hence never a problem. Plugging in USB devices, etc isn’t ever going to trip off activation.

I always laugh when people say other OS’s are more secure. How do we know that? They only seem more secure because less effort goes into finding holes in them. If you look at it the other way, yes there is a lot of patches by MS but if they keep patching all the holes that are found then it in theory is more secure than an OS with holes that just haven’t been found yet. Which ever way you look at it, all OS’s will have holes as they are written by humans and we all make mistakes.

Linux is a great OS, don’t get me wrong. I sure do like how it is making Microsoft react a lot more, compertition is good. It’s also hard to not take a serious look at it for any server role for the cost savings and quality of the software is extremely high even if a bit harder to setup.

However it’s not ready to be a desktop OS yet for the mainstream. Don’t hate Microsoft just because it’s cool to hate them. XP will allow you to get whatever sort of work you got your TR for without any real major hassles.

Rant over.  :wink:

FastlaneJB: Eloquently stated.  You hit the major points squarely on their heads.

One other thing to note regarding this is that the TR was designed to run Windows XP. It does an extremely good job of doing this. Installing Linux maybe fun but you’ll run into a lot of headaches finding drivers (especially an Xserver that supports 1280x768) and getting it to run as smoothly as the designed operating system.

If you’re more interested in having Linux around for general testing and exploration then I’d suggest grabbing a copy of VMWare 4.0 or Virtual PC 2004 and running Linux inside it. You have less hassle with hardware since it’s virtualized and you can run it in full screen at surprisingly good speed if you want to be in “Linux mode”. You can even have it interact with your current Windows XP session.

I setup Linux with iPlanet (app/web) in a “virtual PC” and developed against it from my Windows environment. All of it was on the same system. Performance was surprisingly good (it helps to have 1GB of RAM) and I could flip between the two or resize one of the windows to keep an eye of what was going on between the two systems. If you have an external monitor, you can just have Linux on another monitor.

I’ve also setup Windows 2K and/or XP inside their own virtual PCs for testing new software and for projects. The other cool thing about virtual PCs are that they are highly portable. You only need to copy the “image” file over to another system running the same software and you can be up and running instantly. For people working on projects, it’s good because you can separate project work from your main OS so that you don’t need to worry about uninstalling a bunch of crap you no longer need. You simply archive or delete the image file and create a new one for the next project.

I should note that this virtualization software is pretty rock solid. I know of many IT organizations that use VMWare in their data centers as a means of consolidating servers. They essentially run 2 or 3 virtual servers on one powerful server making them far easier to manage. This lowers their TCO dramatically and it’s rock solid enough to run 24/7/365.

I fully agree with Groovy. Not only is a virtual machine a good system with reasonable speed if you need to have access to an app in Linux but also it will save a reasonable amount of disk space because you can have it’s partition file which sits on your NTFS drive resizes on the fly so it only uses pretty much the space that it needs.

Also as Groovy said, the laptop is designed around Windows XP. Sony don’t make any drivers for Linux and while you can get the bulk of it to work you’ll need to buy an Xserver to get the correct res and things like the Motion Eye just plain won’t work.

just wiped out the message I had carefully composed. Paraphrasing:

very responsive community we have here.

I shall not engage in flame wars. Spent 8 1/2 months in Afghanistan…had enough of combat zones. Carried a 15” Aluminum Powerbook G4 along with a M4A1.

This TR2A would have definitely replaced the Apple had I owned it at that time.

I suspect that the NT 5.1 version shall go far in erasing some of the Windows objections raised while trying to use the ME version. Dynamic alllocation of resources and enhanced stabillity should significantly reduce the chances of blue screen appearances.

As for Linux….one can only learn by diving into this OS. What better way to learn the kernel underpinnings than to compile from source?

For me…it is about overcoming the GUI eye candy mentality and being able to follow the electrons around the circuit board as the programming evolves….or something like that.

Re-emphasizing: I’m not a flame thrower…more like a former Windows user who has come back to take another look at what was once thought to be an exercise in futility. Defensive posture…yes, of course.

But this TR2A has me grinning. My DSC-T1 is “Out for Delivery” and the Clie UX 50 is on back order…...it is fair to say I may be drawn to Sony for their “looks.”

Enough babble.

Does anyone know if that DSC-T1 has lens threads? Of course I am looking to defeat the whole purpose of the camera by adding a wide-angle and telephoto lens.

Life is a series of contradictions.

It is not appropriate to arrive at death’s door with every piece intact and the battery fully charged. One must slide in under the wire, exhausted and full of attitude.

I’m not sure if you saw my review of the DSC-T1 but I can confirm that the DSC-T1 does not have lens threads. As you can see in the photos, the lens is so small to begin with that I don’t know if there are lenses that small.

Regarding Windows…yeah, I can totally see how Windows ME turned off a lot people from Windows. That had to be the worst OS they have ever released. I never had a stable Windows ME installation…even on systems that shipped with it. Windows ME was one of the reasons why I went with NT4 on most of my systems. Despite not being fancy, NT4 was rock solid (more so with odd numbered service packs) and reaffirmed my faith in Microsoft. Both Win2K and XP (children of NT) have been equally solid.

in depth…thank you. My DSC-T1 should be here this afternoon if UPS can hang with the snow/freezing mist.

I have been using the DSC-P1 for years and have no complaints except the weight (backpacking). It has been on numerous backpacking trips and spent 8 1/2 months in Afghanistan with no problems…the telescoping lens needed some “return home” coaxing at times, but considering the amount of dust over there…..it performed exceptionally well.

Although I have a Sony TRV80 it will soon go to my brother. I traded “down” for the lighter Canon Elura 50 so I could carry it anywhere and shoot one handed.

As for ME…still a visceral reaction erupts when thinking about it. But I shall persist in regrouping with XP. With this most awesome TR2A…..should be a walk in the woods…literally.

How does one spell check in this forum? I’m missing something. RTFM? What page?

Welcome to the club. You are with people just as opinionated.

gr00vy: Remember Windows 3.x? I think 3.0 was the most unstable version of an operating system I’ve ever used. Windows95 was worse than ME too. It wasn’t until Windows95 OSR2 that I could expect it to last for more than 6 months. I picked up NT 4 in 97 after getting it with an educational copy of VB and never looked back. As a workstation, it wasn’t bad, but as a server it was the pits. Try to install IIS on an NT4 box. Install O/S, reboot. Run Service Pack, reboot. Install IE, reboot. Run Service Pack, reboot. Run Option Pack. Reboot. Run Service Pack, reboot. God, MS has come a long way. 

[quote author=“Drachen”]gr00vy: Remember Windows 3.x? I think 3.0 was the most unstable version of an operating system I’ve ever used. Windows95 was worse than ME too. It wasn’t until Windows95 OSR2 that I could expect it to last for more than 6 months. I picked up NT 4 in 97 after getting it with an educational copy of VB and never looked back. As a workstation, it wasn’t bad, but as a server it was the pits. Try to install IIS on an NT4 box. Install O/S, reboot. Run Service Pack, reboot. Install IE, reboot. Run Service Pack, reboot. Run Option Pack. Reboot. Run Service Pack, reboot. God, MS has come a long way. 

Ahhh!!! No, don’t bring back those memories…I had suppressed them…until I read your post. 

Windows 3.0 by Microsoft! Why do you torture me!!?

Yeah, Windows 3.0 was atrocious with Windows 2.0 even more atrocious. I only “kinda” liked Windows 3.x when they go to 3.11 aka Windows for Workgroups.

Windows 95 was ok but OSR2 was definitely the “real” Windows 95.

I think the reason why WinME was so bad for me was that it was so unstable. Windows 98 SE was reasonably stable and ME took it back to the Windows 3.0 days. Yeah, by then I was mostly on WinNT 4 so it wasn’t a big issue unless I wanted to play games.

Yeah, NT4 was definitely great for workstations and “light” server needs. I hated even numbered service packs as they invariably fouled something up. And yes, NT4 required a reboot for every little thing.

I take a certain perverse pride in this, but I still have a Windows NT 3.51 PDC at my shop. We’ll be migrating our NDS tree over to Win2k3 AD in a few weeks (what can I say? we’re a Dutch-run company and they finally got tired of the american company’s bitching). At least I use Win2k and 2k3 on all the app servers…

  :D :wink: 

Hi !

I bought my TR2 since one month and i use linux since the begining i try to use the very well configured windows but after 2 hours i was bored.

I can confirm that Xfree work only at 1024x768.. but it never crash ! At work my worstation have a uptime since 10 december… Windows is now more stable yes it’s true because every days you have to reboot for updates, norton updates etc… so it can be stable

About security, 3 lines of iptables for the firewall and nothing more to do ( no outlook or IE)

I juste touch 3 lines on the kernel and my CPU is at about 20Mhz at rest i get about 5 hours of battery (i dont test under windows)

When you see how woks Linux on this computeur in spite of patents, close drivers… Do you imagine how it will work with out all of this…

Now it’s a question of philosophy and what do you do with your computer, 3 years ago i never realy test Linux i was unsing Widows every day (i’m MCSE) but one day i took the steep to understand

(Sorry for my very good english !

Romain

[quote author=“igo4mtns”]do you recommend? I am using SuSE currently on a “Linux” only Sotec machine but would love to dual boot the TR2A to maximize possibilites.

I am not meant to use Windows (Mac convert…the only way to go cold turkey from “blue screen” addiction) despite the XP advances over previous NT versions.

I now have a fractured toe because of a copy of Windows XP in a Nutshell I dropped yesterday.

It also irks the crap out of me, the lowly end-user, to be subjected to the activation anti-piracy tactics utilized by Microsoft. Too bad Microsoft doesn’t focus more on the MAJOR security issues they have created because of their laxity in that area.

Must learn to hack.  :wink:

dont learn to hack ....but hack to learn !