The death of my laptop has made it necessary to move my Windows based Compaq to another part of the house, which makes the Dell with linux my main computer. The two utilities that I have to have I installed via Wine. So far everything has went smoothly, but it has occurred to me that I don't know what to use to make CD labels yet but i'll figure that out. I have a template I made in Xara that I can export to Inkscape so I might do it that way. But so far everything is running smoothly.
With that comment I'm off to teach 4 hours of DFS parenting classes.

My first experience with Linux was Gentoo - probably not the friendliest of introductions, but I learned a lot. I use Ubuntu now. Aside from some difficulties choosing a scanner, it has been a flawless experience.

I use gimp exclusively for all cd/dvd labels. Also, linux has Xara Xtreme. Can you not open your Xara files in that?

Merrak, do you have a scanner now? Or thinking of buying one?

Yes, I know, but it's an old version and my template was made with XX5. It's a multilabel, 3 kinds on one sheet so Gimp wouldn't do so well. I can do it in Inkscape and I found an app called glabel which looks promising. Everything but ID labels I usually make in open office.

I tried Fedora, and Ubuntu, I found that I prefer Mint. If i come into another spare computer I'll try other distros on it just for the experience.

I have an Epson Perfection V300 that works very well for me... but it was my second attempt. I bought something else first (can't remember what). It didn't work with Ubuntu - but I got to exchange it for free since the salesman told me it did.

nice kitty avatar!

Mine? I seem to have the only cat avatar.

His name is Milton. He's named after John Milton, the poet (my wife named him, and she was an English major in college...). We have another cat named after Edmund Spenser. They do not get along.

I hated cats most of my life then I got a kitten and I named him Leroy. Man I loved that cat but he was an idiot. He had everything perfect here yet he tore a hole through the screen and took off. I haven't seen him for over 4 years now. I've looked pretty much all over town. There won't be another cat for me. My heart belongs to my rats. he was declawed and wouldn't come to anyone but me. There is no doubt in my mind that he's dead by now.

I grew up with dogs, but I didn't want to get one until I settled somewhere. We adopted Milton. Spenser came with the house when we bought it. The previous owners used to smoke outside, and we figure they fed him. Spenser is sad. He'll climb up onto the windowsills and stare into the house for hours at a time. He leaves little nose-prints on the windows. Our bedroom is upstairs - On cool evenings, if we leave the window open, he'll serenade us. Milton hates all other cats, though, and despite what it seems, Spenser really prefers to be outdoors, anyway.

Congrats and welcome to the wonderful world of FOSS. I doubt you'll miss Micro$oft very much. Maybe a little at first, then not so much.

I still have it on two of my computers, my wife uses it exclusively but I'm working on it. The replacement laptop that I plan to get unless it's been sold will have vista on it. But except for the apps that i paid money for and have to use or I wasted my money i can't ever see missing Windows. The DVD drive was bad in this Dell but i had a spare and the video board is a very low end Nvidia, which i plan to replace when i can afford it. And this Dell KB is making me crazy, the keys are really stiff. Fortunately I have 2 or 3 others in my stash. I managed to get my linux box to see my lan and it now plays well with my other ones, so no more transferring files with a USB drive. Yesterday i familiarised myself with apt to CD and backd up everything that I took hours to install so if I have to reinstall again I won't have to reinstall all that stuff. The only problem that I still need that I can't find a free version for linux is Esword, and it burns me up to have to pay for what's normally a free application. Nothing else is as good so trying to use anything else is out of the question. I think if everybody knew what Linux was Microsoft would be out of business. It's sad how few people take the time to look into it. I've been posting on facebook lately that I was making the change and probably 95% of the responses were "what's Linux."

Try xiphos. It's in synaptic.

I tried it, i have it but only as a backup. it's not as good as esword, plus I have probably $80 - $100 worth of Esword modules i bought that i want to use. if we get the laptop i want (2 more days on the auction) it will have vista on it so the problem will be solved. I don't like vista but it will do. With a 160G HD I'll be able to dual boot and not have space problems. that is IF I get it.

Meanwhile back at the ranch...if a person was thinking to use one of these operating systems you are talking about which would be the best rated for the use of GIMP as I am seriously considering using GIMP on my vmware via one of these OS on my mac. Since it seems that there is no support for GIMP on Mac at sourceforge...all references in the past 24 hours have led me to lisanet and you cant even get a message to Simone it seems. I also found a rather lengthy post of hers from a long time ago which referred to her being the only person who was even bothered to help mac users..so I am chomping at the bit to use more features on GIMP which are virtually disabled on mac....

Yeah Akky; Windows is the Red-headed step child of GIMP and MAC is the childs offspring. lol

There are forums for Mac support that I've run across, but don't know how active those forums are. Still, I know that David keeps G'MIC updated for the MAC version of GIMP, so at least he continues to support that platform. My comfort zone still is with Windows though; I've run GIMP inside VM Ubuntu more then often and had no issues with that so you should be fine if you decide to do so.

They havent been active for ages...not the ones I can find anyway

well I already have windows xp pro sp2 installed but I cant stand it

GIMP keeps on over riding the python updates I put in place as well...so I cant run the newer python scripts at all...I made a suggestion that perhaps the developers ought to look a that for the next version or at least make it an updateable thing for now...but I was told that they do not support Mac, to contact lisanet...talk about being sent on a paper trail which all led me back to the same place to be told the same thing again...its getting a bit boring...and now I am told that GIMP will not run on the soon to be released Mac OS 10.7 which is a possibility which I'll deal with when the time comes...I think I need to make the move to use GIMP in my VMware..just have to decide which platform to use...as long as its a free one I'll be happy if it works