Gary's Summer of Hell 2015

[wizard509]

Glad to see you are back Gare.

[Gare]

Gary is not only home, but he's working on content for the June Xara Xone. Let's face it; I'm a little late for May.

Thanks Rik, thanks everyone.

I wouldn't wish the pain on my worst enemy.

Okay, strike or revise that last thought.

My Best,

Gary

[Crow Haven]

WOW! So sorry to hear of your accident but glad you're mending, Gare! Heal up fast!!!

I ditched Windows and have converted fully over to Linux so I haven't been in touch.

[stygg2003]

Nice to hear from you Maya, glad your still around. How you finding Linux, keep thinking about doing the same myself but not to sure about Linux and Xara? me being a thicky on these sort of things

Stygg

[Crow Haven]

Nice to hear from you Maya, glad your still around. How you finding Linux, keep thinking about doing the same myself but not to sure about Linux and Xara? me being a thicky on these sort of things

Stygg

Hi Stygg!
It's been quite a bit since I've checked back here. Gare's accident was a real surprise (and recently two other friends have had broken bone injuries -- one broke both her arms falling off a treadmill and a nearby neighbor just broke his ankle in an accident when his tractor rolled over on top of him last week)!

Regarding Linux, I've been thinking about abandoning Windows for some years actually and finally I just decided I've had enough with expensive forced updates and intrusive software. I haven't experimented with Xara yet, although Linux does have a compatibility program called Wine for working with many Win applications. I don't expect it to work with newer versions of Xara -- I don't know. However, Linux does work with many freeware and opensource artwork programs -- the 3D program Blender and Gimp (sort of like PS, with animation also) and Inkscape (vectors) along with CAD programs, and many other artwork programs. More are being developed and improved all the time. There's loads of great free programs of every type, even LibreOffice which can do more than everything I'd ever want to do (even has LibreDraw in the suite). Linux is different, I love it and jumped right in. These days you can have the Linux Os versions of your choice and the versions which offer very similar graphical user interfaces are the distributions called Mint 17.1 and Ubuntu. You can use them with the GuI or you can learn the commands and type what you want done through the terminal (like the DOS prompt in Win). Actually once the commands are learned many things can be done quicker that way. For general use, though, I use the GUI. I'm surfing the net and typing right now with Linux and everything looks just the same as it did when I used a Win box. The computer is faster (no bloatware) and safer because of how things function in Linux. I still have Win boxes to use for some art programs I use only offline as I want to preserve them as long as possible from intrusive updates which could eventually lead to them no longer functioning as companies decide to change things. I'm loving the freedom! So long Microsoft, Adobe, etc...

[Gare]

Hey Maya!

Yeah...it probably wasn't as big a surprise (my accident) to you as it was to me! :(

That's why no cartoons in PM or chat about the weather.

Getting waited on like royalty,

Gare





Just as I suspected. Right up there with Tootsium and that mineral in Cheetos that makes your fingertips to orange for a half life of 2,3000 years.

[Crow Haven]

Take it easy and mend fast, Gare! My best to Barb too!

[stygg2003]

Hi Maya,
sorry to hear about your friends accidents and thanks so much for a very informative reply with regard to Linux, it has helped me a lot and will look further into installing Linux.

Stygg

[theinonen]

I would suggest trying out different linux distributions with VirtualBox before actually installing anything. In my opinion Linux is still not ready for desktop and to be used as the only operating system, but is slowly getting there.

[rafsgrafx]

So sorry to hear this. Hoping for a speedy recovery. Gary's a class act.