t1m0r4n's Journal: Real Player

I recently switched from Linux to Windows as my desktop of choice. (It was a painful decision, as I was using Linux when most of you were born.) Set up Windows 2000 with Tweak UI, DOS Here, and Start Killer, along with all the GNU utilities.

Got me a working sytem. But I HATED the default multimedia thing Microsoft calls Windows Media Player. I downloaded the updated version of, what is it, version 9. Sucks.

I like to listen to music, and watch a video from time to time. So I set out and downloaded a bunch of tools. The only one I like SHOCKED me. I liked the Real Player v 10.5) I mean I really like it. It wasn't anything like the old Real Player full of spyware type crap. I mean this new software rocks. It gives you options of what you want to install. Then it actually works nicely! The free version is OK. I like it so much, I'm paying for the full version. So, anyway, if you haven't checked out Real Player for Windows, give it a try. Very nice.

Now, why I left Linux, well, that's another story. I'll put it in one word -- Suse is shit. Ok, that's three words, but I built a computer that matched 100% linux compatible hardware. Bought the big fucking expensive CD box of Suse software, and not a fucking thing worked. Teck support e-mails exchanged, terrible service, searched newsgroups for Suse oddities, got stupid answers (e.g. one person asked for help with an ISA slot and got a frightfully rude answer regarding details of a PCI slot which had nothing to do with the question). The Suse scripts are just pure crap, and required completely rebuilding the ditro to make it usable.

KDE is the crap. Suse lives for it, as do 99% of linux users today. God bless Richard and the GNU. I love the philosophy. BUt it is too much of a pain to get anything working with any distro these days, and trying to get any software with my own raw ditros is just silly. I'm too damn old for this shit. Slackware circa 94 was better than anything on the market today, and, sadly, getting anything to work as it did back then is more bother than it's worth. (Only good distro of Red Hat was in the 4.x series, Debian has blown chunks since, gee, I think they snuck in a good release circa 2.0 by accident, and all you Windows Fan Boys who like Mandrake and all that other crap, well, it's crap -- second rate software that Geos OS outdid 20 years ago. OK, Win2k ain't nothing compared to a VAX system in the 1980's, but this is a desktop, and Linux is just becoming too fucking ugly.)

So, in summary, do Real Player if you have the luxery of using Windows. Read the Quran. Drink plenty of water. Listen to the Grateful Dead. Be happy.