Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Is Linux or Windows Easier To Install?

Posted by timothy on from the click-click-click dept.

Mark Cappel writes: "Joe Barr, a LinuxWorld.com columnist, compares Linux and Windows installations. He expected Windows to be faster and easier since Microsoft has been at it for 21 years. (DOS 1.0 was released 21 years ago today.) It turns out Red Hat is quicker and less manually intensive."

1 of 784 comments (clear)

  1. Fdisk? you gotta be kidding by greenfly · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Then it was Red Hat's turn. I inserted the first installation CD and rebooted Windows. I chose to manually partition the disk using fdisk. First, I deleted the partition I had originally created for Linux. Then I created a 256-megabyte swap partition and gave the rest of the drive to Red Hat, choosing the ext3 journaling filesystem.

    Ok ok, let's stop right here at the first paragraph. So, he already had his drive partitioned from a previous install (meaning he didn't have to mess with fips, partition magic, etc.) and he used fdisk to partition. And exactly how is this easier than a Windows install?

    Granted, I've used Linux for years, and fdisk isn't difficult for me to use, but having to use fdisk raises the difficulty of an install considerably. I know that RedHat doesn't require the use of fdisk in their install, but this reviewer should have known better.

    I make it a point to try out the various latest Linux installations on a spare machine here just to see how far they've come, and when one compares Redhat to something like SuSE or Mandrake, it still lags behind. RedHat is competing in the Windows NT/2k/XP Workstation/Server market, and isn't apparently too interested in the home desktop market, and their installer reflects this. There are still many questions asked throughout a Redhat install that would require some sort of background in Linux to answer.

    Something like SuSE's install would work better for such a comparison, as it best combines ease of use with configurability. The SuSE install tries to autodetect and autoconfigure everything the best it can, and then presents you with a summary of everything it has done, along with the option to change anything if you want to. The new Linux user would probably just click the "Next" and accept these defaults, while the experienced Linux user still has the option to change anything he wants.