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The Clueless Newbie's Linux Odyssey
overshoot writes "Just what we've always (said we) wanted: people who are fed up with Microsoft and are willing, even eager, to give Linux a real try. Well, she did. And did. And did some more. Not only that, she's a technical writer and she took notes. Not fun reading, but worth reading anyway."
After finding herself stuck behind the times using Windows 95 in 2002, the author took it upon herself to convert to Linux. After trying Mandrake, Lycoris, SuSE, RedHat, and Knoppix, she found them all seriously lacking and has since switched back to using Windows 95,
If a computer literate technical writer can't even get Linux working properly, how can we expect it to be widely adopted by the masses? Linux is not ready for the desktop.
Have you been stalked by Seth today?
At least Linux is reliable and after you get used to working with it, is powerful and useful. And also I don't seem to have so many damn device driver problems as in Windows...with those clueless vendors writing garbage drivers (I'm thinking Creative and ATI at the moment, grumble)
Sounds like one of those people who love to complain and are just looking for an audience.
Let's see 12 distro's tested. Of those 8 are red hat / mandrake and 2 were suse. To give linux / alternative operating systems a try there should be more choices. She never said that linux was her only choice she just thought it best met her requirements. Seems to be that FreeBSD or any other BSD would be a good choice to try at as they meet all the requirements. Or if your hell bent on linux at least use a bunch of different distros just not red hat and mandrake. Doesn't seem like she gave enough alternitaves a try. I'm personally a fan of using what works best, be it windows, unix, linux, bsd, mac, beos, or whatever. It varies from person to person and from situation to situation and from computer to computer. There is no end all perfect for all, hardware, situations, and uses operating system and until there is one, we'll be stuck dual booting or using windows in some situations or whatever. Anyways thats just my two pennies.
Check out my life
During WWII, Charles Lindburg went over to germany, looked at their massive numbers of factories and aircraft, and concluded that the USA could never win the war. I suppose also, that in 1950's USSR, many people saw their huge building projects, factories, and the space program and concluded that the USA would never beat out the Soviets which at the time seemed more elloquent and "sophisticated" in their approach. But if you believed that people had inaliable rights as dignified human biengs, and believed that freedom was an end in itself - then there was only one way to go.
Well the same is true with Linux. Some Microsoft features may seem more "sophisticated", others may see Microsoft's huge amount of cash and never believe that they could loose to Linux. But if you believe that copying things is not a sin, but a human nature; and you believe that property rights derive from physical truths and not from artifical monopolies imposed by the government - like copyrights. Then there is only one way to go, and that way will free and benefit the people who believe in it over the long run, and destroy the people who don't.
I see some problems with this. Last I checked, Windows did not have very good tech support, online or offline. The "help button" in most Windows apps is usually pretty useless. And, the author needs to RTFM.... there are plenty of good resources to use for Linux help, www.justlinux.com being one I frequently used when I needed help. The writer falls into the trap that most do, assuming Windows is THE perfect operating system. And, it's not, there are just as many faults in installation as there are in Linux. I've seen many failed driver installs, no/bad video, etc. I think linux support is better in some aspects, actually. And the use of non-standard parts for the writer's test PC's (video card in first computer, SCSI card??) would not be 100% in Win95 to begin with. I just wish writers would view things a bit better before going off complaining about how tough Linux is. If Windows was held to the same standard, the same complaints could be made as well.
take off every sig for great justice
I have to add that this was my experience too.
Let me preface this by saying that I run a web design company, I maintained our servers for the first few years, I put in my time on PETs and TRS-80s, and APPLE IIs and Windows 3.0 and 95 and NT and 2000 and Linux. Take my word for it, I'm a seriously fucking technical guy. I offer as further evidence the fact that I'm posting to Slashdot on the Linux holy war at 9pm on a Saturday night.
I made an honest go of making my home main OS Linux, but I quit in frustration. The main problem is that it's not that Linux isn't *capable* of doing everything I need, but the tiny things that are slightly greater hassles in Linux end up being a death by a thousand cuts.
If there's one main way I can think of to characterize my regular use of my main OS, it's "freewheeling." I need it to be a transparent conduit in my productivity, whether it be hitting the Net, writing documents, personal finance, etc. Linux was *always* functional, but *never* transparent. I constantly had to tweak little things to make it work, find new libraries, etc. That's fun when I'm using hobby time, but not fun at all when I have shit to do on a deadline.
Honestly, I don't know how you're going to fix this aspect of the OS without doing what Microsoft has done - compromise fundamental stability and security in favor of useability. Personally I hope the debate stops, and we stop trying to fit a square peg in a round hole. Let MS spend their money catering to the masses, let's keep Linux stable and robust for hard core needs.
I think we'd be doing the world a lot more good putting Microsoft's server products out of business than their desktop products. I'd feel a much greater sense of accomplishment knowing that I helped get the world's credit cards onto a Linux server than the world's Mom's on a Linux desktop.
-----
Believe me, I'm as surprised by my comment as you are.
#2 Existing hardware must remain usable. At a minimum, the printer, modem, and CD player/writer must work, and the new operating system must make them work without my having to tweak configuration files. If it can't get that far, it's not ready to inflict on the general public as a migration route, and I certainly will not recommend it to my friends.
#3 Existing software must remain usable unless the new operating system has equivalent features to the ones I use, there is no loss of data and data-transfer is easy.
Note: Requirements 2 and 3 eliminate WindowsXP as an upgrade route. I would need to buy a new computer, probably new peripherals, and replace some eXPensive software to get the dubious benefits of product-activation codes and embedded functions I don't want and can't delete.
At least we know she hasn't bought into Redmond's bullshit about XP's features.
If version X of a release is difficult to use, why try Version Y? And if Version Y is also not working for you, what kind of a moron do you have to be to say "Hmmmm, Version Z, that's gonna be the one to solve MY hyper-specific and unique problems!"
I was told the definition of insanity was doing the same thing and expecting a different result. Now I've had some bad linux installs (*Cough* linuxppc *cough*) but I take that as an indicator that I have to move on. This woman is crazy!
And do you think it would be so hard to bribe that geek to install it for her?! Just show him a little ankle flesh and I'm SURE he'd do whatever you wanted!
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
The expectation that Linux will fulfill the hardware driver installation off the distribution CD, when you admit that you may have to replace the entire hardware for XP, is inherently unfair and beyond what can be reasonably expected in any operating system. XP is not without it's major problems when it comes to older hardware ( especially scanners ) support and driver conflict problems.
The lack of any relative comparison in your article to the Microsoft alternative, paints Linux in a far worse light than is the reality. Compare your article to the recent articles by Joe Barr, comparing Linux installation with XP and Windows 2000.
Also, given the rapid improvement of Linux distributions, 18 months is in my opinion, too long ago to represent the current state of Linux on the desktop. See Michael C. Barnes updates look at leading desktop operating system options on the market.As with Joe Barr's article, it benchmarks Linux against Microsoft's offerings.
There is nothing inherently wrong with pointing out faults, in fact any *constructive* criticism over current releases of Linux is both welcome and necessary to the Kazan like rapid improvement of Linux. However, just repeating war-stories without acknowledging either that the issue has been fixed in the lastest release of that distribution, or similar problem also exists with Win2k and XP, does nothing but provide fodder for Microsoft's trolls. I am surprised that this article in it's current form, made it past the editors at Linuxworld.
Not all linux distributions are targeted for the non-technical deployer. For example: Lycoris, Xandros and ELX are more likely to have SMB functionality preconfigured on install.
However, does not someone also re-configure windows for your colleagues? When they log in, is the SMB shares,printers and defaults always pre-installed for them? If not, who ever provides techsuppport for you is not doing their job properly.
Deployment, day to day management and just using a computer, require a different level of technical knowledge, no matter what operating system you are using.
Although many non-technical people to install and with windows often reinstall the operating system, that does not mean that they do a good job of it. I have been too often called in to repair a screwed up home based 98 to XP systems to personally attest to that.
That some Linux distributions, for example RedHat 8, do require a lot more knowleadge to deploy, once properly deployed and configured, they are a hell of a lot easier to remotely manage on a day to day basis, even using GUIs. ( hint - ssh -X root@TARGET-IP ). The quality of the technical knowledge from Linux user groups and distributions forums, especially in comparison to phone support from Microsoft, can more than make up for the difference in relative difficulty. That Tsu Dho Nimh set up a a pre-requisite that no external support was aceptable, is unrealistic even for windows XP.
Dispite the absolute terror of the Microsoft advocates, Linux is NOW a more than adequate as a desktop for the enterprise, a replacement for XP and an upgrade from window98 and NT4.
At work , we have upgraded 80% of our ghosted win98se desktop from Microsoft Office 98 to StarOffice6 and Mozilla
Well, I tried Mandrake, and it honestly didn't seem to have any real benefit over WindowsXP other than the dozens of cool freeware games that came with it. For normal work, WindowsXP gets the job done fast enough and is perfectly stable. Plus, even though it's "bloatware" it's a lot faster than emulating windows apps from Linux. When both OSes are free (heh heh heh) I don't see any compelling reasons to use Linux instead of WindowsXP.
Repeal the DMCA!
Being one of the lucky open source developers who gets paid to work on Linux for a living, I love reading constructive feedback about how to improve Linux. I did not like this article because:
1) It was degrading. I'd rather not be condescendingly referred to as a "shreiking geek".
2) She says she has problems that are absolutely absurd. For instance, "Root gets locked out of files". If this is occuring, then Linux has some serious security problems...
I hear so much complaining about how Linux developers aren't helpful to new users and such. Well, I'm sick of new users who aren't helpful to Linux developers and just sit around complaining about how things don't work like they should and then fail to explain how they should work or make general statements like "all my old legacy applications should just work".
End-users of Open Source software have as much, if not more, of an obligation to be helpful to developers as developers have to be helpful to end-users.
int func(int a);
func((b += 3, b));
I've been a faithful Windows user for almost a decade now. Mostly because it's getting expensive to buy software every time I want to do something new, and mass piracy is turning my stomach, I've been looking into this whole 'free software' thing. Also, my current co-op work term required me to learn Linux and Solaris.
:). Once they're installed, I poke around a bit, look for the GUI configuration tools in the 'start' menu, and bang, I can change almost anything I want. Hmm. Just like Windows, where every new version means you have to hunt and peck (mouse wise) for where they've moved everything, and for all the new features you're unfamiliar with.
Ok, so at work we have about a dozen test machines. At home, I have a couple of spare machines. Broad range of hardware, from cutting edge XP1800's and 128mb video cards, to barely usable p100's with 64mb ram and 1mb video. ISA, PCI, AGP, sound, network, scsi you name it, it's here.
So freeweed decides to try installing linux. Ooo, I've heard good things about this Red Hat. Download the isos, burn, start the install. Wow, looks as good as, if not better than, the current batch of Windows installers. Very slick and intuitive (as long as you understand drive partitioning, something required even in the Microsoft world). A short while later and I'm in Gnome thinking "huh. except for a really odd filesystem, it's like Windows with nicer graphics". So, I carry on. Mandrake. Debian. Slackware (ok, that was a bit of a bitch and I needed to ask for help
So, I'm pretty used to installing linux at this point, and with all these different configurations, the worst I had to deal with was looking up how to get an old ISA network card to work. Huh. Just like Windows. Now, it's time to try using some of this software. Holy shit! There's an office suite installed, free! Mp3 player, ftp client, multiple browsers, packet sniffers, IRC clients, you name it. I have almost everything I need, without the 18 reboots and hunting down cd after cd after cd trying to install everything I use. Ok, let's see how hard it is to get something not on this system. Hmm.. download a package, double click it in nautilus, it's installed! No easy desktop shortcut or start menu entry, so let's try just typing its name on the command line (just as I've done for years in Windows). No pathing errors, this is pretty damn cool!
Summary: I've been a Windows kid since the early 90s. Installing linux was at least as easy as Windows (it even told me that 'root' was the linux word for 'administrator'). I can do everything I want, for FREE. So far it's been pretty easy, and I'm hooked.
This writer who's coming from Windows 95 obviously hasn't tried installing 2000 or XP, they're at least as involved as a Red Hat install. (Oh, and for the record, anyone with an older machine that finds Gnome/KDE a tad slow, try windowmaker. Nope, it doesn't look like Windows, but boy, is it fast!).
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
Regular users should be discouraged from doing anything else: PC hardware is just too complex and messy to allow installation on arbitrary configurations. And that's as true of Windows as it is of Linux.
You think average is upgrading every new release?
No. I think average is upgrading every 3 or 4 releases. Letsee, 95, 98,me,2k,xp (which has been out 2 years) and now she is average? No, the average person may be running 98 or me, but not 95.
a file is set immutable, by something or other.
I have installed more distributions of Linux and every other OS than you can imagine. Never have I ever had an installer do that. I have never had software set an immutable bit. I googled it and can't find much either. Nope. Not likely. Not impossible, but I am betting I have installed a couple hundred more boxes than you if you think this was the problem.
And then you insult her: she wrote an honest critique of her experiances.
I could write a critique or review of Italian suites over $1000, but you know what? I still wouldn't know shit about $1000 suits. I am not going to "be sweet to her" simply because she wrote an article. It wasn't a good article. The information is flawed, the premise is flawed, the execution was terrible. And I don't use Linux on the desktop, Im not advocating anything. I don't HAVE a favorite OS. I use them all. 95-XP, bsd, linux, and even OSX when I can. But I know a lame article when I see one.
Whatever. I'm tired of reading posts by pricks that can't take one whiff of honest criticism. Go smoke another with Ellen.
Thats the problem: you are the prick that can't take me criticising her article. If someone doesnt want to be criticized, then they shouldnt publish. She is touted as a technical writer, but I question her credentials as well.
And Ellen is entirely too young for me to be smoking one with. Maybe in a few years.
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
I've just installed a second Gentoo system. It took me awhile but I stopped being a wah-wah baby poking through Linux distros and complaining they weren't good enough and I just built what I wanted. It's like anything. Don't like the meals and service out? Go to a grocery store and pick the freshest and best ingredients.
In a few days I had a complete system with Moz, OO.org, Ogle, Gaim, Xmms, Gnome 2.2.1 etc. Why days? It wasn't days of my effort. It was days of the system compiling while I was doing something else. And once I had Xfree and Gnome done, it compiled in the background while I used the system for other things.
Is Linux bad because all these people try it then cry about how it's not working perfectly? No. Linux is actually GOOD because all these noobs are actually thinking of trying it! Would a few scripts and example tutorials help? Maybe. And by tutorials I don't mean howto's, I mean the openoffice document I created as I went through my Gentoo installs on two machines and recorded all the little things about fonts, mounting zip drives etc. that could easily be part of one document vs spread in a bunch of different docs.
Hardware has a lot to do with problems. A lot of BSODs are caused by sucky drivers, overheating (crappy cases, bad heatsink fans) and cheap RAM. My mother started having a lot of BSODs on her windows box. Guess what happened? My father had seriously upgraded the insulation in the house and routed a new heat vent into her room. A few bencmarks of motherboard and ambient temps showed it was more than enough to push the system over the edge. Was it a windows problem? No. It was a cold Candian winter + old folks who like warm rooms + handyman upgrades his insulation problem.
Linux can struggle with all those things, too. I discovered my RAM was overrated on speed (memtest86 failures in tests 5 and 8) and had to crank it down to get through long compiles without segfaults. I really should get some decent RAM.
The other thing about Gentoo which is interesting (and has nothing to do with intrinsic value) is that as it forced me to assemble my system and pay attention to doing it, I was far more likely to poke around to resolve any issues that popped up and to stick with Gentoo in the long term.
Maybe downloading all these iso's makes it too easy to try it, decide you don't like it, then bitch about it over the Internet like you're someone who matters.
I use Linux (Debian) nearly exclusively, but I can definitely see where she's coming from. If I want to do pretty much anything I need to read a bunch of documentation and edit config files. Now this isn't too difficult if you know what you're doing and have spare time, but I can see how most people would find it unacceptable. In Windows and Mac OS, if you want to do something like, say, burn a CD, you just install the necessary software and it Just Works. In Linux you have to find a cd burning HOWTO and figure out how to change permissions so the cd drive is writable by your user (or set the suid bit on your cdwriting software).
My biggest pet peeve though? There don't appear to be any good GUI ftp clients for Linux. There's gftp, which is lacking lots of features and is crashy, and there's something-or-other from the KDE people that's not so good either. Nothing approaching Windows' BulletProof FTP or SmartFTP. So I use ncftp, which is a CLI interface. Works for me, but I doubt it would for most casual computer users.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
This question is rhetorical. You probably use it every day for the same reason I use it every day--that being, although it sucks, everything else sucks more.
But different people have different needs. I'm one of the biggest Linux fans in the world. However, I happen to think after reading the article that the writer would be better off using Windows.
This is not because of l33tness, or because I want to be an asshole. The simple fact is that Linux is not yet ready right now for what our writer needs. The most distressing part of the article to me is that it took the writer 18 months to figure this out.
The reason why no one has tried to make a *good* distribution is that the set of people capable of making distributions (call this set A) is not a representative sample of the population of people who need a *good* distribution. Members of set A tend to be just fine with using command lines and writing printer magicfilters.
People often lose track of the following two points:
- This problem is *hard* to solve. It is a classic chicken and egg. You can't create a distribution until you enter set A, but by the time you've entered set A what's good for you is no longer what's good for average joe.
- There's no rush to solve this problem. People often fall into the trap of thinking that Linux has to grow in order to survive. But Linux is not like other commerical platforms. Linux is the most successful user-developed platform in history. Because Linux development is so open and accessible, Linux does not need popular success in order to thrive.
While I certainly agree that Linux should suck less, I also don't think that Linux can be all things to all people. Some users really are better off not using Linux. In time this problem may be solved, but that hasn't happened yet.>Only Win2Kers are cool enough to join my OS!". Asshole. Shut the fuck up.
Why isn't this guy modded down as a troll?
Anyway, these people complaining about her Win95 machine have a point regardless. She's (or whoever, the name is an obviously a pseudonym, say it out loud, and probably a clever troll) has an old machine and most of her problems are driver/hardware problems.
Linux for the masses means the same thing Windows for the maasses means: preinstalled OS. An equivalant review would be someone taking an old Linux PC and trying to put windows on it only to find that she's missing the proper drivers. Now add the industy's lack of Linux support and she has no one to hand her drivers.
Linux on the desktop != supported hardware. It would be nice if there were drivers for everything, but that just isn't the case.
I'm curious. When she bought that PC from dell, or whomever, did they just ship a box with a bunch of drivers on a bunch of floppies with a sticker saying, "Good luck!" Yeah, I don't think so either.
No, she, like 99.999% of PC buyers got a PC with a working OS installed and working components because the manufacturer had to provide a working machine. Whether they installed drivers after the OS install or just got them to MS on time, is besides the point.
All this review is telling us is that installation is especially hard with her hardware. Fine, but that isn't saying much. We all know Linux's driver support is limited.
It IS a pen name; or the person's parents have a horrible sense of humor. "Tsu Dho Nimh" or "Sue-Dough-Nim" or "Psuedonym".
What?
In response to your wonder about why there would be a hundred ways of doing something in Linux:
- It's made by developers for developers
What's this mean? It means that it's made by people who care that they can be as productive as humanly possibly with the least effort humanly possible.
So, why not one good interface?
People work in different ways. If you're writing code, you want to use every niftty feature you usually do, and you want to do it the way you have always done so. That's why there's VIM and EMACS (May God smite all who use that ghastly creation) and KATE and CoolEdit and cat+touch and every other thing you can imagine.
However, that doesn't excuse distributions. As far as I can tell, Distros add things that lots of people use. What they need to notice is that they can pitch all of the stuff that is only used by total Linux geeks. Why? Total Linux geeks know damn well how to './configure && make && make install' so they have every program out there at their fingertips.
The main reason that Designers don't do work for Linux is Linux doesn't want them to, not money. In a lot of design environments you have this:
Employee Type Coder gets instructions from Employee Type Designer and does them.
If Employee Type Coder is confused or disagrees, it asks Employee Type Designer for clarification because it doesn't get to tell the designer what to do.
In Linux you have this:
Random Person Coder sees a design suggestion and says 'Great, so why don't you implement it?'
Random Person Designer shrugs and walks off because he can't code that and he knows it.
- or -
Random Person Coder sees a design is, a bit confused, and has Random Person Designer try to explain it to him over e-mail and without any direct contact because they aren't physically co-located.
I'm good at design, and can code a bit, but I can't code a quality program and I know it. But if I put a post on a mailing list, it'll get ignored if I don't contribute something else, especially if it disagrees with what is the current trend in the group and, guess what that group is a group of coders who doesn't know shit about design.
God said 'Let there be' and there was.
Man wrote fifteen thousand lines of code and got a seg-fault because he missed a paren.
We've got a ways to go as far as programming languages are concerned.
Why would you need a GUI enabled computer to act as a print server? Isn't that just a waste of resources? The idea behind your friends recommending Debian probably was that you didn't need a GUI and that you knew what you were doing.
Anyway, a dedicated print server ought not be a seperate computer in the first place. It ought to be part of the printer (which you finally figured out). That's typical A-Bomb to kill an anthill thinking. The amount of extra electricity in the long run you waste with an extra node will pay for getting the JetDirect a couple times over.
And no, setting up a seperate node as a print server in Linux is definitely NOT easy nor recommended for the average user, but something that an experienced sysadmin should be able to handle. Why? Because Linux by default isn't MEANT to be a print server. The problem isn't Linux printing, the problem is people like you who try to use a wrench to nail in a hammer.
"I have installed more distributions of Linux and every other OS than you can imagine. Never have I ever had an installer do that. I have never had software set an immutable bit. I googled it and can't find much either. Nope. Not likely. Not impossible, but I am betting I have installed a couple hundred more boxes than you if you think this was the problem."
The point is: who the fuck cares WHY it happened. It happened. And it prevented her from doing something she can do in Windows. That alone should be a red flag, regardless of whether she is brilliant or retarded. None of the things she was trying to was abnormal, and they could all be done on a 7+ YEAR OLD version of Windows.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
Google Posting
$ ls
hello.h ebonics.h ebonics.o ebonics.c hello.c hello.o whatup*
$ rm -rf *
rm:
$ ls
$
--Dan
I was reading the article right up to this:
And then I switched off. I really couldn't care less whether she uses Linux or not. She's not the sort of person who is worth fighting for. How can anybody act so ungraciously when a community gives her a free gift of software, a free gift of their time, and a free gift of their knowledge, all with the goal of HELPING her? She can go pay for new hardware and Windows XP and avoid having to deal with all those "shrieking geeks".
If this lady is the sort of person that will be attracted to Linux if Linux is made easier to use then I think the current situation is fine. Keep Linux hard to use because that will keep these ungrateful brats away from Linux. Any valid improvements she might suggest are irrelevant if those improvements result in more users like her. She obviously considers herself to be a better person than the "geeks". I think the situation is exactly the opposite. Good riddance to bad rubbish.
"Here's some advice: buy a newer used computer! What the heck do they pay "technical writers" anyway!?! Heck, I see Dell desktops with 7 - 900 mhz PIIIs for 300 bucks!"
That's not a solution, only a bad trade off.
What you call old systems are not that old and they are still working hardware.
Perhaps I shouldn't say this as alot of the systems I have now are from others tossing them away as they "upgrade their system hardware".
And it is this hardware that I'm looking to find software to make them useful in terms of today.
with some shrugs as to why things didn't work and now do.... I installed College Linux DM on an IBM aptiva 266Mhz...... haven't tested modem or printer yet, but the sound card works.... don't know about playing CDs yet... not to mention burning any...
I suspect things like multi-user issues contribute to complexities that many if not most desktops users don't really need to have to deal with. As such there really should be a distro that is for a single user system...
Another OS I'm looking at as a free and open source based system is AROS which I hope in time will become a single user system of choice by those supporting such free and open source software. As a clone of the Amiga OS and my experience with the Amiga OS.... a small robust multi-tasking easy to use OS is greatly needed.
Even better is the possibility to use such an OS hosted on a GNU complete system (The Hurd core) as a user space OS that can IPC tap into the resources of the GNU system.....
But still...... Working hardware is worth throwing out only when it breaks..... not when software leading edge makes it slower...
There really is a problem with computer component landfill pollution...
In any event people don't like throwing out what is still working and if you can install software that make the hardware useful still....
To be able to easily install Linux in a manner that is useful only means spreading linux not only freely but upon hardware that is either free or damn well near it... more so than $300 cheap...
Jesus, dude. How many different ways does he have to spell "RTFA" for you? She was trying to replicate conditions of someone switching from Windows to Linux, which involves starting with FAT or NTFS partitions on an existing hard drive
/boot, / and SWAP partitions anyway. Formatting it as fat16 is a silly waste of time and shows she doesnt understand what is going on. The fat16 partition she so carefully makes, is destroyed FIRST THING when you install. its irrelevent.
No it doesnt. You dont know what you are talking about.
She put it on a seperate partition, NOT on a fat32 partition. IF you used partition magic or another drive to open the space, you would NOT format it as fat16 because you have to split it for seperat
The point stands -- she started the first one with FAT, and she reverted to that for each subsequent trial for consistency. What's your problem with that? It it's irrelevant, why keep yammering about it? Why let it affect your eval of the article or the author's execution of the trials?
Actually, I am well under control. I just think it was a bad article, and said so, and every hard dick jumps to a ladies defense. No one ever acts this way if someone puts down an article unless its by a girl around here. Before you argue back, look back. I have.
I think its funny how sexist some of you are. Patronising. I think she is probably a big enough girl she can handle one person not liking her article.
Now, risking karma, but well worth it . . .
You, sir, are an idiot. You couldn't address my point reasonably, so you play the sexism card. That's amazingly lame. I'm not sure if "Pseu - Do - Nym" is male or female, and it doesn't matter. His/her points are valid regardless of gender, as are mine. Your posts, however, have been weak, reactionary, hyper-sensitive, short-sighted, and generally annoying.
Don't bother replying to me on this one, I don't wanna go that far OT or spoil my fine Sat night any more with your pointless vitriol. And besides, I just modded you down below my threshold, foe, so I won't see it anyway. Let the people with at least minor clue fragments post some, k?
everything in moderation
"No, you probably just aren't familiar with the shell. Many very good typists get very frustrated with UNIX because of the need to understand the shell."
You bonehead--she can't be wrong about what her own requirements are.
To everybody who says "I never have problems installing linux", let me point out that this doesn't mean that nobody has problems. I don't have problems either (most of the time) but obviously some people do. Rather than acting all defensive and saying "Microsoft sucks too" why not see if anything can be done to improve things?
Also it doesn't make sense to say "what do you expect for free". If I pay RedHat or SuSE for a distribution I expect a certain level of quality. I wouldn't blame the authors of the individual GPL'ed packages, but I would blame the distribution people who let packages get on their CD without adequate QA.
To the distributors that the author specifically mentions, I hope you are taking advantage of this free QA. Either she is lying about the problems she had (what would be the point of that) or these problems really happened. If they did they should be fixed. Bugs are bugs.
The conclusion of the article is that Linux isn't ready for the mass market. If you disagree, fine, but don't claim it's perfect or more stable than Windows and therefore the whole article is BS.
MS offers support? Maybe to businesses. As someone with two completely legitimate running copies of WinXP--one laptop, one desktop--I can say that I've looked, and there's no way to get actual real live support from Microsoft for them. I have to go to the vendor. What do the vendors say? "System restore. If that doesn't work, reformat."
The up side is that WinXP *does* recognize all manner of hardware without so much as blinking at it, and so on. Which is largely why I still use it, at the moment.
But, actually, as far as taking a relatively standard system and using it for non-gaming everday things? Linux does pretty well. It's not hard to browse the web, get email, write papers, IM people, that sort of thing. Which is good progress.
No, you can't game, do major graphic design and desktop publishing, whatever, as well as on WinXP. But there was a long time when people said you couldn't really do those things on Windows, either. (Less so in the games department, but I do recall Sierra having a lot more Mac-emphasis, and they used to be huge.)
So I wouldn't install Linux on my grandparents' computer right now, no. But by this time next year? This time two years from now?
Everybody always acts like these things are fixed in stone, and they aren't. Everything changes. Maybe Joe User depends on the status quo, maybe Joe User just uses whatever's most likely to land in his lap, but the future isn't really determined by Joe User. The future is determined by the people who actually want things, and the people who're willing to do something about them.
Usability is a huge concern. I've been using Linux systems since 1997, and they're improved a great deal since then, but there should be a joint usability services group that evaluates the current situation and how it can be improved. Input such as this should be welcomed, and paid heed to.
The system has failed you, don't fail yourself. --Billy Bragg
She is not technically inept. She is a technical genius compared to many of the people I know. To many of them, running sndconfig is so far out of their league it isn't even funny. The very concepts of dual booting or partitioning a hard drive for different OS's is as foreign to them as the idea of performing a transplant.
"The legitimate powers of government extend only to such acts as are injurious to others." Thomas Jefferson.
Why? Because Microsoft has a stiffling grip on the OEM hardware market. There's a shitload of hardware on the market which was designed to be a win2k/winXP only gadget. That would mainly be certain USB devices, winmodems, winprinters, scanners, soundcards and graphics cards.
Robert
I don't use RedHat any more (Gentoo made ma a believer), but I knew is was simple to download the iso images, so I tried it.
www.redhat.com->download->Red Hat Linux 8.0
At this point, you can click on "How to download Red Hat Linux", which explains the process in great detail and fairly simply, or you can continue to "Download Now!"
Click "Download Now!" and you are in the ftp directory. If you read the instructions, or you know what you're doing, you're already downloading.
How is this "retardedly inaccessable?"