Mandriva Linux 2006 Review

Anonymous Coward writes "In light of the many misunderstandings about Linux, software repositories and installation of packages, part one of this season's Mandriva Linux 2006 review includes an extensive background article about it. It explains why the nature of Free Software leads to a more userfriendly software installation setup for Linux distributions in general, as compared to proprietary systems such as the current desktop market leader. The process is illustrated with Mandriva Linux tools. This first part of the Mandriva Linux 2006 review also contains information on the installation and benchmark figures against previous Mandriva/Mandrake products and much more"

Comments

Nature's way.

[kahei]

It explains why the nature of Free Software leads to a more userfriendly software installation setup for Linux distributions in general, as compared to proprietary systems such as the current desktop market leader.

Nature has many ways to deliver a warning. The bright stripes of the coral snake, for instance, warn us of its poison. The yellow markings of the wasp warn us that if we touch it it could sting us. And sentences like the above warn us that the discussion may be just a teensy bit over-focused on The Destiny Of Free Software And The Slaying Of The Redmond Ogre.

Ah, Mother Nature, your resourcefulness never ceases to amaze :)

Re:Nature's way.

[jolyonr]

I have found a blue error screen is a natural warning of low-quality software.

Re:Nature's way.

[QMO]

Which is why I've removed the blue signal wire from my VGA plug. My software improved overnight.

(I know, I know. But it was still fun to say.)

Re:Nature's way.

[jonadab]

> I have found a blue error screen is a natural warning of low-quality software

That's exactly why Microsoft is improving Vista by adding a red error screen.

Re:Nature's way.

[heffrey]

I have found OpenOffice.org persistently crashing Linux another warning of low-quality software.

Well, not to defend an evil empire or anything,

[ScrewMaster]

but what is so unfriendly about the Windows XP install, in particular?

Re:Well, not to defend an evil empire or anything,

[MathFox]

but what is so unfriendly about the Windows XP install, in particular?

The first things that pop up in my mind: EULA and activation code.

Re:Well, not to defend an evil empire or anything,

[zootm]

but what is so unfriendly about the Windows XP install, in particular?

In terms of software installation, I believe that the problem they're getting at is that you have to obtain the software yourself. Of course, this is something of an oversimplification (in particular, in some cases, this could be easier than using package management), but their emphasis is on the fact that all the software you want for your system is available in one place, and is easy and consistent to install.

Windows installer packages fix the second one of these gripes, whereas with the first, I suppose there are pros and cons.

Re:Well, not to defend an evil empire or anything,

[vdboor]

but what is so unfriendly about the Windows XP install, in particular?

The installation starts in DOS mode; the basic system configuration (like partitioning) are done in a blue/white DOS-based screen. Most users don't even know what partitions are, let alone how to step through those screens. Only the last parts of the installation happen in a real GUI.

Re:Well, not to defend an evil empire or anything,

[cyxxon]

I don't really know myself, but turn this around: Linux installation often gets critizised for being hard to install, and for sometimes featuring a menu driven but text based installer. You even get asked for what kind of machine you are installing (server, workstation, ...) and how much of your hard disks you wnat to use!

And the Windows XP is basically the same. You have to partition the harddrive yourself with a text based installer. You cannot go back to an earlier step throughout the whole installation, only during the second half. You get asked lots of questions, about the timezone, your network setup, and other hard to grasp concepts.

Yes, this might sound like a rant, but we are talking about OS installation mechanisms. They cannot magically determine what you want, only make it easy to prepare the questions for you. And quite frankly, Windows is not much better in that regard than an enduser friendly Linux distribution, but Linux often gets critizised for it by the "mainstream" IT press. Another thing the mainstream I press usually ignores is that one of these hard question installers ask is for the kind of machine, and then install all kinds of software that is appropriate, as in an office suite or SMB server. On Windows, you get asked all the difficult questions again upon each single application install (okay, meabe not for an SMB server, but you get my point).

This is a rather lengthy FA, and I doubt anyone outside the linux community understands and reads it in its entirety, but it is agood one nonetheless.

Re:Well, not to defend an evil empire or anything,

[Anonymous Coward]

I was wondering the same; of all the distro's I have installed, none of them is as user friendly as Windows XP as far as the installation is concerned (reply all you want, but that's my experience). This looks like another one of those cases in which some people claim that the user friendliness of Linux distro installations is on par with the user friendliness of the Win(XP) installation process, but reality paints a different picture. Besides, I do not agree that the freedom that Linux distro's enjoy as far as being able to customize the installation process is concerned is necessarily something that will lead to a better and more user friendly installation process than the proprietary installation process of Win(XP), since (GUI) uniformity is often lost when each component of a Linux distro offers its own way of installing something (and let's face it: a lot of tools out there either don't pay attention to a user friendly installation process at all, or they think - as mentioned above - that their way of doing it is The Right Way, resulting in a lack of uniformity).

Re:Well, not to defend an evil empire or anything,

[ooh456]

The process of installing Windows is long and complicated compared to most Linux and even BSD distros I've tried.

And instead of getting easier with each new version its getting more difficult. The last time I installed it a few months ago I had to spend 10 minutes on the phone punching codes in and then listening to a voice generate me an activation key. And since I called from Sweden the message was in Swedish. Nice one. You think normal serial codes are annoying? Now that was annoying. Enter your serial code, Bork Bork!

What's more, Windows typically does a worse job at auto-configuring than Linux. I remember a few months ago I couldn't even install Windows XP SP-1 which cost me $300 on a machine because the new hard drive I bought were serial ATA and I didn't have a floppy drive to load the 'special drivers'. Since it was a computer I was building on a budget, I refused to buy a floppy drive just so I can load some whack drivers. I mean, I haven't used a floppy drive since 1996.

Guess what... a standard Debian Linux CD-ROM which I downloaded and burned for free could see and format the Serial ATA drives with no problem. It got all my drivers right as well because it just automatically downloaded the latest versions as necessary from one of about 100 mirrors around the world.

As for software, a Windows installation can take a whole day and cost thousands of dollars as you install your productivity applications and whatnot each of them with a separate serial code and a reboot of your computer. With BSD or Linux distros you just pick the apps you want and they install and auto-configure along with the rest of the operating system. I think I rebooted my Debian box one time when I was editing my FSTAB file.

That, my friend, is what is so unfriendly with a Windows install. It takes longer, it is tedious, and loads up a bunch of marketing crap that maybe 5% people think they want. Oh yeah, and you have to speak Swedish if you install Windows in Sweden. So no traveling, okay?

Re:Well, not to defend an evil empire or anything,

[heanol]

Difference is, windows is usually pre-installed.

Re:Well, not to defend an evil empire or anything,

[Anonymous Coward]

OK, I hope you're not serious about this (or trolling, for that matter)... Linux does EXACTLY the same, if not even more so: most distro's confront you with a text-based installation process at the beginning as well and don't even get me started about partitioning, because that is one of the most terrifying things someone new to Linux can be confronted with (the partitioning part of Windows XP is far less complicated than the partitioning part of the installation of an average Linux distribution).

Re:Well, not to defend an evil empire or anything,

[xs650]

but what is so unfriendly about the Windows XP install, in particular?

I don't see a lot of difference on a new install with fresh software, in fact Windows has the advantage because it usually installs and just plain works with no treaking. If everything works without tweaking, a Linux install can be easier, but in my experiance, there is usually some piece of hardware that causes headaches in a Linux installation. It doesn't matter that the reason for the problem is lack of drivers from the hardware manufacturer, all that matters to the user is that he has problem that he didn;t in Windows.

On the 2nd, 3rd, 4th ... time the OS is installed, Linux installations start to have some real advantages. I just reinstalled Orifice XP in a 4 year old notebook computer for the 3rd or 4th time, this time because I replaced the hard drive. Everytime, it gets to be bigger job. It's re-enter the silly bazillion digit authorization number (assuming you can still find it), download and install a big arsed batch of updates, dowload and install a 90+ meg service pack 2, then download and install the next big batch of security patches etc. Then search the web to find out how to get rid of some of the crap the XP automatically loads and starts running for you.

By comparison, to reload a Linux flavor after a hard drive change, you get the revision of the distribution you want and just load it. Chances are it, unlike Windows, will be easier to reload than it was the first time because Linux distros are fairly rapidly improving their user freindliness while Windows loading is a bit more user hostile than it used to be. Then on top of that, office software and a bunch of other usefull stuff gets loaded in less time than it takes to just get the Windows OS loaded.

Re:Well, not to defend an evil empire or anything,

[Anonymous Coward]

Probably "a standard Debian Linux CD-ROM which I downloaded" is more updated than a SP1 XP. If you try a SP2 XP (latest version) you wouldn't face this problem!

Re:Well, not to defend an evil empire or anything,

[stinky wizzleteats]

but what is so unfriendly about the Windows XP install, in particular?

I know a lot of people who bought new computers after being spywared rather than attempt an XP reinstall. I think this casts the whole "easy to install" question in a totally new light. The real question is - who installs their own operating system? We (mostly Linux users, a few Windows power users and astroturfers thrown in for good measure) have come up in the years of installing your own operating system - installing DOS 5.0, doing your first '95 upgrade, etc. We live in a world where people don't do that anymore. No one installs XP. They buy the computer with it already on there. Most people don't back up their data and have to rebuild their entire digital universe from scratch when they change from one computer to the next, so the pain of doing so is reserved to and part of the trauma of buying a completely new computer.

Why do people do this? What is so hard about Windows XP installation? 2 things:

• The license code.
• You dont' have a functional computer when you are finished

Modern Windows multi-step phone home licensing is beyond what the average user wants to mess around with. I think that is clearly deliberate. But the most important problem with installing XP is that when you are done, you aren't done. You have to put all your programs back on it. Windows installs without an office suite, imaging editing software for your digital camera, software to talk to your blackberry, etc. etc. etc. This is an area where I think Linux has a very big advantage which has not been exploited from a marketing perspective. The software repositories for something like a Debian or Gentoo are truly amazing. You are a few clicks away (in the case of Synaptic, for example) from a universe of software most Windows users can never imagine. All Linux systems install with a MS-compatible office suite by default, and have thousands of other programs to choose from to do everything from games to development to desktop publishing. Windows doesn't even come with a decent text editor.

As with so many things, therefore, comparing the installation of Windows to that of Linux is like comparing apples to oranges. Software freedom is a qualitative matter rather than quantitative, and, as usual, you can never accomplish through a Windows XP installation what is possible when you install Linux.

Re:Well, not to defend an evil empire or anything,

[Lumpy]

but we are talking about OS installation mechanisms. They cannot magically determine what you want,

really?

last time I installed MacOS it did.

Granted it has an extremely limited scope of hardware to support so they get an advantage there.

Re:Well, not to defend an evil empire or anything,

[LWATCDR]

The bigest problem with installing Linux isn't Linux but X-Windows. SuSE and Ubuntu have made that a lot simpler but it still can be a pain. Now if nVidia would just let everyone include their drivers on their distro that would go a long away to making life simpler.

Re:Well, not to defend an evil empire or anything,

[quickflash]

You get asked lots of questions, about the timezone, your network setup, and other hard to grasp concepts.

You must be from Indiana ...

Re:Well, not to defend an evil empire or anything,

[Anonymous Coward]

And since I called from Sweden the message was in Swedish. Nice one. You think normal serial codes are annoying? Now that was annoying. Enter your serial code, Bork Bork!

Did you have to use the Swedish Chef translator? :)

Re:Well, not to defend an evil empire or anything,

[Anonymous Coward]

We have a hard disk duplicator. We have a standard install of XP which installs all drivers and software automatically.

The standard install takes about 45 minutes. At the end, we have a station running XP PRO, SP2, WSUS, Office, and every other application we want.

We have made clones. They take about 5 to 10 minutes. So on any new machine, we put the clone image on the harddrive and in 5 to 10 minutes we have a fully working XP machine. We just have to give it a name.

Zenworks (ZfDS 6.5) is running on our network. So if we give the PC a department name of sales, the machine automatically gets the sales department programs. If the user has special software, Zenworks installs that when he logs on. Without the user having to be ADMIN.

Sure, it took us a while to setup. But man it is nice.

I just installed Mandriva 10.1 o on 3 SuperMicro servers using 3Ware RAID controllers. It took half a day to get Mandriva installed with the packages I want. I couldn't use the onboard Adaptec controller because Mandriva doesn't work well with it.

The hard part was getting Mandriva update to work. Mandriva update never works out of the box. This go around, the old Mandrake URL fails so Mandriva erroniously tells me the hardware platform is not recognized or supported.

I know Mandrake update is a POS, so I go to easy URPMI and find some mirrors. That takes a while as often they are full, signatures are invalid, or they no longer work.

Once I have Mandriva update working, there are 770MB of patches to install.

I could probably clone Mandriva just as easily as I do Windows. Install is a non-issue on both. The only real issue is when I don't have the Windows key when doing a install/reinstall and I have to go to eOpen to find it. That's usually my 2003 servers though, and not XP. I have a single site license code for all my XP PC's.

Sorry, Mandriva is nice. I run half a dozen servers/workstations. But Windows is leaps on bounds ahead of all *nix distros, and always will be. It's got the revenue to keep it there.

Re:Well, not to defend an evil empire or anything,

[Quevar]

But Windows is leaps on bounds ahead of all *nix distros, and always will be.

Maybe and maybe not - can you tell the future? Very little of what you said pertains to how Windows works well. You are simply skipping the install process, which, as you mention, you could do with any other OS install. My concern is that the Windows install is going to be out of date within a week and will still require at least a few reboots to get all the latest security patches up and running. I still don't understand why it needs so many reboots to install the patches. It's nice that it works so well for you, but that doesn't help the average joe home user who can't duplicate an image.

Re:Well, not to defend an evil empire or anything,

[Dave2 Wickham]

most distro's confront you with a text-based installation process at the beginning

Really? When I installed Red Hat 7.3, back in 2002(?), it had a fully GUI-based installation. I've not had a huge amount of experience with other distros; just Slack, Debian and Ubuntu, which all use text-based installation, but all but Ubuntu are aimed at the more experienced user. I was sure that things like Mandriva had full GUI installers based on Anaconda.

Re:Well, not to defend an evil empire or anything,

[Anonymous Coward]

1. You can copy the wpa files from the windows direcotry to a floppy/cdrom and when you reinstall windows immediately boot into the command prompt and copy them over to the windows directory.
2. You can make a BartPE boot disk and include dd for windows. Use dd to image your old windows disk to transfer to a new hard drive.
3. Prepare a vlk media disk and use your legit serl number to avoid the annoying activation (may be illegal to do )
4. Use sysprep. Sysprep will create an answer file and you will not have to type anything in, you can also seal the machine so that it starts up just like a brand new system from the store.
5. Ghost or driveimage

And before you do all this, slipstream sp 2 onto your windows isntall disk.

Either windows or linux can be just as easy as the other if you put a little effort into learning the system.

The real problem is that the concept of operating system is flawed. The OS should be on a ROM chip where nothing can modify it and where it cannot easily get corrupted.

Re:Well, not to defend an evil empire or anything,

[Anonymous Coward]

"Oh yeah, and you have to speak Swedish if you install Windows in Sweden." The Swedish have it easy - if you want to install it in America, you need to speak Indian.

Re:Well, not to defend an evil empire or anything,

[CmdrGravy]

No, they don't. I have been using Mandrake for at least 4 years and it's had a full GUI installation for the last 3 of those years for sure and possibly even before that. I also know that SUSE has a full GUI installation and I am sure many other Linux distros do too.

Partioning in Mandrake at least was very easy and it is very helpful about what partitions to create and what to do in case you have an existing Windows installation you don't wish to overwrite. In all the cases I have seen the original suggestion the installer makes for partitioning is the correct one so in effect the user just has to click on 'OK'.

Re:Well, not to defend an evil empire or anything,

[bigpat]

but Linux often gets critizised for it by the "mainstream" IT press.

That is because most of the time you have to install linux, but Windows comes preloaded. So you will always have people comparing the installation of linux to getting a windows computer which is preconfigured by the hardware vendor, it is an impossible comparison.

I noticed this back in 1998 when I tried installing NT and found that the Windows installer was a lot less friendly than Linux, to the point that it was barely functional and failed several times.

Sure some installers are better than others, but it is irrelevant to market adoption. Linux on the desktop means desktops that come with Linux preinstalled. And it is Dell that is the biggest obstruction to the goal of real choice in desktop OS for the masses.

Re:Well, not to defend an evil empire or anything,

[Heckle78]

The bigger issue here is that most people re-installing WinXP these days on personal computers do not use a standard hologram CD. They use a OEM customized recovery CD or recovery partition hidden on their hard drive. In those cases the OEM has already made most of the difficult decisions, and the user may be asked only to pick a timezone and an initial password - nothing but that. The perception of Windows being easier to install persists for this reason.

This is not a defense of Microsoft, but if we're going to argue that Windows is just as hard/easy to install as Linux, we should take into account the experience most end users actually have and frame our arguments in that context.

Re:Well, not to defend an evil empire or anything,

[Anonymous Coward]

What if I want to use the box as a server, and MacOS installs a load of extra crap on there that will never be used? That's not what I want.

Re:Well, not to defend an evil empire or anything,

[Liam Slider]

I don't see a lot of difference on a new install with fresh software, in fact Windows has the advantage because it usually installs and just plain works with no treaking.

You're joking right? Or are you counting "dragging out all your driver disks and installing them after you've freshly installed Windows" to simply be part of "installing Windows"? Then there is the fact that there is hardware that gives Windows machines trouble and simply won't work, or won't work well, and that this is an increasingly common problem. You bring up the occasional Linux hardware problem (which is increasingly rare) but simply ignore those faults that Windows has. Rather unfair if you ask me. And then there's the relative lack of software on a fresh Windows install...compared to a Linux install it's incredibly limited. Maybe you should change "just plain works with no treaking (tweaking?)" to "just barely works with nothing to work with."

Re:Well, not to defend an evil empire or anything,

[leadsling]

I don't see a lot of difference on a new install with fresh software, in fact Windows has the advantage because it usually installs and just plain works with no treaking

I have done dozens of Linux and Windows installs and have yet to have a Windows install pick up all the hardware. If I'm working on a new machine, no big deal because I have MANUFACTURER"S DRIVERS supplied. Most of my work is with used machines and 9 times out of 10 I do NOT have drivers disks. If you are lucky, the component is still supported and you can download a driver. If not, then you are in for a ride that makes Linux set up look like elementary arithmatic. Plus, even in the time it takes to do a simple install of the OS in Windows I can have the OS and all of my productivity software installed and ready to go.

Re:Well, not to defend an evil empire or anything,

[kubevubin]

I use Windows 2000 Professional, so the activation code is a non-issue with me. Furthermore, I disagree with the article's author regarding the process of installing software in Linux being more intuitive than the process of installing software in Windows.
Matching the available software to your particular version of Windows isn't typically much of an issue. Unless you're using an older version of Windows, any new Windows software is XP-compatible (unless it's something developed by some freak of nature who intentionally writes software for Windows 3.1 only in his parents' basement.
As for needing to know the software's title, isn't that pretty much a requirement in a Linux environment, as well? The software summaries given in the typical Linux distro do not go into full detail about a program's feature set, so I don't even feel as though this is a relevant issue.
Furthermore, I highly doubt that the average newbie Linux user could figure out what he/she needs without visiting a forum or randomly installing/uninstalling various software packages until he/she finds the one that has the desired functionality. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that they'd hafta ask around more when looking for Linux software.
If a certain software title isn't included within a particular Linux distro (*cough*Opera*cough), you must then download and execute the software, also as an admin (by providing root's password). Furthermore, do note that any software installer can potentially include a virus of some sort. I seem to remember hearing about a particular Korean Firefox package for Linux containing a little something...
As for wizard installers, I like being able to choose how much of a particular package I'd like to install. Furthermore, what's wrong with it prompting for an installation directory? I, personally, like to choose the installation directory for certain applications, as it helps from an organization standpoint.
I can't believe that Linux users actually break a using a Windows wizard installation into multiple steps. You know, you don't have to change a thing. You can click Next or OK to your heart's content, only getting burned if you install an untrusted package.
And I really wish Linux users would stop bitching about having to reboot a Windows machine after certain software installations. Boo hoo! You know, you don't even necessarily have to reboot immediately. You can install other packages before rebooting for another. Besides, a Windows boot doesn't take nearly as long as a Linux boot, so what's the big deal?
As for the registry, yeah, it sucks. You know, though, it really isn't all that bad. I, personally, make plenty of changes within my registry upon reinstalling Windows, as I feel comfortable enough with it to do so.
Depending on the hardware, most devices are typically detected and installed automatically in Windows XP. It isn't perfect, but do realize that Windows XP has been out for several years, and it's bound to be out-of-date in terms of driver support. However, you can typically find device drivers on Windows Update, anyway. *shrug*
I'll admit that the system tray issue is quite common amongst the less experienced Windows users, but that's strictly due to their inability to take the time to pay attention to what they're doing. Full-auto software installations in Linux only encourage this sort of irresponsible computer use.
Perhaps the funniest thing about the article is that it assumes that everything in a Linux software installation will always go just fine. What if something goes terribly wrong? Would the average user know what to do then?

Re:Well, not to defend an evil empire or anything,

[murdocj]

Having installed lots of software on Windows, and having gone thru some attempts at software installs on the latest version Debian, I'd like a hit off whatever the article author was smoking.

My latest install on Debian of the X11 dev package did a few things I didn't expect (like going out over the Internet instead of using the disks I had bought) and then hung my whole system (e.g. power switch time). It apparently "successfully" installed, but I can't say it was a smooth user experience.

I'm not saying that Windows is wonderful or DRM is wonderful or we should all bow down to Bill, but let's keep the discussion somewhere close to reality.

Re:Well, not to defend an evil empire or anything,

[spyfrog]

Well, all people should speak Swedish anyway... ;-)

Re:Well, not to defend an evil empire or anything,

[jonadab]

> but what is so unfriendly about the Windows XP install, in particular?

The hardware detection leaves a lot to be desired. A lot of *very* common and popular hardware is either not detected correctly, or the needed drivers are not included, so you have to obtain them separately, e.g., from the manufacturer's website. This is no big deal for something like a printer, but it can be a real pain for certain types of hardware, the lack of a driver for which can impede your installation experience. For instance, it is *very* common to have to complete the entire installation in 256-color mode, as if it were 1993, because the video card driver is not included and must be obtained subsequently. Even worse is when the network card driver is not included, which also happens quite a lot; you have to use another computer to obtain it then, and transfer it to the computer where you're doing the install using removable media. One of these two things happens, in my experience, more than half the time when installing Windows XP (or even more often with Win9x; I have little experience installing Windows 2000 so cannot make informed comment there). I have installed various versions of Mandrake (not, however, recent Mandriva versions) on various hardware, including both new and quite old hardware, in some cases the same hardware where I've previously had the aforementioned problem with Windows (not XP though, as the hardware in question was far too old for that). I have *yet* to see Mandrake, or any of the numerous other Linux distros I have tried, fail to automatically detect and correctly configure the driver for any kind of ethernet card, either add-on, original, or onboard. The track record with video is not as good as with ethernet, but still rather better than Windows, in that when the card is successfully detected (which is usually), there is no need to hunt down a driver, and even when the card is *not* correctly detected, there is usually *still* no need to hunt down a driver, you just have to pick the manufacturer and model off the list. I *have*, however, seen scenarios where a video card didn't quite work correctly even then; it's not very common, especially lately, but it does happen occasionally. Still, overall, the hardware detection on Mandrake is the best I have seen on any operating system. Knoppix is also rather good, and the BeOS gets honorable mention for its exemplary handling of even most hardware that's rather newer than the OS.

Windows is improving in this area, too, though, and with XP being much better than 98 in my experience, I suspect that Vista, if^H^Hwhen it ever finally comes out, will probably do pretty well in this regard. (It's not, however, merely a matter of recent Mandrake versions being better at this than vintage-2001 versions of Windows; Mandrake 7.0 was already quite decent at this when *it* was released.)

Then there's the small matter of installing software, to get the system into a usable state. I don't know about you, but I personally don't really feel like using WordPad for all my word processing and desktop publishing needs, Paint for photo editing, nothing whatsoever for vector graphics editing, Notepad (gah!) for text editing, and so on and so forth. When you install Mandrake, you have almost everything you need (with a couple of minor exceptions, such as Firefox extensions and the core fonts). With Windows you have to hunt down and install the power tools (especially TweakUI, the exclusion of which from the core distribution is inexcusable), an office suite, a real text editor, a photo editor, a vector graphics editor, whichever core fonts are missing (they're Microsoft's own core fonts, but there are *always* some of them missing, frequently the most useful ones, such as Georgia, Verdana, and Andale Mono), a decent command shell (Microsoft has one of their own now that from what I have seen is quite good, but it's not yet included in the OS and at this point will probably not be included in Vista either), and anything else you might happen to want (

Re:Well, not to defend an evil empire or anything,

[Anonymous Coward]

No, you are smoking, or have not actually done that many installs. Since I install
Windows all the time, witout any prebuild install images , I can state the facts for you

Try to install 5 new HP pc's with previously purchased Windows XP + SP1 Disk
Time for install ready + and compilers and office installed
-> AGES and AGES (i.e. workdays), and you have to have a external firewall to protect the machines as install goes by.

Linux install -> even with a single set of CD image's , done in an hour !!!

Sorry for my spelling, but I don't see you spelling chinese either ....

Well probably you are just glueless, and have not done that many installs :)
And think if one would install Windows 2000 Server's, for same machine's ,
well that is pure torture.

Re:Well, not to defend an evil empire or anything,

[rtb61]

Just an idle query, but it is 2005, why arn't you running stale piss, is there any particular reason that you as a windows preferer choose to stick with a five year old operating system. As a computer buff I would assume that you have purchased newer hardware and that you would have had to purchase the newer windows nt rehash and are going with the legal downgrade option.

Fail to reboot between certain hardware driver install of win2kpro and stale piss and you will be doing a reinstall from scratch. Reboot each and every time and will end up saving yourself a lot of heartache. You even have to install drivers in the correct order or you will end up stuffing up the install of both win2kpro and stale piss.

There is one thing that a payed for Linux distribution will be able to offer that a microsft rehash never can, a customised distribution based upon your hardware. With out having to pay a licence fee for the same software over and over and over again, it does leave money for more beneficial for the customer uses like support, custom distributions and real manuals.

How many of those missing windows drivers are really because the hardware manufacturer did not want to pay the microsoft extortion fee, not because the driver was not available i.e. microsoft specifically making the end users computer experience worse on purpose so that it could exploit it's monopoly for yet another fee that ends up costing the end user yet more money.

Re:Well, not to defend an evil empire or anything,

[xpyr]

What's more, Windows typically does a worse job at auto-configuring than Linux. I remember a few months ago I couldn't even install Windows XP SP-1 which cost me $300 on a machine because the new hard drive I bought were serial ATA and I didn't have a floppy drive to load the 'special drivers'. Since it was a computer I was building on a budget, I refused to buy a floppy drive just so I can load some whack drivers. I mean, I haven't used a floppy drive since 1996.

Well you can integrate the serial ata driver if you want onto the windows xp cd. And at the same time slip stream service pack 2 onto it.

Guess what... a standard Debian Linux CD-ROM which I downloaded and burned for free could see and format the Serial ATA drives with no problem. It got all my drivers right as well because it just automatically downloaded the latest versions as necessary from one of about 100 mirrors around the world.

You're comparing a version of an OS from 2001 to something that was just released recently? Nice unfair comparison you just did their. What if there wasn't a driver for your nic with your debian? How would you load it? Via a floppy disk?

Well there is one thing that windows does well that linux can't do. All those hardware raid controllers that operate on ide and sata right now linux doesn't work with them. If you setup raid1 with 2 drives, windows sees one drive while linux sees 2 drives.

As for software, a Windows installation can take a whole day and cost thousands of dollars as you install your productivity applications and whatnot each of them with a separate serial code and a reboot of your computer. With BSD or Linux distros you just pick the apps you want and they install and auto-configure along with the rest of the operating system. I think I rebooted my Debian box one time when I was editing my FSTAB file.

It doesn't have to cost thousands of dollars. Install firefox and thunderbird, install openoffice 2.0. Now what if the application I want there isn't an open source alternative? Quicktax? Turbotax? What am I to do? Do you just put up with it that there is no open source alternative? You sound like you would.

As for windows, I think windows developers appreciate that they can develop an application, create a setup program for it, know that it will work with all windows versions from windows 98 to windows xp. But for linux, you need to create a package of it for every single linux distro out there since none of them have a standard file system. You have a download for redhat linux, mandriva, debian, gentoo, etc. Sometimes you even need to have a package for different versions of the same linux distro.

As for your complaint about windows being only available in swedish in sweden. You could order a version of windows that is in english if you want. The default language in sweden is swedish, which is why all windows versions there are swedish. Just like in china, all windows versions are chinese. And in Canada, since the official languages are english and french, you can buy either the english version or the french version. It's all about where you're located.

By the way, a floppy drive is $5 on average. How cheap can you be? I'd certainly want to have a floppy drive around just in case I needed it.

Re:Well, not to defend an evil empire or anything,

[Anonymous Coward]

And it is Dell that is the biggest obstruction to the goal of real choice in desktop OS for the masses.

I have a Dell, and I run Mandriva on it. Granted, I was forced to buy XP with the box, but I was then quite free to download Mandriva and install that. And it works great!

Re:Well, not to defend an evil empire or anything,

[Anonymous Coward]

I just reinstalled Orifice XP in a 4 year old notebook computer for the 3rd or 4th time, this time because I replaced the hard drive.

You're the idiot if you're not learning how to use tools like Ghost or Acronis TrueImage. Or even using a Knoppix boot CD and using NTFSClone to make a drive image before moving to the new machine. That at least is all free software so you can't use the excuse of not being able to afford the $50 for Acronis.

The really smart folks know enough to burn a full system image every month or three months off to DVD-R so when the hard drive dies, it's a simple process to restore the image to a new disk and be back up and running within an hour or three.

Which reminds me... I need to make an image for my laptop!

Re:Well, not to defend an evil empire or anything,

[10101001 10101001]

I use Windows 2000 Professional, so the activation code is a non-issue with me. Furthermore, I disagree with the article's author regarding the process of installing software in Linux being more intuitive than the process of installing software in Windows.

Matching the available software to your particular version of Windows isn't typically much of an issue. Unless you're using an older version of Windows, any new Windows software is XP-compatible (unless it's something developed by some freak of nature who intentionally writes software for Windows 3.1 only in his parents' basement.

And with a Linux distro there's zero matching, as all available software is kept in a nice list. Anything on the list is installable. Complaining that various software *isn't* in the list would be something worth mentioning, though.

As for needing to know the software's title, isn't that pretty much a requirement in a Linux environment, as well? The software summaries given in the typical Linux distro do not go into full detail about a program's feature set, so I don't even feel as though this is a relevant issue.

Furthermore, I highly doubt that the average newbie Linux user could figure out what he/she needs without visiting a forum or randomly installing/uninstalling various software packages until he/she finds the one that has the desired functionality. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that they'd hafta ask around more when looking for Linux software.

Why would it be any more? Because people already know Windows and Word? You run into the exact same problems with Linux as you do with Windows, as far as having to know the name of software to install it. The major plus to Linux disros is, again, that there's a list. Further, virtuall all distros include descriptions in these lists. Now, obviously, you're still stuck to actually installing a lot of this software to "test it out", just like you are with Windows software. And you'll probably want to rely on friends to have some clue on what's "best" without going through all the options. But I can't really see how Linux could be marked any worse in figuring out what you need. It's only worse in that you can't click a link on a website, but you have to go through your list instead.

If a certain software title isn't included within a particular Linux distro (*cough*Opera*cough), you must then download and execute the software, also as an admin (by providing root's password). Furthermore, do note that any software installer can potentially include a virus of some sort. I seem to remember hearing about a particular Korean Firefox package for Linux containing a little something...

Right, this is a legitimiate complaint. And the answer, by many distros, is to include said software indirectly. For Gentoo, one has to manually d/l some software. But still, Gentoo's package manager is the one that actually installs it and keeps track of it. And yes, if you're not willing to manually go through all your software and build from scratch (and with all the various firmwares, it's really not even possible on most systems), you're going to have to rely on others. Linux isn't immune from viruses. It's just been lucky to have a community that's quick to discover viruses and, more importantly, connected enough to have a web of trust and accountability.

As for wizard installers, I like being able to choose how much of a particular package I'd like to install. Furthermore, what's wrong with it prompting for an installation directory? I, personally, like to choose the installation directory for certain applications, as it helps from an organization standpoint.

I somewhat agree, except generally wizards don't just install into a directory, but that's more to do with the registry/Application Data, so I'll respond more below.

I can't believe that Linux users actually break a(?) using a Windows wizard installation into multiple steps. You know, you don't have to change a thing. You can click Next or OK t

Very nice page for the beginner

[imr]

I thinks it's a very good idea to describe the softwares installation process under linux, which may be puzzling at first to grasp when coming from windows but is really a no brainer afterwards.

As for the online documentation that the article describes, it is contained in the distribution, just install with the "Software Packages Installation wizard" those packages :
mandriva-doc-Starter-fr
mandriva-doc-Drakxtools-Guide
mandriva-doc-Command-Line
mandriva-doc-Server_Conf_Guide

The first 2 being the most importants for the beginner. Once installed, they will be accessible in the documentation menu.

Also, if you need help and support afterwards, go to the mandrivaclub forums, you don't need to be a paying member to post there, you just have to register a login as in any online forum.
It is a community driven forum, yet with the en/us forum admin being a paid mandriva employee, an uber help machine and an "original doom" speed freak.
http://forum.mandrivaclub.com/

Re:Very nice page for the beginner

[IamTheRealMike]

I think pretty much by definition if people have to write long rambling articles "explaining" why it's so much easier to install software on Linux than Windows, it probably isn't.

Re:Very nice page for the beginner

[ookaze]

I think pretty much by definition if people have to write long rambling articles "explaining" why it's so much easier to install software on Linux than Windows, it probably isn't.

That's because your logic is incorrect.
In math, explaining why "1 + 1 = 2" is a very long process too (and not trivial), which does not mean that learning that 1 + 1 = 2 is hard.
Where what you say is flawed, is that explaining why it's much easier to install software on Linux is not the same as explaining how to install software on Linux.
If you read the article, you would have seen that explaining how to install software on Mandriva :
- is very simple
- is explained in the manual (hard copy or PDF on the site or doc package)

Re:Very nice page for the beginner

[Coryoth]

In math, explaining why "1 + 1 = 2" is a very long process too (and not trivial)

Actually, generally, once you've defined what you mean by each of those symbols explaining why "1 + 1 = 2" is quite short and trivial (amounting to "by definition"). Explaining why the arithmetic thus constructed from your definitions is consistently applicable to the physical world... now that's a little harder.

Jedidiah.

Re:Very nice page for the beginner

[JaxWeb]

Oh, no! I cannot resist pointing out an article I have recently written: Sets and Such.

Look at section 8, "The Foundations of Numbers", to see why 1 + 1 = 2 :-D Enjoy!

Re:Very nice page for the beginner

[Coryoth]

I am quite faimilar with axiomatic set theory and foundations of mathematics. The point remains that in terms of arithmetic of numeric symbols that is largely an issue of definitions (how do we define a number, how do we define addition of numbers, how do we define equality of numbers) and following the (not inconsiderable) groundwork of defintions (and there are actually a few ways to approach this - there are at least two different set theoretic defintions on natural numbers, you can approach it simply with Peano axioms, or you could comne in via a category theoretic approach) the explanation of why 1+1=2 follows very efficiently and almost directly from the definitions.

Jedidiah.

Re:Very nice page for the beginner

[JaxWeb]

I wasn't implying you didn't know, it was just for anyone reading in general (and it made most sense to reply to you).

Sorry for that misunderstanding.

I don't dispute your point, by the way. Certainly it is definitions, and I personally would go further as to say do not actually feel there is much 'natural' about these sorts of things at all. I consider them all man-made.

Re:Very nice page for the beginner

[Anonymous Coward]

I explain to those who don't know linux - even those who (try to) use it but keep trying to install rpm packages built for RH8 onto a SUSE machine and vice versa.
Everybody who moves to linux has a short 'eureka' moment when they first use a package manager. Everyone who hasn't tried or hasn't come to that point will mess up their system and waste their time - and lots of those post negative things about Linux that were their own fault.

aRTee
www.mandrake.tips.4.free.fr

Chip board, or pine?

[basingwerk]

How can Linux compete with the current desktop market leader, which surely must be either chipboard or pine?

Re:Chip board, or pine?

[meringuoid]

How can Linux compete with the current desktop market leader, which surely must be either chipboard or pine?

Well, I've been using pine on Linux for years, from back when I used to telnet into my shell account just because I didn't have the disk space on my machine for a mail client, but I haven't heard of chipboard. New project? Is it on freshmeat yet?

Re:Chip board, or pine?

[$RANDOMLUSER]

Hear that whooshing sound?

Re:Chip board, or pine?

[Anonymous Coward]

Quite ironic that you were the one who didn't get the joke.

Dumped My Windows XP System For It

[Anonymous Coward]

Other than my MAudio 7.1 card not working with the master volume and no one anywhere on the Net knowing or caring to help, I was able to dump my Windows XP system for Mandriva easily.

KDE blows away the XP desktop, although some stuff like options being buried in four or five levels of sub menus needs to be addressed.

However, it is not in the same universe as my dual G5 OS X system.

Please KDE guys, buy a Mac, steal one, whatever it takes. You have matched Microsoft, big whoop. Time to move on to the big leagues in desktop software.

Too bad that Apple got the boot from IBM, I don't see their desktop system lasting much longer now they are dumped into Intel land and their hot, slow chips. Oh well.

Re:Dumped My Windows XP System For It

[BravoFourEcho]

Real Mac users would be proud of it, and not post as an AC.

That aside, ask yourself who's desktop Mandriva/KDE most resembles. It ain't the Mac's. At this point in KDE's development, I'm sure if they had wanted to make the defaults more Mac-like, they would have done so.

Background

[Jacek Poplawski]

Background of this article makes it really unreadable.

Re:Background

[Anonymous Coward]

Background of this article makes it really unreadable.

Why are you trying to read the background?

Disadvantages?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmmm, the article listed about a dozen advantages, and no disadvantages. Doesn't seem very balanced.

Here are some of the disadvantages, as I see them -

- The installer did not recognize my webcam, my scanner, or my printer. Hardware support is awful
- The partition portion of the install wiped out my laptops small "save" directory for low power shutdowns
- It did not correctly set up a dual boot Windows 2003

I would there are many disadvantages. Sadly, it looks like linux is still not ready for Joe Lunchbox Windows user. Maybe by 2010.

Re:Disadvantages?

[badfish99]

I haven't tried it on a laptop, but a while back I tried to install Windows on my desktop machine.

-The installer did not recognize my webcam, my scanner or my printer. For each of these, I had to search for the manufacturer's website, download a separate driver, install it and reboot. I couldn't find a driver for my scanner which would work with the latest version of Windows. Hardware support is awful.
- It wanted to install using the whole hard drive, wiping out all my Linux partitions.
- It did not correctly set up dual boot with Linux.

Sadly, it looks like Windows is not ready for this Linux user.

Re:Disadvantages?

[ErroneousBee]

I also found:

During Install
+ Correctly created grub option for my Win98 installed on hda1,
- but missed the Madriva 2005LE installed on hda5, so I had to go into "Configure your Computer" and add that option.
+ Installed nvidia driver and other stuff like acrobat.

Post Install
+ Boot times are really fast.
+ It has corectly configured my microphone, Win98 and MDK2005LE both failed this simple test.
- Still have to go to easyurpmi to get plf-nonfree and the win32-codecs and stuff. A new user wouldnt know about this.
- Kuickshow doesnt obey the delete key. This is a serious problem for me as it turns my 2 minute initial sweep though photos downloaded from the camera into a 20 minute job eliminating the ones I dont want.
- Doesnt always shutdown cleanly, seems to hang shutting the hardware demon down.
- Doesnt autodetect/mount devices I plug in.
- Subversion packaging is a bit ropey, reports packages I thought I needed but didnt.
- I still have to wait 10 seconds for bootup, UT2004 and other apps to release the sound device. I hate this, as I cant go from boot to plying ut2004 to watching a DVD without having to count to 10 each time.

I think this release could have been really good, but Its let down by some obvious bugs and ommissions.

Re:Disadvantages?

[Anonymous Coward]

Please mod parent "insightful".

You bring several valid points. Windows installation procedure assumes, mostly wrong, that it will be the main OS on the disk. Some normal users (read: linux beginners) I know try to install Linux first, set it up to their preferences, then try to install Windows as an alternative OS for the occasional fragging. They soon find out that Windows installer overwrites MBR without asking and they will have to re-install Lilo/Grub again.

Windows is the only OS I can think of that does not handle dual-boot out of the box. Yes, you can configure it afterwards with a bit of know-how and experimentation with the Windows loader as well, but it is by no means automatic as it is with all Linux distros I know as well as the BSD flavours and BeOS/Zeta. Ubuntu for example even lets you resize your main Windows partition, set up the new free space for Linux, installs a boot manager, and even make Windows the first OS choice in the boot menu if you want.

The hardware support in the latest Linux kernels is far greater than the Windows OS. The latest hardware drivers are often included as well as OLDER hardware. This is a very important issue. I have PCs with ISA cards that work fine with Linux but that are not detected at all for later versions of Windows and no drivers will ever be written for that hardware for that OS.

Peace to all

Mr/Mrs/Miss Anonymous Coward

Re:Disadvantages?

[91004]

I thought that I needed Windows XP for a particular project. I have been going Native Ubuntu Linux since May and thought that it wouldn't hurt to place Windows XP on the computer. Boy was I ever wrong. Like you I had problems from the get-go. It didn't even recognize my ethernet card which is a very generic ethernet card, nor did it recognize my USB port setup, my webcam, or any of my other accessories I had. Luckily I had backed up all of my files and reinstalling Ubuntu Linux was a breezey! Trying to install window drivers and related .dll files is really a pain in the ass. First you have to find the drivers and then you have to install them. What a freakin joke.

When I installed Ubuntu Linux the items... Well they just worked. The only thing I had a problem with was a TV viewer for my tvcard and I found that right away on Linux.. Tvtime!! Linux just well... works. It doesn't whine and cry like WIndows does. It you can't run something on Linux, you sure in the hell can't run it on WIndows!! I use Crossover Office, Wine, and Cedega and I have no problems running what I want to run. I have also used REACTOS and this kicks ass. It is still in its infancy but runs Windows problem like they are native.

Anyone that runs Windowx XP and thinks LINUX is a joke should think again. Why do you think government agencies are making the switch to Open Source O/S? Because the support that Microsoft is showing and the money which you have to layout for the Operating System has become more of a joke than anything else.

Re:Disadvantages?

[timbo234]

- Still have to go to easyurpmi to get plf-nonfree and the win32-codecs and stuff. A new user wouldnt know about this.

A new user wouldn't know they have to goto divx.com and real.com and apple.com to get things called 'Divx' and 'Realplayer' and 'Quicktime' to be able to play most video files on Windows either.

When theory and reality disagree... reality wins.

[mumblestheclown]

It explains why the nature of Free Software leads to a more userfriendly software installation setup for Linux distributions in general, as compared to proprietary systems such as the current desktop market leader.

When theory and reality disagree, reality wins. Windows software is, in general, at this moment in time easier to install than Linux software. If you disagree with this statement, you are at best guilty of wishful thinking.

That said, there seems to be an unhealthy fixation in the Linux world with the "ease of OS installation" or "the ease of application installation." While these of course are important things, of course they represent only a relatively small portion of the whole "usability score" for a given OS/work environment. While most linux vendors have made admirable strides in the realm of OS installation (I'd argue, despite the likely claims of many here, that application installation still has a ways to go) to the point where the installation is now within the realm of 60% of computer users (compared to, I'd say, 70% for windows and 10% or less for linux 6 years ago), larger problems remain, such as the lack of true credible alternatives in many key software areas (gimp, for example, is a lousy photoshop clone) and a lack of true interoperability (like the fact that I can cut and paste items from powerpoint to photoshop to my email to into an MS-Access cell to ... relatively seamlessly).

Which of the 793 to choose from?

[Anonymous Coward]

Who am I going to listen to? Geek #1 or geek #793...

Some of the major distros even try to do this, with a normal/advanced version of their distro (the one costs more...).

What about using the M$ scheme?

Home : n00bie OS. With pretty pictures and a media player.

"Proffesional" : geek OS. With all they have to offer, but you can still choose how "advanced" you want the thing to be.

"Server" : big geek OS. As above just with 4 extra DVDs to host from mail servers to whatever you'd like.

And if you want to compile everything yourself, just get the extra 7 DVDs that are availible... If not? Get the 1 CD version. Or live version (like a lot of distros now have apart from just a main "installation" version)

What else do we need?

why all reviews do not tell everything...

[Bigos]

Things like: *messages in Drakconf "Program exited abnormally" *where configuration of kicker has disappeared *systems seems to crash more often I doubt if any of the reviewers used the system for longer time. I think they just install it perform few stamdard actions and move on to review another distro. I am in the process of moving to Ubuntu. Tried Suse but it didn't work on my system. I can aford Mac, give me some advice on some good distro

Re:Pick One...

[Macka]

I don't think this is true. Sure there are lots of Linux distributions out there, but most of them only exist because they satisfy the needs of specific niches. In reality market forces and developer resources have already paired down the choices most end users will make down to just two: Redhat and SuSE; with Ubuntu being a possible third. No disrespect intended to Mandriva but they don't have the marketing mindshare to compete with the big boys, and its mindshare that counts the most. Having two or three main competing distros is not a bad thing, its a good thing as it helps to keep them sharp and focused on quality and innovation. And having a choice of two or three is not too much to ask. It certainly doesn't do any harm.

Re:Pick One...

[Professor_UNIX]

The single biggest problem stopping greater linux penetration? "Why are there so many versions". Focus the linux open source community on one or two distros max, then i really believe everything else will fall into place.

Afterall, it worked so well for FreeBSD. I hear they're up to 3,000 users now.

j/k BSDers!

Re:Pick One...

[Anonymous Coward]

there is more redundancy between countries legislations and speech languages in the world and there is nobody claiming for making one only country or speaking an unified language.

Network Deployment

[Anonymous Coward]

Is there a way to automate package installation across an entire network? With MSIs and policy updates, this is really quite trivial in the Windows world and is a big reason that companies use Windows networks. Linux may have a nice single machine installer, but how about network-wide deployments? (Please note that this is a real question for those trigger-happy with the Troll mod. There's a lot going on in the linux world and maybe this problem has been addressed and I just don't know about it.)

Re:Network Deployment

[Marauder2]

Sure, there are several ways. Primarily as a result of large parallel computing clusters such as Beowulf type systems, there have been several ways developed to manage packages on large groups of systems.

For the longest time I Had a relatively simple shell script where I could specify the group of systems and what packages to install and it would rsh to each and install them over a network mountpoint. I could do that because this was several years ago, a parallel cluster with a very specific and known configuration, and we were talking over a 100% trusted and isolated network.

Of course nowadays on anything but a completely trusted network like I was running on, it would have to run over ssh for security. Even on a trusted network it's usually better to run ssh however there are some networks where there are actually policies that prohibit encryption within the network for various reasons I shall not go into.

Also now, you can also use some tool like Parallel URPMI which was designed for managing large groups of machines (theoretically parallel clusters but it's not limited to that) and does essentially the same thing.

http://clic.mandriva.com/documentation/ch10.html#i d2859225

Re:Network Deployment

[Havokmon]

Sure, Zenworks. But I'm kind of biased, I can't even get a freaking root certificate from cacert.org to install with group policies.. Not like there's much to it. *grumble* :/ Rick

Re:Pick One...

[vdboor]

The single biggest problem stopping greater linux penetration? "Why are there so many versions". Focus the linux open source community on one or two distros max, then i really believe everything else will fall into place.

How do you relate this to the different needs of different users? Having one or two distro's attracts a niche market, but scares all other user away. Heck, even Microsoft (one single vendor) releases several versions/distributions of their OS. Somehow the difference between Windows 2000, professional, advanced server, exterprise never confused business because they get themselved informed. The same applies to Linux distributions IMHO.

And there are just a few really good distributions for the enterprise (think SuSE/Mandrake/Redhat/Debian/Ubuntu).. the other 100-200 distributions mostly serve Open Source fans.

Interesting dependency (not!)

[LaughingCoder]

Basically, it means that any Free/Open Source software project that is even remotely interesting has been packaged. I haven't had to build any package from source in years ...

So if I read this right, this amazingly easy installation procedure (which is pitched as a strength of FOSS) does not have any dependency on the Free/Open Source development model because the installation packages are binary. Further, while it is true that the user is relieved from having to figure out which packages work with his/her system, there is a significant burden on the application developers and/or packagers to support every Tom-Dick-and-Harry distribution. Just the testing alone (which I would bet does not get done on the lesser-known distros) is a massive undertaking.

So in the end I remain unconvinced that the Linux world is even in the same ballpark as Windows when it comes to ease of use, installation-wise, for the end users. And further, the direction the Linux world is taking is to be more Windows like (binary install packages, software manager, uninstallers). The main difference is Microsoft relieves the application developers from the burden of having to build installers for umpteen platforms - typically they only have to build 1. And the average Windows user doesn't have to worry about picking the wrong distro

Here are some anticipated user reactions:

How come you can get the CDtoasterExtreme package and I can't?

What do you mean if I want that application I have to install a new operating system? But then I lose some of the applications I already have?

I subscribe to the notion of a binary installation. However, until the Linux world can harmonize on a SINGLE package that runs on ALL Linux distros they will be far behind the Windows world in this regard.

Re:Interesting dependency (not!)

[dylan_-]

So if I read this right, this amazingly easy installation procedure (which is pitched as a strength of FOSS) does not have any dependency on the Free/Open Source development model because the installation packages are binary

And here you have stumbled upon the dirty secret of Linux. I was keen to enter into the world of Open Source myself, and had heard that Gentoo was an excellent Source Based distro. Imagine my horror when I discovered that running the "emerge" command not only downloaded the Source Code, but then proceeded to compile it into binaries before installing!!! I was disgusted and dismayed at this pollution of the Open Source ideals! It's good to know I'm not the only one who feels this way, and I will continue in my quest for a Pure Open Source Operating System, untainted by the blight of "binary code".

Re:Interesting dependency (not!)

[omega9]

So if I read this right, this amazingly easy installation procedure (which is pitched as a strength of FOSS) does not have any dependency on the Free/Open Source development model because the installation packages are binary.

Wow. 1st prize for being pretty much as wrong as possible. The path that FOSS software takes from application developer to user can often involve several people: the developer(s), possible hosters (sourceforge, etc.), package maintainer(s), QA (not always), repository hosters (fex, OSU), and potentially others. All these resources come together to create the software distribution channel that I believe the original author was referencing. And why are you suggesting that the FOSS model is out the window simple because the packages are binary? You could argue that the very fact the user has access to a binary package proves the FOSS model is working since it would most likely mean that every stage in the delivery chains has successfully played it's part. In any case, who says the binary and source packages have to be offered by the same individual? If I install a precompiled build of Apache provided by Mandriva, but I can always get the source directly from the Apache homepage, what exactly is wrong and who am I supposed to blame?

Further, while it is true that the user is relieved from having to figure out which packages work with his/her system, there is a significant burden on the application developers and/or packagers to support every Tom-Dick-and-Harry distribution. Just the testing alone (which I would bet does not get done on the lesser-known distros) is a massive undertaking.

You're showing clear signs that you think you know what's going on, but you've never actually been involved in the process. In general, there's no significant burden on anyone. In large part because of those people I mentioned earlier. The FOSS model has produced segments that specialize in one aspect of the process. Freshmeat excels at software catagorization, an overall software "library". Sourceforge provides the tools for projects to develop and coordinate. Anyone familiar with these things is already thinking of the others I could mention. Developers themselves are realy free to decide who, if anyone, they want to directly build packages for. In most cases the packagers for each project will take over and handle that aspect. And as far as testing, look at Debian. It takes them ages to get things into stable! Yes, there are distros that don't have that level of involvement, but that's a direct result of the FOSS model. They wouldn't even exist otherwise.

The main difference is Microsoft relieves the application developers from the burden of having to build installers for umpteen platforms - typically they only have to build 1. And the average Windows user doesn't have to worry about picking the wrong distro.

There are a lot more similarities than you think. Windows seems singular, but remember the current support system includes things like 98, ME, 2000 Pro/Server, XP Home/Pro/MCE/64, 2003 Std,Adv/64, CE and Mobile. Yes, it's fair to include those last two because you have to make a comparison on all available correlating platforms. You're correct that there probably isn't a whole lot to do to ensure your program works on most of those platforms, but how much effort do you think Linux app developers are putting in by comparision? Usually a lot less then you think. Remember those package maintainers? Again, they're usually the ones that take over and certify it all works correctly.

Now, I'm not saying that Linux or the FOSS model are perfect, just that all your post has are a few bold and caped letters but not much else.

Re:Interesting dependency (not!)

[Haeleth]

Developers themselves are realy free to decide who, if anyone, they want to directly build packages for. In most cases the packagers for each project will take over and handle that aspect.

Yes... if someone in that project is interested in your program.

Suppose I, as a developer, am interested in making a program I've written available to (a) Windows users, and (b) Linux users.

To make it available to the vast majority of Windows users, all I have to do is build ONE binary package and test it on WinXP, Win2k, and Win98. If it runs acceptably on all of those, I can pretty much count on it being fine for 99% of Windows users. Note that I can do all this myself. Just me. It is feasible for one single person to produce one single binary package that he can be pretty certain will work for 99% of Windows users.

How do I make it available to the vast majority of Linux users? I have two choices.

One, I do it myself. That means I have to build, test, and package it for a wide variety of incompatible systems. I can't even just make an RPM and a DEB, because Red Hat RPMs aren't guaranteed to work in Mandriva, and Debian DEBs aren't guaranteed to work in Ubuntu, and so on. I have to test it separately in all these distros and more. This is not feasible for one person to do.

Two, I get the community to help. That means I have to evangelise my package: I have to build up a sufficient userbase for distros to consider it worth including: I have to find users enthusiastic enough about it to volunteer to give up their spare time to package it and field bug reports. In other words, I'm in a catch-22 situation: until my program is popular enough to have a lot of users, it's not going to be widely available enough for users to discover it.

Despite what you say, it still sounds like an awful lot of hard work compared to the Windows case, where I can do it all by myself...

(Yes, for programs that appeal to geeks I can just distribute source code, and adventurous souls will compile it, experiment, decide they like it, and package it for their distro. But for any sort of program that's aimed at non-techie users, that just ain't gonna happen.)

Re:Interesting dependency (not!)

[swv3752]

What a load of bs. Everything in the Main repository is as well tested as can be hoped for... that is what the whole cooker-beta-rc-final release cycle is for.

Ignore commercial software for Linux and just pay attention to FOSS. Packager is rarely the same person as developer. Some developers will go ahead and package for the major Distros but usually the Distro is the packager. With Mandriva, in addition the Mandriva company, the Mandriva community packages a number of the less popular or esoteric programs. the packages put together by the community are known as contrib. There is also PLF that are kept seperate bacuase of legal encumberances- mainly patent or DMCA issues. While you may not always get the very latest version, you will find most any program already package for Mandriva.

Commercial software usually keeps things generic that it will install on most any distro without problem. Several years ago I bought Corel Wordperfect for Linux. It worked on Mandrake, RedHat, and Corel (based on Debian). It does not work on newer Distros because of a problem with Libraries, but then I have programs that worked on Win98 but don't on Win2k. The only recent commercial software I have are games, and they work fine on Mandriva and Ubuntu, representing the two major packaging systems- rpm and deb.

Re:Interesting dependency (not!)

[Alioth]

I subscribe to the notion of a binary installation. However, until the Linux world can harmonize on a SINGLE package that runs on ALL Linux distros they will be far behind the Windows world in this regard.

One word:

Autopackage. http://www.autopackage.org/.

I use it for Oolite-Linux. It has worked fine on all distros I've tried. I have had no user reports of problems with the Autopackage installer so far.

Re:Interesting dependency (not!)

[Anonymous Coward]

Your answer: http://autopackage.org/

Re:Interesting dependency (not!)

[Chuck Messenger]

Do you use Linux? If you did, you would surely know that the way it works is this: Each distro takes care of compiling all the thousands of apps for you. So, for you, the end user, the apps are binary -- you don't have to worry about any messy compatibility details. Only a small number of experts are needed, to build the binary app for the given distro.

It is not necessary (or even desirable) to have One True Linux. The current system gives you all the ease of installation of a binary package, but with the flexibility of source code. The system of having _only_ a binary release, and no source code, is a limitation of the Windows world. That's why free software is slowly-but-surely eclipsing Microsoft.

Linux is like a many-headed beast. Or a rapidly-evolving cold virus. The distros are in competition with eachother as much (or more) than with Microsoft. Competition provides the fuel for evolution. The distros have become just amazingly powerful, in only the last few years -- each trying to eclipse the other. And all the distros are is the top layer. At each layer, you have the same thing -- lots of competing systems, vying to best eachother (Gnome vs KDE vs ..., MySQL vs PostgreSQL vs ..., Mozilla vs Konqeror vs ..., it goes on and on). Microsoft, by comparison, is completely stuck with their one tired old stack. They're becoming ossified.

Re:When theory and reality disagree... reality win

[Varka]

You REALLY think that installing Microsoft Office on WindowsXP is easier than typing "urpmi openoffice.org" in a console?

Re:When theory and reality disagree... reality win

[Anonymous Coward]

Windows software is, in general, at this moment in time easier to install than Linux software. If you disagree with this statement, you are at best guilty of wishful thinking.

Err, other than my not being root by default in Linux it's about the same. Stuff like Acrobat, Firefox and UT2k4 all install with a friendly "wizard" and work out of the box, whatever the OS.

You must be kidding.

[Wiktor Kochanowski]

This article is a joke. I firmly believe that I got what I paid for so I wouldn't normally complain here. But this is nothing like my experience.

Simplicity of the installation process? Last year I installed a Mandrake 9 on a VM. I had a functional install which I used for 2 weeks and then forgotten. This year I had to dust it off and install some new software for it.

Poof! The installation system is broken, the software repositories don't work, nothing upgrades not only automatically but even most things fail during manual installation due to library dependencies and even the Mandrake websites no longer exist. End result: I cannot install software on a year old Linux system.

Re:You must be kidding.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not Mandriva's fault that the lousy law abusers eliminated their good old name Mandrake.
Moreover it's not true, that you are supposed to be able to use the latest software with a
repository for one special version, when you want to upgrade, you'd better do it like you'd do
it with Windows, too, by installing the shit.

Re:You must be kidding.

[Anonymous Coward]

Mandrake 9 is a lot older than a year, actually hardly anyone uses it anymore (antique servers maybe),
there have been 6 versions of Mandrake/Mandriva since then
besides they have a new website.
And the installation of the newer Mandrivas is a breeze.

You don't complain of Windows problems that were there in Windows 95, do you?

Re:You must be kidding.

[Rocketship Underpant]

When I installed Mandrake 9, some of the URPMI repositories in the default setup (the "contrib" ones I believe) were broken and didn't work - and that was a shipping product. That's when I realized Mandrake would happily take my money but wasn't too interested in QA.

(Now I run OS X exclusively.)

Re:You must be kidding.

[Azureflare]

Mandrake 9 is much older than a year. It has not been supported for almost a year. 9.2 support was dropped when Mandriva 2005LE was released. Mandrake 9.2 was released in October 2003.

There _are_ repositories for the main and contrib packages for mandrake 9.2 on most mirrors; for e.g. mirrors.usc.edu still has mandrake 9.2 packages. However, no official updates exist from mandriva for versions older than 10.0.

Re:You must be kidding.

[opkool]

Please, compare apples to apples (no pun intended)

It would be relatively[*] the same as trying to update MS-Windows95 ... and get mad because http://update.windows.com/ is not working anymore for your MS-Windows 95.

See, both Mandrake Linux 9.0 and MS Windows 95 are "old" and unmaintained OS versions. Nevertheless, all the packaged for Mandrake 9.0 are STILL available in (at least in the principal) ftp servers, in the "old" section, for example here:
* ftp://ftp.proxad.net/pub/Distributions_Linux/Mandr ake/old/9.0

In your previous post, you said "I installed Mandrake 9 one year ago". One year ago, you had available the most current Mandrake Linux versions, that is, 10.0 and 10.1. Both versions still have their package sources found at the regular "official" section, in all of Mandrake ftp mirrors.

[*] I use Windows 95 as a comparison, as Linux develops and moves forward faster than MS-Windows. It is interesting to note that Mandrake 9.0 was released in 2002 (see http://qa.mandriva.com/twiki/bin/view/Main/Release sHistory ), and was followed by 9.1, 9.2, 10.0, 10.1, 2005LE and 2006.0 (the most current version).

Peace

Re:You must be kidding.

[FellowConspirator]

Complain to the Hearst Corporation and King Features Syndicate about it. In 2004 they sued Mandrake over the name of the company and Linux distribution because it collided with that of Mandrake the Magician (and, admittedly, used some names and graphics alluding to the character).

As a result, Mandrake was forced to rename itself. It selected the name "Mandriva".

It affects you becuase they also had to rename all of their servers and directories on file mirrors. The result, if your configuration has repositories listed with the Mandrake name, they no longer work.

The solution is simply to locate a new mirror (listed at the Mandriva site and various other places), and go to the Mandrake Control Center's Software Management tab, click on the Media Managment button and update the URLs to point to a valid mirror. Ta-da!

There's not much Mandrake could have done about that.

Re:You must be kidding.

[Anonymous Coward]

So you complain about installing a two year old version of Mandrake one year ago - sigh...

If you really want to complain about old stuff, why don't you complain about something really old, like installing IBM360 DOS and having to input the boot code with toggle switches?

Re:You must be kidding.

[ookaze]

Simplicity of the installation process? Last year I installed a Mandrake 9 on a VM. I had a functional install which I used for 2 weeks and then forgotten. This year I had to dust it off and install some new software for it.

So last year you installed a by then out of date distro (MDK 9 came in 2002 I think), OK. You forgot to say it was the download edition, OK.
You had to install some new software for it OK.

Poof! The installation system is broken

No it's not, but you sure are a troll.

the software repositories don't work

They actually don't exist anymore, which is true if you used a download edition. Anyway, the software is probably available on your CDs.

nothing upgrades not only automatically

Of course, as you have no more repository for this version.

but even most things fail during manual installation due to library dependencies and even the Mandrake websites no longer exist

That's because you've done the same mistake as a lot of Linux distro newbies : you thought you were smart enough to use Linux without support in a setup even advanced user don't use (2 years old distro, now 3) and what's aggravating, you left it for a year without maintenance, and now want an up to date system, but you just realised you are not smart enough to do that (it involves getting the new version and upgrading from the CD or DVD).

End result: I cannot install software on a year old Linux system.

Actually you can, it involves updating the system entirely if you want latest softwares though, and it works well, though I don't know if it works well for MDK 9 -> Mandriva 2006, but I know MDK 9 -> MDK 10 -> MDV 2006 works well.
Just shows that the installation process is very simple indeed.

Re:You must be kidding.

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the comments here are beside the point. Windows 95 still allows you to install software, and it's 10 freakin years old now!
There's definitely a problem if you can no longer install software on a 3 year old version of an OS.
I'm running 2005 LE now on my server and am quite happy with it. I just hope that 2 years from now I can still load stuff onto it without running into problems or having to upgrade the entire OS. I don't want to have to mess with an OS upgrade every couple of years just to install a new piece of software, when I am perfectly happy with what I currently have on the system.

Re:You must be kidding.

[Anonymous Coward]

You can install software on Mandrake 9. It just can't be software that was compiled for later versions of Mandrake. This is in no way different from any other operating system: the .NET framework can't be installed on Windows 95, for example, nor can any software that requires this. The difference is that a server name change for your repositories is a big deal when you install your software from those repositories, so it is a lot more noticable. Next time, simply upgrade you system or point to third party repositories.

Yes, the server name change was a mess -- but that was beyond their control. It would be like attacking Microsoft for abiding by the rules of the various lawsuits they have been involved in.

Re:You must be kidding.

[heffrey]

Install a new app? Why, you need to upgrade your OS? That's really user friendly.

Imagine if our friends over at Redmond ever imposed that on people?

Nah...Windows Wins This One

[Dante Shamest]

Most people buy their computers with Windows pre-installed. To them, the installation process simply involves paying for the computer.

Re:Nah...Windows Wins This One

[Hackeron]

if only the re-installation process wasnt so routine that there are hundreds of sites devoted to the subject. Hell, the virus dejour, the 25% of dell phone calls being spam related, the constant reports of an installation just dieing, its no surprise that the installation process is considered important on both platforms only on Mandrake, you only have to do it once.

Re:Nah...Windows Wins This One

[Dan_Bercell]

The reinstallation process isnt all that difficult on OEM computers, usually the recovery CDs dont leave any room for error or for data recovery for that matter.

Re:Pick One...

[ozmanjusri]

Focus the linux open source community on one or two distros max, then i really believe everything else will fall into place.

I wish people would stop moderating this quackery as insightful. It's FUD and it's a trap.

The computer OS field has been a monopoly for so long, you people don't even recognise a free market when it's running on your computers. The FOSS environment has competition between distro makers driving improvements and users benefiting, just the way capitalism is supposed to work. Almost every distro has some innovation to distinguish it, and because the software is truly free, other distro makers are free to adopt those improvements, or learn from the failures.

Limiting the number of distros will drag the rate of innovation of free software down to the level of the monopoly OS. Lets face it, the reason there are so many Linux distros is because people want to make them, and they have the freedom to do so.

2006?

[PHanT0]

Seriously... I mean, I know M$ can't release an OS in the same year that it's name implies but do we have to underline that fact with a car-like release schedule... three or four months ahead of the actual year begins?

What's next... Debian wins the J.D. Power & Associates 2010 Consumers Choice Award?

WIndows XP installation is hell

[Werrismys]

Installed Ubuntu on HP dc7600CMT with Promise "RAID" SATA card. No problems whatsoever.

Installed XP on identical machine. Had to open the box, attach a floppy drive, find a working floppy, create a driver disk and use that to install the drivers during installation.

Ubu install: 20mins with basic software, with working net share mounts, printers, stuff. XP install: half the day with basic software, same mounts, same printer.

They both suck! Get a Mac!

[Cro Magnon]

A few years ago, I tried installing Linux on a new machine. I had had good results on my previous box so I wasn't expecting any trouble. Bzzt, wrong! RH and Suse both failed to install. Linspire installed, but was almost as unstable as Windows. Mandrake did install, but I wasn't quite happy with it. I got Slackware mostly working with a lot of work, and Debian Sarge mostly working with a little work, but neither was 100%.

Windows came pre-installed and the basics worked, but for some reason, it couldn't see the printer driver on the CD.

My iBook just works, with far less effort than Windows or Linux.

That's not it.

[Rocketship Underpant]

I don't think the number of distros has anything to do with it. The problem is flaws they all share in common:

1. No distro includes a simple way of installing and uninstalling software that is guaranteed to work for all Linux programs.

2. Different tookits and a lack of GUI guidelines leads to unpredictable interface behaviour and a lack of inter-operability. Even basic copy and paste can be a problem.

3. Few (if any) software retailers stock Linux software, and many crucial applications are unavailable for Linux. (This won't change till 1 and 2 are fixed)

4. Most hardware does not ship with Linux drivers. (This also won't change till 1 and 2 are fixed)

Were any or all Linux distros to solve these problems, Linux would take off.

Name?

[DeafByBeheading]

Still has to be the distro with the stupidest name. I understand where it came from, but it's awkward to say and just *looks* clunky. And no, I'm not putting too much weight on this (hell, you could get rid of most of the references to the name with find and tr), but it's a thought...

Re:Name?

[Anonymous Coward]

I know, it sounds like a name that lesbian nazi hookers abducted by aliens and forced into weight loss programs would come up with.

Re:Name?

[joestar]

> Still has to be the distro with the stupidest name.

Oh I really thought it was SUSE.

Re:Pick One...

[lahvak]

But that's what everyone is trying to do! Make the best Linux distro, so that everybody will use it, right?

Keyboard Navigation for the Control Center

[trollable]

Good review (part 1).
I haven't tested yet the MDV2006 but I hope they have fixed the main issue I had with the previous releases: Keyboard Navigation for the Control Center. Sometimes I had my mouse frozen (when switching to a USB mouse, when pluging it in another plug, back to a PS/2 one, ...). No problem to launch the control center. But I never succeed to navigate in it using the keyboard.
Also, urpmi is easy to use but the repositories are not as good as Debian's one. Sometimes they are not updated or disappeared, sometimes I got missing dependencies warnings, other times alerts about the certificate. Except that, MDV is a good and easy-to-install Linux distribution.

Re:Keyboard Navigation for the Control Center

[Anonymous Coward]

You can navigate the MCC by keyboard if you start it in (not just from, but in) the terminal, i.e. not in X, so you get a text interface.

Here come the Windows zealots

[Anonymous Coward]

The windows zealots don't get a lot of focus here on slashdot. They're the ones you're seeing right now, saying "Linux needs to do $CHANGE in order to get into the desktop market". $CHANGE is generally some form of comparison to Microsoft Windows.

Windows zealots don't get Linux, though a lot of the slashdot ones are actually linux users as well. They're thinking in terms of markets, and beating the competition. Linux, in its essence, is not about beating anyone. At the very core, linux is about sharing code. As long as code is being shared, linux is a success.

However, every time there's a linux article with any semblance of relating to user friendliness or The Desktop, out they come, with their redundant ideas about How to Save Linux, How to Make Millions from Linux etc.

I admit that I am a little anti-windows, though I do still keep it on my hard drive and use it from time to time (using it right now coincidentally). Having said that, a few years back when I moved to linux, I didn't hang around windows sites saying that $X was wrong with windows, or that I didn't like $Y.

So what's with all these people who for the most part don't even use linux, let alone contribute anything to it, trying to dictate to us changes we should make to our operating system (mostly in order to homogenise it with windows).

Also, the usability issue is long dead. I've used Mandriva and SuSe, and I lost IQ points as a result - that's how absurdly easy they are to use. They piss all over windows software installation, which starts at google, and ends at "Next", "Finish", and are full of little touches that literally astound windows users, like having an icon appear on the desktop for your USB stick, instead of that frankly useless little window (even though this obviously uses the same mechanism, it amazes everyone I've showed it to so far - they actually ask how it's possible, just because windows doesn't have dynamic icons).

When will you zealots understand this? They've spent years listening to you, and you're still there, demanding more windows-like, and less thought. I've got news for you all: it's got nothing to do with usability. Moving to linux used to be like learning a new language, especially because of the command line, but also because of the general look and feel. It's now so windows-like that it's more like learning a new dialect, for example the difference between Latin American Spanish and Peninsular Spanish. As such, my opinion is that by now, these little niggles are not so much deal-breaking flaws, but rather excuses not to do the work required to acclimatise oneself in a new environment.

It... lovely... soft... ravishing!

Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah - leave my OS alone, stupid windows zealots.

Re:Here come the Windows zealots

[DogDude]

So what's with all these people who for the most part don't even use linux, let alone contribute anything to it, trying to dictate to us changes we should make to our operating system (mostly in order to homogenise it with windows).

Because I don't use Linux, and there are lots of reasons why. I think that letting developers know why I'm not using Linux is a positive thing and should lead towards improvement and wider adoption.

Also, the usability issue is long dead. I've used Mandriva and SuSe, and I lost IQ points as a result - that's how absurdly easy they are to use. They piss all over windows software installation, which starts at google, and ends at "Next", "Finish", and are full of little touches that literally astound windows users, like having an icon appear on the desktop for your USB stick, instead of that frankly useless little window (even though this obviously uses the same mechanism, it amazes everyone I've showed it to so far - they actually ask how it's possible, just because windows doesn't have dynamic icons).

Last time I played with Linux with about 2 months ago. I wanted to install several apps, but after I installed them, there was no way to launch said applications (started with postgresql). There's just one HUGE usability issue that I ran into within the first 30 minutes of using Ubuntu. I'm sure that there are many more, but at that point, I realized that Ubuntu was still useless to me, and I decided to try back again in abother 6 months or so. To say that usability isn't an issue is just 1. Completely clueless (ie: have never used Linux before) or 2. Utterly naive as to what "usability" means (too dorkified to understand what non-IT geeks can understand).

Re:Here come the Windows zealots

[cens0r]

You do know that postgresql starts automatically when you install it? But that's beside the point. If you are installing server software, you should be reading the manual before you do it. You wouldn't expect to install Oracle and have it just work would you?

Installing desktop software is another thing entirely. If you install a mysql server admin, a development enviornment, etc. it shows up in your menu (at least in ubuntu and madriva).

Re:Here come the Windows zealots

[optimus2861]

like having an icon appear on the desktop for your USB stick

Ironically, Mandriva modified that feature in 2006, replacing it with a "Devices" icon that you have to double-click to see all of your mounted & unmounted devices. A USB stick appears in there now instead of directly on the desktop, which I'd call a step back in usability as you get no immediately visible feedback you've done anything if you don't have that window open when you plug the stick in.

It also curiously makes a distinction between my USB stick and my SD card reader -- the USB stick gets "Unmount" on its context menu, while the card reader gets "Safely remove". Not exactly sure what happened there to make those mismatch.

Re:Here come the Windows zealots

[DogDude]

You do know that postgresql starts automatically when you install it? But that's beside the point. If you are installing server software, you should be reading the manual before you do it. You wouldn't expect to install Oracle and have it just work would you?

No, but I would expect PostgreSQL to since the install on a Windows 2000 box works perfectly fine. It starts, there's a service that I can easily find, there are shortcuts to the admin tools, etc.

But then again, this is just one insurmountable problem that I found withing 30 minutes of putting the linux CD in my drive. I was responding to the parent post about usability being a non-issue. My one half-assed example is blows that argument out of the water. If I were to spend time with the OS, I'm sure that there'd be lots and lots of other things that I couldn't figure out, too.

Re:Here come the Windows zealots

[cens0r]

Tell me this then. How did you know that you should go to the services to look for it? How did you know where the shortcuts would be? You knew because you are an experienced windows user. An experienced linux user knows how to look at the services running (it's not any harder than windows just different). An experienced linux user knows that /etc/init.d/postgresql start|stop|restart will take care of running the server.

Re:Here come the Windows zealots

[Anonymous Coward]

funny, i had this problem on windows, too. in fact, i didn't use pgsql 8 b/c i couldn't figure out how to run it on windows and ended up using pgsql 7 via cygwin...

now that i know how it works, though... duh! it's easy.

that's the key - it isn't a matter of easier, it is a matter of current knowledge. not all the time... but most of the time.

btw, i think the solution is the same in either case - fire up linux's version of pgadmin3 and connect to the db server... it *is* there, after all!

Re:When theory and reality disagree... reality win

[omega9]

Sometimes it's not about the amount of effort, but about how clear and easy to use each step is to perform and understand.

It's not a race.

Upgrade needs work

[skribe]

I upgraded my LE2005 to 2006 and I'm still finding packages that rpm failed to upgrade. In one case, gimp, a new version was installed and the old version binaries and libraries were left. rpm can't even tell me what package they belong to anymore. That sort of stuff just shouldn't happen.

skribe

Re:Upgrade needs work

[Mr. Hankey]

You're dead on with this, but it seems to be a general issue with RPM. I've had this happen on several RPM-based distros, including updates to RHEL 4 through up2date on x86_64 not terribly long ago. This was on an HP xw9300, which is supposedly supported by both HP and Redhat. This is something that the packaging systems should check for IMO and offer a reasonable fix along with the short explanation.

On the other hand, I have installed, configured and administered literally thousands of Linux systems over the last 10 years and can state with confidence that the problem is quite rare. When it happens it's quite annoying though, and like being gored by a bull it only needs to happen once. The best thing to do is just remove the package appending the full version name, and (in Mandriva) urpmi again. Typing "rpm -qa |grep " will give you the whole list of files matching the package name if all else fails.

Re:Upgrade needs work

[Mr. Hankey]

I should have anticipated the angled brackets not being escaped, sigh. The command was "rpm -qi |grep packagename", one can typically type "rpm -qi packagename" but the former should work if the latter gives up.

More user-friendly installation?!?!?

[akepa]

It explains why the nature of Free Software leads to a more userfriendly software installation setup for Linux distributions in general, as compared to proprietary systems such as the current desktop market leader.

Who wrote this article - Baghdad Bob? I use both Windows and Linux on a regular basis, and I like both of them. But software installation is one of the most horrible, frustrating deficiencies of RPM-based Linux distributions. Sure, if you stick to your distribution's official software repository you're unlikely to find yourself in RPM hell. But sooner or later you will need/want to install an application that is not available there, and then good luck to you.

Re:More user-friendly installation?!?!?

[joestar]

With more than 12,000 RPM packages publicly available for Mandriva 2006, it becomes more and more difficult to find an app which needs "manual" installation. Additionally, URPMI is, in my opinion, as good as apt-get.

I've been using Mandrake/Mandriva for a while, and I really don't know what you are talking about when you write:"software installation is one of the most horrible, frustrating deficiencies of RPM-based Linux distributions".

Re:Boo for Mandriva!

[KrisW]

With Mandrake you let drakconf and it's buddies do everything for you and then you have to go and hand-hack it later anyway.

Then, if you decide to use drakconf for something again, it writes over everything you've hand hacked. This is one of my biggest complaints against Mandriva (That, and I don't like urpmi. I'll take apt any day).

Re:When theory and reality disagree... reality win

[c_fel]

Windows software is, in general, at this moment in time easier to install than Linux software. If you disagree with this statement, you are at best guilty of wishful thinking.

It's not completely true. If the Linux distro you use has the package you want, it's now always easier (and cleaner) to install it on Linux than on Windows. You usually don't have to write anything about where you want to install it, and the files are stored in a more consistent way.

That said, try to remove a software cleanly on Windows, it will mostly fail.

But in the case the software is not available for you distro, then I agree that it's simpler to click on Setup.exe than download and install development librairies, open a console, do the ./configure; make; make install and hoping there's no error.

Re:When theory and reality disagree... reality win

[imr]

When theory and reality disagree, reality wins. Windows software is, in general, at this moment in time easier to install than Linux software. If you disagree with this statement, you are at best guilty of wishful thinking.

If I want to install software X under windows, i must:
-find the site of the publisher or some software site
-find the installer
-download the installer
-click the installer
-answer questions
-be aware of spyware

If I want to install software X under Mandriva, i must:
-check that it is not already installed since it comes with hundreds of softwares
-click the Software Wizard
-find the software (by finding it in its category or searching for his name)
-click OK

I therefore disagree with your statement.

What you really mean is that it is more difficult to install softwares under linux the windows way.
That is true, and that is what this article is all about: you don't install software the same way under linux and under windows.

The linux way is more difficult to set up if you are a windows user, since you have to grasp the concept of repository and then you have to learn one new software "the software manager" prior to installing softwares (like in windows, newcomers had to learn the installer first, which seems so easy to them by now), but, AFTERWARDS, installing programs is easier:
-no internet search
-no decision about where to install
-security
-the same amount of clicks or type

suse for me thank you

[frankcow]

it's still not nearly as pretty as OpenSuse.

Honestly, I think the mass adoption of Linux just won't happen until users can be offered as much eye-candy as XP

Mandrake 9 ??

[joestar]

Since Mandrake 9.0 there were 9.1, 9.2 (excellent), 10.0, 10.1, 10.2 AKA LE2005 (excellent) and now 2006 (looks good so far). Actually 9.0 was not good and quite broken, but since Mandriva has done a big quality effort and recent versions really rock. The installation procedure is extremely solid, features are comprehensive (more than 12,000 packages are currently provided on public FTP mirrors) and personally I love the look and feel of Mandriva.

Regarding the website, yes it changed, it's now http://www.mandriva.com/

KDE

[Anonymous Coward]

Honestly, I think the mass adoption of Linux just won't happen until users can be offered as much eye-candy as XP

IMO SuSE's default KDE is overkill. I can't stand the bouncing icon and Fisher-Price looking desktop. How much more eye-candy do you need?

Re:When theory and reality disagree... reality win

[Haeleth]

If I want to install software X under Mandriva, i must:
-check that it is not already installed since it comes with hundreds of softwares
-click the Software Wizard
-find the software (by finding it in its category or searching for his name)
-click OK

You missed the stage where the software you wanted to install wasn't in the repository, so you couldn't find it in the Software Wizard.

So you go through all those phases you disparage above for Windows: find makers' site, find setup program... oops, this is Linux, there isn't a setup program. There are three packages (Debian, Slackware, and Ubuntu). So you can't use a package, but you wouldn't want to anyway - all of them are two or three versions out of date, because nobody has volunteered to package the latest version of the software.

Never fear, this is Linux. You download the source code instead.

Er... what was it you do with source code again? You email your geekiest friend. The reply comes back in a flash: "It's really simple. Just untar it somewhere, then go into that directory and './configure && make && sudo make install'." Well, that sounds easy enough. Luckily you're not scared of computers, so you extract the source code and enter the magic command line. Mysterious text scrolls past for a couple of minutes, and then you're staring at a line saying something like Error: could not locate libfoo >= 3.1.2".

Wait, isn't this that "dependency hell" thing that centralised repositories were supposed to solve for ever...?

Centrino distribution?

[massysett]

I tried Mandriva 2006 on my laptop, motivated in no small part by Mandriva's claim that it is the only Centrino certified distribution. I was very disappointed. The startup process takes forever--it gets to the wireless adapter, then pauses for what seems like thirty seconds. Also, support for my touchpad and trackstick were spotty--sometimes they worked, sometimes not. SUSE 10.0, which has no boasts about Centrino certification, starts up speedily, supports my WPA network nearly perfectly (support for WPA is still lacking in some ways, however) and supports my pointing devices flawlessly.

Re:Centrino distribution?

[arrow014]

I really have to come to Mandriva's defense on this one. My experience was completely the opposite of yours except for one point: I too installed Mandriva 2006 on my laptop (a Compaq Presario X1030US) mainly because of the advertised support for Centrino. It installed very smoothly, and the Centrino does indeed work wonderfully (even though I did have to point it to the correct file first).

KDE looks great with the included interfaces, WINE runs c-evo (my favorite strategy game) nearly perfectly with a single interface tweak (see the September/October forum for details) and all the other software I use (OpenOffice.org, Firefox, Gaim, Dia, Netbeans, etc.) was either included with the install or installed and worked with minimal effort. Battery life seems comparable to running under Windows and my widescreen display (1280x800) was correctly detected during installation. The system is quite responsive and runs speedily enough for me.

So I'm guessing your problems are laptop-specific and, I propose, not representative of Mandriva 2006 as a whole. I'm sorry you had such trouble, but I hope that others aren't turned off; it's working great for me. :-)

Takes longer, more interaction required

[Tharald]

Windwos XP install is not directly unfriendly, but compared to Mandriva Linux install (and most other distros), a couple of issues stand out:

1. Time to install; Windows XP takes on average ~1-2 hours to install the OS and install all the drivers for motherboard, graphics card and so on. Mandriva takes on average 20 minutes, and is then configured with all drivers including NVidia/ATI 3d drivers and everything set up to go.

2. User interaction required; XP requires constant interaction during said install, to enter information, make choices, reboot and insert CDs. Mandriva requires a few choices first, the installation starts, and you can go away for 15 minutes and come back when everything is all set. One reboot to be up and running.

3. Functionality; XP, after said install, has the bare minimum requirements for an OS. If you want any more functionality, you need to spend lots of extra time and effort to install lots of software. Mandiva is all set up with office software, photo-software (manipulation and album software), games, calendaring, messaging, email, internet and most everything you need. All included in the 20 minutes (you can manage to make the install take up to 40 minutes, but then you install everything you can including server software and all).

All in all, I have installed quite a few of both, and I do not think you can compare the two. Setting up a windows machine is half a days work, while Mandriva is maybe one hour for everything including updates. In addition, the process of upgrading / reinstalling is much easier because of the separation of user data in the home folder.

Re:They both suck! Get a Mac!

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd get a Mac if I could stand Apple's crappy OS. But I can't. The diddums-baby single button thing is bad enough (and don't say "plug a real mouse in, then", because I'm talking about the single button below the touchpad on Mac laptops). Then you have the clunky "Finder" interface, the crap where you can only resize a window from one corner, "Expose" which is a poor man's substitute for virtual desktops, ugly and inconsistent widget sets that change at random not only from application to application, but within an application (click on that thing at the top right of a Finder window if you don't believe me - blammo, one minute it's brushed metal, the next Aqua!). And horrible unreadable blurry fonts to boot.

Nope, I'll stick with Windows for play and Linux for work. Sorry, Apple fanboys, but solid, usable, and stable trumps distracting eye-candy for this user.

Linux easy to install on 3 year old hardware

[Conor Turton]

If you look at the system details in that article, all it does is prove Linux has hardware compatibility out of the box with stuff that is two or three years out of date.

• urich | desktop | athon 2400+ 2GHz | 1024MB | Asus A7V333/KT333 | MSI geforce4 ti4200 | audigy2
• samos | laptop | PIII 650MHz | 384MB| Compaq | ATI rage pro mobility | onboard audio | Compaq Armada M700
• neuchatel | desktop | duron 1000MHz | 384MB | KinetiZ T7/KT133 | geforce 2mx | onboard audio |

Hell, XP has no issue with those specs listed.

The article is a load of rubbish. Perhaps if they'd bothered using current hardware such as an AMD64/nVIDIA 6xxx and wireless network card then it might have been relevent. As it is it is a nothing more than "NEWSFLASH: Linux supports out of date hardware."

it's a baby that needs constant attention

[Quevar]

The installer is like a little baby that needs constant attention. It stops at various stages to ask you what options you want. Who sits and watches the OS install? If I come back an hour later, I find out that it is only 10 minutes into the install because it was to ask what the timezone is. I tell it and leave again, then a few minutes later it wants to ask me another question. Why can't it ask me all those questions at the beginning?

After you're through with the installation

[Anonymous Coward]

and you are outside North America beyond the reach of the MPAA and its minions, and MPlayer/totem/ogle/kaffeine/xine installs and plays Region 1 DVDs (encrypted or not) OUT OF THE BOX, please let me purchase those CDs from you.

Will gladly pay for shipping costs too.

No, do not tell me to apt-get, urpmi, emerge anything.

Wake me up if this edition of Mandriva cares not for these restrictions.

MOD PARENT UP

[Anonymous Coward]

Absolutely spot on.

DVD ISO

[Norfair]

Why does it have to be such a PITA to get the 2006 DVD? (No jokes about the distro name ;)) This is what the mirror page list says: "This is the raw installation tree for Mandriva Linux 2006. If you are looking for ISO images to burn CDs or a DVD, look in a few weeks in the other section of this page." Yeah, I know I could just pay the money and d/l it today, but FFS, this is a really shitty tactic, forcing users to pay or wait. Bastards.

Re:DVD ISO

[jb_02_98]

I would just download the boot.iso file and burn it. Then you can either
1) Install via FTP or HTTP
2) Download the whole tree and install from harddisk.

I prefer method number 1. It has worked good for me and I didn't have to pay. To help other people install it, I would download the tree, set up an ftp server on my laptop and then use a crossover cable. It works great. Just make sure to change your urpmi settings to reflect a "real" mirror rather than your temporary mirror. The install takes between 15 and 45 minutes.

Re:When theory and reality disagree... reality win

[Anonymous Coward]

When theory and reality disagree, reality wins. Windows software is, in general, at this moment in time easier to install than Linux software. If you disagree with this statement, you are at best guilty of wishful thinking.

No, it's more likely you are living in the past,
or are perhaps a microsoft shill.

The reality is, a recent version of Linux (Mandriva, in my case) installs everything I need
in one (count em') one step. Without rebooting,
without calling home, without maxing out my credit card at the local software store. Without having to
download all kinds of extra software and 'updates'.

Re:When theory and reality disagree... reality win

[b0bby]

No, not really, but I would say that installing VMWare tools under Windows 95 is easier than trying to install it under Ubuntu... as soon as there's not a package for your particular distro, you can get into all sorts of pain. Although (for example) VMWare supports an number of RPM based distros, using their tools under a Debian based system can be very difficult - untar, check that gcc (3.4.5, not 4) is installed, cross fingers, etc. Can you tell that I just went through this? Pretty much anyone can get Office XP installed by hitting enter after the install screen pops up and typing in a lot of numbers; you can't always count on Linux software to be that easy to install.

Re:When theory and reality disagree... reality win

[kilgortrout]

You are so right. I installed my Sony rootkit in windows without a hitch. Just popped in the cd and clicked on the EULA. Try doing that in linux.

Magical Wizards

[GetPFunky]

I find the real problem with Linux installation wizards is that you only perform this operation once. Until the Linux distros can require you to reinstall the OS every 2-3 months, Linux doesn't stand a chance.

You are not efficient at installing Windows because it has an easier wizard, you are efficient because you are required to repeat this process on a regular basis.

Re:When theory and reality disagree... reality win

[ookaze]

When theory and reality disagree, reality wins. Windows software is, in general, at this moment in time easier to install than Linux software.

You are right : Linux software is, in general, at this moment in time easier to install than Windows software.
For example, Gimp is installed by default on Mandriva, and more difficult, but still easy to install on Windows. But Photoshop is hard to install on Windows (have to go buy it, expensive, ...), and very hard to install on Linux.

If you disagree with this statement, you are at best guilty of wishful thinking.

Ditto for mine.

That said, there seems to be an unhealthy fixation in the Linux world with the "ease of OS installation" or "the ease of application installation."

You seem to think unhealthily that it is a fixation. This topic appears only when trolls like you spout opinion as argument, opinions like the one from you above.

While most linux vendors have made admirable strides in the realm of OS installation to the point where the installation is now within the realm of 60% of computer users (compared to, I'd say, 70% for windows and 10% or less for linux 6 years ago)

I could pull numbers from out of my a** too, but I'll just say that I never saw an average user install Windows, so from my statistics, we are at 0 ù for Windows.

larger problems remain, such as the lack of true credible alternatives in many key software areas (gimp, for example, is a lousy photoshop clone)

And back on earth, I never saw an average user install Photoshop or even buy it. On the contrary, I've seen a lot of people use Gimp. That GIMP is a lousy photoshop clone is a (bad) opinion of yours. I could say that Cinepaint, that is an old fork of GIMP, is used extensively for movies; that Gimp is but a fraction of the price of Photoshop; that GIMP is available for all the platforms Photoshop is available on, the contrary can not be said.
So you see, your trollish comment and flawed logic just made you mistake the word "niche" with "key" in the expression "key area". Even worse, FYI, Gimp is not perceived as a problem. The only problem in your phrase, is Photoshop, which is not available for Linux, and that's a problem only Adobe can fix.

a lack of true interoperability (like the fact that I can cut and paste items from powerpoint to photoshop to my email to into an MS-Access cell to ... relatively seamlessly).

If only you understood what interoperability means, perhaps we could talk seriously ...
FYI, what you described is not interoperability.

Re:When theory and reality disagree... reality win

[Alioth]

...and in those cases, there is Autopackage.

The difficulty in installing some software is not the fault of Linux - it's just that maybe the developers haven't got around to making a decent distro-agnostic installer. Oolite-Linux is *not* distributed with any Linux distro, but it is very easy to install - download the autopackage, and run it. An Autopackage is basically an archive wrapped in a shell script that bootstraps the entire process - including getting the autopackage management infrastructure if your distro doesn't have it, and resolving dependencies if there are any to be resolved. Autopackages can either be installed in a GUI or in a terminal window. Superficially, it looks similar to the InstallShield-style Windows installers (but it does quite a bit more, such as dependency resolution, and can install programs quite happily as a non-administrative user where this makes sense, for example, you can choose to install Oolite-Linux system wide or in your home directory).

Autopackage is fairly new, but it's picking up popularity:
http://www.autopackage.org/

Re:When theory and reality disagree... reality win

[Alioth]

Have you seen Autopackage yet? It's an installation system that is very easy for the end user. Third party software in a '.package' file - you just execute the .package file, and it installs. No harder than installing Windows software from a .msi file (except unlike .msi, Autopackage has the capability to resolve dependencies automatically if there are any).

Why focus on installation?

[Anonymous Coward]

The apparent reason is that some (most?) switchers will go through the install process for 2-3 flavors of Linux before really getting into it and actually using the distro.

You know the drill. You hear about a great distro, decide to install and then realize that because you know how to do things on your previous OS (be it OS X or Windows) you don't boot that partition again except to update it every few months.

Since 90% of my experience with Linux has been using the installation process it is the most crucial part of it!

Conversely,

[matt me]

>Background of this article makes it really unreadable.

I found the as-to-be-expected text and near-duplicate screenshots really spoiled the whole background experience for me.

I disagree (sort of)..

[msimm]

Back in the eighties I wanted to build a PC, but I was terrified. I didn't even know where to begin. I thought building PC's was for engineering students or professional technicians. A I was interested.

I believe most people don't install OS'es themselves for similar reasons, but of course you have to add to that the fact that they probably aren't interested in the process anyway. They've got the money, why waste the time?

Installation wise between xp and any decent modern linux install system (that counts out debian and gentoo (vahnilla) of course) its all about the same. With Linux I still get to/have to make a few decisions (do I want auto or custom partitioning? extra packages or a pre-selected set? firewall/no firewall? Extra users? Whats my administrator password? Etc) which are honestly quite minor (and helpful).

Back in the day (say pre SCO) Caldera had the install process wrapped up. Great hardware detection (wow, I don't have to set up X11 by hand??) that let you play tetris while you waited. That was when I realised Linux was (or would be at some point) something more then a hobbiests OS.

I don't think its there yet, but I'm not worried about it. I'll get there when the time is right. Until then it makes my life both on the desktop and in the server room easier.

Reasonably smooth upgrade path

[robbo]

I installed Mandrake 9.2 on my laptop in Dec 2003. Since then, with each new release I've just updated the urpmi media and run urpmi --auto-select and poof, instant upgrade. It's a risky path, but the only time I had any trouble was with the 2006 release- grub wasn't updated properly and I had to go in with a rescue disk. Otherwise, I love urpmi- its my best friend. I can do without most of the drak stuff, though- old hand editing habits die hard.

Windows - lousy install

[Anonymous Coward]

Hell, the virus dejour, the 25% of dell phone calls being spam related, the constant reports of an installation just dieing, its no surprise that the installation process is considered important on both platforms only on Mandrake, you only have to do it once.

Exactly. Windows "simplicity" is a myth. If your system crashes and you need to reinstall, or if you are upgrading, the last time I had to do this, both SuSE and Mandrake were much superior to the Windows install, as far as speed, recognizing devices, configurability, polish, and simply _working_. This is probably because most people do indeed install Linux over Windows, so the Linux install is more proven as it *has* to be better. So yeah, for the average joe user, who probably takes it to CompUSA if anything breaks, and buys a new machine anytime he needs to reinstall or upgrade, Windows install is ok. Otherwise Linux is way beyond.

Re:Windows - lousy install

[Anonymous Coward]

I couldnt agree more. I've been working on a comparison that covers everything they dont want you to know - would be nice to get some criticism, comments: http://hackeron.dyndns.org/hackeron/index.php/Linu x_or_Windows_-_A_Practical_Comparison

Re:Pick One...

[plstk]

it wasn't very funny

That's straying a bit from the topic

[theurge14]

If it's application installation you have a beef with, I don't see how Gentoo could make the OpenOffice installation any easier than:

# emerge openoffice

I get the newest version of OpenOffice downloaded, compiled and installed.

If it's the application availability you have a beef with, then take it up with those applications.

And as far as the keyboard-mouse interoperability issues you have with Linux applications, I can find comparable issues with Windows applications. For instance, in Windows Ctrl-Ins and Shift-Ins work about 75% of the time for copy and paste in different apps. Or how Outlook defaults to a cryptic to find folder when it wants to save Outlook Template files without making it clear in the Explorer tree that it just did that for you... makes finding those template files again real fun.

Re:When theory and reality disagree... reality win

[Blakey Rat]

Yes. Look at the set of knowledge you need for the Linux way:

1) You need to know that the terminal exists.
2) You need to know how to get to the terminal.
3) You need to know that the urpmi command exists.
4) You need to know what the syntax of the urpmi command is, at least basically.
5) You need to know what name the people who organize the repository gave Open Office. For instance, I wouldn't assume the ".org" would be at the end of it.
6) You need to know how to run the program after its installed. Some Linux repositories add an icon to a handy menu, some do not.

Compare that to the knowledge required to install from the Office CD:

1) You need to know the serial key.

Re:When theory and reality disagree... reality win

[opkool]

It is easier than that. On Mandriva Linux, OpenOffice gets installed by default.

1. Insert Mandriva CD on your PC
2. Install Mandriva Linux
3. On the "software selection" make sure that the "office productivity suite" is marked (it is by default)
4. Proceed with installation

Compare to Windows:

1 to 99 steps. (Windows cumbersome installation process)

MS Windows installer, although long, doesn't offer you the choice to install MS Office.

MS Office installation represents, at least, the following steps

1. Notice that you do not have an office package installed
2. yell "WTF?"
3. Get your pants back on and go back to use both hands again
4. Go to your local software provider, during business hours.
5. buy MS Office package, and pay with $$$
6. Go back home
7. deal with those pesky plastic box covers, which are a pain to break.
8. insert CD on your computer
9. If you have "autorun" enabled, Start clicking "Next" "OK "I accept" buttons during the next 20 minutes. Else, first go to My PC -> CD-ROM -> SetUp and then start clicking "OK" and such
10. enter license code, which is long and error-prone ("prone", not "pr0n")
11. Now, you can remove your pants, keep browsing the web one handed and open those .ppt files with n4K3d Ch1k5 that your mates sent you

Let's see, in the case that you were a complete ID10T and unchecked the "office software" during Mandriva Linux installation, you would proceed like this:

1. click the yellow star/ KDE logo/Gnome logo/"start" button
2. Go to "System" -> "Configuration" -> "Packaging" -> "Browse available software"
3. Enter root password when it's requested
4. in the "Software installation GUI", type "office" in the search box
5. Select OpenOffice.org
6. Click on "Install" button
7. profit! ... errr... done!

Also, if you move your mouse over the taskbar icon that looks like a wrench over a PC, you see that tihs is "configure your computer" icon. so:

1. Click on "Configure your computer" icon
2. Enter root password when it's requested
3. Click on the icon "Look at installable software and install software packages"
4. in the "Software installation GUI", type "office" in the search box
5. Select OpenOffice.org
6. Click on "Install" button
7. profit! ... errr... done!

See? You do not need to know what an urpmi is, or what a konsole is or what an OpenOffice is. Just a few clicks and you are done.

Peace

Re:When theory and reality disagree... reality win

[incabulos]

Thats a pretty pathetic comparison. Would you expect Mr & Mrs Joe Average to download a bunch of Visual Basic project files, fire up Visual Studio, compile and install the thing, _then_ run them? Is that user-friendly? Even ignoring the costs of licenses for the above, its an insanely difficult process compared to ./configure'ing and make installing.

Most distributions these days have a one-command installer - 'urpmi openoffice', 'emerge mozilla-thunderbird', 'apt-get mplayer' and the like. All dependancies magically taken care of. No end-user effort needed. And one command to uninstall and rollback all changes. And one command to perform an update of software already installed. How much do you think that process can be improved?

And tell me, how the hell does that compare to scouring the web for the distributors page, finding the install package, downloading them ( from a single website which may be down or overloaded, not hundreds of mirrored servers around the world like Linux/BSD ), double clicking them, crossing your fingers and hoping the install doesnt kill a registry setting, clobber some DLL, come with spyware, viruses, rootkits or any other malware, etc?

Windows looks positively archaic and primitive compared to the state-of-the-art software install + distribution that Linux now offers.

I assure you I'm not kidding!

[Anonymous Coward]

This article is a joke.
Not intended that way. Your story though doesn't make much sense though - glad others already pointed that out.

I firmly believe that I got what I paid for so I wouldn't normally complain here. But this is nothing like my experience. [snip experience with linux release from dawn of time]
Well, here's your change...
Yours is one experience. Mine is another. And I happen to keep track of what goes on, for instance on mandrivausers.org and I see that your story is not quite what current linux experiences are like.

aRTee
http://www.mandrake.tips.4.free.fr/

Re:When theory and reality disagree... reality win

[timbo234]

In the menus there is entry named 'Install Software', you click on that, type the root password and then type in 'OpenOffice' in the search box. It comes back with openoffice.org or whatever the package is called, you select it and click install.

For ancient versions, use the "old" repositories

[buchanmilne]

Mandriva doesn't continue wasting space on all mirrors on obsolete unsupported releases (such as 9.0 which must have been obsolete at the time you installed it). Instead, old releases are moved into the "old" section of the tree, which not all mirrors keep.

However, there are a number that do. Find one, add the media, and you will have no problems.

But ... use of the 'old' tree should be avoided, it means you are using a distro which is no longer supported and no longer gets security updates. If you had installed a current version, you would still have had updates and working repos ...

How did you upgrade?

[buchanmilne]

Whatever tool you used to upgrade can only upgrade packages that are available to it.

So, if you installed 2005LE, added media, and then did an upgrade via the installer, additional packages from the media you added to 2005LE wouldn't have been upgraded.

But, all you need to do is ensure you have updated all your media for 2006, and run 'urpmi --auto-select'.

The case of the gimp could be related to the fact that there have been multiple versions available simultaneously ...

Anything else would be a bug, please file one with sufficient information to track it down (if you are sure it is a bug).

Some solutions

[buchanmilne]

Firstly, lets cover the reasons for MS needing software management via group policies:

1)different roles for machines
2)Software dependant on users who use the machine
3)licensing issues
4)pushing software updates
(there may be more ... feel free to add any)

Now, the first one can be handled quite easily at OS installation time by any current distribution that supports automatic installation (ie kickstart on RH/Fedora, auto_install on Mandriva, AutoYast on SuSE, semi-kickstart-compatible support in the Ubuntu installer). It's quite trivial to have a machine-specific "kickstart"-file, and then assign (via symlinks or similar, or by using PXELINUX's IP-address-dependant bootloader config file selection) it to a group of machines.

We manage a number of machines doing entirely different roles, so we generate our kickstart files on-the-fly from a configuration database (handling everything from machine role to VLANs etc). RHN's bare-metal provisining should also be able to do basic per-host configuration, but its not practical without an RHN satellite, which we didn't have time to investigate (or even if we did, and decided to take it, wouldn't have had time to get through acquisition, and probably wouldn't support VLANs and many other features we need and have in our own solution).

Usually, if (1) can't satisfy (2), it's an issue of (3), which is largely irrelevant on Linux anyway (at least for software that you would be able to deploy automatically).

Now, for the case of adding software that wasn't installed initially, Mandriva has "park-rpmdrake", which basically supports the "--parallel" option to urpmi (which installs software on all the hosts configured for the "group").

I think RHN should also be able to do this (but, we don't use RHN for this ourselves ... we use pseudo-packages for a specific role which require everything they need to operate).

Finally, software updates are supported by almost all distros, even if you may have to write a one-line cron job (ie 'urpmi.update --update && urpmi --auto-select --keep --auto --update').

However, I think directory integration could make this even better ... and urpmi has some LDAP support, specifically media/repo configuration in LDAP, hopefully there's more to come ...

linux's main disadvantage

[xpyr]

Okay, there is an extra disadvantage, but from the point of the packagers/developers: * for every architecture and (practically) every release, a package must be built Yes, and this is why linux needs a universal default standard package install format. There has been one developed, but practically no distributions have adopted it. And the reason why? It would end the lock-in that distributions have and give the smaller distro's of linux a chance. Because you can't have every single piece of software out there for linux in a repository for every distro. It's just not possible. Letting the developers maintain their own application installations in a universal install format is much less work then for everybody.

Re:When theory and reality disagree... reality win

[imr]

You missed the stage where the software you wanted to install wasn't in the repository, so you couldn't find it in the Software Wizard.
I didn't miss it, it's not what this article is about. When a package is not in the repository, you're left on your own just like in windows. I agree with you that this stage is a problem and less practical than rpmdrake, that's my point.

As for source code, it's a last option, but it's still more practical than not having it.

I think there is over 11000 rpms in mandriva repositories right now.