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Comdex Update: Linux a smash hit
Alan writes "The Linux
booth was an absolute smash at the Comdex in Vancouver today.
This was it's first day, but the booth stayed packed from when
the doors opened to about an hour before they closed. And
when I say packed, I mean PACKED. People were overflowing into the
aisles to talk to the volunteers that were there. We quickly
ran out of the Caldera CDs and Linux Journals that were donated.
Even people who weren't part of the booth but used linux were
stopping to talk to people about it and help to show them all about linux. We were literally the most busy booth there. There was even a tv crew from BCTV (www.tvforbc.com, no story though) who came out and put us on the news!
In short, Linux was the toast of the show :)"
I think this report is a very good example of the liveliness there is in supporting something other than the mainstream choices and sticking with it. Most people would use Windows because it's a lot like flicking through channels on TV late at night - you wouldn't exactly rant about the content but at the same time, it's better than turning off your TV.
Linux, and this story is to me, a lot more bright eyed and the inspiration to become a Linux junky is often something a lot more pure than corporate greed.
// Sludge
Sounds good to me! Only wish I was in vancouver right now ( for more reasons than just comdex), it would have been nice to partake.
Keep up the GOOD work
The thought Linux newbies trying to install
Caldera or SUSE gives me the chills. It seems
to me only Red Hat has an install program
which newbies have a hope of making it through.
There's no way to turn them off faster then
giving them an impossible install program that
doesn't detect most hardwware.
The thought Linux newbies trying to install Caldera or SUSE gives me the chills.
um, really? damn, i just bought SuSE and i'm gonna install it tonight. i'm not precisely a newbie, but i'm certainly an idiot. i have trouble operating a toaster. i installed red hat 4.somethingorother a while back and it went okay. did i just screw myself here?
the only reason i got SuSE was a) somebody on slashdot said it was cool (duh), and b) i have a friend who lives near fürth (duh again). i'm probably basing my decision on more valid reasons than most corporate MIS goons have for anything they decide, but that's awful cold comfort.
hey, what the hell. even if i fuck it up, it's still more fun than barking at cats and chasing a stick.
I use SuSE, and the sax utility that ships with it made XFree so easy to setup that it made windows look like a hard install, and SuSE was easy enough to install that Newbe's in my area prefer it over redhat. All in All SuSE is a great distribution for newbe's.
I've installed a number of linuxs now (SuSE, Slackware, Redhat, etc...) and personally I like redhat best.
I set two machines up over the weekend with RH 5.1 and KDE1.1, and it was a breeze... however I have been playing with computers scince I was 7, did a 4 year masters in computer science and have been a part tiem sys admin for 6 months...
However there are still some things which confuse newbies... mountpoints and XF86Config are the two main points. If you want a newbie to install linux there needs to be much more point and click stuff... for example why not boot into a basic 640x40 SVGA X configuration and actually make the install look pretty, maybe even use things like Kpackage for selecting initial configuration.
Also things like using xvidtune to set the display up correctly needs to be publicised more... my flatmate works as a programmer for nuclear subs and he has never got X above 640x480 before the weekend.
Hackers will always use linux on principle... but theres plenty of 'normal' computer literate people who still find ti far to scarey.
flame if you want
Tom
(tom@commercenet.co.uk)
I personally think that the OpenLinux install is much smoother and more easy to deal with than the Red Hat install. I tried Red Hat once and that was _it_.
Redhat Linux install has a "expert" mode which
leaves a lot of decisions up to you if you don't
prefer the automated method.
Caldera: Put the CD-rom in and boot! Off you go.
Red Hat: First make a boot floppy or two from the CD-rom (This is sure to scare off many newbies)
I find Caldera to be easier than RH, although I haven't tried 5.2 yet
I could install suse in my sleep, I cannot even see how it can get any easier.
Steve
While I agree that Caldera's installation is not as polished as it should be, I say that SuSE clearly beats RedHat for newbies.
The install program has a similar hardware detection, and Yast is currently the most comprehensive admin tool.
But more than anything else RedHat's user interface is TERRIBLE, especially when compared to SuSE. An awful Win95 wm look (but totally different feel) combined with totally crappy lokking, inconsistent tools (linuxconf is a step forward, though).
After installation, SuSE beats RedHat hands down:
KDE works flawlessly, Gnome is easily installed (hell, it's a mess to do this on RedHat), and you can just switch from one desktop to the other, or change WMs (thanks to the WM auto-config) without having to edit dotfiles.
RedHat is ok for geeks and nerds, but certainly not for newbies.
well, which distribution to choose depends on your skills, I'd say.. I have slackware, and like it very much. It's ok to set up, if you are able to dive into some documentation, and i happen to be that kinda person..
In my opinion, Linux isn't the OS for a non-tech-savvy guy..that's just a fact. It demands some degree of understanding from the user, and the users who DO understand a thing or two, feels better off with linux than windoze, because the user has more control/overwiev.. At least that's how I feel about Slackware vs. Windoze.
hmmm.. Maybe I should get an account.. I'm the one w/ the first "I agree." Oh, well. I'll get one eventually.
Well, anyway, that is exactly why I want Debian. I don't like RPMs. They were nice when I first started, but now I do anything I can to stay away from them. It just gives me too much crap about dependencies, and why I shouldn't do things. When I tell it to -e something. It tells me it isn't installed. I then upgrade to the next one (it wouldn't let me without -e'ing the last one... long story) and it tells me that the old one is still installed! I just started using source. The only problems I have with source are minor things that I can easily fix within a minute.
-Just my 2c-
When I switched to Linux a couple months ago, I was overwhelmed by all the text-based stuff. I thought --due to excessive M$ brainwashing--that all modern programs were graphics-based. I thought that text=old pretty graphics=state of the art. I realize that I was wrong, and I'm glad I stuck with it. However, the reality is that most people really think this way. It would be a huge improvement to the distribution to have a graphics-based install. This is what newbies (like me) want. They don't have the education, and you can't just call 'em stupid, they just haven't learned.
Blame it on Microsoft.
RH 3.0.3 was the first Linux version I ever installed. I tried using the graphical setup, and it was terribly confusing for a newbie. The main problem was that the X server was using an XF86 virtual desktop and a (fvwm?) virtual desktop configured so that moving the mouse near the edge of the screen moved to an adjacent page; so that if you got the mouse pointer too near the edge of the screen, you could lose the package manager window altogether.
Yeah I was there yesterday as well. The booth is so popular that I couldn't get in on my first try. Anyway, I got my Caldera CD., the installation was smoother than my RedHat. And - as a new user to Linux, KDE amazed me. I plan to join the LUG as well.
A company (Dynavar? I think) is raffling off a Cobalt RaQ. Very cool! They said yesterday they'd have a Qube today, but I guess it didn't arrive yet.
Other than that, the show is actually a bit underwhelming. It's a good thing I've got other stuff to do around here!
-srw (A prairie boy who's enjoying the 5C+rain weather rather than -30C back home)
Damn, am I ever upset about this Comdex hubbub. Don't get me wrong, I think the Linux Booth having so much success is great, it's just that Comdex decided that anyone under the age of 21 has no place at such an event, and now my hacker friends and I can't go :( It's really too bad they don't recognize youngins like myself to be THE major future market for whatever they are pimping and how we already have quite a presence where concerned with technology. Oh well, only 4 more years :/
My mistake... when I posted the story to Rob I forgot that the CDs were not SuSE, but in fact Caldara. Sorry if I didn't give credit where credit was due.
:)
Who gave what aside, Linux is Linux, and Linux was a hit
Red Hat tried to do an X-based install with RedHat 3.0.3. It didn't really work that well, from what I saw of it. Just stick with character-based installs, much easier to ensure compatibility with.
I did my very first ever Linux install (as complete Linux newbie and with very little general Unix experience) off a Slackware 3.0 CD. The only problem I had was that I didn't have room for all the stuff I wanted to install (only had a 120M disk). Other than that, I got the machine up and running without a hitch, and I haven't looked back since.
With some minor level of basic computer knowledge, any Linux install I've ever been through is easier and far less time consuming than an Win95 install. And, truth be told, I prefer the UI of the Slackware install scripts to the Red Hat ones.
Posted by DaHack:
Caldera and SuSE are major proponents of Linux in the BC Linux organizations, as such we have to show them as well as RedHat, although I agree that RedHat is easier to install for beginners.
Besides, we may have some people attend the show that are familiar with Unix in general, who could probably succesfully install Caldera or SuSE.
Yep, me too.
.5 hours or less (Depending on CD-ROM speed.)
I started with Slackware... God, that was a bitch to install and continued to be an eternal PITA. I tried RedHat on another machine and never looked back. Even for experienced users, RH is nice. (Until you get into the roll-your-own custom distro stuff for REALLY specific applications.)
BTW, I disagree on the Win95/WinNT thing. WinNT is MUCH easier to install than '95. But RedHat blows NT away hands-down.
Win95 install - Many hours. (Reboot, reboot, reboot)
NT install - 1-2 hours.
RHL -
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
We were expecting to have Redhat and SuSE CDs as well as the Caldera ones, but these did not arrive in time for Comdex. So, we went with what we had.
We even talked to a CD-duplicating place a couple of booths down, but no luck.
-Mike (VanLUG member)
I suppose. Try SuSE. I am sure you will find it very intuitive and *very* easy to install and setup. It has some nifty features like "sax" the SuSE X configurator. SuSE should be definitly one of newbies premier choice.
CU
Tobias
I was in Vancouver, and I popped in to check out the Comdex.
:-)
Man, that Linux booth was packed. It was hard even getting near it. It was definitely the booth that generated the highest excitement level.
Too bad you guys didn't have the floor space of, say, Microsoft.
Cheers,
- Jim
The sucky part is only that Debian CD's don't include some very useful packages due to licensing. Like a browser that supports WWW proxies a la Netscape. I kinda got locked on my system after my network worked but I could only access the web through Netscape. So i had to download Netscape onto the linux box through a windows machine.
FYI: lynx can use proxies, as well as wget; dpkg and dselect is really good, put apt-get, or dselect with apt method is the best package management system ever.
Szo
Red Leader Standing By!
My first Linux Installation was SuSE 4.1 and I managed that without too much trouble. I don't have PnP hardware, though, so i can't comment on this. Also I must admit that I felt a bit uneasy, when I installed RH 5.2 for a friend and it started to detect the hardware by itself(went flawless, though)
2 weeks ago I installed SuSE 6.0 and it was a breeze. IIRC there even is an option to let the setup-program do the partitioning, but that's just as useless as the RH version if you happen to have another OS on you drives, which is very probable if we're talking about Linux newbies.
"When I first heard Daydream Nation it quite frankly scared the living shit out of me." -- Matthew Stearns
did i miss something? Thought current release was still 1.0...
I went from slackware to redhat to caldera to redhat to debian. I love debian. For all you windows users out there. The hard part about installation is knowing what all your hardware is, and how the nomenclature translates to linux. When you install RedHat, the install finds out and tells you. Then, you can move to debian or some other distro if you wish. RedHat is just fine, I think it will definitely be the big contender among commercial linux distros. But as far as pure fun in experimenting with different linux apps, debian has given me the most pleasure. Debian will remain what is largely considered the most technically pristine distribution. I can think of many ways to implement debian in the corporate or SOHO settings. If your not sick of installation (a linux skill in itself) try debian and other distros, the beauty of linux is the sheer number of flavors. Linux will overtake MS not by one distro dominating (although certainly some distro will emerge with the most notoriety a la RedHat),
but linux distros overall will dominate because they can be customized for anyone's special needs. There could be Grandma Linux that boots with very few daemons, has a very easy GUI that starts automatically, has some imaging software for her fancy new sewing machine that accepts bitmaps for patterns, a fast browser, etc. What is even more beautiful, is the small company that distributes Grandma Linux could then support it in a much more personal manner. Possibly even customize some apps for her. Or better yet, customize her homepage so that she has quick access to stuff she cares about, yahoo, her mutual funds, email lists of her kids and grandkids, etc. Some equally as beautiful is that for her monthly charge of $20 or whatever the service provider could offer a sub $1000, or $500 pc.
What I'm trying to say, is that linux does not have to be user un-friendly. Most people use general purpose distros, these necessarily include users of MIT level technical ability and people like me (a law student who only discovered linux 8 months ago). Linux offers the freedom to customize a distro based on a larger distro, to tweak it for a very specific purpose (i.e., the opposite pole of a beowulf implementation). We all tend to focus on which distro is better than which, when we should focus on how to make every conceivable distro for every purpose and start businesses to support them. Linux will be hurt by a one company domination model. It will flourish where many distros are based on open standards. There will always be shortcomings with any model, but I think the one I have envisioned is superior. Any comments?
I don't understand why RedHat insists on defaulting to the Win95 wanna-be desktop. You're right; the AfterStep that ships with it is _much_ better looking than the default. Although we should give them credit for making it easy enough to switch...
hmm... i wonder why this was not a suprise for me :)
Øyvind
what happens when Linux is mainstream?
Dare to think
Last year I went, and had no big problem getting in. I was 16, and my friend, 17, was around 5 feet tall, and he got in as well. We had several free passes, and my dad (president of some company) registered us onsite, he said that 'the without us the company couldn't run. Little lies don't matter :) This year I did the samething with another friend, and they asked no questions. The other friend's dad got a free pass (the actual card) in the mail, and he had no problem. I'd suggest not to come dressed as a 12-year-old geek. I didn't see anyone else who looked less than 20, though. I think one of the reasons for the age limit is that 3 or 4 years ago, 90% of the high school population in the Vancouver to Chilliwack Area went, so they had to stop it somehow. This year's show was a lot smaller than last years, only 90% of the upper floor was filled, wheras last year both floor were packed. I wonder what it will be like next year (size of Comdex/size of Linux-related booths?? Wim.
What brought this up? You see "Linux" and the knee jerk reaction is "trash Caldera and SuSE"?
Erik Ratcliffe
Caldera Systems, Inc.
You have your opinion. I think you're wrong.
Sorry, nothing personal.
I was there yesterday.. and it truly was amazing. It was the last boot we saw because it was in the corner, and yet it was the most exciting and popular booth there! I was impressed that Victoria and Vancouver have such a well organized LUG. I am now planning to join the VLUG in Victoria.