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Slate Takes on Linux
alkali writes "The weekend edition of the Microsoft-owned, Michael-Kinsley-edited Slate has two articles on Linux, one written by Slate's chief program manager (i.e., a techie) and the other written by a staff writer without any particular technical expertise. No surprises, but the Redmond connection will probably interest at least the conspiracy-minded. "
What more needs to be said?
Of all the comments I've ever posted, this is definately one of them
This article made me laugh. Why would anybody get a Microsoft programmer to write a (supposedly) unbiased article? That would be like a vegetarian writing an article on the health benefits of beef. Anyway, my favorite quote of the article is:
"You can add a graphical interface known as Xwindows, which looks amazingly like Windows, complete with a Start button."
Now, I'm certainly not an expert on computer history, but wasn't X around before (or at least soon after) MacOs?
-- toolie
I am tired of people saying: 'The amount of hype Linux is getting is similar to the amount of hype Java got, therefore Linux is a fad.'
Remember, the hype is generated by the computer media (magazines, news sites, etc.) and not by some corporate empire with the sole purpose of inflating the claims of a product.
The only 'hype' being generated is by Linux users who want to advocate their O/S to others.
-------------
Please read Linux and GNU/Linux, if you are one of THOSE people.
...because the geek guy has this to say about Linux's stability:
"On my machine I can claim only a week of running without restarting, but that is pretty darn good."
It must be very refreshing for him.
-B
Ash and Hickory, straight-grained and true, make excellent bludgeons, dandy for the cudgeling of vegetarians.
I don't know why, but the layout is nauseating. I couldn't go past the first paragraph, since my stomach was starting to turn over upside down. Interestingly, that's what I feel when I see a Microsoft product's manual.
^D
In Soviet Russia, Jesus asks: "What Would You Do?"
The "geek" article says the Linux install partitions your hard drive "because Linux knows you'll still want to run Windows."
Bwahahahahaha!
Got your daily dose of Vitamin FUD yet?
This is a very subtle article of MS FUD. For instance. They embrace linux as little, agree*
with almost what everyone else has said about linux. Stable, good for a server, not so hot for a desktop. They they relegate it to the domain of "Geek Love." They are basically telling people yes it's good, BUT it's only for hackers, geeks and enthusiasts. Of course they don't come right out and say that but it's the underlying theme. It jsut spreads very subtle FUD.
*******************************************
Superstition is a word the ignorant use to describe their ignorance. -Sifu
I've spent a horrific 3 days instaling Win98 on my system. Install Win98, install patches, install new stuff, fire up directx, BANG! fall down dead. Format drive, start over. (It's a hardware/driver problem, but Linux and X run JUST fine!)
The big problem is that people don't install operating systems very often. OS installation can be one of the most painful experiences in computerdom. (With the exception of MacOS 7.x, 8.x, is is actually pretty easy)
Also, I hope that RedHat replaces FVWM95 with something else for 6.0. "Start button"? Sheesh.
Linux was written by a single man? That man was "Linus Torvald?" The FSF preaches that all software should be "Open Source?" What a waste of electrons.
I thought Linux was actually started from SCRATCH...great way to make himself look stupid. I don't think I will be able to finish this one.
Okay guys, next time -you- have a Linux tech support question, call Microsoft. Apparently they'll help you.
(From the second article:)
"So I telephoned the Microsoft Helpdesk. Even though Linux is supposed to demolish Microsoft, the Microsoft Helpdesk, which provides computer assistance to its employees, was surprisingly helpful."
These articles (I read both) are biased in lots of unsubtle ways. They are thinly veiled FUD, nothing more. I am impressed that the Slate editor mentioned on the intro page that Slate is owned and run by Microsoft and that the articles should (essentially) be taken with a grain of salt.
I mean, I try to remain objective about Microsoft. I try to just ignore them, repeating to myself that "Loving Linux does not necessarily mean hating Windows", over and over and over again. I keep trying to rationalize that Bill Gates is "just another businessman", and that Microsoft is "just another company". I really really do try.
But when I read things like these articles and like the Halloween documents and Gates' blitherings both during his DOJ trial deposition and during his recent book tour, I just get so F*&KING angry. It's not enough that they control the -majority- of the computing world, they have to control the whole goddamned thing.
Argh. It makes me so angry (said in my best Marvin Martian voice).
*grr*
- deb
GNOME, I would imagine. That fvwm2/95/AnotherLevel/NextLevel crap deserved to die from day one. It's the first thing that I "undo" when installing a Red Hat system.
Of all the comments I've ever posted, this is definately one of them
"Unlike Windows (and IBM's OS/2 and Apple's MacOS) Linux was written by a person, not a faceless monolith like the company I work for."
What is that supposed to mean? He works for Microsoft. I wonder how that got by the editor.
Er...*zone*...it's Friday. Ignore that bit about the helpdesk.
- deb (*blush*)
Consider:
Now I must confess my doubts about the Open Source movement...Perhaps the greatest technological feature that Windows posesses is that it can handle programs as old as the first DOS applications. Linux will never do that.
Heard of this funny little thing called DOSEmu? WINE? I'd estimate that Linux is 80-90% of the way to running legacy code, if that's your idea of a good time (the last 10% being the hardest of course...)
Some critics say that Linux will fracture into a dozen different incompatible versions...
This has a little more substance--not because of the distributions but because of the possibility of people rewriting the system just to bite their thumb at the FSF. Aside from that, though, it's hard to imagine how such a schism could happen. The distributions are more compatible lately, not less.
Developers want to write code, they don't want to solve all the niggling little problems that users come up with.
He works for Microsoft, he should know. ;-) That said, the Debian bug tracking system is (IMO) a good place to start looking at how bugs in Linux programs get dealt with.
I think those are the only things he mentioned that haven't been hammered to death already.
Daniel
Hurry up and jump on the individualist bandwagon!
Ummm...Java didn't fail. Nor is it a fad "Hype" is the product of a gullible media and a techno-ignorant marketer. The idea that java failed is ludicrous. It was considered viable enough that Microsoft polluted it. Bill Gates reportedly screamed an experinced senior executive out of a meeting because the executive dared sugest that MS prepare for the world of Java. The number of java developers is growing. Many web sites are difficult to deal with if you don't have a Java-enabled browser. But because Java-powered office suites did not immediately appear and replace Windows, Java is a failure? If, in the year to come, Linux doesn't displace Windows on the desktop, the mainstream media will doubtless begin considering Linux a failure, too.
Agreed! It is FUD.
I'm sure Bill was standing behind the writer (if it was an individual) nodding in approval.
With the MS skullduggery that's been documented in the antitrust case, marking these as "spontaneous" articles by a couple of "individuals" is not even close to being paranoid.
Changing the BIOS to boot a CD can't be that hard. My Dad a lot of people in my family can do that and they're not engineers.
software of the Free Software Foundation, whose name describes
its mission. Linux is derived from an operating system developed
by FSF called GNU. The proper name for Linux is GNU/Linux.
GNU is a variation on the Unix operating system and the acronym
GNU stands--disconcertingly--for " GNU's not Unix." Are you
still with me?
The FSF crew preaches that all software should be "Open
Source,"...
I mean, c'mon!
Wow, great way for YOU to look stupid. Linux was a project originally derived from Minix code.
This FUD is quite possibly the most dangerous. The few compliments and insults to Microsoft fool the reader into believing the writer is being fair and impartial. Then when the FUD hits, they accept it without questioning it. The reader loses all ability to tell what is real and what is FUD.
I'd probably prefer outright FUD, because at least it's easy to spot, even for the newbies...
One day I was trying to create a bootdisk, and I accidentally typed "dd if=image of=/dev/hda" /dev/fd0. Ok, ok, I was root, so please thwack me for that.
/dev/hda1 contains Win95.
;^)
instead of
Anyway
I was able to recreate the partition table, and the only thing I lost was the Windows installation! So this justifies its existance to me
Of all the comments I've ever posted, this is definately one of them
I believe Linux was originally *developed* on Minix, but I don't think it has any Minix code in it. If it did, Linus would be breaking the Minix license, I think. Besides, I thought Linux wanted a 'better Minix than Minix', so why would he have used Minix code?
If I'm wrong, please correct me.
what if both of them have to comment how
to install windoze 98 or worse if they
have made an upgrade to 98 ?.
Worse problems are in the way !!
OverLord
Wow, now YOU look stupid. Linus started Linux because he thought that Minix was kindof limited...
http://www.twics.com/~tlug/linus.html
..the operating system I had been trying to use before Linux: "Minix". Minix was meant to be a teaching operating system, but it had been to limited and in my opinion too expensive for that. It was also hard to get hold of.
So when I made Linux, I wanted it to be easily available over ftp with full sources, and I did _not_ want it to be too expensive for anybody.
I thought it was refreshingly candid of them to remind everyone on the intro page that they are published by Microsoft. Unfortunately, that's where any semblence of honest, accurate, or candid behavior ended. When I got to the tenth misrepresentation in the "techie" article, I stopped reading.
Written by a single man? Based on GNU? X Windows "similar" to MS Windows? Time for the ol' "Back" button....
- Bob
Is that there's not the vast diversity of hardware for MacOS that's available for x86 -- and none of it is the total crap that most people run Windows on. Don't get me wrong here, Apple hardware has got some problems, but none of it is as bad as all the Pavilion/Presario/Packard-Bell (*shudder*) junk that people run Windows on.
In all my experience of installing OSes, Solaris wins hands-down for being the easiest. Now if it only didn't run so god-awful slow.
And don't get me started on FVWM95! First thing I do to a RedHat install is compile WindowMaker.
--
Ok, so I typed 'Linux' rather than 'Linus' once in the above post. Sue me ;-)
For a fair comparison, the two authors should have purchased their machines from VAResearch. I'm sure both normally use PCs with windows *preinstalled* at the factory. So of course the effort to get a Linux PC would be much more than they had to invest in Windows. :-)
Granted I'm not a novice computer user, but I've installed Linux on two different desktop systems (one with no OS, one with Windows 98 preinstalled) and on a laptop with Win 95 previously installed. You'd think I would have run into at least one of the problems they mentioned. Nope. All went smooth as silk (Redhat 5.2, no plug intended).
In my office I have a Win 98 based Dell and a clone box running Linux. Win 98 crashes, on average, about every other day. Really. Yesterday it crashed 3 times. The Linux box has *never* crashed. I've thrown Staroffice at it. I've thrown Oracle at it. I run KDE, Netscape, etc. Never crashes. The only time it went down unexpectedly was when someone cut the PG&E main power cable feeding our neighborhood. Even Linux has its limits I guess...
It's interesting to me that with Gates saying how Linux is "no threat" that his various media machines like Slate and mouth pieces like Mr. Muth are spewing out such an incredible volume of venomous verbage about how bad Linux is. It's been quite a biltz this week. They're saying it's over-rated, it's under-featured, it's over-hyped, and only for nerds. It has no GUI, it has a GUI that looks like Windows. It doesn't have the features of Windows, it runs "just about as fast as Windows".
:)
Oy! FUD, FUD, FUD, everywhere I turn, nothing but FUD. I think I definitely sense fear and apprehension on the part of Billy boy. It's good to have confirmation from the man and his machine that we're really on the road to defeating his much-cherished Empire. Just like the Visigoths in the 400s on their way to Rome, here come the OSS hordes to the door of the Redmond offices. They see us coming, and they fear us. They fear the freedom and truth we represent. Time is on our side, and there is not much they can do besides this FUD campaign to stop us. Linux, FreeBSD, and other OSS OSes shall continue to prove themselves superior in the trenches. It's going to be a fun year.
Oh, gee wow, an objective write up of two microsoft employees' experience in trying to install Linux!
Man, the whole time I was reading this, I kept thinking this sounded like they were handed "talking points" to make sure they put the right FUD slams in.
How transparent. Let's see them hand a PC with OS/2 installed and ask them to dual-boot install Windows 98!
I agree - the main barrier to more people using or at least trying out Linux is the initial setup. If big vendors started shipping dual windows/linux boxes there'd be a lot more people out there willing to give Linux a go - and I believe finding that there is enough application functionality to meet most of their needs.
Installing new devices under windows can be a pretty frustrating experience too. A few weeks ago I had a cable modem installed - the techie spent around an hour trying to get the USB drivers installed (windows wouldn't allow the first cd of app software to be ejected to allow the install of the drivers). They eventually gave up and installed an internal ethernet card with the drivers from a floppy disk.
In comparison configuring it from Linux only took me less than half an hour, including the time taken to recompile the kernel to support the ethernet card and read the FAQ on dhcpcd.
Took me five shots and about 15 hours to install NT Server. This was my first time, and I was trying to get it to multiboot with LILO, but it would die at odd times, refuse to boot, etc. For comparision, the first time I ever installed Linux I installed it myself, no help, and had no problems at all.
And I still find it insane that I have to create and format a DOS partition before I even begin to install NT!
I couldn't finish reading it. The guy's writing style is terrible, I've seen better stuff by schoolkids. At least this guy isn't working as a Microsoft tech writer.
OTOH, maybe his (lack of) style carries over into his code...
(As for the X Window System (nee Windex, before a certain manufacturer of cleaning products got upset), it was at version 10 when I first discovered it in 1986, so it may well have been around before MacOS (introduced in 1984)).
-- Alastair
Linux can do your homework, dishes, laundry, etc... you just have to read the HOW-TO! Too many people give up before they've even started.
Yup
This guy seems to not like partitions or at least is using "ohmigosh linux is making me have three partitions" to further some FUD.
Its interesting that if he knew what he was doing he would have partitioned much more than that. I always make /tmp, /home, /var, /usr, their own partitions in addition to /. Much safer- divide and conquer! But im probably preaching to the chior...
I actually thought that these articles were kind of entertaining. They both tried soooo hard to look impartial and then threw in lots of subtle (and not so subtle) FUD. I think I'll call MS the next time I have some problems. "Start menu? I dont have a start menu!" :)
Calling X a "pale and wan" version of windows was insulting at best. Just grit your teeth- its only a matter of time before Linux surpasses Win32 in all ways imagineable!
2^5
Without helping at all, sit your mom down in front of a PC with Windows installed, give her your favorite off-the-shelf Linux help/install guide, and have her install the OS.
Remember, give her no assistance.
In the general case, if she manages to do it, it will take a long time and be a very frustrating experience, even with such distros as RedHat and SuSE. That is one of the hurdles faced with Linux being on the desktop.
Given that it's just as hard and frustrating for me to install '98 (three hours, three tries to get the FS set up the way *I* want it, much cussing and fussing), usually some variant of DOS/Windows is already installed. That is your customer base. Now, philosophical debates about whether you want users of that stripe here or not, this is the general computing public.
Don't go too hard on these writers, especially the English-major chick. Linux is a bit daunting if all you know how to do is point and drool at a preinstalled Windows love-fest.
My $.02
--Corey
Not only will they not deserve liberty or safety, Mr. Franklin, they will be DENIED both!
Sure enough:
You can find it in this article by Wired that ran a little while back.
You'll just need to search for the word "scaffolding" once there. I'll leave interpretation to everyone else.
----------
mphall@cstone.nospam.net
----------
mphall@cstone.nospam.net
"A horse laugh is worth a thousand syllogisms"
I couldn't finish reading it either. I had to go look for the "start button" on my Xwindows. Still can't find the damn thing.
"In my experience, this is the ultimate problem with Open Source development: not enough formal engaged testing."
a ar/
This guy's nuts! I guess his definition of "formal engaged testing" has nothing to do with REAL WORLD, day in and day out testing of software. He REALLY needs to read "The Cathedral And The Bazaar". Hey, Andrew, if you're reading this, its http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/writings/cathedral-baz
snipped from the article...
Furthermore, as I've written before in Slate, software companies spend a surprising fraction of their resources testing software, not writing it. In my experience, this is the ultimate problem with Open Source development: not enough formal engaged testing. Developers want to write code, they don't want to solve all the niggling little problems that users come up with.
Oooh, very bad. Companies spend a surprising fraction of their resources on testing for one
reason, and one reason only. That reason is that the development process is all messed up. Requirements
and specifications are not laid out properly, then design is not thorough. The development process
is supposed to be front-end loaded, with over 50% of the time being spent before a single line of code
is written. Test should be about 10% of the time. Why? What does it matter where you spend your time? Data
shows that the further along in the development process a bug is found, the more it costs - exponentially! If a bug costs
$100 to repair in design, it will cost $1000 to detect and repair in coding, and $10,000 to detect and repair in test. It only
gets worst after release. This has been definatively proven (to my mind) by the Software Engineering Institute (SEI),
and is the topic of countless software engineering and design papers (all coming to the same conclusion). A great deal
of data has been gathered to support this, and you only have to read the software engineering papers out there.
Okay, all that said -- does that mean that linux has 10% testing, and it is the right 10%? I'm not sure, but
I don't think so. I think that typically linux programmers (like most software engineers) fall into the same trap --
leaping into coding before a proper design has been done... because coding is fun, and that is what they like to do.
So how does the "huge chunk" of testing get done? Linux software is quality software.. somehow. I believe that
the testing gets done by the users and beta testers, and while it isn't formal (which is always good) it is one of the
ultimate forms of testing -- if the software works for the user, then the software works. Even if there are bugs.
The user is the definition of the requirements, and of what meets the requirements. Most of this paragraph is just
conjecture though, because not much data has been gathered to support it.
Yes, the techie works for Microsoft. Of course he will lean that way. But that doesn't mean that absolutely everything that he says can be thrown out as clearly biased or FUD.
The point I caught was his comment on testing the code. And its something I've brought up here in the past: lots of Linux programmers, not a lot of QA. I personally work as a tester - in Redmond, no less, though not at MS - and our job is just as important to getting a usable app out the door as the devs. Software testing is an entirely different discipline from software development, but I don't see any articles about testing open source code, nothing about blackbox vs. glassbox methods; heck, we're not even an option in the polls. Pure code review doesn't find all the bugs. Period. You have to have someone willing and able to methodically and carefully test every damn part of the final app. Not the debug version, it functions differently. Not scripting against the underlying structure, or at least not only that. Actually clicking the buttons, one at a time. Putting in just bonkers stuff in all the input fields. Race conditions. Stress tests. Sure, you've got the code in front of you, but nobody does any work with source. Test the *app*.
But testing isn't cool. Testers don't get movies of the week written about them. And some testing is flat boring. (Trust me, repeating the exact same test cases in 7 different browser versions will make you start looking at the nearby water tower and remebering that it takes 42 muscles to smile, but only 4 to pull the trigger on a decent sniper rifle. Which is why I'm the lead and make somebody else do it.) But untested code, no matter how clever the programmer, isn't going to conquer the world. And devs make lousy testers. It's just a different mindset.
-reemul
You're just jealous 'cuz the voices talk to *me*
And don't forget: Rome had the shiny, impressive army that took over the known western world. But the Vigoths just KEPT coming, over and over and over.....
And it is hard to make people stop using free software. The price is hard to beat.
If Andrew Schulman is now a Microsoft employee, it's news to me. It wasn't entirely clear from reading the article,
In the past, though, he has taken on Microsoft pretty thoroughly. He did a lot of reverse engineering on the Win95 betas, and much to MS's displeasure, he released "Undocumented Windows 95" which was one of the first books to blow through the hype that Win95 was a "new 32-bit" system. Later, he cracked the MS CD key code, and an article describing it was available on O'Reilly's site. I think it's gone, now. Anyway, even if he is an MS employee now, he has in the past been pretty independant, and he's a very sharp guy.
It's also a little unfair taking pot shots at the article; it's an article written for people who have been hearing about this Linux thing, and it inevitably has to be a little shallow. Many more similar articles will soon follow in the non-trade press, so get used to it.
That said, he still can't seem to understand how it can work while being free. I mean, geez, how far does Linux have to progress before people believe that it exists? To quote Groucho; "Who are you going to believe, me or your own eyes?"
Try figuring that one out, little bed-wetting English-major type.
Chris
Chris
So Buddha walks into a pizza parlor and says: "Hey, make me one with everything."
Like I said before, Linus developed Linux on Minix. Minix was scaffolding while Linus created his new OS.
Do construction workers use the scaffolding as part of the final structure they are building? Didn't think so.
handle programs as old as the first DOS applications
:-)
Ha! Windows doesn't even do that. I know, I've got some old DOS apps that have refused to run under Windows or DOS 6 or whatever. (I did, however, manage to run them on SoftPC on a Mac
Linux will never do that
Double Ha! Ignoring that he probably meant DOS apps that old (as I said earlier, his writing style sucks), I've run apps older than DOS just fine under Linux (and that's not even counting the fact that most of the basic unix utilities are older than DOS). Recompile (although I had to dig for a Pascal compiler) and go.
-- Alastair
My personal favorite quote (and really a sharp jab in the gut to Linux) is:
"A big practical disadvantage of Linux is that there isn't much application software for it. But that's because so few people use it. It wouldn't be fair to count this as a negative in weighing Linux's intrinsic merits. And so, of course, I won't."
Ummmmmm. I don't know about you but I think that counted as a negative!! To people not knowledgeable about Linux, he's simply stating "It doesn't have much software because only an insignificant amount of people use it!"
It seemed to me thank this "techie" was looking at Linux from his own limited MS world, like "Hey everyone, look at this little Linux thing I found...Isn't is cute?, Oh well, back to the 'real world'..."
The other article was also pretty bad, making MS look like some kind of hero that could help her, even if it wasn't an MS product, as if the MS Helpdesk knew everything. It also didn't mention the fact that just as often installs of MS products from scratch are difficult and frustrating.
Both these articles are really biased and have many inaccuracies, subtle jabs, and enough MS plugs and FUD to be seen as an attempt to dissuade readers from Linux.
Oh well I guess I shouldn't have expected better from Slate...
Respectfully,
Kevin Christie
kwchri@maila.wm.edu
Just stop posting them.
94.9%(guesstimate) of computer owners...
- purchased their computers with an Operating
- will never install any Operating System
- do not know what an "Operating System" is,
therefore, this and all other articles related toSystem preinstalled,
on a computer, including the one they own,
the installation of Linux are moot.
If these were among the first of such articles,
there would be no objection, however, that is not
the case.
Free software promotes freedom and sharing; if
you treat it as just another consumable item,
that is all you will get out of it. Go to a
friendly neighborhood Installfest rather than
buying the latest copy of Red Hat from Barnes &
Noble and installing it alone.
---------------------------------
"The Internet interprets censorship as damage,
Exactly, the problem with this comparison is that Java was an untried technology that SUN decided to throw their marketing muscle into. Linux on the other hand is a prooven technology and is succeeding on its own merits.
It's like PUSH technology... everybody said that it would be the future of the browser, but it was all hype and did nothing for the end user. Generally, if hype preceeds a product, then it is going nowhere... if the product itself generates the hype, then you've got a winner.
The other thing I see being on Linux's side, which MS seems to think is unimportant is how much it is used in university's and by students. If these students are taught programming and OS concepts on Linux, then what are they going to prefer when they start to work in the real world? The students of today are the IT professionals of tomorrow.
Hec.
Pardon the digression, but has anyone heard that win98 increases the size of its partition by a few bytes each time it reboots, eventually corrupting your no fat32 partitons.
Yes, I agree it sounds like an urban legend. But I got my swap space in between fat32 and linux. Just in case...
2^5
These articles weren't *THAT* bad, much better than almost anything from ZD... Here's what I replied to...
For a first article on Linux, that was a good one. I've been using Linux
as my desktop for a while now, and I agree: it's definitely not for
everybody, but it is what I want from an operating system.
I will have to correct you on one fine point here, though:
Now I must confess my doubts about the Open Source
movement. Do all those software developers writing
open source code for Linux have the incentive to fix
problems as they arise and--more important--to help people
upgrade and keep old code running? Perhaps the greatest
technological feature that Windows possesses is that it can
handle programs as old as the first DOS applications. Linux
will never do that.
Not only do they fix the problems that arise in Linux, Linux already runs
the old DOS apps.
I use Linux to run my old DOS programs, and by and large, they run
*better* than they did under DOS. The program I refer to here is DOSEmu,
and it is in its late beta stage, I believe. (Wine is still alpha) It
needs some configuration, but what else is new in UNIX.
DOSEmu (www.dosemu.org) provides a complicated DOS virtual machine,
whereby Linux emulates the required DOS services. It only runs on x86
though, because it doesn't emulate instructions. However, on x86, it runs
as fast as DOS does. (you can benchmark it and find in some cases the
processor is only running at, say, 98% of DOS's speed, but there is no
perceptible difference in almost all cases.)
Advantages: more free lower memory, better cache, features you'd expect
from running under a good OS in protected mode. It is faster to defrag
your hard drive (dos partition) under DOSEmu than it is under DOS.
Disadvantages: limited graphics support (original VGA works fine, SVGA is
more problematic, and tied to SVGALib, this sometimes works better in X)
and bad sound support. The only sound I could ever get working was MIDI
(pipe it through Linux's MIDI, this is documented) and DMA. Star Control II
is the only game I could get sound working perfectly on. However, this
has no impact on, say, running an old version of Lotus 1-2-3. And some
old DOS programs don't run very well under Windows 95 (or later)'s idea of
a DOS VM.
There is also a less free (shareware) DOS emulator called Bochs that runs
on UNIX (and, of course, Linux) which is much slower but more compatible.
It does emulate x86 instructions, and can run Win '95, but I wouldn't
reccommend it yet. (ever use SoftWindows? This is at least that bad)
And, for Windows, there's also WABI, for Windows 3.1. You have to pay for
it, but Windows users are used to that. I prefer Wine, but it is
certainly lacking in compatibility currently.
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
Yup, can't ignore it any longer, it seems.
If this is the best they can do to scare people off by this 'subtle' campaign of mis-information and fear-mongering, they have already lost!
The "pale and wan" reference was surely a reference to fvwm95, in which case it would be completely justified. I don't know why Red Hat makes that crap the default.
For those who haven't noticed, Slashdot run today the story The Ultimate Argument Against Linux. The "sinergy" between that article and Slate's storys is amazing.
It is fairly obvious that Slate has an agenda. But at least they are far more subtle and elegant with their FUD. It is "FUD for the thought", if you will. All in all, the technical guy final argument was "Why change?" (see the "Ultimate..." story).
Now, am I too picky or the Slate self-assumed technically clueless journalist managed to install Linux in just one article? While I was reading I kept remembering another self-assumed technically clueless journalist that spend two(or three?) articles up to now just to tell us how technically clueless he was...
It could be that the people managing Slate have enough sense to realize that their success depends on credibility, which means not being seen as under the thumb of their sponsors.
Of course, compatible with this notion is the idea that this is a sort of intellectual tokenism. Let the occasional anti-MS tidbit by, so Slate can say "Look, we're objective, we can say bad things about MS if we want!"
--
Do I look like I speak for my employer?
Look, there are some valid comments here. What is needed for Linux is:
A nice, InstallShield like interface for installing Linux. Nothing less than this will do for the newbie users.
DOCUMENTATION, DOCUMENTATION, DOCUMENTATION.
Yeah, there's the howtos, etc, but these should be maintained regularly, and peer-reviewed.
Changing the BIOS to boot a CD can't be that hard. My Dad a lot of people in my family can do that and they're not engineers.
It's a lot harder when your BIOS doesn't support bootable CDs. Tools like LOLI or using some DOS program the name of which I forget (I think LOLI has that in it too) help. When I needed to reinstall NT I actually just used VMWare to do the install and then dd(1)'d the virtual disk file to an actual partition.
Cheers, /engine violates Alabama and Cobb County, Georgia law--at the same time).
jerodd (the new
If nothing else, many open source projects such as Linux, Apache, and Mozilla get MUCH more testing than the average commercial app.
I'm not a programmer, but I know the ins and outs of how a computer system is supposed to run and I report bugs. Many of the people who use Linux and open source are like me, who do nothing but install, use, and test.
I would say for each programmer on Linux, there are at least a thousand non-programmer admin/user types who are VERY good at testing things and are testing things in a vast array of situtions. Compare this to what commerical software companies CAN do.
Just testing is boring, but each of us do only a small part of the whole...
OK, before you whip out the flamethrower, please read the rest of this comment!
:-) Us hackers can hack it out in an "expert" mode to set up Linux, but distributions like the forthcoming Corel Linux, which aim to make Linux ultra-easy to use, are what the Linux community needs. (As long as Corel gives all of their enhancements back to the community via an OSS license, of course).
:-)
The MS articles are FUD. Ugly FUD. Sick FUD. I could barely read them.
However, I can't help remembering my first experience installing Linux, about a year ago now.
It was RedHat 5.0. I had just finished the 2nd year of my Computer Science degree at Guelph
I ran into Linux via my programming classes and was interested enough (very interested) and wanted to try it for myself.
It took me a while to get it running. It was frustrating. The learning curve was steep. Dare I say, I limped back and huddled in Windows again until I built up enough courage to learn more Linux.
The point is, I was (and still am, of course) a smart person, and definitely more computer literate than the average user, but Linux was still somewhat hard to install and learn. I probably wouldn't have bothered if I wasn't intrinsically interested as a computer scientist/baby hacker.
Now go and think of the type of user that makes up the bulk of the Windows user base: it's obvious Linux needs to be as easy, if not easier, to set up than Windows if we want to take over the world.
All of this, IMHO, of course.
Cheers,
I tend to agree that the traditional software development process is all screwed up.
Closed software companies often seem to have a problem with testing. Often, testers only know what to test because developers told them what to test. They tend to use the product "the right way", without really mirroring the real world. This is why so many products make it to market with problems, even though testing did its job.
IMHO, free software gets a more effective workout because it's beaten up in the real world right away. In the free software world, it's ok to release multiple versions back-to-back. This simply doesn't fly in a closed environment, where version x.x must be IT for at least a few months.
Save the whales. Feed the hungry. Free the mallocs.
software companies spend a surprising fraction of their resources testing software, not writing it
And that explains the crap-masquerading-as-software coming out of Redmond (and a few other places).
Testing never added quality to anything, it just weeded out (maybe) the defects it found. Reliable, quality software is built by designing it correctly and writing in the quality, which (if you're doing it right) takes longer (and costs more, in a commercial environment) than you'll need to spend on testing.
It's all those endless "test, find a bug, try to fix it; test again, find a bug, try to fix it" cycles that run up the test time, since to do it right you have to rerun your whole test suite to ensure you didn't introduce a new bug.
-- Alastair
An even more telling experience would be to sit your mom down in front of a computer w/ no operating system at all installed, give her a shrink-wrapped (or equivalent) Linux distribution, and a shrink-wrapped Windows distribution.
Don't give her any help.
Have her install Windows, from scratch, without help.
Have her install Linux, from scratch, without help.
Of course, most folks won't ever install their own operating systems. They'll just use whatever comes with their computers, without stopping to think if there might be an alternative. This is why linux should come pre-installed on PCs. After all, if you never have to install the OS to begin with, then OF COURSE it's easier to use.
I still refer to the RH manual from time to time. In fact, I installed 5.2 last night on another machine, and due to lack of sleep couldn't think of a good partition layout, so I flip to the manual for RH 5.1, and voila, there's a whole several pages on suggested partitions. No where have I seen something like that in a Win95 manual (not that I've really looked) or even an NT manual (again, haven't put in effort).
I would say that from a scratch installation, (certain flavors of) linux is probably a better contender.
"The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule." --H.L. Mencken
Open Source has a lot of testing. When you release software early and often, you get plenty of testing by users.
Why is Linux so reliable?
Why does KDE work as well as it does? (as an example)
Software that is widely used gets plenty of testing. This software is only included in distributions after it is widely tested.
Open Source gets more testing than most commercial software.
What you're saying is completely FUD.
At the moment, Linux has no formal regression testing, and there's a lot of design stuff that isn't documented. There is certainly the potential for serious breakage, and sometimes it does happen. Regression testing of "stable" preX versions might be very helpful in eliminating the bugs that occasionally pop up in the stable series. That said, Linux's design is mostly quite robust and Linus keeps very tight quality control over the core.
The parallelised nature of "bazaar" development probably reduces the cost of fixing bugs, because it's easier to create and test branches off the official development versions.
Well, I read through both articles. The first one had some rather annoying things in it. It could probably be termed "FUD", but in a rather subtle way. It has the usual confusion of free beer and free speech, but had some other clever things, too. Mentioning that Linux lets you partition your drive "because it knows you're going to want to keep running Windows too" made me shudder inside. (For the new, Linux is happiest with a separate partition for swap, so (re)partitioning is generally necessary.)
I felt that the second article was a more honest one. Mostly, it described the problems the person has installing Linux. She happened to be unlucky enough to have problems with her CD drive, and had to ask several people for help. As others have pointed out, she would likely have problems installing Windows, also. That's why LUGs offer to do installations. She might have liked Linux if someone else had installed it for her.
--Phil (No "formal engaged testing"? Read "The Cathedral and the Bazaar"!)
355/113 -- Not the famous irrational number PI, but an incredible simulation!
Helpless twerp who thinks AOL is the Internet (created by Al Gore and Bill Gates) fails to install Linux without help - shocking details! Film at 11!
All that aside, I found that in terms of content, there was nothing different about either article. The alledged tech-head seemed as clue-impaired as the hopeless dweeb who played Lemonade Stand.
I heard Microsoft called a moving target; this is like shooting at fish in a barrel.
The rule is, with enough eyes looking at your code, all bugs are shallow. -E. Raymond
Linux gets tested by hundreds of thousands of people every day, only the difference is that Linux users can fix the bugs *themselves* and then post the fix for everyone else to use.
Look at it this way, you can run a product through all the contrived scenarios you like, but that won't catch as many bugs as releasing it to the public and letting them find the bugs.
Plus, with Linux, you get the fix as soon as it's completed - you don't have to wait for the next product release and *PAY* for the company to fix what should have been correct in the first place!
Posted by Mike@ABC:
Very good point. With OEMs getting on board, I'd be more likely to buy a Linux box, knowing that I wouldn't have to put my limited technical skills to the test. They focused mostly on the install, instead of the actual operations.
HOWEVER, the article did serve a good purpose -- even with Red Hat 5.2, the install on most Linux builds still needs work. If Linux ever wants to try to take on the desktop, it needs a dumbed-down install for the masses.
As far as the FUD factor, look at it this way. These articles may have introduced more people to Linux, and if they're interested enough, they'll find out more on their own.
like "Debbie Does Dallas".
You gotta figure, when they can't even spell "Torvalds" correctly, it's going to be bad. Outragously bad.
"Pale and wan?" I've got Enlightenment (with Absolute E), GNOME, and a couple of Eterms running right now, with a root background from Propaganda. Totally stable, and totally usable. Put that up against any Win98 desktop and you'll know the true meaning of "pale and wan".
I think we need to a habit of introducing Windoze lovers to our own Linux setups, just to see their reaction. Keep some anti-seizure drugs around, just in case.
(Anyone else think that RedHat 6.0 will have E/ShinyMetal as the standard window manager? Or will they stick to something a little more conservative, like WindowMaker, for the default? Hopefully not fvwm2; it's just way too Windoze-like.)
-- Blame any errors on your own stupidity. All wrongs reserved.
And this is why past (and conceivably present, I wouldn't know the details) OEM licensing that effectively prevents PC distributors from installing whatever OS they want is particularly pernicious.
--
Do I look like I speak for my employer?
I did see a story on slashdot about that last year, but nothing since.
Of all the comments I've ever posted, this is definately one of them
As suggested some book I read a while ago,
the X development started in 1984.
And yes - my linux desktop looked fairly
similar to Windows 95 - running LiteStep.
The article was written by Andrew Schuman, not Andrew Schulman.
BIIIGGG difference.
Well, it can make coffee...
This is exactly what I was thinking when I read her article. Be honest: How many Windows users out there have ever even seen the Windows installation process, much less installed it themselves? Sure, Linux takes a little PC knowledge to install, but no more than Windows does (to install from scratch). This is truly one of the most annoying types of FUD. Any one of the problems she mentioned could (and usually does) pop up during the Windows install process or during everyday use.
And what is up with her IDE CDROM story? It was plugged into the sound card IDE port instead of the mobo IDE port? And it wasn't even enabled in the BIOS? This sounds more like a PC manufacturer problem than a Linux install problem.
The lady's install article was almost fair, and
an echo of things heard in the highly flamed
Katz install dilemma (I think she faired much
more admirably than Katz actually).
The "techie" article was, IMHO, one of the more
disturbing pieces of propaganda that I have seen
as of late. It reminds me of "Purple Heart" -
a WWII-era propaganda movie (one of *ours* folks)
aimed at the Japanese culture and war machine.
By the second paragraph he is already setting out
to portray Linux as confusing, different, and
something that Windows people don't have any
contact with. It appears to me that he is
targeting the average Windows user who has no
contact with Linux (to their knowledge) and
who wants their questions settled in an article
from someplace safe. He makes Linux immediately
seem confusing and alien. Good strategy. Many
of his finer facts are wrong, but within the
realm of plausible deniability. He sets out
immediately the "good guy/bad guy" duality
(Linux is made by one guy instead of a faceless
monolith, but really it's made by a bunch of
faceless organizations who can't decide on
names. Shreds of truth on both counts, but
the second one is where he puts his emphasis)
he uses throughout the rest of the article
to establish "objectivity" while he trashes the
system.
He continues on to draw upon the party line to
subtly attack the FSF's motives. Far be it from
me to side with a Microsoft instrument, but I
have to agree that I don't expect to see sellable
software vanish from the world in my lifetime,
but I don't think that's the point. I'll let
the debaters rage on that one -- I just enjoy
having a choice, being able to use good software
that I can muck around in with the code.
His description of Linux as merely a kernel to
which one could add a windowing system, etc. Is
the first point where I began to get disturbed
and decided to post a response. The author
slips from debatable propaganda/FUD and slight
confusion of facts into a not-so-subtle attack
on the (debatable) weaknesses of Linux with the
implication of "...and so the thing's useless. Go
now back to your homes and play with your Windows
boxes and enjoy your hair." You are free to go
now. The verdict is in.
Linux *is* short of application software when
compared to the Windows software base. To split
hairs one can install Linux without X, but if a
GUI is important to you then you would install
it. The implication that significant extra work
or (as with NT for example) extra purchases must
be performed to install the OS with what should
be considered "standard" features is another
example of fine propaganda techniques. The
implication that the web (similarly Internet) is
the domain of the average Microsoft user, and
therefore must have come from Microsoft, is one
that must resonate well with their user base.
So when the author says "I even installed a web
browser." He is masterfully drawing upon this
unspoken belief -- as one of them.
The basic premises of the article are what I would
call the "Party Line" of the MStocracy:
- free software can't win
- the Linux community is too disorganized to
stay around
- they started from 1 guy, but they have the
same corporate disadvantages as the rest of
the industry
- to get their free software you have to pay
- you don't get any functionality with Linux
- Linux is struggling to emulate Windows
- Linux is nearly impossible to install and won't
recognize your hardware
- the stability of the system isn't important
- Linux doesn't really perform any better/faster
- you can't run your old DOS/Win3.1 programs on
Linux
Any of these points can be the basis for a healthy
flame war or otherwise religious debate.
The propaganda techniques the author uses include:
- identifies himself as a member of the reader
community (here day-to-day MS users with little
known contact with Linux). This is
particularly ironic since his initial
credibility takes him, by definition, out of
that group.
- establish apparent objectivity by supporting
facets of the system which do not conflict with
the "party line" tenets
- establish that Linux is associated with a group
very different from the reader community
- make that different group seem overly complex,
strange, non-conformist. The important
psychological tactic here is that the
demographic of the reader group (due to the
way the article is targeted) is exceedingly
conformist, and will react adversely towards
a non-conformist representation.
- focus upon the valued facets of the reader's
current beliefs (Word documents are important,
printing is important...) and analyze the
competitor rigidly within this framework.
- make the reader group appear to be the
important group, the misunderstood group;
further highlighting the difference between
"us" and "them"
- resting upon the implied conclusions, show that
the enemy must necessarily fall since our way
must be superior to theirs
- allow the reader to believe that since "we"
drew these conclusions then the reader shares
some of the credit
- finally establish a feeling of membership in
the knowledgeable group by letting the reader
know that there are others (fools) around who
will still pursue the Linux phenomenon, but
"we" know better
A fairly broad array of effective psychological
tools. Well done, Herr Shuman.
roundeye
"Cause there's 40 different shades of black, so many fortresses and ways to attack, so why you complainin'?"
I enjoyed the article by the English major... :)
I installed redhat 5.2 last night, and there were
a few bumps (the screen went black when it probed
my Matrox Millenium II, so I had to reboot and
install using expert mode, and I had a moderately
hard time setting up PPP just because I wasn't
used to the interface) but I have installed
Slackware and SuSE before so I kinda knew the
ropes.
I don't see why everyone is attacking them just
because they had difficulty too... I found the
articles refreshing.
If you would listen to the complaints maybe it
would give you ideas for improving things...
You've got the source, go fix it! FUD is good
for you.
I am puzzled by the number of times I have read articles supposedly written by "techies" who describe all the problems they have installing Linux. I knew next to nothing about Linux the first time I installed it (and on a piece of junk computer, to boot), let alone a CompSci degree, and I didn't have any trouble at all (this was Red Hat 5.0). As for the other article, well, my wife used to to tech support for a graphic design shop, and those people would complain about how hard Macs were to use! There are always going to be those people who just can't understand technology of any kind, and the more complex it is, the more panicky they get, regardless of the reality of the situation.
Agreed, installation on a bare drive is probably easier for someone not knowledgeable about computers, assuming the hardware is correctly set up for CD-booting and proper detection. There's one less level of crap to wade through to get the system up and running if you don't have to make allowances for another OS.
However, that wasn't the case in either of these articles, and it won't be the case for the vast majority of new linux installs in the near (or even the relatively distant) future.
I agree that it would be great to have Linux pre-installed, and that that will have to happen before Linux is palatable to the public at large. The fact is, though, that most installs will be of the type written about here.
There must be easy coexistance if Linux is to subsume the Windows installed base.
--Corey
Not only will they not deserve liberty or safety, Mr. Franklin, they will be DENIED both!
You raise some good points. I've worked with some good testers, and yeah, they'll try stuff that the developer would never think of. Also that the target audience would never think of, just to see if they can break it.
However, a lot of those sorts of things (eg random input in a text field) can be and are caught by the openness of source, for example when a project coordinator review a submitted patch. Stuff gets looked at a lot more closely there (or should be, beware of Greeks bearing gifts) than in a commercial setting code walkthrough.
OTOH, free software is exposed to lots of beta (or alpha) testers along the way.
-- Alastair
Try changing your window manager...mine doesn't have a Start button (AfterStep)
Couldn't have been done on purpose, could it? Heh.
Just for clarification they were Visigoths not Visgoths
[sorry, but my login is based on Visigoth]
Blocklevel: Practical Information Architecture
Upgrading to Win98 from 95 with a user tweaked registry, and the upgrade fails mid-way through. That was awful, it took me a week to redo all of my registry changes. Backing up the win98 partition because your hdd is failing, then trying to to copy it back onto the fresh installation of 98 on the new hdd. That's a nightmare. Installing drivers, etc.... If I hadn't been more knowledgeable than the average user, I wouldn't have made it.
Pre-installed Windows vs. you-install Linux ...
I am SICK AND TIRED of articles comparing pre-installed Windows systems vs. "you-install" Linux. Totally unfair.
Can we PLEASE get some REAL ARTICLES showing a pre-installed Linux system vs. a pre-installed Windows 98 system?
And also, compare Linux more to Windows NT since Windows 98 IS easier to understand from a layman's standpoint since it is a single user system. Of course that comes with the fact that a cracker can trash it in their sleep!
My $0.02 and damn good pennies too!
-- Bryan "TheBS" Smith
Independent Author, Consultant and Trainer
The point I caught was his comment on testing the code. And its something I've brought up here in the past: lots of Linux programmers, not a lot of QA.
Not a lot of formal QA, you mean. What you've got is a lot of users banging on every change almost as quickly as the developers can release code. Carpet-bombing isn't efficient, but if you drop enough iron in there pretty soon there aren't any bugs left.
Also, in OSS the changes are often relatively small because they come out so quickly, as opposed to commercial software where the version sent to test may have dozens to hundreds of change orders in it. Interaction bugs don't get caught until test in commercial software, while in OSS they usually get caught quickly after creation.
Final sanity check: if Linux lacks testing, then logically it's bug rate should be higher than commercial software. Experience and the extant data says it's lower, so either Linux doesn't lack testing or has something that's doing a better job of eliminating bugs than testing.
First I'll comment on 'How Predictable and Lame'. Trying to dual boot/reload Win98 is obviously something they never considered. Maybe we should e-mail a challange to them to do it?
/. have to deal with people so completely inept at configuring a computer? Sure, we've all spec'ed and built our own systems. How about 'Joe Gateway' that probably can't even dial the phone right to order his system? I think the second article has a bit of truth to the 'I'm not ready for Linux or maybe Linux isn't ready for me' comments. Sure the distributions are getting better at simplicity. But are they fully ready for Prime Time? I don't think being disdainful of the LCD buyer helps advocate Linux.
As for LCD, I mean Lowest Common Denominator. How many people on
Do really dense people warp space more than others?
The usual response to this point, I think, is that Linux users (or rather that proportion of them that are also coders) are your testers. They run the program, make it do something it doesn't want to do, then root around in the source to fix it.
That's the theory, anyway. In practice, this debugging model will miss lots of edge cases and stuff. And anything that involves race conditions or other synchronization issues doesn't get found easily by this model (though in fairness, it's exceedingly hard to even find, much less debug, race conditions by any means). The details of this debate I'll leave to people more knowledgeable than myself.
Serious testing is certainly vital for mission-critical apps. I don't want the code that controls the airplane I'm riding in, or the control tower directing my airplane, to have been tested with the "bazaar" model of testing. But then, that sort of thing is almost the canonical example of code that should be developed cathedral-style anyway; and people don't write ATC software for kicks.
I had a point when I started writing this, but I've forgotten what it was.
--
Do I look like I speak for my employer?
This could've been written by Bill himself.
Everybody's watching Microsoft for FUD right now, so they've toned it down, to a more subtle approach. Get a writer, give him geek credentials, then have him act mystified by such monumental tasks as creating a boot disk.
Faint praise and subtle FUD -
-'the gui looks like Windows' (implying that Xwindows copied MS).
-Yes, it did go a long time without crashing, but the writer only managed uptime of one week (without saying why, perhaps hinting that it crashed after a week).
-Take a subtle shot at FSF ("When pushed they [actually] define free software as...", as though they were admitting to a compromise).
-Multithreading - something it shares with WinNT (typical of MS to point to a *nix and say it's "just as good as NT", when in fact they wish to imply that NT is just as good as the *nix).
-Have the so-called geek express doubt as to the future of Linux. I mean, he should know, right?
- "something called a core dump"... no mention of GPF here.
-It's as fast as Windows (Jesus, they must have done something wrong!)
-"Linux will never do that [run old code]". No, you may need to recompile. But wait - then you can run OSS code on any version! Unlike closed source...
-"Developers want to write code, not solve niggling little problems". Funny, if Linux isn't properly debugged, how come it has so many fewer bugs than ANY MS product?
Watch for more of this. People will jump all over MS for attacking Linux directly, so they'll try to pull the rug out indirectly.
Both of our unfortunate authors tried to install RedHat 5.1 on Pentium 133 that was not put together by a major manufacturer. I'm willing to bet that the computer was someone's home jobbie since the on-motherboard IDE controller was disabled and instead, a Sound Card IDE interface was used. What kind of crap is that? Modern computers plug their ATAPI cd-roms into something sensible so that the bootable CD-Rom option can work. By making this mistake, they effectively dated this article to using Last Year's Linux Redhat 5.1 and a computer from Three Years Ago.
I realize that Linux can run on a 386 with 4 megs of ram (less, if you're really good), but for reality's sake, lets assume a base machine of a Pentium 200 for Joe Average User, and for the technoGeeks out there, figure out your parts before you build your system. And don't complain that it won't install if you had your CD-Rom plugged into the wrong interface. (Personally, I wouldn't even admit that I had that kind of problem.)
Shouldn't a technogeek be using Debian or Slackware for the added challenge?
Was he trying to court RMS? A simple reading of the history of Linux shows it was based on Minix, not GNU (though using the GNU utils).
The IDE part looked very suspicious for me too.
Especially as the 'techie' gui also complained about Linux not recognizing CDROMs
In my experience Linuxen have always recognized CDROMs (unless you attach them to floppy or joystick port or something), unlike win9x which, once it has forgotten the existance of CDROM is almost impossible to convince that it has one.
If this is typical of the accuracy, tone, and depth of Slate article, can anybody wonder why it couldn't find enough subscribers to support it?
Weblogging Considered Harmful:
Or, for that matter, comparing a "you install" Linux system with a "you install" Win98 system. Or indeed, any comparison of apples to apples.
--
Do I look like I speak for my employer?
I can't believe someone this ignorant was trying to install an OS by himeself. Ig uess he learned a lot, but one should be willing too.
I, for one, did not think Red Hat's answers to him were out of line.
At any rate, this is where the lines will be drawn. Anyone even remotely inclined or curious will be using Linux and everyone else, Windows. Linux will segregate computer uses very sharply until it is as easy to learn as windows for them ... it is almost like back in the early 90's when there were people "with PC's" and those "without": now we'll have those "using linux" and those "using windows". At least for a while.
support gun control: take guns from cops
So you can occassionally boot up Windows and remind yourself why you use Linux and why you support OSS.
According to the article:
Linux has multitasking and threading just like NT, 95/98 do not.
Linux runs "just about as fast as 95/98" and much faster than NT.
Which of these 3 OS' are better then?
The "English Major" is the person that you would like to see running Linux and loving it.
But having her install it from scratch? Come on. I bet if she used my Red Hat / KDE install, she would be good to go. Word processor, Netscape, E-Mail, easy to dial in to the net. She'd probably be loving it.
If you want Windows instalation horror stories, try typing "install windows" into a Deja News search!
The other thing that really bothered me was the compaints about Red Hat technical support. Say, is the teapot black! Microsoft runs a brutal tech support operation - I've had the displeasure of paying to find that out.
Do you even know anything about perl? -- AC Replying to Tom Christiansen post.
Strangely, Linux worked instantly --now matter what freaky changes to the BIOS setup I made in my struggles to get Windows going with decent video.
In fact I relied heavily on Linux to be able to download drivers and Flash BIOS files. I might have given up entirely on this set of hardware without Linux there to help me. (As opposed to the over-eager, underthought "help" Windows gives when you try installing things --why the ... did you do THAT? WHY can't you see the driver inf file --it's right in front of your f*ing NOSE!) When Windows doesn't install right the first time, you're in a foopsed-up world of PAIN. I have a hard time believing this writer doesn't know this.
Her cdrom problem sounds remarkably like what happens every time I install windows on my system (I seem to get the thing corrupted every few months and need to start over which might indicate a tad bit of instability) the boot disk finds the cd but when it trys to run win for the first time it can't find the cd anymore.
Contrast this with the linux installation that I did 2 years ago that I just replaced with 2.2.3 a week ago. I didn't even bother to updrade linux when I got a new system - just copied from one disk to another and installed lilo and a prebuilt kernel.
Ouch, am I sorry I followed that link!
I found it amusing and all, but maybe the Coffee Howto should not be in there with the other howtos that do not require one to double major in CS and EE. It's more of a "How-Might" and is probably just polluting the quality of the LDP.
> Just read kernel hacker's guide, implement a device driver (it could even be user
> space i think). Please, compile it as a module, so that we won't need a
> kernel compile in every update. Then write:
(and that's just the shortest thing I could quote to get the general idea across)
-OT
The FSF crew preaches that all software should be "Open Source"
Definately wrong!
The FSF calls it "free software".
so you don't; you just install it for her, together with GNOME or KDE, and tell her what button to push on to get wordperfect and netscape, and initiate/terminate a net connection.
same if you're running windoze, except for the GNOME/KDE part...
I have:
/usr (4.5GB) | Linux Swap (100MB)
FAT32 (~7GB) | Linux Root (500M) | Linux
and no problems yet. Guess we'll see.
Do you even know anything about perl? -- AC Replying to Tom Christiansen post.
Hello:
Red Hat 5.1 has FVWM95 as the default WM.
Obviously this would look a lot like windows, especially 'with a little start button'.
Yup - was just there - bought a USB Hp scanner only to find, Haha! our 'old' version of WIn95 didn't have USB support, and none was available
....
without buying a new pc for the oem sr2, thus we are FORCED to buy Win98, haha Gotcha!!
The people in the article are unwittingly suffering from the inequity of having a Win9x
preinstalled - if they could only have a choice
at time of purchase
BooBoo
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
Wait till you have to uninstall...(Hee hee.) I once had to use Norton Anti-Virus to get all of the references to NTLoader off the system. Of course, now I know better. Never again. Jim
-- My Weblog.
I think a more interesting test would be to sit someone in front of a PC with Linux installed and get them to install Win98 on it without wrecking the Linux installation. That would provide the mirror image to all these Linux installation articles.
Anyone tried this (say with a VA machine which had Linux preinstalled)?
Seriously, Roundeye, VERY good write-up.
Check out this section near the bottom of her article.
- Linux is free if you download it off the Web. With a manual and a CD it's about $40. Compare that with Windows 98: $199 for a full setup, $89 for an upgrade, or bundled for "free" as part of nearly every non-Macintosh computer.
I tried something similar with a friend of mine who is a mainframer with some MS-DOS and MS-Windows experience but almost no Linux or UNIX experience at all. You'd think this would give Windows 95 an unfair advantage, but read on.
Given a properly configured new machine with a blank hard drive and nothing but a boxed Windows 95 and a boxed Official Red Hat Linux he was eventually able to get both installed successfully. However, the route he ended up to get there is not what one might expect.
He first attempted to install Windows 95, but failed because he couldn't figure out how to get any MS-DOS boot floppy he had to recognize the (generic Toshiba ATAPI) CD-ROM drive (his previous machine has a proprietary Mitsumi CD-ROM in it) and he didn't have the correct driver diskette for ATAPI or instructions on how to configure MSCDEX.EXE.
Red Hat, on the other hand, provided a boot floppy which recognized his CD-ROM drive and let him partition the hard drive. Once he had Linux installed, he used it to copy the Windows 95 CD onto the FAT partition he had created on the hard drive using Linux and was able to boot from an MS-DOS boot floppy and run the Windows 95 install from the hard drive.
My conclusion is that even for reasonably competent people, Windows 95 installation isn't significantly easier than Linux. Given properly configured hardware (as apparently the Slate authors did not have), the Red Hat boot floppies will normally detect CD-ROM drives and install with very little trouble.
Simply to test this woman's theory, I gave MS Canada a call about this. After waiting on hold for 40 minutes, they surprisingly were willing to help me so long as I didn't ask for help during the actual installation. Very impressed, MS may be a monolith as a whole, but as individuals there are some good people there.
With all due respect, he was probably referring to the actual look of some of the Window Managers, not at the underlying core. He may be a techie but COM programming is much different than Widget programming so its doubtful he looked at any source for that evaluation. But even us zealots must admit: half of the WM's out there are made to look like MS to garner more attention to the OS. It only makes sense. And theres nothing wrong with doing it as well, after all - MS chose the look of the old Mac OS.
First, let me say that I kinda liked the article. I think for the most part it was unbiased, perhaps the snide fudish remarks were added later by the editor.
But, Isn't it obvious that Microsoft handed the PCs to the two writers with CDs that wouldn't work in Linux? ATAPI CD-Roms with the secondary IDE interface disabled in the bios? C'mon.
In the article at , you are labeled as "Boy Developer", and based on some of your experiences while running and installing Linux, the label 'Boy' seems to fit rather well, insofar as it denotes a relatively technological novice.
Sorry to start off with such a harsh statement myself, but some of your descriptions and statements are simply, plain wrong.
You start off with a relatively accurate and informative chapter on what Linux is, how it came to be, and explaining some of the lingo. Good job on that.
At the same time, congratulations on keeping an appearance of neutrality concerning the technical aspects, particularly considering who you work for - kudos on the couple of well-deserved jabs at MS.
Now on to your rather silly statements:
> But that's because so few people use it.
By current estimates that would be around 5 to 10 million, which is a far cry from 'so few people'. Conspiracy theorists would raise their heads now, pointing at your employer, and the sudden surfacing of less than glorious articles about Linux in various MS owned publications.
> I started searching the Web for information. After getting lost
> on a few Web sites
What's so difficult about typing in 'Linux' or 'Linux Distribution' in the random search engine (I favor metacrawler myself)? have you tried typing in www.linux.com or www.linux.org? Since you knew about RedHat (as you bought their tome) have you tried www.redhat.com and simply ordered their product?
Implying that you could find no information on the web concerning a decent distribution, or a manner to order an appropriate disk is either a case of:
a) incompetence and unfamiliarity with the web - something I hope is not the case as you are allegedly a techie.
b) a deliberate desire to make it appear as though less information is available on Linux as there really is. See above: Conspiracy theorists would raise their heads now, pointing at your employer, and the sudden surfacing of less than glorious articles about Linux in various MS owned publications.
> I made a scientific decision based on weight
ROTFLOL!
> Thus, instead of one big hard drive I now have two little ones using the
> same physical disk (blah blah blah)
The whole following litany on how complex it was to partitioon, and how the partitioning implies to be inefficient because you split up your whole disk into little ones MIGHT impress the masses, and make the point that Win is better because it keeps a big disk, but it also makes an alleged techie appear rather silly by comparison. Get it?
In addition, linux does NOT require you to partition for anything, save your swap partition (my first installs used the entire disk), but one quickly learns that by distributin information on partititions, expanding the system becomes much more flexible (like by adding a new drive to replace a partition).
Oh, and let's not forget that 99% of all Windows instralls require that the disks be partitioned into 2 gib partitions, resulting in most users never touching the D: drive because they don't know what it is.
Also, if you had grabbed RedHat 5.2, you'd know that RedHat has automated the installation process with 'Workstation', 'Server', and 'Custom' preconfigs. Select your poison, and the system does the rest, usually in less than 10 minutes (based on your CD-ROM speed).
So, please, don't give me that "oh, it's so confusin' for poo' old me' routine.
> Ithen fruitlessly tried to get Linux to boot up. First I tried to get it
> to load directly from the CD that came with the book
RedHat CDs are bootable. MacOS CDs are bootable. WinNT or Win95/98 CDs are not.
Distributions you purchase in the box come with boot disks. The standard RedHat disk also allows you to pop it into a Windows box, run the 'autoboot.bat' file in the DOSIMAGES folder, and it will automatically install as well.
> trying to get the Linux boot disk I had created
> to acknowledge the existence of the CD drive
RedHat boot disks will recognize most CD mechanisms on the market - if you use extremely esoteric hardware, it's your own fault (albeit I have yet to run into a drive that wasn't recognized). Windows is not better in that regard.
> Finally, I copied the entire CD onto my hard drive and started the install process.
Idiotic - I never had to do this, even when I was totally green and had no experience with Linux (2 years ago, coming from MacOS).
> I had to create two more floppy boot disks.
Again, incorrect for RedHat 5.2 (unless you count the emergency boot disk you have the OPTION of creating during installation - again, Windows gives you that option as well.
> I then launched Xwindows.
See, this is the interesting part - most people unfamiliar with Linux/Unix wouldn't even have known how to do that (startx), but you just did it, without difficulty. This is good, as it establishes as someone with familiarity with Unix (as you later claimed as well), but then this makes me question your competence in regards to the above examples and experiences.
> On my machine I can claim only a week of running without restarting,
Is that restarting because it crashed (highly unlikely) or restrating because the owner of the P-33 wanted it back? The difference matters.
> This is a feature Linux shares with Windows NT
This is a statement that is cute. Not much more.
> In terms of performance, Linux ran about as quickly as Windows
> 95/98 (though much faster than Windows NT Server) on my
> low-end Pentium machine
Cute, albeit inaccurate, again.
perceived speed, as well as actual benchmarked performance is far better on the Linux box, particularly on low-end machines. The difference in performance becomes more noticeable as the machines gets older/slower.
Now come the real doozies:
> Perhaps the greatest technological feature that
> Windows possesses is that it can handle programs as old as the first
> DOS applications. Linux will never do that.
Actually, Windows, any incarnation, is less than stellar in providing true DOS compatibility.
Your claim that Linux will never do that is incorrect, as Linux ships (RedHat at least) with a DOS emulator, called DOSemu.
dos at the command prompt, or xdos in x windows.
Configuration is a bit tricky (I will concede that), but again RedHat 5.2 ships with a configuration that pretty much runs out of the bag.
There are also products to run Windows programs within Linux (Wine), as well as a Virtual Machine emulator called vmware, which essentially emulates a Phoenix BIOS PC, within a window on the desktop - and it does so very well.
> this is the ultimate problem with Open Source development:
> not enough formal engaged testing.
This one is not evenr worth addressing, because the level of testing, as well as the level of quality of the codebase far exceeds most commercial offerings, particularly by Microosft. MS is particularly guilty of NOT doing much of any formalized testing on their products, as the ever growing databases of bugs in the various Windows' indicates - please, at the very least, don't resort to flat out lying.
It might be worth revisiting this issue in a follow-up article to address these issues, as leaving them open will only server your authority, as more and more people point out the flaws in your alleged competence in this regard.
Sincerely,
Harry Zink
I'm sorry, I'm a bit confused...
Is VisiGoth the GNU version of VisiCalc?
Jim
-- My Weblog.
I don't think that this article ever set out to be an objective article. Most journalism isn't really objective, and that's fine, as long as you know what you're dealing with.
/., how 'bout Linux Journal.
Do you really think that you get objective Journalism from
These are both first-person testimonials of things that happened to people and their response to it.
And, about the argument that "They shouldn't have had to install it" -bah- Most PC's out there are running Windows already, and this article is representative of how people in the real world deal with installation issues.
Red Hat ships with FVWM. They believe everything
they see with RedHat 5.1/5.2, and that's just
fine. If they think the latest and greatest UI
stuff for X is fvwm95, they can just go ahead
and believe it.
Excellent analysis. Deserves the "6" it got. ;)
First off, I agree with most posters here that the English major's article was a lot better than the "techie"'s was. I really liked the ending, where she showed remorse for her until-now technically-ignorant, spoon-fed, over-hyphenated computer experience.
Secondly, I have a question that I will get to in a bit. I bought my computer in '95, and since then have been mixing and matching components as new toys/broken old ones dictate. Likewise at work. The point is, I haven't messed with a new, preassembled system in quite some time. So I wonder, how common is it for people to hook up the CD-ROM drive to the sound-card's IDE controller and disable the MB's secondary controller? I may be way off on this one, but that just seems odd. I don't like to feed conspiracies*, but to me that just reeks.
Third(ly?), I do have to agree with some points of this article. Linux really isn't ready for the "What's a BIOS?" crowd yet, which is where it needs to get for World Domination(tm). To expect all the tech-fearing, computer using people of the world to go out and get educated just so they can use an OS is delusional. It would be great, but it is not going to happen.
I think that Linux itself will be ready for the non-technical relatively soon. What's going to be more challenging is getting the Linux user base prepared for the onslaught of questions and demands from these people. That, more than anything, might be the biggest stumbling block on the road ahead. For most of the OS' existence, the Linux-savvy have been accustomed to answering questions, but from people that were knowledgeable about computers/tech in general. The road ahead is something entirely new. People asking "What's a BIOS?" Asking STUPID questions, and asking them about Linux. People not having a clue about anything at ALL wondering what they need to recompile their kernel.
So steel your patience, boys and girls. Even the ignorant have a right to use superior software, and it's up to the rest of us to help make it happen. If that can be accomplished, I think the world will be a much better place indeed.
*standard disclaimer made by anyone about to feed a conspiracy
--
Okay, I got Linux installed. So where's the free beer everyone keeps talking about??
Did anyone notice that there's not one mention of the word "Netscape" throughout the entire technical article? It's always sani-flush clean referred to with the euphemism Linux Compatible Web Browser. Go ahead, try an ALT-F (find in page) and see if that article mentions netscape even once. I wonder what's up with that???? Microsoft employees can't even utter (type) the word?
The second article by the slate staff writer mentions Netscape exactly twice.
I was wondering about that one, myself (my own post a few down). I sincerely doubt if Win98 setup could walk through that one without choking on it.
Currently my sound card's IDE controller isn't even working in Win98. IRQ conflict or something, not important enough to worry about.
--
Okay, I got Linux installed. So where's the free beer everyone keeps talking about??
=D --
Okay, I got Linux installed. So where's the free beer everyone keeps talking about??
Someone should try something like this:
- Build a Linux-only computer (or, get a VAR...)
- Make sure there is only one partition: Linux
- Buy a Windows 9X CD
- Get a computer-illiterate person to install Windows on a second partition of this computer
Hmm...I wonder how well that would go? Would this newbie be able to partition the drive and set everything up properly? Get the computer to dual-boot? Somehow, I doubt this.
Cheers!
Vic
I saved this page here on slashdot to a text file and ran it through the flollowing (please pardon the lack of indentation):
// {
for ( i = 1; i = NF; ++i )
if ( tolower( $i ) ~
}
END {
print( " The word \"fud\" appeared " fud_ct " times." );
}
. . . and got the following:
The word "fud" appeared 34 times.
Only thirty-four times? Now, if you ask me, that's a pretty damn low level of paranoia, as slashdot goes. Way to go, guys! Maybe fear of moderation is having a positive effect.
-j
"Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law." --
I found the articles to be almost uniformly stuffy, pretentious, and extremely content-poor. I believe the editorial guidelines must specify that neo-kitschy, faux-New-Yorker style. because I cannot believe it was by accident. It's aimed at somebody's sensibilities besides mine.
This is not to say that they didn't have the occasional thought-provoking, sometimes almost penetrating articles, but the bulk of them were either painfully self-conscious or stupefyingly boring. And "occasionally good" does not earn you a ticket onto my browser's startup page. When they announced that they were following through with their plan to go for-pay, I had a good four-minute laugh, dismissed them as hopeless, and got on with my life.
When they recently gave up the subscription thing as a bad job, I actually took the time to visit them once again. Not surprisingly, nothing had changed.
Slate--they can keep it. You say "can anybody wonder". I know I don't have any further questions!
Well, from hanging around a couple of the redhat newsgroups, I have seen this issue of the CD connected to the sound card at least a couple times, even had this issue myself.
When I got my 4x SoundBlaster bundled with a SB16 card, the instructions *told* me to connect the IDE cable to the sound card. (this was a 486). This machine was the first Linux install I attempted. When I installed to a more current PC, I obviously did not have this issue.
Even the HOWTO mentions that linux treats this as ide3, and you should reconnect the CD as a slave on one of the other ide interfaces.
I pointedly decided to copy neither Windows _or_ my MacOS environment in my Linux environment. I set it up with Window Maker, clip and dock, several workspaces with specific themes ('net', 'editing', 'admin' etc) and even went so far as to rewrite the Afterstep animated desktop menu feature as Window Maker menus. :(
...except release more GPLed software, and continue to support the extremity of RMS, the hardcore cadre of Linux: anybody who actually likes to handle stuff in xterms or runs FVWM etc, or decides, hey, this is my virtual home, why should I let my decisions on interior decoration and structure be made by Redmond?
...WITHOUT my help, thank you-
...because I won't go along with that.
It angers me that this guy can so easily dismiss the notion of anything not working and acting like Windows, because I already felt that your typical Linux desktops (my experience is primarily with KDE, but Gnome does the same things) are simply annoying Windows clones. They are not _worse_ than Windows: there's no reason buttons can't be different or whatever, and there's nothing inherently evil and ugly about even Motif widgets. But they are not better than Windows because they're trying to do all the same things, and this is exactly the trap that approach falls into. How can anyone deny that Linux desktop systems are rips of Windows?
I'd pointedly add that I didn't say X: X can and usually has looked and worked _very_ unlike Windows. Set these people in front of FVWM and they won't say it's like Win. Set 'em in front of my menu-driven, xterm-filemanaging Window Maker setup and they won't say it's like Win. Set them in front of KDE and what, exactly, do you expect? Why work so hard to approach that which already has total vendor and user lock-in? Expecting people to go, oh, I'll use this, it's just like what I'm already totally used to only it's not, and I can't run Half-Life?
I'm sorry: when I got heavy into linux (now I'm a Mac dude with the capacity for dual, matched, _striped_ IBM SCSI drives and I'm not _using_ that just because it means that much to me to have a linux disk to dualboot off) I knew I wanted to hack it. I'm not much of a coder but at least I could make ChrisOS out of it, and by God I did- and now I read this article where the guy basically informs the world that what I did doesn't even exist! To him, X is KDE, or maybe it was Gnome he saw, and what are the linux desktop people doing to shake that assumption even a little bit?
There's nothing I can do about that: those aren't my projects to gripe about. KDE _will_ persist. People _will_ begin using linux and form the idea that KDE _is_ linux, or that it is X, or that linux is X, and so on. I can't stop that, but it doesn't prevent me feeling a sense of betrayal when some guy makes a comment like that- because to more and more people, that's the simple truth. X looks like Windows to them. It acts that way too. And as they clamor for programs that are specially enhanced for their Windows-like X, they will increasingly marginalize me yet again, and there isn't a thing I can do about it
Revision of history is a reality. I'll accept that, and that X will come to be known as that which looks almost like Windows, but not really, and that Linux will be most closely associated with whichever desktop, KDE or Gnome, happens to be installed.
It's no different, really, from all the anti-Mac fud, of which I've heard some really spectacular examples that were totally false or seriously maliciously deceptive: in this case, assuming people can't be prevented from looking at Linux, the agenda from both the enemy camp and from large numbers of Linux users themselves, is to make sure that those who come to Linux still see all of computing as it was prescribed and planned out in Redmond.
In this way, Linux people help to further the eternal legacy of Microsoft even should the latter die- if their user interfaces are never significantly varied from or altered, they will never die: they will have changed the world for good, reaching out even from the grave to set the tone for computer use.
duh.
-j
"Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law." --
For that kind of software testing to have any real value, you need to know *ahead* of time what the expected result is supposed to be. That means formal designs, reviews, and all the other beurocracy that goes with programming for big companies. That sort of environment is useful for high-level applications (where the people doing the design on paper don't have to know how to program to know that they want a button that does such-and-such.) On the other hand, for deep technical stuff, like kernels and compilers and whatnot, it is much less useful. Only the original programmer really knows the algorithms intimately enough to distinguish correct behaviour from incorrect behaviour. The idea of a separate testing person makes little sense when you are doing stuff that low-level. (And high-level tests really don't reveal much at that level. There's too many oppurtunities for two wrongs to make a right so that something goes unnoticed.)
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
The "Labor of Linux" article, on the other hand, perhaps because the author isn't technical, would be a much better starting point for someone attempting to improve the Linux experience for new users.
--
Jake
Admittedly, the experiences these two people had were nothing like what I went through when I installed RH, but there's nothing unfair about writing an article based on the way most Slate readers would approach Linux: by purchasing a CD, repartitioning a hard drive, and installing.
Actually, the sad thing is that the best form of tech support you can get from MS is paying a couple of hundred $ a year.
They then mail you TechNet, which is a collection of CDs with bug fixes - and more importantly - a searchable index of problems/bugs that is far more complete than their on-line support.
Then, you don't have to pay $200 to go on hold, then get some MS wank tell you thay version x of DLL y leaks memory like a sieve.
Do you even know anything about perl? -- AC Replying to Tom Christiansen post.
Double Ha!
Tripple Ha! I've run a large amount of my Apple II software under Linux using a free emulator, much of which predates the existance of the IBM PC, let alone Windows by a couple of years.
Re: partitioning
...It also has a solid multithreading and multitasking model, meaning that one errant program can't bring the whole computer to its knees. (This is a feature Linux shares with Windows NT, but not with Windows 95/98.)
Is is me or is Andrew Shuman suggesting that if he bought a computer preinstalled with Linux and wanted to install Windows95/98, he would not have to "repartition" and reformat the hard drive? I will agree with most everyone else that a fair comparison would be two computers preinstalled with the respective OS.
Re: graceful crashes
Although NT doesn't crash as often for me at work, any time it does, I have to physically cycle the power of my machine to get running again.
Re: running heritage software
Perhaps the greatest technological feature that Windows possesses is that it can handle programs as old as the first DOS applications. Linux will never do that.
WHAT software can Linux not run (I thinking UNIX heritage)? As long as one has the source code, I don't see why the software can't be compiled on Linux. Old DOS applications still run on NT? Sort of. I still have to use old DOS apps for my work, and there is a large performance penalty (and it doesn't function as well in the NT environment, i.e. I need to run it in full screen to work correctly. Ugh). If Andrew is suggesting Linux will never run DOS apps, what's the point? Even so, I thought there is WINE.
Anyone feel free to correct my viewpoints.
~afniv
"Man könnte froh sein, wenn die Luft so rein wäre wie das Bier"
~afniv
"Man könnte froh sein, wenn die Luft so rein wäre wie das Bier"
Richard von Weizs
ummm are new windows users not subjected to the these words?
Hey, that used to work anyway. Just a bunch of one's. Haven't needed it since I switched to Linux tho. Thank God for that!
Sig (appended to the end of comments you post, 120 chars)
umm that was 39.95 + tax!!
with windows pre-installed you get the OS tax-free
see it really is cheaper to run windows than linux.
How can a rational complaint about the lack of professional level testing be considered FUD? It is simply and demonstrably true.
Based on your assertion that "software that is widely used gets plenty of testing", Office97 is the most tested code in existence. Do you believe that it is the most bug free? I don't. MS releases patches only after they have been tested by thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of pros and beta testers, and they still have problems. This isn't because the programmers at Microsoft simply aren't any good. They're just guys working on code. Its just a matter of increased complexity causing an exponential rise in bug risk. The problem with MS apps lies in the marketing pukes forcing inclusion of enormous feature lists that simply are too complex to work well together.
So the sheer number of eyes looking at an app doesn't necessarily mean that all the bugs are caught.
Your assertion that Open Source code gets more testing than commercial software is simply wrong. My most recent release was just a maintenance update to our oldest product line. In the three month product cycle, it got over 2000 hours of professional testing, just from the QA team for that release, not including all the beta testers and devs and in-house testnights where we got other departments to pitch in. Just 4 full-time testers. And this isn't in any way analogous to 2000 hours of enduser testing. This was systematic, planned testing by people intimately familiar with not only the present state of the code, but how it used to be, how it changed, and how real people use it in the real world. There wasn't any overlap or duplication of effort, no less sexy pieces skipped over. Our test plans and coverage are the results of years of updates and input. And I'm sure we still missed stuff.
Without similar professional level testing efforts, you just won't find the same bugs. You'll find all the twinkie cosmetic display problems with file:print, but you'll never find the crashing problem with printing a file over 10 mb with a name over 64 characters. You'll do wonderful with US settings, but you'll never find out that you completely mishandle Malaysian currency. (the ringgit, btw.) Until some enduser hits it. And then its too late. They'll tell their boss, and he'll decide that "it's Linux' fault, he told them they shouldn't use it for production work", and MS gets to do a smug press release.
Having lots of endusers touch an app will find lots of bugs (if the bugs are there to be found), but thats the wrong time to find them. Bugs in released code are the ones that kill an app or a company. You can't treat the world as beta testers and expect to earn respect.
And maybe I'm over-sensitive, but FUD is a trifle insulting. Its seems to indicate that I'm part of some overarching plan to whittle away at Linux' respect and viability. Personally, I believe that the community's respect in the eyes of the world is much more harmed by touchy defensive types who cry conspiracy when anyone dares offer even the most constructive criticism of not even the code, but a portion of the process. So, 'edgy', while I'm a supporter of Linux, I hope that doesn't mean I have to be on your side.
-reemul
save the whales, collect the whole set
You're just jealous 'cuz the voices talk to *me*
apples to *lemons* is more like it
Oh. Never mind.
I can't fully remember boxed Win95, but I know the copy of Win98 I have comes with a boot floppy which has all the required drivers so that the system will read off the CD for the install.
In the article by the "techie" I found it pretty disturbing the number of times he refered to that the people writing OpenSource software had to be working for someone. Someone is paying then to write this software.
This seems to underly a lot of what comes out of Microsoft. You buy a product that provides a solution.
The Open Source movement isn't about providing products it is about providing tools. The value of an open source system is in the people operating it. Not the software running on it.
windows 95 and NT are best installed in one big partition. No-brainer. No documentation.
For that matter, that was how one source wanted me to do Red Hat, too. Oh, well.
Um, if you're going to offer Tech-Support, you should give it. Microsoft doesn't say they support Windows, they tell you to goto your computer manufacturer.
Clearly Microsoft is attacking Linux in the only way it can - the difficulty of setting up an OS. I had occasion about two weeks about to completely install Windows on one of the art machines in the office. It proved about twice as difficult as the latest Redhat 5.2 install with the primary problems of getting the CD-ROM to work. However the articles are framed in the context of installing an operating system. How many users have installed their own operating system? Outside of Slashdoters, very few! The simple fact of the matter is that MS controls which OSes are installed at the factory level. The license agreements with OEMS essentially prevent them from selling another OS. If there is one effect that we have seen out of the Justice department inquiry is that given the opportunity OEMs will bundle another OS. I would venture to guess that if the Justice department wasn't suing MS we would not be seeing major OEMS pre-loading Linux.
Thalasar
The non-techie story was probably reasonably accurate.
The techie has no excuse. That was pure and intentional FUD. I almost have pity, though, because I think I sensed a more than faint smell of personal fear.
It is amazing how far Linux has come. We are heading into the the last stages of denial on the desktop. In the server, we have already progressed out of denial and into fear and anger.
Linus was right... "First they laugh..."
I have to agree. The first time I installed Linux (back in the 1.0 days), I knew very little about PCs. I grew up with an Apple, and had very little exposure to a PC till I went to college. There I got really sick really quick of Win 3.1 crashing. So I saw Matt Welsh's Installation Guide, printed it out, and read it a few times. After convincing myself that it wasn't too tough, I downloaded Slackware and took off. I think that if you have any desire to learn at all, and can read English (although its probably translated into other languages by now), Linux is incredibly easy to install. Nowhere have I ever seen a comprehensive manual on how to install any MS product. Thanks Matt!!!
-- toolie
I'm in a cheerful mood today (my program finally works), so I'll put a more positive slant on these two articles. First, if anybody has ever looked at a linux mailing list dealing with setup and installation, one would realize that the authors troubles are not unusual. The only thing missing were, my mouse buttons don't work, the colors on my screen are screwed up, and I'm not getting any sound output.
/. routinely flame Mac users for being ignorant and not computer savy. Well guess what? Pretty soon, these computer illiterate Mac users are going to be running unix (Is Apple going to disable core dumps?). Then what are these writers going to say about unix? That Linux is not as easy to use as MacOSX?
The best way to read these types of articles is to take the attitude, "don't get mad, get even." In this case, systematically improve or fix each of the complaints. RedHat, are you listening? (I name RedHat because they installed their distro). The key is to say to yourself, what needs to be done so that a stupid, *ahem* I mean, novice user can flawlessly install and use linux. Well, a good source of info on this is these types of articles.
Secondly, the argument about unix being the evil monstrous operating system will be sorely tested with the release of MacOSX. People here at
As for the splintered Unix community? This time tested FUD has been around for over a decade. At least now we have the POSIX standards (but you won't see the word POSIX in these types of articles).
>I suspect a schism will eventually divide the happy Linux community ...
For a humorous take on this, see:
http://www.userfr iendly.org/cartoons/archives/99mar/19990301.html
http://www.userfr iendly.org/cartoons/archives/99mar/19990302.html http://www.userfr iendly.org/cartoons/archives/99mar/19990303.html
http://www.userfr iendly.org/cartoons/archives/99mar/19990304.html http://www.userfr iendly.org/cartoons/archives/99mar/19990305.html
and http://www.userfr iendly.org/cartoons/archives/99mar/19990319.html http://www.userfr iendly.org/cartoons/archives/99mar/19990320.html
http://www.userfr iendly.org/cartoons/archives/99mar/19990322.html http://www.userfr iendly.org/cartoons/archives/99mar/19990323.html
http://www.userfr iendly.org/cartoons/archives/99mar/19990324.html http://www.userfr iendly.org/cartoons/archives/99mar/19990325.html
http://www.userfr iendly.org/cartoons/archives/99mar/19990326.html
>... the ultimate problem with Open Source development: not enough formal engaged testing.
No less so with Open Source (or other free) software than with any other software ... and no more so either. Consider: http://www.gnu.org/manual/ dejagnu/html_mono/dejagnu.html and then look at the gdb source, full of test suites. Cygnus Software has built a bunch of test suites for gcc and egcs, the GNU C/C++ compiler, and they're actively working on Java test suites.
It'll be interesting to see if the Open Source community picks up on Extreme Programming and its testing techniques. --PSRC
P.S.: Yes, I use Windows for e-mail. My first job here was porting some Windows software to Solaris.-)
P.P.S.: I tried using Outlook, but I ran into some problems with my appointments with the year 4500....-)
Slashdotters: The last comes from another article this guy wrote, about a bug he introduced into Outlook 97. He is a Microsoft developer, or once was. No, he's not Andrew Schulman of "Undocumented DOS" and "Unauthorized Windows 95" and "Windows 95 in a Nutshell" fame.
Stupid job ads, weird spam, occasional insight at
what a dumb techie he is! can't install linux but rather comes out bashing GNU, linux and everything. What a dummer - GNU's not an OS. of course he doesn't want to lose his job, but with linux competition for OS will be strain as it should. nobody should shell out $$ for OS's
there we see another example of what makes microsoft dull with their crappy Win NT that can't TCPIP properly.
I got up to this part and then I just had to stop:
Note how he seems to imply that the FSF only defines free as libre 'when pushed'. Pure Bull. They (by which I guess I mean RMS) are always going out of their way to constantly mention it again and again and again whenever someone makes the mistake of assuming the F in FSF is about Free Beer. You don't have to "push" the FSF at all to get them to say it.
It's as if he's subtly trying to give the impression that the FSF is using weaseling its way around the word "free". What a crock. It's been that way since the GNU manifesto was first written. No weaseling about it.
This is standard MS spin. One thing they are very talented at is making damning accusations by inference, without actually saying them outright (so you can't get them for slander). They are skilled at saying things that are semantically true, but deliberately loaded with connotations that are false. This is more of the same.
And this guy is not a "geek". Notice his title. "Chief Program Manager" is not the title of a techie.
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
How come most of the problems they describe having
are the same ones I had the last time I (tryed to)
install windows?
Almost. Most heritage scientific software is in
Fortran, and getting that to compile is a problem.
g77 has reached the point where it will compile
a reasonable amount of it, but I'm currently working with some code that will run on most unices, but on Linux it segfaults before the first instruction. Isolating the problem is also problematical due to the lack of fortran support in gdb (at least the version with RH 5.2).
After wasting the time to read this article, I wanted to go back to /. Now the stupid slate.com site pops up in Netscapes' word completion woobie in the Location Box. I use to just have to type sl to get to /. Microsoft is trying to exert its influence everywhere :P
Can somebody tell me how to get that slate.com off my Netscape list?
-- toolie
I tried to install NT for 2 weeks before giving up. I got 98 to install after the third attempt. I have 2 separate SCSI drives, and a dual PII system. Slackware, Redhat and Linux Mandrake all installed on the first attempt.
Logic ... merely enables one to be wrong with authority. -- Doctor Who
Interesting insight into Microspeak. Are there other quirks like that?
Must be like working for Disney, where they probably fire your ass if you frown or curse (or they just re-educate you?)
No, actually, they're not. The best way to do it is to install Windows in it's own partition ~500Meg for 95, 800Meg for NT, and keep your data/programs on a separate partition. That way, when your OS croaks, you only have to format c:, re-install and test your programs. Many non-MS packages will just quietly restore their registry entries.
I've even read an article where the author was suggesting that for NT, you install 2 copies of the OS. One in a fat partition, and one in an NTFS partition, so if the NTFS NT goes south, you can boot to the FAT one and get all the data off it.
THAT is so wrong on SO many levels, I don't know where to begin to comment on it!
"What do you mean, invalid parameters? 9000Gigs of RAM and it can't answer a simple question!" -- Earthworm Jim
Yes, majority of all the PC users in the world buy PCs with a pre-installed OS. But what we seem to forget is that majority of those PCs are pre-installed with either Windows 95 or 98.
/.ters). At this point in time, I would still tell my mom, sister, or brother (who are non-technical users) to stick with Windows 95/98 simply because it would be less of a hassle for them and for me.
Difficulties with installing Windows 95/98 notwithstanding, majority of PC users will never have a problem installing it, simply because it comes pre-installed with their PCs.
So we still do have a problem convincing users to use Linux if we can't improve the installation process. We can't mask the problem by adding technical manuals or installfests -- these are kludgy, awkward solutions to something fundamental that needs to be designed from the ground up.
In addition, FUD or not, Linux is still far from being an ideal desktop system for non-technical users (by this I mean people who use PCs as a means to a end; not as an end of itself -- to write to their loved ones, to manage their family budgets, etc.. and are not necessarily enamored of their machines, otherwise -- in other words, people not like us
It's no good to say that people who use Linux should learn to use the command line, that people will be empowered by having to learn the lower level details or have to find a supportive Linux community (or a good Linux guru) to be able to use it. The only result that achieves is that non-technical people will find no compelling reason to switch to Linux, even though in the end it actually benefits them.
This is not to say, however, that things are not improving (or improving quickly). Linux is a moving target and over time it will become as good as any commercial GUI (Windows or Mac) out there.
But it is also important to admit that Linux GUIs (KDE, Gnome, GnuStep, etc.) are not there yet and that there is a lot of work that needs to be done.
The best way to respond to these criticisms (or FUD) is not through explosions of rhetoric that just muddles the issues further, but to actually contribute to those efforts that produce real, tangible results (either in actual code, documentation, bug reports, test results, suggestions for improvements, etc.). For a concrete example, look up the seul project. I don't know how active they still are but their efforts should be supported.
Not necessarily. Unless the interface is completely different from anything I've ever seen before and so non-intuitive that I can't navigate (which is a major problem anyway) there are enormous test possibilities possible without knowing anything about the code. There really is a science to testing, and its applicable no matter what the app is supposed to do. One of the better testers here used to test children's educational software, now he handles credit card data feeds. Its a matter of knowing how to test, not what is tested. Sure, deep knowledge of the code helps develop test cases, but if the end user can't tell in the interface what the result should be, the app is broken anyway.
Sure, for kernels and compilers, testing requires more knowledge of what is going on under the hood, but what percentage of applications does that represent? Fairly small. And a separate tester is still useful. Maybe a junior dev, someone not quite at the level of writing that sort of code yet, just hitting it to catch stuff that the original tester overlooked. The fact that the person knows how to code doesn't mean he isn't a tester, its the process not the person that is important.
And I *never* want to touch a compiler or kernel released without systematic testing. That's too important to hope that beta testers caught.
We don't really do bureaucracy here. At the upper levels, sure, but us cube rats just put our heads together and get the work done. Thinking that a systemic testing effort requires some Microsoft-like business model is dangerous. We do reviews, but they aren't that formal. Beer is generally involved, mostly paid for by the company. Drawing a connection between systematic testing efforts and big business is harmful:lots of folks in the Linux community are leery of such organizations and might be swayed away from professional level testing just because of such statements. I don't wear a tie, I don't even shave every day. Some of the guys don't wear shoes. Does this seem like some IBM-like blue blazer wearing company? Quite frankly, those folks don't test well. Sometimes you just need to try something weird. And sometimes the beer helps.
-reemul
90 minutes before they break out the brew
You're just jealous 'cuz the voices talk to *me*
Contrast this with the linux installation that I did 2 years ago that I just replaced with 2.2.3 a week ago. I didn't even bother to updrade linux when I got a new system - just copied from one disk to another and installed lilo and a prebuilt kernel.
Yes, just try that with Windows. Mwhahahahahaha! (Windows tends to get VERY upset when you start changing mobos on it.)
"What do you mean, invalid parameters? 9000Gigs of RAM and it can't answer a simple question!" -- Earthworm Jim
I'm willing to bet about 75% of Windows users out there have installed it themselves. I've installed it many times on many different types of setups, it's almost always smooth sailing. Any os that requires you to repartition your hard drive yourself (under Redhat anyway..) has got serious problems. A windows user just has to double click on a "setup.exe" file. Can you say that about Linux?
Actually I doubt it was KDE or GNOME that he saw. It was probably FVWM95 which is basically a rip of the Windows look complete with the "Start" button. It's basically like Win95 but not as pretty. If he'd seen KDE or GNOME then I don't think he would have been able to knock it as much as he did.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
The non-techie story was reasonable, but watch out -- both are from inside the BillGatus collective -- as pointed out elsewhere here, both dance around and never mention Netscape by name. Doesn't that strike you as odd? Was that done by an editor, or due to their cult training? Creepy.
There was so little content beyond the installation complaints, it was hard to tell what they were running.
Throw this one in MS pipe:
Q. Who is the biggest ISP (don't nitpick) right now?
A. AOL
Q. What is AOL's latest version?
A. 4.0
Q. Does it run on NT 4.0?
A. Yes and No.
Q. Explain?
A. Well, you can use it only to connect to AOL through TCP/IP, but trying to connect using the modem is impossible.
Q. Is this a 32bit application?
A. Yes
Q. Doesn't it run on windows 95/98?
A. Yes
Q. I am confused, i thought windows 95/98 was compatable with NT?
A. No comment...
Its spelt "L-I-N-U-X", but pronunced as "Free Beer"
Microsoft has huge piles of cash. They would like to profit on everything, but can tolerate huge non-direct profit (propoganda) schemes without a problem.
I encourage everyone to take their money where you can (why not spread it out), but don't help the empire grow.
The equivalent comparison would be against a dual win95 (fat)/ nt (ntfs) boot setup. You can't compare it with a win95->win98 upgrade, which would be like redhat 5.1 to 5.2 upgrade.
How true; everyone knows Hot Dog Stand is 10x better than Lemonade Stand. :-)
This is a temporary name until Mr. Piccolo works again.
> Also, I hope that RedHat replaces FVWM95 with something else for 6.0.
From what I've seen of 5.9 (6.0 pre) they are using Windowmaker & GNOME / KDE with a nifty mangager switcher thingy that _works_!!! Its very swish....Installation help provided ala SuSE...
Now if only I could get StarOffice to work..hmmm
-- Tom
My thoughts set in a fine english that my Danish
origin would have a hard time to live up to.
That writeup was a bullseye.
The question is, what can we do about it? Microsoft has the ability to spread their views directly to the public without any need to go through the media. Right now, the only way the linux message gets out is some guy at the New York Times who says, "Gee whiz this is neat!" :)), without any problems.
I would love to see an ad on TV, in a newspaper, or whatever, with a screenshot of Enlightenment (cause it looks cool, ok?) running the GIMP, a Netscape browser, and a windowed quake game. Everyone is hung up on how hard it is to install, but they don't realize once it's installed anybody can use it! I gave my computer-phobic a little account on my machine and he can browse the web, play CDs and MP3s (all legal of course
People also realize that the _reason_ it is hard to install is because their machines were tuned to Windows, not linux.
Ywwg
ps
How do I copy my GNOME panel settings (drawers, icons, launchers) to my roommate's account? copying the ~/.gnome dir doesn't seem to work!
#!/usr/bin/perl
$c=`cat comments.pl`;
print "The word 'fud' appeared ", ($c=~s/fud//ig), " times.\n";
Anyone care to do a one-liner?
--ac
"If you hate Microsoft, you can use Linux. It has all the basics necessary to get you through your computing life"
Thanks to Slate I now have my new signature
Thought for the day, don't you really dislike the space and bandwidth wasted by most signatures?
Yep....We were all expecting a FUD outbreak...well it has arrived.
tom.
-- Tom
What problems? I think it a great idea to require people to actually learn what's on their harddrives and to decide if they want to keep it or not, rather than overwriting everything. Besides, in the era of 3,4,5 or bigger HD's it common to have more than one partition on a single HD.
Combining the Bill Gates comments and these two articles, I think someone should have enough ammo to launch a lawsuit for slander and Liable... I'm no lawyer but this is idiotic...
RedHat? Caldera? Opensource.org? anyone?
Even if the lawsuit got thrown out... at least the information would be placed in the publics eye....
Any thoughts?
Get a life, not a lifestyle. - Hikem Bey
This has only to do with Linux defaulting to at least two partitions (plus Dos-Win if you want that) while Windows defaults to 1 partition. 99%
of windows machines have one hard disk drive and only one partition.
For most current Windows users, the best entry into Linux is a umsdos installation. ZipSlack is currently the only complete umsdos distro I know of (and you have to install X after the base install, which is quite inclusive of most everything else). After getting a taste of Linux with umsdos, the typical Windows user might be much more willing to risk partitioning his hard drive for a regular install.
Sadly, elitism in the Linux community prevents more modern distros from offering a umsdos distro, with X as a single package add-on. That would make them a lot of money, and do a lot for Linux. It is not politically correct, and detractors point out some performance lags with umsdos. True, there are some performance differences, but with today's hardware few people would notice (until they later compare with a regular linux filesystem install).
You can be politcally correct, or you can get not just millions but tens of millions of new Linux users very quickly. Nothing risked, nothing gained.
I used umsdos for several months before formatting with fips. There was no way for me to back up the data on my vfat partition so it was very risky - not really, but it felt that way.
The average non-technical user simply will not take that risk unless he is first hooked on Linux or has first invested something of himself in it, regardless of fads.
You just haven't been around Linux long enough to see it work.
Ponder this:
The Microsoft help dek actually helped the lady.
Red Hat did not ( as if I am surprised).
Maurice W. Hilarius Voice: (778) 347-9907
That "Chief Program Manager" guy for Slate, is he for real?
I mean, any "Chief Programmer" would have known that
1. Linux _DOES_ run DOS programs, with DOSEMU. Latest versions of DOSEMU are 0.98.6 (stable) and 0.99.9 (development). Both are available at ftp://ftp.dosemu.org
2. There are many EXCELLENT leads on the Web for Linux. How can a "Chief Program Manager" be so lame as to get "lost" in the Web?! Or is this a relection of how lame the SLATE thing is, huh?
The piece needs _NO_ conspiracy theory to see clearly how Micro$oft is afraid of Linux. The two articles are but the newest additions to M$'s FUD against Linux, that's all.
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
I agree. I've just spent 3 days trying to reinstall win95 on a cyrix 686 p166 for someone as a favor. It still won't install. Random GPF's in the middle of the install, errors and hard drive. Booted from a floppy and it worked no problem. I didn't bother setting up all the crashing before the windows installer even boots. I installed Debian just on a lark. It installed, but I couldn't get it to boot from the hardware since this was just an experiment. But just goes to show how much more robust Linux is than windoze.
A
When I installed Red Hat 5.1 I had a large amount of trouble
The main reason why I did was I didn't realise how big
the Swap partition needed to be and after about 80% of the
install i kept getting a kernel panic.
Assume it was intentional propaganda -- did he earn his pay?
What I would like to know is how the hell win98 recognized a cd-rom connected to the sound card!
"It was me against the world, I was sure that I'd win.... but the world fought back, punished me for my sins" - Social D
I use to work in the graphics lab at school. The year I was the head monitor (not really any user contact, purely software/managerial type stuff) was the first year they had NT installed. We were having so many problems with it that the head of PC IT spent about 3 hours per day for a week straight on the help line with MS. They finally said "We have experienced that problem too, but if you re-install the service pack 3 about once/month it should aleviate the problem." I had to waste one Saturday afternoon a month reinstalling NT (we already had the scripts set up for it, so I figured it'd be easier than just the SP3--maybe I was wrong). The prof who talked the lab into going NT was not happy with his decision at all.
-- toolie
At the end of the article, Mr. Shuman claims to
be a 'tech head'.
I am sorry to inform him that he simply does not qualify for that title.
He is nothing more than a 'Redmond Rump Swab'.
The last installation I did was RH5.2:
When installation becomes easier, Linux will shed a lot of its negative perceptions. It is definitely harder to install from scratch than Win95/98, Mac, or the other commercial Unixes I've installed (Haven't had the pleasure of installing NT ;-) ). I am confident that these problems will be fixed in the very near future.
I did find that interesting. My first thought was that her distribution was obsolete; I was surprised that she wouldn't have gone for a fresh Red Hat or SuSE install, which I've noticed go much smoother than the CD ROMs you get included with books.
She may have just been unlucky. I've heard something vaguely about CD ROMs that are hooked up to sound cards, and that Linux doesn't generally support them. But I've installed Linux on three different modern computers and never had that problem.
D
----
So what do you want? A RedHat install that automatically wipes your partition table and sets it up the way that it wants to?
They laughed at Einstein. They laughed at the Wright Brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown. -- C. Sagan
IMO, Roundeye has done an amazing job dissecting the underlying message of the slate articles.
just wanted to add one thing: its obvious (to me) that these articles are a knee-jerk reaction to the momentum building behind linux. The good news is that this is the first definitively negative article I've ever seen on linux to date - and (big surprise) it's from MS!
I guess they thought a press release would be too obvious, but have they really fooled anyone here?
Windows is devillishly complex to install, and if it _doesn't_ work, you're left with nowhere to go. That wonderous 'technical support' will just say you have hardware faults.
*remembers the day he installed AmigaOS2.0 -> 3 low density floppies and 20 minutes*
Now that was uncomplicated. Amiga hardware cards often had the drivers on the card too. Real plug and play.
The complexity of the install is somewhat related to the complexity of the system (architecture and components) the install has to deal with. Which is why they're both 'difficult for the average luser' to install.
__// `Thinking is an exercise to which all too few brains
_
\\/ are accustomed' - First Lensman
OK I admit that I am a geek. For years I have heard of Linux and wanted to try it. I finally did last year. I went through all the pains that you did. As I was reading your article I thought of somthing. How many people could load windows? Then I began to laugh. Almost all of the problems that you are having are just as hard to solve in Windows as they are in Linux. How many people do you know that can say that they load windows themself? You still need a boot disk. You still need a cd-rom etc. You get the same fududalling answers. So I would like it if you tried to install Windows95 by yourself on a machine that has had it's hard drive ereased. Enjoy. It will be just about as hard. You
will have to have a boot disk, and partition your drive etc. These complaints about linux arn't very good. Why don't you buy a computer with linux on it? Just like your windows computers did. Then compare them.
Benjamin Meyer
IceFox
This is FUD.
Dear Slate editors:
Your coverage of Linux was blatantly unfair. Your installations of Linux
should be compared with installing NT raw; which is just as hard.
What would have been fair is ordering and running a Linux installation from a computer Vendor which bundles Linux.
I know the Microsoft PR machine has been leaning on you to blast Linux before vendors can integrate GNOME and KDE into thier releases; to spread
FUD; but, guys, have you no shame ???
At least be half fair in your lies. You could have engineered a phony "We got a linux box from Dell which is now shipping Linux but, I just
don't like it and maybe they should go back to just selling Windows boxes with no choice of applications but Microsoft" review.
Anyway, rest assured; you work for the "MAN" and he subsidizes your money loosing operation. If you're lucky, he will subsidize you until the
competition is run out of business, then you can start collecting monopoly rents and really rake it in. Hey, it's worked a million times before. And guess what, you can call it "innovation" and if you get really hosed on booze, then you can half-way beleive it!
Sweet dreams!
-Richard Finney
Are are some great person. I NEVER install windows without either formatting or fdisk and formatting. Jeez. You know how fragmented your windows drive gets??? I god hope that you arn't a sys admin. If you are, never come to my company looking for a job
My plug and play devices kept messing up after I installed win98. If I took out the soundcard, the printer disappeared from the control panel. When I changed the cdrom drive, the mouse stopped working.
They also relate repartitioning their hard-drive with the linux Installation. How would they install another OS on the same HD? Would that magical OS make a partition for Windows and the other OS without corrupting the files?
A reason why some hardware does not work on Linux is because the companies that make it do not generally support linux.
Okay granted I read the first paragraph...that's all I needed. The techie one didn't catch my attention, so I went on to the other dipshit's article. They're having some novice English major install Linux on a machine that has Windows 98...did he install Windows 98 from scratch? I seriously fucking doubt it. Everyone's main gripe with installing Linux is that you have to do some disk partitioning, which I figured out on my own when I was 12 a few weeks after I got an 8088 with DOS 2.0. It's not rocket science. And partitioning a disk from one OS to the other is not a major thing either. I had my first Linux partitions set up a few years ago before I knew shit about Linux. It's not hard. The thing people fail to point out when they say..."Linux sucks it's too hard to install with that disk partitioning and all" or whatever is that they got their PC from someone as dumb as them from Comp-USA and someone on the assembly line fdisked their drive and installed windows for them. These idiots would have the same problem with windows if they ever installed it in the first place, or to level the field installed it on a machine that has no partitions...a drive straight from the factory. Personally I think Linux installs are easy, they put the fdisking shit right in the install...it's a separate program in Windows or DOS...Oh by the way, you have to reboot your machine several times (once for FDISK, and 3,487,985,234 times for windows)
I really wonder if the techie article was even written by a single person, much less a "techie". As I read it I had the distinct feeling that it had been written in a committee, or at least that several drafts had transpired in which the propaganda was fine-tuned. It is simply too polished.
Either that, or the professed "techie" has turned into a complete marketing flak, having completely internalized the techniques of self-censorship. He could easily get a job working high up in a cigarette company.
Anyway, persistent and polite evangelization is probably the best antidote to the FUD campaign.
My view is that the non-techie person was fundamentally right.
As of today, 27 March 1999, Linux is not easy enough to install on a home PC for a non-technical person without assistance.
A somewhat technical person can do it with the aid of a good book (and she would have been *much* better off buying Linux for Dummies rather than Mastering Linux, for the same reason I want 'How to keep your Volkswagon alive, for the Complete Idiot' rather than 'Mastering the VW').
However, given that the development cycle for Linux is running at approximatly 5 times the speed of Windows', I would say that in 6 months we are looking at a very different story.
As of today, Linux will happily play with Windows NT for server dominance. But it wont beat Widows 95/98 for at a guess another 2 development cycles.
In other words, within 6 months, I believe you will be able to buy a CD Rom that says 'Put me in the CD Rom drive, and click on the Penguin icon to install me'.
I installed Win98 in an hour, basically hands-free.
;-)
On the same machine, it took me a week of evenings to get RedHat 5.2 up and running. The video driver still doesn't work right (switching from SVGA to text mode leaves the console screen a mess).
Want me to write an article?
Seems to me there's lots of FUD on both sides...
Basically, I like Linux. It's an elegant design. I think it's got a future. And sometimes MS Windows just pisses me off.
However, if I need to get something done today, I'll go to NT. If I need to build a VXI system, I recommend NT. If I have to choose between COM today and CORBA tomorrow, I'll take the former.
If my son wants to play Freddie Fish, we boot up '98. Likewise if my wife needs to play her games. Likewise if my in-laws need to use the computer.
I'm still rooting for the underdog (I've since upgraded to the 2.2.2 kernel, & installed KDE), but I'm as pragmatic as the next guy.
No system is perfect; there's always something that needs improving. Just don't take it so hard when a MS magazine slags your system; what did you expect? The fact that they're noticing it says a lot!
You Linux people need to put these types of articles to good use rather than bash them. They (the authors) are spelling out what an average user (not a geek) look for in an OS. If Linux is to ever become a general purpose OS, then these types of complaints/comments should be addressed rather than criticized.
I'm not so sure about that. I've installed win95 three times on this computer (once was a clean install on an empty hard drive), and it's had no problems whatsoever. It auto-detected my video card, monitor, network card, and everything else, and auto-configured anything.
Linux, on the other hand, auto-detected nearly nothing, and it took me 3 or 4 tries in XF86Setup to finally get some video card/monitor settings that would work properly.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
I think it depends on what you install on. My first Linux install was MkLinux on a PowerCenter - complete piece of cake from start to finish. My second time was a Pentium laying around work. It mostly went fine, but I never could get the sound card to work. The third - complete nightmare.
Generally, I agree with you, though. I'm a Mac user, knowing nothing about *nix or PC hardware but I read my O'Reilly books and apply a little thought and it works. That's why I find Jon Katz so irritating.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
Mike
--
Mike
--
"Wi nøt trei a høliday in Sweden this yër?"
Apparently, that boot floppy costs about $100, given the difference in price of the two editions.
Mike
--
Mike
--
"Wi nøt trei a høliday in Sweden this yër?"
This is a the new FUD frontier. Considering that the *world* is doing OSS QA, the assertion that that there are no formal QA people working on OSS project is not valid. Have you looked at bugtraq recently? L0pht? What exactly do think these folks are doing?
Grr. 1997 was the pinnacle of Microsoft's power. Their time is over. They really are no longer the problem.
Issues concerning Linux's stability in comparision with other OSS OS's are much more salient for this community to consider.
Keep on keeping on.
Mike
--
Mike
--
"Wi nøt trei a høliday in Sweden this yër?"
You were always the best, your only screwup was polit-economics. The Central Commitee is proud of you.
I hope most people recognized the language, or I'm going to lose faith in /.
-- Keith Moore
This sig is the express property of someone.
Microsoft made it "pretty" and "easy". I say that in quotes because GNOME and KDE are prettier and frankly it's easier to run non-microsoft products. If, as you imply, Microsoft tests their software so well, why do they always crash?
I'll have to agree with you on this one. Both writers were morons.
The so called "Techie" doesn't write eloquently. Someone in one of the above comments mentioned that he may code like that too. Well that would sure explain a lot about windows.
Secondly, The english major, Eliza. Well, if she purchased RedHat Linux 5.2 why would you go out and download Corel if it comes on the CD in a nice easy to use RPM. I'm sure she could figure out RPM. Why doesn't she have her e-mail address on the website so we can e-mail her about her incompetence.
Lastly...Did anyone else notice how slow Slate's webserver is. It must have taken me 4 tries to load the site. It just stops loading halfway through...is that because they are running it on NT? Also notice in both articles practically ever y other article was a praise to Microsoft.
>As of today, 27 March 1999, Linux is not easy enough to install on a home PC for a non-technical person without assistance.
One thing I've thought about -- but don't have the time to do -- is to redistribute eMachine PCs, replacing Windows with Linux (or possibly setting up dual-boot). Set up easy switching between several window managers, include Wine, etc. Also set up scripts for setting up internet connections to as many ISPs as possible. Unfortunately you have to dump the WinModem, but otherwise it seems like it would be a competent Linux box.
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
I was incredulous after reading the techie article (can't run dos under linux? dosemu...) and just angry after reading the English major one. Then, I stopped for a moment and thought to myself:
"Slate articles have always been misleading or just wrong when it comes to technology. They may be owned by a 'hi-tek' company, but the fact that they even manage to publish their magazine on the web is a surprise given their tech knowledge. It is obvious that the tech people and the writers/editors are on different continents."
As an Enlish/CS kinda guy, Slate just sucks. They try, but the site just doesn't interest me. Much of their commentary just seems dated or irrelevant. Forget the Microsoft connection, I jsut don't like slate!
If you're looking for a good general-interest web-magazine that's also tech-savvy, try salon. If you're looking for more human-interest stories, try word. Charged is good for those of us who have short attention spans and like nice, flashy grafx. The point is, there are a good number of worthwhile general interest web magazines. Slate just isn't one of them.
--Andrew Grossman
grossdog@dartmouth.edu
You are doing new users a real disservice when you point them to VA, especially when there are other linux friendly vendors who can sell a home computer ( as opposed to a SCSI workstation ) for a reasonable price.
But What is techie about the article?
KN
Quite true. However, the number of people looking at the source is what matters. No matter how many people submit bug reports to MS, the same small group of people try to fix it. The advantage to the Open Source method is the varying perspectives that thousands of source-browsers have. I once read that Open Source is a way of putting together a programmer and a bug. Eventually, the person(s) who can fix it will see it.
Mike
--
Mike
--
"Wi nøt trei a høliday in Sweden this yër?"
Mike
--
Mike
--
"Wi nøt trei a høliday in Sweden this yër?"
But I think she got the wrong impression about what Linux should be. She entered the Linux world thinking that Linux was for geeks (only.) She evidently left with that same impression.
The traditional support method is through usenet. She went to Microsoft. She had her heart set on downloading a distribution from the net. She settled for a CD-ROM.
In other words, she viewed Microsoft as a natural ally, but sought out Linux with the expectation that it would be both authentically geeky and authentically hard. It's almost as if her review was geared towards fufilling those expectations.
Microsoft is too comfortable, but to be authentic, Linux has to be difficult. Maybe this is the consumer version of FUD.
First, guys, I concede that neither article was particularly accurate or informative. The tech guy tried very hard to sound like some sort of a guru,
:) . Providing mixed reviews is best for everyone.
but what kind of "guy who knows Unix" says that "Xwindows" looks like Windows 95? And the English major can be granted some leeway,since she (supposedly) had no previous operating-systems experienced, but she did almost everything wrong. She should have bought from VA Research, as somebody above posted, or at least have tried a different distro (No offense against Red Hat, but it's the wrong way to get started in the Unix world). She could have served as a role model for other Linux wannabies, or at least have helpfully pointed out her mistakes. But I do not understand what anybody could _learn_ from scanning over her installation diary.
But what's really important is that MS attempted this exercise at all. Should they simply ignore Linux? That would seem to foment _disgust_ with the stupid MS drones who can't see the revolution on the horizon. Should they flatly deny that Linux has _any_ redeeming merits? No, that would annoy current Linux users, serve as evidence that they're trying to undermine competitors, and possibly provoke a few skeptics to actually _install_ Linux. Should they say Linux is a miraculous wonder handed to Linus the Messiah from the hands of God? No - then they'd be fired
Some people seem suspicious of a major software empire that also controls its own publishing company and writes its own product reviews for it. Maybe they will be contented by learning that Salon is mostly owned by a little fruit farm we'll call Apple. Guess what OS they like best?
Win98 would have to change the MBR on your hard drive to do that, would it not? If so,
1) The change per reboot is going to be a whole lot more than just a few bites, and
2) You're probably in for a world more hurt than just a few bytes lost if the OS messes with the MBR.
It fits the bill as an urban legend, though. Microsoft taking over your hard drive a few bytes at a time...
-----
FVWM does look like a cheesy windows rip off.
Like it or not, microsoft has left their shit stain on the world. If you're looking to turn back the hands of time, I hear there's a linux project working on this.. I have no problem with the windows gui. Other than political/religious issues, I have no problems with windows at all. I choose to use linux because it is a viable alternative to "the man." The more they can make linux similar to windows, the better the chances of knocking ms off its horse. This similarity, like it or not, is rooted in the gui and the ability to run win apps. The real future of Linux in every home is KDE, Gnome and Wine. You have to give people a reason to switch and compatibility is a damn good reason. Unless someone wants to port all the windows software over.
Nothing was said that would require such harsh reprisals. Having to install or reinstall Windows is a truly distasteful task. Which makes no sense since the OS is so f_cked up you have to reinstall on a regular basis - must be the global tide of masochist (Byte).
And the removal of NextLevel is automatic, it is a real piece of shit. Too bad this is the first screen you see when you start RH.
Woe be on to them, all who rise against poor people, shall perish in a the end. Buju Banton
That's right. Check out the contrast: "professional computer geek" versus "fully developed human being". They aren't demonizing the operating system; they are dissing the *users*.
On a technical level, they are going for this stranglehold: "Windows comes pre-installed, and Linux doesn't." There's not too much we can do about that right now.
But I do have a suggestion: how about if an association of leading Linux vendors (including both Red Hat and Debian, commercial and non-commercial) starts issuing compatibility marks for "Linux-ready systems." A "Linux-ready system" is a system that can boot from a CD-ROM and has Linux-compatible hardware (especially the video card and modem). A Linux-Ready! machine should be capable of installing Linux by an untrained person in less than an hour.
Now imagine Joe Customer down at CompUSA, looking at the MegaBlatt and Personal Foonly:
Customer: "what's the difference?"
Salesman: "they both come with blah, blah, blah, and blah, but for only $50 more, the Personal Foonly is Linux-Ready! (tm) (cute picture of a penguin)"
Customer: "that sounds cool, I'm not sure what Linux is, but I saw it on CNN again last week. I'll take the Personal Foonly!"
Bravo! I wrote propaganda once for a living, and I found Your comment right on the mark. Thanks. A definite top scoring observation...6? (I thought 5 was tops...) anyway... 10!
begin-quote
you wrote:
Perhaps the greatest technological feature that Windows possesses is that it can handle programs as old as the first DOS applications. Linux will never do that.
Hi there. Sorry to disappoint you, but check out the DOSEmu. It runs virtualy all old DOS applications in Linux, including many DPMI protected mode apps. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but NT doesn't do that. Besides, who wants to run old DOS applications if not for a nostalgic round of Commander Keen? If that is Windows' greatest feature, well...
http://www.dosemu.org
By the way, if you really want to find out what the value of Linux and Free Software is, I suggest you stick with it for a long time and with an open mind. Installing RedHat and tinkering with it for a couple weeks is not going to teach you anything other than how to configure RedHat. Try to do all of your development on it. I realize there are real world constraints, such as your employer demanding you continue to work with VisualActiveBasicXScript99Pro, but you really are missing the point of Free Software if you think it's about being Anti-Microsoft or "Hey I got an OS really cheap!" It's about giving real working developers like you and me complete empowerment to get the job done.
I mean, why do computers even exist? Do they exist in order to sell software? From Microsoft's point of view, perhaps. But most people think they exist to help people solve real-world problems. Free Software gives us more power to do that, assuming you invest the time to learn its ways. (And please don't assume Windows is completely intuitive and has no learning curve, just because you are personally quite used to it. I find my Linux system quite easy to use.)
I think Microsoft will always have a large market selling friendly shells to Dummies, but something as important as an operating system used by millions worldwide needs to be Open, and Free (libre, not gratis.) I think the point that most outsiders don't get, and maybe never will get (and that's okay) is illustrated by the fact that most hackers I know wouldn't run Windows NT or MS Office even if it were free (gratis.) A smaller subset wouldn't run it even it were Free (libre) because they feel that Unix is a time-tested, proven, reliable, and useful design philosophy.
Your article had good points, but I hope you stick with Linux for a while before making up your mind. Oh, one other thing; I don't know if you are simply trying to simplify things for morons (always a bad idea) but the X window system most certainly does *not* have a Start menu! X is a client/server protocol that specifies the framework for displaying graphical windows on screens. X is the foundation for the GUI, it is not the GUI. Most people run a window manager, which actually as the name implies, manages the windows on the screen and provides things like the "Start Menu" (which is certainly not common to all window managers.) The funny thing is, this arrangement gives you incredible power. You can switch window managers without restarting the X system! All of your client program remain running! Also, X allows you to (for instance) run a program on one computer while viewing its interface on another. It's actually quite useful in practice.
One last thing to be said, the default window manager that ships with RedHat is probably one of the crappiest availible, Fvwm95. There are many other better and more feature-rich ones, such as Enlightenment, Window Maker, and Ice. Some of them can lay on the GUI candy quite thick. And surely you are aware of the GNOME and KDE desktop projects.
Anyway as I'm rambling on here, I'll sign off.
respectfully yours,
Anonymous Coed (I sent the letter on under my real name.)
Did anyone else notice the so-called techie could not mention netscape by name! He only said Linux comes with a "browser". I wondered how much editorial control MS has over Slate. Clearly they have banned such dirty words. It does say much for the publication.
Martin Sevior
At work I am forced to use Win95 with FAT16. Guess what? My 6 gig drive has THREE partitions (C:,D:,E:) because FAT16 is braindead. The worst part is that my CD-ROM drive is now F: and F: was the drive mapping for all of our network applications. You wouldn't believe how long it takes to fix all of the links to F: buried in the applications.
All the responses to this one say that the users are the beta testers, in OSS. uh...isn't that a M$ thing?
Slackware: old school feel, new school gear.
Maybe you forgot that windows installation does not last forever and (depending on your usage of it) you'll have to reinstall every month or every 6 months.
Actually, you'd be amazed how many factory-built PCs have their IDE/ATAPI CDs connected into the PnP sound cards (which, since the Linux kernel doesn't dick with PnP stuff, it doesn't know about). It's really pretty retarded. But of course, on a Windows preinstall, they can get away with dumb stuff like that.
Sam: "That was needlessly cryptic."
Max: "I'd be peeing my pants if I wore any!"
Well, consider that a Windows preinstalled box contains hardware known to work with Windows, just like a Linux preinstalled box would include hardware known to work with Linux. If you've got some funky hardware, or stuff that's not totally supported yet... well, get to rattlin' the cage of the company that made the problem hardware. Get them to support Linux.
Sam: "That was needlessly cryptic."
Max: "I'd be peeing my pants if I wore any!"
OK I'm going to use the mother standard here.
If something is easy to install, my mother can do it. That kinda rules Linux out.
I'm happy for her to use 98, she can install a USB quickcam and wave at me over the net.
I'd hate to have her try to install Linux, setup a dialup account and login.
For the average user Windows works. You switch your computer on and away you go. It has applications she can use, she never sees a command line, the interface is ok, and I can match her setup exactly here.
*shrug* Face it, Linux is not going to be mass media for the home for a long time, until
a) it comes as an *easy* pre-install option
b) The software base increases dramatically
c) It starts getting used on desktops at workplaces so you don't have to use 2 different OSes.
We're nerds, we can cope with recompiling the kernel, but I still use 98 for preference just for the software base and the games support.
Now where did I put my flameproof undies
Come on thats not just a Microsoft thing, Nitscrape crashes too.
Nothing is ever bug free (well except my code *grin*)
The usual response to this point, I think, is that Linux users (or rather that proportion of them that are also coders) are your testers. They run the program, make it do something it doesn't want to do, then root around in the source to fix it.
Interesting that, yet a lot of Linux heads I know laugh at Microsoft letting external users test beta code. Isn't that the same thing?
(God I'm showing my MS junkie status here)
All the Slate article proves is that it is difficult to install a new OS on a computer with an existing OS for a beginner.... I'd like to see them try this experiment:
Get a computer pre-configured with Linux. (from VA Research or a similar place)Then install Windows on it.... Ok, step one, repartion the hard drive. Oh, wait, there is *no* documentation for fdisk in the win 98 manual, is there! And if you know how to use it, you are still stuck cause MS-fdisk won't even see your Linux partition to delete them.... Looks like you have to boot Linux again to run it's fdisk to set up your windows partitions! I bet we would find that it is a ton easier to add linux to a windows system than it is to add windows to a linux system. And I haven't even gotten to the whole win-overwrote-my-MBR-and-now-I-can't-boot-linux issue.... This article was pure FUD, plain and simple. The depressing thing is, people will believe it.
Ooh.... Hadn't though of that one.... A friend of mine wanted to give NT a try, so I gave him one of the copies I had lying around. (sad, isn't it. I think I have 2 or 3 of them still, and I never use them.) I gave him a win NT 4 cd and the boot floppies... It took over a week before he could even get his cd-rom recognized! And people say linux is hard.....
Try installing windows on a system with no FAT partitions on it.... Guess what, you have to use fdisk too. The reason why Linux installs need to partition the hdd is cause not to many computers ship with ext2fs partitions.... And yes, to upgrade from Win 95 to Win 98 all you have to do is "setup.exe" and follow directions. Well, when I recently upgraded from Red Hat 5.0 to 5.2 all I did was insert a boot disk, reboot, select "upgrade" from a menu, and follow some directions. Real difficult And at least my Linux upgrade didn't require me to reboot the machine *5* times to recognize my hardware like the last time I installed win98!
And MS never bought a GUI from Xerox, tried to copy a GUI from Apple, or based the NT kernel off of VMS...... right.
*yawn* how many times have we heard this before- tech guy installs linux, likes it, but definately not for masses- or
non tech guy(or girl) tried to install linux, fails through incompetance, gets tech girl(or guy) to install linux for them.
This is probably the 10,000th time I've read this exact article
> The proper name for Linux is GNU/Linux.
M$ agreeing with RMS?
> if all software were free, how would they eat?
He well knows free is not in the monetary sense. FUD.
> When pushed, the Free Software Foundation
> defines "free" as a matter of liberty, not of
> price.
Really have to push hard to get this definition out of them - NOT. More FUD.
> Xwindows, which looks amazingly like Windows.
After all, M$ did invent the GUI, didn't they. Oh, I forgot, they stole it from Apple who copied it from Xerox.
> A big practical disadvantage of Linux is that
> there isn't much application software for it.
Desktop application software, maybe.
> But that's because so few people use it.
And yet Slate is wasting oh so valuable space on their site (running on *NIX?) and your time over it.
> Linux has a utility program that helped me
> [repartition] (because it knows you're going to
> want to keep running Windows too).
Oh yes, exactly why.
> On my machine I can claim only a week of
> running without restarting.
Missed blue screen and had to reboot to see one.
> If you hate Microsoft, you can use Linux.
I sure hate this FUD.
> Do all those software developers writing open
> source code for Linux have the incentive to fix
> problems as they arise?
Yes (just read Kernal Traffic). FUD, FUD, FUD.
> To keep old code running?
Something M$ is well known for doing.
> Perhaps the greatest technological feature that
> Windows possesses is that it can handle
> programs as old as the first DOS applications.
Bullsh*t.
> Linux will never do that.
Thankfully, but it will run good Unix SW which predates MS-DOG.
> Some critics say that Linux will fracture into > a dozen different incompatible versions, just
> as Unix did.
Stinking FUD.
> This is the ultimate problem with Open Source
> development: not enough formal engaged testing.
But M$ has definately got this one licked. Yeah right.
Changes aren't permanent, but change is.
Because he shut it down after a week of uptime with no problems! Get it now? The FUD continues
in subtle ways. Damnation by faint praise.
You didn't get it. LiteStep is for Windows which replaces the standard Windows shell and gives it a look similar to Afterstep and WindowMaker.
Not that I've tried it. I don't use Windows but if I did I'd probably give it a go.
See: http://litestep.computerheaven.net/
--
If you want to be able to recover contents of pre Service Pack 3 NT4, it is pretty much essential. Furthermore, you make an NT boot floppy. Format under NT. Copy to floppy files BOOT.INI NTDETECT.COM NTLDR NTBOOTDD.SYS
Curiously, booting NT from floppy can work when NT cannot boot directly from Hard Drive.
>THAT is so wrong on SO many levels,...
I agree, BUT am unwilling to risk losing access to the data.
PS. I also hit the power switch when it gets its brains fried. Safer to not let it try to preserve the damage on hard drive.
(signed) Windows NT (ab)user.
unlike win9x which, once it has forgotten the existance of CDROM is almost impossible to convince that it has one.
Ugh. Been there, done that. My CD-ROM has some sort power-save feature that Win95 doesn't like, at all. If the CD isn't actually spinning on start up, Windows will refuse to use it. Plus removing the CD means all the drive letter shuffle around, so half my software breaks, even if it doesn't use a CD.
For a while there, Linux was actually part of the bootstrap process for Windows. Telling LILO to boot "win" would actually boot Linux with an init that would mount the CD-ROM, run a lilo -R, then reboot to the real Windows. Fortunately, I've since found that loading DOS CD-ROM drivers in config.sys and autoexec.bat accomplishes the same thing.
This is an excellent point. I don't think that an easy installation program is going to take over the world. Rather, it's going to get an extra 10% of people to try Linux. I'm in that extra ten because I want to run Linux, I'm not afraid of my machine, and I _do_ want to understand _how_ it works. If the installation becomes easy enough for folks like me to manage, then we will install, chuck Windows (not out of hatred but frustration) and then yell and scream until more manufacturers preinstall Linux on their machines.
Once that happens, the momentum takes over. I really believe that manufacturers will have a much easier time supporting Linux because they will naturally fall back on the Internet to do it. They will point people to user groups other free sources as well as the help lines for which they demand a Visa number.
Right now people are describing Linux as something to add to a system--make the switch! The real turnover will happen when the computer is already running Linux and the unaware masses have no idea that it's there.
Yeah, I'm as old as my UID would suggest.
I'm not even gonna go into the article at all.
I'll just point out that he mentions that he was even able to run 'A' web-browser.
I wonder if the copy editor made him remove the name 'Netscape'.
Anyone ever hear of MSIE for Unix? *shudder*
Friends don't let friends buy Compaq's. (Dell/Gateway... same same) You want a good computer? Build it yourself.
I love it.. hehehe.. and no... you'll never be able to do that with standard windoze installation media. You stick that floppy in and it's gonna format your harddrive... that is.. if it can even SEE your harddrive.. heheh...
How come the techie said that a crashed program doesn't pull down an entire NT machine?
That's a bunch of hooey.
Friends don't let friends buy Compaq's. (Dell/Gateway... same same) You want a good computer? Build it yourself.
I've been sitting here reading through all the posts on this board about the conspiracy of Microsoft to damage Linux. And though I certainly believe that it is in Microsoft's best interest for Linux to be slighted, I am thoroughly disgusted with the general attitude of the Linux "community". All this board is filled with is people sitting around whining about a questionably negative ariticle. When in reality you should be overjoyed that Linux has gained so much publicity that these articles were written in the first place.
The reality of the situation is this. Windows in one form or another is installed on almost every PC sold today. Windows will continue to be installed in this manner as long as consumers continue to consider it acceptable. Right now the "average" end user will generally only buy a PC if it has Windows installed. The Linux "community" can sit around and argue about why this is the case all they want, but right now it is simple reality and it isn't going to change until the people actually buying the computers demand otherwise. What this means is that the vast majority of people buying computers that could be running Linux are currently running Windows on those computers. This makes the scenario described in these ariticles very much in line with what a new Linux user would most likely experience. And despite what the Linux elite want to proffer, the way many people will get their exposure is through a CD from a book or magazine. For the average end user with an analog modem downloading from the net is simply too large a barrier for any but the extremely curious to cross. Also it is not at all uncommon for the "average" end user to have less then state of the art hardware sometimes even older then that described in the Slate aritcles. The question for Linux is not whether it is as easy to install as Windows or not. The question is whether it is easy enough that someone who already has Windows installed will make the effort. Because of this Linux must not be as easy as Windows to install, it must be much much easier.
Ok so what is my point, first don't be so quick to dismiss articles like this, no matter what their source, as being pure FUD. In order for the Linux community and the open source community in general to prosper it needs to be much more introspective of its faults and use criticism as a rallying cry for improvement rather then to simply fuel the flames of hatred against Microsoft. Try to make the imaginative leap and look through the eyes of the "average" end user. Look at your beloved Linux and ask is it really ready for wide spread use by the general computing population? Is it really easy enough for the average end user to install? Should a person installing it really need to know what a BIOS or a drive partition is? Should they even care? Remember whose eyes you're looking through, these are people who want to use a computer as a means to an end not as the end in itself. They simply want the computer to make it easy from them to do their work or to let them play. I guarantee you, they don't care one bit about how the drive is partitioned or whether it is partitioned at all or for that matter whether the computer even has a hard drive. The only thing they care about is whether their computer lets them do what they want to do and is friendly while doing it.
Since the "average" end user is most likely already using Windows (which they probably perceived as being free due to the fact that it came on their PC) why should they switch to Linux? What is the added value that Linux brings to the table. What outstanding quality about Linux makes it so desirable that the "average" end user will scale the barriers to acceptance that they are confronted with? Are there compeling enough answers to these questions to make this type of user switch? If there aren't then the articles like those published by Slate should not be derided but should be embraced as an indication of the work still to be done. Only by focusing on the flaws percieved by your enemies can you implement the necessary improvements to eliminate future criticism.
So what is my challenge? Linux is great for technical users, there is no doubt about that, but I believe that it is no where near ready for use by the general computing population. From the tone of the posts here it is apparent that the Linux community believes it is ready. My challenge to you then is to convince me otherwise. I am about to purchase a new computer for my sister's family. Her family consists of my sister of course, her husband and 3 female children all under the age of 10. A couple years ago I gave them their first computer running Windows 95 and they've used it extensively for school work, her husband's work, playing games and all the other things the average computer user uses a computer for. Not once have they had a problem with the operating system. Now their computer is pretty dated and I want to get them a new one. So what I want to hear from the Linux community are solid reasons why I should install Linux on their new computer in place of Windows 98. Or for that matter solid reasons why I should install Linux at all, even in a dual boot configuration. If I can be convinced then I will install Linux on their new computer simple as that.
So what will it be?
K.S.
With OSS, at least the developers are honest, and tell the users which versions are beta, and which are stable versions. Everybody knew the 2.1.x kernels were experimental, and could run 2.0.x if their box was real important. If you don't want to be a beta tester, you don't have to.
With Mickeysoft, there's no telling what's stable and what's experimental. (But as a rule of thumb, it's all beta...)
"A big practical disadvantage of Linux is that there
isn't much application software for it. But that's because so few
people use it."
This goes to show that it's still too hard for the average bonehead to get Linux online quickly. Anyone who bothers to get on the net and surf for apps knows there is plenty of great stuff out there for Linux.
There was no desire here for an honest review.
Oh, isn't it Xwindow and not Xwindows?
He's impressed with a week without rebooting....wow, I guess the Microsoft world is worse off than I remember!
. Quit playing Monopoly with Bill. Switch to one of many non-Microsoft products today.
There was something said about basic browsing. I'm guessing the author was forbidden from even firing up Netscape and only used Lynx!
. Quit playing Monopoly with Bill. Switch to one of many non-Microsoft products today.
Hello, I'm just wondering whether the lady who
tested Linux may actually not have performed the
procedure as described. She says that downloading
linux would have taken 5 hours (implying a modem)
and later claims that it would have been too
difficult to connect to the corporate network. Am
I missing something here?
I also suggest keeping the tech guy article for
future reference on the competence of senior MS
technical staff.
If Win9x decides to overwrite some bytes in areas it does not own, it does not have to change the partition table.
OK, I'll try a stab at this.
First, bugs are not created equal. Formal testing tries to use metrics, but this distorts reality.
New user syndrome. A new user will stumble into bugs a more experienced user would never encounter.
Open Source has at least two effects. First, the code is probably better thought out initially, otherwise it is flame-bait. Commercial quality code, at least IBM from long ago, is NOT that good, and from a few check points has actually deteriorated with time. Second, there should be a few people out who take a pathological delight in finding and eradicating certain types of bugs. With the source, they know where to look and what to look for.
For the bugs that matter, somebody competent out there will run into it and fix it.
In general, the user community will be as helpful as possible.
Bugs are diverse. The user community is diverse and beats on it in a variety of ways.
Open software will not catch all the bugs, but will tend to catch all of them that matter.
Closed software testing will start out with good intentions, but the same old same old tends more toward preservation of original bugs than their elimination. Further, there is an assumption that it's tested so it must be right. In addition the programmer wants his boss to think he did a good job. The whole mess creates a sort of arrogance so that if a user does find a bug, it's far easier to just try to bypass it. It's just not worth the hassle. Even if it does make it onto the list of things to be fixed, it will be months at least before the user will see the results.
In contrast, with Open Source, it is worth the hassle. The user gets his bug fixed, along with any fixes for other bugs. At this point, with a sensitized target, with communication lines open, you get the best regression testing imaginable. Everybody gains.
In short, with Closed Source, the forces are aimed at burying or trying to ignore bugs. With Open Source, the forces are aimed at 1) ameliorating effects of bugs and 2) exposure of bugs. Further, Closed Source is effectively paid by the line. There is a strong disincentive to take the effort to shorten and tighten the code.
Release early. Release often. Catch the really bad actor early. Cure the bug twice. First the bug itself. Second, fix it so the bug can't really hurt you. Another rule. Bugs are like snakes, they go around in pairs, so find the other one. It helps to be paranoid.
Be aware of the level. Cool on the desktop is ok. Cool for non-critical stuff is fine. Cool for critical stuff, particularly the kernel, is not ok. As I understand it, Linus Torvalds is a very nice guy. In the book excerpt from Open Sources, he uses the word "stupid" 4 times. The more I think about it, the more I am convinced that he is exactly right. At this level, it is much more important to not be stupid than it is to be brilliant. If you look at it the right way and it is stupid, it is stupid. Remember it. "The very basic rule is to avoid interfaces." This is dead on target. You cannot avoid them entirely, but less is better. Hmmm, maybe this is why Un*x cannot be killed off. "While the NT team knew the final result wouldn't approach a microkernel, they knew they had to pay lip service to the idea." And this starts the chain of deception. At the level of the kernel, and other critical stuff, you need to be [brutally] honest.
Crystal ball. (He who lives by the crystal ball shall learn to enjoy ground glass) Beware Windows2000 (W2K).
I'm willing to bet about 75% of Windows users out there have installed it themselves.
That's because everytime you add a new piece of hardware, you have to fscking reinstall the OS to get the damn thing to work. Or, if you keep getting too many of those "illegal operation" errors, your best bet is to just reinstall. I'm willing to bet that percentage is closer to 100%.
This is exactly what I was thinking when I read her article. Be honest: How many Windows users out there have ever even seen the Windows installation process, much less installed it themselves? Sure, Linux takes a little PC knowledge to install, but no more than Windows does (to install from scratch). This is truly one of the most annoying types of FUD.
:P
Interesting that you'd mention it...
I've only had one bit of experience installing win95. It was on a friends computer which was so virus-ridden I decided to just wipe it all and start it over. And guess what. Getting it to use the CD-ROM was hell. It was kinda funny even... I would chuck the floppy in the drive, it would start doing its installation stuff, it would read the CD, write a bunch of the stuff to disk, try to reboot and not be able to read the CD-ROM. Because it didn't install enough drivers to complete its own install process. I ended up having to make another boot floppy, and add CD-ROM stuff to the config.sys and autoexec.bat right smack in the middle of the install. And before I installed linux, people kept asking me why I hadn't upgraded my win3.1 box. Nowadays everyone knows better
--
Paranoid
Paranoid
Bwaahahahahaa.
Right. Overwriting bytes on other partitions is not increasing the partition size, but Win9x could do that. Even in that case, though, you'd be seeing problems sooner rather than later.
-----
It makes me wonder what CD-ROM she was using. The only thing Ifigure is that she was using an extremely obscure SCSI card with her CD-ROM, or perhaps the 2.0.34 kernel (though she said she was using RedHat 5.2).
I've installed Linux on several different machines, all independent of each other, with varying types of hardware, and I was always able to get past that initial step.
-Dean
Agreed. The information in superbad.com
contains more truth than slate. What is the purpose of slate?
I just don't understand it? For years they thought people would
pay to read pro-microsoft views of the world and other slanted
non-sense when they can get that for free elsewhere on the net.
It's too bad Bill Gates subsidizes slate; it would have gone under
long ago.
Well, maybe I missed something here or I hang out with people who are not considered average computer users (non-power-users). The kind of person who knows how to print, use the word processor and turn it on, etc. From my experience I could see this person totally floundering around.
./install (whatever it is, haven't installed it in a while)
Lets say the computer has already been installed and your novice user is staring a logon prompt in the face: 3 questions come to mind:
1. What is this?
2. What do I type?
3. Whats the password?
And there thinking (man this is tough)
So you get them logged in, how about a few more questions:
1. Alright I see a $, now what?
2. Where is the mouse and graphics?
3. Where is netscape/whatever browser/app?
4. where are my files?
5. I want to open "XYZ" off my floppy drive, how?
Okay so you get them in X and there thinking damn I gotta type startx to go in alright thats a pisser, but I can deal. So logon / password, startx.
1. Now im in this windows thing, wheres my word processor?
2. What, I have to download it? How do I do that?
3. Configure my ppp account? what?
Okay ill do that for them also?
4. Im online, where's netscape? What its not on here?
5. How do I use ftp / ncftp / lynx / etc to get it?
Okay I do that...
6. How do I install it?
Rtfm peon! Alright ill install that also
7. Okay I have it now I can get my word processor.
8. Got it how do I install it?
tar -zxvf filename ; wp
9. wtf was that? nevermind I dont care!
10. okay I got it im all set, at least the printer was easy to setup.
Ovbiously this is probably a worst case type scenario but I can deffinetly see it as a possibilty. Im not a novice I dont know what joe average computer user is going to think when he is staring linux in the face, but the author of the article has a very good, and often overstated point, it is geek love, it is a hacker os, its not for everyone and if it ever becomes that way, its not for a long time to come.
For that type of ease of use were going to need to come a long way from the old redhat / slack / suse / debian installs and upgrades. text only is not really gonna cut it for the install and it better be damn intuitive and explain itself well if thats the case. I found the article by the average user at slate to be very good. And a good read.
So I love my linux, but the dude next door, my mother, father and friends are not gonna be able to do shit with it. I can deal with that, its a problem and we can deal with it till it gets better.
-Adam
Yeah, isn't the NT BootMangler precious?
Love that interoperability.
Remember that what's inside of you doesn't matter because nobody can see it.
With such a penchant for accuracy, I'm guessing Mr. Shuman must be on the NT kernel team.
My first install of Linux was similar to yours: I read the HOWTOs, downloaded the slackware disks, and followed the directions. The only problem that I had was determining the video timings for X.
Installing Linux has gotten easier, but it still takes extra time upfront reading the documentation and knowing what you have. I've never used anything but the online docs and haven't had any problems. In fact, the last install that I did was easier than installing win95 on my wife's laptop. I'm sure some of the Linux is hard to install stories come from some people that just want to pop the CD in the drive and have it take over. Anything worthwhile takes some effort. Installing Linux is well worth the effort.
What these two articles were designed to do is to reinforce Microsoft's FUD:
the good ground has been paved over by suicidal maniacs
"The article was written by Andrew Schuman, not Andrew Schulman."
It seems to be 'Shuman', actually, with not only the l but the c missing too.
But I did a double-take too when I first saw it, before I noticed the difference.
And that set me thinking -- OK, so am I seeing invisible black helicopters here? -- maybe that's WHY they hired the guy in the first place?
Think about it: If more people are like Bob K, and have heard of the real guy, and miss the difference in how this one spells his name... Cheap extra credibility for Slate, right?
Another reason for my theory: They have to have hired him for *some* reason, and it sure can't be his writing -- that sucks almost as bad as his knowledge...
Christian R. Conrad
Opinions are MINE, not my employer's -- Hedengren, in Finland.
Christian R. Conrad
mail me at iki.fi ; same user ID as here
what?
slate is running IIS on WinNT -- query port 80 if you don't believe it.
Explorer is little more than a collection of bits and pieces from everyone else's gui shells, including those that ran under X. Everyone see's their old gui's in win98: Mac users, X users, OS/2 users and even Atari users.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Of course their web site runs slow. They're running IIS 4.0. What else would you expect from them?
Matthew Vanecek For 93 million miles, there is nothing between the sun and my shadow except me. I'm always getting i
Absolutely agree! I thought that the first Slate article was actually really great because it spelled out what one of the biggest problem is with the Wintel monopoly: pre-installation of the OS by OEMs.
People actually think that Win9x/NT is easy because it is already installed on a PC while Linux is user unfriendly because you must (even though tou do not have to...) create boot disks. The fact that PCs come preloaded with Windows is very unfair to other OS's like Linux because it creates an impression that Windows is user friendly and that other OS are backward and convoluted systems.
The DOJ should consider making it impossible for OEM to install software for you on PC's. Instead, maybe it would be a good idea that OS installation would be a value added, separate, service for which you would have to pay separetly. i.e. OEM can seel the shrink wrap software, but another person would have to be paid to install it, or you could install it yourself.
This would put an end to the $$$ from a hardware purchase being used to pay for the OS (Os subsidies?) and level the field for non MS products.
"If you're still interested in Linux, click here..." What is this garbage? This sure makes it sound like the article was intended to scare people off of Linux. As if there is some shock that you would consider Linux after the horror story! You'd think somebody associated with Microsoft's computer magazine would have MORE experience. Geez. Anyone in a computer company should have more experience than her! -Seth Nickell (snickell@bigfoot.com)
Give WinXX to a novice with no IT experience and watch them install and configure it on a fresh box. Get it ready for the net, set up proxies if req'd etc.
Linux is a bit tougher to install but the above process can produce gibbering wrecks from most intelligent but computer illeterate people as well. I think this whole 'its not as easy as Windows' bit has to be re-assessed by the linux community. RedHat is not that far from where M$ is on this front in reality. Sure, setting up a box with more than one OS is even tougher but thats inevitable.
ZamZ
Why the hell did anything on Slate ever get posted here in the first place... I couldn't care less that this dipshit has decided to spread FUD (fucking useless drivel). There are serveral good sites to get newbie help on setting up Linux, it just seems this nimrod doesn't even know how to use the internet. BTW, what happened to Katz and his Linux box :)
Correction, she said 5.1, but same deal... should have seen the CDROM. Perhaps it was a mitsumi or something
Actually , it's X... to say window anything is to pull down your pants and reveal your stupid ass...
This only applies to the Full copy. Win98's upgrade copy does not include this floppy. It also (irritatingly) asks for proof of some sort of prior Windows product. Thank god I kept my WfWG install floppies.
Apparently, that boot floppy costs about $100, given the difference in price of the two editions.
And try to find the "full copy". Very few stores around here seem to carry anything but the upgrade edition. Its also getting virtually impossible to buy Windows 95 at all anymore, as all most stores have these days seem to be 98.
I understand your points, but you were missing mine ...
I was talking about getting a pre-installed Linux system (not installing either). Your mentioning of the video problem points out the issue, you need to check the hardware compatibility list before installing. If you buy a system with Linux pre-installed, you do not have such issues my friend.
As far as your "easy" of installing Windows 98, it was on a system that already had Windows 95 -- right? I can say the same for upgrading RedHat 5.0 or 5.1 to 5.2! Very easy to do. Linux is NOT an upgrade for Windows 95! People seem to miss that point!
And if you had to install Windows 98 from just the CD on a blank system, could you do it? Especially from a Windows 95/A/B CD-ROM, which does not seem to be bootable in any system. And if you read the one article over on a Microsoft publication, you would have heard about the user who spent two paragraphs complaining how she could not get the RedHat CD to boot (because she did not know how to tell the BIOS to boot from the CD first).
Again, I think you missed my points here. But you are just among the 99% of the population that does. That is why it is so hard to fight the FUD onslaught, it is coming from biased people. They are still thinking with a "Windows is everything" mentality. If you are already used to Windows, OF COURSE IT WILL BE EASIER!
As I have said before, most people find rebooting is often easier than using a new OS. And don't even get me started on security!
-- Bryan "TheBS" Smith
Independent Author, Consultant and Trainer
Actually, a more REAL comparison is installing Linux to installing NT.
I am sorry, but with the age of the Internet -- the age of single-user has come and gone. Home users will just have to grow up sooner than later. Hence, why we have these virus problems today.
-- Bryan "TheBS" Smith
Independent Author, Consultant and Trainer