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Time Review of Linux
afniv writes "Time.com as a short article about Linux. The reviewer talks briefly about Linux install troubles and will have future installments. "
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Here's a thought: instead of writing this reporter a bunch of nastygrams, let's help him figure out how to add and integrate things like the RealPlayer G2 to his Netscape, and Sort out Xanim and Mpegtv and X11amp. And properly install StarOffice an/or WordPerfect and SANE and Hylafax. These are things that will get his respect for the OS and the people who use it.
This is just FUD. I'm running Win2K beta 3 now, and there's definitely a command line unless they changed something in the 15 builds between the one I'm running and the official release candidate sitting over there on the corner of my desk daring me to install it.
Don't get me wrong - I don't like Microsoft any more than the next slashdotter - but FUD is FUD and should be avoided.
IMHO, 99.5% of these "install" whiners don't even know what thier talking about, they just freak out because it askes them a couple questions. 89% or more have never tried to install Windows or anything else, so they don't even have a frame of referance.
You know what, I think it's time for a new Linux distribution, one that just reformates the whole dang drive, doesn't ask a single question, and installs as much stuff as it can fit. That's what they seem to want anyway, "Huh? what IP??" Let them figure that out after the system is installed like they do in windows.. just set up X at 640x480, and let them see it's there, and let them configure it later... or else they will whine.. GRrrrrrrrrrrr... Just do everything for them, then it "installs" easy, it's post installation configuration they have to do, and with GUI tools insted of a dialog box during install, they seem to want it that way anyhow..
Look, Red Hat installs with very very little effort, and when it's done, your have things all set exactly like you want them. Windows 95 was a nightmear to install, and Win98 isn't any better. Windows NT was sorta better than Windows 95 to install, but not as easy as RedHat. These are the same people who said NT was hard to isntall, because they never installed Windows95.. so don't believe a word of it..
Ok, I'm off my soap box, I'll go read the dang thing now...
If anyone thinks that installing Windows isn't 1-2 orders of magnitude easier than Linux on a given random machine, then they are smoking crack, dropping acid and shooting heroin all at the same time.
Yes, Linux can go easy, if you don't stray from the path. I recently installed RH/6 on a fresh machine in order to build a gateway between my Win/98 machines and my DSL line. After trying different combinations of network cards, innumerable "gotchas" and about 15 reinstalls, I got it to work. Don't get me wrong -- it works well -- but I wouldn't want grandma setting it up. And by the way, I've been using Unix for 10 years, so I understand Unix.
I have to say: The documentation for RedHat (which is supposed to be one of the best) is absolutely atrocious. What there is OK -- just OK -- but it's insanely incomplete. I'll spare everyone all my trials, but if it wasn't for Deja News, I never would have got the thing working.
I like Linux. I want Linux to succeed. But it does the cause no good to exaggerate the pain of Windows installation (which literally millions of bonehead users have made work), and minimize the very real problems of Linux.
Interesting. I've had the exact opposite experience. I've installed win95 twice, once on an empty box and once a reinstall over a messed-up install of it. Both went extremely smoothly and I was up and running within 30 minutes, with my network card, modem, video card, printer, etc., all configured.
Then I installed Slackware (3.0). After messing with some disk images, I managed to get a boot disk to support my non-IDE cdrom drive (using the sbpcd.i disk image). The boot-up took about 20 minutes as it scanned (really slowly) various addresses (or something, it didn't explain what it was doing, just took a while) to find the CD-ROM drive. After it found it, the install went relatively smoothly, except for the fact that all the packages were just listed by a single letter, with no explanations, and being a Linux novice, "D" did not mean anything to me.
Then came the X setup. I played around with XF86Setup for about an hour, rebooting two or three times in the process. Finally I got a working 640x480 8-bit color X server running. After a day or so i managed to get 800x600 16-bit color working. And I never did get my printer set up.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
>>Your readers may also benefit from knowing that
>>Gnome, while developed with help from Red Hat,
>>is also open source software and is available
>>from www.gnome.com...
They'd probably benefit even more from knowing it was at www.gnome.ORG, since there's some silly company at www.gnome.com.
Failure to proofread is bad for all of us...
Remember that what's inside of you doesn't matter because nobody can see it.
I have never found Linux to be difficult to install, with the exception of XFree86 which can sometimes be a bit difficult.
I think Linux has a bad reputation for installation because people actually *do* have to install it, unlike Windows---few people actually install Windows because it's preinstalled.
I certainly hope that the people doing these reviews have actually installed the "competition", because Windows 95/98/NT can be quite difficult to install. I remember having particularly difficult problems getting NT to recognize a mainstream sound card and had a horrible time trying to make it do anything other than 16 colors.
I'd still like to see the Linux installation process get even better, and I know it will.
And yet literally millions of non-technical people have done it. Curious.
Millions of non-technical people have done windows upgrades, not bare installs. There's a big difference. Any slouch can do an upgrade, even a Linux upgrade.
While the Red Hat install has some rough edges there is no non-technical person on this planet that could install Windows 98 on an computer with an unpartitioned hard-drive with only the CD, a blank floppy disk and another computer running 98. They might have a shot at installing Red Hat (although admittedly they would not be likely to be able to get past the login prompt at reboot).
--
"L'IT c'est moi!"
Why don't you try reading the article instead of panning it out of hand. I found it to be balanced and informative to the prospective Linux user. He may not be a genius, but that's the point. It's hard to get a good new user's perspective from a CS major. Like it or not, your ability to get your favorite hardware and software to work on Linux is dependent in large part on new users and a consumer market. Let them come. They may change the chrome but they can never change the heart of Linux. New users can only benefit power-users.
--
"L'IT c'est moi!"
I wrote the following letter to the editor of time.com/ tech.html]. I have been Unix systems adminstrator for three years and a Linux user for a little under a year. His installation criticisms were valid, but it is worth noting that installing Windows 98 onto a computer with an unformatted hard-drive or one that has non-windows OS on it is a truly daunting proposition which took me a couple of hours to figure out. The formatting and partitioning tools are not a part of the standard installation procedure as they are with any Linux distribution, therefore it is necessary to boot off a diskette and use the command line format and fdisk utilities.
I appreciated Josh Quittner's Linux article [http://cgi.pathfinder.com/time/personal/19990524
The perception of easy Windows installations is largely due to the fact that the vast majority of PC's come with Windows pre-installed. Most users are unlikely to ever do more than upgrade their Windows which is a relatively painless proposition. Upgrading a Red Hat system is just as easy. In my estimation, installing a Red Hat system is easier than installing Windows in any case except when the computer has Windows pre-installed and has no unpartioned disk space.
Overall the article was very informative and made the virtues of Linux clear, including it's open source code, stability and low cost. Your readers may also benefit from knowing that Gnome, while developed with help from Red Hat, is also open source software and is available from www.gnome.com, and that a very viable alternative to Gnome called KDE is available from www.kde.com and is also open source and included in Red Hat 6.0 as well as Caldera, SuSe and other distribution. Finally, it might be noted that an alternative to downloading a distribution or buying a boxed set is to pay a couple of dollars and get the distribution from www.cheapbytes.com which redistributes all of the major distributions sans book documentation and support. I would still recommend that the average user buy a boxed set.
I hope to see further linux coverage in the future.
Sincerely,
Michael Cope
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"L'IT c'est moi!"
What I thought was really interesting is that the author received good support from Red Hat. Isn't that one of Linux's biggest (FUD) complaints is the lack of support?
Try to get that kind of support from Microsoft.
Take it easy everyone. He's a newbe and really want's to try it out. When Time runs articles on Linux, you know we're getting mainstream. And as it gets more mainstream, there's gonna be more stories like this.
BTW, I believe I fixed his problem with the Thinkpad. I work for the same company.
The biggest problem is that people view linux as a supplement to their system... not as a replacement for windows... I guess they have too many applications on windows to let go. People need to start viewing linux as a total replacement for windows, and therefore installing directly over the win partition. What would help the most would be an freeware version of Partition magic. That way, every installation could include it with thier software and automatically install itself as you go.... Even if it were run directly from the cd (so you wouldnt have to install anything into windows) that would be great.
I think people who dismiss the difficulty of installing Linux are not being realistic. Even the Red Hat install requires an understanding of both the machine and OS that are far beyond most users.
Linux is, from both an installation and use view, a real dividing line amoung computer users. If you have no computer experience, Windows is difficult until you get the paradigm at which point it becomes much easier. The paradigm for Linux, if there is one, is much more difficult to get.
I don't expect that Linux will ever become the favored OS of the casual user, but I also do expect that, due to the pervasiveness of computers and early age at which children are being exposed to them, the average adult user will be head and shoulders more savvy about the machines in another 10 years than they are today. Hopefully the proportion of casual to serious users will decline, and that is where Linux will grow.
Well, you have to look at the big picture. You have to consider how this will look to the average user. In many ways, you can deal with the reporter as an average user. Installing Linux might be no picknick, it certainly wasn't when I installed my first GNU/Linux six years ago, but we've come a long way since then, havn't we? The installation tools are practically as good as for Windows. You have to remember that this reporter would probably even need some help installing Windows to get everything right! But he mentions that there are support to get so this kills one of the most common misunderstandings about Linux.
He never deals with the general system, but he does say that there's something called Gnome that will make things easier. He also mentions the Gnome logo, which kills another misunderstanding about GNU/Linux being all text and no graphics.
In the end, he gives an impression that he's content with what he sees and that he's interested in learning more about the system and he leaves a little hook for the reader saying that he'll be back with more information.
This would feel good to read as a user I think, it takes an average guy that probably doesn't know any more about computers than you do, and it explains that he kind of liked GNU/Linux and after having read this article, you'd probably be very curious about the system.
Mission accomplished.
Multiprocessing? Great, no need to buy that new mb, I'll just install Linux!
Dumb little nickpick, I know, but this is Time; I'd hope their Tech columnists would know a enough not to make such an obvious mistake. (OK, not *that* obvious to most people, but I got used to double checking for it, and so should he--*before* he writes a column for a major magazine.)
They should sit in on some Win95/Win98/WinNT installs! Whew! I've done some that've taken DAYS!!!