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Install Linux in 4 Minutes
Bill Clarke wrote to us about WholeLinux system they unveiled at LinuxWorld. From a "cheap" CD-ROM even, they can install Red Hat Linux in 4 minutes, plus another 2 for things like Apache, Sendmail etc. Heh-run around with one of these things at your office/school. See how long it takes for the NT people to reinstall. *grin*
You make it sound like NT 5 keeps a duplicate copy of everything in case it fucks up. Either that or a helluva lot of error-correction data. Typical MS, instead of reducing the chance to screw-up they've built re-installation into the OS!! How long does a self-repair take?
What do you mean "of course"? You have some information about the product you should be sharing with the rest of us? From the artical: "By automatic, I mean no input whatsoever is required from the user." Just how much of a guru did you imagine was needed for this complicated task?. Hey - if you grabbed a copy of their disk and it doens't live up it's claims spill the beans and let us know the details. AdamT - at work
We just got a copy of Red Hat 6 and it's rocks! We loaded several applications on it, and we don't have to worry about filesystem corruption! No reboots, either. That is awesome. Can't beat that.
But seriously, I don't see why auto-repair of files would be desired for Linux. With today's hard drives you don't in general worry about corruption at the hardware level, and Linux just doesn't suffer from this, especially not to the degree that NT does. I'll take a system that doesn't screw up in the first place (Linux) over the one that repairs itself automagically (NT5) any day.
You said it. Lord knows how many NT admins aren't even aware that it's possible to use a DOS boot disk with their machines. (And with Linux Samba servers, btw.)
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Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
There's something to your rant. The other day I popped into comp.os.windows-nt.advocacy (for the first time since the good ol' OS/2 days in '94 + '95), and the on-going Linux/NT was a hellava more intelligent and cordial than a typical Windows NT thread on slashdot. Amazingly, less ads too.
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Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
Try to roll out 20 new machines with 15-20 minute installs. When you return, you will have answered your own question, grasshopper.
by Mike Buddha -- Someday the mountain might get him, but the law never will.
But that's OK, because Windows will now also refuse to let anyone else install software. All installations will have to go through the MS Install Wizard, which will presumably know enough to update the backup system files when installing a new version. (One more obstacle to just copying software onto a machine instead of using a bloated install program...)
As you say, you are wrong =) The Install Wizard is still exactly what it was before - a program that searches for a setup.exe for users too dumb to use a file manager. Windows Installer is the new system API to support safe software installation, and you don't have to use it. Because it is just an API, not a real program, the install program is still provided by the software developer - the API just takes care of the actual background process of installation.
It does work by keeping a backup of important system DLLs, which can be updated by non-Windows Installer applications. I have NT5 (for curiosity's sake only) and as an MSDN member I have information on WIAPI. As far as I can tell, it combines the best of the new with the best of the old. Don't get me wrong, Windows still doesn't compare to Linux, or most other systems for that matter, but it's getting closer.
Torne
richard.coles1@virgin.net
(I'm only an AC because I can't get my member details from work =)
!Raised Tails!
MacOS and MacOS X Server beats them all. After all the OS's I've worked with over the years, MacOS X Server rules as far as install, general setup, and user look/feel.
UPS is 3 words. :)
-Erik-
No one ever said you had to use ext2fs, there are other alternatives out there.
-Erik-
I would in a second if I could. Give me IBM JFS plus LVM please and thank you.
The next round of Micrso~1 Office2000 security risks will be just this problem. Get an email which calls the installer and inserts a bad, but new DLL. NT won't allow you to fix it. Then we hope that the outcry finally puts MS out of business.
Yes, sort of :)
:)
:) :)
I've gone from redhat 4.2 via 5.0 and 5.1 and 5.2 etc, through suse 5.1, 5.2, 6, 6.1 and am now on debian (potato, dist-upgraded religiously every evening
Your problems with hostname could be solved with one blast of 'linuxconf', but I for one can't remember whether RH4.2 even had that...
(And of course, debian has it nowadays, and it rocks being able to use it to set up samba and configure firewalls, etc
~Tim
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~Tim
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Rushing on down to the circle of the turn
I wonder why so many distributions use RPM, when Debian's package management is streets ahead (and yes I have tried both).
What is the point in an easy installation, if you are going to battle with broken dependencies whenever you install a package? Installing Gnome on RedHat 5.2 was a nightmare, and it seemed to hang after about 6 minutes of use. With Debian, I typed one apt-get command! As a relative newbie, I feel that the package management is the most important aspect, but it always seems to be overlooked.
Saying RPM is a standard is simply not good enough - you could claim we should all use Windoze as it's the most common OS! There are so many Debian packages that there is really no excuse, although you also hear complaints that there are too many! You can also install RPM packages on a Debian system by using Alien.
It's good to see that Corel have actually investigated the distributions before pushing another into the marketplace.
Who cares how *long* it takes to install an OS. That is completely uninteresting to me. Whether you are using Linux or NT you should never have to reinstall, so it is worth taking the extra time to select packages that you really want.
I think it is rediculous to spend so much effort making the install faster. It is much more useful to make the install smarter; i.e. by coming up with logical grouping of options and automatic dependency selection, for example.
-Tom
Bad words about NT might have something to do with the years of abuse and mind games it inflicts upon my time. Just this morning, I had to deal with an NT machine that peed all over itself and "lost" a whole directory of files. How does a computer just lose files? And I had to reboot another NT machine, not once, but twice to get it working. What's up with that? No, these are not desktop machines that people use, but ones locked in a cabinet used to control *shudder* equipment. Nothing like downtime and scrap, let me tell you.
I have only been working with Linux for a little over a year and I love it. What I find interesting is that I now find it less cumbersome to install any version of Linux than Windows NT or 98. Although I have never gotten Linux to install in 4 Minutes, the 20 Minute install does me just fine and I have everything that I need. That is a FAR cry from the 68 Minutes it takes Windows 98 to install. That just drove me insane. I've primarily worked in Mac shops most of my carrer and intsalling Mac OS 8.5 take only 15 minutes off of the CD, pure and Simple. Just pop the CD in and install. No Problem. Because I'm a Mac guy, booting off the CD is commonplace. But do that with Windows, no way. But Linux on the other hand, I can just pop the CD in and off it goes. The installer Finds my hardware and it's off and running in under 20 minutes. I'm no Linux pro or New-Newbie for that matter. I have had my share of Linux Exposure, but I will say that Linux is now easier to install that ANY version of Windows.
I suppose you can do this since your machines are similar (or you install all drivers for different HW, yuck). This isn't that impressive since all you are dependent on is the transfer rates. For example I could install some operating system from one disk to another doing; dd if=/dev/hdisk1 of=/dev/hdisk2 bs=2000k and get a "install time" of size_of_disk / transfer rate. I guess Dell and other box-pushers have dedicated machines that do this even faster and in paralell. In AIX (which is the Unix I know) we "clone" our systems by booting from a backuptape. This is a basic functionality of the OS and you don't need any new software. But in this case you also need to have the drivers for the new machine on the tape. Why not boot from the network instead and doing the install from a central server ? Running around with a floppy and a CD-rom seems a bit "outdated". Just plug in the floppy, start the PC (or just start the PC if they support booting of the network) and move to another machine. Assuming you have a lot of machines of course, this is what I would do. If someone has messed up their machine, just plug in the floppy and reboot. You don't need to burn new CDs. Disclaimer: I don't know much about administrating PCs beyond having to reinstall my machine approx. once a year.
you could write something to restore to a different size hdd under linux too. Just make a huge tar.bz2 of the file system, then on the new box mke2fs then untar. Nice and simple.
-matt
The only question marks I see are in your reply and not in the original message.
This isn't for file level corruption, it is for programs that try to corrupt NT. This *should* in theory help stabalize mature installs of NT5 (DLL version problems are one of the biggest reasons why NT installs go bad). When you try to install something with older DLL's (like Office 97) NT5 detects that, and won't allow it to happen. If you try to delete system files from winnt (assuming you have the permissions) it will detect that, and replace those files.
Just because it has a console interface doesn't mean I want to go through a dozen flippin' menu screens to find the right dang box to bang in my hostname. I happen to like being able to edit config files. It's powerful. I'm perfectly willing to sacrifice checkboxes and buttons and menus and goooeeeees in order to have full configurability at my fingertips. Hostname? lets see here... could that be in.. um... maybe... /etc/hostname????? Let me fire up my all-purpose sysadmin tool... I call it "vi". Imagine that. Someone likes configurability more than ease of use. Heh. never would've guessed
What bothered me most was knowing that I was doing it the Right Way (tm) but the configurator conspiracy was undoing it every time. Once I read the manual pages for "hostname" on every Unix system I could. The results were pretty much the same. "The current name of the host is stored in /etc/hostname. Editing /etc/hostname, then running the 'hostname' command is a good way to change the name of the host." Except Redhat, which had the same manual pages, except it didn't work.
And tomorrow, when someone decides it won't be /etc/hostname anymore, but rather /etc/this_is_what_I_call_my_system, I'll be able to find a manual page for that. But we'll be working in reverse to hack up linuxconf to support the new standard and the old standard because some people are still running the old standard.
Hm. Makes "/bin/vi" look more and more like a universal configuration tool, doesn't it?
The comment was good natured... I mean, installing NT on my workstation was worth it, but it took longer than four minutes.
Should be www, not wwww....
What's your damage, Heather?
Clever people buy UPS anyway.
Why is it necessary to take shots at NT for no good reason? It's very immature. You know how yahoo has a special site for kids? Maybe Slashdot should look into doing something like this...
The question is how usefull is a 4 minute install of any OS. Name 50 usefull things. I have a 44X SCS cdrom connected to a dual PIII 500Mhz box and RH Linux takes at least 15-20 minutes to install. That's installing enough for it to be usefull.
The 4-minute install time is, of course, valid only for people so experienced, they could do it in their sleep. What really counts is the install time for clueless novices, or slightly clueful novices. That is the true measure of ease-of-install.
Joe
See how long it takes for the NT people to reinstall. *grin*
Less time than you'd think. I admin NT for a living and we have a super quick method of getting NT onto any system.
1. Chalk out a inverse pentagram inside a circle on the floor.
2. Place a lit candle at each point of the pentagram.
3. Place the computer in question in the center of the pentagram with the case off.
4. Chant "Yog Sothoth Neblod Zin." while sprinkling the blood of a freshly slain rooster on the motherboard.
This works in under 5 minutes for intel hardware. I once managed to get NT onto a VAX 780 this way as well, but it took a few hours.
--Shoeboy
We just got a copy of NT 5 server edition and it rocks. We loaded several applications on it and then we did a lot of things to corrupt over 85% of the system and application files and the system did what is called self-repairing. The application binaries were repaired from the corrupted state. We used HEX editors to screw up binaries all over the system and as soon as we would screw on up the system would detect the screwed up file/binary and it would repair it. That is awesome. Can't beat that.
Pulling a disk image (made with dd) of an nfs server with dd on a 100mbit network restores NT in a jiffie !
To install service pack 5 the correct deity is Shub Niggurath, Yog Sothoth only provides the NT 4 golden bits.
--Shoeboy
Hmm. 31% of the internet's webservers run linux.
IT world still not taking it seriously?
Fact is Novell, NT, and HP are all commercial-ware. Maybe when 1 of those servers goes down, your company wants to be able to call HP and get someone in to fix it within 4 hours.
Face it, while you laugh at linux.. It laughs back at the money you're shelling our for those commercial servers.
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Bitchslapped? Give Rob a bitchslap from bitchslapped.com.
I doubt your company is not using Linux and somethig because of peception. It may have something to do with what fit the needs. If a company chooses systems over foolish behavior, you can expect massive layoffs due to the dontime created by incompetence. Its what works that gets chosen.
This is really bullshit. If your IT managers make decisions based solely on SlashDot comments, then they deserve to run NT. I'm not saying Slashdot comments are insightful, but that basing a business decision on a bunch of childish posts is just as stupid as the posts themselves.
(hint: download or purchase a distribution of the OS, install it, run some apps, make a judgement for yourself).
This isn't your usual license flame, but a serious question. I'm in the process of building a CD with a live version of RH on it, munging the RH installer to set up various things. If their system can recognize all this hardware and set things up, it would be a great help to build a system you could boot off CD and try Linux. (rw storage is handled by a loopback filesystem on the dos drive.)
But I can't use their code unless they have a free license....
What is your stock ticker symbol so I can short it? Seriously, if your IT management makes their decisions based on postings on an advocacy site such as Slashdot instead of doing a serious analysis of the actual products, then they are probably making a lot of other stupid decisions.
There is valuable information to be found in online forums, but anyone who is a veteran of the computer world should know that the signal to noise ratio in most online forums is not what we'd like.
If you think that 'people with 12 year old minds' are the most visible Linux advocates then you just aren't looking very hard, and probably not at Microsoft either. They've certainly got their share of the juvenile trolls. Unfortunately, what they also seem to be plagued with are the advocates that obviously have a vested interest in Microsoft (I.E., paid off in one way or another).
Juvenile trolls will probably grow up some day, while the people whose allegiance can be bought will eventually move on to other pastures.
It is very unfortunate there are some companies who may benefit from the use of a product, but instead choose to ignore it not based on any possible weaknesses of said product but merely because a vocal few of the people who use the product have poor social skills.
I am a bit confused about this product. It seems that something that is as important as the installer should be Free Software so I could modify and adapt it to new hardware/software combinations. But I couldn't find any hint of the source.
Apparently you didn't read my original post. We run HP, Netware and NT. We migrating to NT from Netware (don't even want to get into that). We have a Linux server here. It's going away. I'm not saying it isn't useful, I'm not saying it isn't a solid OS. It is. The problem is the perception of it.
That's because you're on windows.
Try reading it from a Linux machine and you'll see the question marks.
It's because of the non-standard characters that Microsoft uses.
I'm guessing the origional post wasn't written by hand. It was written in word, or frontpage, and pasted into the text box.
you install a program which updates your DLLs with newer versions, and the newer versions are fcked up or have compatability problems with other software? (happened to one of my servers with a supposedly good software package) Will NT 5 let you fix that *properly* or is it time to pull out the magic fdisk?
If you're viewing this through an MS operating system all will appear well.
Basically, MS has two different characters for an apostrophie (sp?) one of them is the standard character by for some reason MS also uses another one which isn't displayed properly on non MS platforms.
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Microsoft brings this crap upon themselves. It's so typical: they invent "solutions" like auto-repair, hype it up, but fail to attack the underlying problem itself. Any respectable hacker knows user applications should NEVER go around modifying critical system libraries. I imagine MS thought they were clever when this whole thing started (hey, we can change our system libraries at will to outdo our competition!), and I'm glad to see it come back and bite them in the ass.
:)
In my eyes, this is the exact reason they deserve to be split up. They take advantage of this all the time- think Corel gets to rewrite pieces of Windows to make its office apps work better? Die, MS, die.
See this morning's (Monday's) FoxTrot comic strip (the website is at http://www.foxtrot.com/, but it's a week behind the newspapers).
So we have ~40 comments on how quick you can install something in. How about the longest install time of a remotely modern setup?
(I'll kick the game off: 3hrs for a Debian installation, including byte-compiling emacs19 and emacs20 modules!)
~Tim
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~Tim
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Rushing on down to the circle of the turn
Alex Bischoff
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Alex Bischoff
HTML/CSS coder for hire
I was going to make a post about length of installation comparisons between Netware, NT and Linux, but obviously the conversation has gone slightly off the track. I run NT at work and at home. I don't laugh at Linux...I have a rh-mandrake box sitting next to my NT workstation at home. Both boxes run great. Neither crash.
I do laugh at the social ingrates who so visibly post here. NT is no joke and it's not going away. Neither is linux. Yet posters here just love to mock NT inside and out. Why? Why isn't there an NT website dedicated to NT news with a messageboard with deranged 14 year old NT advocates? Why, oh why? I haven't met an NT administrator who calls Linux "gay ass shit" or Slashdot "pure FUD". I'm not saying everyone here posts content like that, but it's a large, visible percentage. Those types of remarks about NT have been in several posts I've read just today.
I read Slashdot frequently and was starting to post a lot. I was even going to start an account...dangerous for an advocate of NT *AND* Linux (and Netware! and FreeBSD! gasp!) After reading comments like this day-in and day-out, I'm done. I'm not going to set up an account, I'm not going to read posts here, I'm not going to even read the news here anymore. I'm tired of seeing fools make idiotic posts, and I'm tired of seeing articulate, intelligent people act immature on a routine basis.
Maybe I'm wrong. I'm still entitled to my opinion. But not here. My posts are flamebait simply because they don't conform.
See ya Slashdot.
As I understand it (not having used Debian since the pre-apt days), apt is just a front end that sits on top of dpkg, much the same way as dselect used to do. There's no reason you couldn't have the same or a very similar front end running on top on RPM. dselect was one of the few reasons I stuck with Debian for so long. But in the end, I just found Red Hat easier to work with. Plus it was nice to have a single distribution on all my platforms (I understand Debian may now have a Sparc version available, but they didn't at the time).
"The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike." -- Delos B. McKown
but I'm really wondering why NT people DON'T make jokes about linux
Perhaps its because we NT users wish we were lucky enough to be able to use Linux at the workplace. Unfortunately the sad truth is that our Company owners etc and higher ups weren't hired for their computer knowledge, obviously.
I think this is to provide left and right double quotes, left and right single quotes and a distinct apostrophe. Anyone know why ascii doesn't have two types of double quotes, while it does have two types of single quotes?
JET Program: see Japan, meet intere
If you have XFree86 on your system you can get an updated version of it from (amongst other places) rpmfind.net. The lastest version has the ability to recognice the intel 740 chipset generically. Install the newest version of XFree86, run the XFree86Setup program and voila! Instant recognition of your Intel 740 chipset. Then you can Gnome to your hearts content at a *real* resolution. The following url has mandrake specific stuff but if you hunt around there, you can also find stuff for redhat and other versions. http://www.rpmfind.net/linux/RPM/mandrake
I got a copy of WholeLinux last week and have been meaning to take a look at it. I haven't gotten around to it yet because I need another hard drive to install it on. Currently the installer has no concept of partitions and just overwrites everything on the hard drive. The idea behind WholeLinux is neat, but it seems there are quite a few things that still need to be worked out.... Has anyone actually installed WholeLinux?
Again, I'm amazed at the number of people here who proclaim to be "sysadmins" or other such relatively important people, yet the clueness factor is very much in effect here. Obviously, there aren't any real professionals here. Any real professional would just use NT's non-interactive install. I'm beginning to think that Slashdot's visitors are all kids, or all posers...
They used that where I was working too... My question is, why can't you make and write an image with dd, and make that one floppy a free linux boot disk? I don't see what ghost does that's so special...
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
re-kickstarting our 100+ systems takes about 30 mins on a 100baseT network. (i guess NFS BW is the limiting factor, otherwise it would be done in 12 mins like single kickstart) so that would mean ~18secs/system. do i win anything?
Who gives a rats ass how many CPUs or how much RAM the thing has. That's totally irrelevant when you're talking about copying a bunch of files. Do you expect people to say, "We bow down and wholly submit to you because your virtual schlong(that I only get to use at work when my boss lets me) is bigger than ours?
Seems like it usually takes me about 1/2 hour to pick what I want installed and 15 minutes for the machine to install it. Now that I have a larger HD, I just install everything.
If you want an ultra fast Linux install, what about the following:
1) boot from CD
2) format and partition the HD
3) create symlinks on the HD to a live image on the CD
4) use a copy-on write scheme to turn the symlink into a real file if somebody trys to write to it
5) The system can now be used
6) continue copying the filesystem from the CD "in the background"
Even though the complete install might take 5-10 minutes, the time between booting from the CD and logging in could be on the order of a minute or so.
JET Program: see Japan, meet intere
Heh. Herbert West, MCSE, coming soon to a Windows Media Player near you. :-)
Yes, I think the latest version of ghost does handle Linux. Besides, I don't think I want to develop a tested NT image for every different hardware platform out there, thank you very much. I would much rather use an intelligent installer if it was about the same speed.
A day to create a boot disk? You must work for a union or the government to still have a job.
Kinda makes you wonder what will happen to the RedHat stock once the techno-idiots realize that RedHat is essentially selling air. Ok, perhaps compressed air is a better analogy... ;-)
Since I manage a lot of linux servers myself, I take things a step further. I customize an install on one machine and then tar the whole thing up from the root directory.
Installation on multiple machines is then as simple as popping in a boot floppy or custom cdrom, making the filesystems, untarring the image, setting the network parms, running LILO, and rebooting. Viola! Totally customized machines cranked out at six (or more) per hour.
-p.
I'm glad they could do it in four minutes... I've been struggleing for about 4 days with my Mandrake6.0 install. The damned thing won't recognize my video card (it's an apollo 7400 8MB, with the intel740 chipset, but Linux treats it like a standard VGA). If I pick an SVGA server I get 320*204 resolution! That's not even enough to read the help files in GNOME! AAARrrrrrrrrrrgh!
Would any of you kindly *nix-ubber-geeks know where to direct me to find help for this? The I'd love to be able to get the rest of my 'linux' stuff working in 4 minutes!
P.S. the manufacturer of the video card left no contact info.
I'm a gnu world man.
OK, I've been a Unix swe for 15 years now, but just getting into Linux. So last Friday, armed with a 6" stack of CDs from the expo, I finally decide to install Linux.
Being a novice at Linux (but not Unix), I decide to try out WholeLinux first of course. I wasn't concerned about install time, but ease of install. Pop in the CD, pop in the diskette, reboot, answer a couple of legalese prompts... A few minutes pass and no more questions are asked, and... Unbelievable! Everything is up and running! I've just installed Linux with very little stress! Yes, but... Where's apache? How do I configure the box for the LAN? And why the hell can I only see a 1/4 of the screen at a time and I have to constantly scroll up-down and left-right? Hmm, I have to configure a ton of things before I can do anything else... But how?!?! This might take hours to setup the way I want it...
So I give up and try Mandrake... Pop in the CD, reboot, ahh a series of good old questions on what I want to do... Choose partitions, network setup, packages to install... Many questions and 20 minutes later, my Linux is finally installed. That's a lot more effort than WholeLinux! was it worth it? YES! My Linux is up now already configured with a web server and everything else that I need. I can start enjoying Linux right away and get to know the intricacies of the system later.
WholeLinux might be a good idea for doing a vanilla install on many identical workstations, but it's not for a Linux newbie who wants to get a system up and running with little effort... Mandrake rocks, I won't recommend it to a Win or Mac user, but the end-result of the install is a much more usable system. For real *nix newbies, the Mandrake installer should at least support mouse input and provide more on-screen explanation...
This is all my humble opinion of course, YMMV. Now, is there an extended FAQ somewhere for Linux newbies?
I think lame posts are inevitable in forums where normal people get to post. You can always avoid them by not visiting public forums, but that seems kind of like throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Then again I have a long history with and great fondness for BBS's, which probably skews my opinions.
-- $SIGNATURE
I have a new logitech trackball for my NT4 system and whenever you use the wheel, it makes the system sluggish and soon unresponsive.
-- "Well, Hello, Mr. Fancy-pants. I've got news for you pal, you ain't in control but two things right now, Jack and s
Pleeeeaase???
Ok, well thanks
Chris Carlin,
volkris@cryogen.com
Ghost is so special because I don't really need to know anything to do this. That is empowering. Using dd I have to figure out how to do it. What do all the parameters mean, etc. I just want to click on a clearly marketed button called "Do" or "Start" or whatever. I don't want to spend anymore time than that since Disk Cloning really doesn't add value and maintance time should be reduced as much as possible. I vote for being productive right away. Maybe having a very simple GUI interface for dd would be nice. I'm not aware of one though. Or a simple script that asked maybe 2 questions and then started dd with the right parameters etc.
I was at RedHat last week for training. A Custom install with no changes on a 6GB drive took 6 minutes, not counting formatting and whatnot.
If you used kickstart, you could probably do it within 8-10 minutes.
when you think that on a fast cdrom ... NT is still takes a long time to install... add that up over the months... and you have 'alot of time' that is pretty well a waste...a fast OS install is
a dream come true... the point is to be productive... unless of course you read dilbert + productivity... then it's ok to laugh and not be productive... so as engineer you
1. take 1.5 hrs to install NT
2. spend your time pressing 'next' alot
3. wondering why everyone thinks NT is great and
thinking 'my this NT install sucks...'
4. laughing while you get paid pressing 'next alot'
5. next is a word you can't stand seeing and no this is not disneyland where 2hrs is actually
1hr...
my spew...
ik
sages say the path is narrow and hard to follow...narrow as the edge of a razor...
The reason I'm awake right now is because a flaky NT server stopped responding, and I got paged at 5:20 AM. Rrrr.
Have you considered that maybe, just maybe, NT *does* suck?
P.S. Thanks to VNC, I didn't have to drive downtown, and sit at the console to recover. Why didn't Microsoft think of that?
--
Interested in XFMail? New XFMail home page
Useful or not, 4 minutes is pretty impressive. It took me 5 minutes to get the cd out of the plastic wrapper. Maybe we could make this an Olympic sport? The 100m Linux Installation. Then again, maybe not.
Yeah! How dare they! Imagine using humor to lighten the atmosphere... and of course, we don't need it!
THIS IS PRE-ALPHA PRIVATE RELEASE CODE!!!
DO NOT USE IT UNLESS YOU ARE A DEVELOPER.
ALL IT DOES IS CRAS
The issue is not anything to do with NT. The issue is the fact Linux advocates get a bad name because of things like this
It's like a bully that goes around making fun of everyone; they end up making a lot of enemies. It wouldn't be much of a problem if slashdot was a small site but it is not. Most stories about Linux include a link to slashdot and therefore many people looking into Linux come here and are greeted by insults to others on a regular basis.
See comic at http://www2.uclick.com/feature/199 9/08/16/ft.gif. Cheers.
Even Win95 installs in 4 min. on my 450mhz computer. Of course, Microsoft had to fix that little bug for the 98 release :p
I've got VNC deployed on all my servers and about 20 choice user stations. Runs great on a 100MBit ethernet and I don't have to leave my desk as much. Can also dial in from home and have it work fine also. Just make sure your background is black :)
Ok it seems that /. has started a wave of bad information. No I don't mean it bad. I mean it horrible. In three days we get a desinformation, a hoax and now a bit of yellow advertisement. To be precise:
Life is 2.7
US Government considering charging E-mail
Linux can be installed in 4 minutes
I make part of my living by installing Linux boxes. Specially for users who wouldn't never had dreamed to work on it. And I can say one thing for sure. Presently no average desktop workstation/server can be installed with such speed. If you do it you'll just get the same M$ LemonSoft out-of-the-box or even worse.
The reality is that Linux is hard to configure. At least to create an environment for a typical M$ user I and several people take A MONTH to do it.
Looks strange? Under my experince no. An advanced *NIX user or an experienced computer user may have the luck to get such things in a few hours. For some maybe even an hour is enough. On servers things may run up to a week or two. However the ill-doomed average user is unable to work on such stations.
For such users the installation, configuration, tuning can turn into a long wait. However I can say that after such headaches they can use such stations. It may take a month for them to get acquainted with several features that are natural to *NIX. At first time they usually hang in the usual conditionalisms brought from M$ world. But in a few monthes they start making a few steps into a more *NIX world. But I can say they Linux is a painful thing to learn. A few thousands users I forced into *NIX can testify for it.
Anyway I can say one thing for sure. It takes two weeks for them to forget the "back to M$!" mood. And in a month or two the vast majority becomes Linux partisan. Yes there are some conservators that wish that things would go back. But not even they criticize the move. Most argumentation goes around "M$ still rules" and the dangers of running out of it.
There is one thing I would like to state clear. No average user, today, can make a good Linux station out of the box. Only a good expert can do such thing now. And it is not an easy work. One have to take into account a lot of things:
User psychology
Level of computer knowledge
Linking console and X applications into a more friendly environment, while preserving the traditional independence they possess
Constraints based on hardware and work environment
Bug-fixing, feature-fixing.
Doing all this and keeping Linux stable and high-preforming
Now anyone can do this in 4 minutes? I take a month doing this on each station release. Truly, after it, I rarely take more than 4 minutes hanging on each problem that comes up.
A badly written driver can corrupt any system, there's no way around that. The only problem I've ever had with NT is with third-party device drivers. Microsoft would probably be better off if they closed their systems and only allowed drivers that they write, but the anti-trust weasels would scream.
Well, you know, DOS is becoming a lost art in the world of the typical NT admin.. Nevermind the fact that Ghost comes with a butt-wiping utility that creates the disks for you if you're too lame to figure it out..
Of course. This is "News for teenage nerds. Linux stuff that matters." after all.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
"I just want to click on a clearly marketed button called "Do" or "Start" or whatever."
You are M$'s dream customer.
Karma: Poor (Mostly affected by lame karma-joke sigs)
We use a product called Ghost, to image our boxes, off of one floppy, and 1 cdrom, it takes 7-10 minutes on our 166 workstations, but 4-6 minutes on the servers. - A/C
P.S. Thanks to VNC, I didn't have to drive downtown, and sit at the console to recover. Why didn't Microsoft think of that?
They did, It's called SMS. I'm not going to tell you the summoning ritual to get that onto your server though, some things are too horrible to be unleashed upon the mortal world.
--Shoeboy
And for configuring software? Sendmai lusually comes presetup to a degree. Do I need to add a feature? Use m4 to recompile the cf file
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ping -f 255.255.255.255 # if only
Quite. Some of us do have to put up with NT, or even *shudder* Win9xx "workstations". That's why we hate them so, probably a lot more than those rare souls who have never had the misfortune to have to maintain the wretched things.
I brought linux into this company to reduce downtime, and so far, it's beating NT hands down on both price and performance. I suppose the fact that these are real-world situations rather than hugely contrived "benchmarks" helps.
I have to say that on the whole, NT is also rather boring to run.. there's very little inherent hack value in it. Everything seems to be designed around buying yet another suboptimal bit of M$ ransomware, to make it do things that it should have done right out of the box- and what's more, to make a really shoddy job of it (thereby adding insult to injury).
Ah well, we can all argue about this until we're blue in the face, but personally, I'm voting with my IT budget..
Well... if you know what you are doing, I mean really know, you can actually get it working. Thats if you know the quirks and what not. How well it performs... I do not know. It's like sendmail.cf. If you wanna do anything, you have to know the language. Well.. lets forget that M4 is around ;>
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ping -f 255.255.255.255 # if only
I mean ... really. There are really only two things you need to know here, both of which you more or less HAVE to know in the first place to be worth much as an admin:
Once you know these two things (the first of which, especially, you ought to know), it is trivial to make the following inferences:
Gee... I want to get an image of the disk /dev/hdb4 in file blah...
dd if=/dev/hdb4 of=blah
Okay, now I want to write that image to /dev/hdc3...
dd if=blah of=/dev/hdc3
Hell, if that's too complicated for you, you can just use cp to and from the raw device.
Either of those commands is massively faster than starting up a shell script or interactive program and answering questions. So much for your precious time savings.
You, sir, should never, ever be a system administrator. Your unwillingness to learn or even think will ultimately mean catastrophe for your employer. I'm serious about that. You will get yourself in SERIOUS trouble if you don't really understand what you're doing.
Quite literallly 90% of the serious problems you encounter as an administrator will not be the sort that any programmer could ever have taken into account for you and written a friendly "OK" button to fix.
---
DNA just wants to be free...
So you're not using it out of spite? That seems incredibly, mind-bogglingly fucking retarded. "Oh, it works really well but the skript k1ddi3z use it too so we might get shunned by our peers." In reality, your peers are probably all laughing at you. I know I am.
You can continue to pay $30 per phonecall to Microsoft though. Have fun!
- A.P.
--
"One World, One Web, One Program" - Microsoft Promotional Ad
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
Jump off bridges and tall buildings onto picket fences too.
Take heroin anally.
Lick 9 volt batteries.
Drive your car after dark with the lights off.
Give your young children weapons and ammo. Teach them to shoot people who wear red.
Deal cocaine by the brick.
- A.P.
--
"One World, One Web, One Program" - Microsoft Promotional Ad
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
Ya great. 4 min. But what if your config is not so standard?! Then what?!! I've been trying to get my dhcp client to work with the stupid Mediaone cybersurfr cable modem. Still hasn't gotten it to work. Right now all that happens is that as soon as the NIC get configured the cable modem's PC connect light turns off. And yes I've seen all the how-to's and other documentation out there.
The point is that if you need to be interoperable with a non-linux entity that has not been hacked around you are in for some pain. So how about a config that has at least ONE NON-Linux device or function to setup and time that!!!!
disclaimer - I've never used Ghost (never been anywhere where they could afford it!)
I hear that one of the nice things about Ghost is that it will do multicast, so if you're a school or whatever you can re-install a lab full of machines _really_ fast.
(Maybe you can do that with free s/w too, if so please enlighten me...)
We reinstall NT Terminal Server + SP4 + SQL Server + custom installation and setup in less than 2 minutes regularly. Magic little tool called Ghost.
;-)
As for the install of Linux, how much software (window manager, TP monitor etc.) did it install as compared to an NT installation? Did it have to format the file system? Really, this isn't exactly an informative post but flamebait and FUD. I expected more from Linux advocates - aren't you supposed to be the "enlightened ones"?
John Wiltshire
Fear: When you see B8 00 4C CD 21 and know what it means
this isn't flame.. :)
.. :)
Well, i think it's just funny.. but I'm really wondering why NT people DON'T make jokes about linux.. they probably haven't got enough time between NT-server-recovering, exchange-server-fixing and Workstation-configuring to think about linux's minus-points (..and IMHO, there aren't lots to note.)
Laughing is healthy, never heard of that? - and, IMHO, a bit of sarcasm is always good, even on "clean-n-big-newssites" like this.
best regards, o. studer
I work for a 6000 employee corporation, and Linux is laughed at here. Not even mildly considered. We have 15 Novell 4.11 servers, 10 NT application servers, and about 15 HP 3000 boxes. They won't touch Linux. Why? Because of the original post here and the corresponding childish responses. When people with 12 year old minds cease being the most visible Linux advocates, it will be taken seriously in the IT world. Not now. -Bill 90% of a NOS's effectiveness is administration and hardware.
of course this was on a quad xeon with 1gb of ram and a nice fast scsi hdd, but still it was done.