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Petreley on Win2k Installs and Softway Systems
Zach Frey writes "Nicholas Petreley [?] 's latest column has an interesting side-by-side comparison of Linux installs vs. Windows installs. It's a data point in the "Linux is too hard to install!" war. The upshot? Current Linux distros installed in around 15 minutes and had no trouble autodetecting his hardware, Win98 took 40 minutes and failed to recognize his network cards. W2K took ... much longer. " The more interesting comments, IMHO, were the comments on Softway Systems, but the Linux install article is timely, in light of the CNN install nightmare story.Update: 09/30 10:27 by H :Check out an update from Nick posted in the comments regarding the version of Win2k.
"A fatal exception 0E has occurred at 01E6:6668A7D0...."
:)
Yes, and how much does MS charge for the beta? If you pay for it, it should work (and work well), shouldn't it? Well, in an ideal world, I suppose.
...just a hidden assumption.
"I don't know how to fly an airplane, it's too hard. Therefore all airplanes suck for my uses."
This is exactly what the "can't install Linux" guy was saying and it's what Petreley meant to say, but didn't.
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Linux MAPI Server!
http://www.openone.com/software/MailOne/
(Exchange Migration HOWTO coming soon)
Ever tried to install MacOS on a Mac?
That's how to install an OS.
Put in the CD and double click on the installer icon.
That's it.
And you can do a "clean" install which replace your old system folder with a new one and leaves a backup of your old system folder on your disk.
pitiful.
"95 out of 100 Microsoft customers will choose Windows"
Err... Duh. I bet most Red Hat customers would choose Red Hat too. What bold statements you make.
If you want Windows enough to buy it, then that's what you want. You could care less if another OS is in the box for free. If you want Linux, you can get it for free anyway.
And how many Windows users even *buy* windows? They either have it installed when they buy a computer, or they buy an "upgrade" CD. And just because you can install the Win98 upgrade over Win95, don't mean you can install either from scratch.
>>In any case, your and my definition of 'install' is irrelevent if we're talking about average users installing Linux.
Linux, like *BSD, and even WinNT probably should never be for "Average Users". When you dumb a product down quality issues arrise. Imagine what Win9x could have been if they didn't have to keep backwards compatibility with DOS and Win3.1 apps.
>>Average users expect their computer to "just work" after installation.
The average user is a moron who only wants to get on AOL and download a little porn when the wife or parents aren't looking. The Average user wants his computer to read his mind and do what he wants it to do and not what he actally tells it to do.
It's a waste of finite resources to concentrate on making Linux easy for these idiots. That time and talent should be spent on making the OS more stable and powerful.
>>Personally, manually editing setup files and chasing down drivers got old a long time ago.
Looking for device drivers are a bitch, I concede that, but manually editing *.conf files can be a bit tedious but it is the best way to get a good understanding of what's going on. You sound like the 3rd grader who says "Why should I learn the multiplication tables? That's too hard. I can just use a calculator!"
You must understand how to do things the hard way before you can take shortcuts and do them the easy way.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Absolutely! This is one of my biggest pet peeves about Win95. I moved my PCI ethernet card to a different slot one time, and sure enough Windows reported that a new device was found, and couldn't find drivers. I didn't have the old floppy around that came with it, so I had no ethernet driver.
There is a work arround for this, you tell it C:\WINDOWS and C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM when it prompts for a disk.
If that fails, becuase the file is someowhere silly, you will need to use find.
Grant the moderators with more intelligence and get a life.
Or are all impure thoughts banned in the Brave New World of Linux?
Getting to a command prompt, or a gui screen, is only a small part of what people set up a machine to do, and so we should expand the task for the comparison.
A better challange would be to have a new user install the OS and create and print a simple text document.
With Windows 98 and any recent printer, the printing services are automatically installed. This is not at all the case with any flavor of Linux I have experienced.
Maybe a better test yet would be for the new user to install the OS, get onto the Internet and print a specified web page. The user is allowed to use whatever resources he/she needs to establish a new account to get onto the net. This would include the freedom to establish an account with one of the half dozen or so national ISPs whose icons are installed by default on the Windows 98 machine, or some maw and paw hole-in-the-wall outfit if desired.
I'm not sure what options the user would have under Linux (I remember seeing an AT&T Worldnet icon printed on a Linux Mall CD for OpenLinux over a year ago,) but I know for a fact it wouldn't be as easy. Since we are talking about a newbie user, it wouldn't be acceptable for them to just plug in the info from a previous account somewhere. They could of course use any ISP they wanted, even dial up by voice and get the info from an operator at the ISP (a popular choice with some Linux users).
Installing the OS and then a game (something a few years old, like perhaps Quake or Doom) and getting it to work, including sound and joystick, would be yet another worthy test case. I remember a few years ago waiting at the register at CompUSA with a woman behind me her crying child. She was trying to tell him the game that he wanted "wouldn't run on the Mac." I suppose for the sake of objectivity, we shouldn't insist on there being a crying child in the background as the test subject struggles to get something fun for a kid running on the Linux machine. Xbill doesn't count, needless to say.
Myths wrote: "we all know how easy Macs are to use, which is crap"
Have you ever installed Mac OS?
To install Mac OS you click Accept then Ok.
The End
ev0l
28 minutes? You're on drugs or on fire(flamebait). I install Win98 5 days per week 10 hours per day. It takes most machines over 8 hours to install. I install between 5 to 7 machines per day. Each and every one of them has a different problem. Sometimes it's detecting the network card, sometimes it's finding a modem, but most often it's blue screening on the install. It takes between 3 to 20 install attempts get Win98 running. You can't get Win98 to reboot that many times and have time to type-in the product code that many times in 28 minutes, much less finish it. And, 5 minutes of user time? You must be really fast at typing in those product ID's. On the average install, I have to type them in 4 times. It takes me almost 5 minutes to type-in those ID's.
"-- NEVER NEEDS TO INSTALL WINDOWS."
Don't shout young man. Besides that's generally true the *first* time. Second, third, and so on because either they messed it up {the installation}, or they had to re-install to clean the cruft out and bring 95,98 back up to speed. So another "never" dies a lonely death.
So you upgraded from NT 4 to Win2k Pro or was it a "clean install?" You did all the same with RH5.2 then?
A few weeks ago my friend wanted me to install windows on his box. He gave me a weekend so I'm like hell let's put Linux on this machine. The first night I install Redhat 6.1 becuase it was just release, what a waste of time, then Turbo Linux and SuSE just for the heck of it. Oh it was sweet, no problem with the video card, X went up at 1024*720 24 bit colors the 1st time. The nic went flawless. It was a really nice sweet install.
The next night I installed windows 98 on it. It took me four hours and 40 reboots to get the thing shipable. Windows couldn't find the NIC and I didn't have the drivers for it. Then had problems with the video card. Then it BSOD once when i was installing some programs. Had problems reading cd's I burnt. Between the 40 reboots, 5 crashes, 2 reinstalls, 3 formats, the B flick film and the haft gallon of ice tea I was burnt out and didn't want to do another windows install in my life.
MarNuke
Fairynuff.
No I haven't, it should be easy, limited hardware.
I was referring to shells though, where it's personal preference on what is easy to use now.
Why does Petreley feel the need to spread FUD about 64 bit Windows? He says "Microsoft was making such poor progress with 64-bit NT". What are the details? What problems specific to 64 bit could Windows be having? He uses "facts" like this, which contain absolutely no details whatsoever, and it makes it sound like it is just something he heard off of a rumor mill, and it also makes him sound like he has very minimal system design experience of his own. Undetailed, ungrounded FUD like this is regularly passed around and it sounds clearly unbased in reality, and intended just be a more feel-good juice to appease the Microsoft-hating crowd rather than to make any sort of intelligent journalism.
Win98 is a pain to install. I completely cleaned mine out and reinstalled recently and it bluescreens on shutdown. Nowhere else, just when shutting down. Weird.
It's also a pain to do, unless you've prepared boot disks and such like before hand.
dave
My system: Abit BH6 mainboard (on-board IDE) 384MB Micron CAS2 PC125 SDRAM Celeron 300a (464MHz - I know, I know =P Adaptec AHA-2940U2W SCSI-3 Controller IBM UltraStar 9ES 7200RPM LVD HDD (9.1GB) Teac 6x/24x CD-R (SCSI) Pioneer 6x/32x DVD-ROM (slot-load SCSI) Western Digital 6.4GB EIDE HDD Matrox Millenium G200 8MB SGRAM AGP Linksys LNE100TX 10/100 network (tulip) Creative Labs Sound Blaster AWE64 Gold PRE-SCSI My first installation of Linux, Slackware 3.6, revealed that the tulip driver in the kernel didn't quite support my network card (2.0.35 or so) - so all I did was check the website for my card and they pointed to a new driver to include in the kernel compilation (which I was about to do). Then I found that it was already supported under the new kernel series, so all I had to do was rebuild one of those on my box and boot it. So I did, and everything worked A-OK. Next were RedHat 5.2 (needed kernel upgrade for network card), SuSE 6.1, Mandrake 6.0, and now Mandrake 6.1 - all of which were painless to install and get working, EVEN for someone who had NO (as in 0) previous knowledge about UNIX and/or Linux OSes! All I had to do was a little bit of research and reading up on the matter and I was set (and damn fast, too, because there is a PLETHORA of information out there on it). Oh, and the best fact? YOU ONLY HAVE TO REBOOT THE LINUX OS ONCE - 1 TIME!!!!!! (after all packages are installed) Now to Windows... (with SCSI) Let's see... 1. I had to disable my on-board IDE controller in BIOS just to get Windows to realize that I had a SCSI HDD installed in the system... (let's see a newbie computer user do that.) 2. I didn't keep track of how long actual file copying and "auto-detection" of hardware took, but at least 20-30 minutes, and then... 3. Windows boots for the first time, "auto-detects" the monitor and needs to reboot. 4. Windows detects a few system devices (motherboard stuff) and needs to reboot. 5. Windows does this a few times, reboot after reboot, etc, etc. 6. Then I finally get into Windows and things look pretty crappy - I need to get the latest drivers for my video card, and while I'm at it update all my other drivers. 7. Windows then lets me know that it doesn't have a very good driver for my SCSI controller by running like Quake2 at 1 frame / hour. 8. I install the latest drivers for the SCSI Adapter, and everything seems OK for a bit. 9. Then it slows to a crawl again and I go into device manager - there's suddenly a cute little yellow exclamation point over the controller. 10. I reinstall the same drivers, and it works again... Then it does the same thing. 11. I reboot my system and the error is corrected... Hmmm... *(Just before this Windows installation I had been running Mandrake 6.0 for a solid 2 months straight - no reboots - so I'm thinking it's not the hardware.) 12. It did this for a while, then I upgraded to Windows 98 SE (which has newer drivers for the 2940U2W), and didn't even bother with upgrading the drivers. Overall experience? Took at least an hour to get it up and running flawlessly (well, for Windows, even if the base I/O of your computer (SCSI) doesn't work, that's pretty flawless for Windows) and a few months if you take into account getting the SCSI controller working correctly. Add to that the dozen re-boots, and it's even longer. Oh, and I've installed Windows from the CD more than 20 times, I'm sure, so consider me a professional who can do it about as fast as it can be done. Linux on the other hand? Worked out of the box without problems, and didn't take a fraction of the time to install. What can I say? Windows is a pain in the ass to get running compared Linux.
"Try that in Windows!"
Win95 and Win98 are desktop OS-s, NT and 2000 are server OS-s. Win9x does not support 2 NICs because it was not designed to, no-one in their right mind would want to use it for a server because it is simply to insecure anyway.
Usually the FUD goes the other way (attacking linux) but this is part of the report is certainly pro-linux FUD.
Mielipiteet omiani - Opinions personal, facts suspect.
My system:
Abit BH6 mainboard (on-board IDE)
384MB Micron CAS2 PC125 SDRAM
Celeron 300a (464MHz - I know, I know =P
Adaptec AHA-2940U2W SCSI-3 Controller
IBM UltraStar 9ES 7200RPM LVD HDD (9.1GB)
Teac 6x/24x CD-R (SCSI)
Pioneer 6x/32x DVD-ROM (slot-load SCSI)
Western Digital 6.4GB EIDE HDD
Matrox Millenium G200 8MB SGRAM AGP
Linksys LNE100TX 10/100 network (tulip)
Creative Labs Sound Blaster AWE64 Gold
PRE-SCSI
My first installation of Linux, Slackware 3.6, revealed that the tulip driver in the kernel didn't quite support my network card (2.0.35 or so) - so all I did was check the website for my card and they pointed to a new driver to include in the kernel compilation (which I was about to do). Then I found that it was already supported under the new kernel series, so all I had to do was rebuild one of those on my box and boot it. So I did, and everything worked A-OK.
Next were RedHat 5.2 (needed kernel upgrade for network card), SuSE 6.1, Mandrake 6.0, and now Mandrake 6.1 - all of which were painless to install and get working, EVEN for someone who had NO (as in 0) previous knowledge about UNIX and/or Linux OSes! All I had to do was a little bit of research and reading up on the matter and I was set (and damn fast, too, because there is a PLETHORA of information out there on it).
Oh, and the best fact? YOU ONLY HAVE TO REBOOT THE LINUX OS ONCE - 1 TIME!!!!!! (after all packages are installed)
Now to Windows...
(with SCSI)
Let's see...
1. I had to disable my on-board IDE controller in BIOS just to get Windows to realize that I had a SCSI HDD installed in the system... (let's see a newbie computer user do that.)
2. I didn't keep track of how long actual file copying and "auto-detection" of hardware took, but at least 20-30 minutes, and then...
3. Windows boots for the first time, "auto-detects" the monitor and needs to reboot.
4. Windows detects a few system devices (motherboard stuff) and needs to reboot.
5. Windows does this a few times, reboot after reboot, etc, etc.
6. Then I finally get into Windows and things look pretty crappy - I need to get the latest drivers for my video card, and while I'm at it update all my other drivers.
7. Windows then lets me know that it doesn't have a very good driver for my SCSI controller by running like Quake2 at 1 frame / hour.
8. I install the latest drivers for the SCSI Adapter, and everything seems OK for a bit.
9. Then it slows to a crawl again and I go into device manager - there's suddenly a cute little yellow exclamation point over the controller.
10. I reinstall the same drivers, and it works again... Then it does the same thing.
11. I reboot my system and the error is corrected... Hmmm...
*(Just before this Windows installation I had been running Mandrake 6.0 for a solid 2 months straight - no reboots - so I'm thinking it's not the hardware.)
12. It did this for a while, then I upgraded to Windows 98 SE (which has newer drivers for the 2940U2W), and didn't even bother with upgrading the drivers.
Overall experience? Took at least an hour to get it up and running flawlessly (well, for Windows, even if the base I/O of your computer (SCSI) doesn't work, that's pretty flawless for Windows) and a few months if you take into account getting the SCSI controller working correctly. Add to that the dozen re-boots, and it's even longer. Oh, and I've installed Windows from the CD more than 20 times, I'm sure, so consider me a professional who can do it about as fast as it can be done.
Linux on the other hand? Worked out of the box without problems, and didn't take a fraction of the time to install.
What can I say? Windows is a pain in the ass to get running compared Linux.
"Try that in Windows!"
I've actually done several installations of win2k, with several versions of the OS (from NT5.0 B1 to Win2k RC1). It's slow. However, it's impressive for a two reasons: 1) It does everything. Well, too. It detected old, wierd hardware, as well as newer hardware, and installed it correctly. It asks you very few questions, and yet doesn't do everything wrong. 2) It does upgrades. I've always had problems getting upgrades of MS OSes to work right; the resulting systems end up mangled, or at best, mysteriously unstable (over and above baseline MS instability). Win2k RC1 did flawless upgrades of 95 and NT4 for me. Some applications won't work right, but they are coded to check for NT4 or 95/8. Plus, on fresh installs, the irritating inability to make formatted partitions over 4 GB during install is gone. As for ease of installation compared to Linux (say RH or SuSE), sure it's easier. No user intervention is required, so what's easier than doing nothing? Linux installs are currently oriented towards people who understand things about how a computer works, things which basic Windows users don't know cause they don't ususally need to, like how to partition drives, etc. That stuff isn't tough, but average compuphobic/computer illiterate users will get freaked out.
Softway was doing so badly that they'd even proposed going to an Open Source development model awhile back.
The problem with this reasoning is that if you installed linux with the same ammount of core functionality as win98 you would have something like 50Mb or so. Basically what you got on the cd was everything that would make a complete system with everything you ever need. If you bundled Office2000, doom, quake, (both shareware), netscape, compilers, text formating tools, image manipulation programs, etc. The install would probably be about 5Gb+. So actually for what linux does it does it in a smaller space.
Slashdot social engineering at it's finest
Time spent on the install isn't a good indicator of the actuall difficulty. I once installed Win3.1 in under 30 seconds (off of a ram disk on a fast 486) and have spent three hours fiddling with Redhat (picking packages, etc) install.
The install also isn't over when the OS boots. With Linux the install for the OS installs all the standard services, compilers, shells, etc. All you need to do is change a few configuration options. With Win95 the install is 'easier' but you don't get as much installed.
There will always be this complexity != ease factor... A linux install (currently) expects you to know what Apache is. And in the future will at least expect you to know what a web server is. Until we start treating people like idiots and having default installs that don't install 'complex' stuff, the installs will be harder.
Part of the problem, like someone else on here said already, is that Windows comes installed, but very rarely do people get Linux installed. (And of the geeks here, who wouldn't reinstall it themselves, just because...
But, is this really a problem? Only if we're trying to compete directly with Windows in the desktop market. I don't think we're ready. Many office machines could be replaced transparently by Linux, but the user's machines are the last to go.
Who cares? As long as Linux is there for the high-end and the very low-end (where OS costs double the machine costs) then we can work at slowly narrowing the size of that middle ground. We don't *have to* do it all overnight.
But, to win that middle ground, we need to have trivial installs that focus on security over flexibility (does that desktop user want a web server and if so, is this the install for them?) and that brings the user straight into X with a nice WM and a decent GUI config editor (along the lines of Win9x's control panel).
So, yes. Windows is probably easier for everyone except Slashdot readers and tech writers to install. But, it's getting easier quickly enough that we don't need to fret, especially because it doesn't need to be easy right yet.
The man said it didn't recognize either when both were installed. He added that it recognized them separately. But you couldn't be bothered to read that in your haste to come to the aid of the fair damsel Win98 eh?
It doesn't make that much sense to consider this to be a "64-bit-related" deal; the issues of making NT (or W2K) code "64-bit-clean" are likely to have more to do with having considerable bits of test harness to validate that they work with big values than anything else, what with the major architectural differences.
As for competition immunity, we can go back to the days of the Roman Empire and see the ebb and flow of the growth and destruction of empires that people thought would stand. The more arrogant they get, the bigger the fall when they do fall.
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
I'd never installed an M$ system. The day I had to install NT 4 it took me 6/8 hours and a lot of frustration.
;-)]
Also you have to reboot the stupid thing 3 times,
figure out you have to _download_ some gfx board driver update because the one you got is incompatible with service packs, etc.
It really sucks. And text-based X configuration is easy [and BTW, I see why the graphical tool coming w/SuSE is called SaX. It reallyn does
localhost~# _
As if... how much more cryptic could you get?! Today... I can reinstall redhat in under a half-hour, and that includes restoring my custom configs under /etc from a tarball, merging all my custom patches and stuff into the stock distribution, and bringing the system back up (on different hardware no less!). Throw in a kernel compile, and in under 45 minutes, I have a system that is 100% operational, fully configured, and set to go. I can't do that under windows - even if I wanted to. There are some things a GUI just slows down... *alot*.
[1] I hear, however, that it might have taken less time if I had actually read the manual. *g*
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This mirrors my experience almost down to the last T. I installed Linux on my laptop two years ago. Mind that: that was TWO years ago - Red Hat 4.2 distro.
I didn't notice anything peculiar, or out of the ordinary. RH 4.2 installer came up, detected my hardware, I chose the packages, the CD spun around for a while, and I was all set. Pretty much everything worked. I think I had to tweak X for a few minutes, but I don't recall any major problems with my Chips & Technologies chipset. Red Hat's installer also had no problem detecting the ESS audiodrive chipset, and everything pretty much worked out of the box. It took a while for the set up to complete -- the laptop's CD was pretty slow.
The laptop was partitioned to dual-boot Win95. By comparison, it took me at least a couple of month before I managed to combine the right concoction of assorted card and protocol stack drivers so that the PCMCIA network card could work properly with Win95 OSR2. Mind this: this was a 3COM PCMCIA card, supposed to have great support under Win95!
Bleah! The bloody thing refused to work for months. Finally I got it work simply by trying every device driver on the OEM Win95 CD in turn, until the bloody thing worked.
By comparison, pcmcia-cs worked nearly out of the box. All I had to do is tweak one setting in a config file. This was with Red Hat 4.2. Since then, the laptop was loaded with RH 5.0, 5.1, 5.2, and 6.0 without a hiccup. Each upgrade went in on complete cruise control. I'm afraid to touch the Win95 partition. I'm afraid that if I as much as sneeze at it, it'll stop working.
This is not a joke. Win95 failed to correctly autodetect the network card, and choose the correct device driver. Meanwhile, even two years ago pcmcia-cs correctly picked out the correct device driver voo-doo logic after a one time either/or boolean option was set.
I've lost the number of times I installed and reinstalled all the OSes on countless machines. I've done them all - Win95, Win95OSR2, Win98, various Linux distros, etc... Always, without fail, I've had a much easier time bring up a Linux distro on the same machine, as opposed to a Win OS.
--
I wonder why he never gave any numbers about the install time of Win2k?
Was he installing from the CD? Was he installing directly from his HD under windows? Was he installing from the CD in DOS? If he was installing from DOS, he probably didn't have the foresight to load smartdrv and sat there for 4 hours while it copied all 2,000 files from the i386 dir to the HD. Anyone who has any experience installing Win2k doesn't install this way as it is like chineese water torture. DOS copies files very very slow. The better method is to either boot from the Win2k CD directly, install from Windows (if you already have it installed), or if you MUST install from DOS - make SURE you run smartdrv to speed up the file copy process.
I can't speak for beta2 since it is almost 9 months old, but Release-Canidate 2 that was released a couple of weeks ago doesn't take more than an hour to install. I am speaking on behalf of 40 or so people in #Win2000 on efnet who all install Win2k at various times. As long as they arent installing from DOS without running smartdrv, and they don't have shitty hardware, they install within an hour consistantly.
Well, sure.. installing Linux isn't hard.
How easy is installing a Linux-based system which is fully-usable. Hmmm.. I can't think of a decent way to say that.
(Before you all flame me, I don't really like Windows, but let's look at this objectively)
Once Win98 is installed, _if all goes well_, you'll have a nice little icon that helps you pick and configure an ISP. It'll pop up a nice little box when you plug your USB wossname in. It'll start the CD-ROM when you put it in the drive.
All things that we all probably hate, but all things that Joe Q. Public will _need_ if he's to use his computer more than looking what's on a disc, etc.
How easy the core operating system is to install is frankly irrelevant. How easy it is to get a useful, working, comfortable operating environment *with applications* is another matter.
Windows 98 *can* be easier than Linux in this respect (when it works!)
I haven't really tested this theory out lately (I'm notoriously lazy with regards to upgrades ;), but last I did a clean install of just the base GNU/Linux system (Red Hat 5.1, to be precise), with no optional frills (hopefully I don't have to explain what this means.. yes it ran =P), it took up just a little less disk space than Windows 95. ;) Naturally if you toss on all that optional software, it can get to take up more space than Windows, but that's probably because you're not just talking about the base set of tools anymore (granted, Windows comes with a lot of useless junk, but that's their fault ;).
Granted, however, you do get a lot more stuff with your average Linux distro. It's just that not all of it is forced upon you a la Windows. Hee hee..
~ Kish
That all sounds great, but is it the first thing you see on your desktop with a message underneath saying "Connect to the Internet" (or something equally dumb but obvious)?
The Windows 98 one will give you a pretty selection of ISPs with their pros, cons and prices.
Sure, most of *us* hate it, but a dummy will love it.
Hmm, strange last time I installed Solaris(~30 mins), I found it MUCH easyer and cleaner than Red Hats, or SUSE(~40 mins) install program, and a lot faster.
But then I found it faster than Linux in grenral.
As to aiming to Win's install, yeap its a good start, but really you want something like BeOS install (click next, 10 mins it's installed). But then your also want its boot time (4 sec) and it's file system...
Mlk, awaits the flames...
Wow, I should not post when knackered.
Don't you think that maybe Apple knows what all hardware they need to be able to support? It isn't like a big question in their minds. Obviously, if they put together the hardware and the software, you can be Joe F. Idiot and install it. How about a real example with a real OS? Better yet, just stick to the thread, not wander off into la la "I can show Kish up" land.. ;)
~ Kish
I'll second the above. I support about 240 new Dell Pentium III's at work. I have 48 of them that do not work. Yes, that's a 20% failure rate. Re-installing Windows 98 does not work. Dell support is absolutely no help. Usually they just insult me or my employee's. The three year on-site support contract is useless, because they refuse to send anyone out. I've got almost $100,000 worth of useless equipment. Well, useless until I convince the owner that we should put RedHat on them. BTW, it installs fine.
Tens of millions ... try to install.
But it will not be a 'clean' install, it'll be an update, ie all the settings neaded will be there, an it will just be a case of throwing in a CD, and letting it auto-run.
In the next... Windows2000?
For many 'normal' users there still will not be this choice, as all they care about is 'will it run word, and game X'. Why change your nice, easy to use, standardied (in the way it looks) OS, to Linux? I would have to say that Linux is a LOT easier to install.
Yeah, but as Alt-OSes go, BeOS is MUCH ezer to install (hit next, wait ten mins, the end...)
Mlk, awaits the flames
Wow, I should not post when knackered.
When folks complain about having to edit files to get their systems to work properly, so many seem to forget that it was only four years ago when the vast majority of PCs still ran Win 3.1 -- if that. Hello?! Win.ini? System.ini?
Together with control.ini Win9X still uses these files. The real fun comes with it storing most of the data in binary format. So you can't even use a text editor on it. As well as not separating configuration information into "critical", "important" and "trivial"...
Any data, user stuff would be under /home, /usr/local, and maybe /opt (Which are OF COURSE seperate filesystems). These would be primarily (/home totally) untouched by the upgrade. So loss of data would be near impossible.
-- Keith Moore
This sig is the express property of someone.
(sorry if my previous posting was a bit unclear, but I was quite tired when I wrote it last night)
Let me just clear out a few things since I find the tone of your letter quite accusing:
"I find it difficult to assign creditibility to those that blame OS's for hardware conflicts."
I do NOT blame the OS for the hardware conflict. I just described what happened to me and pointed out that it somehow worked like a charm with Linux.
"Doesn't matter what the OS is, if your mommaboard needs the latest update from asus or intel, then you will eventually find problems!"
My motherboard had been in circulation for months before I bought it. I didn't NEED any updates, but as I said, I tried everything I could think of to get that damn card to work, but it didn't help.
"For example - blaming winx.x for the KNOWN AGP/Socket 7 error."
1. I'm not blaming windows. If I'm to blame someone it's STB since their card and drivers was much later out on the market than either Windows or the mainboard (which is a quite popular one). They should have made sure that their new stuff worked well with what allready was out there.
2. The AGP/Socket 7 error was not known to me back then (January'99). I'm a programmer with a fair bit of hardware knowledge and experience from putting together machines from scratch, but I'm not a professional sysadmin so excuse me that I don't know everything about hardware.
"Sure, it might be frustrating the first time you run across it, but hunting around in the OEM's website or emailing them might have given a hint."
I searched through both their website's and found some minor updates to the bioses and drivers (which I tried in all kinds of combinations) but nothing more. I couldn't even find a single hint that there could be problems with AGP/Socket7.
"win tough to install? of the hundreds of installs over the last several years (the bane of being a sysadmin & the lab guy @ university & private companies) the ONLY time that there has been a problem, the root HARDWARE cause was eventually found - with some searching to be sure."
Where did I say that windows was tough to install?
I did in a way say that Windows was IMPOSSIBLE to install on my hardware combination (probably because of the GFX-card drivers, but I'm not sure about that, could still be something in Windows that the driver can't get around to compensate for the hardware problem).
I also said that I find Windows installs very frustrating (!= tough) because of the (comparatively) long installation time, mainly caused by all those reboots.
"if you find ANY os tough to install, then practice! use a lab box or your home network and practice-practice-practice!"
I do NOT have time for that. The OS should install with minimum effort and time. Besides, I think you're contradicting yourself here. First you (indirectly) state that Windows is easy to install and then you tell me that I need practice to get it right. Everything is easy once you know how to do it.
"holy smokes, the anti-m$ fud is as silly as the pro-m$ fud."
Agreed, but I don't see any FUD here, neither from me or you. I simply described what happened to me and even made sure to state that this is the ONLY time a Windows install has failed this way for me.
Then you started ranting about me being totally wrong, incompetent and biased, but that's still not FUD...
/Tord
" I would submit, however, that Linux -needs- to be much easier to install than Windows (of any flavor), if it is to become anything approaching a mainstream desktop OS"
Well first of all what we want is the freedom to choose our os, not world domination.
Second all these arguments about ease of use this and ease of install that ring rather hollow when compared to historical and present reality.
1) When dos came out it's installation was simple(so was the os), and some people complained.
Didn't stop people from using it, didn't stop it from selling well[still sells well to this day].
2) Windows 3.1 came out installation was a bit better(not by much) and it was a bit easier to use, and people complained still. The product still sold, and sold well in spite of these 'difficulties'.
3) Windows 95 came out. Even easier to install and use. People still complained[see a theme here?].
And the product sold well in spite of the difficulties.
4) Now we have Linux, which isn't windows. The installation (depending on the distribution) can fall between dos and windows 3.1 with a smidge of 95. The ease of use facter falls into the same scale. And people complain(there's that theme again). And now the question comes to the forefront. What makes you think that ease-of-use and ease-of-installation issues will be this great burden that we have to overcome when the historical record has shown that that hasn't played as big a role in the success of other os'es?
I think that the three arguments (that Microsoft bought Softway just to bury Interix, Microsoft bought them just to get developers for 64-bit-Windows or that they bought them to really improve POSIX compliance for the federal marketplace) all have a certain amount of merit, but none alone are the total reason. Microsoft wants this type of technology to exist when it benefits them (so they don't want to see Softway go belly up), but they feel a need to control this type of technology so that people will only use it in a single direction -- to Windows instead of away from it.
You are not installing comparable products. Of course you are going to have problems installing an upgrade version of 98 without having a previous operating system.
You need to compare installing Linux and a full version of 98 to get any worthwhile results. Until you do, any results you may draw are worthless.
I would like to see a side-by-side comparason of installing Linux vs. installing Windows 98. I wonder what the results would be then, seeing is that 98 is not in alpha.
You can install 98 by booting from the CD. I did this quite successfully on a machine last week which had a virgin harddisk.
Strangely it wouldn't boot my FreeBSD 3.2 CD.
Yes, he probably did, in fact.
Not all that tricky if the video card and monitor support the VESA Display Data Channel standard and the video card can get enough information from the monitor that way to let the host identify it.
I haven't bought the standards in question from VESA (they aren't cheap), so I don't know what sort of information you can get from plug-and-play monitors, but check out the VESA standards page.
It looks as if support for DDC, and at least some of the information you can get from it, may show up in XFree86 4.0; see this item in the XFree86 3.9.16 release notes.
Any one who says that Linux is hard to install is blatantly biased. Most of this is due to ignorance. If you handed these same people a machine with an unpartitioned drive and a windows disk, they would obviously have the same problems. If you actually read the screens, Linux installs are much simpler! I have installed every distribution that I can get my hands on, and all of them, even Debian, are simpler than Windows.
Brad Johnson
Advisory Editor
Brad Johnson
1. Run a marathon, finishing last
;)
2. Watch the Matrix... twice
3. Install Linux on the 8 other machines in your house
4. Renew your drivers license at the DMV
5. Get a Master Degree
6. Get your PhD
7. Read Leo Tolstoy's "War and Peace"... twice
8. Read every article on Slashdot, the article it links to, and all the comments it gathered.
9. Write a lengthy letter to everyone in your family, and the families of everyone you know.
10. Hit cancel and install Linux instead
hope you enjoyed it - feel free to add your own
---
You can install 98 and NT withou resorting to installing DOS first.
You can either install by booting from the CD if your hardware supports it, or they both provide boot diskettes (1 for 98, 3 for NT) which load enough of an OS to talk to the CD, although this might not be true for all SCSI CD's.
i started running linux during the early 1.2.x kernel, and let me tell you, even the redhat install was pretty bumpy!! things failed (my first install failed to install the /dev/hda bootloader). but STILL, i managed to get it done in a couple days and have a fully working system (and this is considering i had never installed windows, and i had basically NO unix experience!!!)
so why all the whining about current-day installs?? what the hell is so difficult about them?? i get the feeling that some really brain-dead people are trying to use linux these days (in which case...let them stick with OEM-installed winblows for all i care).
its just my opinion, but UNIX has never been a place for the brain-dead...and i'm kinda hoping it stays that way.
A year spent in artificial intelligence is enough to make one believe in God.
You are right, win32 is just another subsystem of windows NT. Tho NT is not a true microkernel OS, since the subsystems are executed in kernel mode! (also the GUI is executed in kernel mode..)
I've never ever had to reinstall a Unix box just because it's having problems. Almost every OS upgrade I've ever done I've done without loosing the data. Those rare upgrades where that's not possible, that's because I've been changing the filesystem - ie a GOOD reason.
..I want to see some more articles about how easy it is to use Linux as compared to Windows (and hopefully not just the CLI ;). After all, only someone with a good grasp of things is going to dare to install an OS on their computer rather than just buy a desktop with it preinstalled and preconfigured (well, unless they don't mind running into.. trouble).
~ Kish
It's interesting, but I would have liked more details, instead of just hints. How much practice has the author had at installing either operating systems and what procedures did he use?
:) )
I like to pick my packages individually while installing linux, so it takes me a little longer. On the hand, I've had to re-install NT Workstation so many times due to it's f**king up, I can do it in under 15 minutes.
(And I have a friend who insists that re-compiling your linux kernal is a basic step in the installation procedure, which would add a little more time
Finally, it is vastly more important to me which computer *functions* once the install is complete, rather than how long it takes. Looks as though Win98 is the big lemon, though.
Dana
Security settings in Win98? Win98 has no registry security - NT does, but Win9x doesn't. The security API calls exist on 9x, but they just call empty functions and return null security descriptors. Anyone can read or write any key in the registry.
You can power down the machine in the middle of the Win98 or Win2k (I think) install and it will pick up right where it left off.
I think part of the difference is due to this. Win98 is very careful to log everything and is always prepared to be screwed by the hardware.
However, some of the difference has to be in the size of the install. Linux is a lot smaller -- for good or bad. You do get a lot more stuff with the installation of Win98.
I totally agree that Linux *is* as easy (depending on how you look at it) as Windows. Sometimes, like with NT, even more so. That's irrelevant, however, because the average user -- the guy who avoids Linux because of this stuff -- NEVER NEEDS TO INSTALL WINDOWS. Well, yeah, that's obvious, right? It's preinstalled. Guess what? That's tough titties for us. We've got to make Linux EVEN EASIER to install, so that it's as easy to install Linux as it is to use a pre-installation of Windows. I think that WinLinux2000 that we just saw a week ago was a step in the right direction, but we need to do more, and preferably not using the UMSDOS filesystem.
What version of win2k did you install? I've installed RC1 in a vmware session (which goes slower than a regular install), and it didn't take more than an hour. I was installing from the CD. Worked flawlessly too.
Avi
Debian already has a system that is quite robust in this regard. Just download the packages onto the hd and then type dpkg -i *.deb or something like that and it will upgrade everything without getting anything munged.
Slashdot social engineering at it's finest
It occurred to me that there are two main approaches to OS creation today. There is UNIX, which has an extremely logical and consistent design, but which is difficult to learn, and there is Windows which is relatively easy to learn, but internally seems to be a mess of inconsistent overlapping APIs. UNIX in the form of Linux is trying to become easy to learn, and Windows in the form of NT and 2000 is trying to be good at the things UNIX is good at.
Clearly even if Windows was made open source it would be such an incredible job to tidy it up and get it to the same state of logicalness as UNIX that it hardly seems worth it. We need to keep making sure that Linux (and in turn UNIX) is at least as easy to learn as Windows - the installation procedure is just one part of this. Eventually the BSD's will hopefully take on the easy-to-learn parts of Linux too. Choice is always a good thing.
Hmmm... maybe this is slightly offtopic. Never mind.
That CNN story is unbelievable drivel. My grandma could do better and trust me, she's /totally/ non-geek.
Very poor editorial decision to publish in my view. Simply displays the ways in which some journalists and editors share their ignorance with the world.
Why was he installing such an old version? Is that even a version of Caldera Openlinux? I installed 2.3 and it didn't ask me much at all. In fact, it started up in KDE. Since the guy didn't mention Tetris, I'll assume he was, in fact, installing the older version. That, to me, doesn't count for anything. Wow, big deal. An old version of Linux doesn't install easily. Look at the newest versions. They install fine. (except Slackware and Debian, but I've only installed each one twice.)
Crowing about anecdotal evidence on Slashdot? I would've expected better.
Trying to convince the world that Linux is easy to install by throwing up meaningless stories like this is going to accomplish nothing. Making Linux truly easy to install with a wide variety of driver support will do a lot more.
Remember that Windows has sold literally 10s of millions of Win/95 and Win/98 upgrades. When upgrading, the O/S redetects all the hardware. Trying to argue that Windows doesn't work anything less than the vast majority of time is foolish.
The problem here is not Win98 but the fact that PC's are such chaos. The BIOS doesn't have serious SCSI support (compare this to the SCSIManager on Mac where you don't need drivers for other SCSI cards) nor even basic CD-ROM support. The reason that PC's are such nightmare to set up is that there are no standard interfaces for most components (only keyboard, up to two hard disks, floppy and very basic video support are standard, all the rest is up to the whims of the card manufacturers).
Let's be honest - neither of these beasts has a simple install. It's partly the installation mechanisms, but a lot of it has to do with hardware support. I've installed various windows, Unix-es (Unices?), and other oddball OS's on a lot of Intel and other hardware. I've got over 17 years of experience installing this stuff, it's still tough! Macs and Solaris boxes are easier to install, but only because the company controls the harware and the software.
I think that the Windows installation routines have a slicker look-and-feel that really puts the person doing the install at ease. Don't think it's any simpler than a Linux install, though, just prettier.
I've done a lot of Token Ring installs, for example, never found an OS that installed easily there.
I've got a hybrid ethernet/modem PCMCIA card at home. Took me several hours to get it working under Windows, and I never got the modem part to work. Worked out of the box on Linux (including modem). Whoever wrote the driver for it really paid attention to the details.
Linux is pretty ambitious in that it is trying to support a lot of older hardware (386/486 systems) with smaller resource footprints. From an installation and start-up/booting point-of-view, this is only increasing its complexity. And we want the Linux install package to provide a novice installer interface as well as an expert interface. Windows has the one mechanism.
The bottom line - I'd rather fight with Linux installs than Windows installs, but not by much. The key work is fight.
Exactly how is it difficult?
Boot to CD. Watch it load drivers. Agree to licensing. Keep pressing enter. Select partition. Choose to format it, or not. Watch it install. Reboot. Install NiC (via search or driver floppy). Watch it finish installing. Reboot, log in.
Sure, you still have to service pack up, but as with any OS you tweak after installation.
Real tough stuff.
-witz
Partitioning the hard drive can be a royal nightmare, of course. SuSE 6.1 had the time-honored solution (defrag C:, boot into DOS, run FIPS.EXE) but the documentation for doing so was scattered throughout the manual and the first distro CD. Also, there was something in the docs which said, "LILO is incompatible with FAT32 partitions!" which was, fortunately, false. :-)
Setting up LILO to do the dual-boot thing was even harder, as the manual left off a rather important line in the sample /etc/lilo.conf they provided. (mustn't forget "table=/dev/hda".) Well, everyone should be allowed some typos, and after RTFMing, I figured it out...
The real danger here is a lack of good documentation--the SuSE people tried really hard and produced a fairly decent manual, but it wasn't quite there yet. (Have RedHat/Caldera done better in their paper documentation?) It's really no good to tell people, "Read the HOWTOS on the LDP website," because while you're installing, you probably don't have much of a network, and some of the HOWTOS are slightly outdated. Maybe I should write a HOWTO of my own, then....
Give a monkey a brain and he'll swear he's the center of the universe.
Yeah, that's true. It wouldn't be hard for a distro to stick an icon on the KDE desktop that does the same thing. But right now you're right, if I just bought a computer and said "I want this internet thing," clicking an icon and choosing one of the resulting ISPs would be a lot easier. We need to get some national ISPs to team up with some of the leading distros to make something like this work. I wonder if Corel's new distro might consider undertaking something like this?
Actually, I believe MS are recommending reformatting and installing Win2K from scratch, what with all the changes to NTFS and suchlike.
"All they ever talk about is the installs..."
While it's true that they talk about the installs all the time, it's not unfounded because like it or not, 99% of the users out there wanting to try Linux will have to install it themselves. While you can buy boxes with Linux pre-installed, they aren't nearly as ubiquitous as Windows or even Mac boxes.
Regards,
Bun
"Anyone that has ever gotten an idea based on any of my work and done something better with it-good for you."--J.Carmack
No, the video card ROM just puts a call to a function in shadow ram in the vector list. This is what gets called by the interrupt. The functions that give you all the info mostly just point to a small block of shadow ram where you can read out the names of manufactures and version numbers, screen modes supported and stuff like that. The info is pretty cool. And I do believe the name of the monitor manufacture can be found in there, if the monitor supports it, but I don't really remeber.
No, the video card ROM just puts a call to a function in shadow ram in the vector list. This is what gets called by the interrupt. The functions that give you all the info mostly just point to a small block of shadow ram where you can read out the names of manufactures and version numbers, screen modes supported and stuff like that. The info is pretty cool. And I do believe the name of the monitor manufacture can be found in there, if the monitor supports it, but I don't really remeber.
Ok, yea here it is...
int 10:
AX=4F15
BL=1
cx=dx=0
es:di=where you want the info to go
puts in 128 byte block at es:di manufacture, model, serial number, manufacture year and week, size of screen (in cm), gamma, timing, and some other stuff. Pretty cool!
In my experience, it takes about an hour to install RC2 on a decent machine (PII 333 or higher). It's mostly automatic as well, especially upgrades (upgrades are 100% automatic). I think the reboot count for a standard install is two, which is not bad at all.
Not only that, but msdos.sys is a text file that controls windows, and it still uses config.sys and autoexec.bat, which come from before win 3.1. It also introduces another dosstart.bat. It runs this whenever you go to dos, so that it can load your real-mode cd-rom driver or whatever else you need in that session. There are many of them. The point though is that they already have most of the defaults correct for most situations, and windows provides easy ways for a program to modify these files during installation, so that the user rarely ever sees them. (I think Windows 3.1 did a better job here... everyone has had to go into the registery and fix it, but it used to be fairly rare in 3.1.
Daniel
If you're looking for a really easy way to get PPP up and running, have a look at WvDial. It'll auto-detect your modem, and figure out how to talk to your ISP. All you should have to give it is your username, password and phone number.
Enjoy your job, make lots of money, work within the law. Choose any two.
Oh, the agony... I installed RC2 on my old notebook, from a freshly-formatted empty drive. I used DOS, and forgot Smartdrv. It took over 6 hours (this was a p120 notebook with a crappy cdrom drive). Oh well, at least win2k works perfectly on it... no complaints once it actually installed.
1 floppy and a network connection is all you need to install Mandrake, or Redhat (and possibly Debian - been awhile since I've done that..)
So what was your point?
What is WinLinux2000? Sounds like bad mojo.
As Signal 11 points out, experience certainly makes taking a metric of installation ease difficult. In this day in age, it is really hard to find a sample set of people with no Windows-biased computer experience -- almost everyone knows about the A: and C: drives just like they understand touch tone telephones and ATMs. To them Linux is more alien because it starts calling A: /dev/fd0.
However the growth of Linux in spite of these handicaps demonstrates its vigor and fighting spirit. In a few years time CNN will be reporting nightmares installing Win2005 while lauding Linux's ease of installation.
About 30 years ago, Mad magazine satirized Consumer Reports. They called it Condemner Reports, and the test was how various appliances would press socks and ties. IIRC, the four place toaster, while not getting out all the wrinkles, was a model of efficiency and production. It was pretty funny. Take CNN in the same vein. Please.
Linux is tough to install? Compared to what. Installing DOS with the TCP/IP stack? WIN31? These are still commonly used by the way. This guy doesn't know what tough is.
I'm working with my high school niece, 'teaching her computers.' It took her about 10 minutes to learn the Caldera install, she calls it the chicken dance. 'Just keep pecking yes.' Mandrake 6 wasn't much tougher. Tomorrow we automount file systems.
Using Win 95/98 to compare to is like trying to compare installing a car engine to installing a VCR. They're unrelated. Win 95/98 is a game platform for kids. Compare against Win NT. NT is a real OS, with a very simple install.
Redhat Linux 6.0 still uses only one floppy to do a network install.
Frankly, I was left a bit cold from the article. It didn't really say much of anything new or insightful other than one very critical point: Microsoft makes some huge assumptions about where one begins when using their OS (?!) products.
In all of the press and conversations I've read/heard discussing the installations of Linux vs. *using* Windows, the basic thing that seems to be missing is that very problem with Microsoft's assumption: that we only use their products and that we should be grateful for doing so. When folks complain about having to edit files to get their systems to work properly, so many seem to forget that it was only four years ago when the vast majority of PCs still ran Win 3.1 -- if that. Hello?! Win.ini? System.ini?
I'm still not sure where I stand on the Linux-for-the-masses issue, but I'm sure that I don't want people to assume that they have to settle for an inferior product when, with a bit of tweaking and polish, a better solution (Linux, FreeBSD, etc.) is readily available. That said, I'm encouraged by where Caldera is taking the install process; I only wish that the 'Advanced' user bypass option will always remain.
Oh yeah? NEVER in my life have I ever had a flawless installation of any version of windows, going back to 3.1 and 3.11
My experiences have been timewasting nightmares. For a while I thought it was cool that I was smart enough to do the strange and random things necessary on mine and my friends computers (and later, clients) to get doze to work. Now, I dread having to install it, let alone an 'upgrade' or putting in some new hardware. It is insane. No normal, non-'power' user has a hope in hell.
My first linux box was an ipmasq debian box a friend built for me out of spare parts. Took a bit of work, mainly re-compiling kernal for a tulip nic. My experiences with this, an order of magnitude more reliable than the wingate solution I was using tempted me to try more.
Since then, I have installed rh 5.1, 5.2 and 6.0. They all worked first time, including apache and sendmail, right out of the box. Getting ipmasq etc working with 2.2 kernals fooled me for a bit with 6.0, but a couple of howto's later and I was going fine.
I have to say that rh's autodetection and general hardware installation pisses on m$ from a great height. It ain't pretty, but it works, is extremely simple and more logical.
The marketdroid lies that win98 spews out during an installation just make me laugh nowadays. And it takes forever and you have to reboot at least 3 times, and thats if you are lucky . . .
-- Reverend Vryl
I find it difficult to assign creditibility to those that blame OS's for hardware conflicts. Doesn't matter what the OS is, if your mommaboard needs the latest update from asus or intel, then you will eventually find problems! For example - blaming winx.x for the KNOWN AGP/Socket 7 error. Sure, it might be frustrating the first time you run across it, but hunting around in the OEM's website or emailing them might have given a hint. win tough to install? of the hundreds of installs over the last several years (the bane of being a sysadmin & the lab guy @ university & private companies) the ONLY time that there has been a problem, the root HARDWARE cause was eventually found - with some searching to be sure. if you find ANY os tough to install, then practice! use a lab box or your home network and practice-practice-practice! holy smokes, the anti-m$ fud is as silly as the pro-m$ fud.
I second that. My experiences are about parallel.
Win95 and 98 are pretty easy to install, as long as you know what to do when a problem comes up. Stuff like unkown hardware is annoying and the mandatory endless rebooting gives you time to twiddle your thumbs.
NT4.0 Workstation was about the longest install I've ever experienced. My particular version insisted on copying everytigng to the HD from CD and then making 3 boot disks. Then it failed to initialize properly when restarted... Wooo... 4 hours after starting and deleteng/copying files - it finally installed itself. I didn't have any problems with my ISA devices; I count myself lucky. I don't want to _ever_ do an NT install again.
RH 5.x/6.0 was closer to 98/95 than NT. Of course I had to figure out how fdisk/Disk Druid worked... destroyed a few partitions before I figured it out. I've used DOS fdisk before plenty but for a newbie Linux partitioning has a long way to go.
SuSE6.1 - this one was rather confusing with the organization of the installation. Menu based is ncie to be able to go back. But I almost felt lost as I wasn't always sure if I'd done all the right steps. Partitioning was aboutas confusing as RH. Not too hard since I wasn't trying to protect any partitions.
BeOS 4.0/4.5 - Partition Magic b0rked on me for some reason so I went ahead and used the built in partitioning tool... Wow, this is _by far_ the best tool for partitioning that I've ever seen. Nice GUI with sliders and dropdown boxes for partition type... I recommend trying it just for the experience. Oh, installation takes about 4 clicks 10 minutes and a reboot.
I'd add that partitioning in any OS is 'dificult' to do safely and pretty much near impossible for a new user. However, if Linux or any other non MS OS wants to achieve more desktop popularity it's going to have to address this. So what if it's difficult in NT or 98? It's _already_ on the machine! You get to start the game down by a point (or 10).
That and monitor/video card selection are going to have to improve under Linux. Sure sure.. gripe about the OEM vendors... that doesn't change things.
WinLinux seems interesting, I think I'll try that next.
Fsck cluebie moderators. I'll say what I want, offtopic or not. And fsck having to qualify every bloody statement just
WinNT, Serice Pack 3 or greater does -not- enable AGP graphics. All it does is treat the AGP slot like a fancy PCI card. There are no AGP transfers happening.
I don't see why everyone complains about Linux installs...
I mean, Solaris (any arch) takes forever, isn't very talkative (not silly pictures, I mean useful stuff), and you don't get anything. I have repeatedly spent an evening on a Solaris install, then spent half the night installing GNU utils, tcsh, pine, lynx... all of the stuff that any Linux distro gives you in well under an hour. And CDE and Netscape used to be on separate CDs...
And I never did understand why OS/2 Warp 4(Client) installs took 3 floppies, a CD, and a reboot.
I just think that most of the journalistic folk who try a Linux install just plain don't have enough to compare it to.
--Ben "I've never tried QNX..." August
--Ben
I don't see what this guy's problem was for the Linksys card... go figure.
If you notice he only had problems with both network cards in. Either one on its own was detected fine. Not completely surprising that multiple-network-interface support would be somewhat lacking in Win98, I suppose -- that's not really something its intended market would have
My $0.02
I mean, Linux installation really doesn't do nearly the same amount of stuff W2K does.
As an example, Linux has a pretty limited hardware detection routine, whereas windows 2000 has thousands of infs it has to look at to install just the right driver for like 2000+ devices - then it has to detect them properly. Basically - W2K has support for much more hardware (and a variety of them too).
This is probably the longest part of the installation provided you boot off the cd and don't do a DOS installation without smartdrv.
Then there are the extra things W2K setup does, it tracks it's progress - so lets say you accidentally powerdown the machine half way thru - or detecting some hardware causes a reboot - w2k setup will be able to recover from this (if it was a detection problem, it'll skip that device and log it). Linux installers don't do this.
Ther are other examples like W2K scans for other OSs (ok, only microsoft ones), scans the registries etc etc etc.
W2K does much more than just copy files and do some simple detection of Mouse, Video, NE2000 (and maybe *some* extra) devices.
It may take a long time, and generally - it's probably not much easier than some linux installers - but it is really easy and DOES detect hardware well - like win98. Ofcourse you could always find a hardware configuration that Linux can detect well, and win98/win2k can't, but i think that's prolly a minority of the cases. It's a simple result of windows having much better support from hardware manufacturers.
Well you do need Service pack 3 for the card to be recognized correctly. That's what I meant ;)
OK from personaly experience the following things are "difficult" about linux installs:
:P), I spent ages figuring out how to partition, and then doing it totally wrong and reinstalling :P
:P)
:)
:)
:)
1. Disk partitioning
2. X configuration
3. Getting a network card to work
And -
1. Disk Partitioning
When i got slackware 3.1 as my first distro (off the net and onto floppies, no less (that kept getting bad sectors.. but thats another story
This has been made much better by Redhat (and its variants) in particular offering "default" partition layouts. Good for people who dont know what is what with the unix-type filesystem layout. A simple "root + swap" 2 partition setup would be fine for the average desktop linux user i suspect. People who need more than that (who are setting up servers for example) SHOULD know what the hell they are doing.
2. X configuration
This has been largely addressed, however what would be MUCH help is actually having hardware specs available with hardware. I dont mean programming info necessarily, but sync rates of monitors/video cards, etc. Some simple instructions from video card vendors would help here: eg for a TNT2: run xconfig, type options blah blah blah.
Some sort of help file with common video cards and what to set them up as would be a help (displayed on screen with a "click here for help" button
The VESA framebuffer will help here, as a last resort type setup, as a "i dont know" option in setup so that additional updates can be done after X install.
3. Getting a Network card to work.
Major problem is that most distros have them all loadable modules, and typically want IO addresses for them, etc. Hopefully PNP will help here?
Other than that, disks are large enough these days for most users to just do an "everything" install, and worry about figuring out what they need after they get some experience (as I gather everbody first did when they first installed windows anyway
Linux WAS hard to install. These days, the most difficult thing (assuming you are doing a Redhat install) is video card or network card setup.
Redhat is unfortunately hard to update so I dont use it tho
debian's apt-get is just too funky
but now im rambling....
smash
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
Oh the humanity! :)
/., but at the end of last year, for about a 6 month period, almost everything posted that wasn't specifically PRO Linux was being flamed as "FUD" from microsoft. I think it had something to do with the haloween documents. All the zealots jumped on the "FUD" buzzword bandwagon and were waving the word around without knowing what it really means.
"Remember, if it's not PRO-Linux it must be FUD!! " is suposed to be read as SARCASM!
I don't know how long you have been reading
I really think you misread my post. Slow down and stop injecting your own ideas in between my lines.
I never said that 98 rulez, is stable or even what i'd like to be using. I said his install times didn't jive with my experience.
And to clarify:
I've used linksys cards in systems with other cards and they were still both detected.
Now, I have not attempted to duplicate his result with the same hardware, so your mileage may vary.
Windows 2000 Advanced Server, RC2 (beta 3).
I installed on an Alpha first, only took an hour twenty. The Intel install took almost three hours, and thrashed nicely for the last thirty minutes.
.sig: Now legally binding!
Windows 2000 Advanced Server, RC2 (beta 3).
I installed on an Alpha first, only took an hour twenty. The first Intel install took almost three hours, and thrashed nicely for the last thirty minutes. It then died a cryptic death, and I had to restart. Second Intel install took two and a half hours, didn't thrash, and worked nicely!
.sig: Now legally binding!
"My OEM version of Win95 forces me to install The Works and then I get to spend an hour or so deleting stuff I don't want. Not helped by the fact that you have to reboot almost everytime you un-install something!"
Heavy interdependence on files has caused me to shy away from even bothering to do anything like this on a Windows system. I have found that every time you do, well, much of anything to it, it becomes ever more unstable. Even if it's something you wouldn't think would cause it to become unstable. ;)
~ Kish
Anyway; as Signal 11 has pointed out, that sounds like FUD, although pointed at W2K. Not that I mind, though. It's a nice thing to see the pendulum swing both ways in the news. Of course, ideally, there would be no FUD either way, be it Microsoft or OSS.
The "Linux is hard to install" is truly an annoying myth and one dating back to the early 1990's, at that. I do remember trying to install Linux back in University; it was a long and tedious process, for which you felt more than rewarded when, after weeding through tons of HOWTO's, you actually managed to kick X into working. It was a hard but very satisfactory experience.
I installed Linux again when Mandrake came out, and expected more or less the same growing pains. I was quite surprised to see the whole affair go by smoothly, so smoothly in fact that it's a simple matter to simply reinstall the whole thing when you begin screwing with permissions and packages too much. (Or when you lose your root password, heh heh.)
Now, the other day, I had to run a friend through the phone (I had a busted ankle and couldn't go there) into installing Windows 95. The main problem was to prevent the bloody thing from assuming things about every other driver. It took a good hour and a half to babystep her through.
That brings old memories of Linux. Linux Mandrake does not. The article has one essential point: indeed, Microsoft relies on the fact that the computer will come pre-installed with the OS. They've dumbed down the installation process to clueless technician level, but only for a standard platform on which the technician will have installed the OS many times.
As for most Linux distros, the installation process becomes more efficient and automatic each time. Microsoft doesn't seem to want to ease the installation process any time soon. As soon as a few people pick up W2K from the shelves and end up crying to their hacker son/nephew/friend (I do level 1 support for my family and many friends, as I'm sure you all can relate), the myth that "Windows is easy to install" will die.
In the meantime, let's keep working on the "Linux is hard to install" one.
"There is no surer way to ruin a good discussion than to contaminate it with the facts."
Microsoft needed Softway to allow NT to acheive
POSIX compatibility and UNIX95 branding,
which is important for selling into the
Federal marketplace.
Softway wasn't making much money on this software,and was in danger of going out of
business or dropping the product, both of which
were unacceptable to Microsoft.
Over the summer I installed Win98 on a clean hard drive 3 times in one day. Once I got a crash in "kernel.dll" as it was finishing the install. Once I got a blue screen of death. That should not happen in the install. And the hardware, AFAIK, is fine.
That would be a neat trick.
The version on win98 that ships with dell computers (NT too) isn't the same as the version sold in stores.
Don't believe me? Ask dell or microsoft why Office 2000 didn't ship with dell computers right after it was released.
It was because the were differences in the registry (dell's version had incorrect security settings on a few keys) that prevented Outlook 2000 from installing.
I hate NT, partly because of the configuration that my school uses. NT is configured so that the user cannot save word to the hd but the system can. Of course with NT trying to be everything it fails at being anything. I only use the NT box to test my programming assignments. I have to use a borland C++ editor & comiler- fine. NT running that dos program is horrible and the mouse support is nonexistant. But anyway, the editor has a dos shell. I found a little security hole.
d:\more c:\dude
and access is denied but when....
c:\more dude
everything works
With recent memory prices skyrocketing (as of 9/29/99, >$300US for 128MB), when Windows 2000 is finally released, will anyone be able to afford the memory requirements?
In other words, W2K memory requirements are pretty high. As memory prices will eventually drag prebuilt system prices up, will anyone be able to buy W2K is rumored to take 64MB for @home, and 128MB or 256MB for Workstation/Server configs.
For that matter, I don't see Linux's memory requirements exceeding 32MB, or 64MB to be comfortable. Linux continues to be affordable on all hardware.
At Microsoft's rate, W2K won't be delivered to stores until the memory price hike have migrated across the entire market making their memory requirements to be unattainable for a low price.
Which Build of W2K? I used to have this problem,
but with the latest build I tried (2128), it installed in about 20 minutes, with almost no user interactions needed during that time.
I hate NT, partly because of the configuration that my school uses. NT is configured so that the user cannot save word to the hd but the system can. Of course with NT trying to be everything it fails at being anything. I only use the NT box to test my programming assignments. I have to use a borland C++ editor & comiler- fine. NT running that dos program is horrible and the mouse support is nonexistant. But anyway, the editor has a dos shell. I found a little security hole.
d:\more c:\dude
and access is denied but when....
c:\more dude
everything works
Well Windows detects it as a plug and play monitor, BeOS detects it as..well hell I don't know ;) but it works. I thought it'd be nice if Caldera did the same..but at least it presented me with the entry for my monitor.
At least, in this case, the blame can be laid, in part, on someone other than Microsoft. Still, though, for a company that's been promising "plug and play" for years and years, I've yet to experience anything but headaches when adding hardware in Windows.
- A.P. (software that works == good)
--
"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?"
Then again, Macs never came in literally thousands of different versions, with a thousand possible add-on cards to go with that. Autodetecting and autoinstalling for x86 is a pain for all OS:es. Try Linux for other-than-x86 and it probably will be easier still.
-- I'm as unique as everyone else.
BeOS install crushes them all
Im constantly amazed by how good BeOS is at what it does. Of course what it does is still quite limited compared to other OSes that have been out longer. In my experience the RH and windows installs are pretty much equal these days. Alot depends on your hardware.
I prefer the RH because the windows way of doing just about anything really frustrates me. Windows is an example of how NOT to do a GUI interface. BeOS is an example of just how good a GUI can be.
BeOS has the easiest, quickest install of them all if (and its still a fairly big if) your hardware is supported.
BeOS is fun & easy to use and doesn't sacrifice power in doing so. And its fast, really really fast. Right now its weakest point as an OS is the lack of multiuser support and the attendant network security problems.
Windows comes pre-installed and some/most of its user base do consider reinstalling to be a serious chore worthy of a weekend at the very least, while the underdog (BSD/linux) OS's do not.
Yeah I don't see why the NT install takes so long. To install my Awe 64 I had to install some isapnp support option, then the drivers. And afterwards it kept giving me the windows "card detected! blah blah blah!" message for the next 5 reboots even though the drivers were already installed and I kept telling it to go away ;) It was like a pesky street vendor. Finally it shut up ;)Afterwards NT worked fine with the exception that booting takes a horribly long time. I'm not sure if this is due to Networking or SCSI Card..but it did take my windows nt workstation some 3-5 minutes to boot each time. Bummer. Ever notice that the KDE guys stole NT's task manager? ;) That always cracks me up. Oh Partition magic...heh..well that seems to be the bane of all partitioners as it kills partitions as often as not. I think you need to defragment a fat partition before resizing for best effect. But yes you're right, partitioning _is_ the hardest task.
Sounds like NC/WebTV land.
Seems like the next crop of consoles will pretty much fulfill the Internet and the gaming aspect that people usually buy computers for.
Myself? I really don't think that NCs are the way. A company called Futurelink came to my school and was talking about jobs they had there. Basically their main idea is being an Applications Service Provider. All the software is run off a server farm somewhere. For some reason, I just really dislike the idea. Basically the idea is that you don't have to upgrade so much and worry about everything, you let the Futurelink people do that. Seems like a good idea, and many magazines and newspapers praised it, but I have the sneaking suspicion that it will crash and burn.
"At worst it installs as an NE2000 adapter, which will work."
Sigh. So the "plug-and-play" thinks it's some other kind of adapter, but that's okay because it works.
And you wonder why people have a hard time "trusting" Windows?
My first linux install was Slack and I downloaded it from the net. I got the the base and the required apps in 1.44 format. I started down loading on a 28.8 modem @ about 6pm when I got home from work. While down loading I read the install docs. I had it installed on a the same machine with ppp working at 6am. I had never installed or used Unix at all. Just alittle SCO from an NFS mount. That was in 95... Linux today with bootable CD's is by far the simplist OS to install from scratch.
I install win95, NT workstation, NT server and Terminal Server at work all the time. I use Ghost because it takes too long to install all the video,sound,network,modem, Service Packs and Fixes by hand. Anyone who says ANY OS is easier to setup then linux is FULL sH%$.
We have about 45 Dell G1's and about 150 Cp-Cpi laptops at work. I have only have one hard drive
in the desktops go down. The laptops are another story, the onsite contract with Dell has been great. I have even had the EU's call support from their homes and had Dell come and Fix the problems there. EU's are hard on Laptops, I am sorry you have had such a bad time with Dell I have nothing but nice things to say about them. They have made my life much better.
** BeOS 4.0 (haven't upgraded yet)
** instaled & rebooted in about 6 minutes
6 minutes !?!?
Wow.
So far in my life, OpenLinux 2.3 is the BEST install EVER. It worked flawlessly straight out of the CD Burner. It's awesome! None of the otehre Linux distro's I've ever worked with (and I've worked with most of them) installed as easily or quickly as OpenLinux 2.3
It beats installing any MS product hands down. But then again installing Linux has always beat the crap out of MS due to the lack of rebooting. Installed Win98SE on a P3-500 with a 48x cd-rom last night, took 45 minutes. Installed OpenLinux 2.3 on a slower machine (p2-266, 40x cd) during the same period of time, took all of 17 minutes, and I go to play tetris (a small but highly effective gimmick).
by Mike Buddha -- Someday the mountain might get him, but the law never will.
I've installed various Windows 95 releases several times on the same PCs. Not once has it always detected all the hardware right without my help, though fortunately it tends to leave things alone if it doesn't know what it is. In addition, a full install always takes a nice day - figure about 7 hours, including twiddle-thumbs time. This includes rejigging drivers it didn't know about, getting the settings right (Network stuff is a pain), loading updates and stuff like TweakUI etc etc. A Linux install from a recent distribution on similar hardware averages a quarter of that time. Most of the discrepancy is because Windows has to reboot so many times. And this is even more startling when the Windows install is from a HD and the Linux install is from the CD.
Wade.
Yeah right.
Here's what you said "I only use linksys and have never had one not autodetect in the install. At worst it installs as an NE2000 adapter, which will work. "
Which is that you took the problem to be that the Linksys card wasn't detected in Mr. Petreley's install. But the problem wasn't that, it was that the card wasn't detected when there was another card in the system.
Well here are a few of mine.
;)
;)
My system is:
Celeron 300
Abit bh6 board
128MB ram
Mylex UW Scsi adapter
plextor 32X scsi cdrom, plextor 4x12 scsi cd-r
IBM 8 GB ide hard drive
awe 64 soundcard
Riva TNT video card
Linksys 10/100 Network card (the one the guy used)
SGI 20.something inch monitor
Windows 98
The install is fairly simple, it des not recognize the video card (As TNT cards weren't around when 98 was made..duh) The NIC is either detected as a NE 2000 card, or nothing at all. Everything else works fine. After the install I pop in the driver cd for the video card and floppies for the network card. After a reboot everything works fine. I don't see what this guy's problem was for the Linksys card... go figure.
Windows NT (Workstation)
I installed NT a long time ago so I don't remember all the details. Video card worked fine after applying service pack 3 with AGP support. The sound card was a nightmare to install though, ISA PNP support in NT definately needs work. But after I finally managed to get it working everything was fine. I would like to mention that I used NT for a few months and not once did the system crash. Apps crash of course but that is present in every O/S. Never did I have to reboot a system due to a lockup. So when I hear these stories of systems locking up it makes me wonder if the user was playing Quake or something on the NT server
Mandrake 6.0
The TNT card does not get detected, this is okay as I can pick it from the list of cards supported. The SGI monitor does not get recognized _ this is a major pain in the ass as I don't have the manual for it. After playing "Guess the horizontal and vertical frequency" for 5 minutes I manage to get it right. Not a good way to pass time. Network card is detected fine. Mandrake 6.0 also does not have sound detection as part of the install, bummer. After running sndconfig everything works fine. All in all an okay install... the monitor bit is what annoys me the most.
Caldera 2.3
Wow..not bad, I'd say the best Linux installer I've tried so far. Detects everything sans... The monitor is not detected but they have an entry for it! Amazing. So I pick it and everything works fine, why doesn't Mandrake have the entry for my SGI monitor but Caldera does? Weird. After pondering that I also notice that Caldera detected my Awe 64 as a Soundblaster 16... makes me raise an eyebrow, but it works. My opinion? Not bad.
BeOS 4.5
Finally BeOS. I am lucky enough to have supported hardware, a lot of my friends have been unable to install it due to lack of drivers. I pop the cd in, run partition magic to make a BeOS partition. After a reboot the install kicks in, asks me if I want some 3rd party demos and japanese support. After that the install begins, after returning from a 5 minute trip to the kitchen I see that the install is done! BeOS boots in some 10 seconds and presto.. I blink in amazement as the install didn't ask me any hardware questions. But lo and behold everything was detected except for my network card (networking isn't part of the hardware detection I guess) I go into prefrences and put in my card type (no irqs or io settings to mess with) and my ip adress info. All done.
Moral of the story? Windows 98 install is easy, Windows NT is fine unless you have ISA PNP cards, Mandrake 6.0 install is livable, Caldera 2.3 install is about on par with Windows 98. BeOS install crushes them all. Not bad for an operating system made by a little company heavily in debt and smirked at by open source advocates screaming "Since you won't open source you will die! Mwahahaha!" Anyway that's my two cents. The biggest thing to watch out for is to make sure you have compatible hardware. Check first, install second. Not the other way around. Pardon any spelling errors
Zagato-sama
No it isn't fair to compare an unshipped product with a shipping product.
But that is what they are doing, 95/98/NT don't really fare well against certain 'other' OS's
So they compare it against what w2k will have, and of course since it isn't released it doesn't have to be usable or bug free yet.
They will do whatever is to their advantage.
Each reboot requires at least 2 minutes, and there are *many* reboots required.
Not only is Win2K still in beta, but this guy was talking about Beta 2! When did that come out? Like last March? They've already released Beta 3, RC-1, and RC-2 by now. Also, his gripe about not being able to install Advanced Server over Professional seemed weak to me as well, Server is different in many many ways than Professional is, I'm not surprised it won't install over it, I wouldn't expect it to.
When in danger or in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout. --Robert A. Heinlein
I work for a company that uses all Dell machines for the client computers which all have Windows pre-installed. Random Dell computers, when Windows 98 would be re-installed, exhibited this missing .vxd file error. Like you I spent some time trying to fix the problem with limited success. Ultimately, using Windows 98 SE instead of the original Windows 98 solved this problem best. Buying a whole new version of Windows, rather than the upgrade, is not an option for everyone, however so this solution would be useless for those people.
Oh, I have also installed Mandrake and RedHat on the same boxes and using a local ftp server (100 BaseT network) the average install time is less than 20 minutes total (faster than the CD-ROM). Compared to the Windows installs of over 35 minutes. This is for a base installation with network card driver but not video or sound card drivers. Those take some amount of fussing in both OS's to get working properly on newer machines. Windows really likes to be rebooted after each driver is installed. Sure, you can do them all at once but the systems installed that way are usually more unstable. (When I install the OS, it is EXPECTED to be rock solid. Most complaints about Windows instability stem from poor installs, like from the factory, or hard drive corruption due to improper handling by users, like not shutting down properly.)
I forgot about changing network configurations after the install. That requires a reboot with Windows, too. Reboot reboot and reboot seems to be the rule with Windows. But you all knew that already. Why Windows requires a reboot for network services is beyond me because it is the only OS I have used that does.
It took me 20 minutes .... BP6 mb, dual 466 celeron, 9gig IBM HD, 40x CD-ROM ... detected everything except the UDMA66 controller. This is with Win2k RC1 Professional (Workstation).
MacOS has to be the easiest, mostly because I just told it what model I had and it installed (yes, I understand that this is possible because of the control that Apple has over the hardware). Windows 9x isn't bad at all, if the hardware is pretty standard, and the same goes for Red Hat or Debian. The main difference is that the 9x install has pretty graphics and makes all sorts of wild promises (Whatever you do will be easier/faster/more fun? I don't think so.).
On the other hand, you are correct that NT should be compared to Linux. It is a much better (gasp) example of what MS can do than Win9x, and fully expect 2000 to make some improvements over its predecessor (Heresy! Again!).
The important thing to remember is that most Win9x users don't have to install their OS; it comes preloaded on their PC. I agree that, by and large, Linux is usally easier to install from scratch these days. I would submit, however, that Linux -needs- to be much easier to install than Windows (of any flavor), if it is to become anything approaching a mainstream desktop OS.
Capturing server-space isn't hard when you have tech folks who can install just about any OS. Getting your average, 'i think I know enough about PC's' Joe to install it on his family PC is another matter, for just about any existing OS.
Gee, Linux is not better, that's the whole point. 95 out of 100 Microsoft customers will choose Windows.
The important thing to remember is that most Win9x users don't have to install their OS; it comes preloaded on their PC. I agree that, by and large, Linux is usally easier to install from scratch these days. I would submit, however, that Linux -needs- to be much easier to install than Windows (of any flavor), if it is to become anything approaching a mainstream desktop OS.
Capturing server-space isn't hard when you have tech folks who can install just about any OS. Getting your average, 'i think I know enough about PC's' Joe to install it on his family PC is another matter, for just about any existing OS.
Win2K is currently at "release candidate" stage if you get the MSDN subscription, or if your employer does. It's much improved over the beta, but of course is still bloated and ram-hungry. The point? Don't feel all warm and fuzzy just because the beta is lame, that's not the market will see. The "release candidate" is now faster to install than Win98, and had no problems with any of my hardware - except that ASUS don't have a driver out for their TNT2 products just yet. Linux still wins for a number of reasons, but for easy (i.e. without even thinking about it) USB and DVD in the home Win2K is a little more attractive right now. (And that CNN article on how tough Caldera was to install - that's positive as far as I'm concerned. He went out of his way to do stupid things, and STILL managed to end up with a working Linux system.)
Linux über alles. Who else is fed up with the constant barrage of Linux cheerleading in the media? The only way to judge the pros and cons of Linux is to install it and actually use it. No amount of cheerleading will cover the glaring deficiencies and general akwardness of Linux. I have a suggestion for Microsoft: Distribute Linux with every copy of Windows sold. There's no faster way to kill the hype.
Remember, most Windows installs require you to sit there and hit "OK" over and over. Given that, the duration sure does matter...
", Win98 took 40 minutes and failed to recognize his network cards. W2K took ... much longer. " Don't "good things come to those who wait."?? oh, nevermind.
Byte has an article this week, OS/2: The Little Engine That Could, that touches on OS ease of installation in OS/2 Is Hard To Install...Not!
My favorite part of this article talkes about the ease of installing OS/2 compared to installing Windows in that OS/2 does not require you to install DOS first to use the CD: Note that in no case do you have to install DOS and a CD driver first, like Microsoft requires for Windows 95, 98, and NT.
I've found this to be true when I've installed 95 on a new machine I built(I used the 95 partition to run Windows software under OS/2 using Win32-OS/2, now known as Odin). I've not installed 98 or NT so I don't know if the DOS requirement is valid for them.
Microsoft presents this illusion of effortless software. But if you stray from The One True Path, by even a micron, you're off the freshly paved, 8-lane highway, and on a dark, scary unpaved road, with lots of invisible monsters who would like nothing better than to eat you and your hard drive for dinner.
Well, seriously, guys, you CAN buy preinstalled Linux. I've got two boxen myself that came that way.
...) or VA Linux Systems. Then, when they upgrade, they'll be ready to handle it.
Could I do it myself? Yes. Did I want to go hunting for drivers when I'm way too busy already? No.
So let people buy their first box or two with a preinstall from Penguin Computing (love that ad
Will in Seattle
He did install Windows 98, along with W2K, and a small number of different Linux distros.
~ Kish
Everyone is entitled to their own opinion. I for one advocate iMacs to all those who don't know anything about computers, and don't *want* to know about computers. For everyone else, Linux is the way to go. Sure, there's BeOS and FreeBSD and others, but if they know that much they'll know whether it's the OS for them.
Linux is also the way to go in environments like corporations where the users don't know anything, and don't *need* to know anything because there are real computer people to support them. Of course, having a thin-client solution is an even better solution in such environments.
-Brent--
Much more likely is the theory that Microsoft bought Softway simply to bury the technology. Microsoft has a vested intrest in making sure that cross-platform development remains very difficult (to keep all the software, and thus all the users, on Windows). And certainly promoting the Unix API as _the_ cross-platform API is Microsoft's worst nightmare.
As to hiring talent for 64-bit Windows, why did Microsoft throw a hissy fit over Compaq's dropping NT-on-Alpha, and not simply hire the entire Compaq/Dec group to continue doing what they were already doing? Here you have a group of people already familiar with a 64-bit architecture _and_ the internals of NT, and in sudden need of a new job. It's possible that Microsoft was just being childish, but more likely they aren't looking for outside help.
As for Microsoft being immune from competition, I think the book "Megatrends" said it best- "There is no divine right of inherited markets any more than there is the divine right of kings". The book was talking about Railroads, but the lessons apply.
From his description of the installation, it seems that it WAS in fact Caldera 1.3. And yes, that's a real version.
--
Win dain a lotica, en vai tu ri silota
I installed Windows 2000 RC2 not Beta 2. Sorry - that was my error. I did not test RC3 because I do not have it. Waggoner-Edstrom is kind enough to get me a complimentary MSDN subscription each year so that I can have software to test. So I eventually get all the betas, RCs, etc. That's how I got RC2. But Microsoft refuses to put me on the list to receive betas/RCs in a timely manner, which is why I do not have Windows 2000 RC3 yet. (Actually, Wagg-Ed tells me there is no such list. Yet I know of many journalists who regularly get timely betas without having to request them each time. It doesn't take a genius to figure this one out.) -Nick Petreley
Installs of win95 and Linux are pretty much the same difficulty. The difficult part of a Linux install is NOT the acutal install.
Win95 installs are just the base OS, a Linux install is the OS, apps, email, internet connection, all the way up to apache, it is just too much at once.
I find that I get the same amount of frantic calls from friends no matter what they are installing.
I think Linux just puts a bit too much on the plate at once for most people to comfortably handle, win95 does things in many smaller steps
A typical Windows98 install is around 300 Megs I think. My typical Linux installs run around a gig or so. That's Mandrake 6.1, if you're curious. I think most Linux distros offer *more* software than MS does, primarily because it's all free anyway. The only things that I use that don't come with Mandrake are GAIM and StarOffice. Besides, most of MS's utilities are pretty stupid and/or worthless. Just look in the accesories section of a start menu.
My opinion is that one would have a much better time trying to write for obscure hardware under Linux than Windows.
Right on. For example, Linux is the only OS where you can use a homemade cable (or the TI-Graph Link) to FTP to a TI calculator.
--
Win dain a lotica, en vai tu ri silota
When a Windows system gets hosed for unspecified reasons, many customers call in to the company they purchased their computer from for support with reinstalling it. A customer rarely has to go through the reinstall without someone to hold their hand over the phone. The Windows reinstall (by the time you've installed whatever drivers, service packs, applications, etc) can take more than two hours. RedHat will install in 20 minutes max with all apps already installed. You just can't beat that!
On a system I made out of spare parts, I had the opportunity to try several different video cards with RH 5.2 and X.
My first was with a messed up ATI rage 2 card. It worked fine, but the video card was messed up, so i borrowed a AverMedia 3dLabs card.
Okay, so let me just install the libs for the 3dlabs card. Nope. couldn't find any. I even tried just plain vanilla VGA, and all it did was lock up my system time and time again. Gave up.
So then I tried(I think, there were so many video cards) a Diamond Stealth S220, but there was no easy way to install different video card libraries. I eventually gave up and reinstalled RH 5.2 again
I had an offbrand sound card that never was able to be detected by sndconfig. Works fine in windows, so I lived without sound in RH.
Then I bought this cheap-0 motherboard with onboard sound and video. Just to test things out, I installed '98 on it, and the sound and video worked perfectly.
Tried RH 5.2 on it, and was in for more fun. There were no drivers for it on the CD, so I FTPed some drivers from xfree86.org, and FTPed it back to the linux box. Followed the instructions to the T, and I had two choices in X. A) 320x200,B) totally messed up and unusable display. I gave up. That and the onboard sound didn't work either.
I then tried Caldera openlinux with an ATI Xpert 98 card. Tried it beforehand in '98 and I didn't even need to install the CD. Fortunately this worked in X to, after my friend played "guess the refresh rates" game.
Huh? Mandrake 6.0 came with legions of more stuff than Win98! All the compilers, editors, games, graphics programs, shells, scripting languages, admin utils, graphic programs, window managaers, Gnome, KDE, ftp utils, browsers, various servers,...and so on.
In terms of Stuff, Win98 is dwarfed by your typical Linux distribution!
Dana
The Win98 boot disk seems to support every SCSI card ever made EXCEPT mine (Advansys). For me to install Win98: 1. Partition & format. 2.Boot up Linux on zip disk. 3. Mount cdrom & hard disk. 4. Copy Win98 setup files to hard disk. 5. Reboot with DOS boot boot disk. 6. Do 'sys C:'. 7. Reboot and install Windows. Most people have no idea just how brain-dead Windows really is until they have to install it. By the way, I have booted 3 flavors of Linux and the BeOS demo CD from cdrom but the Win98 CD doesn't boot !
First off, we don't have an impartial judge here. So many grains of salt must be added to this article.
Second, Win98 takes about 28 minutes. Did 5 last week on different hardware, and it was about the same. Also the Win98 setup takes about 5 minutes of your time. Then you leave and come back in about half an hour and it's done.
Lastly the Linksys card he's mentions in the article. I only use linksys and have never had one not autodetect in the install. At worst it installs as an NE2000 adapter, which will work.
The install times are really driven by experience. I do Windows installs and am familiar with them, and other than waiting for ti to copy files from the CD it all goes quickly. I bet if I setup linux boxes (any flavor) all the time those would go quickly too.
I'm a computer science major at the University of Oregon. A while ago, Windows crapped out on my and lost about 3 megs of my windows/system directory. Not a lot that I could do except re-install. I chose to try Linux. (I was borrowing a Win98 machine for the time being, so I had a backup PC.) I liked it... the install was fairly easy. But NOWHERE was there any sort of documentation as to what the hell was going on. None.
Linux, unlike Windows, didn't seem to want to detect my old ISA SoundBlaster 16. Couldn't figure it out. And there just don't seem to be any places on the web for people who grew up under Dos 3.3 and then moved on from there to find clearly written instructions.
And I couldn't use my DVD drive to play DVDs. It worked for CDs, but had my roomate (running Solaris 7 at the moment) not been able to suggest a thing or two, I'd never have been able to figure out what was going on. Configuration and customization of the X terminal was a pain in the ass. That's one of the nice things about Windows... (And I run Win95a)... I know where things are. I find it to be highly intuitive for me, and relatively problem free. Linux didn't crash, but I really didn't use it as much. I didn't install bizarre shareware and crazy programs.
Overall, I'm still going to throw Linux on a second box, but the lack of support and lack of standardized applications (WordPerfect, a Netscape that doesn't crash every 10 minutes, etc) make me shudder at trying to use it as a primary machine.
One last note. Windows 95 ran faster on my Pentium 233 w/ 48M of RAM than Linux w/ Gnome did. Really.
I can sympathize with your troubles, but because it came pre-installed correctly doesn't really mean it will re-install correctly. I love Dell machine (I support about 100 at work), but I have come to realize that a LOT of the hardware Dell sells has been tweaked by Dell. They have video cards specially made for them (they are basically the same as another card the vendor makes, but with a special driver, or some other small change). I true test would be to install both OS's on a PC with very generic software (stuff that almost everyone has) and see how it works then. Also, from what I've read, Linux wasn't installed on the system that gave Win98 so much trouble, so there's no saying it wouldn't have had a lot of problems alse. In general, we all need to remember that our experiences aren't enough to generalize on. Everyone has had good or bad experiences with an OS, but that doesn't mean you can expand your experiences to the whole of the OS's userbase.
"Information wants to be expensive" - Stewart Brand, the same guy who said "Information wants to be free"
A complete MacOS 8.6 install takes around eight minutes on my old PowerbookG3/250mhz with a 24x CD. It's easy enough a marketing director can do it by himself, and harmless enough where all of your old programs and system enhancements run like a charm.
Hell, if you need to wipe the old OS off your Mac and re-install the System software due to data corruption, it will carefully copy all of your old settings, and let you decide what to do with 'em. And you -still- won't need to re-install your old applications (unless it's MS Office...)
System upgrades (like from 8.5 to 8.6) takes three minutes or so.
In extreme contrast, installing Solaris 2.7 is an all-afternoon prospect on an older Sun system with an 8x CD-ROM.
SoupIsGood Food
Hmmm. Well you know something, Microsoft is going to have to learn not to tout their unreleased OS as the greatest thing since sliced bread. You cannot have it both ways. Either it's a release candidate or it isn't. I doubt whether w2k will be bug free when it's finally released as well. History with Microsoft's new releases supports that. Microsoft's spin machine goes into overdrive whenever they want to garner mindshare. Slowly but surely you see all the promised features getting the ax. Why not concentrate on making an OS that is stable, reliable, secure and affordable? Oh, wait Linux already does that.
I've read endless press releases and articles trumpeting how wonderful w2k is, truth be told perhaps the crown jewel is nothing more than cubic zirconia. Wouldn't suprise me in the least.
I love how the "Windows 2000 install went without a hitch" comment gets buried.... i run rh6/win2k rc2 on my p2-366 laptop. yes, win2k took 35 mins to install. yes, mandrake took like 12 minutes. big deal. 'my install is quicker than yours' - :P
I installed both Win 98 and RedHat 5.2 on my Celeron 400 system. RedHat was simple. The only trouble that I had was with my video card. But, that was easy to get past. Win 98 however, was really difficult. In order to install the upgrade version, you have to have some MS OS on your system already. The Win 98 instructions say to create a Win 98 boot disk to start the install. To create it, in Win 98 click on Control Panel... WHAT! I worked around this problem by creating a DOS boot disk. Then, I had to verify that I owned a previous version of Windows. What a pain! Linux installations are not perfect, but I have found them to be much easier than ANY Windows installation.
Articles about how someone had an easier time installing one OS versus another are pretty pointless. Unless they're doing some massive multi-model, multi-OS, multi add-on test, it's just anecdotal evidence. And as with any anecdotal evidence, people will use it to support their favorite side of the arguement.
I've had really bad installs with many OSes. Windows has the real-world advantage that Windows is the first OS vendors write drivers for. It's also the one they maintain best. Often, you'll find your hardware driver on the Windows CD.
This does not make Windows a better OS, it means that vendors favor it because of marketshare, therefore feeding the marketshare.
Windows also does a decent job of maintaining backwards compatibility.
However, if your hardware isn't supported by Windows, chances are good your recourse is NIL. You could write your own drivers, but you won't find source as a starting point, or a community of Windows device driver developers waiting to give you help.
My opinion is that one would have a much better time trying to write for obscure hardware under Linux than Windows.
It also means, if my observation is correct, that Linux will catch up to Windows for device support, and will take that advantage away.
I really think it would be good to have separate choices for those experienced and inexperienced. Kinda like the "custom" install, but a little more straightforward. For instance, if the person installing Linux clicked on "New to Linux", the installer could automatically exclude the enabling of telnet. It would just take a custom script, right? That could easily be done with all the unfamiliar features of Linux.
Of course, there should also be an install choice for someone that knows what they're doing.
It seems we're following in someone else's footsteps with the basic install options. Let's put together an install that customizes *itself* to the user's ability.
Makes sense to me, IMHO.
...that there has always been, and will always be, a 'division of camps' as it were. I see it as a three-way street. On the one wing, you've got all the folks who have, for all intents and purposes, grown up with PCs, Windoze and Micro$platt. Many are not aware that there was ever a computer type OTHER than a PC with Windoze: One I met a while back mistook a Wyse terminal for a PC, and couldn't get the concept of 'terminal' through their skull no matter how I explained it. These are the people who will never be comfortable with anything other than M$ leading them around by the nose because, for the most part, they can maintain a state of blissful ignorance about the most basic of computer functions -- except that they'll know how to launch applications like nobody's business. The thing of it is -- THEY are the ones who made that choice. It's not up to the rest of us, right or wrong, to make any judgment against them for doing so. They didn't CHOOSE to know any more about computers than they do because what they have is what they're comfortable with. Get used to it. Second, you have the folks who are undecided. These are people who might have actually done some do-it-yourselfing with computers along the lines of a disk drive or expansion card, but never took it any farther than basic 'Plug-and-Pray' gear. They might also have experienced more crashes than they're comfortable with, and may be looking for an alternative. They WON'T CARE if said alternative has been dumbed down a bit, installation-wise, as long as it's as simple, or simpler than, Windoze. Again: Their choice! Rather than judge them for it, let's oblige them. It'll help Linux (or FreeBSD, or NetBSD, or whatever) to sell. If they want to learn more, point them in the right direction. They'll follow if they're truly interested. The third group: Well, I think we all know who we are. ;-) After all, you're reading this now, yes? All I will say for the lot of us is practice a little tolerance. If you treat someone on branch 1 or 2 like an idiot (even if they really are one!), they'll never respond to anything you try to teach no matter how much the lesson might benefit them. If they want to know how to do something, explain to them what's involved in doing that something. If they then choose not to pursue it, that's their choice. Help those who are curious to understand. Don't judge them if they don't want to.
It is amazing how Linux advocates start out by saying that Windows users are losers and they do not know anything about computers...that is why they can't install Linux. Then in the same breath, you say that you had trouble installing Windows??? Can you say hypocrite? I like Linux, but it doesn't mean that everything else is garbage. Like it or not, there is a lot Linux can learn from Windows and vice versa.
....sick of these stories yet, here's mine.
+&x
Petreley is not exactly unbiased. And he has proably installed Linux more times than the average person has booted up a computer. Not to mention that Win 2k is still in Beta.
The article is also sorely lacking in details. How automatic was the Linux installation process? What devices did Win 2k detect automatically but Linux didn't? A slow but automatic installation is probably much better for an average user than a fast install that requires lots of manual intervention and configuration.
First of all, why do I need recovery during an install? It only takes 15 minutes to install Linux, how likely is it that the power will fail in that window? And even if it did, I could do full re-install (maybe even twice more) before the Window98 install finished once. Useless feature. Second, you do NOT get "a lot more stuff" with Win98. The Linux install gives you gcc, devel libs, games, browsers, databases, servers (web, ftp, etc). A Linux install CD is packed with software. A Windows install CD is packed with demos of other "Fine Microsoft Products".
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Is it really fair to compare the shipping version of one product with an unreleased beta version of another?
Isn't ease of installation more important that raw installation time? I mean, you only install an OS relatively rarely... Who really cares how long it takes, just make it simple...
DrLunch.com The site that tells you what's for lunch!
Having recently installed W2k, I can tell you that he does not exaggerate. I could have installed SuSe, every package, nine or ten times over in the span I waited for Win2k to tell me it couldn't complete the install. Instead, I drank two pots of coffee, recompiled my Linux kernel five times, wrote 1,000 lines of code, read the first four chapters of 'Linux Device Drivers', built a new box from spare parts, installed RH 5.2 on it, configured it, re-timed my Camaro, drove to the store for smokes, bled the brakes on said Camaro, washed my hands of the grease, checked my phone lines for noise, played a few games of Quake, ate lunch, ate dinner, watched Alien 3 on video, did some light housekeeping, and refreshed /. two hundred times. The sick part? I was installing it on a PIII from a local drive!
.sig: Now legally binding!
I don't believe I've seen an article in the mainstream media about how easy it is to use GNU/Linux with a desktop environment (say, GNOME), a window manager (say, Window Maker under X11), etc., however. They always bitch about the installs. AFAIK, Windows has always had DOS mode. The fact that GNU/Linux also allows for a GUI or a CLI (or even both) is why it could be good for both Joe Public and Joe Linux (and everyone in between). All they ever talk about is the installs, though. I want to see how your average media guy does at just playing around in a preinstall preconfigured Linux environment (that was set up competently, mind you).
~ Kish
One day just for kicks I decided to look at one of the earlier distro's out there. I got rid of my recent slackware system and decided to look at debian 0.92 beta (I think, I know it was a pre 1 beta) and installed it. Now this was before lilo so you had to use a boot disk to get into your linux system. The mouse didn't work right in X windows, the communications program (some real arcane thing) didn't work right either. However even this early experience (using kernel 0.95.11p or something in the boot disk) was less bumpy than some computer systems I have had the unfortunate ability to use?
Question for anyone who knows just for kicks is it possible to upgrade from that kind of release to the current unstable release of debian without repartitioning or reinstalling?
Slashdot social engineering at it's finest
More seriously, both of these articles should be classified under "FUD", or atleast severely-misguided, because they don't take into account the intelligence/knowledge of the user. Let me give you an example - "I don't know how to fly an airplane, it's too hard, therefore all airplanes suck. But because I know how to drive a car, all cars are better than all airplanes." Anybody else see the flaw in that statement?
--
Isn't it ironic that if W2K does good in a benchmark it's "beta vapourware!" and shouldn't even be mentioned, yet when some lowly journalist has a slow time installing it that's fair game? Alas, all is fair in love and war I suppose.
Having said that, it does install extremely slowly and you should set aside a large block of time. It should be said that it is a beta. We have no idea what sort of extra debugging checks it is doing, and the vast majority of the time is in `setting up components' and `hardware detection', both of which take an astronomical amount of time.
Once it is installed it is absolutely stunning. I haven't had a single problem whatsoever with RC1 and it sits chugging running some admittingly low volume servers 24/7.
Are we talking installing the OS, or the OS and a full suite of applications? Either way you're build scripts must be horrible. Experience will tell you what changes need a reboot and what all you can get away with installing before you need to reboot.
The only win98 install hang i've seen recently was due to a bad DIMM.
(Just to be fair, what hardware is in those computer's you're setting up?)
It's fortunate for Petreley that he was using 3c905b's and an LNE100TX, probably two of the most ubiquitous NICs around. These have had support for literally years in the kernel, and have worked fine. However this shouldn't be misread; Linux still has a long way to go when it comes to hardware support. The fact is that many (a decreasing number, but still many) hardware makers by default only support Windows. So I guess what I'm saying is keep on evangelizing to whatever hardware vendors you use to support Linux and don't be lulled into complacency. It's a sign of progress when Linux can install more smoothly than Windows (one which I would've laughed at if you'd told me a year ago), but we still have a long road ahead of us.
I think there is a world market for maybe five personal web logs.
Nick Petrely continues to be Pro-Linux to the point that he deliberately misrepresents the facts. For the open-minded these are: 1/ Softway INTENDED to get bought out. MS have purchased a UNIX-95 *BRANDED* subsystem for NT. This means that...wait for it... NT *IS* UNIX. Petrely fails to mention (cant think why) that Linux is (a) *NOT* UNIX and (b) the LSB 'effort' has failed to produce anything. Heck, NT *IS* UNIX, Linux is just, err, messing around. 2/ W2K is rock solid as a vast number of major installations are discovering. For them, there is no reason to change. Now that W2K *IS* UNIX, there is even less reason to change. If Linux was so good, it would get Branded as well. But then again... Remember the 2 rules of a Linux article: a) If its rabidly biases and Pro-Linux, its must be factual and the author is obviously 'cool' b) If its not rabidly Pro-Linux, its FUD and the author is paid by M$. Petrely needs to get back to objectivity and lose hit hate. And the LSB? Failed effort over how long is it...mutter... 18 months! All those developers..all those eyes...quality of Open Source....yeah, right....
HardWare: Abit bh6, Celeron 366 @ 550, 128 RAM, ISA sb16, Realtek 8139 nic
.... *CRUNCH*)
BeOS 4.0 (haven't upgraded yet)
Ok, I'll get it out of the way: BeOS is great! My machine instaled & rebooted in about 6 minutes. It didn't detect Sound, but I could set it up easily (I lost most of the time working out that I didn't need to worry about configuring i/o or irqs). There was, at the time, no NIC driver for my card....
Other points: Very few options to choose from: You either instaled it clean or full of demos and other extras. I *love* the very simple app they use to create partitions. And the BeOS GUI is very good, very *easy*.
win 98 SE:
It took me 50 minutes to install and reboot! It keeps on insisting that my 3.5 floppy drive is an old 5.125 floppy drive. I have to remove & reinstall it on the device manager various times before it finally got the ideia... Otherwise everything worked first time, even TNT card (remember this was the SE version of 98).
NT 4:
Ok, less time to reboot than 98 (about 20 minutes), but didn't video, sound or network cards. I installed the drivers from floppys and they worked first time (first time this was this easy for me).
2000:
It asks me the usual (windows) questions and then proceeds to do everything quietly. Takes about an hour on my system.
Now, Win 200 has a cute way of solving install problems: It logs every action it makes, before it makes it, so it knows it must bypass it if it crashes and restarts the install.
Well... It don't work too well. I watched open-mouthed as my pc instaled almost to the end, crashed, self rebooted, restarted the install, didn't ask any questions and re-installed everything... only to crash and repeat at the very same spot.
It did this 5 times before I took pity on it and stopped it.
Suse 6.1
Love the isntall. It's (IMHO!) the best isntall around for us middle-of-the-road folks, who know quite a bit about pc's, but can't (or can't be bothered to) begin to unravell the library dependencies in Linux. It's a text-mode app, so no fancy tetris game while-u-wait, but it does the job well. It boots into graphic mode into Suse's own X config app for Videocard & monitor defenition, which works very well. It didn't detect my sb16 or my nic, had to do it by hand.
Anyway, in the M$ world I *still* prefer NT4 (sp5). BeOS is (don't flame please, this *my* personal opinion only) the better OS of the lot. It was the fastest, easiest to setup, and rock-stable. It has litle or no software, but so did Linux 4 years ago (In fact that's what M$serfs criticised about Linux at the time, right....).
Suse is a very good instalation, prefered it to RH 5.2 which was the latest I have tried so far.
Maybe 6.0...
No, I can't spell!
-"Run to that wall until I tell you to stop"
(tagadum,tagadum,tagadum
-"stop...."
> BSD marketshare is in an ongoing decline
You would of course, have a reference for that relating to real data??? Or did you just make it up!
... in any case, so what if FreeBSD is trademarked? Given that (if I understand things correctly) all the code is under either the BSD license or the GPL what's to stop me creating UserBSD(*) - a more user friendly BSD variant???
Or do you have a reference as to how they intend to ignore the BSD license *and* the GPL???
... failing all else, if they do manage to block use of FreeBSD code what are they planning to do about NetBSD, OpenBSD and Linux (which IIRC does include some BSD code!) - also, how are they going to prevent someone merely creating a userfriendly NetBSD varient (which wouldn't take much work in porting!)???
Are you in fact just a troll???
* - I will admit that I think the name UserBSD is a really bad one, however if anyone actually wants to use it - feel free!
PS: I'm actually a Linux user, however I feel better about the world knowing the *BSDs are out there too!
AC writes:
Lawyers and judges have become too powerful. Too many disputes are handed over to the lawyers when common sense would work in the interest of all concerned parties. The courts are becoming a dictatorship. In the US, citizens vote on propositions and legislatures pass laws, only to have some unelected judge void the law on improbable grounds not found in constitutional jurisprudence.
Early this year when I put together a K6-2 350 from scratch to replace my good old P133 I decided to install both Linux and Windows NT 4. NT was the environment I was familiar with and planned to use the most and Linux was something I only had little experience from earlier but decided I wanted to learn.
:)
/. password)
When I tried to install NT, I couldn't get the drivers for my STB Velocity 4400 to work properly, I was constantly forced back to 640x480x16. I tried everything. Using the drivers from the CD, downloading the latest drivers, update the GFX-card bios, update the mainboard bios, with and without all the released NT service packs, but NOTHING worked! I'm an experienced windows user and I have installed NT on many machines with wierd hardware and had to use a number of tricks to get it to work, but I really failed on this one.
I decided to go for Windows'98 instead. That didn't work either, no matter what tricks I used.
After two days of frustration I decided to wait with the Windows install (thought that maybe some new drivers would be released later on) and start with the Linux install instead, in my case a homemade Mandrake 5.3 CD I had downloaded from their homepage.
That wasn't completely without trouble either since I wasn't so used to install Linux (what packages do I need?, how do I use disc druid? What frequencies does my monitor support? etc), but I had a two page tutorial in a magazine that helped me through. When I was prompted to select graphics card I nearly gave up since my new card wasn't listed. Out of desperation I selected another card from STB that seemed to be quite close (also based on the TNT chipset)...
AND IT WORKED!!! About an hour after having started to install Linux (for the second time in my life, the first was so long ago that I hardly remembered anything) it was up and running with X-Windows and KDE!
That's actually what made me switch to Linux, Windows refused to work properly on my machine. I have later been told that it has something to do with AGP-cards and Socket 7 mainboards, but why on earth didn't the providers own (updated) drivers work on a fairly standard machine, when an unofficial driver not even meant for my card takes care of it without a problem???
I did try to install both Windows'98 and NT once more later on since I prefered Developer Studio to any other IDE I could find on Linux (however, I don't really need it anymore since KDevelop is nice and developing quickly even if it still has some catching up to do) and do like to play games now and then, but I didn't succeed then either.
Now I don't bother anymore, I'm fully accustomed to Linux...
However, to be fare I have to say that I've never experienced anything like that either before or after with Windows installation and neither have my friends (who still use it and refuse to touch Linux, maybe I can persuade them to try WinLinux later on).
However, something I can't take anymore is all those reboots the Windows install does, it's just so frustrating....
/Tord
(who is sitting on a computer far, far from home without his
The masochism is only in your own mind and perhaps in the minds of others that prefer to spread FUD when no Windows OS is really insulated from the true nature of the PC Kludge Clone: Random Collection of spare parts.
Some of us even like real PnP, or other systems actually designed with ease in mind rather than that aspect being unnaturally bolted on as an after thought.
I don't see how faster install times = easier installs.
After all, I could write a program to take a disk image and write it to disk, which, undoubtedly would be much faster, but has nothing to do with the simplicity of the install, which was, after all, the point.
-Erik-
Device drivers is a completely different issue than ease of install. If you can't figure out how to install an OS on your PC, maybe you shouldn't be using it.
"Ease of installation" means "How easy is it to load the operating system, and get it to work with my hardware?" Obviously any idiot can insert the CD and start the installation process. In any case, your and my definition of 'install' is irrelevent if we're talking about average users installing Linux. Average users expect their computer to "just work" after installation. Heck, so do I! And "just work" means having the drivers for their hardware.
And on the subject, what is with this masochism in the Linux community? Why are some people seemingly afraid of easy and simple installation? Personally, manually editing setup files and chasing down drivers got old a long time ago. I see no reason why any user no matter how advanced wouldn't want easy installation.
First, I really don't understand why folks bother comparing Linux with Windows 9x in any respect. Windows 98 is a EOLed product that has been comprismised to hell for backwards compatiblity and supposedly lower overhead, and furthermore has no concept of security whatsoever, and that's *by design*.
Really, if you want to take on Microsoft, and have any crediblity, at least take on their better OS - NT 4 or Win2000 (and even then wait and see on 2000). Just forget what shipped on your mom's e-machine and look at what products have a comparible feature set.
Second, for server machines (and face it, that's Linux's strength), the ease of running the installer is really a non-issue. One supposedly has somewhat knowledgable people doing this. The critical ease-of-use factor here is configurablity : How easy is it to set up file and print sharing? How easy is it to get a web server up and running? I don't think that anyone would argue that Linux is better than WinNT in this regard. (Although, you could argue that Linux is better when supporting non-standard or secure configurations.)
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
Tens of millions of consumers are not going to throw away their $1500+ boxes just so they can get a hassle free Windows2000 system. No, they are going to try to install.
In the next 6-9 months, tens of millions of users are going to be confronted with an interesting upgrade dilemma: Linux or Windows2000? I would have to say that Linux is a LOT easier to install.
Actually since that is the case on the apple platform. How well does any of the Linux versions install on the platform?
Last year, a friend of mine across the hall tried to install BeOS. The installation was very smooth, or so he says (I never saw it get put on), but he showed me the end result. His computer was running in monochrome, and his network card couldn't be detected. He tried everything, but gave up after about 2 days.
BeOS may be able to install very quickly and painlessly, but Be needs to work on getting their drivers updated, or releasing more drivers.
Is all you need to Install FreeBSD.
Now *THAT* is simple.
(and it used to be MUCH eaiser...it used to be 1 floppy and AOL used to send me the floppies once or 2X a month!)
So how long did the W2k install actually take?
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Uh how do you get more stuff with the install of Win98 than a typical unix install? When I am done with a FreeBSD install (in about 20 mins) not only do I have a full BSD style system with get this, an okay browser (Netscape), KDE, tons of tools and can you believe this, an actual compiler?!@# How insane!@#$ Oh and uh a typical linux install is the same.
F /...
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Openstep/NeXTSTEP/Solaris/FreeBSD/Linux/ultrix/OS
--- I do not moderate.
I just did an install of NT server, or at least tried, until I reached a block that stopped me in my tracks. The thing is, it really struct me how NT is about the same as Linux to install, the only thing is it recognizes more hardware and is more likely to get going with a dodgy setup.
But what occurred to me is how these myths just get going, we all know how easy Macs are to use, which is crap, shells are a matter of preference these days, how Windows is ugly (well maybe), but the latest w2K desktops are quite slick, and the big one of how Linux is hard to install, well once it was, I bet Linus had a hard time on his first install, but hey, things have changed.
Once these things get going they continue despite any facts that complicate the issue, maybe M$ has a myth propagation department.....
It is amusing to see the comments spewing fourth about Microsoft's aquisition of Softway Systems.
Interix never claimed to offer Linux/*nix BINARY compatiability. That is just plain silly. When Softway launched the campaign to get Linux people, they tried to make Interix more 'linux friendly' by porting over more apps and utilities that exist for linux today. That is all. Remember back when slashdot pointed to a story about Interix triyng to get more 'linux friendly'? The zealots all ASSUMED that meant Interix was trying to put out a way to run linux binaries in emulation mode. If some of these people here would bother to READ the article before commenting on it, they would have noticed that Softway was simply porting over more utilities.
What Interix provided was a true posix system to _compile_ source code into a binary that will work under the INTERIX subsystem of NT. What Mr. Petreley is suggesting simply won't happen. The only reason I can see for him suggesting that MS/Softway will provide a way to run linux binaries to to rile up the linux community in order to get more hits to linuxworld. It seems that this has succeeded if his story is now posted on slashdot.
Fear not, the closest thing that MS could do (if they integrate Interix) is providing a way to compile *nix source code under the Interix (or whatever it will be called) subsystem. And that is a good thing for both NT users and Linux users.
Please keep in mind that the way NT is set up is that the microkernel? provides the ability to have seperate entities (win32/os2/posix(interix)) that can talk to eachother.
Posix/Interix subsystem != win32. Try to remember that.
The other box is a 1-year old Dell that SHIPPED with Windows 98. I wiped the disk and tried reinstalling Windows 98, from the Dell-supplied CD. With 3 minutes left in the install (they have a little timer), I got an error message about a broken or missing vxd file. Reformatted the disk again -- same thing. I have a real problem. Dell support was useless. ("Try starting the installation from the floppy instead of booting from the Windows 98 CD". I tried, just to be safe, and of course that failed.) Searched the web and found a 19-step procedure for fixing this file. The procedure takes about an hour to go through. Made a slight error after that, and had to start from scratch (more reformatting). Got it right the next time. Installed a NIC which caused the machine to lock up solid when booting. Removing the NIC (in safe mode, from the control panel) and physically removing the card didn't fix the problem. Another reformat and reinstall (along with the 19-step 1-hour procedure to avoid the vxd problem). Finally get through it all, and the machine is flaky -- freezes within five minutes.
It's hard to imagine a simpler installation scenario -- standard Dell machine with no extra hardware; blank disk; standard Windows 98 installation. After banging my head against this wall for three days I still have a useless PC.
Meanwhile, I'm quite new to Linux, and got through the RH 6.0 install in about 15 minutes on another machine, on my first attempt.
Now I have to say that the Windows install had prettier graphics flashing while the installation "proceeded", but I don't see that as contributing to simplicity.
I've installed various systems over the years: DOS, Win 3.11, Win95, WinNT, Win98, Linux (Debian, Red Hat), Solaris x86, FreeBSD, OpenBSD.
:) but of course not as much cool stuff. Windows installs are simply easier than any *nix install for a novice, because of 1) autodetecting, 2) autodefaulting.
/var file system to be, etc.
What I would say is that DOS was the easiest
Microsoft worked their butt off to make sure people had stickers 'Win95 ready' or whatever they said on the front of their computers, which meant that Windows install would be able to correctly detect and use all the hardward within. Which usually meant evil plug-and-pray hardware, or better yet, windows-only hardware (software needed, like winmodems). Basically any piece of hardware out there is usable by Windows because the maker of that piece of hardware wants to be able to sell it. That's something we have to deal with, that hey, X windows configuration is something we have to look at if we want to improve (by far the hardest part of setting up Linux, FreeBSD, or Solaris x86 was configuring my video card).
By autodefaulting, I mean that Windows will by default just be ready to take up the entire partition and install itself, whereas most current *nix distributions make you pick how big you want your
Anyway...
burn the computers. go back to the abacus.