Seriously. I have a fair bit of experience with computers, though mainly of the software side (C, PHP, Java, etc). I've installed Windows three or four times, and only once had a problem (sound output, that was fixed by taking it to the store.) You'd think I would be able to install Linux, right? I have tried
. Linux Mandrake (retail version 7.2) . Linux Mandrake 8 . Debian . Slackware . OpenBSD . FreeBSD
all to no avail, even after installing/reinstalling Mandrake itself about five times.
I got help from the guy who set up AARNET and basically brought the Internet to Australia. That was the closest my machine got to running Linux (Slackware in this case.) Even with his help the graphics were buggy and sound output was non-existant.
I took my computer to a store to get Debian installed -- he got me a prompt but no X server, and definately no sound. And that was after a day of ringing around his Linux friends for extra information.
I have pretty average hardware, so I don't know where the problem lies. PII 333, 32mb RAM, 40GB HD.
So basically, what's stopping me is frustration. It's the fact that I can get my work done on Win98 without too many hassles. Yes, it crashes every now and again but I don't have to worry about monitor issues, about not being able to use a modem (a REAL modem, not a winmodem), or not being about to hear sound.
Because everything I want is available on Windows (Photoshop Lite, Freenet, gcc, python, lisp, ocaml, haskell, etc...) and it works very, very easily.
I want to use applications. I don't want to grok conf files to be able to get an image on my monitor.
Sorry if that was heated, but thinking about all the hours I lost trying to get Linux working gets me as discursive as some of the Linux evangelists:)
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has learned to love silicon ;)
Seriously. I have a fair bit of experience with computers, though mainly of the software side (C, PHP, Java, etc). I've installed Windows three or four times, and only once had a problem (sound output, that was fixed by taking it to the store.) You'd think I would be able to install Linux, right? I have tried
:)
. Linux Mandrake (retail version 7.2)
. Linux Mandrake 8
. Debian
. Slackware
. OpenBSD
. FreeBSD
all to no avail, even after installing/reinstalling Mandrake itself about five times.
I got help from the guy who set up AARNET and basically brought the Internet to Australia. That was the closest my machine got to running Linux (Slackware in this case.) Even with his help the graphics were buggy and sound output was non-existant.
I took my computer to a store to get Debian installed -- he got me a prompt but no X server, and definately no sound. And that was after a day of ringing around his Linux friends for extra information.
I have pretty average hardware, so I don't know where the problem lies. PII 333, 32mb RAM, 40GB HD.
So basically, what's stopping me is frustration. It's the fact that I can get my work done on Win98 without too many hassles. Yes, it crashes every now and again but I don't have to worry about monitor issues, about not being able to use a modem (a REAL modem, not a winmodem), or not being about to hear sound.
Because everything I want is available on Windows (Photoshop Lite, Freenet, gcc, python, lisp, ocaml, haskell, etc...) and it works very, very easily.
I want to use applications. I don't want to grok conf files to be able to get an image on my monitor.
Sorry if that was heated, but thinking about all the hours I lost trying to get Linux working gets me as discursive as some of the Linux evangelists