I just got done trying out Knoppix for the first time tonight, and I just had to say, Beautiful! Bravo to the Knoppix and KDE people, and whoever had a hand in developing this stuff! I knew that there were good, user-friendly versions of Linux out there; I had just not stumbled across any before. I am very impressed:) No nightmares, no configuration whatsoever - it just works. This has got to be the most user-friendly installation I've ever seen. Kudos.
In defense of the other distros, I have had very little Linux exposure; if yours is user-friendly, I haven't seen it yet.
MS has, at this point, about a dozen current new versions of Windows. There are versions for desktops, servers, the Enterprise, homes, entertainment centers, remote displays, tablets, PDAs, cellphones,even cars. In the Linux world, we have dozens of distros, probably a hundred. And each of these distros wants to distinguish themselves, to carve out their own little niche for growth. The best way to do this is to specialize, like MS has done. There is some of that - Red Hat positions itself as being an enterprise distro, Mandrake is supposed to be friendlier, Knoppix touts its one-disc design, another for embedded systems. Diversity among distros does not preclude Linux's flexibility! If you want iron security for a server, you could have a distro with only a CLI. The only distro I know whose goal is home-friendliness is Lindows, and they achieve this by copying MS.
Lets not kid ourselves, it's not about philosophical differences, its about opportunity for growth, specifically in the home environment.
To start off, I am a developer/consultant with a CS background, so I do have the tech cred. But I've always used MS because I've worked for MS shops. My box at home is MS, too, not because I care what I use, but it lets me do my work there, too, and I want the friendliest machine I can get for my non-tech wife (we won't mention Apple). I've installed Red Hat a few times in the past - in '98 with 5.2, and again in '00. I thought the install was OK except for getting X to run, which I failed to do. I want to keep up my tech skills, and I kept hearing good things about Linux's progress and wanted to check it out again. I was really looking forward to using a state-of-the-art OS.
So I downloaded the latest Debian ISO today - a network install. I wanted to install Lilo on the drive's MBR and use my BIOS to pick a drive to boot up. It took me half a dozen tries to install it before I got a bootable install. I was asked a whole lot of questions - my favorites were where there was no information to explain the various choices available to help me make a choice. I made four different attempts to get Lilo to boot, each time choosing different options, and all failing. My fifth time, the installation wrote over my Win2000 MBR on another drive (which I had to repair later), so I opened up my case and pulled out my XP drive and 2K drive to prevent any more disasters (should have done this to start with). One final time running the installation got me a bootable system!
Well, it booted to a prompt, so I had to rummage around and find X, but X wouldn't run. So I rebooted the machine, and this time it tried to run X automatically, failed, and told me my configurations were bad and it was going to give me a chance to repair them. So it started X up, but my PS/2 mouse wouldn't work, so I had the unpleasant experience of trying to run X without a mouse (I hate to say it, but even Win3.1 had much better no-mouse support than what I saw today). I futzed with the popup menus, but then the whole GUI locked up and I had to turn the power off and reboot. Same thing happened again - I got to futzing with the menus in X, and this time I spent a little while exploring the various options, but couldn't find out how to get my mouse to work or the problem X had when booting up. Again my machine locked up solid, so I turned it off.
When the power was off, I decided to put my XP and 2K drives back into my case. When I started it back up, I pointed the BIOS to the Linux drive to boot up. I think this confused my kernel, because although the BIOS started up Lilo and Lilo started up Linux, I got a kernel panic error. I rebooted, and again I got the kernel panic error. I'll bet if I again took out the two Windows drives, Linux would boot, but I just threw my hands up in disgust. Forget it. I'm downloading Mandrake ISOs and hoping for much better luck. I'm not afraid at all of technical challenges, but installing a freaking OS should not be this much work. What I saw today is just not ready for prime time.
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I just got done trying out Knoppix for the first time tonight, and I just had to say, Beautiful! Bravo to the Knoppix and KDE people, and whoever had a hand in developing this stuff! I knew that there were good, user-friendly versions of Linux out there; I had just not stumbled across any before. I am very impressed :) No nightmares, no configuration whatsoever - it just works. This has got to be the most user-friendly installation I've ever seen. Kudos.
In defense of the other distros, I have had very little Linux exposure; if yours is user-friendly, I haven't seen it yet.
I understand your argument, but I disagree.
MS has, at this point, about a dozen current new versions of Windows. There are versions for desktops, servers, the Enterprise, homes, entertainment centers, remote displays, tablets, PDAs, cellphones,even cars. In the Linux world, we have dozens of distros, probably a hundred. And each of these distros wants to distinguish themselves, to carve out their own little niche for growth. The best way to do this is to specialize, like MS has done. There is some of that - Red Hat positions itself as being an enterprise distro, Mandrake is supposed to be friendlier, Knoppix touts its one-disc design, another for embedded systems. Diversity among distros does not preclude Linux's flexibility! If you want iron security for a server, you could have a distro with only a CLI. The only distro I know whose goal is home-friendliness is Lindows, and they achieve this by copying MS.
Lets not kid ourselves, it's not about philosophical differences, its about opportunity for growth, specifically in the home environment.
To start off, I am a developer/consultant with a CS background, so I do have the tech cred. But I've always used MS because I've worked for MS shops. My box at home is MS, too, not because I care what I use, but it lets me do my work there, too, and I want the friendliest machine I can get for my non-tech wife (we won't mention Apple). I've installed Red Hat a few times in the past - in '98 with 5.2, and again in '00. I thought the install was OK except for getting X to run, which I failed to do. I want to keep up my tech skills, and I kept hearing good things about Linux's progress and wanted to check it out again. I was really looking forward to using a state-of-the-art OS.
So I downloaded the latest Debian ISO today - a network install. I wanted to install Lilo on the drive's MBR and use my BIOS to pick a drive to boot up. It took me half a dozen tries to install it before I got a bootable install. I was asked a whole lot of questions - my favorites were where there was no information to explain the various choices available to help me make a choice. I made four different attempts to get Lilo to boot, each time choosing different options, and all failing. My fifth time, the installation wrote over my Win2000 MBR on another drive (which I had to repair later), so I opened up my case and pulled out my XP drive and 2K drive to prevent any more disasters (should have done this to start with). One final time running the installation got me a bootable system!
Well, it booted to a prompt, so I had to rummage around and find X, but X wouldn't run. So I rebooted the machine, and this time it tried to run X automatically, failed, and told me my configurations were bad and it was going to give me a chance to repair them. So it started X up, but my PS/2 mouse wouldn't work, so I had the unpleasant experience of trying to run X without a mouse (I hate to say it, but even Win3.1 had much better no-mouse support than what I saw today). I futzed with the popup menus, but then the whole GUI locked up and I had to turn the power off and reboot. Same thing happened again - I got to futzing with the menus in X, and this time I spent a little while exploring the various options, but couldn't find out how to get my mouse to work or the problem X had when booting up. Again my machine locked up solid, so I turned it off.
When the power was off, I decided to put my XP and 2K drives back into my case. When I started it back up, I pointed the BIOS to the Linux drive to boot up. I think this confused my kernel, because although the BIOS started up Lilo and Lilo started up Linux, I got a kernel panic error. I rebooted, and again I got the kernel panic error. I'll bet if I again took out the two Windows drives, Linux would boot, but I just threw my hands up in disgust. Forget it. I'm downloading Mandrake ISOs and hoping for much better luck. I'm not afraid at all of technical challenges, but installing a freaking OS should not be this much work. What I saw today is just not ready for prime time.