After coming here for months, I wanted to try Linux. I am very experienced with Windows and really have had little to no issues, but I wouildn't call myself a Fanboy. The wife is a die hard Apple person, so over the years I've gotten pretty good about working that side of a fence. I like both OS's equally well, as MS does some things better, and Apple does other better.
While the pain and the triumphs of my recent Linux conversion are all fresh, let me give you a newbie's POV.
I went with Ubuntu, as it seemed to be the easiest to start with (for now, let's not argue this issue). Since I had an old laptop, I formatted Windows off and did a total, clean install of Ubuntu. Only 2 things didn't work out of the box, screen resolution and wifi. It took a week to get the screen resolution fixed, and I had a ton of help on all the different forums and wiki's. It took another week to get the wifi to work, with the same support. Maybe my expectations weren't very high, but other than those 2 major issues, I thought it was a pretty good transition. I haven't tried DVD, since this old brick probably wouldn't do a very good job anyway. I ripped some CD's the other night just to see of it would, and it did it with no problem. I did have to install Xfce to make this all usable, Gnome was just too hungry for my laptop. And you really wanna get a feel for how painful this can be to some people, go to the Ubuntu Absolute beginner's forum. They are trying, and they are learning, but you get a good feel for how much people struggle in the beginning. Too many experienced Linux users take some of the basic commands for granted.
Now to try this on my much newer, more powerful dekstop. I ran the Live CD for the beta coming out, almost everything worked great. With my new found 2 week old knowledge I was able to reconfigure and tweek those things that needed it. When Dapper releases gold on June 1st, it will be installed on my second drive for dual booting. We'll see what happens after that.
Conclusion, it is somewhat of a learning curve, but not insurmountable. It was a lot more than going from XP to OS X, which to me were very similar in how the UI works. In Linux, there were small things that shouldn't have been so hard. As far as the difference in installing XP drivers and installing what I needed to get hardware working in Linux, it was a huge difference. Windows (and OS X) installs take time, but are very easy. For the new person, getting simple things going can be frustrating and appear complex.
I like Linux and will continue to learn. I look forward to my dual boot system. I'm sure eventually I'll ween off Windows entirely. As far as Linux being ready for Joe User, it's not quite there yet, but getting close.
Same here, just loaded Ubuntu last week. I finally got the console to fit the screen Saturday. It was no easy task. Since the machine is so old, I also needed to run Xfce, again, almost a week to get working. I was lucky in the fact that I had on old laptop that I could format and install Linux alone. I screwed up a few times and had to reinstall. It had W2K installed before and I hated it. No way this old machine could use XP. I'm learning and will continue to do so, if for nothing else to see if this really is eventually better than OS X or Windows. So far, I like that it's faster and has given new life to the old laptop. My cheapo Linksys B model wireless card should be here any day, and I'm bracing myself for the install. For Linux to gain any widespread use, it has a ways to go. I like playing with it and learning, but I wouldn't be doing this on my main machine. Right now it's not for most people. I know very few people that go beyond internet, e-mail, and some very basic office apps. All of which Ubuntu easily handles out of the box, if your machine and everything in it works correctly (which it probably won't). I would probably switch my desktop over also, but I have a ton of software that I do use, and I'm not ready at this point to spend weeks trying to get it to run under Linux. Why work harder to get the same thing? Maybe I'm the only person on the planet that's had very few Windows issues. I'm no fanboy, but I don't have a beef either. I feel about the same with OS X. The wife has a very nice Apple set up, but really, there's not much difference. When I get a new computer, I will most likely install Linux on the old one to see how it runs with some power. I would try it now from a Live CD (here's some irony), but a keyboard failure at startup won't let me change the BIOS to load from a CD. Am I having fun yet?
Several years ago I worked at an airline, and they did what was supposed to be comprehensive background checks. One employee, who seemed like a decent guy, was involved with teaching some other employees' kids to ski. Turns out he was sexually abusing them. Further investigation found that he was a convicted pedophile in another state, a place he never reported living. It was also in a very small town. Had there been a national database, he would have never been hired, and those kids would have never been in that position.
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...you have an infant sleeping in the next room that gets woken by the new Billy Mays screaming about something. Then it's a BIG irritant.
My NetFlix are delivered by a truck, they don't magically appear in the mailbox. Bad analogy.
After coming here for months, I wanted to try Linux. I am very experienced with Windows and really have had little to no issues, but I wouildn't call myself a Fanboy. The wife is a die hard Apple person, so over the years I've gotten pretty good about working that side of a fence. I like both OS's equally well, as MS does some things better, and Apple does other better. While the pain and the triumphs of my recent Linux conversion are all fresh, let me give you a newbie's POV. I went with Ubuntu, as it seemed to be the easiest to start with (for now, let's not argue this issue). Since I had an old laptop, I formatted Windows off and did a total, clean install of Ubuntu. Only 2 things didn't work out of the box, screen resolution and wifi. It took a week to get the screen resolution fixed, and I had a ton of help on all the different forums and wiki's. It took another week to get the wifi to work, with the same support. Maybe my expectations weren't very high, but other than those 2 major issues, I thought it was a pretty good transition. I haven't tried DVD, since this old brick probably wouldn't do a very good job anyway. I ripped some CD's the other night just to see of it would, and it did it with no problem. I did have to install Xfce to make this all usable, Gnome was just too hungry for my laptop. And you really wanna get a feel for how painful this can be to some people, go to the Ubuntu Absolute beginner's forum. They are trying, and they are learning, but you get a good feel for how much people struggle in the beginning. Too many experienced Linux users take some of the basic commands for granted. Now to try this on my much newer, more powerful dekstop. I ran the Live CD for the beta coming out, almost everything worked great. With my new found 2 week old knowledge I was able to reconfigure and tweek those things that needed it. When Dapper releases gold on June 1st, it will be installed on my second drive for dual booting. We'll see what happens after that. Conclusion, it is somewhat of a learning curve, but not insurmountable. It was a lot more than going from XP to OS X, which to me were very similar in how the UI works. In Linux, there were small things that shouldn't have been so hard. As far as the difference in installing XP drivers and installing what I needed to get hardware working in Linux, it was a huge difference. Windows (and OS X) installs take time, but are very easy. For the new person, getting simple things going can be frustrating and appear complex. I like Linux and will continue to learn. I look forward to my dual boot system. I'm sure eventually I'll ween off Windows entirely. As far as Linux being ready for Joe User, it's not quite there yet, but getting close.
You must mean Linux users.
Same here, just loaded Ubuntu last week. I finally got the console to fit the screen Saturday. It was no easy task. Since the machine is so old, I also needed to run Xfce, again, almost a week to get working. I was lucky in the fact that I had on old laptop that I could format and install Linux alone. I screwed up a few times and had to reinstall. It had W2K installed before and I hated it. No way this old machine could use XP. I'm learning and will continue to do so, if for nothing else to see if this really is eventually better than OS X or Windows. So far, I like that it's faster and has given new life to the old laptop. My cheapo Linksys B model wireless card should be here any day, and I'm bracing myself for the install. For Linux to gain any widespread use, it has a ways to go. I like playing with it and learning, but I wouldn't be doing this on my main machine. Right now it's not for most people. I know very few people that go beyond internet, e-mail, and some very basic office apps. All of which Ubuntu easily handles out of the box, if your machine and everything in it works correctly (which it probably won't). I would probably switch my desktop over also, but I have a ton of software that I do use, and I'm not ready at this point to spend weeks trying to get it to run under Linux. Why work harder to get the same thing? Maybe I'm the only person on the planet that's had very few Windows issues. I'm no fanboy, but I don't have a beef either. I feel about the same with OS X. The wife has a very nice Apple set up, but really, there's not much difference. When I get a new computer, I will most likely install Linux on the old one to see how it runs with some power. I would try it now from a Live CD (here's some irony), but a keyboard failure at startup won't let me change the BIOS to load from a CD. Am I having fun yet?
Several years ago I worked at an airline, and they did what was supposed to be comprehensive background checks. One employee, who seemed like a decent guy, was involved with teaching some other employees' kids to ski. Turns out he was sexually abusing them. Further investigation found that he was a convicted pedophile in another state, a place he never reported living. It was also in a very small town. Had there been a national database, he would have never been hired, and those kids would have never been in that position.
*ducks*
All mine ever talks about is how hot/cold/rainy it is. :)
....and will have Duke Nukem 3D installed!
Unsolicited mail sent out en masse is still spam, even if it is for a good cause. I'm sure AOL did it with ill intent, but it's still spam.