im upgrading the HD on my workstation (had a 6G and a 9G 4500rpm and 5400rpm respectivly) in my workstation that i have started to outgrow space and performance wise.

so after backing everything up i need to back up to my server i start the process of removing the old drives, installing the new drive, then get ready for a fresh install of XP Pro into my 2k AD domain.

well that was 4.5 hrs ago. it took all of 15-20min to back everything up and get the old drives out and the new one in. (mind you this is not a horridly old system its an AMD 2000+ with 1G pc2100 ram) all of the rest of the time have been spent dealing with reboots and i am still downloading more patches and this means MORE reboots.

i lost count on the number of reboots at 10 and know i have done several more since then.

get system up to first boot, reboot, log in and install MB drivers, reboot, install sound and updated NIC drivers, reboot, update sound drivers reboot, install SP1 reboot, pull down 21 patches, reboot, install DX9c reboot, install Nvidia drivers reboot, pull down 16 more patches reboot, tis were i am currently.

that does not include installing any software yet, just dealing with the blasted OS and the drivers for it.

anyone that tells you windows is easier to install then linux has not got a clue.

this coming from someone who knows windows way way way better then i do linux.

heck with debian, i could have my entire system up and running with all updated software in under 1hr with this exact system. in fact this box will now become a dual booter with debian as its main OS and XP as the back up for when i need access to pagemaker real time. If i could only get pagemaker to work properly in crossover office id go 100% linux at the office.

*side note* its my small business i own a Karate school in the Orlando FL area and manage my own domain as well as a few of my students small business domains. trying to convert them to linux too, but that is much slower then my own endevore.

anyways. 3 cheers for linux, and /rude for microsoft

its now 10:30pm (roughly) and i am just finishing up getting the system patched, all office software installed (went with Open Office this time instead of MS Office), e-mail configured, printer mapped and tested, server drives mapped, desktop for both administrator and main user configured, and now i can semi relaxe.

so roughly 7hr to get an ok system up and running in windows and i have yet to start on the dual book for this bad boy yet.

(hangs head) man now i know why i hate computers from time to time, its not the hardware, its F'in Windows.

so any of you windows lovers out there, read this thread and keep in mind just how much faster linux is to install and configure once you know enough to do so like you do in windows now. ive been a windows user for over a decade, and ive been fixing and building, and running domain level administration in windows for going on 6 years now and i can tell you with less then 2year of linux under my belt i could do the same job in linux (debian at that) in roughly 1hr on this box.

ill post the exact time once i get the dual boot up and running.

I did a hardware upgrade (changed motherboard) once and Windows took about 20 reboots to become stable again (that is, not keep popping up the new hardware found) dialog box.

With Linux, it took just a reboot and the hardware detection script updated everything without a problem.

Don't forget: Most mainstream Windows users are the people who buy branded PCs with preinstalled OS and never open their computer case in their lives.

yeah windows can get rather picky with chaning the MB especially if it is from AMD to Intel, or vis a vis. windows will die at that point.

it took me exactly 25min to get to the point i was doing my first apt-get upgrade after manually configuring my sources.list and having already ran apt-get update. i started at 1:13am it is currently 2:22am and i am waiting on KDE to finish unpcaking so i can see if i did everything right to get into the GUI for the first time.

that should be about 5 more min from the time i enter this post.

fyi, i forgot to apt-get install x-window-system, once i did that i had my GUI up and running without a hitch. then it took less then 15min to get firefox, thunderbird, and open office installed and configured.

now only thing i have left is adding the network printer that sits on a win2k server. for that i need to learn a few things, but in all it took me roughly 1.5hrs to completly have my debian system up and running vs roughly 7hrs for winXP pro.

in all i am so glad i have stuck out the learning curve that is the wounderful world of Linux and look forward to the day i know more about linux then i do windows.