At least, that's the response I've got from many a confident Windows user, when I've suggested giving it a try.

I was reflecting on this earlier today. In the last 48 hours, I've installed 3 operating systems - Win 98, Win XP and Ubuntu Linux. None of these went perfectly smoothly. The difficulty with Ubuntu was a known problem - it doesn't like my monitor or graphics card for some reason, and I have to enter the HorizSync and VertRefresh rates manually into xorg.conf. However, installing Win 98 nearly had me screaming with frustration, as the "essential drivers" failed to load, my printer(s) didn't instal properly, and so on. Much reinstalling of drivers via the Device Manager.

The Win XP installation went a little smoother. A little. At one point, it told me to insert the SP2 disk. I looked. I tried the "update" disk. No joy. After a while (and on the verge of searching through old junk for that SP2 disk that came free with a magazine of yesteryear) I remembered that the version of the OS was supposed to have SP2 included. I tried the first install disk, which worked. That still wasn't the end of the trials, though. I currently have two admin accounts (one created as administrator, and one in my user name), and can't find a way of just having one. This was after failing to log in to the second of these, because I assumed that the Administrator password I had set belonged to the account identifying itself as a Computer Administrator account. Meaning that I had an admin account without a password for an hour or so.

Anyway, my point is i've had problems installing Linux, and I've had problems installing Windows. The problems with Linux have, in many ways, been easier to sort out, due to the open nature of the OS. In fact, the smoothest installation experiences I have ever had were with SuSE and Fedora 5 (and perhaps Mac OSX, though that took three times as long).

There is Slackware, and there is Gentoo, and I have yet to take the plunge with either of these, but I think that in terms of ease and usability Linux has come of age.

Yours (at 3a.m.),
Rob

Has anyone else noticed that the spellcheck on this forum doesn't recognise Ubuntu, or SuSE, or Slackware, or xorg.conf...?

There is a large group of people out there who understand Windows, but do not understand Computers. In many cases, this distinction would go right over their head. How many times have people come in here saying: "On Windows, it works this way, therefor......" or even more basic things like "where's the C drive?"

One recent post included a comment that a DOS command did not work....!!!!

Here's a simple question for a Windows snob: "If I have to re-install Windows 2000, why should I have to make multiple passes with Windows Update, to get all the patches in?"
And: "Why do I have to install all the drivers separately?--In Linux, they are all included."

AND..."Why do i have to re-boot every time I change anything?"

AND...."Why is IE the worst offender in not following web programming standards?"

I think I need a drink........

Well Rob, go to sleep man in the Cuckoo land, will talk to you in the morning

i think even if one day linux does works like windows , at least from "users experience" perspective like there arent anything worth to compare between windows and linux anymore ... linux will still be a superior system for many "original" linux users ...

one thing is for sure ... its weird to see people swearing and cursing at a computer or an os or whatever that are computer related ...



.

Except possibly in that strange alternative future where Microsoft has seen the light, and Windows goes open source !

But they deserve it so often...

Difference between hardware and software: Hardware is what you can throw through a window. Software is what makes you want to throw it through the window.

At least in the closed-source world.

you still need walls for windows unless your dwelling got no walls at all or that your windows are as large as walls ... ok , you got there in the first place(sort of actually ...) , either by chance or by coincidence ... you hack yours first and i will hack mine ...


//its not going to happen ...


.

I never use that. I just rely on the Firefox 2's spell check. But then again, it doesn't recognize "SuSE" or "xorg.conf" but it recognizes "Ubuntu" and "Slackware."

On topic: WinXP is usually easy to install even though it takes forever. openSUSE 10.1 was very easy and fast to install. It has problems with graphics cards though, especially ATI. The installer should have just enabled the generic vesa driver at installation since it obviously can't work right with a proper 3-D driver without downloading and installing one from the manufacturer's website (nvidia or ati).

bye bye all. 8)

Personally I think that Linux far surpasses windows in Stability. In addition I think that some day in the next ten to fifteen years (by my rough math) LLinux will gain an equal if not superior foot hold and eventually Choke Balmer and his gang of High Way bandits.

You mean you're using Windows operating system and a Mozilla browser.

The primary problems with dialup is simply a lack of speed. No operating system is going to make a dialup connection work faster than the connection is capable of working.

You can try a Linux OS and see if you like it better, just don't expect broadband speeds out of a dialup connection.

bye bye all. 8)

Now that is hilarious. Enough said.

Mozilla is an Open Source browser and not an Operating System. Yes browsing speed differs when you use different browsers. I think I saw a comparision sheet from Lxer stating konqueror was the fastest, don't know where it is right now. Also, using Linux or Windows or Mac shouldn't effect the effective speed of your dial-up. Dial-up has media limitations (modem, telephone wires) that limits its speed and then there are the ISP's that control more over it.

I think most of the problem with difficulty trying to put linux on your computer is often when you try and install it on your brand new hardware and strange and unexpected things start happening (e.g. black screen instead of installer program / on boot) which leave you thoroughly confused, and maybe a little upset, as a brand new linux user because you don't yet understand that support for your machine has not yet been implemented in the kernel. (And how could it? Your hardware is brand new!)
You then have start playing around with boot line expressions like acpi=off, and if you're lucky, you might be able to install. Maybe.

Of course this is no fault of linux developers, who because they have to reverse-engineer/write the drivers themselves may need a few weeks/months to support your computer. But you don't know this.

You then (maybe) post some unhappy thread on a linux forum and end up getting a load of flak from some ignormaus who has totally forgotten what it was like on the first day after they themselves installed linux and who chooses to deride rather than point things like this out.

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