Well, thanks!

Shameless bump to report that my results have been updated to include Windows XP SP2, and has been somewhat reformatted for clarity.

if you have not tried Godspeed You Black Emperor , try it , its something only instrumental , slow but massive , if found not to your liking , just dump it , no harm ...

alred, it appears I hurt your feelings. I apologize. I laughed at your response to my comparison of Kitaro to Yanni because it was clever, not because I wished to shame you. I will look for Godspeed You Black Emperor on the strength of your recommendation alone. In return, allow me to recommend to you Mannheim Steamroller's Fresh Aire series as something you might enjoy. I believe there are 6 of them, not including the Christmas albums.

Anyone who complains about how difficult it is to install Linux ... probably has not installed Windows from a "generic," non-Home-edition CD. Perhaps onto slightly older hardware. It isn't easy and it isn't fun. The moment you stray even slightly off the primrose-pathway, brambles and briars abound.

The stuff they do at a computer-store doesn't count: there, they use the equivalent of a "Kickstart" disk ... which of course is a useful concept that Linux supports too.

Most people who use Windows have never installed it, and could never successfully do it if they tried. The experience of installing Linux is, in my opinion, no more difficult ... and in some distributions it's considerably easier.

erh ?? feelings hurt ?? apologize ?? none of that kind , that would be ridiculous , really , just thinking of introducing some thing to you , nothing much , will looks into your recommendation ...

I read this yesterday and tried for myself on the Following setup:

Machine Type: Home Built peice of Junk

Machine Specs are below:

Mobo is a: Mach Speed Viper 64 seris (K8T8A5)
Chipset: VIA K8T800
Serial ATA
FSB: FSB 800 MAX
AGP: 8X on an Nvidia 5200FX 128MB SDRAM/DDR Video Card
RAM: Centon DDR 266MHZ 256MB Single Stick
CPU: Socket 754 AMD SEMPRON 2600+ (1.6GHZ) Not OC'ed
DVDROM: Off brand Generic
HDD: SAMSUNG 80GB 7200 RPM
USB:HP CD R/W 8200 4X
LAN:VIA Seris Built in 10/100 standard.
Mouse:Basic Generic PS/2 Ball mouse 2 button No scroll Wheel
Keyboard: Fellows Generic 101 key PS/2

First Install Linux:

Distro: SUSE 9.1 Personal

Install time 20 minutes or so

it found all of my hardware right off the bat had 1 error and that was Linux had mistaken my HP seris USB CD R/W Drive as a 1.0GB SATA HDD (had it as SDA). other than that i had
had access to everything Internet,Email,Multimedia,Gimp, Office tools Ect, and as far as gaming goes i installed Americas Army 2.3 (Firefight) for linux and it ran Great !, Good FPS around 80 or so.

then i cleared the drive complety and formated to NTFS USING Windows XP PRO Retail Copy (No OEM or SP1).

Install time was about 39 minutes or so including the reformat during the install and the reboot to setup the install after copying the files to the HDD Kinda like a Debian Type of install. (No Insult intended to Debian or It's users).

it found all of my hardware correctly (in my case anyways) but it ran so slooooow, even when i switched it to classic view to conserve resources. I had access to the Internt but since i am Cable i disconnected my modems cable line. (for obvious reasons). now as above i had access to the same things above Internt,Email,Multimedia,MS-Paint,Word pad Ect. as for gaming I installed Americas Army 2.3 (firefight) for Windows and got lousy FPS around like 3 or so due to the fact XP Correctly Id'ed my Card but it's builtin driver for it Sucks !.

so my conclusion is Linux is Just as Easy to setup and use out of the Box as windows is but with the added bonus of way better hardware support. but to get that better support you must use a Distro tailored to Newbies as Windows is tailored to Newbies in the point and click era.

for Distros that are most easy to setup like windows i would use:
Ubuntu,Kubuntu,suse 9.1 personal,Mandrake 10.0 - 10.1 are top chioces out there.

Cheers, Rusty

non sequitur
noun
1: a reply that has no relevance to what preceded it
2: (logic) a conclusion that does not follow from the premises

Yeah, uh, that's a good one ... ;')

Hey Charred!

Could you also do that same test with Vector 5.0.1-SOHO?
On my (MUCH!) lighter machine it installs within 25 mins and has a cartload of software included.
I'd be interested in your views on it.(And the comparisons you can make.)

Sure! I've been meaning to wipe that hard drive again anyway.

Gesundheit!

I'll be building a "muscle car" type of a box here in the next day or so, and would
be willing to try some of this "installation conflaguration," though it's going to be a
real stretch to install Windoze on this sweet little virgin SATA drive. What has she
done to deserve such as that?

I have installed Vector, and will play around with it for a while so I can get to know it as well as Slackware, WinXP, etc.

So far, not bad, not bad...

I agree, a lot of computers come with it installed already.

Though, I can't say most because mine nor my father's did.

Also, linux is preferred by me because it's free, unintrusive, and highly configurable.
Not, because of how fast or easy it is.