OSNews

Ok, where do I start?

1) My primary system IS a mass produced office-type machine that I purchased specifically to maintain compatibility with the computers that my former employer was using at that time. And I don't care the slightest whit about whether the BIOS switch disables the onboard video, or sets it as secondary, or castrates it with a rusty nail file, or just gives it a cookie and puts it to bed. All I want to do is use the dang thing. I cherish my ignorance regarding video chipsets and I intend to guard that self-same ignorance with ferocious determination. It worked on the vast majority of other distros that I have tried on that box, so I am unhappy that it won't work with Lindows.

2) My hardware is not outdated. Not by normal people standards. Not by typical business standards. Granted, to a hard core gamer (I am not one) or a well-to-do hobbyist (I am neither) or even a programmer (which I am not and never will be) it might be slightly dated. But outdated? The systems are 3 years and 2 years old respectively. I can name a long list of companies that are still using computers that are 5 years old or more. And these are not SOHO operations, these are small to medium sized businesses that employ between 10 and 50 people. They use 5 year old hardware because it works for them and they don't need any more speed. If any of these businesses tried to adopt Linux in any form, they would be doing it on their existing hardware since their most probable reason for trying Linux would be to avoid upgrade hell from Microsoft. So brace yourself, SOHO users are generally going to be using hardware that you can buy off the shelf, and they are going to be squeezing every last drop of usefulness from it until it dies of old age. Any software company that targets the unsophisticated end user, while at the same time expecing that end user to be running bleeding edge hardware, is kidding themself.

3) You can set your concerns aside, I will try my best to give Xandros 2.0 a fair trial. I have not made up my mind about Lindows on the secondary system. I simply said that Lindows was the only distro that I had tried that never had any problems at all with my secondary hardware. So until I have a chance to try out Xandros I am going to use Lindows on that box. And unless Xandros is better, I will not bother that installation again. As far as the primary system is concerned, Libranet has done the best job to date, but I deliberately stated at the end that I was retaining the option of switching to Xandros if it is worth it.

4) I am not targeting these articles to the newbie crowd specifically, although I certainly would be proud if they get some use out of them. I am an experienced technical writer/end user who is getting almighty tired and disgusted at being forced to spend more time maintaining, tweaking and upgrading his operating system than he does actually WRITING anything. I want something I can park and leave alone. I am investigating which option looks best for my needs. If you don't get any benefit from these articles so be it. I am writing themthe way *I* wanted them. I am quite certain that OSNews would be delighted to post your rebuttal. So go for it.

I want thank everyone for bothering to read these, and for taking the time to offer feedback, good and bad.

Barry