“I assumed I could boot the well-known Linux distributions from a CD-ROM drive, make some on-screen selections, let the distribution know what hardware to use, twiddle my thumbs for a while as it loaded software and configured itself, and then have a working system. Was I ever wrong.” Read the long and interesting article at LinuxWorld.
Migrating to Linux Not Easy for Windows Users
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
And in other news, the world is round. Geez, it took 11 pages to point out something so obvious as “Migrating to Linux Not Easy for Windows Users”.
Well, duh. People have been telling that to the linux community for years. And if they would have listened to windows users instead of telling us to RTFM they might have a slightly larger userbase.
For completely dumb joe users I recommend Knoppix. Even a Windows installation or a videocassete is very difficult for these users.
Why do Windows users assume they can just cross over to Linux and pick up on it right away?
Hmmm, gee … I wonder ….
http://www.suse.com/us/private/products/suse_linux/i386/index.html
The installation and operation of SuSE Linux 8.2 is quick, easy, intuitive, and transparent!
Maybe if you meditate on it long enough, I’m sure you will figure out out.
or completely dumb joe users I recommend Knoppix.
Right, and I’m sure that they will be able to figure out in 2 seconds how to remove ‘read-only’ permission to their hard drive and (assuming they’ve got 2 CD drivers) figure out how DVD/CD-burning works, along with getting decent fonts installed.
Next.
It’s long, but it’s in no way interesting. It’s just one guy bitching because his bizarre and ancient combination of hardware didn’t always work as expected, and he placed artificial restrictions on himself.
Presumably he had net access before he installed Linux, so quite why using the help resources available to him online was taboo is a mystery to me, eliminating the net as a source of information does not make a test more “real world”, if anything, it makes it less so.
The idea that it’ll work perfectly with zero effort isn’t true of _any_ operating system unless you buy it in a bundle with the hardware, no, not even for Windows.
How about this: ————————-
I had been using Linux for many years with no problems, but had heard good things about Windows, so I decided to try it.
I got a copy of Windows 98 (i realise this is quite old). I started the installation, and wondered why it didn’t let me partition my drive. Anyway, I installed it, but on startup it started demanding driver disks. I don’t have any such disks, so I clicked cancel and things died. I couldn’t access my printer, my modem and my screen was stuck in 640×480.
I wanted to make this a real world test, so I refused to use the net to find out the solutions to these problems. The manual was no help, I already know what a mouse is thanks.
A few minutes in, I tried running an app I found off a CD. It crashed the whole OS!
That’s when I discovered it F$?$?CKING KILLED LINUX! My lovely animated boot menu had gone completely! I had to boot up a Linux rescue disk to get it back. It couldn’t read my Linux disks either.
I thought I’d try XP next, should be better, right? No! It’s gone backwards. It also deleted my boot menu, didn’t offer any partitioning info. The new GUI is unintuitive and hides things from me all the time. It still died asking for drivers at startup, but the new GUI looks horrible in 256 colours, unlike the old version, which worked much better out of the box.
I realise my hardware is old and probably half broken, but my copy of Slackware 3 works perfectly on hardware that old, so I don’t understand why people reckon Windows is easier. A newbies tale tells a very different story.
http://www.mandrakelinux.com/en/concept.php3
A computer running the Mandrake Linux operating system can be as easy to use as a computer which uses Windows or Mac OS — a fact which has been Confirmed by many IT publications.
this article is a slap-in-the-face to all you linux fans out there, but just tell me the things the author mentions aren’t true. Sure thing, he represents the user point of view, which means he doesn’t know the things most OSNews readers take for granted, like “mount /dev/hda1”. But if Linux want’s to hit the desktop, it’s people like this it will have to open up to and confront!
—————————-
Right, and I’m sure that they will be able to figure out in 2 seconds how to remove ‘read-only’ permission to their hard drive and (assuming they’ve got 2 CD drivers) figure out how DVD/CD-burning works, along with getting decent fonts installed.
—————————–
Stupid users cannot operate a Windows PC without a minimum trainment. Even for a stupid drive a car it is need license. Why not for install operating systems in PCs ? A typical joe user don’t install operating systems.
My experience is that a perfectly installed linux system can be operated for a stupid user. And they can’t remove programs, destroy Windows installation, install viruses, etc like Windows machines…
It’s not a case of “not true”, it’s a case of generalising one persons experience to the whole of Linux, something which sadly happens far too much with all operating systems.
This guy had some bad experiences. I feel for him. Most peoples experiences are not that bad, I know this because I do a truckload of tech support for Linux and because I’ve done many installs myself which worked without a hitch – as have (non-technical) friends.
In general, I’ve found Linux installs with very few hitches. Yes, sometimes printing doesn’t work, or a winmodem needs special drivers or whatever. That’s my experience, and that of a few others. I’m not claiming because MY experiences have been good, that Linux is perfect and nothing ever goes wrong, clearly that would be false. But that is what this guy is trying to do.
Oh and it’s not a matter of “listening” either. I read this article because I had a spare few minutes while waiting for my dinner to cook, but it contained nothing new, nothing insightful. It’s just somebody bitching about hardware support. That doesn’t get better by some random person writing an article and some other random hacker going, “oh yeah, this guy is right! I know. I’ll go write more drivers”. That’s not how it works.
As an article, its worth is probably mostly historical.
So basically this guy wanted to run linux on non-supported hardware, to read/write Microsoft Office files, and didnt want to read any newsgroup/websites?
Why don’t you stick to windows then?
Sorry, Linux might just not be for you.
Sorry it took you that many distributions to figure that out. That article could have been 1 page though: “I wanted to use Linux but had no clue, my hardware was not supported and I wanted to use Microsoft file formats, I didn’t have any luck”. No shit.
Oh, and installing Mandrake 9.1 for me was as simple as you described. in your introduction paragraph… Of course I made sure I had supported hardware
I find it amazing how people put higher expectations on Linux than in Windows and then think ‘linux sucks’ after using it for a very small amount of time.
This guy himself said in his article that a couple of the older machines he has have hardware that don’t even work in Windows and would need to be replaced to get it to work under XP or such. But yet he bitches when it doesn’t work under the Linux distros?
And not using the net for some of his old (frankly outdated and crappy) hardware that don’t work in Windows was a bad decision. I’ve actually found that googling for older machines’ hardware can actually provide instructions to get them working in Linux even if they don’t work in XP.
One thing I like about this review as opposed to a lot of other ‘reviews’ I’ve seen on OSnews recently is that the article is actually thought out and more than half a page long but unfortunately he chose to do too much in too little time. 4 systems with around 10 distros on each one? That’s a lot of installations to (or attempt to) get working
In the Linux world, installation is ever so slightly more difficult due to partitioning. Despite that, my non-geek 10 year old nephew was able to install Red Hat 8.0 all by himself. He doesn’t even know how to install programs, but I sat him in front of the wizard and he was able to click his wa y through it. As a plus, once you’ve installed Linux you’ve installed 85% of all the software you will ever use along with it.
In the Windows world, installation is a bit easier, but afterward you must install 85% of the software you will ever need. In fact, installation is so brain dead, many people would rather “format and re-install” than troubleshoot a problem they’re having. I’m sure we all know of the chronic formatters who are too braindead to troubleshoot a registry problem so they’re just constantly formatting and re-installing Windows.
IMHO you can’t even compare installation of a Linux distribution with Windows. If you compare the entire system installation, Linux wins hands down. The Linux install is able to install a tremendous amount of software relatively easy. Windows must be installed at the OS level, then one must go through all the individual application installs.
Apples and Oranges…that’s never stopped people from drawing a comparison though has it?
Why isn’t he using the latest distributions and instead 12 month old versions?
He should have stuck with Mandrake.
Why are there all these reviews where people claim to want to use Linux, then try it for ten minutes, get everything working fine, and then not use it? Mandrake 9, or better, 9.1 fulfilled all the criteria he was asking for, so why the backing out?
I think the intention, yet again, was to write a review, not review distros.
The comments at the end about ‘Interface comments’ were perceptive though, and I found myself agreeing with most of them.
Ok where do I begin? There’s two problems with this review. The first isn’t the reveiwer’s fault, being that linux companies are making linux out to be the end all of and all solutions for consumers. It will feed your cat, wash your car and find you a mate, all well getting rid of the “M$” on your computer. Seriously, I think some of the marketing hype that the distros are using is really ridiculous. Things like yoper and lindows really make me sick. Yoper is absolutely ridiculous, at least with lindows you can add new software, but it costs you an arm and a leg (although its pretty much a bastardized version of apt-get from the freeest of all distros, debian). I know linux companies are trying to make money, but they’re really targeting people that would just be better off staying with windows.
Secondly of course this guy shouldn’t be installing linux. I mean he’s still running windows 95. So when’s the last time he even installed windows? I mean you can’t just hop into linux and expect to be able to figure it out on your own. You should RTFM, I wish I had done more of that before I’d got started, it would have made things a lot easier. He said there’s no manual to read, try http://www.tldp.org/. You’ll find most anything you’d want to do there. I remember the first time I booted up the live-eval of suse and tried to open up “what I thought looked liked my computer” and was like what the hell, where is the c: drive?
My advice to anyone who wants to try linux….buy a book. I wish I had. It would have saved me a lot of guess work. Read the book, understand linux concepts (such as filesystem hierarchy ;-), then get knoppix and mess around with that for a little bit. Then pick a distro, and install it.
Finally, why do we continually have newbie written reviews, its kind of getting old. I’m coming to the conclusion linux isn’t for joe sixpack.
Agreed, and ditto to the other posters making similar comments. It’s a farce. I too am sick of ‘Joe Luzer wants Linux to be telepathic and perfect’ reviews. They are useless, and a waste of space.
if you read the review he says that he starting doing this 18 months ago. At any rate his hardware should be supported with the old dirstros anyway.
>I find it amazing how people put higher expectations on Linux than in Windows
Sorry, but you get it all wrong.
For a customer to switch products, the alternative product HAS to be considerably better than the previous product. Otherwise, there is no reason for a switch.
This is a market reality my friend, nothing more. Learn to accept it if you want to see your product getting bigger attention.
Research has found out that Linux users can quite easily adapt to Windows, but being dumbed down apparently didn’t motivate them enough to do so.
Seriously, Linux is not easy to install at times, but is easy to use once installed. Even easier than Windows for some tasks.
And once you learn the quirks of the installation process (e.g., partitioning) it’s always the same thing, year after year.
they offer this free “prepurchase” service to help eliminate any problems _before_ they happen.
As well, their post-purchase support is excellent.
I helped a freind migrate to Windows XP from win98.
it was far more of a hassle than anything I have seen
in Linux.
So this guy trying to approximate the mindset of a newbie
had some troubles with his particular configuration.
I as an actual newbie managed to install the supposedly
difficult Debian. I read the installation guide off the
web from my old w95 a couple of times
first.I invested an hours time in preparation. That was
for slink. Things are even easier for Debian , let alone
distros like Mandrake, Xandros, Suse.
I am sorry but if you can’t install Linux with the easy installs these days I would have to say you are trying too hard…. to fail.
this article is a slap-in-the-face to all you linux fans out there
I didn’t quite see it that way. I think it exposes the naivity and ludicrous expectations of “new users”; and the infantile whinings that usually follow. These users act like they were born instinctivly knowing how to use Windows and that somehow anything that varies from this beloved operating system’s way of doing things is somehow “not ready” and users who like the alternatives are “extremely rude” and “stupid”. Somehow those people just “don’t get it”.
It is sickening how some people spend so much time glorifying their own laziness instead of actually learning a different way to do something. I mean, if you don’t like Linux because it doesn’t fulfill a personal need that you have, fine. Dont use it (pretty simple). Just don’t whine about it. If you’re so discontent using Windows that you desperately want Linux to emulate Windows, well, it isn’t going to happen, so you better dig in and learn. If you aren’t interested in learning something new, don’t.
Most people are writing Linux and apps that run on it in their free time. How is it that new users can be so selfish? They view their time as being too valueble to actually spend any of it learning something new, yet they expect, no demand, that everyone working on Linux drop everything in their lives and “make Linux a Windows clone”. Why not donate some of your own time to your education instead of demanding others donate theirs to cram the world into your pre-existing sets of knowledge and expectations?
But if Linux want’s to hit the desktop, it’s people like this it will have to open up to and confront!
Not necessarily. People used to use DOS, and before that CP/M. I’ve worked for clients who still use Pick or Theos as their main office operating systems. The world does NOT have to be Windows. In case somebody here was unaware of it, “regular” and “average” people CAN and do learn other things.
Linux has made a lot of headway in the last few years (more so than MS in my opinion). I firmly believe that the time will come when you will be forced to learn Linux at work because that’s what your employer chooses to use (which is probably the same way you learned Windows) and that will be that. THen, hopefully, we will hear an end to all this vitriol and tantrums.
I think the author’s experience is more typical than most Linux users would like to admit. Documentation for linux is horrible. Coming from Windows to Linux is a never-ending research project.
My PC had hardware that was supported by Linux and installing Mandrake 8.2 was very easy. Even general use of KDE wasn’t too difficult.
The problems came when I wanted to upgrade hardware and add USB devices. I made sure that drivers were available for the hardware, but installing and configuring new hardware often isn’t easy. In Windows I insert the disk that came with the device, click through a few options and the device is working. In Linux I have to track down and study FAQs and Howtos, compile software, edit multiple config files, etc. Generally I have to know much more about the operating system and the hardware that I’m installing to be able to get it working in Linux. Adding a USB modem, getting online with broadband and setting up a dual headed display took days of research and work, while in Windows I had everything working in minutes.
I’m sure some poeple don’t have any problems with Linux and obviously Windows has plenty of faults too. But there are some things that are simply much more complex and time consuming in Linux. If Linux is going to be a mainstream desktop OS then there are a lot of things that have to be made easier and more automatic. Obviously that’s happening with graphical tools available for a lot of tasks, but Linux still has a long way to go.
Sorry, but you get it all wrong.
For a customer to switch products, the alternative product HAS to be considerably better than the previous product.
That’s not entirely true. Otherwise we would all be running Macs or OS/2.
I have been using Linux on and off for about five years now, alongside windows 95/98/XP.
It has been evident over the past year or so that things are finally converging toward a great desktop. We’ve seen plenty of articles on why Linux is dead/not ready/will never be ready for/on the desktop, but things are getting there rapidly. Mandrake 9 I used, thought it was alright, but plenty of little bugs and minor gripes. I tried the 9.1 betas/RCs as well, and found that they broke far more than they fixed. Needless to say, I was worried that maybe Mandrake really did deserve to snuff it.
Then procrastinated after the 9.1 final announcement, but eventually downloaded the ISOs the other day and installed them last night. 20 minutes to install (winXP – install 1hr, drivers 2hrs, apps 2hrs), recognised all my hardware, even stuff that I can’t get Windows to recognise/find drivers for. It’s solid, stable and fast… KDE 3.1 is nice and the mandrake control center, and especially the package management have developed massively.
I installed the new NVidia drivers and Quake 3 with the minimum of hassle as well, and was pleasently surprised to find the game smoother and faster than a higher-powered WinXP box.
I thoroughly recommend people to try Mandrake 9.1… It is really rather good… I’ve been smiling all day while getting my work done
I think that it was perhaps more than a little unkind for a the reviewer to try out very old editions of Mandrake and others; I would say that it’s akin to testing windows from a few years ago, but that leaves you comparing with win2K, which really just highlights the radical speed of development in Linux, which is truly a good thing and bodes well for the future.
The one thing the review does highlight, is that users typically never install windows or drivers or software. That is just done for them and they just potter about, use and break things until the boy next door reinstalls it for them. I think it is possible to get these people to install an OS, if you can abstract that away from them. I’m heartened that Mandrake 9.1 has a nice installer which really does do all of that. No network config, no X config, nothing hard to do… It just installs, boots and stuff works. I think my parents could install the thing, to be honest…!
The future looks to be quite bright, I would say…!
… enough not to read the article. I bet you _any_money_ no n00b on earth can install NT4, or W2K or XP on a LX-chipset board with Adaptec SCSI on board. On the other hand every n00b could install any Linux flavour very well on that hardware – so what is this all about..?!
I have been a hard core Windows guy for 10 years. I can’t believe that you would review Linux from the perspective of a Windows user…Windows users are helpless…linux users are not! End of Story!
>Sorry, but you get it all wrong.
For a customer to switch products, the alternative product HAS to be considerably better than the previous product. Otherwise, there is no reason for a switch.
This is a market reality my friend, nothing more. Learn to accept it if you want to see your product getting bigger attention.<p>
Fact #1: Modern Linuxes are easier to install than Windows, any Windows, including XP. Fewer or no reboots, excellent hardware detection, and package selection as hands-off or as finicky as you like. I admin mixed networks, I’m hands on with Linux, Windows, and Mac every day. Desktop and server.
Fact #2: the whole point of an operating system is not the installation, but using it. According to OS News, and so many other alleged tech news sources, it’s all about installation, and nothing else.
Linux has so many advantages over any flavor of Windows it’s not funny. With these exceptions:
Linux is not appropriate if the applications the user wants are not available, or hardware not supported. (Which is true of all platforms, but Linux faces greater handicaps because of vendor’s fears of offending Microsoft) I agree there is a way to go in this arena. I have Linux desktops installed for about a fourth of my users. The number will increase as desktop apps increase and improve.
On the server side it’s no contest. Anyone running Windows servers should be sued for malpractice.
So for many uses, and users, Linux is by far the superior choice.
Fact #3: People do put higher expectations on Linux than in Windows, which I blame on alleged computer journalism, which overall is poor quality. Ill-informed and shallow. How many more thousands of words are going to be wasted on Joe Luzer’s installation follies?
Why should we have to keep pointing out that Joe Luzer is also inept with Windows? It’s the wrong standard to measure by. How about doing some real journalism, and compare security, user management, system requirements, hardware support, desktop applications….
For those who care about getting Windows users to migrate to Linux, reviews like these are exactly what is needed. People can go on and on for as long as they like about how people expect too much from Linux, etc. I’ll grant it. But — so what? The expectations of the people you want to attract — now matter how unreasonable — cannot just be ignored. Their expectations have to be either lowered or met. The review suggests some good ways to meet them. Can they be lowered? I doubt it. Inertia is really powerful – as Eugenia wrote, people aren’t going to migrate unless they feel like they’re getting something significantly better than what they have.
@Eugenia wrote:
“Sorry, but you get it all wrong.
For a customer to switch products, the alternative product HAS to be considerably better than the previous product. Otherwise, there is no reason for a switch.”
As long as Linux can roughly aproximate the usability of
Windows, the absence of: restrictive licensing, forced upgrades, product activation, constant phoning home,poor security,evergrowing DRM, Palladium on the way,an overly commercialized browsing and computing experience,not to mention a Linux’s lower to free price,
and I would say that even for Joe Windows there are a lot of reasons to switch.
Many people do care about these things when they are told about them.
Showed a freind Richard Smith’s article on how Xp phones
home in 16 different ways. He didn’t believe it till we put a firewall up and he saw it with his own eyes.
So now he double boots Mandrake, with XP seeing less
action all the time.
You make a good point. But not for a desktop operating system. My guess is you just don’t see Linux that way – that is as an operating system installed for everybody. You see it along the lines of DOS, CP/M and other awkward, but reliable business, network tools.
You say – if it’s too hard – just “Dont use it (pretty simple). Just don’t whine about it.” I don’t know if you realize, but if the linux developers (the vast community behind it) actually thought the way you did – not only would Linux still be a hobbist operating system without ANY user base, it would probably still have the “features” or limitations of DOS.
The article we’re both commenting on focuses on Linux as a desktop operating system. If you don’t see it that way – no problem, but that doesn’t mean the author was wrong!
You say that some day people “will be forced to learn Linux ” – so you admit that currently Linux is difficult to master and is not a straightforward experience. A desktop computer HAS to be easy to use. Maybe Windows is easy to use only because people have become used to it. But that only means that Linux will have to become better than WindowsXP – and then users will migrate. Let’s hope that happens.
You’ve taken the quote out of context (and even chopped off the important part of the sentence I wrote).
I said: ” I find it amazing how people put higher expectations on Linux than in Windows and then think ‘linux sucks’ after using it for a very small amount of time.”
I had high expectations for Linux. I’d heard it was more stable. I’d heard it was more customizable. I’d heard it was open-source and free (as in freedom not free beer). I’d heard it was more powerful and flexible.
So I did have higher expectations for it than I had for Windows before I switched. But I didn’t try it for an hour and then scream “LINUX SUXORS!” I realized that I’d spent my last 12 years in a Windows environment and that getting Linux to do what I wanted it to do what I wanted it to be would take more than an hour or a day (as some contributing-author ‘reviewers’ have done here).
Alice,
Joe Luzer is plenty inept with Windows, as evidenced by the number of phone calls I get from friends and family asking me to solve basic Windows problems — and I’m no kind of professional, just a competent and fairly knowledgeable user. But Joe Luzer has been using Windows forever and can get by. His Windows installation follies rarely come up because it comes factory-installed. All he has to do is take his machine out of the box, turn it on, and point-and-click. If we want him to migrate to Linux, we have to adress his concerns, no?
I hope programmers and distro makers at least read the last page. The author has some good things to say about user interface quality and polish in general. As usual, the devil is in the details. The fact that they’re the same details says that no one has learned from Linux’s past mistakes.
Keep in mind that this guy is a professional software tester and documenter. He has trained himself to dig around and find as many flaws in software as possible, and appears to have done so. This should help, not hurt things (unless no one’s man enough to hear that their beloved system is not up to snuff).
More than hardware breaks on the author. Printing was hit-or-miss and he never successfully burned a CD. Printing isn’t a hardware issue because it worked some places but not others – that’s a problem with the distributions. I’m willing to bet his CD burner could work, and it’s just a configuration problem. I’ve set up CD burning in Linux myself, and the fact that you have to tell Linux to pretend that your IDE burner is SCSI to get programs like cdrecord to work is a major source of frustration.
The author has much to say about help documentation. I agree with him that searching help is a basic need, and it isn’t rocket science. Why SuSE requires the user to go download some program just to search help is mind boggling. At least Red Hat has legal reasons for not including the often-missed mp3 support. I also like his point about how a programmer writing “hire me!” as the only help documentation for an application is proclaiming that programmer’s unemployability. I will try to write proper documentation for any end-user software I release in the future.
Finally some *human being* wrote something about Linux’s major problems. In 5-10 years maybe Linux will be ready for home consumption.
Bottom line: The long and interesting article is realistic! Anyone who disagrees is unrealistic and needs to come back to reality.
Sadly even the faintest criticism of linux brings out the linux zealots. ranting about how you’re dissing the best OS in the world (Yeah might be the best OS for you, but for real people who have lives, get up before 2:30pm and know what the world looks like in daylight) it’s not the best OS by any stretch of the imagination)
Linux should be as easy to use as Windows/MacOS/OSX/ Amiga OS, RiscOS/Beos or indeed any other Operating system (excluding unix based ones) that can share a similar method of operation and a similar philosophy (i.e. easy to understand and use)
Sure, you have to learn how to use a PC initially, we all do. But once you’ve learnt it once you shouldn’t need to relearn it again for Linux (you don’t need to relearn how to use a Mac… you know how to use a mac, because you’ve used Windows/Amiga OS Beos, etc) – there are subtle differences between each OS but that’s it, they’re subtle!
When so many people are shouting like mad about the same failures of Linux again and again, when are Linux people going to listen (especially those that are trying to tempt people away from Windows to the Linux cause)
This author clearly isn’t an idiot and he’s willing and wanting to move away from windows (like so many of us are)
But Linux is just making it too hard or impossible to do so we all end up sticking with the Beast of Redmond’s offering (because sadly it’s better and easier to use than Linux in so many ways… and has been usable by regular people for over 7 years)
sorry should have checked first….
The author is a lady… so my sincerest apologies (to her) for automatically assuming you were male (a victim of my own preconceptions there for sure)
Very sorry.
Did anyone catch the pseu_do_nym joke? Anyway..
I found it straight forward switching from windows to linux. Too many windows users expect an OS to be like windows because they’ve never used anything else. That’s where the difficulty lies.
>The idea that it’ll work perfectly with zero effort isn’t
>true of _any_ operating system unless you buy it in a
>bundle with the hardware, no, not even for Windows.
Not ture. If an operating system is installed on a computer with fully supported hardware, it should just work. Like BeOS. If you install it on supported hardware your done. You don’t have to run any config files or this and that and spend forever tweaking the system to get it to run halfway well.
It just works.
>I find it amazing how people put higher expectations on
>Linux than in Windows
Why would you switch to an operating system if it wasn’t better than the one you have now?
>Seriously, Linux is not easy to install at times, but is
>easy to use once installed.
LMAO!
>>Sorry, but you get it all wrong.
>>For a customer to switch products, the alternative product
>>HAS to be considerably better than the previous product.
>That’s not entirely true. Otherwise we would all be running Macs or OS/2.
Dude, she said “For a customer to switch products, the alternative product HAS to be considerably better than the previous product.” not “if an operating system is better, everyone will switch to it”.
>I can’t believe that you would review Linux from the
>perspective of a Windows user…Windows users are
>helpless…linux users are not!
That’s exactly the problem with linux people. They want linux to take over the desktop OS world, but they don’t want “annoying” questions from newbies.
Well, get used to it. If you want windows users to switch to Linux then your going to have to put up with the questions of “newbies”. Face it, not everyone is born using Linux. What seem to be idiotic;y stupid questions to skilled linux users are perfectly vaild questions to a newbie. If you tell them there to stupid to use linux and to RTFM they aren’t going to stay in Linux land very long.
>On the other hand every n00b could install any Linux
>flavour very well on that hardware – so what is this all >about..?!
Please learn how to spell. When you speel stuff like n00b it makes you look very uneducated.
>The future looks to be quite bright, I would say…
Yes, Linux has come a very long way to becoming a more mainstream desktop operating system. One day it may be a good desktop OS, but they still have a long way to go. I’m not saying they will never get there – they just have some things to work out first.
(In 5-10 years maybe Linux will be ready for home consumption.)
This is unrealistic and overly pessimistic. Distros like Red Hat and Mandrake are not 5 or 10 years away, and if they make the right choices it could be far sooner. Articles like this are helpful because they show what the right choices are from the point of view of the people who will ‘consume.’
What is the sense of testing SuSE 7.1, Mandrake 8.1 and Red Hat 7.3 *today*!? To have a “fair” comparison to Windows ME?
I too made the same mistake. Stupid industry with (nearly) no women :-p
>Alice,
Joe Luzer is plenty inept with Windows, as evidenced by the number of phone calls I get from friends and family asking me to solve basic Windows problems — and I’m no kind of professional, just a competent and fairly knowledgeable user. But Joe Luzer has been using Windows forever and can get by. His Windows installation follies rarely come up because it comes factory-installed. All he has to do is take his machine out of the box, turn it on, and point-and-click. If we want him to migrate to Linux, we have to adress his concerns, no?
Chazwurth,
You are absolutely correct, we do have to address Joe Luzer’s concerns. I’m all for computers being easier to use. It’s these endless uninformative “Linux is hard” installation reviews I’m sick of. Any dolt can raise questions- useful publications give answers.
With my customers, I give formal training classes. Not only for Linux users, but all users. Hey, we had people retyping documents because they didn’t know how to copy and paste! I insist on training, or I don’t accept the job.
How many people who have been using Windows PCs for years still don’t know squat? How to edit emails? How to save files? How to navigate a directory? How to say no to the many horrible infestations of the Windows world, like Comet Cursor, and Gator, and Forward Crap To All Your Friends… I’ve had users call me all frustrated because Norton Anti-Virus would not let them open an attachment.
Using a PC takes skill and practice, there’s no way to avoid that. Doesn’t matter what platform it is. It would be good if more preinstalled Linuxes were available, then Joe could get right to work learning applications, and doing work. And pestering you with questions.
For the last two days I have been helping our Flatmate out with troubleshooting his windows machine.
The problem prooved to be a error by msword that trashed parts of the fat-table, so nothing short of repairing the damaged table or reformatting the drive would be of use.
We chose to reformat the drive after backing everything up from within a gentoo livecd.
after formatting the drive we went on to install windows 98sp2, first sign of trouble , a illegal exeption stacktrace and reboot, In the install!
We rebooted and continued, crashed on the same spot, I recognised the error and concluded that we needed one of two things -new- ram or a new cdrom drive, we used my cdrom drive and tried it again, same error, decided to whip in the linux cd again, ran memx86, shoddy ram I knew it! , we went out bought new ram, slotted ’em, same error again..
strange, we yanked the hdd:s and i looked them over (ive repaired hdd:s before) no visible signs of stress of hw failure, we bought a new 120gb disk, again same error, I was loosing my cool, we used a copy of XP, xp bombed directly..
I lost my cool and used my free off of the net mandrake 9 cd, asked me mate if he wanted to try it out, at this point he was also abit on the darkside of his cool, sure he said, oh look, worked like a charm, it even detected his tvcard (which windows couldnt find,, thank god there are 3d party vendor driver cd’s)
a few hours ago we decided to buy a new mobo for his machine, since basically Everything else was new, did that, now we have a new media-hub in the apartment, his old setup running beos.. oh and that was no hassle to install…
So Windows is easy to install ? bull-fsck-ng-sheit!
So when am I going to start to see the sort of articles and “REVIEWS” about microsofts products that I seem to get about linux? my guess.. never..
Cheers!
Rob.
I’m not sure if it’s unrealistic. 3 or 4 years ago I thought that Linux would be a good desktop OS in 3 or 4 years, well, I was wrong.
My guess is that it will be a borderline, halfway decent desktop os in 2 – 4 years. It needs a lot of work to be a really good desktop os. For it be a really good desktop os i’d guess 5 years and up.
Linux needs more than a few new features and a easier isntaller. In my opinion Linux needs a lot of restructuring and the community itself needs a lot of work. Thoese things take time.
Eugenia wrote>Sorry, but you get it all wrong.
For a customer to switch products, the alternative product HAS to be considerably better than the previous product. Otherwise, there is no reason for a switch. <
Here are a few more choices to choose a product.
1) The product is cheaper money wise.
2) The product offers features you want or need.
3) Loyal to a particular vendor.
I am sure we can all find examples of these choices in the world around us.
In order to choose a product you must ignore the marketing hype and you must do a lot of research. The problem with operating systems is that Micrososft Windows will be on the PC by default. Or the MacOS if you buy an Apple. This sides steps the research phase. If you were automatically given a particular make and model of a car at age 16, you would think that particular car was easy to use, fun to drive, and affordable. You would actually have to research other makes and models to switch. You would also have sharper criticisms towards the other products.
To all switchers, find out what your needs are, what you are willing to learn, and why you want to switch.
I firmly believe that the time will come when you will be forced to learn Linux at work because that’s what your employer chooses to use (which is probably the same way you learned Windows) and that will be that. THen, hopefully, we will hear an end to all this vitriol and tantrums.
>>>>>>>>>>>
Am I the only one who remembers people bitching about having to switch from DOS to this “foolish Windows thing” at work?
Another thing about this article surprised me. He didn’t use the internet? Linux is not windows. Linux tech support, by and large, does not come from some (often clueless) tech at the end of a phoneline. It comes from a community of knowledgable users all out to help each other. The Gentoo forums ( http://forums.gentoo.org ) should be required reading for would-be Linux reviewers. In my experience, pretty much every problem I’ve ever had was solved by a quick search of the forums. Unlike tech support, the forums can help you even when your problem becomes harder than “Which gidget is the mouse?” Read some of those posts. Notice how all the users are — enthusiastic, curteous, and, well, curteous. Nobody bitches “listen to MEEEEE right NOOOWWWW.” Nobody says “RTFM j00 n00b!”
“Too many windows users expect an OS to be like windows because they’ve never used anything else.”<p>
I use Windows and Linux, when I am in Linux I miss my windwos GUI and apps, when in windows I miss my shell tools. Although I use Windows way more often than Linux I have been using the 2 operating systems for about the same amount of time. I started a web page and learned HTML 3 days after I got a computer. But I still can’t even compare Linux to Windows as a desktop OS, even still I say using Linux and installing software on it is noting short of frustrating. Currently my RH9 install disk locks up on the first “would you like to test the media y/n” screen. RH8 did the same thing but eventually worked after 3 or 4 tries. I think Solaris is a better desktop OS than most Linux distros.
Well duh, but all people get when they want linux to be easier is “go back to windows if you want ______” fill in the blank or get called stupid, with that atitude I really so linux taking off. Why don’t you developers do it instead of make a few 100 more text editers, we have enough.
I really see linux taking off.
Most users do not, install there OS’s -period
in the workplace sysadmins, desktop support and others IT types do it all for them. and at home many people have those restore all disks. and then buy “upgrades”
so many never really install there OS at all. New users to Linux ,should like anything plan for an installation the same if they where doing anything. read some of the quick install giudes of the said vender, maybe ask arround first maybe you know some who can help you.
this is not rocket science, it amazes me, how ppl give credit to people who probley have trouble installing windows also, and then they say – see linux is harder, and not ready -blah blah.
i have my kids on linux, and they use it fine, i have not had to give them any real trianing, i just gave them accounts and told them what was what. and they took it frm there.
sheesh…..
-Nex6
“Modem issues: One of the modem-setup programs lied to me. It said I wasn’t connected, but I tried Mozilla anyway and had no problems. Anyone relying on these error messages is going to have problems.”
Even if you are connected, it pops up the internet connection
wizard!
Alice,
I agree that many “Linux is hard” reviews are pretty much useless. What I liked so much about this one was that it 1) attempted to survey a fairly large number of distributions in order to identify pervasive problems and 2) offered suggestions about what has to be different before migration from Windows to Linux will be viable for large numbers of users. Frankly, if I were involved in decision-making and development for a large distribution that aims at ease-of-use, I’d keep that list of suggestions on hand at all times. It’s a succinct statement of problems from someone who is interested in Linux and would like to see those problems fixed.
On the other hand, the lack of pre-installed Linuxes does make an even playing field impossible. Most of the non-technically-oriented Windows users I know have been using Windows for years and never once installed it. I think people tend to focus less on just how much of a disadvantage this puts Linux at, and more on how Linux needs to be ‘fixed’ — because the availability of machines with Linux pre-installed is pretty much out of our hands. The big manufacturers like Dell and Gateway get to decide that issue. I think Linux would be doing much better in the home desktop market if every Dell computer had a 100-dollar-less-expensive option of shipping with some Linux instead of Windows. In the absence of being able to control that, the only way to push Linux popularity is to fix the kinds of things that the reviewer mentioned.
Ok, listen I really like linux, but I’m not going around claiming its the best os ever, and I think that people that do don’t really understand what linux is all about. Linux has its place and I really don’t think it’s for joe sixpack’s desktop. Why should linux be as easy as windows, mac osx, or the dead beos?
First off linux is a kernel, nothing more nothing less. It’s the GNU parts of it that make it what some might consider a usable os. It’s not all coded and maintained by one organization like windows, mac osx, or even freebsd to an extent. I’m just sick of this idea that, linux has to be super easy to use. If you want a super easy to use os, run windows, or buy a mac. (By the way i think my favorite os right now is OSX, its amazing because because it looks pretty and is easy to use for those who want that, and underneath you have all the power of unix, which is great…anyway..)
If you don’t want to take the time to learn the os, then DON’T USE IT! Oh also, you said “unix based” os’s don’t really need to be that user friendly, well let me clue you in on something, linux is meant to be unix like operating system. Linus created it to make a cheap unix work alike. Yes i know “linux is not UNIX” before i get blasted by someone.
It seems like the person who wrote this article, and half of the people who’ve posted about this article just are really afraid to read about things and actually LEARN. That’s why I love working with *nix, I like to learn about computers. Call me whatever you want, tell me I have no life or whatever, but that’s why I use linux. I’m not just a cheapskate looking for an alternative to windows, and I’m not necessarily a linux zealot who thinks every piece of software should be free. Just seriously, people why do you get so mad because linux distro x isn’t a windows replacement out of the box. Why is it all of a sudden linux’s place to free us from the shackles of Microsoft?
It’s amazing it works at all if you think about it. I mean do u understand how many seperate pieces of software it takes to make a usable distro?
Finally….most linux is completely FREE!!!! Why are you complaining so much? I mean seriously people….All right my rant is done. Just my 2 cents.
Kevin,
Aside from installation problems, I don’t think it needs huge amounts of work to be a *decent* desktop option. Having played with Red Hat 9 for a couple of days, I think it’s pretty close. In kde 3.1, I have a desktop environment that I think looks better and is in most ways as intuitively easy as any Windows I’ve seen; I have a good web browser, email program, and word processor; the ability to play all my music (after grabbing an mp3 plugin for xmms, granted); CD burning is sketchy but works without too many problems; in general, it is a full-fledged desktop OS with the ability to do what I need it to in a pleasing environment. What it mostly lacks, once up and running, is good documentation that is *easy to read and understand* for someone who doesn’t know very much and is unwilling, unable, or just doesn’t have the time to wade through difficult (for them) documentation. (Notice that many of the suggestions made at the end of the review boil down to — I need better, more accessible documentation/help!)
Once your average Windows user can get an easy-to-use Linux pre-installed or install very easily, there aren’t that many barriers left. Yes, some things need work, but not so much work that it couldn’t be improved in the short-run assuming that effort is put into the right places. (That’s what I like about the review — it pinpoints where work has to be done to satisfy these kinds of users.)
Skaeight,
The reason we need *some* Linux that is easy to use is because the world needs a free-software operating system, as an alternative to Windows, that is what you describe osX to be — easy and pretty, power underneath. (Sorry to throw my hat into the political ring, but this is what I believe.) Saying that professionals and hobbyists should use Linux or a BSD or whatever, and leave the average users to Windows, is a mistake. Computers are changing the way we live and will do so more and more in the future. For people to have freedom, choice, and be empowered, they must have options. Windows is designed to be completely opaque — to inhibit the ability of users to understand what their machine is doing and what it can do. This is a bad thing. It will become more of a bad thing as the technology becomes more integrated into our lives. While one should perhaps not *have* to learn a lot in order to use one’s computer, one should also not be pushed toward using an OS that is prohibitive of learning.
Sorry if this point of view offends anyone. Again, it’s just what I believe.
I suppose people selling a particular Linux distribution might care if someone can’t migrate to it from windows, if that is the market they are targeting. Addressing the Linux community as a whole on the issue, and saying things like “if you want to get people to switch, you will do this” doesn’t help, and it ignores the real issues anyway. Like, how is Linux supposed to recognize the hardware if no one releases specifications to the volunteers who are nice enough and smart enough to write the drivers? And if there is no such volunteer, how can you get angry about that? Who is there to be angry with?
I think Linux, and the BSDs for that matter do remarkably well for being developed in the manner in which they are. There’s a 10 year old kid in my house who uses Red Hat daily, and he installed it. It didn’t take him long to understand why he couldn’t play his Windows games anymore, and he accepted it and moved on.
These “I’m a stubborn consumer, attend to me” articles are really silly, especially in the face of so many people who are ready to go out of their way to help anyone who wants help.
>Sorry, but you get it all wrong.
>For a customer to switch products, the alternative product >HAS to be considerably better than the previous product. >Otherwise, there is no reason for a switch.
>This is a market reality my friend, nothing more. Learn to >accept it if you want to see your product getting bigger >attention.
Sorry, but you’re also wrong.
Any product can succeed if it delivers value and satisfaction to a buyer, where value is defined as benefits / costs, and satisfaction compares perceived performance to expectations.
By relentlessly focusing on switching costs, you’re missing the benefits and satisfaction part of the equation. A product can have high switching costs, and yet if the benefits and satisfaction outweigh the costs of switching, it can succeed.
Also consider that there are some segments of the desktop PC market where switching costs are not a consideration, or are not an untenable hurdle for Linux.
OMG !!! Have you even looked at the manual that comes with windows ? It’s a waste of paper and don’t get me started on the help menu which is basiclly almost competely useless in most cases.
What an idiot! He obviously forgot the –config-with don’t-break compile time option. And did he use the GCC 3.3? Well, then that’s the problem right there.
missing the benefits and satisfaction part of the equation
Take a note from Microsoft and how they won the spreadsheet from their competitor. They reduced switching costs to nil People don’t look long-term, and they want a cheaper version of windows. That’s how Microsoft won the spreadsheet. Maybe other software will be better in the long run but that requires a trust that most people won’t give. Their first impressions by stumbling across specfic bugs mentioned here certainly don’t win this trust.
Windows is good enough, and a cheaper windows is what people want. If it’s better then that’s good too but Windows is good enough (right now – remember, they don’t look long term). Now maybe some don’t want the masses on Linux but I want the hardware support and the drivers and open formats and all the good stuff.
If you’re happy with Windows, then use it. Pay the money for it and install it on your computer. If someone contests you decision or tells you that you are a/an <insert insult here>, then you can flip them off and keep on with your life.
If you’re happy with Linux/UNIX/*BSD, then use it. Pay the money or download the ISOs and install it on your computer. If someone contests you decision or tells you that you are a/an <insert insult here>, then you can flip them off and keep on with your life.
If you’re happy with Mac OS Whatever-Version, then use it. Pay the money or download 7.5.3 and install it on your computer. If someone contests you decision or tells you that you are a/an <insert insult here>, then you can flip them off and keep on with your life.
Me??? I’ll be off playing with my abacus….at least I know THAT won’t need drivers / crash / need rebooting / need faster hardware / need configuration / etc.
Well, you shrieking geeks, I don’t have a shelf full of Linux reference books, and I don’t plan to buy them. As I mentioned, I think a computer is a tool rather than a hobby.
So you are saying just because it is a tool it doesn’t take any training to use? You can just pick it up and be an expert? A warning: keep this guy away from heavy machinery. Apparently he can handle a bulldozer with no training because it is a “tool rather than a hobby.”
a well-hidden something called the “mixer,” which was installed with the volume-slider and defaulted to zero by SuSE. The mixer overrides the CD-player volume level and the speaker controls.
This is the same under windows. If your system volume control is turned all the way down you will have no volume from any of your apps.
Most of the other problems he has had I can understand though. It is much easier to build a system with linux in mind than to just try and switch from windows. If you want everything to work in linux you have to pay attention to the supported hardware lists.
>Take a note from Microsoft and how they won the spreadsheet from their competitor. They reduced switching costs
Great example, and like other posters, you’re oversimplying the buying decision by focusing only on switching costs.
When Microsoft became the dominate office applications vendor, they did so by reducing total product cost (not just switching costs), and producing a product with greater benefits and greater satisfaction than the competing product.
Recall that Microsoft was the first to bundle the office applications together as one office suite, thus:
1. Reducing product costs. It was more expensive (at that time) to buy (WordPerfect or AmiPro) + (Lotus 123 or Quattro Pro) + (Dbase or Paradox) individually.
2. Lowering switching costs. Excel and Word had compatibility with Lotus 123 and WordPerfect in file formats, menu choices, and macros.
But MS Office also had greater benefits, as the bundled applications worked together to produce a sum greater than the parts, and some individual MS applications were clearly superior to the competition.
[[Great example, and like other posters, you’re oversimplying the buying decision by focusing only on switching costs. ]]
Look, I specifically said that “maybe other software will be better in the long run but that requires a trust that most people won’t give. Their first impressions by stumbling across specfic bugs mentioned here certainly don’t win this trust.” to address switching costs. And although I have come to different conclusions I have answered the question. If you’re not going to read, and you just want a quote someone to make it look like you’re paying attention then you may as well to talking into a cupboard.
A requirement to exploring Linux unless you are naturally computer savvy is to know a Linux user. If you know someone you can go to for help then you are far better off that trying alone and getting lost in the FAQs and HOWTOs. Man pages are easy for me to read, but that took about 5 years of experience to become familiar with the system.
>If you’re not going to read
Well let me apologize then for not addressing the 1 out of 9 sentences in your post that was not about costs.
Joe Sixpack@LinuxWorld,
My suggestion could be easily changed from “Migrating to Linux Not Easy for Windows Users” to “Migrating to Linux Not Easy for Lazy Windows Users”.
Some of this hardware is completely unknown to me, and i’ve been custom building (my own) pcs since the mid 90s. I know that ideally every pc would just work out of the box with whatever distro you tried, but realistically, come on! A pentium 266. You wanted to use microsoft formats (presumably office). LOL! You are one very patient man. A system like that would take in excess of a minute to boot OpenOffice. People with systems like yours tend to stick to smaller alternatives like AbiWord, Gnumeric and KOffice with lower memory requirements with poorer office support. However, these alternatives are fine if used with their own formats.
Finally, the net has enough linux-howto information for you to choke on. Literally. Next time if you want to seriously give linx a fair try, TALK TO PEOPLE. ASK QUESTIONS. READ BOOKS. I bet you didn’t just start tapping away with Win95 when you first got it right? I bet your hardware exotica needed some configuring too? Put some effort in, and I’m sure you’ll get results.
This guy obviously had some bad luck. My experience is the opposite, I actually have better hardware support with Linux than I have with Windows. My printer (hp400) puts out garbage in windows but works perfectly in Linux, odd but true.
Also, in Windows 2000 I had to go on the net looking for drivers for my sound and network cards, something I didn’t have to bother with in Linux. I’m using Mandrake 9.1 and I’m really pleased with it.
[[ Well let me apologize then for not addressing the 1 out of 9 sentences in your post that was not about costs. ]]
It’s obviously not about whether you’re addressing anything as I wasn’t asking you a question. You said that I – like all the others – had just concentrated on switching costs and not later savings. You’re obviously not reading, and yet you talk, again and again.
These forums aren’t a fight, you don’t need to respond with sarcastic apologies, just grow up.
The review is fair given that the hype from some distros is
years old.
The issues raised are in most cases the result of poor or
nonexistent testing, poor gui design or lack of understanding of gui standards. These are typical
problems programmers have when unsupervised. You see these
issues all the time in shareware and freeware both for
Linux and Windows.
It is not reasonable to expect users of any system to have
to understand the invisible internals. When moving to a gui
the internals become even more invisible. MS has a lot of
issues here as well however they are at the margins (eg how
do I get XP to NOT reconfigure my modem when their config
info is wrong!!).
If Linux and, more to the point, open source software is
to come out of the garden shed and into the mainstream then
usability will have to be addressed. This means that:
– interfaces will have to be standardised
– options will have to be simplified and consistent
– testing will have to be systematic
– usage will have to become transparent to users
Given the fact that OS software is created by volunteers
and that the variability is due in a large part to the
culture of minimum controls, in the case of gui based apps
more control is needed.
Clearly there is a distinction between a package of applications and individual apps. A package of apps should
be consistent and hence needs to require inclusions to be
standardised in some way before acceptance.
In the case of distros who create their own packages,
in particular settings gui’s and installation wizards,
there is really no excuse. The people creating these apps
are paid to do it and should be subject to the sort of
controls you would expect in a professional shop.
Backyard distros don’t have the resources to be “good”
however RedHat and some others do and should get serious
about QA. This means NOT including apps by default that
don’t really work as expected, sorting out their installs,
pushing back on the KDE and Gnome communities to lift
their game and not over hyping their capabilities as a
desktop. Incomprehensible interfaces, help files and man
pages have to go.
A final point to the flamers. Much open source software
is overly complex. This has to change. Remember that any
idiot can write complex code (in fact that’s the only sort
of code an idiot writes). Don’t be an idiot. Wallowing in
complexity may be a fine hobby but in the end it’s as
pointless as building ships in bottles or writing the lords
prayer on a pinhead. Simplicity is much harder to achieve.
Each penguin in the market is a different penguin. One has got horns. The other has got a frog head. Another one will have fish scam in its body. That is the way it is with Linux, while still a penguin, distros are very different from each other.
I am so glad you have Windows XP, OEM, paid, or pirated. (I don’t care pirated mr. rightie). Linux is just used by a small amout of 1% in the computer world usage. Macs come with a 2% scale. Windows comes with 97%, reigning and absolutely on top.
Poor Linux users.
shut yer hole freak.
> Linux is just used by a small amout of 1% in the computer > world usage. Macs come with a 2% scale. Windows comes
> with 97%, reigning and absolutely on top.
Could you show me a source for those exact numbers?
Unless you pulled them out of your ass of course.
Must have been pulled out of his arse… as he must have been in the trolling mood..
a lot of hardware devices might not work.
my canon 620U scanner won’t work, since there is no
sane driver
my $2 gravis gamepad pro would not work since it uses game port instead of usb
save a few $$ on OS and get yourself a shit load of trouble
in fact, using linux means less choices – you have to stick with linux firendly hardware – often means outdated and limited few
Why do so many people focus on the installation of linux? I think that each distribution has made it pretty much fool proof. In all honesty, at this time it’s hard to severely mess up an installation. Before installing linux I read as much as I could about the topic, and I found it as easy to install as Windows. Partitioning was the only real difference.
Installing software that was not included with your distribution and that wasn’t designed for your distribution is another story though. Granted most software you’d want to use comes with the distribution. I’ve had several conversations with fellow linux users about how hard it is to install software, and we’ve looked for solutions to this (finding none). Installing from source should be easier, but I’m not writing this for someone to read it and be like ‘hmmm this is what I’ll work on’ I have faith that linux will get it in time, just as it’s made the initial installation of the OS easier. And just because I can’t get Downloader for X to install doesn’t mean i’ll leave the OS, I found wget on my system… And (sadly) i don’t think i’m going to get the next version of Gaim to work (GTK+ 2.2 has a 10 page installation document, I think that’s beyond my realm of linux ability). So i’m going to have to wait for a new distro to include it… and install that one, i guess…
these days, few people read manual before install a software
most people expect a few clicks and that’s it.
if a guy is really serious about something before installation, he might looking for the serial number 8-)))
“Why do so many people focus on the installation of linux? I think that each distribution has made it pretty much fool proof. In all honesty, at this time it’s hard to severely mess up an installation. Before installing linux I read as much as I could about the topic, and I found it as easy to install as Windows. Partitioning was the only real difference.”
Agreed; as a complete linux newbie i made a point out of reading everything i needed to make my distro installation work, and you know what? manuals are often written as if only people with a comp.sci background are reading it. Sorry, but i’m no coder, so what the hell is “boot-loader” supposed to mean to me?(ever wondered why the average user has -never- heard of MBR on their winNT/2k/XP box? because they don’t have to, because they wouldn’t know what to do anyway) i agree many many newbs just jump in because it’s cool to have linux, i’ll admit that why i approched it too 2 years ago, but it also took me 2 years to get a stable, well-configured, reasonably-easy linux machine. i went through redhat 6.2/7.0/7.3/8.0, gentoo (yes, even a newb is sometime willing to sit through the awful and painful recompiling), a few SUSEs and what not. i just recently installed mandrake 9.1: wonderful experience so far, the installation zipped by, my worst problem so far is figuring out to install the ‘real’ nvidia drivers from a shell script file, it doesn’t seem to run, but in no way does it impair my everyday use of the system. don’t get me wrong, i love the fact that its not some big company putting this out charging me for licences, even if it means i have to wait and hope ‘this’ distro will be the good one for me. tremedous work is being accomplished, furthermore, it’s all that collaborative work that appeals to me, but i have to agree with the author, the first 10 attempts can be rough for a newbie. fortunately there’s plenty of help available, but a newbie has to go out there and get it (only makes sense).
The criteria is actually rather biased:
1. It must have a GUI interface for installing and configuring the system. I’m a lousy typist, and text mode is not an efficient way for me to interface with an operating system.
The fundamental paradigm of Unix is that everything is a stream of ascii text. This is a huge advantage it also means that some configuration needs to be done to text files. Oracle (including their desktop development edition) has a nice GUI but ultimately some of the configuration needs to be done to files and most importantly all configuration can be done from the command line. The command line comes first the GUI comess second. I just installed a custom SAN OS and it didn’t even have a GUI.
This idea that the GUI is the primary inteface is really a Mac paradigm which Windows has only adopted in the last 8 years or so. It is still controversial and does bias towards windows.
2. Existing hardware must remain usable. At a minimum, the printer, modem, and CD player/writer must work, and the new operating system must make them work without my having to tweak configuration files. If it can’t get that far, it’s not ready to inflict on the general public as a migration route, and I certainly will not recommend it to my friends.
Again unfair. The system was purchased to run windows and thus the hardware has windows support. Where can I get windows support for my G4 motherboard? Where can I get Windows support for the i860 daughter card?
Linux does an excellent job of supporting Windows hardware, but it should get credit for this. BTW given the binary only drivers for windows many people are finding that Linux support for old Windows hardware (modulo a knowledgeable user) is actually better than WindowsXP’s support
3. Existing software must remain usable unless the new operating system has equivalent features to the ones I use, there is no loss of data and data-transfer is easy.
Again the existing software is windows based. There is some definite bias here.
4. A bit of incompatibility with legacy Microsoft Office documents is OK, but using an old Microsoft Office file with Linux should be no more of a pain in the neck than using an old Office file with a new version of Office.
Microsoft Office is a Windows / Mac only application. Would anyone consider it fair if I required that Windows support Stardoc (a Unix only astronomy application) as reason to reject the OS since it “couldn’t run software”? Again this is clear bias the standard for compatability is choosen to be a windows piece of software.
5. I must have the ability to edit documents created by clients with Windows systems and return them to the client in their preferred format.
Same as #4.
6. Because a dual-boot system is the best solution for me, the Linux distribution must make it easy to create a dual-boot system. It has to recognize and preserve the existing operating system and its data, give me access to the data on the Windows drives and be reasonably unlikely to wipe out my system.
Completely fair.
Now what was missing from this article is one good reason the person wanted to use Unix. Why do we keep getting reviews from Windows users with no Unix experience and no desire to run any Unix apps and consider this the desktop standard? Heck I just today I had to walk my father-in-law through a nasty X related issue (he’s using Exceed) which would have been trivial if he were on a Unix thick client instead of a Windows thick client which barely has the power of a thin client.
There are millions of people who use terminal emulation and X clients every day. There are millions of people who want to run academic or scientific software. Why do we always hear about people who want to run to word but don’t want to pay a few hundred to Microsoft?
Run Office, Goof around in Unix, and serve a website
“Sorry, but i’m no coder, so what the hell is “boot-loader” supposed to mean to me?(ever wondered why the average user has -never- heard of MBR on their winNT/2k/XP box? because they don’t have to, because they wouldn’t know what to do anyway) ”
Well on a pre-install that’s true, or when one is installing an OS that doesn’t care that another OS is already present. Consider it the price of getting along.
[jbolden1517]
Note that most of the articles have been “I’m a windows user transistioning to…(note that it usually isn’t a Mac, wonder why?)”. That fact is more telling than any “I find fault with” article.
Their expectations have to be either lowered or met.
Some would say their expectations are too LOW. If you are wanting your linux system to function, look, and behave just like Windows then I have an OS to reccomend for you. It is called Windows. The people that WANT their computer to work specifically the way it does with a certain Windows flavor on it should probably stick with that Windows flavor as opposed to trying to re-create that environment in Linux. These two OSes are far too architecturally different and philosophically at odds. Turning one into the other is not the answer.
If we want him to migrate to Linux, we have to adress his concerns, no?
This user will never “migrate” in the sense of installing linux on his machine. He will use linux when it comes on the machine he buys or his system crashes and a friend installs it for him.
[jbolden1517]
Note that most of the articles have been “I’m a windows user transistioning to…(note that it usually isn’t a Mac, wonder why?)”. That fact is more telling than any “I find fault with” article.
I understand they are windows users but they are windows users who don’t have any Unix related needs. As for switching to Mac articles I’ve generally seen these with discussions of laptops since the Mac laptops offer features (like long battery life) you just can’t get with Windows laptops.
This idea that the GUI is the primary inteface is really a Mac paradigm which Windows has only adopted in the last 8 years or so. It is still controversial and does bias towards windows.
Why is this controversial? Does a fait accompli bother you for some reason? Windows and Mac OS together have about 99% of the desktop market – I think that the GUI is now the de facto standard.
Linux does an excellent job of supporting Windows hardware, but it should get credit for this. BTW given the binary only drivers for windows many people are finding that Linux support for old Windows hardware (modulo a knowledgeable user) is actually better than WindowsXP’s support.
Hardware support is really a vendor issue. Linux is disadvantaged because every distribution has its own specific requirements, and, even where drivers are available, installing them is often beyond some users. The fact that mainstream Linux companies like Red Hat are still refusing to put all the available drivers into their distros (eg. winmodem support) makes a tenuous situation even harder. Plus, Windows supports much more cutting-edge hardware because the vendors tend to write Windows drivers first, and Linux ones second (if at all). Sure, old hardware may work better with Linux sometimes, but most people are near enough the center of the bell curve wrt computer age that they won’t notice.
Again the existing software is windows based. There is some definite bias here.
Read the qualifier again: unless the new operating system has equivalent features to the ones I use, there is no loss of data and data-transfer is easy.
Most consumers have data they want to preserve, and, if they migrate, will want to (a) retain or improve upon exisiting functionality and (b) have access to their existing data. The same would be true for someone migrating from a Mac to Windows, or Windows to a Mac, as from Windows to Linux.
Microsoft Office is a Windows / Mac only application. Would anyone consider it fair if I required that Windows support Stardoc (a Unix only astronomy application) as reason to reject the OS since it “couldn’t run software”? Again this is clear bias the standard for compatability is choosen to be a windows piece of software.[i]
Microsoft Office is the de facto standard. We’re not talking about having the programs themselves ported, just being able to open existing data, which is a requirement in any consumer’s migration needs. Your UNIX astronomy program is probably used by less than 1% of the world’s computer users, while Microsoft Office is used by something like 90% of them. The bias is set by market conditions, not by the author.
[i]There are millions of people who use terminal emulation and X clients every day. There are millions of people who want to run academic or scientific software. Why do we always hear about people who want to run to word but don’t want to pay a few hundred to Microsoft?
Because the vast majority of computer users run Windows and Office because that’s what they know. That’s the starting point for just about everyone – I’d even wager that you, like me, cut your teeth on a Microsoft OS (DOS 3.22 over here).
Im a total linux noobie. I installed Mandrake 9.0 beta on a system similar to his system 1(pII 266 mhtz and similarly old hardware, with win98 installed) and the installation was as smooth as could be. The GUI worked. I could acces windows from linux. The only problem i had was with boot loader. For some reason i had to boot linux with a boot disk. Put the install cd back in ,to add new software, and it fixed the error anyway. Other than that, no major problems occured. I had an even easier time installing Red Hat 7.3 back when i was even less linux aware.
I agree with you about one point — many people will not use Linux until it comes pre-installed or until a friend at least guides them through the installation process. But, since there is currently not much control over what companies choose to offer Linux pre-installed, distributions that want to capture some of the home desktop market have to focus on making installation smoother and easier, among other things.
The question is whether or not it is desireable to attract those users — whether or not doing so is just a waste of time. My personal views about this are political in nature. Do I believe that Linux is generally a better operating system than Windows in a technical sense? Yes, I do. This isn’t the only reason I think people should use it, though. I think people should use it because I think free software is better for society in the long term.
What I’d like to see is not Linux turned into Windows with a better lisence. This is neither possible nor desireable. But I wouldn’t mind seeing an easy-to-install, easy-to-use Linux that is still Linux underneath a pretty exterior — an exterior that will help to attract people away from what I see as a socially and politically undesireable product. Whether or not you subscribe to my politics, I think you might agree that some distributions are making progress in this direction (that is, of an easy-to-use Linux), and also that making more progress isn’t impossible.
Tempest,
It isn’t always as easy as it was for you. It isn’t the author’s fault that her hardware isn’t well-supported; it isn’t as if she went out and bought a system to install Linux on. The article was informative precisely for that reason.
Too many assumptions being made. ‘Microsoft has 97% of the desktop market’. ‘You probably cut your teeth on a Microsoft OS’. Microsoft may have over 90% of the consumer market, but I doubt if you count all of the applications in industry you would find 90% penetration. We used Windows almost exclusively in our offices, but not in our distribution centers. AIX and Oracle were used, other companies used Informix and Postgres. In the centers there were many PC’s that did not have Windows on them. They had software for the warehousing system and for carriers (UPS, etc.). Most large corporations use Unices and Legacy systems for;
1. Stability (99.9999%)
2. Concurrent users (not unusual to have over 1,000)
3. Availability (24 hour 7 day a week runtime)
The assumption that everyone learned on an MS OS is faulty, unless you are specifying those who have been introduced since MS gained dominance in the 90’s. Many people I knew
had their first exposure to Apple computers, they were the most prevalent at the time. I learned on IBM, there were no desktop PC’s at the time and if you wanted to use computers you took courses on programming and assembly language. There was ONE computer on the campus, the mainframe, and we had to schedule hours to do the jobs. I know that is dating my experiences, but some assumptions seem to relate to computers since 1990, as if no one knew about computing before Microsoft. The first ‘consumer’ PC I used was a VIC 20. How many people remember that the first MS pc’s had to be run from floppies because there was not enough disk space to install programs? Microsoft did not gain dominance because they were technologically better, they were significantly cheaper than anyone else.
i’m quite experience wiht linux, but i love nice, efficient guis and easy installations. i thought it will take linux few more years to take us there.
i was proved WRONG. i would suggest everyone to try RedHat 9! it’s AMAZING! it even recognized my on-board sound card…
Jeff: This idea that the GUI is the primary inteface is really a Mac paradigm which Windows has only adopted in the last 8 years or so. It is still controversial and does bias towards windows.
Anon: Why is this controversial? Does a fait accompli bother you for some reason? Windows and Mac OS together have about 99% of the desktop market – I think that the GUI is now the de facto standard.
Those numbers depend on defining desktops in such a way so as to get the numbers. For example single purpose computer systems that you often see in non office environments are excluded. It removes operating systems on all sorts of devices. If you define desktops to be general business purpose easy to use computer not driving any specialized equipment or hardware and running on programs on the local CPU then yes its the high 90’s (though nowhere near 99%). OTOH if you define desktop to be say “primary computer used” the numbers are much lower. A huge percentage of the workforce uses terminals and the servers are running: Unix, VMS, zOS, etc… To pick an extreme example there might be less than 10,000 zOS systems in production use in the United States. I’d wager though that 30,000,000 people in the US use at least one zOS application every day.
Jeff: Microsoft Office is a Windows / Mac only application. Would anyone consider it fair if I required that Windows support Stardoc (a Unix only astronomy application) as reason to reject the OS since it “couldn’t run software”? Again this is clear bias the standard for compatability is choosen to be a windows piece of software.
Anon: Microsoft Office is the de facto standard. We’re not talking about having the programs themselves ported, just being able to open existing data, which is a requirement in any consumer’s migration needs. Your UNIX astronomy program is probably used by less than 1% of the world’s computer users, while Microsoft Office is used by something like 90% of them. The bias is set by market conditions, not by the author.
As an aside I think 90% isn’t even close to true. Microsoft does not sell nearly that many copies.
Now the main point, my comment in the original was not that Stardoc is a vital feature for most people (I choose it in many ways because its obscure) but rather we consistently see articles addressing general business applications and the failure of Linux. We don’t hear from people who need to run scientific or academic applications in these sorts of reviews. This is an area of obvious bias. I went with Linux years ago because it ran the Unix applications I needed to run while Windows didn’t. There is no question the general purpose office suite is an important application and there is no question that extend office (word, excel, access, project,visio ….) is a very strong lineup in this area. I’d say far and away the best applications suite in this area.
If your goal is to run general purpose office apps, and you aren’t going to push them Linux has little to offer. However once you push them the limitiations of programs like word and excel become very clear and the Linux applications really shine comparatively. And if you need to run Unix applications the limitiations of windows become much more noticable.
My point was that it is no more reasonable to attack because windows does a better job support .doc files then it is to attack windows because Linux does a better job supporting Stardoc. That’s a failure of fit not a failure of the OS.
Jeff: There are millions of people who use terminal emulation and X clients every day. There are millions of people who want to run academic or scientific software. Why do we always hear about people who want to run to word but don’t want to pay a few hundred to Microsoft?
Anon: Because the vast majority of computer users run Windows and Office because that’s what they know. That’s the starting point for just about everyone
This is what I’ve been disagreeing with. Its simply not true that everyone runs these apps. Lots of people don’t type memos and use spread sheets for a living. When you buy a book a barnes and nobles do you think the inventory system tied to the cash register is windows? When you pass a police officer in his car and he’s getting computerized information do you think that windows? When you read the newspaper think of all the people running the press early in the morning do you think they running windows?
– I’d even wager that you, like me, cut your teeth on a Microsoft OS (DOS 3.22 over here).
Well you’d be wrong. I cut my teeth before Microsoft was in the OS business, and instead was known for writing BASIC interpreters. I cut my teeth on PDP-11 http://telnet.hu/hamster/pdp-11/ followed by Commodore Pet http://www.old-computers.com/museum/computer.asp?st=1&c=191 and the Apple2 http://www.old-computers.com/museum/computer.asp?st=1&c=68. I never used an IBM compatable PC until well until mid-late 1980s.
the original article is about windows users migrating to linux – not about to big iron machines.
a significant portion of pc users gained computer experience since netscape/IE – that is vastly different from the good old vt100/3270 days. it is about web, WYSIWYG, digital imaging, color printing – not a blinking cursor on a green terminal with tektonix/ReGis graphic as a luxury option.
cheaper solutions will only get popularity when it makes money – NetZero is significantly cheaper than AOL, but that doen’t make it a larger ISP than AOL.
Beta alpha gamma, this is the state Linux is at today (at best). Tsu Dho Nimh gave a meaningful review and I wish that all Linux editors use this article as a starting point for the specifications of their next releases. Linux will replace MS Windows everywhere the day that corporate managers (the ones who decide for the rest of us) will be able to conduct their daily work with it.
Think of that ! (twice)
I just got finished installing ManDrake 9.1 on a Dell laptop and that is what I am typeing this message on. It was painless for the most part. I am knowledgeable about computers because I have built quite a few. My main one has 98se on it and it hardly ever and I mean hardly ever crashes. Grant it it did take a lot of tweaking but it can be done.
The problem for the most part that I have with Linux and believe me I want to learn it is that the documentation is piss bore. I know a lot of people have put alot of time into it and I can appreciate that. You post problems on forums, boards or where ever the info you get back is most of the time over my head. For instance I was trying to set up my network with a pc running MD 8. I had problems so I wanted to ping around to see where the problem might be. I posted on linuxquestions.org after doing alot of research. When I finally get an answer it was something like open command console and type ping. Well I did not know what to open and could not get a clear answer. So finally I started off in text mode and did a ping 192.168.1.1 to hit my router. Guess what it kept going and going and going until I shut the pc off. Just the basics to get going are hard in Linux. Give it to me something like Start, programs, msdos prompt type ping 192.168.1.1 or start, run type cmd hit enter type ping 192.168.1.1.
After reading some of these replies and people refering to other people as being stupid and joe luzer I understand now. I hope one day if you need help and ask a joe luzer he tells you to stick it up ++++ +++. Just because they do not know as much as some of you self proclaimed linux gurus.
Yeah Linux might be better and free but it will never replace windows as much as I hate to say it unless people get off there high horse and being a little more tolarent of newbies.
“Finally, why do we continually have newbie written reviews, its kind of getting old. I’m coming to the conclusion linux isn’t for joe sixpack.”
Which is the reason why Linux isn’t going to take over the desktop. Linux has come a long way in the past several years, but in most business and home environments, this is exactly the type of user that would be using it. A majority of linux advocates who would like linux to become a major desktop player are not the majority of those who would be using it if linux were to become prevalent in the desktop marketplace. The majority of the home and business computer users aren’t admins or home system tweakers. As much as I love unix and the variations of it, I know that that this majority wouldn’t be able to have a smooth transition to linux, not matter how much you like it or how much hate Microsoft.
Of course people have high expectations of Linux. You only have to look at a lot of posts on this forum to see the number of Linux zealots who say ‘Linux is better than Windows’, ‘Linux can do everything that Windows can do and more’, ‘Linux can replace Windows’ and major Linux distros pushing how easy they are as a selling point – it’s no wonder people get dissapointed that their systems don’t just work.
I think Linux has become swept along with the anti-Microsoft feelings and it is being looked to as the ‘Messiah’ of operating systems. It’s not. Live with it. Admit it. If Linux is good for your needs then great – it doesn’t suit my needs just yet. One day, I hope it will be.
Key points were made in the article, mainly that users already have systems so they don’t want to have to go out an buy new hardware to install Linux, and users already have files and these need to play nice with Linux. The last one is made very difficult though due to proprietory file types in most applications (not just Microsoft).
My advice to anyone looking at Linux to replace windows – Stick with Windows – there’s nothing better… yet.
Maybe the next time someone releases a Linux distro, at each stage provide a clear short precise description of what is hapending at that stage, and then provide a ‘Tell me more’, which then gives more dtailed info on the topic. Something like the following.
‘In this section, Redhat will install a program to enable you too start any of the operating systems on your hard drive’
In the tell me more it could then go on and say something like
‘The first few sectors of your primary partition on your boot drive are the master boot record(MBR). The system (usually) checks here first for an operating system when it starts….’
This has the effect of enabling the newbie to at least know what is happening then and enable them to actually learn something about computers, rather than hide this information from them. As long as the information can be written to be as simple as possible and not require them to take action on it.
I posted above about installing MD9.1. Well durning the install I told it not to mnt the ntfs partitions I have on my laptop. Dual boot with xp. It did anyway. Went into directory where mnt is clicked little + sign. Lock Up. Went to control center the drives were mounted. Would not do anything. Had to manually kill pc. Tried to boot back into MD. File system screwed will have to reinstall.
“In the tell me more it could then go on and say something like
‘The first few sectors of your primary partition on your boot drive are the master boot record(MBR). The system (usually) checks here first for an operating system when it starts….'”
“Huh? WTF is a sector? What is a primary partition? OMG this is confusing Linux sucks!!!!”