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My ConcernMy ConcernPosted Sep 1, 2006 13:09 UTC (Fri) by pbardet (guest, #22762)In reply to: My Concern by nlucas Parent article: Fedora Core to drop openmotif
I used to think the same as I focused on Windows 98. But I recently installed a Windows XP system for my spouse. Everything came preinstalled, it updated itself (at my request) with the latest patches (from the internet), without me having to find the right web site to get the stuff. That PC came preinstalled with Word Perfect, media player, internet browser, graphics suite, vector drawing stuff. All for CAD300.
Before doing this (I want to stay as much as possible away from Windows), I wanted to install a Linux system with Windows emulation for the software she needs on Windows. Cross stitching software DOES NOT exist on Linux. A good 3D CAD software does not exist on Linux. I quickly stopped this path as I had to setup either Xen or VMware and spend days/weeks (since I'm no expert with all that stuff).
I'm sorry to say that Linux is not ready for the regular people and removing software that is won't help Linux adoption. All my boxes use Linux, as I can deal with it. When it comes to setting up a box for a standard user, I'm not able to do so and I can understand that people with less computer knowledge than I won't want to go through this pain.
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My Concern Posted Sep 1, 2006 13:55 UTC (Fri) by ofeeley (subscriber, #36105) [Link] "Cross stitching software DOES NOT exist on Linux."
You've got to be joking. A quick Google reveals
My Concern Posted Sep 1, 2006 20:05 UTC (Fri) by pbardet (guest, #22762) [Link] Did you try it ? I did.
My Concern Posted Sep 1, 2006 18:25 UTC (Fri) by oak (guest, #2786) [Link] Well, the only problem is that you cannot get Linux pre-installedand pre-configured (with an upto-date distro you yourself prefer) for your broadband connection (email accounts etc). Hm. Actually I think some providers are giving Nokia 770 (Internet tablet using Maemo Linux) to their broadband customers... Anyway, If you need to install Windows (XP) yourself, that's a world of pain compared to installing Linux. Just installing the virus scanning software feels to be about on same scale as installing one of the smaller Linux distros. Virus checking software taking nearly 1/2GB of disk, running all the time half a dozen processes and doubling your machine's bootup time seems quite extravagant. Well, that might be slightly exaggerated, but I'm actually looking forward to MicroSoft taking care of that... They've created all the security holes, so who's better at patching them? ;-) Admittedly there are still some special apps for which there's not as good (or cheap?) alternative on Linux as on Windows and for gaming Windows beats Linux hands down, at least when it comes to bleeding edge 3D and quantity. But for normal Office and Internet usage I think Linux is pretty good. E.g. Xandros home edition is 31 euros, or were you comparing Windows of which you pay quite a bit against Linux which you get free? If the Linux distro doesn't offer that many packages, then getting the SW often requires installing them from the sources and although this is doable for a knowledgable computer person, there's no way computer novice going to do it. Hopefully Linux systems at some point stabilize enough at the system, GUI toolkit and package naming level, that using packages from other distros unmodified becomes feasible. (Debian offers alien, but I'm not sure how it handles package deps)
My Concern Posted Sep 1, 2006 20:40 UTC (Fri) by pbardet (guest, #22762) [Link] I know that it is very difficult to find a Linux pre-installed. From what I've seen, it exists, but those businesses fold up pretty quickly because even once "properly" installed there are lots of quirks to fix and you end up having quite a bit of support to do when you can't offer such a service.
Try to install a printer, if you're lucky to have a driver available, you will need to know where to get it. Most geeks know that linuxprinting.org will get that fine, but the unfortunate who types linux-printing.org instead gets some parked domain name.
Linux is about how good you are at googling, most of the time. I did not google a single time to get the XP box working. Instead I was able to browse local help to understand why I needed to setup the network 3 times through their wizard every single time I wanted to change one parameter.
It sure is easier to cry about the big PC vendor not offering Linux than setting up a business that will sell PCs with Linux pre-installed and ready to work in 30 minutes.
Windows emulation on linux Posted Sep 3, 2006 23:30 UTC (Sun) by djao (subscriber, #4263) [Link] I wanted to install a Linux system with Windows emulation for the software she needs on Windows. I quickly stopped this path as I had to setup either Xen or VMware and spend days/weeks (since I'm no expert with all that stuff). I had a very easy time setting up Windows emulation with qemu in fedora. Do it like this:
rpm -Uvh http://fedoranews.org/tchung/qemu/0.8.1/fc5/2.6.17-1.2174_FC5/qemu-0.8.1-2.fc5.i386.rpm
That will boot the emulated system from the windows installation CD. After you install windows, the system will reboot. Finish the installation, shut down the emulated windows the way you normally shut down windows, and close qemu. After that, you can boot the emulated system from the hard drive instead of the CD, as follows: qemu windows.img -localtime -k en-us -monitor stdio -usb -usbdevice tablet -soundhw es1370 -cdrom /dev/cdrom -kernel-kqemu -m 512 The -kernel-kqemu switch makes windows run a lot faster (but you can't use it while installing windows -- windows will hang). Once everything is set up correctly, you should be able to run qemu full screen (Ctrl-Alt-f) and not even notice the emulation overhead. Hope this helps.
Windows emulation on linux Posted Sep 5, 2006 15:41 UTC (Tue) by pbardet (guest, #22762) [Link] Thanks for the info. I guess it was to difficult to put it in the qemu documentation. Once again, lack of easy user support. Even if you know where the software is, info is very hard to find.
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