My Concern [LWN.net]

My Concern

Posted Sep 1, 2006 18:25 UTC (Fri) by oak (guest, #2786)
In reply to: My Concern by pbardet
Parent article: Fedora Core to drop openmotif

Well, the only problem is that you cannot get Linux pre-installed
and 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)

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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.