“You ever tried Linux?” my wife’s Uncle Toby asked me as I sat in his home office that cold winter day. We had been discussing the rise and fall of the BeOS and he mentioned that he had tried a few different *nixes on his home server/firewall. “Here let me show you,” he said as he flicked the switch on the monitor next to his Windows XP box.Uncle Toby was running Mandrake Linux 9.0 on his server. He was using it as the firewall for his cable internet. He showed me how easy it was to navigate the KDE desktop and also showed me Kasteroids and Tux Racer. I asked him whether you could use microsoft file formats and he fired up OpenOffice.org and showed me the settings for opening MSoffice docs. That night I took home a freshly burned copy of Mandrake Linux 9.0 on 3cds.
Now, almost a year and a half later, I am huge booster of open source and I have converted four of my fellow computer geek friends to the Mandrake distro. But there are many pitfalls for the Windows user making the switch to Linux. Here are a few that I have encountered myself.
One of the problems faced by the open source community in general and Linux in particular is that we have all been engrained with certain preconceived notions about software. When Uncle Toby burned Mandrake for me that night, I asked him if he could also copy OpenOffice.org for me. He showed me how the Mandrake Software Sources installer worked and tried to explain that I didn’t need a disk for every application that I wanted to install, but I insisted that I needed OpenOffice.org so just to shut me up, he went to the OpenOffice site and downloaded the latest tarball for me and burned it to CD. I have never used that CD. I never needed to.
What I didn’t realize until after I had installed Mandrake for myself a few nights later, and what most Linux newbies today still have a hard time grasping, is that Linux is by it’s very nature a network based operating system, and because most of the software is open source, there is a large amount of software that just plain ships with the distro.
I know this seems old hat to most OSnews readers, but really, this is revolutionary stuff. You just search the software database for the program you want to install, and after a short and completely automated download your new application is ready to run. (I have since learned the untar, configure, make, makeinstall ritual, but compiling from source is beyond the scope of this article. I am merely pointing out a few of the “gotchas” that snag new Linux users)
Brand recognition is another thing that gets in the way of “getting” linux. The first thing a new Linux user asks is “Can I use Windows Media Player in Linux.” It takes a while for the new user to realize that the question should really be, “Is there a killer MP3 player for Linux.”
Another concept that is hard to grasp for the new Linux user is the fact that so much of the software is free. Once they get it they are often amazed. The usual response I get when I explain how it works is, “So let me get this straight. You link up your Mandrake Linux to a bunch of FTP sites with software and then you just steal whatever you want?” And I answer, “No.. not exactly. It’s not stealing, because it isn’t commercial software. There is commercial software for linux and you do have to buy that if you want to use it, but most of the commercial software comes bundled with the OS if you buy the Official version, but the download version is free and so is all the software that comes with it.”
Another preconceived notion about computers brought about by Windows9x/NT/2k/XP: The reboot. I ran a dead slow Compaq Presario 433 for 4 years as my answering machine. It ran for months at a time without a restart. It was running the Compaq version of Win3.1 and it was slow, but it was stable. Mind you, every month or so I would exit to DOS and run scandisk and defrag, so it wasn’t without user intervention. But it was stable. I have since used Win95, Win98, WinME, WinNT4.0 and Win2000/XP in either my home or at work, and they will never be as stable as 16bit Windows on 16bit Dos. Repeat after me: “I have seen the bluescreen in WinXP and now I believe.”
But Linux is STABLE. If it starts to choke on a tricky piece of code it will divert necessary resources to that code in an effort to get the job finished, often at the expense of user time cycles. So the desktop will slow to a crawl and lock up even though everything is fine at a kernel level. But it takes you a few months of use to realize this. So the linux newbie does what he would do in Windows: Restart.
On my current super slow machine (celeron400, 440bx mobo, 512mb ram, 40gig and 20gig harddrives ancient ATIragePro videow/8mb ram and LG dvd+rw combo drive) if I am doing some particularly processor intensive task the desktop will lock up. Coming from Windows with the preconceived notions that I had had, I would restart the computer after 2 minutes with no response. I would think to myself, “And they say it’s stable, well, I’ll show you stable you computer you. Look how stable my finger is as I press the reset button!”
One day the system locked up while I was editing audio files in Audacity. Because Cooledit2000 locked up on purpose when you did the same thing in Windows, I figured, ah I’ll let it run. Sure enough the desktop came back. Now I never restart. I figured it out. On my little Cele400 it can lock for over 5 minutes, but it will recover everytime. I bet a lot of newbies reboot their systems unnecessarily just like I used to.
The final gotcha that I want to point out today is the reinstall. In the Windows world, nearly all of the really big problems with the OS need to be solved with either a fresh install of the OS or a system restore. I had reinstalled Mandrake some 10 times before a friend of mine taught me how to edit fstab and also the little trick with the script files in your home directory. I had thought that these config files were like registry files and that the system wouldn’t boot without them. When I realized you could wipe them to restore your default settings it saved me a lot of hassle. Learning to edit fstab and the other configuration files is tricky, but I was pretty good with windows .ini files so I have a bit of a background anyway. But here is my point. The average windows user.. not power user, but average user, solves everything by reinstalling windows. And given a Linux distro they will do the same thing at the first sign of trouble. X-windows won’t load video config failed: reinstall. Of course, now I know this is completely unnecessary, but it is a gotcha.
In many ways Linux can be so much more graceful than Windows. The KDE project and the commercial desktops based on Gnome (Ximian, Sun JDS etc.) demonstrate this. And for daily use, I enjoy KDE more than I enjoy XP, period. It makes more sense to me. But the initial configuration and the gotchas that I have outlined above will continue to stunt the growth of large scale adoption. It’s not that the learning curve is too high, it’s that this entire generation of computer users has learned how to use computers the Microsoft way. Flaws and all. And unlearning all of that baggage is the biggest factor in “figuring Linux out.”
About the author:
Matthew Fogel lives in St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada with his wife Sheri and his two sons Drew and Joey. He works for the SITEL corporation as a tech support agent for one of the big 3 PC manufacturers. He runs Mandrake Linux on his home computer and about that he says, “I don’t intend to ever buy another piece of Microsoft software again… Bill Gates has enough money.” Matthew has played guitar for over 14 years, and is quite good.
I would think to myself, “And they say it’s stable, well, I’ll show you stable you computer you. Look how stable my finger is as I press the reset button!”
I sincerely hope you’re not trying to claim that Linux never crashes…
This is obvious stuff. I have the Mandrake 8.1 and SuSE Linux instruction manuals, and they have a whole chapter dedicated to documenting the differences.
Even versions of Windows have differences. I found it hard going from Windows 3.1 to 95 to 98 to XP, with 98 to XP the hardest of all! NT and 2000 were easier because they looked similar to 95 and 98! My suggestion is when introducing Linux to someone new is to use a Knoppix disk first, tour some of the software on the disk, explian the differneces then install a full distribution.
This article is obvious. Next up, Usage patterns hinder the adoption of Automobiles from the horse and cart masses.
I particularly enjoy the Gentoo distribution, and FreeBSD, another unix branch.
It was quite hard to get used to them, and I’m still using Windows XP at home.
Did you read the article at all?
If so, I think you didn’t understand it at all, because your criticism has nothing to do with the contents of the article. It’s not about the functional differences, but the “way of thinking about software” differences, and AFAIK you won’t find it at any manual.
Believe what? That the blue screen still exists? Yeah XP can crash, but then so can linux. I have seen them both crash, it is an rare occurence on either OS.
“Now, almost a year and a half later, I am huge booster of open source and I have converted four of my fellow computer geek friends to the Mandrake distro.”
Ok, I just have to ask, why did you convert your friends? Were they having trouble with Windows? Did they want to convert? Or were you just doing this in normal Linux geek fashion to help get the whole world on Linux, because you know how its bad for Microsoft to do it but its ok for Linux to do it? Why did you convert?
Oh and about those lock ups. Sure the system may return to you in 5 minutes on Linux, but its so much easier to just press reset on the computer in Windows. Takes less than 2 minutes to get back to the desktop in Windows. So basically what your saying is if you use Linux your productivity will go down by 3 minutes for every 5 minutes you are using it.
I did read the article, and yes the Manuals have comprehensive differences between Windows, Mac OS X and Linux, whi.
For example, Where’s my start menu? In Mandrake Linux the program menu is a yellow star.
It also explains how software is installed and so on. It is to explain about the differences, and shows the user how to think different. I did understand it. Thats why I carry a knoppix cd with me and I use it to explain the differences in person.
This makes a big diffence to stability. It allows you to get rid of crashed programs in two clicks.
To use it, right click on the panel, choose add, special button, Non KDE Application. Type xkill as the program to run and click OK. To use it, click on it and when the special icon appears click on the crashed program to eliminate it. To use it on Gnome, right click the panel, choose Actions, Force quit.
Truly is the most useful utillity for Linux. Much better than the Windows way. Also, many computers do not come with a reset button so that isn’t much of an option!
For what it’s worth, there is a huge difference between an individual giving a friend a copy of Linux to try. Most computer users know what Windows is, but very few have had experience with Linux and (as a result) have very little reason to seek it out. If somebody makes a few comments about how to improve peoples’ perceptions of Linux when they try it, all the best to them.
Takes less than 2 minutes to get back to the desktop in Windows
And what about the work you potentially lose when you have to reset a locked-up system? I’d better have my system slow for 5 minutes but at least I don’t lose anything.
I wonder if the article’s author would receive so much flame if he said he used Gentoo or Slackware instead of Mandrake…
I can see how Linux might be appropriate for a 100% n00b. I’ve been using Windows computers for 10+ years … and i use two windows computers now. I think to many people, the Windows computer works and does everything fine. And it is simple enough to pickup. So if a user is comfortable, why would they want to switch to Linux? You can say it’s more stable… more free software… but my Windows is stable… and i have all the programs i need already
i’ve already tried linux of different flavours, including knoppix, mandrake 10, fedora … my primary problems are
1. hardware support … i know it’s not Linux’s fault… but it’s a problem that deters me from using it
2. office compatibility… i’ve tried OpenOffice… it’s nice… but i NEED MS Office… and i don’t want to go setup WINE to run it
3. i don’t have time to learn… yes i’ve spent too much time with windows, but if windows does the job… why switch now
To me… and i think to many others, it’s still not a convincing case to switch, because the windows works fine.
YES – I claim Linux never crashes. In 5 years desktop use on heavy (professional) graphics processing I have had no (ZERO) crashes – oh except once, when I didn’t notice my CPU fan had died – and then a terminal window popped up and politely informed me
“Kernel panic. System going down now.
Kernel Panic. System going down now.
Kernel Panic.
Kernel Pan
Ker” – (bit like HAL in 2001 – don’t kill me Dave)
Even by the time I had the case off, the heatsink was too hot to touch. I left it half an hour to cool, changed the fan, booted up, and carried on work where I left off. (Oh – I lost 2 minutes work done since my last save.) Luckily my Athlon 2000Xp was undamaged. The system is still fine now two years later.
At least in the case of my mother, I changed her computer to Linux (Mandrake 9.2) because
1) Her computer is very old (Pentium 233, 64 RAM) and it was extremely slow with Windows 98, every new version makes it worst and worst.
2) Stability (she was losing emails and word documents all the time due to lockups)
3) to a lesser extent, viruses. Although she used Norton and didn’t have much problems herself, she thought a bit stressing to have to be so “alert” all the time because a smart boy in Denmark or China found a new way to fool her.
Since she doesn’t install new software very often, Mdk is working great for her (I taught her to use Red Carpet, just in case, but I think she never used it)
What hardware dosen’t it support? Have you told the developers of Mandrake, Knoppix etc so they know about it? Remember that Mandrake 10 is a beta, with constantly improving hardware support!
As for Office, have you tried CrossOver office? Quick and eeasy set up, much easier than wine. As for time to learn, it only takes a few hours to read the manual. So spend one week end trying it out. It should be noted that My 52 year old mother uses Linux everyday, but she gets totally confused with Windows. She even figured out how to use the command line, thanks to the mandrake tutorials!
Windows wasn’t stable for me. It BSODed me far too many times. The only times when Linux crashed is when I overclocked my CPU.
I can’t speak for him, but chances are he converted his friends because they where his friends. When people find a better way to do something they help their friends out by showing it to them.
If I find a band I like I let my friends listen to it. If I find a restaurant I like, I take my friends there. It is part of being a friend.
I know this is how I got into linux. I was visiting a friend and he showed me his system running linux. After trying it out a little I decided to install it at home. A little while later I realized I hadn’t booted to windows in months.
Now it is also part of being a friend to respect your friends decisions once you have showed them something.
So if a user is comfortable, why would they want to switch to Linux?
It’s pretty simple: you don’t have too. You’re free to use whatever you like and you shouldn’t be locked down to a specific system or be forced to switch to another one. As long as you know what you are doing, losing or gaining, it’s all fine.
Speaking about the article, i’ve found it to be very sensible and close to reality. It reminded me the first time I run Linux, back in the RH 5 time. Reinstalling the application or OS is something very common for newbies: “It worked fine out of the box, so if I mess with it, better I reinstall it and get back to its default behavior”.
“Well duh”. Well, to you this may seem obvious, but I found it an interesting article. I’m a fairly new Linux user (Mandrake, Suse and Knoppix) dual booting Windows XP. And I have to say: I recognized myself in this article. I also reboot my Linux way too often, so it seems. His suggestion to edit FSTAB looks interesting, I’ve heard of it before but never actually bothered. Time to read up on this one…
Yes, you are right. Never is a very long time.
I remember distinctly one of our Linux boxes crashing, I think it was in some time in late 1999. It turned out to be a RAID card that had been misconfigured, so that it didn’t automagically bring up the hotspare when the normal disk had a hardware failure.
So sure, Linux can indeed crash.
For example, Where’s my start menu? In Mandrake Linux the program menu is a yellow star.
Looks like you still didn’t get it. Nevermind. Keep “well duhing”.
As UGLY as this suggestion seems I would encourage every distro that customizes it’s KDE start (or whatever the technical term is) to make the buttons back colour lime green. That would be UGLY but it would draw eye focus and the green would increase usability by giving the user somewhere to start. Even if they ‘guess’ to use the lowest left icon, they green would make them more at home and give them more ocnfidence.
By the time they got sick of it and wanted it changed they would have learned enough about Linux to do it. Kinda like when I first got used to windows (95) from dos the first thing I did was change the background, it gave me a sense of accomplishment.
Really this is a really basic thing and easy to do – and it seems kinda obvious.
Who needs ugly ‘start’ buttons? I can loose a 6yo kid (and have done) on my computer (KDE desktop) and they know where to ‘start’. They can usually find ‘Potatohead’ too – its _the_ killer app for that age group. They can’t mess with my stuff either (on the guest desktop.)
1) Her computer is very old (Pentium 233, 64 RAM) and it was extremely slow with Windows 98, every new version makes it worst and worst.
Hmm, in my experience Win98 is a lot faster than Mandrake on that kind of hardware, especially if you use KDE.
But Win98 is also a lot more unstable.
XKill isn’t much use if the UI is totally unresponsive or the desktop is inaccessible. When running full screen apps such as games and multimedia players I quite often get locked into the app and can’t get back to the desktop.
Unlike in Windows I find that alt+tab window switching doesn’t work in many apps, especially if the system is unresponsive. Often the only way to fix the problem is to switch to a virtual console and use the ps and kill commands.
OTOH I’ve never seen Windows become so unresponsive that the task manager isn’t displayed within a few second when ctrl-alt-delete is pressed. Usually in Windows I can simply alt+tab out of the misbehaving app and kill it with a right click on the taskbar. IMO that’s a lot easier for most users than dealing with command line tools.
I crashed my RedHat install probably about 5 times in a year (the RedHat kernel mods really weren’t very good IMO). Since I switched to Arch (6 months ago) I’ve crashed it once (I’ve crashed Xfree about 3 times). When I crashed it I had opened several hundred decent quality jpeg images in GIMP. I suppose it would be nice for the kernel to stop when it runs out of memory (and it may have just dug into swap I am not patient enough to wait 5 minutes). Windows XP doesn’t seem to crash, however in my XP it likes to crash applications running on it.
Mostly though, Linux has better applications for my uses
. It’s a matter of personal preference, to each his own.
>But it was stable. I have since used Win95, Win98, WinME, WinNT4.0 and Win2000/XP in either my home or at work, and they will never be as stable as 16bit Windows on 16bit Dos.
Just stopped the read after that sentence.
Win3.x is the most unstable OS I have ever tried. a lot more unstable than WinME… Especially when using network.
Why people do have to lie to convince other guys to switch to Linux if it’s that good ?
I’m not a sheep… As long as people will say everywhere “switch to linux ! linux is better ! linux is stable !” I just won’t switch. If someday I have the choice to try and choose, I’ll do that. A lot of people complained about the Microsoft propaganda: but why are they now doing the same with Linux ?
Now please stop that stupid campain… Just got enough.
Regards,
Leo – HALT the Linux PROPAGANDA !
Just to be fair, I have had the experience you have mentioned with both Windows and Linux. The task manager took forever to come out, and I had to reset the system. It is much less frequent lately with both Linux and windows. As the author did say, I realised recently that sometimes Linuz, especially with teh 2.6 kernel, will soldier on until everything works again. I am one of those who had been in the habit of resetting.
I do occasionally have this problem with windows where one of the aps causes a memory leak, and I do not know which, and my RAM goes down to 6MB available out of 512MB. Then the system becomes very unresponsive. Nothing launches. You do not know what is eating all the memory because the reporting is not accurate. You just have to kill as many processes as you can until you hit the right one. At least with Linux, this is always accurate. And I have never had this problem. YMMV of course.
When I get a bad crash in Linux, I can recover most everything with knoppix or something similar. With windows, if your ntoskrnl.exe gets corrupted in a bad crash, gawd help you. Still, I’d use knoppix to see what I can fix. Every OS has it’s share of weaknesses.
Yet, waiting for the system to recover gives you a chance to save other progs you may have had up. If you just resetted everytime something went wrong, you could stand to have much more data loss.
This article isn’t near as bad as people make out to be. It’s discussing one of the trickiest parts of getting your mind around Linux if you’re not a techie. One of my previous bosses still couldn’t believe you can have free access to almost every software package you’d need in distros like Debian or Gentoo.
To many people who can only think in the microsoft world, this doesn’t seem the least bit natural.
foo
If you use KDE and want to Xkill some application:
Option 1) Ctrl+Alt+Esc gives you a nice mouse cursor to kill whatever you point and click at. try it.
Option 2) Ctrl+Esc brings you a nice TasK List(Procees Table) to select and kill whatever process you like to.
Note: Not sure if these options are on older KDE versions since I just discovered them on KDE 3.2. (don’t had to xkill so much).
hmmm wonder if someones ever witnessed that thing crash on its own :-D.
“I have since used Win95, Win98, WinME, WinNT4.0 and Win2000/XP in either my home or at work, and they will never be as stable as 16bit Windows on 16bit Dos.”
Oh, do be serious.
WinMe would crash if you looked at it funny, and Win95+98 were not the most stable.
But, Os’s like NT/2K/XP have proper memory protection. Dos and 16bit Windows do not. I can’t imagine how you found them more stable, unless the apps you were running never ever crashed or had any bugs in them.
I have run Linux for about four years now, and consider myself an advocate of it. However, I am sick of people having to bash Windows to justify using Linux, especially when the reasons they give are patently absurd. Windows 2K or above are nice OSs, and do very well for a huge amount of people, many of whom would not like using Linux even if they had a good understanding of how it works.
Repeat after me: You don’t have to hate Windows to use Linux.
Just admit that you enjoy using it, and find the apps useful. That’s enough.
More on topic… An interesting article, I forget about the preconceptions of people who have only used Windows all their lives sometimes.
You have to be careful, as the fist time they see your desktop, they assume that *is* Linux, whether you are running KDE, Gnome or Fluxbox or whatever. The first impressions are important, so I now switch to a sleek Gnome 2.6 if someone is watching what I’m doing, and back to my messy customised WindowMaker with it’s stack of constantly changing terminal windows when they go.
Win3.x is the most unstable OS I have ever tried. a lot more unstable than WinME… Especially when using network.
Actually, you do know that Windows 3.1 wasn’t an operating system, right? It wasn’t nothing more than a graphic shell for DOS.
Even today, I still think that it was way more stable than any Windows version starting with 95 until MS shipped Windows 2000.
Regarding the “Linux propaganda”… Well, nobody is pointing a gun to your head demanding you to switch your OS… Geez!
1) Her computer is very old (Pentium 233, 64 RAM) and it was extremely slow with Windows 98, every new version makes it worst and worst.
You know, I am all for Linux of PCs. It runs pretty well on old PCs, but you have to be kidding yourself to think that you can run a modern, graphical distribution of Linux on a PC like that. I have an Athlon XP 1500+ with 256M of RAM and a GeForce 2. The default install of Fedora takes almost all physical ram on boot, and KDE or GNome running on X11 is not too snappy. I can’t imagine running it on lesser hardware. Sure, linux can run fine with a minimal kernel and no UI on an old pentium, but to think you can run a full modern workstation like that is silly.
now this is difficult to believe, but I am posting this from a PI 233 laptop, that I have upgraded to 128 megs of RAM. SO far I have put Fedora 3, SUSE, Mandrake, Debian (via knoppix) Win2K, Win98, and now XP on this, my laptop for tinkering.
SO far, with out a doubt, the fastest OS has has been XP.
With the setting in the control panel set to “best performance”, the old 233 is unexpectedly agile. Not a thoroughbred, but a usable workhorse none the less.
Linux distros, on the other hand, are just slow. I mean agonizing. I just don’t see why people claim it is better on old hardware. In my empirical studies, I have found that to be wholly untrue.
You have to be careful, as the fist time they see your desktop, they assume that *is* Linux,
Lucky you. People thought I was running WinXP when I was running BeOS, and MacOSX when I was running Linux with XFce
Basically
1) Any Operating System Crash
2) The question is why. There are Stable Operating Systems that dont really crash. I mean come on, some places need to be running 24/7/365 out of the whole year. Take Yahoo for example. I dont think their running Windows Server… However OS’s can crash and the reasons are as follows
a) bad programing = badly designed os or using badly designed software with the os
b) Stupid User like downloading Spyware! or cracker
c) Bad Hardware – either not properly configured or the OS doesnt have enough resources(like memory) to do the tasks in which case it slows to a crawl and usually crashes
Now lets face it Linux can crash but thats usually because of b or c not a unless of course your using something unstable, or freshly released that hasnt been tested. still though a’s have been known to occur.
Now windows on the otherhand is just plain badly designed. especially with the 9x series. The NT series being more stable and secure for that matter. Of course you could blame it on the hardware, afterall x86 has more hardware than one can count so surely theres going to be something thats not completely supported and that could cause bad things. Or the numerous syware which will bring a computer to its knees.
So what does it boil down to? nothing really. people pick their oses for different reasons. I really think the *Nix like OS’es are better designed but then again linux develop probably can be characterized as fast and furios and their are always bugs, so if someone wanted something more stable they should probably try an older release or some os that is more stable orientated
I just don’t see why people claim it is better on old hardware. In my empirical studies, I have found that to be wholly untrue.
Same here. Though, I install BeOS on old computers unless the user has some special app requirement. I also find Win98 faster than XP on old hardware.
But I personally run linux for work, even though it’s slow on my box, simply because I prefer it for web development. I use BeOS for most everything else though.
I would think to myself, “And they say it’s stable, well, I’ll show you stable you computer you. Look how stable my finger is as I press the reset button!”
I sincerely hope you’re not trying to claim that Linux never crashes…
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I don`t think he`s trying to say it never crashes but, most of the time people jump the gun and automatically restart like when there on Windows.
It is somewhat of a disservice to introduce new users to Linux via the GUI. Primarily because the usefulness and core of Linux lies beneath the GUI. It is an unfortunate burden Linux inherited from UNIX. New users need to understand Linux is not Windows or Mac. Linux is different. Frankly, despite what the marketing hype and commercial interests may say, Linux isn’t for Joe Average User, at all. How do you teach Joe of unlearn his nasty Windows habits? How about mounting and un-mounting volumes? The GNU tools? OSS? Maintaining and upgrading the system? Security? Samba? Package management? Desktop environments?etc.
Is your average user willing to learn all those and more? Not likely. Average users will be better of sticking to Windows. Knowledge or Power users are prime Linux targets, or should be. They are curious by nature and are willing to learn new ways if necessary and do so with ease. The arena I would like to see Linux flourish is in the academia, enterprise and embedded sectors. Today, Average Joe is better of with Windows, except he is ready to unschool his windows mentality and relearn a new paradigm of computing.
I use Linux as my primary OS, but when I take a look at many of the computer users around me, it’s not even worth it mentioning Linux to them. It just won’t work.
You have to be careful, as the fist time they see your desktop, they assume that *is* Linux,
Lucky you. People thought I was running WinXP when I was running BeOS, and MacOSX when I was running Linux with XFce
Heheheheh… A friend of mine once showed up in home and after he saw my KDE desktop, he asked me if there was already another version of Windows after XP (it was a bit before the release of Windows 2003). 🙂 After some time where everybody were laughing, he did take another look at my KDE theme (High Performance Liquid) and proudly “realized” that I was using MacOSX, and then apologized for the tremendous stupidity he said before this… 😀
Is not because the BSD they use is so super stable. Its probably because they do not do much wit hit. It runs few specialised apps and there is less chance of error. Besides they probably run comparatively old software which has been thoroughly debugged and so they can minimise downtime. If you PC has a thousand and one uses, it is not going to be as stable as Yahoo’s which in essence does one thing only.
However, I am sick of people having to bash Windows to justify using Linux, especially when the reasons they give are patently absurd. Windows 2K or above are nice OSs, and do very well for a huge amount of people,
The problem is not Linux users bashing windows users, but the other way around, by continuingly calling any Linux user a ‘zealot.’
IMO its the windows users that keep giving reasons that are obsured, expecialy when you count how many times they have been prooven to be nothing more than FUD from the windows community.
As for stability, linux has been stable sinc the 2.2 kernel or older. Even XP I’ve seen crash many times over due to the same problems that the windows community keep denying then try to tell the Linux commuinty that we are the problem.
The fact is people want to get their work done. Not fiddle around with the registry, dll files aor keep reinstalling windows just to maintain their work. Linux for this reason is not a diservice but a boost because joe shmoe can now get his/her work done without the hassle that windows bears down on them. Linux is easy enough that everyone can use it. For windows you really should be a MSCE or something.
I know how to crash systems. I can hang any system with some of the crap perl code I write anyday. Which I don’t think Linux should do unless it was executed with a higher than usual priority. But maybe 2.6 will be nicer to me. Running an app at a lower priority will keep it from locking the system…
As for crashing it with hardware, just about any plug n play stuff can take it down. Try hotplugging your firewire drive in and out of the system, mounting and umounting it, loading and unloading its kernel modules. Do it with usb flash drives too. It will eventually tank on something somewhere. But I imagine 2.6 will become super stable with these removable devices and other inconsistencies if it isn’t already because of its mass adoption.
Besides hogging all the CPU time or the console none of my normal system processes ever cause the kernel to crash. This is the normal expected behavior for any modern OS.
>I just don’t see why people claim it is better on old hardware. In my empirical studies, I have found that to be wholly untrue.
Same here.
It’s a good thing the lightweight window managers (e.g. fluxbox) are still around because something like KDE 3.2 or Gnome 2.6 need just as many system resources as XP does. Forget about running any modern desktop on something less than a PIII-500 and 128 meg of ram. Or better yet, just stick with windows 98.
I run both BeOS and XFce well on Celeron 400Mhz and I consider them both to be modern desktops. What defines a modern desktop really? SVG icons?
>I just don’t see why people claim it is better on old hardware. In my empirical studies, I have found that to be wholly untrue.
>Same here.
Sure i believe you, if you’re trying to run gnome or kde, any person expecting kde or gnome to run on pentium I or II and be faster than 98 is smoking crack. Blackbox or window maker is the way to go!!! I use an old pentium II 233 with 128mb of ram to watch divx movies(700mb), could i do the same under 98??? probably not!!!!!!! i use opera for my browser and only feel the slowness of my machine when compiling a kernel or opening open office??????
i work as a tech in a major electronics store (better buy) and see old machines everyday where win98 is corrupted or slowed down. even if 98 is faster out of the box just give the user a few months in which they will install all sorts of crap that take over the taskbar and eat the available memory, faster indeed
besides if i have an old machine i would much rather install linux so i can trim it down and have only the necessary progs and startup services, try this with windows!!!!
i could on and on however i guess this is long enough for a rant!!!!!
[quote]1) Her computer is very old (Pentium 233, 64 RAM) and it was extremely slow with Windows 98, every new version makes it worst and worst.
You know, I am all for Linux of PCs. It runs pretty well on old PCs, but you have to be kidding yourself to think that you can run a modern, graphical distribution of Linux on a PC like that.[/quote]
Vector Linux 4.0 would run quite well on that machine. Especially if you used the IceWM option for your GUI. QUITE well. I am running Vector 4.0 on a Thinkpad 760XL with almost those same specs, and Vector Linux w/ IceWM easily runs as fast as my wife’s Win98 install on her Thinkpad 600… which, by the way, has a faster processor and more RAM.
Should the title read “Adoptation” (as it does)
or “Adoption”?
caution this is a rant.
The only reason so many people are preaching linux is because it’s free. if all the distributions were commercial i don’t think this article would have existed and the number of linux will be about 10% as that of today. and about the lockups why does it happen on only some apps is it because of poorly written code?
At least in the case of my mother, I changed her computer to Linux (Mandrake 9.2) because
1) Her computer is very old (Pentium 233, 64 RAM) and it was extremely slow with Windows 98, every new version makes it worst and worst.
Are you joking or just trolling? Mandrake 9.2 is faster than Win98 on a Pentium 233 64 RAM?
There is *no* modern distro that’s as fast as Win98 on that hardware. Please, quit spreading these lies!
Actually, with that hardware, you hardly can use a Windows-like desktop such as Gnome or KDE… you would have to use something very very minimalist, such as Fluxbox or something like that. And it still won’t be as fast as Win98!
I like Linux, i use it exclusively on my desktop computer, but i hate when i see people spreading lies.
Victor.
There is *no* modern distro that’s as fast as Win98 on that hardware.
Gentoo,Arch,Slackware,Debian….
Gentoo,Arch,Slackware,Debian….
Until you install X and a decent WM (i.e. KDE or Gnome). kthxbye.
I don’t understand the desktop locking up for 5 minutes thing. I mean, this shouldn’t happen, it’s a multitasking OS. The only time I’ve ever had it happen is when I tried to open a 120 Page word document (with lots of images) in Openoffice, and it ate all my RAM and all my swap (that program is a pig!), but it only paused for like 10 seconds – and I can forgive that because it ran out of memory!
Anyway, since the 4460 NVidia drivers, my machine hasn’t locked once. I used to have a problem with my USB mouse disconnecting, but that’s a bug with my motherboard. It still happens, but the hotplug system manages to reload the mouse drivers before I notice (I used to reload the drivers by hand – and after about 10 times, the mouse would refuse to work anymore).
I have seen a kernel Oops before, when trying to reload USB drivers for a mouse that wasn’t working on another dodgy motherboard.
Needless to say, I also run windows 2000 on this machine (I boot it only once every couple of months though), and I’ve only ever seen it crash while playing games (just random reboot or lockup). I could probably blame the Nvidia drivers for that, but who knows the cause. My problem with Windows is not stability, it’s that I don’t find it flexible enough – i.e I can’t customise the desktop enough, the shell is hopeless, the logs tell you nothing, and you have to pay for/pirate a lot of software for it to be useful.
Windows isn’t a bad desktop OS anymore (well security-wise it’s a horror), so we should stop pretending it is. We should be looking at our own flaws and fixing them (don’t throw stones in glass houses comes to mind). The next year or two should be very interesting for Linux as the various Freedesktop.org technologies and specifications make its way into Linux distributions hopefully integrating the lower level OS and the desktop a lot more closely.
I’ve been using various linux distos since 1999, starting with RedHat 5.2. This article brings back so many memories of just the sort of things I did when I first started out with Linux.
I, too, resorted to reboots and reinstalls as the answer to every little problem. I must have installed RedHat 5.2 and Mandrake 6.0 a couple dozen times before I was proficient enough to really dig and fix the problems myself. Of course, I didn’t have near as much experience with computers back then. Sure, I’d installed Windows 95 and 98 a few dozen times at work (even got a nice imaging system going for our computer labs at school), but I’d never had to do things at the Windows Registry level.
It was fun to read that article and find myself reminiscing from the times I was a Linux Virgin 😉 Of course, in those years Linux has blossomed in so many different directions. Even in the last three or four years, as I’ve been involved in Linux clusters, so many things and tools have evolved.
I’ll agree with several people here, the Live Linux CD distros are just great. They’re great as demos and for testing new hardware in electronics stores.
you would have to use something very very minimalist, such as Fluxbox or something like that. And it still won’t be as fast as Win98!
Rubbish! I have a PR233 with 32MB of RAM, and it runs Mandrake 8.2 with IceWM way faster than win98 on the same machine. Of course, the usability of the win98 desktop is far better than IceWM – but your comment that even a minimalist desktop wouldn’t run as fast/faster is false.
Now only if IceWM supported the notification area protocol, and was more easily configured (drag’n’drop icons and all that – like win98).
I’ve only rarely seen a Linux system crash and it almost always is in response to dodgy hardware.
I used to crash (or disable as I couldn’t recover from the error) my professor’s computer on a regular basis when I tried to burn CDs on it. This was three years ago, so things are better. IIRC, the problem was cdrecord not working correctly and making the scsi portions of the cd-burner drivers flood with commands that wouldn’t execute.
A couple years ago, mplayer used to freeze my video card, making me think my system was dead and reboot it the hard way (pulling the plug). However, after some inquiry I found about System Requests which would let me kill X (with the screen still covered in whatever I was viewing as it foobarred) and restart my session (no reboot) to overwrite the video memory. This got fixed in a later revision to X or mplayer and I haven’t had such troubles in a long time.
I did something similar in Win2000 once, where I changed the video resolution to something the card or monitor didn’t support. I lost video signals and was only able to change it back (I wasn’t the Admin, just a user) by using a similar system next to it and learning to navigate blindly around the Windows desktop using the tab key. That was pretty fun
Now, through my own fault I deleted some security stuff on a linux machine and when I tried to login I got the following message from the kernel: “You do not exist, go away.”
Finally, in recent times I have had a kernel panic when using the OpenMosix kernel patches. I would just come into work and find several boxes dead for no reason. I stopped using OpenMosix and haven’t had such problems since.
Hi I have disliked linux as what people fail to tell you is that most of linux software is really buggie or unfinished Like I own a dell laptop and the first screen I seen after install linux was “#” and a message tell me my video card does not work. After a lot of research I found out about a bug in XF86 and I download a bug fix for it. Under Fedora the task was really easy for me to do but what if a new to computers user seen that what would they do. And As for other Linux’s the task of load the patch is hard or just not able to do. But the good part Fedora unlike other linux it really easy to install programs and design software for. And it’s a lot easyer to use then most linuxs. But for it to be as good as windows it needs better hardware support and fixed opengl. But as for other linux they need to look at fedora and rethink there software design.
Thanx
re: USB and firewire, I do that all the time – firewire for my ipod and USB for my thumbdrive. Granted, I have to unload one of the modules by hand after transferring to my ipod if I want to be able to plug it in again, but it sure doesn’t crash the machine one way or the other. There may even be a way to solve the module-unloading problem, though I’m too lazy to figure it out since what I’m doing now takes no effort. As for my thumbdrive, I plug it in and unplug it multiple times daily on my desktop and laptop. I only shut my desktop off when the fan noise is making it hard for me to sleep; thus I’ve probably plugged the thing in hundreds of times without rebooting, and never a crash.
I’m running a 2.6.3 kernel on my desktop, 2.6.5 on my laptop, both under Gentoo. Dunno how it’d do with a 2.4 kernel, since both toys were December birthday gifts.
I don’t intend to be commenting on Linux v. Windows; this is just my .02 regarding my experience with Linux.
i can do all the job in linux as i was in windows except gaming :p
heres a question: wat if linux has improved in both technical/usability(software quality) sides even surpasses other oses in the next 3 years yet linux still not as easy to use as winxp today?
The fact is people want to get their work done. Not fiddle around with the registry, dll files aor keep reinstalling windows just to maintain their work. Linux for this reason is not a diservice but a boost because joe shmoe can now get his/her work done without the hassle that windows bears down on them. Linux is easy enough that everyone can use it. For windows you really should be a MSCE or something.
And then you wonder why people call Linux users zealots. I can’t remember the last time I touched the registry, and I haven’t touched a dll file since the Win9x days. I have not reinstalled windows, even after swapping out motherboards.
I will not go into my endless troubles and wasted hours trying to get Debian to be a normal desktop.
Re: Linux crashing.
You people seem to be forgetting the RedHat 47 day crash. I’ve also crashed Debian stable which was running a redhat kernel simply by trying to use an external SCSI burner while an internal one was busy.
Besides, an OS doesn’t need to panic to fail. At the university I did my undergraduate at they had a Solaris server and a Linux server for undergrades to use. The admin of both servers (a TA) was TAing for a CS course I was taking. He said he had to reboot the Linux server multiple times a day because it would essentially lock up due to whatever (probably crappy student programs exhausting memory, or the file handles, or who knows what else). The Solaris machine never had to be reboot.
The lesson of the story is that Linux is not perfect. It has it’s strengths and weaknesses. Windows XP also has strenghts and weaknesses (poorly coded vendor drivers being the biggest weakness probably). I’m glad Linux never crashes for some of you. I’ve had it crash on me. I’ve had OpenBSD crash on me. I’ve had Windows XP crash on me.
Forget about running any modern desktop on something less than a PIII-500 and 128 meg of ram.
XFCE4 is a modern desktop, and it works quite well on my Pentium 166 with 96 megs of ram. Sure, some of the apps take a long time to load, but the UI itself is responsive and very usable – at least as much as Windows 98, with a lot more stability and security.
Another great use of older hardware with Linux is as xdmcp remote graphical terminals. It works great for stuff such as e-mail, web browsing and other “light” computing chores (as long as you have 100Mbit Ethernet). The UI may be a bit less responsive, but the apps run great (again, this is with the Pentium 166).
Of course, these older boxes can be used as firewall or personal web/file servers as well, and for that you don’t need a GUI at all – and for those jobs Linux beats Windows on older hardware hands down.
That’s the result of my own empirical experience, anyway.
I have introduced Linux to lots of people, and yes there are those that want to move away from windows. I dont think that any Operating System is bad, if it gets the job done its good.
i have set up an linux box and gave it to some youth to play with. They never once asked , or even noticed that it was not windows. they just clicked away , found some of the games, played with it for hours, surfed the net for their favourite websites, and chatted with gaim to get in touch with their msn friends. The older people in contrary asked where is this or that window like apps, where is internet explorer etc. so there you go !
Are you joking or just trolling? Mandrake 9.2 is faster than Win98 on a Pentium 233 64 RAM?
There is *no* modern distro that’s as fast as Win98 on that hardware. Please, quit spreading these lies!
Actually, with that hardware, you hardly can use a Windows-like desktop such as Gnome or KDE… you would have to use something very very minimalist, such as Fluxbox or something like that. And it still won’t be as fast as Win98!
I like Linux, i use it exclusively on my desktop computer, but i hate when i see people spreading lies.
That’s the thing. There are rational people like me and you that might run Linux(I’m on a 2.6.5 gentoo system running Gnome 2.6 right now) and like it, but are realists and are not caught up in the hype. Then there are the slashdweebs. To them linux/open source in general is more of a religious cult type thing and there can be no criticism.
has anyone that tried to install KDE or Gnome on old hardware actually done a custom linux install.
check the services that you will need on the box and don’t install the extras you wont be needing. Does your mum need to have Webmin running on her machine ?
Remove all excess services, then run “Desktop Settings Wizard”, (I know, sounds like something from Windows)…. move the slider down to “Fastest Performance” and that P233, 64mb should run fine on Mandrake.
Sorry I do not have a machine like that to test my theory, could someone do this and post the result ?
In my office they use Linux on the server since years and since two years they use it on the desktop as well.
I have jet to see an Linux server with an non-beta kernel to crash. I have seen an Linux server crashing, but with beta kernel – but never seen an Linux server to crash with an normal kernel.
Desktop systems are diffrend. There I have seen Linux crashing. Especialy with the 2.5.x series of kernel and with the 2.6 series of kernel. Mostly in connection with USB. We had one system in our office, wich crashed often when you plug an USB scanner to the system. The system used 2.6.x kernel and UDEV, but this is another storry.
And once we had an Desktop system from an customer, wich crashed when you started the X-Window system. It did not realy crash, just the screen went black and you could do nothing, exept using ssh to log into the system and reboot it. The reason for the troubles with that system was the nVidia kernel driver.
Anyway… what I want to say is: Windows XP is very stable. It is one of the most stable Windows Desktop OS. But it crashes (like every other OS). But to say that Windows XP is unstable is just an lie. It is not true! It does crash, but not that much. I would say, that it is more often that it works, then that it crashes. Windows 9x series was much much diffrend. But Windows XP is not Windows 9x.
The big difference between Windows and Linux is: When Windows crashes (even an application can kill your system in Windows), then it is gone. In Linux you have crashes as well, but mostly they crash something and you can still restart the application or service and your system would still continue to work (mostly you can ssh into the system and then restart things. In Windows you can not do that).
We have in our Office an Red Hat Server runing since 30 Novemeber 2002 without an reboot or crash.
On the same network we have an Windows NT 4 system wich would have almost the same uptime. But we had to install once an patch (the MSBlaster patch) and without an warning, the patch forced an reboot. But if we would not install the patch, then this system would as well be over an year up and runing without any crash.
In my personal opinion, both system are stable (I don’t look at Windows 9x series). But I would give more stability points to Linux then to Windows.
And to all of those people saying that Windows crashes all the time: It’s not true! This was once (with the Windows 9x series), but we have now Windows XP and Windows 2003. And both of them are much less likely to crash.
It highlighted a problem I have. I’ve used Linux on and off for years now but mostly off. I find I go to it and bork it and am left sitting going “I know that linux geeks would tell me to go and edit this file and that’d be it sorted but I don’t know how and don’t particular want to know how.”
Now, I’ll take this a step further than the article did.
If the process of de-borkifying a borked up linux setup is a simple mechanical file edit/delete process then excuse me but someone needs to come up with an automated process to do this. A boot option “De Bork Distro” which runs these file edit/delete processes to get yourself up and running again.
Hell, if there is any way to actually check that a setup is broken it should be a check performed as part of the boot or even start/login process in (k/g/x)dm.
Surely this makes sense…?
Windows 9x was a nightmare. 95, 95OSR2, 98, 98SE, ME… all horrors, the stuff to terrorise kiddies with on the dark nights.
Windows NT 4.x was solid but staid. Slow, reliable but very inflexible.
Windows 2000 was a bolt from the blue. For me, rock solid reliability and recoverability. If something clogged it up, it would do the self-recovering that is talked about in the article. I had servers that had a locked up GUI but still served away quite happily and then maybe a few hours later would have the GUI come back. Meanwhile I could stll termserv in to do maintainance. Great stuff.
Windows XP got a little bit away from that but still light years beyond 9x. I do get blue screens with XP, I do get lockups and crashes and reboots (oh my) but nowhere near as 9x. Just a lot more than 2000.
Windows 2003 seems to be a return to form. Again rock solid reliability, it recovers from bad processes even better than 2000, especially with the process control options it has. Fantastic.
This is all aside to the main thrust of the article though. I’d like to see those recoverability options built into Linux instead of it being the demesne of the geek to learn. I don’t even want to know what an FSTAB file is. To borrow from someone else,
Linux ain’t done until CONF editing is gone.
Not “it’s not commercial software” but “it’s free software”! Linux is commercial free software.
I agree, Linux with a desktop manager (eg. KDE or Gnome) is a slow dog. But you don’t need these environments to have a usable system. Since everyone likes to bring up their mother, mine is okay with IceWM — as is my father (who is completely computer illiterate).
A lot of people like to talk about a sterotypical new computer user. No such thing exists. My parents would get me to setup new software for them regardless of the platform. Once you get rid of that problem, usability is a non-issue (a lot of people are just more comfortable with buying a CD-ROM). My parents don’t know many computer users either, so exchanging Word files (or whatever) is not an issue either.
Unix is more convenient in these circumstances because I’m a few hundred kilometers away and can service the computer remotely. I don’t have as many problems to solve either.
I haven’t used Windows for years, so I try to avoid direct comparisons of stability or performance of Windows. Perhaps a lot of other Linux advocates are in a similar situation and haven’t learned to keep their mouth shut? I know Windows was quite bad when I left it behind.
my recent experience 🙁
December 2003
win2k sp5 antivirus was running (AVG) NTFS, I switch off the tower instead of the removable harddisk (in the dark, tons of cables, my fault)
-> the system can not start, windows say can not get exclusive access to the disk! fdisk, scandisk nothing work
I install Suse 9 since 🙂
Yesterday (ough)
WinXP SP1, internal defragmenting tool running on external usb disk FAT32-> software crash ->after reboot (system hanging)
IO error to disk!!!! hope to save it with norton disk doctor
conclusions:
– be careful with program doing access to disk
– NTFS filesystem is awful and not transaction oriented -> how can an application leave the fs in such a state, the os should protect itself!
– real men dont make backup, but they often cry! I probably lost 234Gb of data!!!!
– I will instal reiserfs or reiserfs4!
If you do not have prolem with windows this is because:
a- a lot of user dont use it really, most of the time it is running with the screensaver
b- you restart windows each day (difficult to have memory leaks with such uptime)
Remove all excess services, then run “Desktop Settings Wizard”, (I know, sounds like something from Windows)…. move the slider down to “Fastest Performance” and that P233, 64mb should run fine on Mandrake
Just moving down the slide bar to fastest performance is not going to make running KDE 3.2 or Gnome 2.6 acceptable on P233, 64mb. Now in theory, it might be possible to take KDE 3.2 code, heavily modify it, and release something that wouldn’t move glacier like – in theory…
In reality you have to options. One is to run a lightweight window manager(fluxbox or something else) and gtk1.x apps or Qt apps. Better yet, save a couple pennies and buy an e-machine or something.
Oh yeah, forget about running gtk2.x apps on that box. I had an old thinkpad 166mhz, 80meg notebook that I had installed xchat-2 on and it was completely unusable. The redraw problem is just too bad on systems like that.
Contrary to a few opinions on this thread, KDE and GNOME are perfectly usable on older hardware. I use KDE 3.1.4 on a 233Mhz PII. The only thing you need to watch is memory. The PC originally had 64MB, but this was not really enough. I added another 256MB (which is a dirt cheap way to upgrade the PC) and it runs just fine.
As long as you know what you’re doing, yes it is possible to run Mandrake 9.2 on an old machine. Start turning off the unecessary services, choose wisely a lite DE and turn off any useless eye candy (of course not KDE with bouncing icons and superkaramba) and so on.
At the end it doesn’t make much difference how “modern” is the distro, it could be as well an old RH, as long as you don’t go for all the default options.
I’ve read all the comments, just want to add a few things.
1) Linux kernel is continually updated, patched, and fixed
2) Linux is a kernel, it is not the entire distribution
3) Don’t assume that just because YOU couldn’t do something on some OS, it couldn’t be done. This works both ways.
Linux can and is run on very low level hardware, with X and KDE, its very easy to do. Most people – particularly ex windows users dont understand the importance of regulating what processes you start in init.d etc. Linux is not a realtime scheduling operating system, it is a priority based scheduler, that gives equal time to equal priority active processes.
Secondly, most hard-lock-ups (when you physically need to reboot the computer) are caused by one thing: spinlock. This can happen on any operating system, not just windows and linux. The only known way to fully prevent it is at the hardware level, and the requistite hardware is not in PC machines.
Thirdly, someone who speaks in a firm convinction of what they are saying, is never lying. Ignorant, misguided maybe, but a lie requires intent to deceive. It is rude and offensive to call someone a liar because their views and experiences disagree with yours.
Fourthly: crashes. Four main causes of these, and three come down to code quality and safe programming. The four main causes are: error in operating system, error in driver software, error in application software, failure or fault in hardware.
The simple fact is, you get bad programmers everywhere, however, with linux distributions and software bad code tends to get fixed quickly and released just as quickly. The same is not true for windows programs in general, not for windows itself.
This is not FUD btw, Microsoft themselves have affirmed in interviews that they do not release new versions to fix bugs, and they arent very interested in fixing bugs. This may seem counter-intuitive. It should be observable however, that only the most critical bugs get patched.
Why do I personally prefer Linux over Windows? Call it empathetic response. Espirit de Corp. Whatever you want I identify with the principles and ideals behind Open Source. I see it as an expression of the innate desire to work together to achieve and build for the good of all, rather than for personal gain at the expense of others.
It is that spirit which drives the community in general. I support it, and if I have to sacrifice some of my favourite games to do so, I am willing to.
I think a lot of the close minded and self centered people on each side of the debate could do well to consider that their actions affect others, rather than considering just how others affect them.
Peace y’all
“not just for windows itself”
I think that it is entirely reasonable for normal people to reboot their PC if it doesn’t show any indication of returning to a responsive state after 2 minutes. This is not something that needs to be unlearned. Linux needs to become what normal people expect it to be if it wants normal people to use it.
It is only ignorance that convinces anyone that is acceptable behavior on any OS. Rebooting without shutting down should be a final option, not a first resort.
Fortunately there are journaling filesystems which record the changes they are about to make before they start to make it, so that recovery is much more reliable, but to my knowledge fat32 isnt one, and im fairly sure ntfs isnt either.
The act of rebooting the computer prevents the flushing of file buffers, and synchronisation of data etc that is essential for a stable operating system.
It doesnt matter what OS you are using, you should only use that as a last option, or you ARE looking at file corruption and filesystem damage.
Operating systems attempt to deal with power outs and resets, but they are far from desirable, and for the best safety, you really do want a journaling filesystem of some kind.
I good heuristic – if you can toggle the number lock light on and off, then your system is most likely not hard-locked-up, it may be caught in a loop, or the active application may have stalled. In such a case you may still end up having to reboot, but you should try and kill the stalled or locked app first.
Linux and other systems that support virtual consoles are very good at this.
“No.. not exactly. It’s not stealing, because it isn’t commercial software. There is commercial software for linux and you do have to buy that if you want to use it, but most of the commercial software comes bundled with the OS if you buy the Official version, but the download version is free and so is all the software that comes with it.”
The [GPL] software could very well serve commercial purposes. Therefore, stating it isn’t commercial software is wrong. It is not proprietary software.
“[…] and the commercial desktops based on Gnome (Ximian, Sun JDS etc.) […].”
Here, you are correct.
“X-windows”
Another newbie definition. It isn’t called X-Windows. It is called X, X11 or X Window System.
“Hmm, in my experience Win98 is a lot faster than Mandrake on that kind of hardware, especially if you use KDE.”
Reasons to use a Linux distribution instead of Windows: On old computers like P1’s with a 200 MHz processor there is not any Windows version available which runs fast and stable. The 9x series might be relatively fast, they are not stable. Especially not MillEnium-bug. The NT series are more stable, but still have memory leaks and are not fast at all.
Such a computer running XFce4, IceWM, Fluxbox, or any other lightweight DE/WM flows incredibly fast. I especially like XFce4 because it is so user-friendly, it simply astonishes me. And it is also easy to make it more user-friendly.
Who needs KDE or GNOME? It is not as if those are the only options.
you missed the point of my last post……
I did indeed mention the desktop settings wizard, but I meant that only as an ADDITION to checking the running services on the machine. I know from example that both KDE and Gnome run far faster when webmin, kudzu, sendmail etc is disabled. I meant for someone to post a message about trying that
OK, if you reinstall windows every few months windows might actually be faster on old hardware, because windows sloooows down the more you use it, this goes for all versions.
For Windows 2000 the least imho.
So if you have old hardware, windows might be fast at the start, but after a while it will get ‘dog slow’.
Linux on the other hand doesn’t slow down like that.
I think it’s because the registry in windows keeps growing and because a lot of things ty in there, lots of checking in the registry needs to be done. As it get’s bigger it takes more time.
and also that the windows file systems get fragmented…..
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, if they’d kill the registry they might just have a decent OS on their hands.
i use linux because i like it, and find it fun and enjoyable to use. not because its evil, and threatens the fabric of reality. this isnt d&d guys, its just an operating system. a computer is a tool, not a religion.
ask linus torvalds or any other real hacker what they think of windows. generally, you will get indiference. they just dont care. bring up a technology like XAML that is threatening to close standards in core technologies, and youll get an opinion. but even that wont involve forces of good and evil, nefarious plots by secret societies, and the battle for the souls of computer users.
so why in the world do you continue to pursue this with such fanaticism? your own high priests arnt with you, all i ever see on the boards are half-understood problems thrown back and forth, and apples and oranges compared with reckless abandon.
Thats not to say that discussion about the way things are done in different operating systems is not a Good Thing, that is the very thing that attracts me to this site. unfortunately, cohearent and productive discussion has a way of being pushed aside by the holy warriors of windows and linux, intent on the salvation of humanity.
anyways, to make a point; i like linux. i like it more then windows. i would love to discuss why, because i do have my reasons. unfortunately, they dont involve dragons or sorcerers or the second coming of christ, so it seems that this is the wrong venue. i also like gnome more then kde. i like splinter cell over metal gear. i like cheese on my bread rather then peanut butter. all these things matter about the same in the grand scheme of things, and any of them could be the seed of an enlightening conversation, as long as the maturity of those involved is sufficient to realise that it really doesnt matter that much.
>>>>>i like linux. i like it more then windows. i would love to discuss why, because i do have my reasons. unfortunately, they dont involve dragons or sorcerers or the second coming of christ, so it seems that this is the wrong venue. i also like gnome more then kde. i like splinter cell over metal gear. i like cheese on my bread rather then peanut butter
Nail on the head stuff there Matt.
Yeah, it is a personal choice, I prefer linux over windows, I use linux more than windows, but now and again, I boot into windows. Why ? because I want to, because I feel like it, because it is MY machine
No-one here or any other site will influence me to adopt linux 100% or windows 100%, I will use what I want to use.
I will drink Guinness instead of Bass, or I will drink Tennents instead og Guinness, in fact, I might want a whiskey instead of beer, it is MY choice and there is no-one in the bar telling me what the best drink is.
When I am drunk, I will pay a quick visit to the kebab shop, I might buy a donor, or a chicken kebab, have it with garlic, or chilli, I don’t know, I will make that decision at the time…..
Same as when I am using my pc, I will decide which os I want to run.
Of course you’re right !!!
but it’s not a matter of linux itself, it’s a matter of whatever front-end to linux you use.. because, i’m sorry but even gnome or kde are only front-end to X which is a layer on top of pure linux console.. exactly as win3.1 was..
on a PII 233 and 64 meg, gnome 1.4 run perfeclty fine with a windows manager like windows maker or sawfish
(just don’t launch nautilus and gnome-session)
%%% ~/.xinitrc
gmc&
panel&
exec wmaker
****
and verify that dma is on on disk
hdparm -c1 -m16 -d1 /dev/hd*
I used a PII 233 for years and I can tell you that’s it’s not slow… but if you try to use mozilla, it’s start… it this machine I used netscape in it….
quake3 with 2 voodoo SLI was running at 30-40 fps all the time… and the launching time was fine…
ut on glide hardware was very cool……
BUT never, ever, run gnome2/kde3 on it……
and for divx
mplayer -zoom -vo xv -framedrop STUFF.avi has always been enough…….
People who keep telling that modern distro are enough on old hardware just don’t know what they’re talking about….
gnome 2 is just a joke on this kind of machine
kde 2 too, I don’t know about kde3 but 64 meg is cleary not enough………
heck, I run stock packaged GNOME 2.6 on Mandrake Cooker with almost no for-speed modifications on my 128MB, PII-400 laptop and it feels fast enough to me. The machine has Win98 which is marginally faster, but I’d still rather use Linux.
KDE3 is less “bloated” than KDE2 so you might have more luck with KDE3. It is faster, and it also takes less memory to use. (A shame a company like Lycoris still ships KDE2. Shows on them.)
“So if you have old hardware, windows might be fast at the start, but after a while it will get ‘dog slow’.”
Even on relatively fast hardware like P2 500 with 128 MB RAM or Duron 600 with 128 MB RAM. KDE3 or GNOME2 just continues to move on whereas Windows XP would not. It is because Windows has memory leaks and especially MSIE and Explorer have them.
// Repeat after me: “I have seen the bluescreen in WinXP and now I believe.”//
Can’t repeat that. Never seen one BSOD. Been running XP for 2+ years.
If you use crap-tastic hardware like you mention in your article, it’s *NO WONDER* that you get BSOD’s. Welcome to 2004.
That is the whole problem with naming full graphic desktop OS something that is actually a kernel. Linux will run very fast on even a p75 mhz but its most of the time kde or gnome that is sucking you dry not Linux (the kernel and gnu tools, the actually OS).
Please remeber that!
Are you joking or just trolling? Mandrake 9.2 is faster than Win98 on a Pentium 233 64 RAM?
There is *no* modern distro that’s as fast as Win98 on that hardware. Please, quit spreading these lies!
Actually, with that hardware, you hardly can use a Windows-like desktop such as Gnome or KDE… you would have to use something very very minimalist, such as Fluxbox or something like that. And it still won’t be as fast as Win98!
I like Linux, i use it exclusively on my desktop computer, but i hate when i see people spreading lies.
That’s the thing. There are rational people like me and you that might run Linux(I’m on a 2.6.5 gentoo system running Gnome 2.6 right now) and like it, but are realists and are not caught up in the hype. Then there are the slashdweebs. To them linux/open source in general is more of a religious cult type thing and there can be no criticism.
This coming from a guy that trolls this form to make windows the best but everyone else sux! hahahaha
Here is a few things that are coming from the trolls.
they preach that we are the preachers, yet when it comes to old hardware they say that Linux can not run on it. But win98 can. Yea ok and the world is flat. Yes Linux can run on old hardware. I’ve done it and it is better than any version of windows. Stop living in that make believe world, get with reality.
They say that they never had to re install or mess with the registry while I see tons of people having to do the opposit!
they now keep refering to Linux Zealots as slashdweebs. Its not our fault that your stupid enough to buy into M$ and teh fact that everything that comes out of your mouth is nonsense and its you that seem to preach that windows is he holier than though.
They keep saying that win2k, 2k3 and winxp wont crash if you don’t have ‘crappy’ hardware.
If m$ has 90% of the desktop market then they should of learnt something by now and made an os that can run on all hardware types. Oh look linux does that!
they claim that linux crashes as much as any OS. Yes Linux may crash but even an old distro will not crash as much as any version of windows i’ve seen.
And thus the slashdweeb title seem to fit the windows fanboys quite nicely.
And ah yes. quoted from you “stop with all the lies!”
If they troll. Why bother replying?
Watching Gesundheit: Perhaps you better mail her and explain how you see it. Then she’ll reply how she sees it, and perhaps you’ll agree with each other or settle the difference between opinions.
I have an old machine (amd k6 350MHZ 128 MB RAM). I used windows 2000 on it. But the machine slowed down to such an extent that it was unusable. Then I tried Mandrake 9.2. And boy, Though GNOME is bit slow, apps work great once they are up. I now have a new faster machine and I use old machine as proxy using SQUID. All bundled software for free !!
GREAT
Well, I get home from work and WOW! The Windows vs. Linux Debate/Flamewar is in full force.
Sheesh. So a kind rebuttal, friends.
I _have_ seen a BSOD in WinXP! Once…and yes it was hardware related.. but I prefer to refer to my ancient system as Craptacular, just so you know. The remark WAS offhand, and meant to be taken as a joke.
I don’t consider myself a zealot. I am cheap, and I can’t in good conscious continue to steal software, which is what I was doing before I switched to Linux
As for the whole Windows vs Linux debate, of course for the average user Windows is easier to use than Linux, and Windows is more developed than Linux in many ways. All this is beyond the scope of my article. I just wanted to tell you, my fellow readers about some of the real boner mistakes I made during the first year that I used Linux.
I stand behind my article. I am glad it sparked so much debate.
Cheers
Matt
P.S. perhaps I should have refered to Win3.1 as Dos6.22/Win3.1, but by that same token, I should probably refered to Mandrake Linux 9.2 as Linux 2.4.22, distributed with GNUutils by MandrakeSoft or whatever.. I mean really people, it’s just software. (and boy howdy, DOS was stable even if it was only 16-bit)
>
> By theorz (IP: —.cg.shawcable.net) – Posted on 2004-04->11 22:56:34
>I can’t speak for him, but chances are he converted his >friends because they where his friends. When people find >a better way to do something they help their friends out >by showing it to them.
>
>If I find a band I like I let my friends listen to it. If >I find a restaurant I like, I take my friends there. It >is part of being a friend.
>Now it is also part of being a friend to respect your >friends decisions once you have showed them something.
I knew that “convert” was the wrong choice of words. In fact I gave a friend of mine a copy of Mandrake to play with on his spare PC. As it happened, he installed it and gave that copy to a friend of ours. THAT friend bought the powerpack _and_ a membership in MandrakeClub.
On the other hand, I also copied it for my brother. He tried it for a couple of weeks, but he prefers XP. I respect that. And besides, he’s a gamer geek. I’m not. For a gamer geek, Linux is still very immature.
Besides, anyone who actually read to the end of the article would realize that the point was that Linux is NOT ready yet for the average computer user.
Thanks all for the lively debate,
Cheers
Matt
P.S. It’s just an operating system. Chill
> Mandrake Linux 9.2 as Linux 2.4.22, distributed with GNUutils by MandrakeSoft or whatever..
That sounds like MandrakeSoft created GNU.. oops, that’s not what I meant. Of course GNU is the GPL’d Operating System that runs using the Linux kernel…(and has nothing whatever do with MandrakeSoft other than that they distribute GNU/Linux)
Just thought I’d be proactive before I get spanked for saying that.
> If they troll. Why bother replying?
If you’re referring to the original guy who complained about Linux advocates, I just was defending we Linux users and telling him to use whatever he already has — or even buy a commercial OS. To me this is a reasonable way of stopping flames, albeit admittedly oversimplifying.
If you’re meaning the editors, well, maybe you’re right. After all, the only decent treatment I received came from an user — you. BTW, many thanks for caring to answer me. It’s good to see good people taking action. I hope you read my thanks before it gets moderated down.
> Watching Gesundheit: Perhaps you better mail her and explain how you see it. Then she’ll reply how she sees it, and perhaps you’ll agree with each other or settle the difference between opinions.
I’d be happy to do this, and I’ve done it at different opportunities, in many places. I can’t even say it was “her” in this case, because I was simply moderated down. But thanks for trying to help, again.
I’ve experienced a lot of it, people confusing a function with a perticular piece of software, assuming that the computer would crash if they made a mistake and so on.
But the revolutionary stuff is that there is more than one vendor for the same system. I’ve switched distros twice in 4 years and being able to go to another shop to address your problems (the kind that resists hours of investigations) is great.
With Windows, it’s like Ford was still the only car manufacturer.
That is the case but have you ever had the system freeze or reboot without any warning?
That is because Microsoft added in system defaults so that where it would have BSODed before, XP just (by default) reboots the system. Hence no BSOD. Great bit of mindgames. so the PC still crashes but just now as publicly/noticeabley/memorably.
If linux is something you don’t like then stop reading linux articles. Second why do you feel the need to post in a pro-linux story. You’re idiots. You need to stfu. If you want to remain ignorant of the beauty of linux, fine. I don’t care and neither does any other linux user. Be stupid if you wish. But for god’s sake stfu. Linux may crash on occasion yes. I’ve seen it happen. But windows will always be more prone to crashing since it was developed to operate and run as a series of large programs. Its a fundamental flaw. Now if linux is something you no longer want to hear about then perhaps that’s a good thing for me, since it shows the popularity of linux increasing. By spouting out dumb anti-linux rhetoric and pro-microsoft propragand, do you really think you’re going to convince people not to use linux? I laugh in your face if you do. By talking shit, you indirectly force people to wonder why these windows guys hate so much about linux. You complete idiots. If you were smarter, you’d just shutup and keep to yourselves. And if you were really smart you fdisk your ntfs partition and replace it with a superior filesystem to run linux.