rant from hopelessly newbie

[Durand Hicks]

Let's not forget it was us who got M$ where they are today. Before M$ came up with the activation scheme and software assurance that is turning me off (and I suspect a lot of folks are too but they won't admit it), we bought one copy and put it on as many computers as we owned, even told our family about it, in turn they told their friends and so on, and loaded it on their computers and M$ was silent about that for a time as that got the word out faster than sliced bread (read: free advertising). I bought dos, windows 3.11, NT, 2K, and finally XP Pro. It was xp that started to turn me off. The activation scheme made me feel like a criminal, even though I legally purchased my copy of xp. FWIW, M$ does have some good software, and NT as well as w2k was IMO, the best windows compared to the rest of the offerings they came out with. Also, there are some good third-party shareware programs that was worth the money I paid for. Their prices were reasonable, their software didn't always phone home, and allowed for us to do with it as we please in the privacy of our own home (for the most part), and most importantly, it didn't make us feel like a criminal after buying it. Look at Redhat and Suse for example. You could buy their software, tell your family and friends about it, have them load it on their computers and not worry about being a criminal in the process. Whether open source is depending on M$ for their existence, that's an issue I'm not going to debate. Enterprise software is for big business and you can't expect consumers like us to shell out serious moolah for software we don't need/ use. I can understand if some consumers want to use some enterprise features in their software, and that's a legimate concern where it's appropriate. One thing I forgot to address is internet explorer being integrated into the operating system, that was one thing I didn't ask for and didn't want. But M$ forced that upon everybody, whether we liked it or not. Personally, I don't care if they gave it away for free (or charged for it) separately, but I do care if they are going to tie it to the operating system. Also, in windows, you are root (administrator in M$ speak) in all of the operating systems by default. Where's the security in that? Not so in linux/unix/bsd, where you have to switch to root to get the important stuff done. As far as the learning curve in Linux, the point I was trying to make was that it needs a little more polishing for the newbies, as for us, who are already getting used to it, we don't need it, unless we learn to write scripts or batch files that can serve as a nice frontend to the many cli tools we use. Those scripts in turn would serve to make things easier for newbies to get a handle on linux and not force them to ask for help and get told to rtfm. I'm not saying linux users in general are snobs, it's just that it's different enough that newbies feel bewildered by all the choices (and commands) available, that they don't know what to do, and as a linux user, I know exactly how that feels when I first got started. This is why M$ isn't getting knocked off anytime soon, but as they get more restrictive and open source gets more easier, the tide will turn and M$ will get knocked off, but *not* before then.

[nishtya]

I hear where some of you are coming from about the supposed 'linux snobs", I feel that way when I venture into the debian forums and hear (or rather not) the wall of silence that befalls someone with a good question but has been silly enough to mention their debian is from a knoppix install

I have been or was, in IT long enough to recognize there was what amounted to a "boyz club" though not all of us were boyz I buckled down, read like crazy, built better systems and literally beat it into them that I was "worthy". Mom and Pop user shouldn't have to do that to get answers to a question, help with a stubborn problem, of course. But look at like even what is going down in the Mandrake forums now - people really nasty bitching that community 10 stinks and they are being treated like beta testers. Duh. Community is what it is about, it is not a "general public" official release, yes they are beta testers for gawd's sake.

The question is whether Linux is "ready for prime time". Mom and Pop, in my humble opionion, don't stand a chance. It can't be polished anymore than say Lindows which is what I shot for first lately. It said it was very GUI-ey like windows (no lie) It said it would recognize my hardware (also, no lie right down to my dreaded winmodem) the dreaded winmodem even connected!. It couldn't go any further than that however, it didn't really work and woe be to anyone that doesn't want to buy into CNR and tries to compile (ahh, my calling in linux life these days) drivers for the damned thing.

M$ like any monopoly, like any absolute power, has corrupted its kingdom. We are all now feeling the aftershock of that. I have had IE neutered (like my mice) at home now for ages. I used it only when absolutely necessary. Mozilla (before that Netscape) was always my choice of browser. But Mom and Pop generally don't stand chance at installing it (hey, dont forget these are people that double click hyperlinks on every damned webpage) and even if they found a support forum, the odds of them making a decent case of a problem is zilch. They are going to be ignored or flamed.

**sigh** linux is great and I am trying to bring it to my masses (that amounts to the hopelessly clueless at work). I am no longer in IT, and even my habit of downloading linux iso's comes under scrutiny (hey, try to make those ISO names a little more business sounding - try convincin them Bug Hunter is an operating system
But I keep at it. I like newbies. Ok, I tolerate newbies. My start was three years in an online help room on AOL. But, if you are trying make sense of the M$ monoply, you have to dig deeper. Sociology, Psychology. Or AOL.:P

Somewhere along the line, computers became a household disposable like blowdryers. And the operating system is just plain old 'lectricity. The majority in my opinion isn't looking any further than that.

Pardon me while I go compile a kernel or two for the umpteenth this week

[Cuddles]

OMG Nish, you were on the "front-lines" for phone support of AO-Hell ??? I used to be the same for MSN and the "roll-out" for Win98 - at Microsoft in Tucson, AZ...

I "know" what "common" computer people are... The kinds you had to decide in 30 seconds talking to a customer, if you were going to show them how to get into the registry, or that in the back of there computer "it had four or five screws"...

Some people are not "knowledgable" enough to deal with looking inside the computer, nor something as serious, as it is in Win98, the registry - you just don't let them go there...

I had customers that actually called, on MSN support, that would go out to there mail box and check there snail mail, because the durn computer told them, "they had mail" (true story)

Or, the one who almost had me believing they PAID $45 for AOL - until I realized they actually bought a MODEM, and AOL came in the box with it - unfortunately, they thought the modem was actually packing material, and threw that away...

MSN Phone Support sobered me into what "the real world" was like, what the "common" person was, and in most cases, the "standard" intelegence of them, when it came to computers. These are the kinds of people who are running Windows, on average.

True, Ol' Mighty M$ did bring us away from the Time Share Life, but, as with all things, when an apprentice becomes smart enough to compete with there master, they are left to go out on there own. Many "apprentices" are smarter than M$, and are going out on there own now...

You give credit where credit is due, doesn't mean you have to bow down to them as God, for it. IMHO, M$ fits a certain niche, people who don't know, or don't care, about what is "inside" that computer box, the kind of people who just want to "figure out" where the power switch is, and use a computer, go on-line, and say to MA, hey look, I got an email

M$ knew what market they were selling to, and made sure there product was as intuitive to them as it could possibly be. SERIOUSLY, I don't think any OS, other than from M$, can do the same thing. I HONESTLY think that any OS that "lowers" itself to that level, would have just the same problems that Windows has. Not bashing M$, or for that matter, Windows, or its users, just a factual observation. Windows is targeted, as you know, Nish, as AOL is, to the "simpletons" of the computer world. The ones who are clueless about RAM, a hard drive, or even what a IRQ or memory address are, they don't know what a lot of the acronyms are for, nor do they care, and that is just fine for them. As they would say, why should I have too???

I do not see a "common" OS, any longer, in the computing future - some people will never "grasp" another OS that isn't "just like" Windows, and then, as we are seeing, others who will be willing to risk ridicule and hardships to deal with a OS that is not Windows - for pain, or gain...

I am happy with Linux - and I mean all flavors - we are a "common" OS in my thoughts - If I had RedHat, I would accept someone who had Mandrake, or Debian, or SuSE, etc... I don't make distinction on "flavors"...

Enuf said, this time,
Cuddles

[nishtya]

Not phone support, Cuddles. Worse even. Online. You want to try to "talk" a newbie through cutnpaste in an IM? LMAO. Try sitting up at 2am (after working your day -paying- job with somebody that had chernobyl and never gave a hoot about what a boot disk is ) we made fun of the phone jockeys working from scripts and getting paid. We were the real trenches. The UNpaid community volunteers (and now I am into linux.......hmmmmm) Half my assignments, and my first, was teaching people how to get that porn spread off as their wallpaper when they clicked "set as" instead of "save as" and clearing the most recent document list of "my stepdaughter doing the neighbor's three german shepards". No lie. War stories. Check out the George forums sometime, you'll love them http://chroniclesofgeorge.nanc.com/

But I don't have any regrets about that time, sometimes I bring it up in interviews, sometimes I don't It is where I learned a lot, enough to get me started that once I read, and learned a lot MORE that I could then make a living at it. I even kept an AOL account byoa for the community aspect of it and the friends I made long after I got a "real" isp and a "real" IT career lmao. Real ISPs turned out to be one local after another who got eaten up by the conglomerates, BTW, but another story. Even today I have kept my old hardearned handle in an AIM (now GAIM) nick and link up often enough that I get to keep it.

Anyhow, the mentality point I was making and you got, for a great majority of users out there, they don't care what is under the hood. They put gas in it: it goes. End of discussion. If it is free, cool. If it's pretty, also cool. And astonishingly enough for some of my customers now, they are intrigued by linux's resistance to viruses and other nuisances.

All perceived "elitism" aside, if it is dumbed down enough for them - will it still be worth it? I dunno. Although a little more documentation on lm sensors is surely needed

[mharazin78]

I recently said $^%& you to Bill Gates and burnt knoppix to a cd, popped it in and watched with amazement while it recognized all my hardware! (with the exception of my soundcard) Windoze could never do that without having to install drivers. So I played around for a good hour and a half and decided to install it to the HD. All I can say is I will NEVER run windoze again! I've been tortured and aggravated by their crappy products since DOS came out, enough is enough!

I run a small tech consulting firm, so I'm not completely new to Linux. I had been wanting to make the change for years, but it seemed like every time I had my mind set on a particular distro, I'd see another one that looked better. So anyway... the other day after having to download yet another $#%$^#&^$$ security patch for microcrap I decided it was time to start running Linux on everything.

I started out with College Linux since I already had it on disk. I installed it on an older 800 MHZ AMD workstation which was given to me when one of my customers had to upgrade due to buying windoze xp. Soon as it was up and running I knew that was it. Now it's time to install it on the server. I have a Dell PowerEdge 400sc which was running 2000 server. I found Knoppix while looking at Debian and decided to give it a try. 2 hours later, my server is screaming!! I'm kicking myself for not doing this sooner!

I only have one problem with the whole thing... Knoppix just refuses to see my soundcard. Oh well... who cares, it runs a billion times better than any microcrap product.

So today I've decided to run Knoppix on my other 2 workstations (currently running xp) and a very old compaq deskpro 133 MHZ which has been sitting in the closet for 2 years.

So here's my question.. Anybody try installing knoppix on something as slow as my deskpro? If so.. how did it run? It's not exactly critical to get that thing up and running, but it would be nice to use it as a fileserver.

Anyway.... I've been converted and I'll never go back!

[OErjan]

eeeh, should run well on something as fast as that (relatively speaking) .
i have it on a p1@100Mhz 72Mb ram and 6Ghdd (recently bought secondhand).
works ok.
I use icewm as it would lag beyond berable with KDE.