Quote Originally Posted by garyng
That article is IMO a bit bias against XP, or least give people the wrong impression, if we are comparing how easy it is to install a brand new OS on a brand new machine.
Joe Barr is IMHO one of the better wirters out there and always presents a fair description of the facts at hand.
First there is the network thing, it took me for quite some time to figure out how to setup networking under linux but I never encoutered a problem in XP(don't even need to do any setup, other than giving the needed username/passord for the ISP with ADSL connection).
Netcardconfig worked flawlessly for me either way I used it with dhcp or my static connections. With the PPPoE I can't say never used it but around here it is not necessary even though they tell you need it dhcp works fine for that also.

Then there is the time, while the actual time taken to 'update' or patch an XP system may be longer, it is pretty straight forward. On linux, even the highly praised apt-get is still very confusing. But that is just only the beginning. There is a lot of other tasks that go after the initial setup which XP leave linux far behind(because of its market dominance).
Apt-get is a bitch until you get a handle on how it works not for the noob in any way, shape or form.

I plug a printer to the parallel port and the right driver is being installed and I can start printing. I would appreciate someone to tell me how the same can be done in linux. Have to remember printing is one of the major task.
The procedure I went through las week after having made a printer by fixing two. Plug the printer in re-boot so that it recognized by the startup procedure go to the Control Center select Peripherals then printers select the add printer wizard choose the printer from the list presented and print the test page it was that hard.

The same goes for other things like my USB reader, I have to compile a new kernel for that under linux. Or my digital camera, or scanner.
Don't use USB devices so have no experience with them.
All the mentioned task are IMO essential for today's PC operation. Even repair is relatively easy. I just reboot the XP CD and install again on an existing one. In linux, I need to search for rescue floppy etc.

I believe the catch phrase in that article is that "installing XP is boring", this to me means no surprise(bad side).
As I stated above my eXPerience with the dark side install is zero and shall remain so and people who would just like to have them control their every move have the multitude of security problems and all the rest that goes with it are more than welcome to have at it, for those who actually want to learn about their computer welcome to LINUX.