Quote Originally Posted by mudwater
But i think i might join the BeOS team i think that linux needs to die out if something is that hard to install and year after year no body can fix it and make a easy install then the whole operating system needs to die.
Well I hope BeOS works out for you. It is apparent that you are just a home user of windows. If you were on the admin side or the pc-tech side and you had to fix windows day-in & day-out I think your perception of Linux might change. Sure, it might be a bit harder to install, sure you might actually have to type something instead of clicking 'yes' 5 times but I guarantee that the end result is far superior to anything that M$ has ever released. Don't forget that the easy installation you refer to also includes multiple intentional vulnerabilities. Play your dvd in XP and M$ knows what you're watching.

There are reasons for Linux being more difficult to install. Shall I name a few? I think I shall.

Partitioning-

Windows "do you want to use the entire disk for windows?" YES
-done Now they don't tell you that you're just wasting your disc space, they don't tell you that NTFS is a pice of s**t, they don't tell you that even tho you said 'NO' to internet services they're going to install them anyway but it is fast and easy isn't it?

Linux- uh oh! better learn cfdisk or parted or diskdrake or one of several others to partition your drive. Also you had better find out how many partitions you need, what size they should be, format them, select the mount point. Whew! That was alot of work! Why was that so hard?

1) It is possible that an application might start eating hdd space. If the partition that process is running in is only 2G then all it can eat is 2G.

2) What if a user downloads a virus ( i know there are none for Linux that we need concern ourselves with but let's pretend). Since Linux is a true multi-user system, the virus is contained to that users /home directory and doesn't hose the entire system. Why? because the virus has the same permissions of the user of that directory and therefor does not have permission to write to any of the other directories and is effectually contained. Remeber win98? All you had to do was log in with the wrong name and you created a new user! Now that's security ain't it?

3) I hosed up my install and have no choice but to reinstall. Not so bad considering that if /home is on a separate partition all you need do is tell Linux where it is and all of your tweaks, backgrounds, settings etc come back just as before.

4) Uh oh! I'm running out of room! Well with Linux you can simply copy any partition to a larger one, edit fstab and mount it to the new mount point. Voila! a larger filesystem!

Last count there were 8 reboots involved when installing win2k- Linux has only 1 or 2 and one of those is to boot your new OS.

M$ admits that their windows update software doesn't actually work all of the time and may falsely report that an update was installed when in fact it was not.

How to install an app in M$?

1) Search through thousands of pages of shareware/freeware mixed, read descriptions of apps that are *close* to what you want, find a potential winner, make sure it isn't spyware, scan it for viri, click, click, click install it. Or pay who-knows how much $ for an app that will be depracated in 1 year.

In Linux: If I want an app all I do is apt-get install <application name>

If I don't like it: apt-get remove <application name>.

How much has M$ cost you over the years? For me it was plenty. Are you aware that when you buy a new system w/ XP you don't really even get a copy of the OS? You get some lousy restore disc that you have to get permission to reinstall! You know what I have to say to M$ about that? Bite me you money grubbing bastards!

How much has Linux cost me? Only what I've donated and the time I spend writing things like this post.

Why is it that every other browser available (the bigger ones anyway, Opera, Mozilla, Konqueror, Gnome, etc) have pop-up blocking built in? Surely if M$ software engineers wanted to they could easily add that feature to internet exploder but they do not. Why is that do you suppose?

My local school district in a town of 250,000 people just spent $600,000 for one years worth of M$ licenses! OMG! How many pc's could have been purchased new w/ no OS for that much money? I know for a fact that a school could get plenty of 1.0Ghz machines w/ 256M that would run Linux quite happily and do anything they desire.

I have a few old machine around. For example a 200 Mhz w/ 128M. What does M$ have to offer me for that machine? Nothing! Thankfully Debian runs wondefully on it and I even have a nice desktop, fast browser and the easiest installation of any OS that I have ever done.

Are you aware that M$ moved their M$update site to Linux servers because there was nothing they could do to stop the attacks on their servers?

How about you make an honest genuine effort to install Linux. Stick it out and don't get angry when something doesn't work the first time. I have yet to meet a machine that I cannot install Linux on. Sometimes it is a bitch but it can be done.

The gap is rapidly narrowing my friend. If you honestly beleive that Linux is going to vanish then you are sadly mistaken.