GREAT story. Thanks. -----Original Message----- From: Paul Overby [SMTP:poverby at megsinet.net] Sent: Tuesday, January 08, 2002 3:09 PM To: TCLUG Subject: [TCLUG] Linux ain't so complicated I find it intersting that everyone seems to go out of their way to note "how complicated" Linux is. If we really want people to use Linux maybe we ought to quite trying to scare them off. I built a couple of PC's just before christmas. One for me and one for my daughter. She designs web sites and uses photoshop so she had to have windows which cost me more than the PC. I decided on win98 cause I'm just not ready for XP. For myself I had Redhat 7.2 laying around so why not. When I installed windows I had to install drivers for both the graphics card and the ethernet card. It certainly wasn't automatic. Windows got its registry screwed up because of an attached zip drive so it couldn't locate the drivers. (It was looking in the wrong place) I'm certain any windows "newbie" would not have known what to do. The ethernet card had separate folders for each winOS so windows couldn't find those either. Windows never even suggested I might want to set up my network connection although IE tried to help me set up a dial connection even though I have no modem. Silly me, how could I be so stupid about clicking the wrong option. And in the end my new 1.4 gig cpu was running like a pentium 66. Finally discoverd that a sound mixer application was being started automatically and was hogging all the system resources. I just end task on boot cause I haven't bothered to find out where windows buried the startup for it. I still have't got the CD player to work under windows. Guess I never will. As for Linux. It did ask me to verify my mouse and keyboard and monitor and video card. I suppose those extra four clicks were a tremendous nusance. I also had to fill in an IP address, gateway, and DNS address.This is a toughone since I had to get it from the network admin (that's me). I also had to enter that pesky root password. Typing its not so bad but you got to think one up. Too many old fashions and you may never know what you ended up with. Then they gave me this incredible array of CHOICES. workstation, server, laptop, custom. Whats a custom anyway? And of course I had to insert a second CD and click OK. The nerve of those people giving me more stuff than they can fit on a single CD. So I went off to wrap some presents and before I can get back my son, he's 8, wants to know what the password is so he can check out the new games. So I go back to wrapping presents. He plays the games. Of course I skipped the part about the four hours I spent trying to get the partition table set up correctly so both windows and Linux were satisfied. But that is the point. Linux gets tough when you try to do things windows won't allow you to do. Try installing windows over Linux for a dual boot system. Hope you don't waste too much of your time. Oh and I almost forgot. Linux never asked me to type in that 5000 digit license code. What a relief? _______________________________________________ Twin Cities Linux Users Group Mailing List - Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota http://www.mn-linux.org tclug-list at mn-linux.org https://mailman.mn-linux.org/mailman/listinfo/tclug-list