-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Shawn Grover said:
<snip> > The next big stumbling block for Linux on the desktop is installation. > Anyone can install Windows by blindly click "OK", and letting the > installer figure out your hardware. Linux has made huge strides in this > area as well, but there is still a perception that Linux is difficult to > install. Well I don't think this is as accurate on new hardware compared to and older system. Most users would have a hard time installing Windows XP (or any version of windows) on most newer hardware compared to Linux. The Linux install would be easier because most of the "drivers" are already in the kernel (or in the case of NVIDIA, most "newbie" friendly distros would have that installed for them). Sure they could install Windows, but they would most likely be without a usable network card and modem. Chances are they would also only have a basic video card driver installed. The sound card and USB Root Hubs would probably be the only installed hardware, and even the sound card driver would most likely be out of date. They would either have to load the driver CDs that came with the computer or a better idea would be to go to each manufacturer site and download the latest drivers. Distros like RedHat, SuSE or Mandrake have become just as easy or easier from a click "Ok" perspective then Windows, and at least if you are not running any "Win Modems" or other such devices, your hardware will already be setup and working. My HP scanner and Lexmark printer work "out of the box" with the correct compiled in or built modules which most distros have now by default. With Windows XP, I would spend at least another hour or more after the install downloading and installing each driver for my undetected or mis-detected devices, or drivers that are too out of date to be of much use or unstable. Not to mention the chipset drivers for the motherboard. They also wouldn't need to install the ~300MB updates from windowsupdate or install MS Office and then run the office updates because they would most likely have OpenOffice installed and any distro updates would be easier to apply. You would only need to reboot for the kernel update compaired to the 3 or 4 reboots (more if you install MS Office) required to bring a new Windows XP build up to date. Users find Windows easy because they aren't required to install, configure, and maintain them. So yes, the "install" part of Windows is easy but so is the Linux install. But without the extra work involved after a Windows install, the system would be left in a much less usable state then a "newbie" friendly distro like RedHat would be out of the box. Cheers, - -- Trevor Lauder Personal: Web: http://www.thelauders.net E-Mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Work: Senior Linux Analyst LAN Solutions Telephone: (403) 255-5026 WWW: http://www.lansolutions.ab.ca E-Mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.2.4 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQFAYP8gBsV2IjgYy+cRAnCrAKDJv3bbzAfpGl40lyg5HkotEV8kkgCdGuCy JYR5hPSgxqc57udsvZhQfdE= =7p5V -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- _______________________________________________ clug-talk mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://clug.ca/mailman/listinfo/clug-talk_clug.ca
