read below …..
Shaking my head at you guys (gals?)! 8^)
I’ve been using linux on my main computer for 5+ years, and on my webservers for over 10. Actually started with SUSE desktop (well tried Caldera 2.1 waaay back when UGH!), then went to Fedora to get the “latest & greatest.” (They usually had bleeding edge software before other distros… Mozilla, etc.). I’ve had to purchase Windows due to my job. Picked up Vista, couldn’t upgrade from ME, so got the XP upgrade instead.
Tried Ubuntu on a friends puter, liked it so tried it on mine. All good except could not make on the motherboard nVidia Ge6100 work. Had read some reviews about SUSE, so d/led it. Setting up dual boot. Windows & Linux can read FAT32, so decided to set up my box like this. The 1st 200Gb drive as NTFS XP, 200Gb #2 as linux, 400Gb as FAT32 shared between the 2 for docs, pics, music and such.
Has anyone installed Windoze lately or just purchased pre-installed?
It took about 1 1/2 hours just to format 200Gb!!! So don’t get picky about 30 or 40 minutes to install a linux distro!
And it only formatted 128Gb, so had to use System Commander to stretch it out to the full 200Gb!
Rebooted into my newly installed XP.
NO SOUND
NO INTERNET
NO PRINTER
Call ISP. duh! I needed to install the drivers off the CD that came with my motherboard. I’ve been installing Linux for so long, I forgot about that crap.
Everything just works from linux install. (Except nVidia problem mentioned earlier).
Rounded up my driver CDs and got all that working.
Can anyone explain to me why after paying $100USD for Windoze upgrade it could not do something my FREE linux programs do like install drivers for motherboards and printers???
So now I have a great OS system installed on my box… NOT!
NO SOFTWARE!!!
Installed Office 2003, an old copy of CorelDraw I had, and some other webmaster programs, like ftp, ssh, 1stPage, etc. (You know, programs you get installed for free when using linux…)
Shelled out $40USD for Windows Live virus etc protector.
If I wasn’t dual booting, I’d still be looking around for buggy shareware to do simple things us Linux geeks just take for granted… (burn CDs, play games, make to do lists, bitTorrent, IM, etc.)
In all, it took me about 8 hours to get xp up and running close to the way I wanted.
Installed SUSE, complete with HUGE software stash, did complete update, changed a few things around like I wanted, and it only took me about 1 1/2 hours. That included formatting 3 times as much hard drive.
Oh yeah, I won’t go into trying to get FAT32 working on the large hard drive too much. Checked MS knowledge base. An older one said to go into device manager to format large hard drives. A newer article says, xp can’t do it, use your 95, 98 or ME install disk. HUH? Xp won’t see FAT32 formatted by System Commander, Linux, or DOS command line format. My conspiracy theory is that they knew Linux can read & write to it so they took it out of their OS. Shaking my head at Billie…
1 comments:
That's funny - the same thing happens to me when I install Linux! Video defaults to 800x600 despite my monitor and video doing 1280x1024 without breaking a sweat. Wireless takes days if not weeks to get right. And of course, once everything's installed, it only takes an upgrade of one or two packages to break it all.
I agree with you that many Windows installs by default don't have a working NIC, and without that, you can't do much. But getting that NIC to run isn't that hard (most people can double click on "setup.exe").
Linux is great for servers, but the desktop side has a long way to go.
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