Linux

[SawThe Light]

Is Linux a real alternative to WinXP or other Windows versions for the home and/or small business user?

A friend suggested I might want to look at it but he was unable to tell me whether it could really take the place of Microsoft's products. I guess I need to hear from someone that is indeed running it.

Has anyone got the experience and time to tell me if it really is an alternative, and whether one would need something like a degree in computing science to install and set it up? I would also be interested to know if it could run programs such as MS Office and Adobe Acrobat etc, etc.


STL

[batninth]

STL,
We did this a few months ago but I can't find the thread quickly to supply a link. Suggest you do a search on Linux and you'll find it.
Couple of things you say:
Is Linux a real alternative to WinXP or other Windows versions for the home and/or small business user?
Personal opinion here is that if you want something that you can load and pretty much forget about - then stick to Windows. There are versions of Linux - Ubuntu for example - that present a pretty good WinXP-alike desktop, but they still do not have the consistency that Windows has so doing some tasks will require books, forum help etc. I'm thinking especially about hooking up printers.

I would also be interested to know if it could run programs such as MS Office and Adobe Acrobat etc, etc.
Here's the crunch. There are alternatives such as OpenOffice & a PDF viewer, but they are different enough to put some people off. You can also run most Windows software under a Windows emulator but it seems crazy to me to run Linux & a Windows emulator when you can just run Windows.
I guess my summary here is that Windows is still the best option for ease of use & running the common applications. If you're good with computers and don't mind getting your hands a bit dirty then Linux makes sense.
In our family my son runs specialist Geophysics software that runs only in Linux/Unix so he uses a Linux desktop. The rest of us use Word/Excel, Internet & email - and Windows makes more sense for us.
Hope this helps

[Mac the Knife]

"The rest of us use Word/Excel, Internet & email.." - so one of the "easy start" Linux distros (like Ubuntu, but I'm a SuSE man myself) should do you fine :p

If you buy Windows you'll also have to buy MSOffice if you want to do Word/Excel - gets pricey! If you go Linux you'll have a free OS and free OpenOffice and thousands of free applications.

Linux is....different. Even now, it can have a bit of a learning curve, but once you've done it it's done forever - and you're not Gates' serf any longer.

[Cheerio]

At the risk of sounding like a stuck record on this one........

About 18 months ago I had an old Compaq that was acting up, it seemed that as it was failing, memory hungry processes were causing it to do hard shut downs. Well, thats another story, but on the back of that I decided to put Linux onto that machine just for a bit of a nerdy challenge. I'm definitely in the 'user' category, my hacking skills in any OS are non-existent. But I had a crack all the same, with Suse Linux 9.3. I bought a retail box, in order to get the manuals, and bought a Linux for dummies book also.
If you like messing with PC's, I treat them a bit like tinkering with an old MG in the garage, a productive waste of time or an alternative to sudoku, you will love Linux.
I've been through a couple of new releases of Linux, each upgrade brings its own new challenges. For me the repetitive bugaboos are WiFi and .wmv file handling. Both are easily sorted once you get the hang of it, but the learning process does take a little time. So now I have a full hand of operating systems at home to compare: XP desktop (kids), IMac OSX (Mrs C) and my own Thinkpad with Suse 10.1. After 18 months of Linux, it is easily my favourite OS. I would recommend trying it. Just do accept that there will be times when you need to scratch you head and go looking for solutions to things that might come easily to XP. Often its not the fault of Linux, but the fact that hardware is not supported to the extent it is in Windows. It can be an enjoyable challenge, and I have not yet been beaten. Not bad for a user, and one in the eye for Bill.
For Suse, I found this website invaluable: http://www.thejemreport.com/mambo/content/view/254
And if you are trying it for the first time, do spend the small amount of cash on a retail box, as the manuals are very useful for learning the basics. Once you have the basics, there will be no stopping you, and you will be evangelising like the rest of us MS - free outlaws! To answer your original question, yes it is a credible alternative to Windows. You can read and write in word, excel, powerpoint, acrobat formats, manage your MP3 files, watch DVDs, surf anything you can do with Firefox or Opera, network other machines and printers, run a WiFi ADSL router, download movies all the usual stuff - and all for free. The only thing you may miss is access to all those games. Give it a go.

[Saab Dastard]

A slight diversion, but as there have been rumblings over the years about MS either deciding - or being forced - to seperate the OS from the application divisions, it is not beyond the bounds of possibility that MS Office might be developed to run natively on Linux, in much the same way as it has done on the Mac for years.

Viewed as an independent business, MS applications division would be interested in selling as many licences of their product as possible - irrespective of which OS it is running on.

Some of the often-quoted reasons for companies and individuals choosing (validly) not to move to Linux on the desktop is the required investment in training in a different office suite, and the conversion and compatibility issues between open-source and MS versions of databases, WP, presentation and spreadsheet apps, with huge investments having being made in the MS file formats.

Well if MS were to release a native version that ensured document portability between Win / office and Linux / office it would very likely kill off the open source competitors just as it did with Novell and WordPerfect (OK, they aren't actually dead, just 99.99% dead!).

In the long run I bet it would actually outweigh the loss of OS revenue.

Just a thought.

SD

ps - I'm not saying that this would be a good thing ;)

[planecrazy.eu]

The main question can be answered in a few lines, Can Linux replace Windows?

// That all depends on what you do. If you use mainly office and graphics applications and the net then Linux is a dead winner. If you want to play the latest games then Linux is no good as even Wine (Windows Emulator) doesnt work all that well (Fast).

What i have done is used a dual boot, Linix for business and most other tasks, Windows for Games (FS2004). I browse the net on both but find Windows easyer when using those P2P applications and Wi-Fi.

Mandrake Linux or Suse i have found to be the most switch friendly and then i have moved on to RedHat. Lindows or Linspire is supposed to be the closest Linix to Windows and claims to run most Windows applications, i have not a copy so i cant vouch for that...

[SawThe Light]

Thanks for the responses folks. Don't know if I am much further ahead though. I can get my hands on several variants so I suppose some experimentation wouldn't go astray. Wish me luck.

STL

[Mac the Knife]

Well if MS were to release a native version that ensured document portability between Win / office and Linux / office it would very likely kill off the open source competitors just as it did with Novell and WordPerfect

I'm not saying that this would be a good thing

Glad you're not, 'cos despite the superficial advantages, it would be a very BAD thing.

MS wants to be not just the boss, but the ONLY boss and history has shown that this is not good for anyone. Monopolies are bad for society for a whole host of reasons, which is why most countries have evolved laws to limit this.

For reasons that are somewhat obscure, Gates believes that the world should have only one OS (his), only one set of standards (his) and only one Office suite (his) and on the desktop at least, has come very close to achieving this. Not by merit much of the time, but by illegal anticompetitive behaviour, dirty tricks. and just paying the fines that an increasingly helpless community tries to use to control the company.

Imagine a world where the only place that you could buy commercial airliners was Boeing. What if Boeing controlled most of the patents on aircraft construction, most of the copyrights on design and all the international standards (secret, BTW and you had to buy a very expensive licence from them even to see the standards).

The battle now is not about operating systems, but standards. He who controls the standards controls the world. Having failed to get W3C to use MS's proprietary standards for the Web (which would have effectively allowed MS to control the internet), MS tried to subvert the Java language (used extensively on the Net). MS licenced Java (an open standard), added it's own proprietary extensions and tried to replace the open Sun implementation of Java with it's own closed and proprietary implementation. And so on.

The "recipe" for the .doc, .ppt and .xls file formats is secret MS stuff. No-one else can make easily applications that read and write these formats. The only way is reverse engineering (not illegal) and MS have deliberately made these formats hard to reverse engineer. The fact that many developers HAVE succeeded is phenomenal - it's amazing that compatibility is now around 98%.

And the MS formats change subtly with each iteration of MS Office - how many of you have found incompatibilities opening old documents? Of course MS wants you to drop Office 97 and move on & buy the next one.

The World is getting a bit fed up with this and the .odf Open Document XML standard has been developed - the standard is open, non-binary and free for anyone to implement. There is considerable impetus and adoption of this now, since governments and institutions are increasingly reluctant to entrust data to a closed proprietary format owned by a convicted American monopolist. MS's response has been similar to the Java debacle - they've developed their own MS-XML standard which is MOSTLY open, but contains proprietary closed binary extensions. They maintain it is "better" (for whom?), but the result is that documents created in the new MS Office format may not open or display correctly in non-MS implementations. MS is now trying hard to force MS-XML upon the world at the expense of open XML.

OpenOffice is excellent (and getting better all the time), but again, thanks to MS machinations compatibility is not assured 100%. Thanks to the State of Massachusetts (and other governments around the world), adoption of the .odf Open Document XML format is proceeding apace and very recently MS have finally agreed to produce an add-on to MSOffice that will allow opening and saving documents in the .odf format. MS have made this as difficult and clumsy as possible (you can't use .odf as the default format), but it's there!

The problem of drivers is still with us, but remember that Linux now includes support for a vast number of devices internally - you don't have to put in a CD or go off and download a driver from somewhere much of the time. As the momentum of Linux builds, more and more manufacturers are including or releasing Linux drivers. Some of these are closed binary drivers that are incompatible with the GPL, and purists shun them, but the more practical among is accept that there are sound reasons for this and install them anyway. I have drivers for all my gear on Linux and it all works - Vista, on the other hand does not have drivers for many of my devices (especially older stuff) and realistically these will never be developed - all the more so because Vista will not accept drivers that have not been signed by MS (and getting an MS signature for a driver is very expensive).

Yes, Linux still has some rough edges - it just isn't as slick as, say, XP (which I confess, I find a very stable and usable OS) - but these rough edges are quickly disappearing.

[Saab Dastard]

Mac,

Thanks for the build on my thoughts - I was postulating that the advantages would be all Microsoft's in the long term, though there would be short term benfits for those who had invested heavily in producing output with MS office.

Cheers

SD

[Mac the Knife]

Yo Saab! I quite agree that "the advantages would be all Microsoft's in the long term". OTOH this would mean admitting that Linux was a threat (I suppose they've already done that with all their anti-Linux advertising) and might have the effect of momentarily increasing the adoption of Linux. As Linux matures, I think this is inevitable, but I dunno if MS can bring themselves to admit it.

We'll just have to hope that MS doesn't release a closed binary pay-for-it version of MSOffice for Linux! I have a hunch that they might find it difficult to port since their internal code documentation seems very poor (the code IS the documentation)!

As Linux spreads, more and more of the people adopting it are no longer geeks or purists, just ordinary Joes and Janes trying to get their work done. So long as MSOffice-for-Linux was relatively cheap and works, they'd buy it and use it - if only for the better compatibility with MSOffice-for-Windows that only MS can offer.

MS would then be free to insist on MS-XML and, on balance, a lot of Joes and Janes wouldn't care that much.

On the other hand, more and more countries and businesses are becoming wary of having their data held potentially hostage in a closed secret format owned by one company with it's own agenda (hence the rise of ODF) and it might not work.

To have any chance MS would probably HAVE to offer some kind of OpenXML compatibility, but they'd likely make it as poor and as difficult to find as possible.

I can't for the life of me figure out why MS can't bring themselves to realise that their dreams of hegemony in the IT world just ain't going to happen and start to play nicely, but I doubt whether they are capable of getting out of their old mindset. A pity - potentially giving up 95% of the desktop in exchange for a lower figure would still leave them unbelievably wealthy and, who knows, people might slowly start to trust them again (which has it's own benefits).

What MS has is a much greater degree of consistency and coherence across it's user interface - MS can insist on this internally and doesn't have to cope with, say, KDE vs Gnome and all the rest. MS also has hundreds of people watching thousands of people actually using Windows - seeing what they struggle with and fixing it. So far Linux hasn't had anything like that, though Novell/SuSE are working hard on this. Eventually the LSB will mandate more coherence at a systems level and I look forward to this. But outside the popular desktops, Linux, because of it's open nature, will always be somewhere coders can go to "scratch an itch" and explore new and different ways of doing things.

MS have some of the smartest people in the world working for them (though an uncomfortable number seem to have jumped ship recently) and the good that a moral Microsoft (sounds like an oxymoron) could do in the world far eclipses that which can be done by Gates chucking his money around.

But I won't hold my breath....

[Saab Dastard]

though an uncomfortable number seem to have jumped ship recently

Mmmm... like Bill Gates?

;)

[Gertrude the Wombat]

Is Linux a real alternative to WinXP or other Windows versions for the home and/or small business user?
Last I heard, a couple of weeks ago, there was no Linux accounting package that did VAT. My informant had to keep a Windows machine just to do the accounts. So, a non-starter for small business (if you're in the EU), unless you want to run several machines to cover all your requirements.

(I have to say that this sounds unlikely to me, but I was told this by a real Linux weenie, and if there was a usable accounting package I suspect they'd have found it.)

[Mac the Knife]

Oh dear Gertrude, you're SO predictable!

The quickest Google in the world yields (among others)

Jalia Linux Accounting - http://jalia.sourceforge.net/

"5. Financials – V.A.T :
The financials module provides you with VAT features. All your transactions recorded in the Jalia application automatically update the VAT related information. Using VAT, you can draw out your VAT Liability for a given period and arrange for payment/receipts to/from the statutory authority. Once you make or receive a payment, those transactions can be flagged off as having being reconciled thus avoiding future duplicity."

Also the Kalculate Financial Accounting Package for Linux - http://www.kalculate.com/ - "VAT ready"

Banana Accounting - http://www.banana.ch/base/eng/welcome.shtml supports VAT

I'm too bored to go on.

[Gertrude the Wombat]

I can only assume that my Linux weenie friend tried those and found them unacceptable for some reason. I can assure you that they wouldn't keep one box running Windows if they didn't think they had to.

[Keef]

I keep my old machine for playing with Linux. After 18 months of that, and with it booting into three different flavours of Linux or into Windows, my take is:

1. Linux is very capable, but a lot more "nerdy" than Windows, and it takes a lot of time to get everything working. By comparison, Windows is a walk in the park.
There are lots of different flavours of Linux - called "distros" by the aficionados - some are a bit like MSDOS 3.11 and require a PhD in geekery, some are nearly as user-friendly as Windows. I get on well with Debian, fairly well with Fedora, and after a fashion with SuSe. I've not tried Ubuntu, which I'm told is also nice.
Knoppix is interesting - it will run from CD or DVD: I've used it several times to recover stuff from friends' computers that have crashed or refused to boot from their hard drive.

2. Networked printers are a nightmare: they will work under Linux, but you'll spend many hours getting them to. It's a lot better for your nerves to buy a printer for each Linux machine.

3. Wireless connection is awful. I can get a Windows wireless network up and running in minutes. I've not yet managed to get even a hint of success with Linux. I can't connect any of my machines to the wireless network if I boot them in Linux. I've downloaded gigabytes of stuff that's supposed to make it all happen, but you need a D.Sc to understand the instructions.

4. Open Office is free, and competent. The Word Processor and Spreadsheet bits are fine. I've not managed to get anything that'll do what MS Publisher does. They may be "out there", but they are hiding well.

5. Debian has a wonderful feature: Kpackage - which allows you to look at a list of just about all the software available for Debian Linux, and to install or update whatever you want via a graphical interface. I love that! Much of it is super-geek, but some is excellent and very useful.

6. Linux will drive you crazy typing in the "Super User" password. If you're trying to set anything up, you'll be typing the pesky password several times a minute. You can't tell it to shut up and get on with the job - it just keeps demanding the password for each different operation you try to carry out.

7. Once you get it all working, Linux is many times faster and more efficient than Windows. It just took me about 15 months to reach that happy point - but I didn't have a local guru (I do now).

8. Asking for help on Linux forums is not for the faint hearted. Most of my requests for help resulted in me being flamed for being stupid (everyone knows how to to a ../config.-grunt-/kipper -t +R -x +z:1 or they shouldn't be allowed out alone), or for wanting to do such a silly thing as to print something, or for not asking in the approved format etc etc. In 12 months of trying, I never once got an answer that was any help on any of the forums (although I gave a few). Google helped a lot; now I have a "Linux guru" who is brilliant and either answers immediately, or finds the answer within a day or so. No, his name is NOT available - sorry!

IN SUMMARY ... would I switch to Linux for key functions? No way, without a resident and proven expert to fix it.
Would I recommend it? If you have plenty of spare time to learn a whole new way to operate your computer, and like a challenge - yes.

[SawThe Light]

Keef,

That is exactly the info I was expecting, but hoping not to get, if you know what I mean. God knows MS programs can be trying enough but the notion of trying to figure out the ../config.-grunt-/kipper -t +R -x +z:1 etc. comands is not what I need. I think I'm getting too old for "geekery" like that.

I might try it on a spare box as an experiment, but it looks like I am locked into MS for the time being.

Thanks again PPRuNers.

STL

[Mac the Knife]

2. Networked printers are a nightmare: they will work under Linux, but you'll spend many hours getting them to. It's a lot better for your nerves to buy a printer for each Linux machine.

??? SuSE and Ubuntu saw my network printers out of the box!

3. Wireless connection is awful.

Agree - took me a bit of fiddling to get that right.

STL, don't dismiss the thought of Linux QUITE so quickly. The first couple of weks CAN be a bit mysterious for some things (Wordprocessors, Spreadsheets, Internet and email almost always work out-of-the-box), but buying a copy of "Linux for Dummies" (or some such) makes it easier - after all, look how many copies of books teaching Windows are sold! It's not as though people don't struggle with Windows at times!

Once you're a bit familiar with how Linux "thinks" (and you DON'T need a Ph.D. or to spend months mastering stuff like ../config.-grunt-/kipper -t +R -x +z:1 ) then Linux is MUCH easier to "fix" than Windows (I don't recall ever having to type stuff like that, though you certainly will have if you want to explore the outer limits, but Windows is the same actually). Unlike Windows, there's no single impenetrable Registry, which if mysteriously corrupted spells reinstall, but ordinary text configuration files that are much simpler to change if things don't behave as you'd like. But most of the time nowadays you can work from the GUI and there's no need to type arcane commands.

While we're on the subject of the command line, in ages past many people managed to work with DOS and the vagaries of CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT and survive.....were they all supermen?

How about DOS's print command?

print /d:device /b:size /u:ticks1 /m:ticks2 /s:ticks3 /q:size /t drive:\path\ filename /c /p

Not that I recall ever having to tinker with it, mind you.

Yup, SOMETIMES Linux can be harder, but it's mostly unfamiliarity with something that looks a bit different and behaves a bit differently. It doesn't take ages to get "working familar", though it takes just as much time to be come a Linux guru (I'm not one) as to become a Windows guru.

The rewards for a bit of work are great - freedom from viruses, freedom from trojans, freedom from MS's dictates and a vast raft of software (including accounting software that does VAT ;) ), most of which is free too.

Yup, I'm a Linux evangelist, but I'm not a fanatic - some things like games and photoediting just work better in Windows for the moment - so have two machines that double-boot, one mostly runs Windows (it's essentially a games and experiments box) and the other one runs mostly SuSE for serious work.

Unlike Bill G. I reckon that the world is big enough for both systems to co-exist in and there will always be strengths and weaknesses on each side. The competition is good for both and even better for us users for neither can then sit back on their laurels, knowing that folks will just have to accept what they dish up 'cos there's no alternative.

Viva a Windows that learns to behave like a responsible citizen rather than a greedy sneak, and Viva a Linux that climbs down of it's elitist perch and does some more work on the user experience.

[Cheerio]

I can empathise with a lot of what you say Keef, but I think it is a little overstated. It needs quite a bit of motiviation to make the switch - for me I just like being different, and I'm getting increasingly irritated by MS end user licencing. It does take time to get comfortable with it, and it does take time to tweak the system into your ideal configuration, but once its done, it is superb, and not at all what many would imagine, with a blinking monochrome cursor etc... I prefer the Suse KDE GUI to XP.

[rotorcraig]

Yep MS starting to annoy me too.

Just installed my first Ubuntu test installation on an old Dell with a 3.2Gb HDD!

Seems to work fine and have been surfing on it this evening ... will play with more software tomorrow and source a bigger HDD to make it a bit more credible / usable!

RC

[Keef]

Mac / Cheerio

I take your point, but I have three shorthand notebooks full of the records of what I did and what I tried to make things work under Linux. If you search the various Linux forums for "Keef" you will find me asking simple (maybe even "idiot") questions that had me baffled, and being told I'm a blithering idiot (which I knew already). But the flamers seemed not to know the answer either - which is a trend I've come to recognise.

The "master" machine in my study is a 3.2GHz Win XP Pro box. There are a B&W laser printer and a colour inkjet printer attached. Both are shared on the network (Netgear wireless modem router), and my laptop running Win XP Pro can print on either printer just by checking which one to use. I can do that from down in the lounge, via the wireless link, "just like that." Debian on the Linux machine, hard-wired to the network, can now see the Laser printer but not the inkjet. It took me several months to get that far. Fedora can't see a printer at all, and SuSe...

Setting up Samba to allow the machines to see each other and swap files around needed some geek-code to be entered into various files in the root directory (smb.conf, bootmisc.sh, /etc/udev/rules.d/local.rules). I won't tell you how long it took to find out that those were the ones to edit, or exactly what geekery to put in. I've got it all written down now, so next time it'll be easy.

The SCSI CDROM drive was a bundle of laughs. Sound and video were both nightmares - trying to recompile the "core" with the right "soundcore", for example. Then it would only display 640 x 480, and I had to find out that the place to edit is /etc/X11/XF86Config to add the instructions to use 800 x 600 and 1024 x 768. Nothing difficult - just a case of finding out where the geek-code goes.

Yes, I could use the Linux box now as the office machine, provided I didn't want to print anything in colour, or scan anything on the SCSI scanner. Yes, Linux now is far easier and more user-friendly than it was a couple of years ago. It's a steep learning curve, that's all.

When I bought the new Windows box in January, it took me about four hours (from start) to have it all up and running, doing everything. I didn't have to edit any config files. OK, I know Windows better than I know Linux. But for me, Linux did NOT work "out of the box". Far from it. Maybe I'm just unlucky.

[Mac the Knife]

Setting up Samba to allow the machines to see each other and swap files around needed some geek-code to be entered into various files in the root directory (smb.conf, bootmisc.sh, /etc/udev/rules.d/local.rules). I won't tell you how long it took to find out that those were the ones to edit, or exactly what geekery to put in.

Keef, I'd like to believe you're not a troll, but it's getting harder.

I've set up Samba manually lots of times and never had to edit anything but smb.conf

"bootmisc.sh, /etc/udev/rules.d/local.rules"

udev provides a dynamic device directory containing only the files for actually present devices. It creates or removes device node files usually located in the /dev/ directory, or it renames network interfaces.

udev has nothing to do with Samba

Why do I get this feeling that you're going to say, "Well, I dunno, but Samba didn't work for me until I did it".

In one of your other posts you also had all sorts of obscure references that I couldn't for the life of me see had to do with your "difficulties".

"Debian on the Linux machine, hard-wired to the network, can now see the Laser printer but not the inkjet. It took me several months to get that far."

I don't know what distro you're using (except that it appears to be Debian based) but several months?

If something took me several months I'd have chucked it out long before.

Bits of many Linux distros don't always work "out of the box" - we've already established that. But your experiences seem to verge on the bizarre.

[drauk]

FWIW, Keef is no troll.

Modern Linux distributions usually come with plenty of admin tools to avoid the need to edit configuration files by hand, but if not there is always Webmin which will do the vast majority of all admin tasks that the vast majority of users would want to do.

[Mac the Knife]

drauk, I'm glad Keef is no troll.

But I'm still terminally puzzled by as to why he should be tinkering with /udev/rules.d to get Samba working. Not being an Linux uber-guru I was only vaguely aware of the udev folder since I've never had occasion to poke around in it. From my reading, not many people do.

udev is the device manager for the 2.6 kernel series - see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Udev for the most succinct overview. Udev uses information exported by the kernel drivers to the sysfs filesystem (usually mounted on /sys) to identify specific devices and to then associate them with specific names in /dev.

I'm at a loss to find any connection with Samba at all

Daniel Drake's "Writing udev rules" at http://www.reactivated.net/writing_udev_rules.html#example-printer discusses udev rules at length. Nothing that I can connect to Samba (which I know enough to be reasonably comfortable with).

Here's a not untypical /udev/rules.d/local.rules

# Optical Devices
# Added by Shilo 09/12/2004
#BUS="ide", KERNEL="hdc", NAME="%k", SYMLINK="dvd dvdrw cdroms/dvdrw cdroms/cdrom0", MODE="0660", GROUP="cdrom"
#BUS="ide", KERNEL="hdd", NAME="%k", SYMLINK="cdrom dvdrom cdroms/dvdrom cdroms/cdrom1", MODE="0660", GROUP="cdrom"
KERNEL="hdc", SYMLINK="dvd dvdrw cdroms/dvdrw cdroms/cdrom0"
KERNEL="hdd", SYMLINK="cdrom dvdrom cdroms/dvdrom cdroms/cdrom1"
# Windows formatted iPod mini support
BUS="scsi", SYSFS{model}="iPod ", KERNEL="sd?2", NAME="ipod", SYMLINK="%k", MODE="0777", GROUP="ipod"

I'm sure that Keef does have difficulties with Linux (we all do at times, just as with Windows), but the problems that he has enumerated (and been unable to solve, even after months of intensive effort) don't seem to be typical of normal user problems and often seem to involve configuration files buried deep in the tree that have no obvious connection to the issues he encounters.

__________________
"Bother," said Pooh as he struggled with /etc/sendmail.cf, "it never does quite what I want. I wish Christopher Robin was here."

[batninth]

STL - Watching this thread, do you have the answer you need now? :rolleyes:

It's all very well saying that you can get Linux to do what you want with a little tinkering etc but it still comes down to - "What do you want it to do?" and "Do you have time to make it do it?"

Cheerio is right - if you want a simple desktop o/s, and all you need to do is surf & send email then Linux is a great way of getting more bang per buck out of older systems and I agree that Suse or Ubuntu make easy work of this.

However, try to go on a step and set up networking with other systems, printers etc and you start getting into the need for some skills. My personal bugbear with my Linux desktop is media - trying to get media players working to accept internet radio streams :ugh:

My personal test on this is the "help test" - if I put Linux on a PC for a member of my family, how often would they be asking for help. The answer sadly is far more often than with Windows, and I get asked enough with Windows as it is.

As you say STL - a bit of experimentation is the best way to tell if Linux is what you want. Beware installing it on your windows PC as most Linux versions overwrite the boot loader with GRUB or LILO which works well but is a tough one to back out of if you ever want to clean Linux off the PC in future

[Memetic]

>Is Linux a real alternative to WinXP or other Windows versions for the home and/or small business user?

Yes is the straight answer.

If you trained someone from scratch on Linux, who had never used a PC before then they would be as productive, if not more as it's very secure and less targetted by malware, as a Windows user.

However if you have used Windows it is different. There are things to learn and things to unlearn. The key issues are dealing with all the propriatary files "business" uses and making the choice between all the optioons Linux and open source software offers.

In General, with a modern PC and Linux distribution inistallation is simple - especially if you get your internet connection via a router into the ethernet port.

My suggestion, make the break gently, install Open Office and try all the spread sheets and documents you have in that instead of MS Office. Switch browsers form IE to Firefox (Keep IE or doing any manual Windows updates becoems tedious!). Load Thunderbird instead of Outlook Express (I must admit I am so used to Outlook form the Office Thunderbird at home toook a bit more getting used to!)

Once you are comfortable with those core applications, which all look and work the same under Linux, the switch will be much smoother.

Memetic

[Mac the Knife]

"Beware installing it on your windows PC as most Linux versions overwrite the boot loader with GRUB or LILO which works well but is a tough one to back out of if you ever want to clean Linux off the PC in future"

Depends what you define as tough really.....:}

To get rid of the Linux bootloader (GRUB or LILO).
Boot to your Windows XP CD and select the first Repair option.
This will put you into the Recovery Console.
You will need the Administrators password.

Run FixMBR (just type "fixmbr" - without the parentheses - and press the ENTER key).
This replaces the Linux boot loader with the Windows one.
Take the Windows CD out and reboot, you'll come up in Windows

Not so-o-o-o bad was it?

Now you can delete the Linux partitions from Settings > Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Computer Management > Disk Management. The Linux partitions will show up as Unknown.

You can then create FAT32/NTFS partition(s) in the resulting empty space and format them as usual.

:ok:

[batninth]

Mac the Knife

Just compare the two operations:

(1) Installing LILO/GRUB

Automatic as part of install process, one screen, one simple answer (unless you want to install GRUB on the 2nd hard disc as I did and modify the XP loader to load it, then it's a bucket of problems)

(2) Removing LILO/GRUB
To get rid of the Linux bootloader (GRUB or LILO).
Boot to your Windows XP CD and select the first Repair option.
This will put you into the Recovery Console.
You will need the Administrators password.

Run FixMBR (just type "fixmbr" - without the parentheses - and press the ENTER key).
This replaces the Linux boot loader with the Windows one.
Take the Windows CD out and reboot, you'll come up in Windows

Easy when you've done it a few times, but for the first time user add "Looking at Microsoft support web site for details of how to reinstall MBR" and "Noticing the warning that doing this may cause further problems"

To me, if it installs easily it should deinstall just as easily, but then I only design software for a living so what do I know about this?

[Memetic]

To me, if it installs easily it should deinstall just as easily, but then I only design software for a living so what do I know about this?
That would be the ideal for ALL software. It's not just Linux that has this issue, ever tried removing something like Windows Media player? According to what Microsoft told the EU, even they can't do that!


(By the way I should have added, I use XP at work, No choice. And mix of XP and linux at home. XP is the default boot on the main home laptop as I share that and my other half uses lots of sites that are microsoft tech dependent.)

[Mac the Knife]

"...if it installs easily it should deinstall just as easily..."

Well, if your distro uses YAST (like Control Panel in Windows) it does :ok:

"7.6. Uninstalling the Linux Boot Loader

YaST can be used to uninstall the Linux boot loader and restore the MBR to the state prior to the installation of Linux. During the installation, YaST automatically creates a backup copy of the original MBR and restores it on request, overwriting GRUB.

To uninstall GRUB, start the YaST boot loader module (‘System’->‘Boot Loader Configuration’). In the first dialog, select ‘Reset’->‘Restore MBR of Hard Disk’ and exit the dialog with Finish. In the MBR, GRUB is overwritten with the data of the original MBR."

If you install Windows over Linux, Windows will wipe your hard drive and replace your bootloader with no backups and no questions. There no return from a Windows installation!

No-one is forced to use Linux y'know (unlike Windows)! If you don't like it or if you're sure the people who've told you that it's awful and terribly difficult are right then please, be Bill's guest! If you're happy with Windows, Tux isn't bothered!

Bill G. is the only one who wants to force everyone to use his OS and apps. and everything and make sure we all live in an expensive MS supervised DRM-ridden world where nothing actually belongs to you anymore.

It's Bill who doesn't want other OSes like Solaris, UNIX, Mac, Linux, AIX, BeOS etc., to be able to talk to Windows, in the hope that he'll kill 'em all off and only Windows and MS will be left. The fact is that if other OSes have problems with Windows networks and printing then it's entirely of Windows making (as the EU Commissioners have so recently and expensively pointed out on two occasions). Nobody wanted MS's volumes of uncommented source code, they just wanted documentation of the communication protocols used (which MS, bizarrely, says it just doesn't have)!

It's still a relatively free world (mostly) - so if you really love Windows and MS, why change? Just keep giving them your money and more and more little bits of your freedom - it's yours to give, after all.

If you know Linux is crap, why, don't go near it and tell everyone you meet what a piece of ****e it is!

And if you want Linux to be better then contribute code or ideas or time or money.

To get back to where we were; most distros that I know back up the MBR if they change it and let you restore it, usually from a GUI.

Which is more than Windows does.....

[batninth]

Well MtK - having not looked at Suse for a while I installed openSUSE on my PC last night, and yes YAST makes a good crack at system management but obviously it's not widespread.

[Mac the Knife]

...... yes YAST makes a good crack at system management but obviously it's not widespread.

:D

Of course not.......:E

[Keef]

Keef, I'd like to believe you're not a troll, but it's getting harder.
Sorry about that. No, I don't think I'm a troll. I've been accused of it a few times on Linux forums, mind. I suppose that's because I don't say what people want to hear.

I've set up Samba manually lots of times and never had to edit anything but smb.conf
Many others have told me the same. Sadly, there's obviously something "different" about my old PC. Samba wouldn't start without those changes to bootmisc.sh and local.rules. It does so now, without any problem, and I have the extra bits of code in my notebook for "next time".

Why do I get this feeling that you're going to say, "Well, I dunno, but Samba didn't work for me until I did it".
Because that's the truth, perhaps?


I don't know what distro you're using (except that it appears to be Debian based) but several months?
Yes, because I have other things to do than configure Linux. I spend a couple of hours; if it doesn't work, it gets put aside for a while. It took many attempts, with much googling, to get Debian on the Linux machine to see the HP Laserjet on the Windows XP machine. I've tried the same processes to get it to see the Canon Pixma colour inkjet, so far without success. It's not a high priority to have the colour printer available to Linux.

But your experiences seem to verge on the bizarre.
I wouldn't quite describe Linux as "bizarre", but it has been, shall we say, a learning experience. That said, it does most of the things I'd expect it to, and it does them a lot faster than Windows did on the same machine.

I am very impressed with the way that machine will boot to Windows XP, or Debian (2 different versions - stable and unstable), Fedora, and Suse - all based on a menu at start-up. It also uses the same folders for Thunderbird e-mail in all the Linux versions (I had to do some tweaking to achieve that, but it didn't take long).

The point of my posting was to warn the original poster that while Linux is very capable, it's not a good idea to switch to it without a backup plan for "mission critical" applications - particularly if you don't have a local expert to help fix problems. I still stand by that advice.

[SawThe Light]

It seems that my original question has returned more than I had bargained for and I don't think I'm any further ahead. Perhaps my question should have read "Can I hope to install Linux straight out of the box and have an OS that works as well and as easily as MS?" From what I read I think not.

No matter, you folks have given me a fair insight into using Linux and it seem the scores are fairly even for and against.

Thanks to all for taking the time.


STL

[Mac the Knife]

Funny old world...

On one thread I find myself supporting Microsoft's proprietary NTFS filesystem and on the other I find myself supporting Linux!

Both good OSes IMHO, but with different approaches and philosophies.

And prices of course.....

Well, potential Linux newbies, what can I say except that Keef's terrible and mysterious difficulties are pretty unusual. Most modern Linuxes cope extraordinarily well with the different hardware they encounter and for very many people installation goes smoothly and common things work without further fiddling. To get things really tuned up and zinging you WILL have to poke around the net and ask questions and read a primer, no question. "Some assembly required" as they say.

"Can I hope to install Linux straight out of the box and have an OS that works as well and as easily as MS?"

Probably not, but remember that you're getting the whole katootie for free as opposed to:

Microsoft XP Professional - Upgrade - $199 U.S., Full version - $299 U.S.
Microsoft Office 2003 Student and Teacher Edition - $149.00
Microsoft Office XP 2002 Professional with publisher - $214.95
Microsoft Corporation Microsoft Office Standard Edition ... - $374.95

Finally, many Linux distros have a Live-CD version which boots and runs directly from a CD, so you can try it out and check basic compatibility with your system without affecting your current installation or doing anything to your hard drive. The Live-CDs are slow of course but enough to give you an idea.

Good luck to all of you, Windows and Linux users alike! :ok:

PS: Keef, to satisfy my curiosity, could you post the changes you had to make to bootmisc.sh and local.rules (they're in your notebook)?

[Mac the Knife]

Beware installing it on your windows PC as most Linux versions overwrite the boot loader with GRUB or LILO which works well but is a tough one to back out of if you ever want to clean Linux off the PC in future

That's actually batninth's quote, not mine.

As I have tried, obviously unsuccessfully, to point out, "backing out" is not "tough" but trivial, providing you can type two lines and press the ENTER key.

[Keef]

PS: Keef, to satisfy my curiosity, could you post the changes you had to make to bootmisc.sh and local.rules (they're in your notebook)?

If you think it'll help:

In bootmisc.sh:

kdesu /usr/bin/sambastart start

In local.rules:

KERNEL=="event[0-9]*", NAME="input/%k"

After the next boot, local.rules vanished, so I don't know what happened to that bit of code. Since it fixed the problem, I didn't worry, either.

"Can I hope to install Linux straight out of the box and have an OS that works as well and as easily as MS?" From what I read I think not.
About right. However, if you have the patience to spend a few days getting it all up and running, you may be pleasantly surprised. My experience is obviously (from comments above) significantly worse than should be expected. I suppose I chose the wrong machine to install it on, or there's a peripheral that's causing problems.

Either way, once it's sorted, performance is far better than MS stuff on the same machine. My recommendation would be to experiment "in your spare time" with an old machine, and see if you can get it to function.

[LH2]

I apologise for not really making a useful contribution, but I'd like to mention that I've been using Linux exclusively since 1995, both on my personal PCs and at work. I do find Microsoft operating systems difficult and frustrating to use in the extreme, when I'm confronted with one, so I guess it all boils down to what you're used to. Empirical evidence from those computer users which I've trained from the ground up under Linux would seem to confirm that observation.

I'm not advocating Linux, btw. You can use whatever you want, I'm just saying the original question is a bit of a non-sequitur. Try it, see if you like it, if not find something else, as simple as that really. :cool:

[batninth]

STL - If you are still watching this thread

It seems that my original question has returned more than I had bargained for and I don't think I'm any further ahead. Perhaps my question should have read "Can I hope to install Linux straight out of the box and have an OS that works as well and as easily as MS?" From what I read I think not.

As you have seen - it isn't really a question about the technical merits of Linux vs Microsoft, or even licencing issues. IT all comes down to your attitude of what you are prepared to count as "straight out of the box", or in my trems "How much I'm prepared to tweak it".

If I can draw an analogy here, I work away from home so often travel out on a Sunday evening and pick up a hire car at the airport. I have used a range of hire cars, but the key for me is being able to take the keys to the Hertz lot, get in the car and after adjusting the seat & mirror, drive it away. By and large that applied to most cars. However one that sticks in my mind is the Fiat Stilo which has a small number of annoyances and forced me to sit in the lot reading the owner manual before I could work out how to switch the lights on & drive away. (By the way - the Grande Punto I had the following week was back to sit in & drive off - much, much better car by miles)

The fact is the Stilo was an OK car, and for me it was slightly annoying having to RTFM to be able to drive away at 1am in the morning. Had that have been my wife for example, then it would have been a more serious matter.

The same applies to Linux v WinXP. WinXp works far more often out of the box, and I would say that Ubuntu 6 comes closest to the same install experience (sorry MTK - openSuse is like the Stilo - good product, just too much RTFM). It's just how do you feel about having to work on it to make it work before you can do work.