“Anyone know a good Linux build they can recommend to a Linux newbie?”
therein lies the rub (IMHO). if people that can’t get Windows to work, and are not already using *nix for business want to move to Linux, I think they are in for a hard road.
I do *nix support for a living, and I won’t load linux (again) at home. toooo much hassle. not intuitive, too many versions to get consistent support, drivers are hard to find, lack of software, family members are completely lost, and when it does work, I feel it lacks a lot of the fit, finish and features of Windows.
Of course I was probably about the last person I know of to get off of W2K and now that I am on XP, I will only come off of that kicking and screaming. I gave up on being bleeding-edge in the computer industry 15 years ago.
I had some brief work engagements on DG-UX, IBM-AIX and DEC Unix. The initial efforts to port to a true 64-bit machine were real eye openers in 1991. That stuff was just too early to market and died an appropriately early death. It's time to start looking at that genre again with the advent of more commonplace 64-bit machines.
Just curious.... what distro’s were you loading that you had such problems with?
I couldn’t be happier with both MEPIS and SUSE 10.2....they both installed very quickly...and totally without drama.
Vista is so disgustingly similar to all the complaints about “*nix” that I’m ready to go through the hassles merely out of protest.
Basically, drivers are hard to find, everything is still in public beta, when/if I do find a driver Vista attempts to stop the install at every new file (took 35 minutes of clicking to install some 20 meg audio drivers that don’t pop and hiss), and nVIDIA blames its performance issues on “Vista limitations” & I believe them.
Every minor action requires 1-3 confirmations and non-Windows automatically downloaded updates are completely disabled even if you attempt to initiate on an admin account.
Vista is basically XP with a barbed wire fence. Its supposed to keep your computer secure, but even with an admin account I feel like I’m on the wrong side of the fence. Clicking redundancy also seems like a very very poor security model. Its only a matter of time before malware/virii learn to access the admin account and bypass these redundant “security checks.” The main problem I have always had with Windows is regardless of how you try to set your settings, Windows thinks it knows what is best and truly limits your options and forces you into a certain set of behavior. In Vista, this aspect is wildly out of control, even a main selling point.
I’m no computer rookie either, what I really miss is DOS. I’m no expert either, so I’m not sure why DOS couldn’t have been updated to support more advanced video and networking protocols. I had a server on MSDOS 6.0 and it worked just fine (for the speeds available back then! lol) and I could play the early 3D games online.
And since then Windows has been dumbing down the product to the point where Vista will treat you like a computer illiterate/mildly retarded 5 year old.
Of course I was probably about the last person I know of to get off of W2K and now that I am on XP, I will only come off of that kicking and screaming. I gave up on being bleeding-edge in the computer industry 15 years ago."
DITTO
jw
I do *nix support for a living, and I won’t load linux (again) at home. toooo much hassle. not intuitive, too many versions to get consistent support, drivers are hard to find, lack of software, family members are completely lost, and when it does work, I feel it lacks a lot of the fit, finish and features of Windows.”
Yer full of crap.Tyr Ubuntu Edgy