Re: Users ready for Debian on the Desktop
On Sat, Apr 19, 2003 at 11:05:37AM +0800, csj@mindgate.net wrote:
> On Fri, 18 Apr 2003 12:35:35 -0600, Jamin W. Collins wrote:
>
> > Sorry, but if you honestly think Windows is more difficult to
> > install than most Linux distros, your missing something.
>
> The latest version?
Sure, latest of each.
> > I'm certianly pro-Linux, and prefer it to any MS release, but the MS
> > releases are a fair bit more "hand holding".
>
> I think that statement needs to be qualified by version numbers and
> the purity of the box at the time of the installation.
Latest OS versions, bare drive, and associated manufacturer drivers for
each.
> To be sure I haven't tried any version of M$ Win later than 98r2.
> But that's my point. Have people's expectation of what's easy
> changed? Any recent commercial GNU/Linux distro is easier to use
> than Win3.1 and possibly Win95, and yet we still have reviewers
> saying that GNU/Linux is not ready for the desktop. The same
> thing could be said for Win95. And that was the OS that turned
> M$ into a monopoly.
You want to compare relatively new versions of Linux distros with a five
to seven year old competitor? Why not compare current Microsoft
releases to a five to seven year old Linux distro? Of course such
comparisons are going to be completely unbalanced. If you want to
compare the two, use current versions (latest official releases) of
each.
> Give Redhat (or Suse, Xandros or even Mandrake) a billion-dollar
> marketing budget to promote just one release and we'll see M$'s piece
> of the desktop shrink dramatically.
Agreed, now let's come back to reality. None of the current Linux
distros (or any of the currently forseeable distros) have said budget.
Unfortunately, Microsoft does, and will for the forseeable future.
Rather than dreaming/bitching about the possibilities, it's better to
admit the short-comings of the current Linux distros and deal with them.
After all, Linux (kernel and applications) has a number of strong points
that many of Microsoft's products don't.
--
Jamin W. Collins
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