Many articles already explain why you should use Linux and describes its advantages. However, for a potential new user, it’s also important to know the other side: what are the disadvantages of Linux? This short article by Carl Simard tries to present this other side so that new users can evaluate much better if Linux is for them to try or if they should forget about it.
When you Shouldn’t be Using Linux
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
Why do people keep coming up with the same garbage over and over again. I’m no Microsoft fan-boy, however, why would someone need to pay $20 for an IRC client when there is xchat 2.2 available for Windows? regarding Photoshop, atleast one doesn’t restort to spending 1/2 trying to look for the menu relating to saving a picture.
As for the price, goodness gracious me, if you find it too expensive, buy Corel Graphics Suite which is cheaper than Photoshop and comes with a DTP as well plus the ability to do some nifty web graphics and if that is still too high then buy a copy of Paint Shop
As for Office suites, you can get OpenOffice on both Linux, Solaris, IRIX, MacOS X, FreeBSD, NetBSD, and Windows (have I missed out a platform?) so how on earth can “Linux’s Office Suite” be superior to what is available for Windows? who said Microsoft has to bundle third party applications with their operating system to make it “like Linux”?
As for development tools, they are easily downloaded as they come with the Windows SDK which includes every you need to compile an application successfully. The only downside to this is that you have to manually enter the switches to disable debugging, enable optimisation and to top it off there is no IDE, but really, if you were interested in some profit making programming, you’d simply sign up to MSDN and depending on how generous that tax is in your country, you may be able to right off a large portion against your tax return.
Apropos, a long time ago I tried to install Debian. It wasn’t hard at all – except I had to try a dozen times, because installing it with 11 floppies never worked (floppies break with ease), and installing it with three floppies and a big tarball wasn’t that better – except I never got a bootable system, and I still wonder why
The installer was easy and very straightforward, except it couldn’t install Lilo and couldn’t tell me why – I gave up and had to boot from DOS with Loadlin. At the first boot everything seems to be OK, until the kernel tries to load init. Boom. Linux begins spitting this message like a machine gun:
kmod: failed to exec /sbin/modprobe -s -k binfmt -464c , errno = 8
Come one mate, I’m no computer expert, but have you actually read the error message? what part of binfmt don’t you understand? as for the tar ball, throw it on a CDR and simply download and write the three necessary floppy images. There is NO need to use 11 floppies.
I’ve installed Linux tonnes of times on this machine, Pentium III 550Mhz w/ BX440II Chipset, and it works perfectly everytime. It is nothing exotic or interesting, yet, I seem to be able to run Windows 2000 w/ SP3, Solaris 9 and Linux all without any issues, heck, not even a crash.
If the operating system won’t install, check the BIOS settings. Unlike *NIX and *BSD, Windows 2000/XP/2003/whatever completely ignores the firmware and does its own detection and installation vs. *NIX/*BSD which tends to try to work WITH firmware to establish hardware presence hence the issues on may get if the BIOS is setup with PnP OS set to yes. When it is set to yes, there isn’t the necessary information required for *NIX/*BSD thus you may find things won’t work.
Come one mate, I’m no computer expert, but have you actually read the error message? what part of binfmt don’t you understand?
I think the point is that I (and a whole mailing list, I should add) understood no part of it. I don’t know what it’s about, and I don’t care, because I’ll never install Linux. I’m just curious about that particular error, because nobody could explain it to me
as for the tar ball, throw it on a CDR
I didn’t have a CD burner, at the time. And it was my first time installing Linux (not really, but let’s say so), I didn’t know the options available. I just asked what distribution I should have tried first, and they pointed me to the 11 Debian floppies from hell
If the operating system won’t install, check the BIOS settings. Unlike *NIX and *BSD, Windows 2000/XP/2003/whatever completely ignores the firmware
odd, they told me the exact opposite. But it doesn’t matter – I know nothing about hardware detection, and I won’t talk about it. Plus, I don’t see how this is relevant. Mind you, the installer (Linux) ran perfectly (save for Lilo), and so did the bootable disk (again, Linux) I used to delete /sbin/modprobe
odd, they told me the exact opposite. But it doesn’t matter – I know nothing about hardware detection, and I won’t talk about it. Plus, I don’t see how this is relevant. Mind you, the installer (Linux) ran perfectly (save for Lilo), and so did the bootable disk (again, Linux) I used to delete /sbin/modprobe
Well, who ever told you that should go off and read a manual. In any UNIX manual it clearly outlines the fact that it interacts with the firmware. Windows 9x was the only Windows series that I know off that talked to the bios during the hardware configuration.
What I think you mean is that it talks to the BIOS so that it can talk to the hardware, which is doesn’t do. All the firmware does is say, “hey, there is a device here, here and here”, the *NIX/*BSD operating system says, “great, I’ll use that information to setup communication between the OS and hardware”, meaning, once the operating system is up and running, it no longer interacts with the firmware. That is where I think you are getting confused as Windows 9x still kept that strange relationship resulting in the floppy drive, parallel and every other part of the computer bringing the operating system to a scretching halt, where as with Windows 2000/XP/NT/etc the BIOS is skipped, like *NIX/*BSD meaning it doesn’t have to switch back and forths between the different modes, IIRC, between native and protected mode.
so they have unstable future.
—
oh! you praise money!
money lacks, matter lacks
warm mind lacks,
after all, they want money without people.
people died the lacks of money.
someone enjoy the situation.
money will eat someone himself.
The 36 hour install was because of a software problem. Specifically, it was an upgrade (we didn’t have the resources to do a backup of everything and reformat, so we took our chances) from Win2K + IIS6 + .Net to WinXP:TE. The install “froze” on installing IIS for XP since there was a newer version already installed. There was no documentation about this online or in forums. The closest thing I found was “reformat” and that wasn’t an option. It took me a long time to figure out the hotkeys so I could get to a command prompt, and that was useless. I got lucky once, by popping out the cd while installing, causing an error message and telling me the log. Once I filtered through this log, I found it was IIS. Yet, there was no way to fix it, or to exclude it from the install (because its a terrible installer). The solution, if you were wondering, was to let it run for around 8 hours straight. At some point, it kept going and skipped IIS, but the timeout was way way way too long.
Anyways, the message in this long story is that a beginner to normal user would have NO CHANCE if one of these problems came up.
I consider the MDK9.1 installer much better then the WinXP installer because 1) you can at least easily get error messages 2) specifically exclude software that is causing install problems. No, its not perfect, but it is more helpful than XP.
I do not blame linux install problems on hardware and windows on software. Hardware and software have had a fair number of problems for installation on either OS.
Hi All,
I think we are missing the point, the original post appears to be aimed at the new user, I was a new Linux user and started out with SuSe6.2, no it didn’t work with my Dell laptop Inspiron 8100, but I still stayed with experimenting with Linux. Now SuSe8.2 is my preferred OS, installs out of the box 99% perfect( somehow the power management is not recognised but worked with SuSe8.0)
(I do Duel boot with Win2K for throws times when some apps wont run with Linux on a 3GB partition.)
Think of Linux as a evolving OS which is basically FREE contains all standard apps for your average Joe, compared to M$,It’s not the boot speed that is important it is the overall COST, Reliability and most important Ease of use. Who cares how fast it boots compared to other OS,
The company I work with in Australia have just rolled out the biggest upgrade of XP in the world 22,500 User machines, yes at a reduced licensing cost, Why XP, the cost of training 22,500 staff to Linux and loss of production.
Deploying Linux in a 5 to 10 client environment is where the OS will be the most cost efficient, The question why are people using Linux is COST, COST, COST, every cent saved is better spent else ware.
Linux( for the home user) needs to develop into a OS which is able to install M$ apps from the .exe file. Make it easier to install 3 party applications.
I am excited every time a updated version of Linux is released because the developers are listening to the users and implementing the changes, arguing about Boot Speed is just a waist of time. I would prefer a OS that is Cheep & cost affective, than fast and expensive.