WalMart.com Linux PC Shootout

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1. 2003-07-01 6:54 am

   Anonymous

   What about installing FreeBSD? It’s obviously not as mom-oriented as you might want, but I’m curious to know if it would work.

   I’m running it on an IDT WinChip C3 CPU, 600MHz, it works fine.
2. 2003-07-01 6:55 am

   Anonymous

   I suspect a good many of these Wal-Mart Linux PCs end up getting reformatted and installed with a bootleg copy of Windows from the buyer or one of his/her friends.
3. 2003-07-01 6:55 am

   Anonymous

   I installed Mandrake 9.1 on my brothers PC because he was willing to try out the music recording applications for it, being a bit fed up with Windows. I booted up the system and everything was recognized. Quite impressive.

   I have moved over to Gentoo, because I was tired of the software install/uninstall hell of Mandrake 8.0. I was stunned to see that this problem has not improved an inch with Mandrake. First I used a long time to find sources to add to Mandrake’s grpmi interface. When I finally managed to install a sunet ftp source, which took me some hours, I tried to find a package for Ardour and Rosegarden. I found them, but they had outdated versions available. I installed them both.

   Ardour ended up crashing X, and Rosegarden just crashed immediately with a KDE error window. Since I know Linux, I thought the problem was that there were some dependancies that I weren’t alerted about.

   I downloaded the new version of Ardour from their website, and started trying to compile it from source. There were alot of packages missing. I managed to install a few of them, and then I came to the missing Jack library. There were no new version in the software install database.

   I finally managed to add cooker resources to my grpmi software installation panel. They were bigger, and there I did find a very new version of Jack. But to install it I needed to reinstall 450MB of new software, just for this one lib to work!!! I did that and I still do not know if Ardour will work. Sad to say, my brother is a bit shocked. hehe

   I think Linux is not ready for anyone else than those who want an Office package and some mp3 music playing apps only. If one has multimedia intrests and wants to install software from RPMs in general, I think Linux sucks bigtime. I use Gentoo, and it builds all my software from sources. I have NO problems what so ever. No dependancies. No nothing. But in return, all software installation happens through a terminal window, and there are less to no tools for configuring hardware and such. The only thing available to me in those respects is KDE and the tools for configuring X and some other services.

   I would give Mandrake, Redhard and the other RPM distros 1 out of 10. Sure they look nice, but they have chosen a package system that DOES NOT WORK! And now after years, it still does not work. They should get a clue soon.

   The perfect distro would for me, be a Gentoo distro with a gui for chosing which application I wanted to install/remove/upgrade, and then giving me a progress bar as it compiled it in secret, in the background. It would take much longed than installing from an RPM, but it would at least work. Then with a few tools like Mandrake has for configering my hardware, it would soon be 9/10. Why the jump?

   When a software installation does not work, when software fails to install or even fails to be removed – blocking updates to the system, the distribution has a serious problem that can not be overlooked. I will not rate a distro by which apps it has available from the start. It does not work that way. An operating system should operate, and if the software which makes the whole OS usable does not operate, then I throw the distro in the trash.
4. 2003-07-01 6:56 am

   Anonymous

   I simply hated SuSE 8.2. I’ll stick with 7.3 and just update what I need to. I absolutely HATE sysconfig, it’s a hige kludge, and does not work. I have repeatedly turned on services that still DO NOT start at startup. Yes, it can be manually configd, but what’s the point of replacing rc.conf then?? And I simply cannot believe that they have not fixed the -m switch in the useradd command. Then there’s the default configuration of PCMCIAKernal as opposed to the rock solid external configuration. Nice how it hangs on laptops. Also, and this may just be me, but iI have had endless problems with /etc/adjtime reverting to jump 2000 when my bios clock is perfect. This is easily fixable, but trippy that it happened on 2 different machines with more than 2 installations. It seems like they took a HUGE step backwards with this last upgrade — even the cd packaging sucks; it seems designed to dump the disks out all over the floor. And am I actually correct in my assesment that sax2 cannot be run in text mode?

   I’ll stick with 7.3 thanks.
5. 2003-07-01 7:11 am

   Anonymous

   I’ve tried Lindows before, I don’t really care for it at all. It’s not worth the money…

   I use Mandrake here, and always have been quite happy with it.

   As for the $200 Walmart PCs, they seem like junk to me? For a box like that, I’d rather build one or buy a used one. You can get used P3’s for like $150 now!!
6. 2003-07-01 7:12 am

   Anonymous

   I feel the same way. Gentoo is absolutely top-notch, but I can’t recommend it to newbies because of the learning curve. However, there is a GUI for portage. You can try either kemerge or kportage (both are in Portage, naturally I don’t use either much, but they’re about as easy as you can get. Pick a catagory, pick a package, hit install from the menu. That’s it. Everything else is done behind the scenes. My brother wishes installing software were this easy in Windows
7. 2003-07-01 7:19 am

   Anonymous

   if you are not runing a sort of text mode server, you can basically forget using old / low end hardware for linux desktop. They are bloated and getting worse with each new release.

   With windows, they force you upgrade hardware every two years, but with linux, you force yourself upgrade the hardware every two release 😎

   Don’t forget OEM windows cost about $40 bucks, not the retail $100/$200 ticker price.

   The other day, I tried knoppix linux installed on a hard drive and OpenOffice took 90 seconds to load (w DMA on) on an AMD K6-2 500 with 256 MB RAM, which is 10 times worse than Office XP on a pentium 133 with 48 MB running win98 or a pentium 266 with 64 MB running winxp – in each case, the startup time is 3 to 8 seconds.
8. 2003-07-01 7:29 am

   Anonymous

   Wow. I disagree with even the idea that these PC’s are getting wiped and having Windows installed on them. The average Wal-Mart buyer doesn’t come close to having even that much technical savvy.

   And THEN, even worse, the only support is online? How are you supposed to get online if it doesn’t work???

   There will be two casualties from this insane idea:

   1. Wal-Mart’s computer business. This is probably a good thing. Never made sense to give an Uzi to a monkey.

   2. (unfortunately) Linux’s reputation. What Linux doesn’t need is a bunch if disgruntled customers saying “Ma, that Linucks thing dinnt work”.

   Nothing but a bad idea.
9. 2003-07-01 7:31 am

   Anonymous

   my monitors are 10 year (nec multiscan 3v), 5 year and 4 year old. Windows never complained. Linux some times has troubles, however, I happen to know how to start in vga text mode.
10. 2003-07-01 7:32 am

    Anonymous

    “Gentoo is absolutely top-notch, but I can’t recommend it to newbies because of the learning curve..”

    Wouldn’t it be nice to see a Gentoo based Distro for newbies? Something like Libranet or Xandros which are Debian based, i mean.

    Perhaps Mandrake should move away from Redhat and base their future releases on Gentoo.

    Just an idea….
11. 2003-07-01 7:35 am

    Anonymous

    only a retailer the size of walmart can have their idea of not selling pcs with windows pre-installed.
12. 2003-07-01 7:36 am

    Anonymous

    ” I was stunned to see that this problem has not improved an inch with Mandrake. First I used a long time to find sources to add to Mandrake’s grpmi interface. When I finally managed to install a sunet ftp source, which took me some hours,”

    Of course if you look around you’ll find sources like easy urpmi http://plf.zarb.org and urpmi.setup (on the cd’s not installed by default should be in 9.2) Which will set up the sources for you in a couple of mins.

    Or if you buy the full set you get contribs and all the packages you could want.
13. 2003-07-01 7:37 am

    Anonymous

    Well that depends. But the main point is that Gentoo for example, does run good, even on a 500mhz computer. Once things are installed, you can spread that installation across the network.

    Open Office is as bloated as it always was, also when I installed Star Office on Windows. It is an advanced office package, but the speed is horrible and feels like I am trying to run a big app on an old Amiga with a bunch of hacks. But KOffice is getting rather impressive, and loads quite fast. Koffice has not really upgraded, publicly, in a long while. When version 1.3 final is out, I am sure it will lift some eyebrows, specially with the new load/save filters. And with an option to save in the open office format, things look nice.

    The biggest problem for Linux is the multimedia portofolio. Ardour looks VERY impressive for home studios (http://ardour.sourceforge.net), but how come all these new good apps use such a diverse array of odd libraries? I thought an app was made to be used and spread, not only to be run on the developer machine it was invented on.

    Same goes for 2D graphics, with Gimp being the only serious contender (I once hoped for Mosfet Paint, but it has not materialized, and Public Paint is bout by SVGAlib to the root… whilst not working with normal mice).

    For 3D graphics we have a plethora of modelling apps, but none for Animation. Blender is open sourced, but it has such a terrible rendering routine, and the bugs are so many, that it will not do for most people. (I must add though, that despite this, Blender has ALOT of potential to unleash!

    We need apps, specially for content creation and art. Please, no more email servers! We have enough! Office is fine, but one should focus more on the users than on the enterprise, at least for a while. Animation is important, 2D and 3D, and music is important. More productivity apps and art apps. Please!

    There is momentum though. Pixel32 might solve alot of issues (pixel32.box.sk), and Gambas is now out for people who want to experiment with programming GUI apps the Visual Basic way. Wonderful achievement (http://gambas.sourceforge.net new 0.6 version), but if app developers would progress in the same pace as the KDE and Gnome teams are, we will be there in a couple of months already

    Just… RPM sucks. Use RPM and you won’t be able to use all these apps without installing KDE anew together with 350 other applications 😛
14. 2003-07-01 7:42 am

    Anonymous

    OSNews had a not-so-great streak for posting sort of dumb reviews for a bit there, but this one was pretty good. Very straight forward, decently thorough. Thanks!
15. 2003-07-01 7:47 am

    Anonymous

    I actually found something like it (narud something). And it was quite easy once it generated some urpmi.addresource expressions that I could run in a shell window. But still, RPM made me uninstall almost all my installed software so that I could install libjack 0.7, which is totally unacceptable – as the RPM installation tool needed to install 450 megabytes of software again, which had to be downloaded from the internet – which is almost as much as a new ISO cd…

    That is the problem with binary distros. Each RPM might be compiled on a machine that has a different setup of libs. Then, these libs, and whichever versions they are in, are dependancies in the RPM. From source of course, the ./configure script might choose to build the executables from the libs you already have. Binary installations are much more difficult on Linux.

    What should be done, from a user’s perspective, would be static compilations. Sure the binaries would be huge, but an app would at least run. Static binaries have the libs compiled in. That is how it should be done for users who do not compile themselves. It is the only solution really, at the moment. Too bad the people who already have an infastructure to release distros do not see this.
16. 2003-07-01 8:59 am

    Anonymous

    -If it fails the install on the machines, then you shouldn’t count it as majorly in your review as you did. (for RH)

    -If you’re judging the merits of the distribution, you should at least INSTALL it. (for RH again)

    -It’s also misleading in your conclusion to say emacs-No and for RH, MP3-No, and not give any clear indication to say that these could be freely downloaded. Not that I’m an emacs person, mind (for RH and the other distributions)
17. 2003-07-01 9:24 am

    Anonymous

    Im totally agreeing with above. A review is no place to slash a none tested distro. There are a lot of such a reviews on OSNews (heavily biased I mean).

    I myself are running gentoo at home and Red hat 9.0 with XD2 at work. Ive no complaints about the two of them, both are stable and fast.

    Just one remark about gentoo. THis morning showed me again that it isnt ready for deployment at work. Once more portage was borked pretty bad and something like making a not tested enough glibc available (by mistake) for upgrade can and did bork some systems pretty bad. I love Gentoo, but both distros have tere places
18. 2003-07-01 9:26 am

    Anonymous

    “if you are not runing a sort of text mode server, you can basically forget using old / low end hardware for linux desktop. They are bloated and getting worse with each new release.”

    There are many five or six year old computers being given away, and it would be a good thing if a Linux distro could be made that would run on them. Typically they would have Win 95 installed on a 1.25 GB drive, a 200-300MHz Pentium, and 64 Megs of RAM.

    It really ought to be possible to run a modern OS and a useful office suite on such a machine – after all, it could be done 6 years ago. (And how bad was Claris Works when it ran on Macs ten years ago?)

    I tried installing Red Hat on such a machine, and it was totally confused by the size of the drive. A message saying “This OS demands at least a 10GB drive” would be more useful than a failed attempt to install.

    But I think it needs a specific low resources distro.
19. 2003-07-01 9:29 am

    Anonymous

    There is no need to install RPMs from other distro,

    and with the following URL it’s pretty easy to configure

    urpmi

    http://plf.zarb.org/~nanardon/

    (visit also http://plf.zarb.org )

    Installation of softwares is just as good in Mandrake

    as in gentoo or debian.
20. 2003-07-01 10:10 am

    Anonymous

    Good article.

    It highlights some real hardware issues with the major Linux distros though. Speaking personally I have a major headache with some of my hardware, regardless of distro, but strangely my scanner worked fine first time and every time (unlike the author’s experience) so surely this means that Linux just isn’t tested with enough hardware setups?

    I can’t get my digital camera to work (despite being USB mass storage compliant), when my USb card reader is installed (to another usb port) – yet the author has no trouble..

    I think linux should spend more time working on hardware compatability an dless time creating the myriad of distributions that do nothing to help bolster the linux ideology.

    The fractionation of distributions might as well mean each distro is it’s own OS.
21. 2003-07-01 10:52 am

    Anonymous

    Mandrake works for me too. As in the article everything works. Well not everything. The installer (setup) doesn’t like my voodoo 3 card. So I have to disable it and use the embedded vid card to install mandrake. But later on I choose in the x setup my voodoo and reboot and it works. I like mandrake conf. You can change all settings there.

    Red Hat is ok but no sound and I just like all of the games I get with mandrake.

    I tried Lycoris once and I didn’t really like it. First of all the installer has a bug or something. At the end of installation the progress bar hits 100% and enables the finish button. But if I stop then the computer hangs and the when rebooted I will only see the terminal. However if during installation I wait 30 minutes or so even if the progress hits 100%. It works. But then I wanted to install the developer CD but the cd’s autostart didn’t work and the html page it should show with the appz you want to install was useless. Only a cryptic name of the app and no explanation.

    However I still use Windows almost all time. As Linux just doesn’t give me the “wow” feeling as BeOS PE (MAX Edition) did 6 months ago when I first installed it and booted it. I tend to use BeOS mostly for when I installed a new OS that has overwritten my bootmanager. I use bootman to repair it.

    And as I don’t do highend video and graphics editing I’m ok with the free apps I can download and use like: firebird, devcpp and other non opensource. And dont spend a lot of money. Ooh and I’m using the trail of w2k3 server which lasts 6 months so I don’t have to pay for the OS neither.

    But then if I were in need of servers I know what I would use. (*nix, *BSD).

    About the technical support. I had the same problem once with a ISP. I got a guy who was realy smart and explained to me this and that. Told me to test it and call him back. When I called back I got another guy and then explained the case but he was making up shit and just didn’t have the to tell he didn’t know and ask a collegue for help. Geez its ok, not everyone knows everything but don’t start lying to me. I’m not the grandma you are used to perhaps.
22. 2003-07-01 11:08 am

    Anonymous

    What about installing FreeBSD? It’s obviously not as mom-oriented as you might want, but I’m curious to know if it would work

    hehehe Bery you made me laugh lol “freebsd not as mom-oriented as you might want” hehehehehe that’s funny
23. 2003-07-01 11:21 am

    Anonymous

    I wondered if it would too, so I bought one.

    I have FreeBSD 4.8 running on the cheapest one ($199), which I don’t think is available anymore.

    I have it set up to handle some server services and page serving and has been running fluxbox. It has been running well.

    I was really surprised by the amount of air in the case. All the components are small and the case could easily be reduced to 1/2 the current size maybe smaller.
24. 2003-07-01 11:28 am

    Anonymous

    As for Lycoris and Wallmart, well, what a freaking disgrace. No, this “the $199 wallmart pc is using cheap hardware” excuse will not jump. It wasn’t like Lycoris or Lindows was being installed on some random pc. Come-on, they hand-picked the hardware, they hand-picked the OS, what else can you possibly wish for?

    I don’t expect Lycoris to compete with Windows, and frankly I have no clue why Joseph is still bothering with his crap. But the LEAST these systems can do is WORK AND SUPPORT EVERYTHING ON THEIR CHOSEN MACHINE OUT OF THE BOX. Anything less than that is unexcusable and tremendously stupid. Whoever is behind these boxes is just doing a shoddy work. What a disgrace!

    >>> RedHat said they would send me an updated installation CD to fix that problem. That was over a month ago and I still have not received the disk.

    >>>

    Redhat support for almost everything really sucks. I was going to certify for RedHat, and you won’t believe how unbelievably hard that seems. Its like you literally have to beg them to take your money. I left them over three messages the last 2 weeks, and have I gotten a response back? No, not at all. Very shoddy indeed. I am begining to wonder how they stay in business at all.
25. 2003-07-01 11:35 am

    Anonymous

    For the informative article. This reinforces my decision to not even think about bothering with a ‘not ready for prime time’ OS.
26. 2003-07-01 12:02 pm

    Anonymous

    Thanks for going to the trouble of writing this up!

    Back in September (going on a year now almost), I bought a Wal-Mart Microtel with Lindows on it. i got a somewhat higher end one with an Athlon processor. I’ve also done some other things like replace the CD ROM with a CD-WR drive and added a Radeon 7500 card. It’s my test machine. Everything gets tried on it first. Cureently RH 9 is on it. For a low price PC, it has taken a lot of abuse, with me running everything I can on it.
27. 2003-07-01 12:17 pm

    Anonymous

    I don’t beleive that first time computer buyers are necessarialy the folks who are buying these “bargain” linux boxes. Its more likley a person who uses a PC primarily for internet and email access and who bristle at spending several hundred bucks for something that will be obsolete in three years. They buy with the expectation that they will purchasing a new machine every couple of years.
28. 2003-07-01 12:20 pm

    Anonymous

    The preconceived notion of, “Consumer Reports wronged Linux, I’m going to show them” that starts this review shows it for what it is, a biased review with skewed results to fit the author’s ideas of how Linux *should* fair, not how it *actually* fairs in real world useage.

    Consumer Reports is an unbiased reviewing company. They work very hard to maintain that neutrality. Their review was honest and useful.
29. 2003-07-01 12:36 pm

    Anonymous

    No, no it was not. I did not renew my subscription due to that article alone. My wife saw it, and she went through the roof about it’s bias level. I just hope that enough people complained about it that they will not allow such bias garbage to be posted in their magazine again.
30. 2003-07-01 12:54 pm

    Anonymous

    “only a retailer the size of walmart can have their idea of not selling pcs with windows pre-installed.”

    pre-installed…. that’s before windows is installed, right?
31. 2003-07-01 1:04 pm

    Anonymous

    everything in consumer reports should be taken with a grain of salt. consumer reports used to be a socialist/workers daily (true stuff). they may not be influenced by advertisers but they have an agenda and if you look carefully you’ll find lots of inconsistencies. I for one doubt that the former workers newspaper is very thrilled with the idea of free labor, which is what linux is.
32. 2003-07-01 1:27 pm

    Anonymous

    I don’t understand the comparsion, would be funny to see Windows tested like this:

    WindowsXP (my own experience, shortly after XP was available)

    Installation

    Did not work out of the box, I use an Adaptec SCSI controller and there is not a single IDE drive in my machine. Tried two times, had to press F6 and select my controller, but it was not on the list, so I had to download a driver disc by Adaptec. After that, Installation was butt ugly (like ncurses), unintuitive and time consumeing. SuSE detected my controller out of the box, has a nice GUI, and after you set up your options, you can go for a cup of coffee – Linux is set up when you’re back…

    Word processing

    Windows has Wordpad, the eunuch of word processors… SuSE Linux comes with OpenOffice, which is fine for me.

    Play DVD

    No, Windows didn’t play DVDs out of the box, had to buy and install WinDVD. But you can only change your region code five times, so it’s not region free – Linux also didn’t play DVDs, you have to install additional (free) software, but the player is region free.

    Rip and encode MP3

    No Windows only allows ripping unprotected CDs to WMA, you have to pay for MP3 encoding using Media Player. Ripping and encoding to OGG works out of the box using SuSE, for MP3 you need Lame (free), it’s possible to rip using Konqueror (audiocd://), rips most copy protected CDs I tried using Paranoia.

    Burn CDs

    Didn’t work on Windows out of the box, had to get software like Nero, but most apps didn’t like my DVD recorder (Pioneer DVR A05 connect to an Acard IDE>SCSI bridge). Worked out of the box on SuSE using K3B.

    Printer

    Didn’t work full featured out of the box in Windows, it’s a HP 710C, and there was no XP driver by HP that time. Worked fine using SuSE.

    Scanner

    Didn’t work in Windows (Agfa Snapscan Touch), and there was no working XP driver for XP back than. Was hard to set up on Linux, but it works.

    This are only some points, maybe I will write an ‘is windows ready for the desktop?’ feature soon, from the perspective of a long time Linux user… 😉
33. 2003-07-01 1:29 pm

    Anonymous

    “I agree with Consumer Reports they are great, well expect when they don’t like stuff I like.” Come on
34. 2003-07-01 2:02 pm

    Anonymous

    By Anonymous (IP: —.uwn.unsw.EDU.AU) – Posted on 2003-07-01 08:59:36

    -If it fails the install on the machines, then you shouldn’t count it as majorly in your review as you did. (for RH)

    -If you’re judging the merits of the distribution, you should at least INSTALL it. (for RH again)

    -It’s also misleading in your conclusion to say emacs-No and for RH, MP3-No, and not give any clear indication to say that these could be freely downloaded. Not that I’m an emacs person, mind (for RH and the other distributions)

    Not to put too fine a point on it, but he included Red Hat *because* it wouldn’t install on this particular machine. Apparently Red Hat 9 doesn’t like VIA chips (or maybe some of the motherboards that can use VIA chips.) I’ve got a C3 system that is really really buggy. The chip runs cold as ice, but even windows on the thing is odd.

    I didn’t particularly care for the article on the whole, but if he *hadn’t* included Red Hat then you (and probably 300 others) would have said “Hey! Where’s the 800 lb gorilla, Red Hat in this article?”

    You just want something to complain about. But that’s only my two cents.
35. 2003-07-01 2:03 pm

    Anonymous

    I totally disagree his Red Hat installation. I found nothing wrong with its installation. In fact, after several distros, I decided to stay with RH9.
36. 2003-07-01 2:07 pm

    Anonymous

    “The other day, I tried knoppix linux installed on a hard drive and OpenOffice took 90 seconds to load (w DMA on) on an AMD K6-2 500”

    This is SUCH a lie. I have the same setup and it takes less than 10 seconds.

    And NO, Office XP does not start up in 9 seconds on a P133 with 48MB RAM. Give me a break!

    Trollie.
37. 2003-07-01 2:12 pm

    Anonymous

    …..My brother wishes installing software were this easy in Windows

    Rayiner or whoever,

    Why is nobody basing their Distros on Gentoo?

    Aren’t the Gentoo Folks interrested in creatindg a distro which could be as easily installed as Libranet(Debian) or Mandrake(RH)?

    As far as i can see it would solve some dependancy problems. Just a question, that’s it.
38. 2003-07-01 2:23 pm

    Anonymous

    We don’t need static compilations, we need a standard installer that would know how to compile your program on your distro. I made a little diagram of the idea at http://itorrey.com/linuxInstall.png
39. 2003-07-01 2:45 pm

    Anonymous

    Hey, I like the idea a couple of mails higher!!

    Try to install Windows XP on that $199 WalMart PC as well!! Why not? You get a cheap box, so no preinstalled/preconfigured stuff just like with the Linux setups.

    Then do all the same tests as you did with the FREE linux installations!!

    Play Ogg/MP3

    Play DVD

    Play Internet Radio

    Burn CD-R

    Do Wordprocessing

    Then sum up all the things you CANNOT do with WinXP out of the box (without downloading oodles of freeware) but that you can do with a Linux distro

    Please update your review with the result 🙂
40. 2003-07-01 2:46 pm

    Anonymous

    …if your not used to them.

    ATTENTION ALL WINDOWS TROLLS!!!! If you’ve never installed something on Windows, it is just as difficult to install sw. Let me explain it this way:

    Let me explain it this way:

    Option 1:

    -Download *.exe from a website (or, find setup.exe on a CD…).

    -Open File Manager, and navigate to where you downloaded the executable to. Did you remeber where you put it? Double-click on it.

    -Read some introductory screen. Press Next.

    -Agree to some licence. Press Next.

    -Select install type. Basic, Complete, Advanced, Traditional, etc, etc, etc. Press Next.

    -Depending on who wrote the installer, you may need to select an install location. Press Next

    -Do you want a Desktop Icon? A Quick Launch icon? A new Program Group? What do you want that program group named? Do you not want to create a new program group? Okay, where do you want it? Press Next.

    -Press Next to actually begin the install.

    -A progress bar…

    -Press Finish to finish the install.

    Option 2:

    -open command-line interface

    -type ‘someinstaller somecoolapp’. Don’t forget to press enter.

    -someinstaller either asks for a CD, or goes out on the net and downloads the proper packages for you. Your app is now installed.

    Now, which one is easier? If I asked my grandmother, who has never used a computer, she would tell me the path with 3 steps is eaiser that the path with 8 steps. My point? It all depends on what you’re used to.

    Personally, I think the Windows method of installing software is much more ‘demanding’ on the user that the Linux method. But I’m not saying it perfect. It needs improvment. A really nice, cross-distro install method would be wonderful. A method of resolving package dependency problems in a human readable sence would be a god-send. But please don’t suggest that Linux should follow the Windows method of installs. Its a mess, too. Windows-trolls are just used to the idiot-wizards. If you gave Linux a fair chance ( and a fair chance does not mean ‘installing it, and crying about why you have to edit a config file, or find a package to install another package, etc, etc, etc), maybe you’d see that some aspects of Linux are superior to other OSs (note: I did not say that Linux is the end-all-be-all of OSs. Only that some of its methods and procedures are better) in those same areas.

    Also, has anyone given any thought to how wasteful the Windows-install method is? When you provide a setup.exe, you also provide every dll they might need, whether its part of the OS or not! 75% of setup.exe’s are filled with redunant garbage!

    Windows has its good points. Linux has its good points. When will all you trolls (windows and linux) figure out that your os is not perfect?
41. 2003-07-01 2:48 pm

    Anonymous

    “”The other day, I tried knoppix linux installed on a hard drive and OpenOffice took 90 seconds to load (w DMA on) on an AMD K6-2 500″

    This is SUCH a lie. I have the same setup and it takes less than 10 seconds.

    And NO, Office XP does not start up in 9 seconds on a P133 with 48MB RAM. Give me a break!”

    Fits with what I know – on Mandrake 8.2 (DMA enabled but ) on a 700MHz Celeron PIII OOo loads in 45 seconds after a boot (It will of course load faster if you have used it recently and there is a lot of the libraries still in cache). Admittedly I do have an older relatively slow drive.

    I don’t know about Office XP on old machine but Office 97 will certainly load in 9 seconds on a P133 with 48MB RAM.

    We just have to face the fact OOo is slow and boated. I use it for its power not its speed.
42. 2003-07-01 2:50 pm

    Anonymous

    Torry, you mean the package/ports collection of *BSD?
43. 2003-07-01 2:50 pm

    Anonymous

    “if you are not runing a sort of text mode server, you can basically forget using old / low end hardware for linux desktop. They are bloated and getting worse with each new release.”

    So how come I have my Father running Mandrake 9.1 and using KDE 3.1 on his ancient Celeron 400? He reckons it runs faster than his old Win98 install, but maybe he’s just senile??? I must get around to writing that story up: “How Linux passed the cranky old codger test” 🙂

    And people complaining about Mandrake RPM hell, take a waddle over to the PLF and PCLO.
44. 2003-07-01 2:51 pm

    Anonymous

    I had a similar problem w/ ardour. jackd and ardour have to be run as root. ardour is meant for serious audio pro’s ( basically, if your not an engineer that understands audio at

    the lowest levels, this package ain’t for you).they have no intrest in the avg. joe. try audacity for basic recording and

    editing.
45. 2003-07-01 2:52 pm

    Anonymous

    Ummm.. people don’t read these things (trust me!)

    So here is how it goes

    Insert CD

    Autorun pops up

    Next > Next > Next > Install

    Icon is on Desktop and in start menu.

    Ok that was easy. Or let’s say

    Download .exe to desktop (most every user knows how to save something to the desktop)

    Go to desktop.

    Double click the .exe

    Next > Next > Next > Install

    Icon is on desktop and in start menu.

    Now let’s talk about REMOVING programs

    Control Panel

    Add/Remove Programs

    Select program you don’t want

    Click “Remove”.

    Now tell me how this is just as hard in Linux?

    Windows doesn’t make you resolve tons of dependancies, learn weird unintuitive file systems, compile sources, figure out commands (like you can’t double click on most linux install files.. you have to ./something )

    Man what a bad troll that was.
46. 2003-07-01 2:54 pm

    Anonymous

    I meant Torrey, and besides what I said, I tend to agree with you.

    However, compiling KDE or X11 takes very long… maybe binaries should be provided for them.
47. 2003-07-01 2:54 pm

    Anonymous

    Daan, i’m not familiar with that. I will have a look into it. I just wonder why these developers can’t do something like this. It doesn’t look too tough.
48. 2003-07-01 2:57 pm

    Anonymous

    Yeah that’s a good point. Large apps would take forever to compile… hmm… You wouldn’t need to compile KDE though as this program would come with each distro and be customized for that distro…. but I do see your point.
49. 2003-07-01 2:59 pm

    Anonymous

    One time Eugenia wrote up a request (or perhaps it was just a suggestion) that the Gentoo people build a distro that was easier to install.
50. 2003-07-01 3:00 pm

    Anonymous

    I also use Gentoo and could go on and on about how its the be all end all distro (IMHO) for experienced linux users with broadband. With regards to making Gentoo more user friendly, consumer grade, or building a new distro based on Gentoo to do so…..I just dont see it happening. The primary reason being that it is source based. Dont get me wrong here, being source based is one of the things I love about Gentoo. Plus it allows me to compile 100% of my software specifically to my hardware etc. We cant, however, expect JonQ PC user to sit and compile all his software from scratch. The Stage1 install (highest performance and most custom)takes the better part of an entire day if you have access to your machine all day and have high perf hardware. In order to support “mom” a Gentoo based distro would have to switch to/add pre-compiled binary support…..which would basically make it similar to apt-get. Then they’d need a fancy installer and take all the technical customizing out or hide it away. By the time you get down to it, you really wouldnt have Gentoo anymore and would have been better off just installing <yourrpmbaseddistro> + apt-get + synaptic. I would like to see the Gentoo install process go GUI though
51. 2003-07-01 3:04 pm

    Anonymous

    There probably won’t ever be a big distribution based on Gentoo. There may be forks, but it will never be a distro. Gentoo’s benefits come in building from source. So let’s see:

    x) building from source is never a good idea when you’re in a corporate network environment. when a machine dies, it takes about 30 minutes to rebuild an RH install using Kickstart. I can install Mandrake by hand in under 30 minutes. Lindows and ArkLinux take about 10 minutes. Gentoo takes about a day, sometimes more.

    x) Gentoo is not newbie-friendly. hmmm…better phrasing: it’s not aimed at newbies. New distros these days need to focus on target audience. Who is the target for a Gentoo spin-off? Gentoo users? What’s the motivation to switch?

    x) Lastly, Gentoo is not really a “distro.” It’s not really available in binary form, and as a result, you have to build it yourself. What changes would someone make to just the source? The only real thing to steal would be portage, which is probably easily done without calling your distro “based on Gentoo.”

    Anyone have any thoughts on that?
52. 2003-07-01 3:06 pm

    Anonymous

    In essence, the BSD ports collection is what you mean. What that does is this:

    – From all apps, in /usr/ports you find a directory containing a few small “universal” install files.

    – Of these, the Makefile includes the “universal” installer

    – This installer downloads the source from the official website, installs dependencies, compiles the source and registers all installed files.

    So the only thing missing is registration in the menu.

    Now, installation is as easy as this:

    % cd /usr/ports/category/package

    % make && make install

    (…compiling…)

    Give root password to install:

    (…installing…)

    %

    Or:

    % su

    Give root password:

    # pkg_add -r package

    (…installing binary package…)

    #

    When a nice GUI would be wrapped around this, and the system would be ported to Linux, it would be great. Also, you should be able to download the Makefile from the website of the application, double-click it in Konqueror and installation should start.

    Of course, a background daemon should compile everything so it won’t go wrong when you logout waiting for it to compile.
53. 2003-07-01 3:11 pm

    Anonymous

    If it only was that easy…

    Click on setup(or whatever).exe, next>next>next>install, start the program.

    Oh, there was a lot of bloat installed (docs, examples, whatever), filling up my harddisk, but where is feature XY – sorry, you should have clicked next>next>advanced and select the packages.

    To remove a program, you click Start>Control Center>Add or remove programs – to find your program is not registered there… so you close those windows, click Start>Programs>Whatever company>Whatever product>Uninstall, and maybe there’s an option to change your installation, or you have to uninstall and reinstall the app.

    Or the setup tells you that you have to install SPx first, or IEy, or DirectXz, or whatever first.

    Software installation may not be harder on Windows, but it also is (that much) not easier… 😉

    BTW, you have to do ./something if a program is not in $PATH, it’s pretty obvious and not hard at all if you’re used to it…
54. 2003-07-01 3:20 pm

    Anonymous

    You just summed Gentoo up right there….Gentoo is ports based. Except Gentoo is much easier and better than BSD IMO.

    Lets use mplayer for an example.

    bash-2.05b#emerge mplayer

    Enjoy… thats it with all dependencies auto satisfied

    or if you want GUI:

    Open Kportage -> sync the tree -> goto media-vidio -> right click on mplayer and select merge…..whalaa
55. 2003-07-01 3:24 pm

    Anonymous

    > I had a similar problem w/ ardour. jackd and ardour have to > be run as root.

    No, it is not necessary, but if you actually want to use ardour, you *must* have a running jackd, otherwise it will kill your X session (no, it does not crash, it kill’s it, *big* difference).

    If you want realtime scheduling support, then you either need to run as root, or use the multi-media kernel (which has the capabilities patch, allowing jackit-realtime to run with SCHED_FIFO).

    > ardour is meant for serious audio pro’s (

    > basically, if your not an engineer that understands audio at

    > the lowest levels, this package ain’t for you).they have no

    > intrest in the avg. joe. try audacity for basic recording

    > and editing.

    I wouldn’t totally agree, but Mandrake 9.1 (with ardour and jackit-realtime from contrib on the multimedia kernel) is definitely the least painful way to get ardour going …
56. 2003-07-01 3:31 pm

    Anonymous

    So what is needed is for the big guys (RedHat, Mandrake, Suse) to start pushing this ports tech by standardizing everything and then wrapping it in a nice GUI.

    So the question is, how do we help in pushing this idea?

    If the desktop is to really be conquored by Linux (as some distros want it to be) this is something that must happen IMO.

    I bet that once you have a universal linux installer that developers from mainstream corporations such as Macromedia and Adobe will start taking a serious look at porting their apps to linux.

    Right now it’s too much work to port things to linux because you can’t support every distro. Each distro has a different folder setup, a different set of installed libs and so on.

    I just don’t get why they keep going using RPM and APT when there are better ways to do it. I think that the main distros look pretty enough now… so they should IMO turn to more important issues such as a universal package installer.
57. 2003-07-01 3:38 pm

    Anonymous

    I think that when someone who has at least some knowledge of GNU/Linux systems and who makes a point about whether or not emacs is included in a distro….SHOULD LOOK BETTER.

    I know that emacs is included in SuSE8.2 personal, professional and ftp-version. I can not imagine that RH or Mandrake has the “nerves” to not include EMACS.

    I’ll keep it at this remark….but someone who wants to do a review and can not remember what happened at boot up…
58. 2003-07-01 3:40 pm

    Anonymous

    riiiiiiiiiight..

    http://dbforums.com/arch/29/2002/9/398411

    Example 1 of 1,000,001.
59. 2003-07-01 3:47 pm

    Anonymous

    > I have moved over to Gentoo, because I was tired of the

    > software install/uninstall hell of Mandrake 8.0. I was

    > stunned to see that this problem has not improved an inch

    > with Mandrake.

    Alternatively, we may take the opinion that you haven’t learnt anything since you last ran Mandrake.

    > First I used a long time to find sources to add to

    > Mandrake’s grpmi interface.

    Well, that of course depends on how you get it … if you buy a package (ProSuite/Powerpack or a workstation DVD) you will have everything you need. If you downloaded, maybe you should consider visiting http://plf.zarb.org/~nanardon, or installing and using urpmi.setup.

    > When I finally managed to install a sunet ftp source,

    > which took me some hours, I tried to find a package for

    > Ardour and Rosegarden. I found them, but they had outdated

    > versions available. I installed them both.

    Yes, this is natural for a binary release distro. However, all the applications that can use jack that are included in the distro will work with that version of jack.

    > Ardour ended up crashing X,

    Yes, you actually have to launch a jackd first, otherwise it will kill X (not crash X, big difference).

    > and Rosegarden just crashed immediately with a KDE error

    > window.

    Works for me.

    > Since I know Linux, I thought the problem was that

    > there were some dependancies that I weren’t alerted about.

    Somehow, I think in your *infinite* linux knowledge, you probably did something wrong. If you installed with urpmi/rpmdrake, all dependencies would have been pulled in, or the software would not have been installed.

    > I downloaded the new version of Ardour from their website, > and started trying to compile it from source. There were > > alot of packages missing.

    No kidding. Binary distros seperate the development packages from the library packages, so people who don’t need the development packages don’t waste the space.

    > I managed to install a few of them, and then I came to the

    > missing Jack library. There were no new version in the

    > software install database.

    Why did you think there should be a new version?

    > I finally managed to add cooker resources to my grpmi

    > software installation panel.

    Why??? Cooker is the development release, and will be incompatible, which would …

    > They were bigger, and there I

    > did find a very new version of Jack. But to install it I

    > needed to reinstall 450MB of new software, just for this

    > one lib to work!!!

    … pull in a whole bunch of other packages since cooker runs newer versions of all the libraries, and some things have been changed in cooker. This is why you shouldn’t install cooker packages on a stable release. Did you even read the cooker page on Mandrake’s site???

    > I did that and I still do not know if

    > Ardour will work. Sad to say, my brother is a bit shocked. > hehe

    > I use Gentoo, and it builds all my software from sources.

    > I have NO problems what so ever.

    And everytime you want support for some other library, you need to rebuild everything.

    > No dependancies.

    Missing features, unless you know all the flags you will want in the future when you start.

    > No nothing.

    Maybe the Gentoo users are those who can’t actually read, since urpmi is actually trivial to use, if you stick to the rules (just like apt in fact).

    > But in return, all software installation

    > happens through a terminal window, and there are less to

    > no tools for configuring hardware and such.

    > I would give Mandrake, Redhard and the other RPM distros 1

    > out of 10.

    That’s because you don’t bother to read anything at all about the system, or how to use it. Worse things would probably happen if I used Gentoo without reading the docs …

    > Sure they look nice, but they have chosen a package system

    > that DOES NOT WORK! And now after years, it still does

    > not work. They should get a clue soon.

    Tell me then how my cooker box gets ~ 50MB of updates a day? Using a two-line cron job with urpmi and friends.

    > It would take much longed than installing from an RPM, but

    > it would at least work. Then with a few tools like

    > Mandrake has for configering my hardware, it would soon be

    > 9/10. Why the jump?

    There are tools to automatically rebuild software under Mandrake, but you seem to have a misconception about the packages. Everything works. If it doesn’t, file a bug report.

    > When a software installation does not work, when software

    > fails to install or even fails to be removed – blocking

    > updates to the system, the distribution has a serious

    > problem that can not be overlooked.

    Or the user is clueless. You actually have to try very hard to break something in Mandrake’s package management, it seems like you did.

    > I will not rate a distro by which apps it has available

    > from the start. It does not work that way. An operating

    > system should operate, and if the software which makes the

    > whole OS usable does not operate, then I throw the distro

    > in the trash.

    Well, then proceed to http://qa.mandrakesoft.com and file a bug report on the package. Otherwise you are just trolling or clueless or illiterate.
60. 2003-07-01 3:50 pm

    Anonymous

    Does anyone know how to get any Linux distro (FreeBSD included) to boot on a Super 7 motherboard w/Aladdin V chipset? No matter what I do I cannot get it to boot. I get DriveSeekError when it probes the chipset. All distros fails (Mandrake,Gentoo,RedHat,SuSe) including FreeBSD 4.8, 5.0 and 5.1. I get either a lockup or a kernel panic (with keyboard LEDs flashing).

    The only OSes I can install are any of the Windows OSes (from 95 to XP) They work flawlessly!

    Here’s my hardware setup:

    * BCM VP1543 Motherboard Aladdin V chipset Socket 7.

    * AMD K6-2 350

    * 128MB PC133 RAM

    * Seagate 4.3GB Medalist drive ATA33

    * ATI Rage 3D AGP Video

    * Vortex 1 sound card.

    Windows XP runs absolutely rock solid. I haven’t rebooted it in months. I use it as a guest PC and a simple file server.

    Any help will be appriciated.
61. 2003-07-01 3:57 pm

    Anonymous

    Oh give me a break! The guy is working on a SQL database problem! It’s not like he is saying “I’m trying to install a new word processor but it says I need xxx.lib and xxy.lib and….”.

    This example is an exception to the norm.

    Everytime i’ve tried to install something on windows it has worked. Only about 50% of the time when I try to install something on Linux does it work on the first shot.
62. 2003-07-01 3:58 pm

    Anonymous

    If you list Emacs under the geek stuff you should have noted that Emacs is installable in MDK via the Mandrake Control Center, same with SuSE/Yast2 … kinda silly to list it under geek as not available, test it with a default install and don’t doublecheck if it’s on disc- no geek (or Linux user for five years) would do.

    Anyway, it was a bit of work to make this review, thanx for that… but you better should have a deeper look into the troubles before you publish something.

    This piece of text definitely isn’t free of bugs and OSnews should have noticed that…(am I wrong?).

    STIBS
63. 2003-07-01 4:13 pm

    Anonymous

    It’s funny, he was supposed to be defending the WalMart pcs, not the Linux distributions. I read the article as: “I can get Linux to install on it, it’s the distribution’s fault for not having stuff working”. There is no mention on the performance of the machines or the peripherals.
64. 2003-07-01 4:17 pm

    Anonymous

    No, you give me a break! I am having the exact same problem, and all I did was install PowerCenter after SQL 2000.

    Install Notes before office and you can’t mail to notes.

    You are right, it doesn’t say you need xlib and ylib it just assumes and breaks them both.

    Give it up, I have an entire knowledge base to prove you wrong with.
65. 2003-07-01 4:24 pm

    Anonymous

    Very good points made in the review and in the comments. For instance, if the OS is pre-installed on custom selected hardware, there’s ~no~ ~excuse~ for the problems reported.

    I was hoping to read more about the hardware though. my hypothesis is that for $200, these computers would make decent backup machines with Win ’95 or ’98.

    Best Wishes,

    Bob
66. 2003-07-01 4:28 pm

    Anonymous

    It’s “Red Hat”, not “RedHat”.
67. 2003-07-01 4:32 pm

    Anonymous

    uh huh. I’m sure you can find instances where you are correct in that there are dependancy problems. But you can’t claim that Windows makes you jump through hoops just like linux does. It doesn’t. I have installed thousands of programs and have rarely had a problem. In linux I have installed over a hundred programs and have problems about 50% of the time. I’m confident that most people here have not had the dependancy problems in Windows that you had.
68. 2003-07-01 4:33 pm

    Anonymous

    > By Walter Phillips (IP: —.companygw.com) – Posted on >2003-07-01 15:50:26

    >Does anyone know how to get any Linux distro (FreeBSD >included) to boot on a Super 7 motherboard w/Aladdin V >chipset? No matter what I do I cannot get it to boot. I >get DriveSeekError when it probes the chipset.

    I once had a p5a-b with Aladdin V and it worked great with linux and also tried freebsd. Think i also got DriveSeekError. Try to disable udma if its not already disabled.

    Here’s my hardware setup:

    * BCM VP1543 Motherboard Aladdin V chipset Socket 7.

    * AMD K6-2 350

    Is that a real 350? not overclocked?

    I have heard that linux is more dependant on stable hardware.Also look in bios if you have cas2 turned on change that to some more moderate setting like cas3

    or you could try “load setup default” or safe option if there is something like that. hmm and there was something about AGP on that chipset. also set AGP to the slowest 1x or something.
69. 2003-07-01 4:59 pm

    Anonymous

    “But you can’t claim that Windows makes you jump through hoops just like linux does.”

    Uhh yes I can. You may have had good luck on your PC, try installing apps in an environment larger than your PC. I have been in the IT industry for 10 years, I have worked with Windows the majority of my career and I can give you dependency hell stories that will make your skin crawl. I’ve been using Linux desktops and servers for 5 years along side Windows systems and I can count the applications that have had dependency problems on one hand. If you don’t choose to use a installation tool that works your dependencies for you then your problems are all on you.

    “I’m confident that most people here have not had the dependancy problems in Windows that you had.”

    HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
70. 2003-07-01 5:21 pm

    Anonymous

    “I’m confident that most people here have not had the dependancy problems in Windows that you had.”

    HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

    Working as a lab assistant I had people coming to me every day because of the insane dependency problems with Windows 98. We’re working with XP now, and everyday I see people encounter DLL hell while trying to install their own programs. Dependency problems are quite common in the land of MS Windows.
71. 2003-07-01 5:22 pm

    Anonymous

    Whatever.

    Once again. Most people do not do the stuff you do and don’t run into these same problems. This is like a race car driver telling me “Tires don’t last even 5,000 miles”.

    If you want to put this to the test.. go to download.com and pick 20 random programs to download and install. Then go to say freshmeat and download 20 random programs and tell me where you run into dependancy problems ok?
72. 2003-07-01 5:26 pm

    Anonymous

    Riight, ‘cuz you got nuttin.

    “Most people do not do the stuff you do”

    Right, I’m the only guy in the IT industry.

    Go tell that to a PC tech, be prepared to duck!

    “If you want to put this to the test..”

    Why when I can just deal with the problems with the apps I have? Again, I’m glad that your home PC works well for you and that you haven’t run into any problems *YET* but you will.

    Trust me.
73. 2003-07-01 5:30 pm

    Anonymous

    “Most people {text omitted} don’t run into these same problems.”

    Go tell that to a PC tech, be prepared to duck!
74. 2003-07-01 5:33 pm

    Anonymous

    Well, in Linux it is not about downloading 20 programs from freshmeat.net, instead it is picking 20 and installing them via your distribution. And then count how may will fail. None, I suppose. Distributions do not offer a uniform way, but they do offer some way of dependency handling.

    With Debian, you can even download a .DEB by hand, add it to the cache after which Debian can also solve dependency problems with it.
75. 2003-07-01 6:00 pm

    Anonymous

    While some points you bring up are somewhat valid, for the most part I find your review to be bunk.

    Under the Lycoris review…

    “I fiddled around a bit, but never got it to do anything.”

    – When you “fiddled” – did the word “google” come into your vocab? I’ve googled numerous issues and voila! most of them time SOMEONE ELSE has had the same problem – and most of the time will post the fix.

    Under Suse…

    “I encountered the same problem with playing a DVD with Xine. When I brought it up there was a message on the screen that it may not be able to play all formats due to legal restrictions. This is a major bummer.”

    – Check out a library called libdvdcss – it addresses that issue for DVDs. This is NOT a linux problem; rather, the MPAA’s tyrannical governance. I got DVDs running under Mandrake 9.1 and Suse 8.2 with both ogle and xine. Again, thank you google.

    Linux will never be an operating system for your computer moron. The idea that it should work completely on its own and never need a fix is bunk. Millions of people drive cars – and yet when a tire blows, we know both what’s wrong – and how to fix it. When my car needs oil, I don’t need a little light to pop on. I know that every 3000 miles, it should be done.

    Same holds for computers. If the thing installs to the point where I can at least SEE what I need to fix; by gosh, I’ll fix the rest. With my limited knowledge of Linux (I’ve been going strong for only 2 years now), I have fixed most issues that I have with the OS – on multiple distributions. Have I EVER contacted a dist support? No – i never bought a distribution. I’ve been downloading them. So Mr. Google has been my friend.

    Sorry for the rant, but NO OS will EVER do ALL the THINKING for a user. And I never want that to happen. PEOPLE need to be a bit smarter to use any OS – or risk being controlled by the likes of corporations like Mr. Gates’ monopoly.
76. 2003-07-01 6:22 pm

    Anonymous

    Wahaha, hey mom how’s that sql server running.

    bwahaha.
77. 2003-07-01 6:35 pm

    Anonymous

    Wouldn’t it be nice to see a Gentoo based Distro for newbies? Something like Libranet or Xandros which are Debian based, i mean.

    Actually, Xandros <u>is</u> Debian-based. I enjoyed the reviews, but I wish the author had been able to include Xandros in the mix. It does everything right out of the box, and if you can read English, you can install it with no problems.
78. 2003-07-01 7:02 pm

    Anonymous

    Daan you are right on.. most distributions come with most things you will need and so you don’t really have dependancy problems. The problem though is that what happens when you later want to get new software and it didn’t come with your distribution?

    Let’s take for example kSmoothDock and ObjectDock. In Red Hat 9 I had to download kSmoothDock, resolve some dependancies, compile and install. In Windows XP I downloaded ObjectDock to the desktop, double clicked and it installed. 99% of things that most people will want to install on Windows is not going to have you running around trying to find DLL files.

    Yes, I am sure that there _are_ some problems with some programs in windows, but, if people truely want to believe that windows has just as many dependancy problems as Linux then there isn’t anything I can say because they are obviously going to believe it to be true no matter what.
79. 2003-07-01 7:13 pm

    Anonymous

    “Red Hat 9 I had to download kSmoothDock, resolve some dependancies, compile and install.”

    So, you downloaded it, did a ./configure –prefix=/usr, then you realized it needed kde-devel so you apt-get installed it and went about your business right? LOL I’m still looking for a functional resolution to my enterprise manager snap-in problem. (You’ll note that this is a desktop issue, not a server problem as enterprise manager is a CLIENT TOOL.)

    “99% of things that most people will want to install on Windows is not going to have you running around trying to find DLL files.”

    Riiight, you keep believing that, and I’ll letting DLL hell pay my bills.
80. 2003-07-01 7:28 pm

    Anonymous

    You dumb-ass Window Trollies can keep you idiot-wizard based installers…

    The command line works fine for me, and anyone else who would bother to spend 5 minutes learning it…
81. 2003-07-01 7:44 pm

    Anonymous

    How exactly is saying that installing programs in linux is harder than it should be and that things aren’t that hard in windows, being a troll?

    Fine, if you like command line.. good for you! What you don’t seem to realize is that there are enough developers out there who see the potential for Linux on the desktop and the way to getting it there is by making a universal installer that *gasp* has a GUI frontend to it.
82. 2003-07-01 7:46 pm

    Anonymous

    if all i am doing is using a computer for is email, surfing the big WWW, & a little word processing then a cheap 300 dollar Linux box from Walmart is plenty good enough for me!!!
83. 2003-07-01 7:46 pm

    Anonymous

    There might be some solution, though programmers would have to coorperate.

    Just like the FSH and the LSB, a set of standard names for much packages needs to be defined. Then each distribution should get a wrapper program (or shell script), which has a uniform interface towards the user, but internally calls distro-depent functions, and might translate package names.

    This program needs to be well thought out, especially the interface that needs to remain the same for years. And it should remain so, otherwise it is pointless having it 😉

    For clarity give it a special name, and on the homepage maintain a list of distributions on which it works fine(, and when time is ready, maintain a list of distros that come with a standard compliant version by themselves).

    Then, suppose a ./configure script finds out that QT is missing, it only needs to call the universal installer program to add it, after which it proceeds.

    And then use checkinstall instead of “make install” to correctly register the self-compiled program.

    Add a graphical client for this, et voila, custom software installation made easy.

    If someone would do this, great, unfortunately I am currently using NetBSD so I cannot create any utility guaranteeing it works on Linux…
84. 2003-07-01 7:52 pm

    Anonymous

    Two additional thoughts:

    – Yes, NetBSD and Linux are different, I know that from experience.

    – Gentoo is not the solution. Not everybody wants to switch to Gentoo. Choice is good, user-friendlyness too, it would be great if that could be combined.
85. 2003-07-01 7:54 pm

    Anonymous

    “Consumer Reports is an unbiased reviewing company.”

    This really isn’t true. Sometimes their methods seriously fall short of their good intentions, and they do sometimes end up with misleading conclusions. Basically, CR is prone to the same faults that any amateur scientific effort is prone to: subtle biases of authors, poor choice of methods and metrics, no peer review, small sample sizes, etc.
86. 2003-07-01 8:09 pm

    Anonymous

    This review should be required reading for anybody putting out a Linux distro.

    I like how it adressed both the needs and concerns of Joe User and the Alpha Geek. And I admire the no-excuses honesty in explaining just how hard it was to get the computer to do really basic things like rip/play and MP3, play a DVD and/or Burn a DVD.

    Bravo.
87. 2003-07-01 8:27 pm

    Anonymous

    >you haven’t learnt anything

    >since you last ran Mandrake.

    I’ve run Mandrake since v7, trying to rid myself from the RedHat RPM hell. Assuming is not a thurral way to start an argument. But on the other hand, if you consider learning the equal to programming the whole system, I will rest my case.

    > Well, that of course depends on how you get it … if you buy a

    >package (…) you will have

    >everything you need. If you downloaded, maybe you should consider

    >visiting http://plf.zarb.org/~nanardon, or (…)

    Ofcourse everything is relative. And I did end up at /~nanardon, where I got my urpmi resources from. But the fact remains – there was no 0.9beta of Ardour available. And since Ardour did not say “run as root and start jackd” on the front page, I didn’t wager it would matter until X was “killed”. Then I thought, hmm, perhaps I should try Rosegarden. Bang. Well, reading about this and that or not, it crashed, or got secretly killed behind my back. I don’t think you could assume in which situation I found myself either. As most people trying to make several things work at once, I didn’t care to linger for three days to setup Mandrake that day (Gentoo takes less of my time). When something seemingly doesn’t work after it is installed, or if it doesn’t give a source to install from, you move on to something else. Hence, Linux is not the number one OS in the market. Live with it. It is not my job to file a bug report every time a package doesn’t work.

    > Yes, this is natural for a binary release distro. However, all the

    >applications that can use jack that are included in the distro will work

    >with that version of jack.

    Well, what if you want the mature version, and not an old version. Should you just sit and grow a beard until some update comes along? Ardour for Mandrake 9.1? Ardour is for Linux, so I thought I could hunt it down in some fashion. I figured cooker would do, as a last resort… Cooker is there after all. You seem to twist the argument to your advantage here. I would have done it differently if I would strive for ardour myself. But my brother is not ready for Gentoo, but now it seems that Mandrake is even more complex in usage, so perhaps I should tell him to read?? Get out of here! The problem with Linux is that most apps are primarily released as source, tar gzipped. But sources scare people, but should that be an excuse to run old software?

    > Yes, you actually have to launch a jackd first, otherwise it will kill X

    >(not crash X, big difference).

    Not a big difference to me. I can lose all my data I am working on. Memory protection should be granted here, but I guess it doesn’t protect X from apps running in X. I call this a hazzard, and I do not bother with separating between crashing or killing. Killing is an insult on top of that. I would rather have a “run as root” popup than murder…

    > Works for me.

    How convenient for you.

    > Somehow, I think in (…) linux knowledge, you probably did

    >something wrong. If you installed with urpmi/rpmdrake, all

    >dependencies would have been pulled in, or (…)

    Hell yes I did something wrong. How come? Took me 5 minutes with an experience in linux to do something wrong. Wonder what grandma would have done. She’d probably stay at home. “I have no mind for that cryptic stuff”… Is this your secret way of pushing in an RTFM note under my door?

    >No kidding. Binary distros seperate the development packages from the >library packages, so (…) packages don’t waste the space.

    Eh? Are you kidding me? Why do “you need devel this and devel that” in the pop up when I install software in Mandrake. Must be doing something wrong. I better read the manual. No better idea. My brother has to read the manual. Or he could just download NTrack studio and get on working in a hefty pace in Windows ala 1998. Hope you are no Mandrake employee. Or perhaps it would make it easier to explain this whole situation. RTFM should be extinct for all mature operating systems, when it comes to installing basic sound mixing software.

    > Why did you think there should be a new version?

    Because it says there is a new version on http://ardour.sourceforge.net?

    > (…) Cooker is the development release, and will be incompatible,

    >which would …

    Cooker had Ardour 0.9, Stable had 0.6xxx, go figure -> and I don’t want to know.

    > … pull in a whole bunch of other packages since cooker runs newer

    >versions of all the libraries, and some things have been changed in

    >cooker. (…) Did you even read the cooker page on Mandrake’s site???

    RTFM again? Thought so. Must be a development version of Mandrake I am running or something. Forgot my red book. Perhaps I should do a mandrake course to use this distro. Or perhaps I should just install Gentoo on my brothers computer. Would use 2 days on installing, but 10 minutes on updating a package.

    > And everytime you want support for some other library, you need to

    >rebuild everything.

    Are you kidding me? I ran v1.2 of gentoo for almost half a year without needing to rebuild near to anything. I am now running Gentoo 1.4 in the second month. Why have you rebuilt everything in Gentoo?

    > Missing features, unless you know all the flags you will want in the

    >future when you start.

    I don’t know what you are saying here..

    > Maybe the Gentoo users are those who can’t actually read, since

    >urpmi is actually trivial to use, if you stick to the rules (just like apt in

    >fact).

    I’ve used urpmi for years, but it is still the old garbage it always was. You need to stick with the portofolio really. Reading? Where? Better have a popup after install that says “Do you want to read the readme file now (1500 pages)?”

    > That’s because you don’t bother to read anything at all about the

    >system, or how to use it. Worse things would probably happen if I

    >used Gentoo without reading the docs …

    Gentoo doesn’t use a GUI. Which is supposed to be intuitive. Therefore I would expect Mandrake to be intuitive, since it has near to banned the konsole. After your comments here, I think you say only one thing. Mandrake is not intuitive. Better stay with MacOS or Windows.

    Gentoo is ment for people who know a little. Mandrake is ment for newbies, as it were. But in this case, it must be the other way around, provided with a totally new definition of what a newbie is.

    > Tell me then how my cooker box gets ~ 50MB of updates a day? Using

    >a two-line cron job with urpmi and friends.

    Why should I? Are we assuming again?

    > There are tools to automatically rebuild software under Mandrake, but

    >you seem to have a misconception about the packages. Everything

    >works. If it doesn’t, file a bug report.

    And RTFM? I am installing Ardour, or Rosegarden. I’m not going the Mandrake mailinglists! Perhaps I should look for an Ardour distro.

    > Or the user is clueless. You actually have to try very hard to break

    >something in Mandrake’s package management, it seems like you did.

    Sure. Assume all you want, but I don’t think you would need to have an education in IT science to find out that Mandrake’s packaging system of choice is a pain in the ass. And “try(ing) very hard” is to put it too far on an edge in this case.

    > Well, then proceed to http://qa.mandrakesoft.com and file a bug report

    >on the package. Otherwise you are just trolling or clueless or illiterate.

    You still assume too much. What about this: let the ship sink and let people stick with something that works? I have no “faith” in the mandrake people, nor an urge to get in their pants over a system I don’t believe in at all – I don’t know them that well, but I know that RPM is no good (forget the “it could work” jargon). Let the RPM distros sink or be corrected. May the force be with them. Linux is not for Joe Musician yet.
88. 2003-07-01 8:51 pm

    Anonymous

    Ah, SQL …

    As I understand it, that’s the incredibly powerful database program that some of the Access databases I update for a UNIVERSITY LIBRARY will be migrating to. SQL’s wicked keen, and I’ve been told it means that the 100k+ people who hit our site every few days can do some really nice customizable searches of our specialized collection databases.

    Right now our SQL database lives on a server with a RAID 5+1 drive configuration down in the sytems area. I’ve seen it. It’s big and black and noisy and has 6 drives in it. The IT people call that particular server “Gandalf”.

    Y’know whut, that doesn’t exactly strike me as a program the casual user’s about to try and install. Goodness knows, it’s not what the systems staff installed on my workstation computer — I have Access.

    Thank you for playing, please give an example of a widely used non-enterprise class Windows app that causes the same sort of hairpulling and screaming.

    (Not that it’s a good thing that IT folk have to deal with broken DLLs, but SQL is not exactly a common program in home and office.)

    —

    Easiest install ever: Fugu on OS X.

    Double click the download link, the program auto unnstuffs, automounts a disk image on the desktop and opens a window with the Fugu icon in it. From there, all I had to do was drag the icon to where I wanted the program installed.

    http://rsug.itd.umich.edu/software/fugu/

    And this is on a *nix based OS!

    Red Hat et al need to pull their heads out of the sand and make installing every program this freaking easy and straighforward.

    Two freaking steps: Download and drag.
89. 2003-07-01 9:02 pm

    Anonymous

    How exactly is saying that installing programs in linux is harder than it should be and that things aren’t that hard in windows, being a troll?

    That’s the thing!!! If you’re not used to installing things the Windows way, its just as hard! You might ask things like “Damnit! Why am I downloading all this stuff that I don’t need! Just give me the files for this software, and not the redunant DLLs!” or, my favorite “When I say REMOVE, I mean REMOVE!”.

    I understand that some people don’t like having to learn cryptic commands like “urpmi pygtk”… Lord knows that’s hard to break down. But please, please do not suggest that Linux installs should be performed just like Windows installs. There is much room for improvment, but that’s not a path that needs to be taken.
90. 2003-07-01 9:02 pm

    Anonymous

    “Let the ship sink”…I like that.

    And that’s exactly what’s gonna happen if the Linux development community doesn’t start making it a little bit easier for us hapless, stupid, uneducated, non-reading, uncool, computer-illiterate users that comprise 98 percent of the computer-using population of the world to install and use the operating system and software. The alternative is that we’ll keep using OSX or Windows, and your boat can sink like a rock.

    See KadyMae’s post on Fugu for what an install should be like. ‘Nuff said.
91. 2003-07-01 9:51 pm

    Anonymous

    “Thank you for playing, please give an example of a widely used non-enterprise class Windows app that causes the same sort of hairpulling and screaming.”

    Easy enough, 10 seconds of hunting and I find this gem.

    Thank *YOU* for playing.

    Q: When I try to launch AIM, I get the following error message: “Startup.ocm failed due to error 31.”

    A: This is due to an outdated version of the file COMCTL32.DLL in your c:windowssystem directory. To correct the problem, take the following steps:

    1.) Go to the following web page

    2.) Download the highest version number available of the “Common Control Library Patch” file. Make sure to get the one that says “x86” next to it.

    3.) Launch the downloaded file and follow the directions. This will probably include restarting Windows. AIM should now work.
92. 2003-07-01 9:55 pm

    Anonymous

    Why in the world is it ok that an application has a problem if it’s not one the common user would have to deal with? Who cares! It’s a WINDOWS APP, and it PROVES MY POINT! LOL

    Geez
93. 2003-07-01 11:02 pm

    Anonymous

    Okay, thanks for providing examples of windows apps installs that have gone kerflooey.

    A simple, widely used program like AIM should install and run w/out a hitch.

    As for the SQL thing, the point I didn’t articulate clearly enough is that I was seeing post after post of “I can’t get my MP3/DVD/Burner/Digital Camera to work in Linux”. (This is meat and potatoes software.) “I have a 50% success rate with Linux download/installs.” And to counter that was “Hi, we can’t get this one piece of enterprise class software to run.” It’s not like you were saying “50% of the time our Word installs work.” That kind of software is incredibly fussy and complicated.

    (And yes, you’ve every right to be incredibly freaking mad about SQL creating DLL hell. If you pay as much as a mercedes for a program it damn well better work and blend you daquris on top of all that.)

    OTOH, I’ve had but one DLL problem in W98 (easily fixed with a quick download) so perhaps my experience is very atypical.

    —

    In the meantime, the server used to allow patrons to register laptops is down for the count. It runs a popular Linux distro praised several times in this thread. One of the Systems people downloaded and installed an update about a week ago and …

    … being the inquisitive Alpha Geeks they are, they’re trying find out which bit of code is responsible so they can rewrite it instead of the much more expedient approach of wiping the damn drive and restoring from a back up.

    We’ve had to tell about 20 people that no, they cannot register their laptops with us and we have no idea when they can come in and register because systems has no idea how long it’s going to take them.
94. 2003-07-01 11:09 pm

    Anonymous

    😉
95. 2003-07-01 11:21 pm

    Anonymous

    The reason there are a lot of dependancies you have to resolve (often times) is because the developers don’t see the need in having you install the same library 10 times for 10 different programs.

    Most Windows programs come with all their dependancies, but they are much bigger.

    Compare Photoshop to the GIMP. Photoshop takes up hundreds of Megabytes, while the GIMP takes up maybe 40MB by itself. They are both comparable programs. Its because things like GTK don’t come with it. I dont have a huge harddrive or broadband, so I appreciate not having to download/install redundant libraries.

    That, and because of the openness of Free Software, programmers learn to work together. Why program your own toolkit when others already exist.
96. 2003-07-01 11:21 pm

    Anonymous

    Um…the error this person had with RH wasn’t fatal.

    He wasn’t installing Windows or some other operating system on the hard disk, and the error he recieved was that RH couldn’t make sense of the partition table, and wanted to take over the entire disk itself. If he would have proceeded, then perhaps we would have had a bit more of a look of how RH would have performed on that hardware.

    But this guy just stopped here. Which is ridiculous.

    I know it’s “something to complain about”, but that’s that comments are for. In this case, the results were misleading. That’s something to comment about.
97. 2003-07-02 12:02 am

    Anonymous

    Adam,

    thanks for answering my questions and correct my statement where needed w/out offending.
98. 2003-07-02 12:16 am

    Anonymous

    What was the true purpose of this review? to compare the various linux distros or the $199.00 PCs?

    Hell, if all you are doing is listening to MP3s/Oggs, using open office.org, sending email, and surfing the web, these PCs are probably all you need — with a distro that works right out of the box.

    If you think about (really think about it) that is what most people use a computer for (not running SQL databases) — and knowing that Wal-Mart’s goal is to lower the cost of living these PCs make sense.
99. 2003-07-02 3:16 am

    Anonymous

    I feel a bit sad after reading this article. Is the situation really that bad. If so, there is no way Linux will make it to the consumer desktop until major improvements have occurred.

    My guess is it will take at least five years unit Linux reach the maturity needed for this group of users.

    I still think that Linux is a good idea in a corporate setting where you have a trained sysadmin, and you can save a lot by using thin client solutions, and set the systems up to fit the business processes like hand in glove. In this setting Linux is ready for use right now. However, this is things that the average joe neither have need for or the knowledge to set up on his PC at home.

    To be useful to this group of users the boxes needs to be set up ready to go, drag & drop must work regardless of toolkit, codecs for comman multimedia formats must be installed.

    Changeing colors and appearences of GUI elements must also work seamlessly across toolkit borders. This group of users have very little interest if they are running Gnome, KDE or something else. It is also necessary to be able to read and write in commonly used document formats. So far OpenOffice does a good job for MS-Office documents. But what about Adobe photoshop files, Quicken, Access databases.. and above all the shortage of games and entertainment programs must be resolved.
100. 2003-07-02 3:23 am

     Anonymous

     I agree we need more programs for content creation.

     A port of Dreamweaver would not hurt. My advice to

     Macromedia would be port the MX suite to QT and you

     could have the same codebase for Mac, Windows and Linux.

     Most of Dreamweaver is written in javascript anyway, so it can’t be that hard to port it.
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