Linux Not Ready For The Masses

This is the argument Microsoft always wants to win. I think they are still winning the war of the desktop for now will for sometime to come. I really like Linux and I have to state upfront this is not a bashing Linux argument but hopefully will enlighten and encourage more people to experiment with Linux. First off Windows will always be the majority desktop on new computers until Linux distros fully support out of box functionality. Some would argue that it is the manufacturer's responsibility to supply the drivers but I argue that the differences from distribution to distribution is what keeps the manufacturers from creating the needed drivers. While this is improving in recent kernel releases, Ubuntu, Fedora, Puppy, Slax and Debian, to name but a few, all have slightly different methods for installing drivers and slightly different directory structures. While the basics are the same in each, differences do exist. We can't expect a video card manufacturers for example to create drivers for all these different distributions when the methods for installing and configuration is slightly different in each one. The Linux community could come together on this and start creating some standards. Secondly Microsoft has for better or worse, kept plenty of configuration standards from version to version only making some minor changes along the way. As computer use grew this familiarity has helped the novice users. It is this group of users that make up the majority of users. Would Linux be right for them? A qualified maybe is my thought on that. Installed I think anyone can use most Linux distributions. It is when installing new software or hardware that will cause a novice to reconsider and return to the safety of Windows. I am a geek and I am learning more everyday about Linux but when I wanted to install the Flash plugin in Fedora I went to Adobe's download page and was presented with four choices a yum, a tar.gz, a deb and a rpm file to install Flash. Which one do I need? I had to stop and research what Fedora would want to install. Not too hard for me a geek but most users might give up. That brings me to package mangers which help quite a bit but still need tweaking for repositories and are not consistent amongst distributions I regularly use Puppy, Ubuntu, AntiX and Fedora. Puppy's package installer has the most differences from the others. AntiX has two different installers and of course all can install from the command line. Confusing? I will end this saying that I like Linux and enjoy the challenges it provides. But I recognize that this challenge is not for everyone. I hope to see Linux to continue to grow and perhaps move towards creating environments anyone, including my Mom, could enjoy what Linux offers.

Using Gparted

If dual booting is something you plan on doing then Gparted will become a very useful tool. Almost all distros will have this tool installed. If not it is easily aquired via most distros' repositories. Gparted stands for Gnome Partition Editor. The current release is version 0.4.5 and is also available at Sourceforge.net. Gparted can read various file systems including fat16/32, ntfs, ext2/3 and several more. If you need to create partitions, re-size them or simply format a drive, this tool can do the job. Do you need to copy or move an entire drive? Gparted can handle this too. I have only scratched the surface in my experience using Gparted. I have re-sized partitions on a laptop running Windows XP and Ubuntu 8.10 on a 120GB hard drive. I was able to change the size of both partitions without data loss or downtime. Here is a view from a 20GB hard drive I am running right now. I have Puppy Linux on the first partition, Mepis 8 on the hda3 (they are out of order since I had given too much room for Puppy and used Gparted to create hda3), on hda2 is the home partition being shared by all OS's. I created an extended partition and placed logical drives within it. AntiX resides on hda7 and there are two unused spaces left over. Using Gparted to manage this hard drive makes it possible and keeps it very simple. Let's hear what tools you use to manage drives?

Ranting about Linux

Well I have been ranting on and on about Linux for a while. Right now I am posting from an old Toshiba laptop running a P3 475MHz CPU and 192MB of ram. I bought this laptop in 2000 and paying almost $2000 then. It was configured with Windows 98 which I replaced with Win2k. It worked but it was always a bit slower than I liked. I tweaked everything and it was still slow. But now I like using it despite the availability of dual core and quad core machines. I have three different Linux OS's available on a 20GB hard drive, Mepis 8, AntiX and Puppy Linux 4.20 which I am running now. If I had to gripe about something it would be that Linux takes a little more work getting the wireless up and running. Puppy Linux works great with my Linksys wireless card but the Mepis and AntiX won't connect with it but do great with a $10 Airlink card. If you are getting bored with Windows and want to challenge yourself hop over to Distrowatch and check out the latest to hit the net in Linux OS's. You might even find one or two you prefer over the standard Redmond fare.