User Feedback :: Thoughts from a MS admin

Hi. I am a Linux noob and a Microsoft expert. I decided to dig into Linux again after learning that you don't (for the most part) have to compile source code to install applications. Here is my story, beginning about a week ago

I tried Debian and Fedora 4 on desktop machines with newish hardware - AMD 1Ghz, 512MB, 80GB. Although some things that are simple in Windows were painful in Linux (couldn't get an IP printer to work in Debian, had trouble with screen resolution in Fedora), it was simple enough to entice me to try something more involved.

I have a Toshiba Satellite 2535CDS laptop. Celeron 300, 32MB, 4GB. They always said that you can run Linux effectively on old hardware, but I knew from my experience with the desktops (the first one was a P2-400, not enough juice to run KDE really) that I would need to find a damned small linux distribution.

Yes, technically, it should be named *Damned* Small Linux, and I have just discovered that the iB code buttons don't work in Dillo -- but I digress.

DSL ran from the CD on this machine, albeit slowly. By holding a moistened finger up into the wind, I calculated that if it were installed on the hard drive, it would run well enough.

It did -- nay, does -- but there were a few bumps along the way. Keep in mind that I am a Microsoft admin, and know nothing of Linux commands or programs or anything. Smart enough to find the answers, apparently, since everything is working to my satisfaction now, but an empty vessel, waiting to be filled.

[Preface: When I say "dig around," I don't mean, "I had to go to Google and look at the first search result for the answer." I mean something more along the lines of, "It took me a good fifteen minutes of clicking around to find the right page which sort of had the answer that I figured out how to make work anyway." Also, there were a whole lot of things that I did look for online, in these very forums, and found good answers for right quick like. But humans tend to focus on the bad and forget the good. Sorry about that.]

Bump #1: Had to dig around to find out how to create a swap space on the hard drive. (As you may know, Windows creates one automatically.) Started with a swapfile; tonight read that a swap partition is better, so that's what I have now.

Bump #2: Had to dig around a little bit to discover sndconfig in order to get the sound working. (Windows: Device Manager, PnP.) Thankfully, I was already familiar enough with apt-get to deal with installing it once I knew it existed, and it was really easy once that was done.

Bump #3: Although the DSL FAQ says my Netgear MA401 card is fully supported, I could not get it to work. (Again, Device Manager.) A few forum posts seemed to suggest that DSL 2.2RC1 was the key (I was running DSL 2.1b). I downloaded that, ran the CD, and got online. So I reinstalled with that rev tonight.

Bump #4: Java was a pain, and that's Sun's fault for not updating their install instructions for Firefox to reflect that the plugins directory is now in the user profile folder. Then, once I found that out, it turns out that this machine is just too crappy to run Java; it takes longer for Java to load and run an applet than it did to install DSL on the machine (I'm guessing, because I waited and waited and finally had to kill Firefox).

Bump #5: Mouse cursor speed. (Control Panel > Mouse - there may be something like this in larger Linux distributions than DSL) I dug around on this a whole lot until I found something about changing the acceleration using: xset m 5 . Okay, that makes the mouse cursor accelerate faster, but I just want it to move faster overall. I ended up with: xset m 3/2 1 by checking the options for xset and trying random numbers until I got something I liked. Still don't know what those numbers actually mean.

Bump #6: I have been so enthralled with doing this that I have been staying up way too late at night, even though I'm sick with some kind of sinus cold thing, and making my wife really really mad. (Windows, getting kind of boring, really.)

General thoughts on Windows vs. Linux, from the other side of the fence:

Overall, Linux distributions are written by programmers for programmers. I am not a programmer. Linux will have a high learning curve for me, but the curve has come down just enough that I can succeed if I put some work into it. And I've got ten years' experience in IT. Non-technical users won't pick up Linux until the learning curve is much more shallow.

I hear a lot about Linux being more secure than Windows. Maybe the programmers of the world know something that I don't. I know that a default install of Windows XP Home is not secure in that the user runs with admin rights, and default installations of Linux don't do that. I also know that a Windows machine can be secured if properly administered in a business setting. I also know that most businesses do not properly administer their machines, because users have a misplaced sense of propriety ("It's MY computer, I can install an asinine fishtank screensaver if I want to."). The insecurity of Windows computers should not be completely blamed on Microsoft; it's business management that doesn't want to enforce strict security policies, or pay IT staff enough to know what security policies should be enforced in the first place. I know this firsthand, by being the guy who knows what the security policies should be, but also knows that the client can't afford to pay a consultant to spend the time locking everything down and testing all the critical applications to make sure they still work, and the additional support time that goes along with it after the fact.

I am glad for Linux, though, first for finally grabbing my attention, second for allowing me to run (and maybe sell) this old laptop, last for having a good number of vocal fanboys that give me a good chuckle. Oh, and it's becoming more viable as competition for the big players, and it's free. Totally sweet, you guys.

Okay, enough, it's 3:18 AM CST, and I have to get up at 6:30 or so. Thanks for having me.

You are my most favorite newb ever. You talk about a steep learning curve but you figured out how to do everything, without having to ask a single question. A feat that stumps, literally, hundreds of newbies in these forums daily. Most couldn't figure out a fraction of what you did if we screamed the information at them for the next few weeks.

As far as your Debian adventures went, setting up a printer under Debian is a bitch, well, it can be a bitch--depending on which printer you have. I'm printing to a Brother printer hosted on my wife's XP machine as an IP printer and I did it with CUPS, but I had to download the driver from the Brother's website. After that, everything setup without a hitch. But, if you don't know that you have to download the driver from the Brother website, it could be hours of hair-pulling.

From the Linux vs. Windows standpoint:

Many of us in here used to be "Windows guys" at one point or another. Me, I've used Microsoft products since the early days of DOS and I still support NT, 2000 and XP machines (and a ME and a few 98 SE's, but I won't go there) at work and in my personal life.

Your complaint, and most complaints I hear about Linux's "steep learning curve" has to do with setup/installation. I'd say 90% of Windows users don't install their own operating systems and beyond installing an instant messenger or some dumbass screensaver, most don't ever install software at all. How many times have you had to show somebody how to drag their taskbar back to the bottom of the screen because it got "stuck" to the sides of the monitor? The average computer user is an idiot about computers, regardless of which operating system they're on.

A fullblown KDE or GNOME desktop has all of the basic features of a Mac or Windows desktops--Icons the user can click on to start programs, GUI email clients, Web Browser, etc. I picked up a Casio Exilim w/USB dock for Christmas and Linux picked it up just fine. It took all of 30 seconds to start transferring digital pictures over to the hard drive. Same thing with my Palm Pilot, plugged it in and synced right up. No worries.

Paid distros like Xandros have excellent printer setup wizards (and scanner, camera and other commercial hardware wizards) that make such devices a snap to set up. Once these devices are configured, the setup is largely forgotten because from then on, it will always work until the hardware fails. This isn't always necessarily true for Mac and Windows systems. I submit as an example the three Macs I had to fix at work today and the 2000 server in the next room that I have to go tweak every other week or reboot after a hard-lockup/crash. My ex-exmployers are still running a Debian mail-server I set up a couple of years ago. They haven't had any problems because I haven't had any phonecalls (they don't know how to fix it if it dies ;).

I think Windows is fine for most purposes, but I don't use it as my primary desktop because it's just too much damn work. Thankfully, with newer hardware, and the migration towards NTFS, the bi-weekly scandisk/defrag is no longer on the maintenance list for the majority of the machines I service, but keeping up with patches, mitigating the latest security exploits, making sure some dumbass hasn't turned HTML preview back on in Outlook, the weekly scans for adware/malware/viruses--I don't miss any of that working on my Debian box at home.

Is Linux perfect? No, it isn't. I'm sure if I sat here long enough I could think of a litany of things that I'd change, but right off the bat, it suits my needs better than Windows ever did.

But none of this is really a problem for you. You're obviously smart enough to troubleshoot problems on your own and get things working in short order. Your primary problem with Linux is one of comfort. Linux isn't familiar to you and so a lot of things are going to be frustrating just because it's different from what you know.

As far as not being a programmer, I can shell script and I can do just about anything I want with a good shell script. Think batch file on steroids. If you can write batch files, you can become a proficient script writer, just takes a little practice. I write a little C too, but I'm nowhere near being good at it. But look at it this way, all that time you used to spend scanning for adware/viruses/malware, patching your system...you can spend on learning how to code. ;)

Nougat, I liked your post. My experience was quite similar, but I've found that I LIKE the extra work that Linux makes me do. 20 years ago I was programming in 6502 assembly language. Windows made me feel that, apart from hacking the registry, computers had grown too complicated for my tiny mind. Linux is teaching me that no, I can do things inside there that count, and I can have fun learning how.

Quote (Nougat @ Jan. 26 2006,04:31)

Overall, Linux distributions are written by programmers for programmers. I am not a programmer. Linux will have a high learning curve for me, but the curve has come down just enough that I can succeed if I put some work into it. And I've got ten years' experience in IT. Non-technical users won't pick up Linux until the learning curve is much more shallow.

Please don't assume DSL = Linux. DSL is actually close to a combination rescue disk/power user/space optimized distribution, not a mainstream desktop distribution, such as Ubuntu. In terms you may be more familiar with, that's like me saying "Windows is completely primitive" based on Windows 95.

Still, I can see you fit right in to the power user community, and seem to be able to take DSL beyond the default limitations. (Which is almost as hard as Linux From Scratch).

Oh, I know there are a zillion distributions, each with their own niche purpose, and that DSL is very niche indeed. Hence my statement of "general" observations.

More later.

Next Page...
original here.