A Trial of Two Installs

By now, most computer users (and in today's society, that's almost everybody) have heard of Linux, but still very few are using it. If you ask why the usual excuse is that it's too hard to use or that hardware isn't supported. I disagree. The default Gnome or KDE desktop is easily as intuitive as Windows. You can even make KDE's behavior and style very similar to windows, or even MacOSX which most Mac users would argue is even more intuitive than Windows. True some of the newest hardware, cheaper modems, printers and web-cams aren't supported yet, but on the other hand I have boxes of old hardware, SCSI cards, video capture cards, scanners, etc. that's no longer supported for Windows. No windows drivers since 95 or 98, won't work in XP, still works fine in Linux.

Then there's the quite legitimate complaint that some software still won't run under Linux. Games are often mentioned. Boohoo. Get a console. Or check with your local Linux Users Group, because although I hardly ever play games many of my friends do, and they seem to be able to find plenty of stuff that works in Linux.

And business or accounting software. In New Zealand that software is usually "Mind Your Own Business". It's frustrating that MYOB's official reason for not producing a Linux version is "none of our customers use Linux", yet I encounter so many business who would like to try Linux but can't because of MYOB.

Finally, there's the excuse that Linux is too hard to install. Compared to what? Windows?!! It seems that very few people have actually been through the truly tedious process of installing Windows, so I've decided to document and compare.

The machine I'm installing to is an HP Pavilion 6318. P300 CPU, 128M ram, 6G big-foot drive. This is far from a bleeding-edge machine, but it's similar to what many people still use and should be more than adequate for simple web surfing, email and office tasks. (My main machine running FreeBSD is nearly identical, and I'm typing this up on a P166 with 64M)

The OS'es;

-Windows XP Professional.. I've cheated somewhat and used the Corporate edition; most home users would need to get Windows 'activated' using Microsoft's web-site or by calling Microsoft's 0800 product activation number. Other than that the install should be identical.

-Knoppix 3.4. Available for $5 from DSE, or a free download from www.knopper.net

OK, starting with the 'easy' one - Windows XP.

11:15 Bootup. Press enter, ignore the EULA and press F8, partitioning (Nuke the whole drive thanks!)

11:17 Formatting (It's a bigfoot, not the world's fastest drive, but ten minutes for 6G seems slow.)

11:27 Copying

11:37 Reboot #1

11:38 Installing

11:48 Settings. Regional settings three different fields under two different tabs have to be changed to "NZ" Surely this could be easier? Name and organization, sobriety test (copy 15 random characters from the CD cover) and computer name. Finally, we have to set the timezone (I already said I live in New Zealand three times, what the hell do YOU think the timezone should be?)

11:53 More install

12:00 More settings. Just install the default crap, thanks. And call my workgroup "WORKGROUP"

12:00 Installing even more stuff.

12:42 Reboot #2

12:43 Change screen resolution. Wait a little

12:45 Final config. Pretty animated help button, soft music, etc. Network settings, registration and usernames.

12:48 DONE!

Well, it found my network, video and soundcard. Missed the modem and video capture card. The screen comes up in 800x600 resolution, no 3D support until I download drivers. The video capture card is quite old and no XP drivers exist. The modem only needs to be set up manually although proper drivers would make it work better.

So what's installed, as far as useful software goes? A barely useable and totally insecure MSIE and Outlook Express. Update NOW! Also the firewall is off by default. Movie Maker. Almost useless because to do anything with it I need to install a camera and drivers, and the install CD usually comes with it's own software. The same crappy text editor, games, and paint program that came with Windows 3.11. Decent photo editor? no. Drawing software? no. Office software? no.

OK, now for the Hard install.

1:55 knoppix is up and running. It gets a little tricky here, most users will probably need advice from a handy Linux guru (you can find them all over IRC, or search for a nearby Linux Users Group) or look up "knoppix install" on google to find out what comes next. Click the terminal icon (the little computer screen thing in the bottom menu bar) and type "sudo knoppix-install" when the black box appears.

Then partitioning, which is also not intuitive. Pick a drive and allocate a partition "200M or about twice your ram, whichever is bigger" for swap and the rest "ext3". The partition manager is very different from DOS or Window's but if you've ever used partitioning software before, it should be reasonably obvious how to work it. Also, unlike DOS or Windows tools changes are all made in a single step, after you've completely finished deciding how to slice up your drive. You can quit any time before this and your drive will be completely untouched.

2:02 Configure; If you don't understand a question go with the defaults. I picked a Debian system here, but you don't have to. Username, password and "admin password" (Aka root) are well explained. Hostname is like Windows computer name.

2:05 Start install. This takes a while, but since we're booted into knoppix there's already about 2000 programs we can run while the install continues in the background. Listen to the "Open source" song, play Frozen Bubble, samegame, jump and bump, even surf the web if you're on a selfconfiguring network connection (Your company LAN and many kinds of ADSL modem will be detected and set up automatically under knoppix) You can even start typing up stuff in OpenOffice; just remember that you won't be able to save it yet.

2:30 All finished. Carry on playing Frozen bubble, reboot whenever I feel like it. Since I don't use DHCP I still have to set up my network card manually, but the system does start in a decent resolution (the best the monitor and card should handle), the modem and video capture card were autodetected. Surprisingly the sound wasn't detected, very unusual for knoppix! Again you might need to contact a linux guru if you have problems like this; It's actually the first machine I've ever had soundcard problems with under knoppix, and I merely needed to add the correct line to a configuration file. No driver download required.

OK there were a few glitches, but the knoppix install was SO MUCH faster it's not funny. More importantly, the knoppix install was all one step. All of the user questions came first, all of the post-install configuration came after. The Windows install involves a number of long waits with questions in between, so the user can't just 'leave it be' and go do something else while they're waiting.

And what do I have installed? A full collection of office software, a rolodex, a calendar/reminder program, powerful photo editing and desktop publishing software, a chat client that lets me get on MSN, Yahoo, Jabber, AIM, IRC, and a bunch of other networks I can't even remember.. a TV viewer and Teletext decoder (I don't have a tuner card, but I can plug my video into it). A whole bunch of different games like mahjong, samegame, and frozen bubble, some educational software, assorted video and music players. There's about 900 packages according to the CD cover. And since it's debian just about everything else available for Linux is only an apt-get away.