A Windows Die-Hard Confronts Linux

Tuesday, Jul. 20 2004 | Author: DarkBlue

Preston Gralla, a Windows user since the dark days of Windows 3.1, describes his first experiences with Linux. Sadly, for the open-source community, Gralla is unconvinced by the experience.

I was surprised at how simple it was to install and get up to speed on Linux. And the desktop has some nice touches that Windows could learn from. The applications didn’t win me over, though. In fact, when it comes to Linux on the desktop, I don’t get the point, really. Yes, the desktop is pretty, but I was expecting more than a pretty face.

No big deal? If Linux is ever to make serious inroads onto the desktop then users like Gralla are exactly the ones that the OS has to impress.

Linux enjoys a vast catalogue of first-class productivity software, but the UIs are often convoluted and non-intuitive. Furthermore, documentation is frequently incomplete, vague or too “technical” for the average person.

The open-source community has invested vast amounts of effort, delivered amazing software and built a world-class operating system. It would be a terrible shame if it were all for nothing because the “unsexy” bits are neglected.

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12 Responses for "A Windows Die-Hard Confronts Linux"

Jonathan Hollin

July 20th, 2004 at 2:00 pm
1

Jono Bacon offers his take on Preston Gralla’s article…
The Wolf

July 20th, 2004 at 10:12 pm
2

Linux != Desktop

Ok, first off I hate linux. Not because its not Microsoft or because it doesn’t run some of the software I need but because it is simply too complex.

People are always talking about Linux being flexable (50 window managers, 100 ways to do this and 500 ways to do that) but they never stop to think about the common user who just wants to get a job done, thats me. I found that this made Linux a very unproductive environment to work in, and thats not counting the shoddy program support and help files.

I think the ultimate system would be something like BeOS with its simple and productive gui and unix style console.
Jonathan Hollin

July 21st, 2004 at 6:03 am
3

Linux != Desktop

I totally agree Wolf. Until Linux can boast a single, unified UI it will always fail to accumulate desktop OS market share.

Don’t get me wrong, I love Linux – I run it on all my servers. It’s an incredibly powerful OS with a software catalogue that can accommodate just about any conceivable task. But, in order to get the most from it (and enjoy some degree of consistency) one has to stay in the shell.

Good Unix GUIs exist (Mac OS X), there’s really no excuse.
The Wolf

July 21st, 2004 at 8:54 am
4

BTW, I mean to say ‘I hate linux desktops’…

OSX and BeOS both have good guis, if your unsure about beos take a look at this image:

http://www.yellowtab.com/products/screens/system/hi/screen4.png

Thats actually Zeta (beos6 beta with new open source components) but it still looks the same.
IEBlog

July 23rd, 2004 at 12:30 am
5

re: Rules for Comments on the IEBlog
Jonathan Hollin

July 29th, 2004 at 5:49 am
6

Preston Gralla has written a follow-up article, “Why Windows Still Beats Linux” in response to feedback from Linux fans…
Eric Jensen

October 3rd, 2004 at 5:55 am
7

Linux=A Black Hole in wasted time

Linux may be free GNU project, but in terms of time and effort, it’s just not worth it for the desktop user.

I’m a 22 year-old guy who wants to learning more about computers. Driven by such a desire, I decided to try out Fedora Core 2 on my PC.

Since that fateful moment a few days ago, every simple process has turned into a ridiculous ordeal.

It took me two hours to download special rpms to configure my network card for the Internet, even though under Windows it works right off the bat.

It took me about four hours to figure out that I had to download an NTFS rpm and edit FSTAB just to access files on my windows volume.

It took several hours of downloading rpms and gzips files to UNSUCESSFULLY install xine and the XMMS mp3 plugin so that I could just listen to mp3’s and watch videos. Installing the mp3s gave me cryptic error messages, saying that I had to install several dependecies, which THEN in turn gave me more error in that I did not specify the CC parameters.

I finally threw in the towel after typing in
# chmod -R 777 /mnt/windows
allowed me to temporarily give non-root users access to Windows volume files, which then reset their permissions to being unaccessable about two minutes later.

I’ve had it. I’m going back to windows where I can actually get things done, not spend hours configuring my OS.

Maybe Red Hat Fedora Linux 2 is a shitty distro. I’m sure some Linux users will say that I didn’t try hard enough, or that I’m simply an idiot. So be it.

I’m sick and tired of jumping through hoops just so that I can listen to music or even access documents from my Windows partition. I don’t have the patience or the time to tinker around with ridiculous workarounds, and I doubt any normal person does, either.

I’m sure that Linux has made a lot of progress towards being a user-friend operating system. But from my experience, I think it’s fair to say that it’s still got a loooooooooong way to go.
Scrivs

October 3rd, 2004 at 10:14 am
8

Sorry to hear that Eric. Seems like you went through a lot of hassle and unfortunately you were doing things the REALLY hard way. With Fedora you can use with apt or yum to download and install applications without having to download the RPMs and configure them yourself.

More information can be found here.

Both Windows and Linux have their merits and I have found that once people get a working Linux system up and running then they don’t go back to Windows unless there is a specific app that they really need. I am sure when you first started using Windows you didn’t just dive right in and get working. It took time to learn. Same goes for Linux.

Too many people assume that just because they know about computers and Windows that they can go into another OS (and different paradigm) I might add and get started right away. Some can, some can’t. Hopefully down the road you give it another chance.

For my own sanity you might also wanna checkout the new distro on the block, Ubuntu.
The Wolf

November 1st, 2004 at 4:25 am
9

For me there are a lot of apps that I ned that can’t be found on Linux. For example

1. I need photoshop, there is nothing like it for linux.
2. I need a decent PHP editor, I have not found a decent linux one.

I can use and configure Linux systems fine, thing is, I don’t really want to spend hours every day just to get my internal or ADSL modems working…
Gary

March 31st, 2005 at 6:22 pm
10

Sadly I agree with Gralla

I work with Linux and run 2 servers at home (the distros if thats important are Knoppix and Fedora3) I use Redhat 9 at work.

He’s dead right, I can plug some (random piece of harware) into my Win XP laptop and it works.

I always have to compile something or other to get it to work under linux. Fine for me. I undestand why this is, and sure I’ll get round to writing the code eventually.

but I wouldn’t suggest my Mother used *any* linux distro.
Jonathan M. Hollin (DarkBlue)

May 3rd, 2005 at 6:19 am
11

Well said Ryan. I totally agree with your comments.

There is a solution for those of us who want to run desktop Unix while waiting for Linux to catch up – Mac OS X!
Anonomys =P

March 26th, 2009 at 3:25 am
12

I actually disagree with all off you. I rather think its the other way round but hey, its just my opinion.

For me to do something with just a button is too boring. I like codes, terminal and using my brain. For me computing is learning about how it works and what comes together to make it work, that is why i like linux.