At the beginning of this week I decided to give Linux another go. It could have been the New Year that inspired me to change my environment, or perhaps I just wanted to get in touch with my techie side again. Whatever the reason, I took the plunge - and changed my world.
Even a hardened IT manager who is used to a Windows environment will think twice before installing Linux.
Jason Norwood-Young, Technology editor, ITWeb
I`ve installed a variety of Linux versions before, my favourite having been a technology preview from Caldera, but in the past have always been disappointed with the effort it takes to install the damn thing.
I opted for the old reliable Red Hat Linux 6.2, then moved over to SuSE 7.1 Professional after I couldn`t get my 3Com network card working. Everything went well, and I even managed to coax the installation past its attempts to wipe out Windows XP. And then came the roadblock.
SuSE was as friendly to my 3Com PCMCIA card as Red Hat - it could see it, it knew what it was, but it wasn`t going to run it no matter how much I begged and pleaded.
So I delved into the Linux Documentation Project, read tomes of how-to guides, manuals, FAQs and newsgroup postings. Armed with tons of obscure commands like lsmod, cardctl ident, and PCMCIA start, along with obscure configuration file locations, I spent two full days Linux-wrestling. I also posted a query to 3Com, which informed me that my card was incompatible with Linux.
It works!
Much to my surprise (and everyone else in the office), the card eventually turned on and started working. All it required was a kernel recompile, linking manfid tuples to drivers, and loading new modules. There was much joy, celebration and back-patting (my shoulder is just about dislocated). Getting a network card to work on Linux was my greatest achievement this year.
Which is still my biggest gripe with this OS. It looks pretty, it`s got a ton of applications, and I can use it for day-to-day work or for power computing. But to install a common network card requires an immense amount of work. Try telling a home user to recompile his or her kernel, and be prepared for a blank stare at best, or minor heart failure at worst.
Even a hardened IT manager who is used to a Windows environment will think twice before installing Linux. If it`s up and running, it is excellent. But one little speed wobble - such as incompatible hardware - turns into days of frustrating grind.
I was impressed by the amount of applications available for the system - far greater than what was around in the past. Yet without that ease of overcoming common problems that Microsoft has got down to a fine art, I`m afraid that no matter how cool Linux is, my opinion is that it is still not ready for mainstream. I`m starting to doubt that the penguin will ever be capable of dethroning Windows.
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