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My day job is computer support or rather server support for a global corporation and in my 14 years as a computing professional I have risen through the ranks along an almost exclusively Microsoft oriented path. With a history like that it will come as no surprise that I actually like "windoze" and generally consider those who hate it & Microsoft to be somewhat pathetic ... on the other hand I also recognise that Windows (like any operating system) has disadvantages and that it is not necessarily the best, the greatest or the most stable operating system ever devised.
For some time now I have watched with dismay as Microsoft gains a tighter and tighter grip on the PC market ... I mean don't get me wrong, I do think the browser belongs in the OS and I do admire both Bill Gates as an individual & Microsoft as a company. What I don't like is the increased move towards surveillance of my PC and feel that, regardless of whether I register my software or not, I should be free to pursue my own choices on my own PC free from any form of checking by any person or group of persons who are not directly concerned with enforcing the legal system of the country in which I am currently residing. In my case that means European & UK law and those groups I definitively do not want gaining information from my computer include Microsoft.
I also note with dismay, as apparently does the majority of the IT industry the latest Microsoft pricing structures. It is incredibly expensive for Joe Average at home to keep up to date with even a fairly reasonable standard of software unless he/she buys it with the PC. As someone who builds his own PC's and upgrades rather than purchases new this is an even bigger issue. Fortunately, working "in the trade" I have access to much that I would not otherwise have done.
Recently I visited the Windows 2001 eNTerprise Show in London ... my but it was dull! There was, however, one ray of light ... somewhat ironically the SuSE Linux stand! I bought version 7.1 of SuSE Linux for £5 and, having a system with removable drives at home and several spare machines at work I decided to "give it a go!"
This wasn't, I stress, the first time I have ever evaluated Linux ... I evaluated Red Hat Linux 6.2 so at a previous employers and came to the conclusion that, whilst technically competent, it was not sufficiently well supported to be a corporate standard (& particularly user desktop) OS. You can view that original report here!
The system I tried to install Linux on was a home built clone:· ABit KA7-100 motherboard (with HighPoint ATA 100 bus)
I also tried it on a number of other machines including a Compaq DeskPro 6000 (166MMX Intel Pentium with 64Mb Memory & a 2Gb HD) and an HP desktop (600MHz PIII with 64Mb Memory & a 12Gb HD).
I initially installed Linux on my home clone with poor results.
Unlike current versions of Windows Linux is not a graphical operating system but has a text-based or command line interface somewhat like the original DOS and can run on top of that a GUI desktop system. Unlike DOS & Windows 3.xx (& even Win 9x) it is purpose designed (by one Linus Torvalds) to be able to run whatever desktop GUIO the user wishes ... KDE (the 'K' Desktop Environment), or rather KDE2 in my case, is one of the two main Linux desktops which gets installed "on top" of Linux.
No matter what I tried I was unable to get the KDE2 GUI running on my home clone and I new too little to deviate much outside of the standard SuSE install. I tried to install a similar setup on the Compaq at work ... that didn't work either and for very similar reasons it seems (the Linux "Guru" at work couldn't resolve it either). I then installed it the HP machine at work and it worked perfectly. I tried again at home and it worked (the only difference as far as I can tell is I elected to install only one of the available kernels) but its detection of the Intellimouse was awful and the mouse jumped insanely all over the screen. Finally I reinstalled again, using the earlier kernel, and an ordinary PS2 mouse and it worked fairly well ... the mouse still jumps occasionally but the system is, by & large, useable.
So now I have two working Linux systems, the HP, which works perfectly as far as I can tell, and my home clone, which is, well, idiosyncratic. I have also single-handedly failed to install new software and to penetrate the murky depths of Linux networking. Despite my failures I am convinced that my problems cannot be representative of Linux in general as I cannot imagine any sane person tolerating such poor performance issues ... with that in mind I am going to close here and continue the article next month.
Dispite the dismay of one of my closest friends I feel that Linux has merit and it is up to me to find out what that merit is ... one thing I have found out is that there are a lot of helpful people out there and to them I am grateful for help so far received. To my friend I will simply point out that I haven't defected ... not yet at any rate!
I would like to thank a fellow infidel of mine "Jay The Obscure" and those in the GL Linux User Group for the help they have given me with Linux.
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