You know the TV commercial with the hip Apple computer talking to the nerdy Windows PC? Well, it’s not just Macs that can work right out of the box. Today, Linux is simple and easy enough for the mainstream.
This morning I went downtown and bought a new hard drive for my +3 year old Dell Inspiron 8500, as the old one was shot. I inserted the backup installation CD (Win Professional SP 1) and went through the install process. It took about an hour to get the Windows desktop up and running. I then tried to connect to my broadband but could not, so I next installed the network drivers from the backup Dell utilities CD, but still was not able to connect.
During the installation process I used the option to partition the hard drive and only used 50 GB of the available 80 GB for Windows. The rest remained unformatted.
I turned off the computer and then booted from the CD (F12) and inserted an Ubuntu Linux CD that I had previously downloaded (for free of course). On boot-up from the CD I clicked on the “Install Ubuntu” icon on the Ubuntu desktop (very obvious to see). I followed the half dozen instructions and installed Ubuntu on the unformatted portion of the hard drive. This took about 10 minutes.
On re-booting, I selected the main Ubuntu option and was soon looking at the Ubuntu desktop. I did not change any settings and I did not install any other programs. I just opened the Firefox browser (a clearly marked icon) and was on the Web – immediately.
It’s a few hours later and my son is still playing with Windows and trying to connect to the Net.
Update: 24 hours later and we haven’t been able to get Windows connected to the Net. Linux is still working fine.
Update 2: Three days later and still cannot get Windows drivers working to connect to the Net. Linux working like a charm.
Linux solutions for home users are getting so good it’s hard to imagine them not catching on soon. I’ve given to new life to creaky ex-MS Windows 98 boxes with thrashed hard drives with a free live Linux CD and a cheap USB memory stick for storage. People can’t believe it.
Mac OS X and Windows XP (haven’t seen Vista yet) are, in many ways, still too complex for “typical home users”. I can’t see how Linux is any better.
Harold, you’re not a typical home user; you’re a technology enthusiast. With teenagers at home, to boot. And Roger’s feats of installation wizardry tell us nothing about how easy it was for those users once he went home.
I’ll believe it when I see it.
You’re right, Chris, Mac is probably the best choice for the average home user. I was just very impressed at how quickly I was able to load and run Linux. With a bootable CD, it was only half a dozen easy-to-follow instructions for the entire installation – honest.
I know usability is more than ease of installation. But there’s a point at which one graphical UI is functionally like all the others, and everyone starts arguing/focusing on a lot of little details.
Harold’s point was that Linux (or Ubuntu at least) has slain the installation dragon– an important real-world usability feature. My point was that the “Live CD” ability of some Linux distros (to run off the CD-ROM drive and not need a hard drive) provides another powerful usability feature.
With a read-only OS, users don’t permanently (and accidentally) change system settings or reconfigure their desktop into un-usability. A re-boot returns the systems to the original state. A big advantage to users without a lot of technical knowledge. (Not to mention that their formerly broken pcs now worked!)
Now these are not “power users” (using old PCs and MS Windows 98, after all!), but people who just surf the net and occasionally need to write letters. So they start out by not needing about 75% of the features of a modern pc. But there are a lot of people out there like this.
Finally, there’s no wizardry involved! Another great thing about Live CDs is that you can test them on your pc without changing your existing MS Windows installation. Test one yourself:
http://www.frozentech.com/content/livecd.php
(list of dozens of live cd distros)
http://www.puppyos.com/
(good one to start with)
http://www.knoppix.org/
(very full featured distro, now a Live DVD)
Has UNB moved away from Linux for its undergrads?
Rajan; I’m not sure what UNB is up to these days.
http://www.unb.ca/its/