Having developed a solid distaste
for Windows on the basis of much experience, I recently bought a
version of Linux.
It is Linux 6.2 by SuSE, and came
in the form of 6 CD-s and a book. The book says the CD-s are for free,
but I had to pay $45 at a regular computer shop, apparently only for
the paper box and the book.
Now even $45 for an interesting
new operating system would not be much, simply to find out what it is
like and whether it is useful for me .... but it doesn't install on my
366 Mhz machine with plenty of disk space - 6 GB available - and
memory - 64 MB - and I have no clue why not.
Also, the book that came with it
is - as so often with computer-books - apparently written by people
who are complete geniuses at clearly explaining things you know
already, and pedantically obscure morons at explaining everything
else.
Apparently, I ought to learn Unix
before I can install Linux - rather like learning to swim in the
desert.
This SuSE doesn't say on the box
that costs $45 and includes software you can't install and a book
that's solidly unreadable, while the - largish, heavily hyped - box
includes only lots of empty space besides.
I am sorry, but it seems to me
SuSE simply swindled me:
A program that doesn't even
install (or the installation of which requires that you first memorize
450 pages of documentation, mostly written in a hermetically esoteric
dialect, that's very difficult to make sense of if you can't install
the OS it is supposed to be all about) is of no use whatsoever -
except of course to its sellers: Yet another fool who coughed up $45
for the latest hype, available free of charge according to the
documentation ... which only becomes clear after you paid.
If I, after 12 years of daily
computing, plentiful programming experience, and academic education in
information technology and computing, can't make much of SuSE's prose
and don't understand why the hell not even their installation-program
starts, and also can find no clue in their 450 pages of documentation
(which I am really not going to read from cover to cover before seeing
whether Linux is worth all that trouble, for which it has to install
properly without me taking the equivalent of a Ph.D. in maths), it is
my considered opinion this is not worth my time nor my money.
It would have been much more
honest if the makers would have clearly said on the shrink-wrapped box
they sell this in: "If you don't know Unix or if you are not a
masochist or if you don't want to spend the next year learning all
manner of commands in an obscure OS you don't know will be useful for
you, SuSE Linux is NOT for you".
Also, if their non-installable
software sells for $45, it's pretty sickening to read in the otherwise
pretty obscure documentation that I should have no complaints because
... the software is offered freely.
I do very much hope someone comes
up with a good alternative to Windows, that does run on a PC. (For
Apple does have a good alternative, but uses its own OS and software,
which is generally more expensive than software for Windows.)
Indeed, it may even be the case
that Linux is that alternative .... but I will only be able to make up
my mind after it arrives with a decent installation- program, and
without the need first to learn all the Unix-commands to start the
thing working in the first place.
"Ars levis, vita brevis" - and
Windows 98 that costs a little over $100 (with a new computer) but
crashes daily is still much preferable to an OS that doesn't even
install for the price of $45, while it includes hardly readable
"documentation" from which I've only learned I have no right to
complain about so called "free software".
I much dislike all the hype
Microsoft is so fond of to sell its products, and I am firmly
convinced, on the basis of extensive experience, that nearly all
software of Microsoft is second-rate at best. But even that master of
hyped up bugs and kludges that's Microsoft has not yet tricked me into
shelling out $45 for a boxed volume of air, unreadable prose, and
uninstallable software: The onion for that goes to SuSE Linux.
P.S. No doubt someone will want to
mail me that he installed SuSE Linux without any problem and without
any prior computing knowledge, and has known infinite bliss ever
since.
Well - I have a mere 12 years of
computing experience, and did not get further than installing a
program called "loadlin" that is supposed to start a program called
"YaST" that is supposed to do the installing - but "loadlin" is a
DOS-program in the style of the early 80ies the makers of which
apparently believe that documentation or explanation of errors are not
needed.
Briefly: If you can't write a
proper and pretty painless install-program for your software, your
software may be pure genius for all I care. Also, I am fond of logic
puzzles - but not of disentangling the problems behind a piece of
programming written in a style that was even 20 years ago outdated.
(October 1999).
More of the same with another Linux-provider, Corel (two months
later):
I think I am rapidly developing as
sound and solid a distaste for Linux as for Windows.
The reason is the same as in the
case of Windows: The totally shameless hype and lies, and the enormous
profits for the shameless liars and con-men.
Today - the last day of the Old
Millennium - I got the latest version of Corel Linux. It comes for
free, on a CD of PC Plus (which doesn't come for free, but let that
be), and is supposed to be a basic version of Linux, with an
absolutely fail-safe install program, that is also explained in PC
Plus paper pages, "in 6 easy steps".
Step zero: Click the
install-button works, by God's good graces.
Step one: Click the start installation button, by God's highly
miraculous graces, also works.
Step two (still in the first step PC Plus sketches): One is
required to let the install program make a floppy disk. OK: I put in a
fresh disk and click on "Create floppy disk".
First news: A window pops up with
"bb.bat is absent" - which seems obvious as the floppy disk was
supposed to be fresh. Also, the program - so helpful, so easy, so
clear, supposedly - does not tell you what the purpose or contents of
the supposedly missing bat-file are supposed to be or why it tells you
it is absent from a disk that was supposed to be empty to start with.
Ah well - artificial intelligence isn't all it is said to be.
Second news, after some trundling
and hick-ups of the computer: "Can't create floppy". Reasons are not
given, nor workarounds - and that's it. Installing Corel Linux is so
easy! So painless! "Only 15 minutes to get on the net!"
Another fresh disk and another
attempt lead to the same.
And once more.
And once ...
And ...
Et cetera ad nauseam. (December
1999)
A slight improvement, after two more months: WinLinux 2000 Final Beta
My Windows98 system is in the
habit of twice daily freezing everything, and tends to do so on the
most incovenient moment: Suddenly nothing works anymore - no keyboard,
no mouse, a dead screen - and I have to reset. Why this happens I
don't know, and don't want to know: "ars levis, vita brevis".
(Besides, the explanation is bound to be a bore about bugs.)
So once again I tried Linux, this
time because some IT-person assured me "installing is a breeze" and
gave me a CD with WinLinux 2000 Final Beta.
This is supposed to "install like
a breeze". Well .... the "breeze" took 3 days of work, if not
continuously. But at least and at long last I have a more or less
working KDE desktop, and can see what Linux is supposed to be like, of
which more in a moment.
Let me first notice that in spite of the breeze of 3 days, this was
the first more or less decent Linux-install program I saw, that
doesn't leave you absolutely nowhere except in a flood of tech-talk
and no working program. (Though this is also the type of
install-program that simply starts copying 500 MB without checking
first whether your system has the available space, and then, after half an
hour of copying, complains that it is out of disk-space.)
Also, I couldn't have installed it
succesfully if I hadn't known quite a bit of DOS. My tip for those who
want to install WinLinux 2000 Final Beta is that they create a new
partition on their harddrive using fdisk (which requires some Dos-knowledge and enough space on your drive: 1 free GB is a good start)
and try to install WinLinux there. And as I found that my system
wasn't quite within what WinLinux could deal with, I had to experiment
with the WinLinux Configuration Utility to get something like a
crudely working video under Linux.
So what I have now is a more or
less working Linux.
It looks a bit primitive, for it
is on a very low resolution, and it seems WinLinux's "Final Beta"
delivers you Linux software not later than of 1998, in consequence of
which I couldn't install what I liked to install.
Also, for someone used to DOS,
Windows and Macs the interface is quirky, for it looks like any of
these without behaving quite like it.
And what I have at present does
look positively amateurish compared to the sleek and smooth everyday
Windows-look (that looks a lot less pleasant as soon as Windows starts
getting problematic, as it does every day).
But what I see at least is written
and commented by real-life persons instead of MicroSoft's anonymous
wage-slaves; one can get all of the source-code if one wants to; and
one can contribute to the development if one wants to.
Whether one does want to depends
on one's time, inclination, morals, money and much more, but it is
quite pleasant to deal with what appear to be real persons committed
to create really useful computer-tools available to and payable by
everybody, instead of totally anonymous entities inside a monopolist
bug-house, whose every word seems to be calculated to make its profits
soar and its code totally incomprehensible: "MicroSoft is a way of
life" (as is piracy). (For more on this topic, see
Capitalism, Communism and Computing.)
On the other hand: It is very
disappointing WinLinux seems to include only Linux-software that's
very old, as Linux-software goes, and I suppose that as a Linux system
goes it is pretty dinosauric. This also may explain its definite
amateurish look - as if WinLinux was mostly made by 20-year old German
students.
So I probably shall try to get a
more recent Linux installed - which may turn out to be problematic, as
the KDE-shell WinLinux provides doesn't install recent Linux material
for some obscure reason.
Finally, the reader may like to
know that such computer monthlies as I read do support my own
independent findings: SuSE 6.2 is difficult to install; Corel Linux is
difficult to install in spite of its hype; and WinLinux 2000 does come
only with Linux-software of quite a long way back in the previous
millenium and installs only if you know your DOS (unless you happen to
have a system that WinLinux does support fully).
And all in all, what I have seen
from and read about Linux, it seems at present and for the next year
or so to be mainly for and by nerds, techies, and other computer-savvy
people who grew sick of Windows and who like to try to see whether a
world full of freely cooperating individuals can do better than a
couple of thousand of employers of a monopolist.
I hope they can and trust they
will - but Linux systems that look and behave as crisp and smooth as
Windows does - when it does work - are probably some years in the
future, and people naive about computing who are neither masochists
nor supplied with oodles of leisure-time are adviced not to bank too
heavily on Linux-as-is.
Also, I recommend those who do
want to try Linux to avoid SuSE and Corel, for the following reason:
What makes Windows so irritating are its massive doses of false hype.
SuSE and Corel try to beat Windows with false hype of the same kind,
and should have tried to do so instead by doing better than Windows
and by lying far less. (March 2000)
Another Linux: Mandrake - a bit better again
This Linux had the first tolerable
install-program, i.e. it installs what it is supposed to install, and
all it takes is time and keyboard-input, and it has a better looking
and more recent Linux than does WinLinux 2000, that contains Linux of
1998.
Part of the reason it is better
looking is that it has recent versions of Linux, and another part of
the reason is that it offers both the KDE and the Gnome desktop, and I
like the latter a lot more than KDE. Indeed, while KDE looks more
primitive and less smooth than Windows, Gnome looks better and
smoother than Windows.
So this is a Linux I might like to
work with and learn, but indeed here starts a problem mentioned above:
One does have to learn quite a lot if one wants to have a Linux that
can do what Windows can do, and specifically: install programs, print,
play CDs, and get on the net with a browser and send and receive
e-mail.
All of that turned out to involve
learning a lot of details about Linux that I don't really want to
know, because it takes a considerable investment of my time, and
nearly all that I learn will be as useless as my knowledge of most of
DOS in a year or so (I hope not much longer).
So effectively I haven't done much
with Mandrake Linux, but this is mostly my choice: I feel I don't have
the time and energy to buy the necessary books, and plunder these for
the necessary details.
However, there is - finally - for
me some good news about Linux:
- its kernel can be installed
rather painlessly
- the Gnome desktop looks better than Windows
- if one is willing to invest time and some money, one probably can
make this Linux do the things one ordinarily does with Windows
but this last if is considerably
larger than Linux lovers like to make known, and painlessly installing
a kernel does not yet give one the capacity to install programs,
print, play CDs, and get on the net with a browser and send and
receive e-mail with Linux, while getting that capacity takes a
considerable amount of time and mostly boring trouble.
My own preference is to wait for a
better Linux.
It will probably arrive in a year
or so, and then I may switch, for Linux indeed is far more stable than
Windows. (June 2000)
SuSE strikes again: 7.1
Windows keeps crashing on me, and
I keep not liking it. Also, I don't like Mr Gates' plans for the net
and I don't want to fork out money for Windows ME, which I don't trust
anyway.
So when an IT-specialist - I
believe they are called nowadays - gave me a CD with SuSE Linux 7.1
and assured me it ran beautifully and installed perfectly on his far
from vanilla system, I decided to give it another try.
One reason to give SuSE another
try - whose release 6.2 disappointed me so much - is that it includes
StarOffice 5.2 for Linux. I like StarOffice, and have used
Windows-versions of it for 1 1/2 year now and am fairly familiar with
it.
Another reason is that I have a
vanilla system, on which most things work and get installed
unproblematically under Windows or Dos - except that Windows does keep
crashing at inconvenient moments, without any warning and without any
reason I can give. (Having installed automatic backups for my files
helps to keep my temper, though it doesn't cure anything in Windows.)
So I have tried to install SuSE
7.1 four times on my system. As with SuSE 6.2, it doesn't work, and it
doesn't get through the install-program.
"The good news" is that the
install-program "YaST" has a new version, has become graphical, and
trundled beautifully away for an hour or so, and installed all manner
of software packages on my hard drive (as I could verify afterward,
with a program SuSE didn't package).
The bad news is that after having
eaten up an hour of my life, YaST found out that it doesn't recognize
my monitor, and that although the monitor is on a list it then pops
up, it cannot properly install it, and then crashes - after which,
this being SuSE Linux, you have to reset the computer, and reinstall
the whole lot again, only to find you run into the same problem, and
will keep doing so until you give up in total disgust.
SuSE Linux still close all their
messages to those who try to install their software with "Have a lot
of fun ... ", so you have to read that expression very many times
while you try to install SuSE or read its "documentation". I think the
3 dots mean: "you stupid masochists!".
However, let me congratulate the
folks at SuSE for having produced a graphical installer. It doesn't
work (on my vanilla system), but then I've never seen anything of SuSE
work, so this must be, for them, an enormous step forward, since their
previous installer wasn't graphical and didn't even start installing.
The present one, by contrast, is graphical, does start installing, and
does waste a lot of your time and hard disk space before it decides it
cannot deal with your monitor. Surely, for SuSE, that's a great step
forward!
(October 2000)
Mandrake Linux 7.1
I have been installing Linuxes now
for over a year, without joy and without fun. But I did learn a few
things about Linux, and even succeeded in getting several Linuxes
installed - but without internet access, without a working printer,
and without decent sound, and always with the promise that in case I
wanted these, I first had to read through a lot of computer
documentation, so as to find out all manner of programmable details a
good programmer could have written a program for.
Also, I freely admit I have mostly
had it with RTFM - "Read The Fucking Manual!" - for over the last 15
years I have read several meters of fucking computer manuals, and
apart from theology there is no less rewarding reading: Thousands and
thousands of pages with information you don't want, don't care for,
don't believe, don't want to know - except for that small bit that
finally makes the software work as it's ads invariably claim it does
always and automatically and unproblematically and intuitively.
Sofar Linux Mandrake was the best
Linux I got installed on my system, for its release 7.0 had an install
program that worked (unlike most other install programs for Linux I
wasted my time on, initially in good faith), and what worked seemed
decent, and indeed appeared to be more pleasant than Windows (except
for the not so trivial detail of no internet, no printer, and no
sound).
So I decided to give Mandrake
Linux 7.1 a go after SuSE 7.0 again showed the performance I have come
to expect from SuSE Linux: Total failure amidst a lot of hype.
Well .... Mandrake 7.1 does not
install on my system, though it is the same on which Mandrake 7.0
installed easily. Why this is so, I don't know and it doesn't tell,
except that it "cannot find a Linux tree" in the Mandrake-directory
the install-program created all by itself, for its own ends, without
telling me.
I suspect Mandrake had a large
dosis of help from some of the brightest minds at SuSE, for Mandrake
now packages a so-called "rescue-system" with Mandrake 7.1 - which, so
far as I can see, does nothing else but start up the Mandrake
installer and tell you some things are absent in a directory the
install-program made, after which you can't quit without having to
reset the computer, so that after that, just as in SuSE's case, you
have to repeat the whole installation.
I did so three times, and every
time ran into precisely the same effect.
Hence, in a year time - in which
several forests have been cut down to print all the hype about Linux -
I have tried six Linux-versions, all heavily hyped, and most supported
by reputable firms with many programmers, software engineers,
consultants, lawyers and other computer-specialists.
Four did not install at all; one
installed minimally but with so little support for my video I could
only look at Linux at the lowest and ugliest resolution and what I
looked at was old and not very useful nor did it look attractive; and
the remaining one installed properly but without any internet,
printing, or sound-support, and no cue how to get these things done
apart from "RTFM" (Read The Fucking Manual) - which I have done far
too much of already in my life, and have no time and no taste for, and
certainly not to find out about very boring, very quirky,
fundamentally very simple things that are just perfect to be done once
and for all by a clever program.
Let me end with two somewhat
rhetorical questions: Is this bad? And what about Linux?
If my time and trouble don't
count, it probably is not very bad: all I lost was time, while trying
to find an operating system less bad than Windows. And unlike several
MicroSoft products it didn't destroy my own data-files irretrievably,
and at least a little of what I saw I of Linux - notably: The Gnome
desktop - I liked better than Windows.
Also - having gone this year
through six almost completely useless attempted installations of Linux
- I do grant that the writing of a decent installation-program for an
operating system is far from easy, especially since there are so many
different kinds of hardware on which it should work, which it should
recognize etc.
What does annoy me most are two
facts:
A. The Linuxes I get invariably
have arrived with as much hype as MicroSoft provides for its products
- as if you must meet lies and hype by a cheat by more lies and more
hype.
B. It's not just the distributors of Linux-versions that produce a lot
of hype: The computer magazines mostly parrot it - as if objective
reporting means the same as repeating ads in slightly more euphemistic
words.
The first fact annoys me because
it should be possible to beat MicroSoft not by even better lies and
hype, but by better and cheaper software that comes with far less
hype, lies, false promises, unreadable documentation etc.
The second fact annoys me at least
as much, for I have in all cases I have discussed above first read
articles in computer magazines, that usually turned out to be rewrites
of the material the distributors of the software provided, only to
find several months or half a year later the same magazines blandly
claiming things to the effect that "of course we all know Corel has a
rotten installation procedure" and so on - in short, the facts they
should have properly reported in the first place, and indeed must have
found themselves if indeed they did try out these installations on
several machines.
To end with the final question:
What about Linux?
In brief: I much hope it will
succeed, because this will be in the interest of absolutely everybody
except those who hold shares in MicroSoft. But the evidence I have
seen over the last year doesn't make me really optimistic about the
chances of Linux, and a good part of the reason seems to be that the
same sort of commercial types with the same greedy motives and the
same habits of hyping and lying that made MicroSoft so big are
involved with furthering the cause of Linux. Or so it seems to me, on
the basis of a full year of experience - and please note: I am not
talking about the many tenthousands of private persons investing time
and trouble in writing decent free programs with public source code; I
am talking about distributors of Linux.
And in any case, Linux will not
work for me if I cannot install it mostly as the ads claim "in a
breeze, without any difficulty, in six easy steps, on the internet in
15 minutes" and so on, and also not if I can install its kernel, but
then first have to read for weeks through computer-documentation to
find out how to get on the net, how to print, and so on, for these
things can and should be programmed.
(October 2000).