How does Linux stack up against Windows XP?
Full story: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/personaltechnology/134617744_ptlinux180.html
By Paul Andrews
Special to The Seattle Times
Shortly after I lost the ALT-F-S feature in Microsoft Word last fall, I made a New Year's resolution to try out the Linux operating system.
You read right: The keyboard "save" function in Word just went away one day. I tried reinstalling Word with Office, but nothing changed. Just chalk it up to another of those famously mysterious Windows "glitches."
I wasn't sure I would want to make Linux my everyday PC, however. As fed up with Windows as I was, I understood the challenges of starting over with a new system. Over the years, I've gone from CP/M to DOS (with proprietary systems thrown in) to back and forth between Mac and Windows. Seldom in the transition do you get to take your preferences with you, and you usually face a learning curve of varying steepness.
So rather than overwrite Windows 98 with Linux, I went out and purchased a bare-bones PC, one without an operating system installed. Because my aging Windows 98 box cannot handle an XP upgrade, I obtained for Linux comparison purposes an eMachines Windows XP review computer with similar specs to the Linux box. Both machines retailed for $399.
But the eMachines computer came with Windows preinstalled. For the Linux box, I decided to purchase Red Hat's new version 8.0 for $39. That raised the overall system cost to $438 before tax. It's possible to download Linux free, albeit highly problematic if the PC does not have an operating system installed. In any case, $39 seemed a reasonable fee for an operating system. I can remember when DOS and Windows cost about that.
The cost difference between Linux and Windows really starts to register when you put Office in the equation. Linux's package came with Office equivalents included at no extra charge. If you have to upgrade or buy Office for XP, you're looking at $250 or more above the system cost.
Red Hat installation fairly easy
It took me from 28 to 38 minutes to install Red Hat. The variation depends on how much software you want to put on your hard drive. Red Hat gives you several options. For interfaces, it offers Gnome and KDE. Both are cruder than Windows but offer the comfort of familiarity to Windows users.
You can also run Linux from a command line, as with Unix and the late CP/M and DOS. It helps to know Linux commands for finding programs, changing directories and so on. But with Red Hat, you can pretty much get by with point-and-click. This is a vital point for any average PC user, since most of us have gotten pretty dependent on graphical interfaces.
Even though XP came preinstalled, it took 12 minutes to configure the machine on initial bootup. Office took an additional 8 minutes. If you don't buy XP on a new PC, installation will take considerably longer for Windows than with Linux.
Installation of Red Hat was pretty straightforward. The system automatically found my monitor, sound, video card and DSL Internet connection. Red Hat offered a point-and-click graphical interface for installation, and I accepted most of the suggested default configurations.
Configuring my Hewlett-Packard printer went smoothly. Red Hat offered a list of printers that included my model. On the XP machine, printer installation was a bit trickier. XP recognized the machine through plug-n-play but could not seem to find the right driver. Even after I installed the driver off HP's CD-ROM, I had to reboot the system three times to get the driver to "take." Whereas printer installation on Linux took a few moments, I wrestled with XP for more than 15 minutes.
For Web use and e-mail, I went with the Netscape Mozilla browser. It sets up similarly to its Mac and Windows counterparts. On the XP machine, I used Internet Explorer. Mozilla proved slightly faster, downloading msnbc.com and mtbr.com, two of the Web's slower sites, noticeably quicker than Internet Explorer .
There's also a program called Ximian Evolution for Linux that pretty much emulates Outlook on Windows. But I found no way to import Outlook mail and preferences (Ximian does offer compatibility with other mailbox formats). Bringing over contacts and archives from Outlook to Linux is at this point impractical. In my case, it's another reason to hold on to my Win 98 machine. It's probably easier to rebuild contacts on a Linux PC from scratch.
File swaps almost a breeze
As for importing files from my Windows 98 machine to Linux, this was where I felt real trepidation. If I couldn't bring over my text, data and multimedia content, I might as well pack it in and stick with Windows.
I e-mailed myself several Word, Excel and PowerPoint files. All opened easily in the OpenOffice counterpart — Writer, Calc and Impress — on the Linux machine. Formatting stayed the same. Fonts looked slightly different, but that's often true if you move from one Windows version to another. There are differences in feature sets between Office and OpenOffice, but I found none of consequence.
I also encountered no problems moving photo (JPEG) and music (MP3) files over to Linux. Red Hat offers several utilities for viewing and listening. Inserting a music CD-ROM produced a rudimentary player that did fine for my purposes.
It was only when I tried to load photos from my digital cameras and play video files that I ran into problems with the Linux machine. Linux recognized my Olympus C2000Z camera but would not let me download photos. As for my newer Minolta Dimage Xi camera, Linux saw it as a USB device only. When I messaged Minolta customer service, I was told Minolta does not support Linux.
Windows XP required me to install drivers from CD-ROMs included with the Olympus and Minolta cameras. After that I had no problems pulling photos off the cameras.
Configuring a media player provided my biggest frustration with Linux. Red Hat doesn't bundle much in the way of media players. RealNetworks offers a version of its media player for Linux, which I downloaded.
The downside
But the experience was a reminder of how challenging Linux installation can be when it comes to packages not included with Red Hat. To install the player, I had to rename the downloaded file, requiring me to type mv rp8_linux20_libc6_i386_cs2_rpm rp8.linux20.libc6.i386,cs2.rpm. From there, Red Hat offers an install-packages feature that, with a few mouse clicks, will install RealPlayer.
But RealPlayer performance was spotty. Some streaming media off the Net ran just fine. Others simply crashed the program. I also installed a new program called MPlayer that has received rave reviews. It would boot fine but would not run video. Apparently the bug has something to do with my video card or perhaps the installation procedure itself.
For Linux, installation appears to be the final usability hurdle. You can download all sorts of binary, CVS (Code Versioning System) and RPM (Red Hat Package Managers) files off the Net. Getting them to install and work right is still a headache.
Windows Media Player and Apple Quicktime are far more powerful programs than I found for Linux. Ironically, though, while I was testing Linux, I had rotten luck with PC media players: Windows Media Player refused to load programs off a CD, and RealPlayer for Windows crashed several times, locking up my PC and forcing reboots. The world of media players on personal computers is fraught with peril, no matter what platform.
So here's my bottom line: For desktop productivity, Linux has reached the point where it's capable of everyday work. On the consumer side, it has a ways to go. Even if the Linux folks can solve installation challenges — and they are working hard to make installation as easy as the "Wizard" approach on Windows — the feature capabilities of content software lag well behind Windows.
Still, in most ways Linux has crossed the "good-enough" threshold. Overall, Linux crashed only twice during two months of installation and configuration. Windows XP locked up countless times and continues to perform unpredictably. I could not log into a Web conference via DSL on the XP machine recently, even though a colleague on a dial-up connection running Windows 98 had no problem.
And the ALT-F-S feature works fine in OpenOffice Writer.
Mac looks mighty good
Linux undoubtedly will continue to get better. The question is whether Red Hat or other vendors will improve it to death. As features and compatibilities get added, the danger becomes burdening Linux with the kind of legacy overhead that plagues Windows today.
It's also a tough call to recommend switching to anyone. It may depend on how adventurous you are, how frustrating your Windows experience is and whether it hurts enough to motivate you to explore alternatives.
Ironically, my two-month experiment (which I will continue) gave me a greater appreciation for a third platform: the Apple Macintosh. Built like Linux on a Unix base, Mac's OS X offers the reliability of Linux and even better digital-content features than Windows.
In fact, the Mac is still a fun computing experience, in contrast to the PC's cross-your-fingers exercise in driver installation, setup and reboots.
If Apple offered a $400 computer, there would be no comparison at all. As with doctors and dentists, pain eradication apparently costs extra.
Paul Andrews, co-author of "Gates" and author of "How the Web Was Won," writes the weekly E-conomy column in the Monday Business/Technology section.
