Mandrake virtually installs itself in 20 mins or less on current hardware.... if you know what you're doing, which I didn't. Overall, it took me about two weeks in what little spare time I have, plus two hours of Greg's time. Finally, once I had everything successfully partitioned, and knew exactly what to do, I did successfully install Mandrake in about 45 minutes.
Installfests just to get Linux installed are no longer a necessity.I'd rather have done all of that at an installfest, it's just that I wasn't going to wait until March. The best way to learn is to have an expert available to answer stupid questions.
Forgetting the hassles caused by the shortcomings of the rpm format, which have been largely worked around in various ways, installing applications and their upgrades is usually as simple as falling off a log.Regrettably, my track record so far is poor. I've tried installing Grip, Lame, Ogg Vorbis, and a modem driver. So far only Grip has worked. Back to that installfest.
Linux's very sucess has had the effect that LUGs are no longer needed for the dedicated support of Linux per se.Installation is OK once you know what you're doing. The need for support won't seriously diminish until you can buy your Linux box ready-to-eat off the shelf at Harvey Norman. Also, I find discussions of "what's the best tool for a photos web-site" both useful and interesting.
Douglas (first-time poster).
