On Fri, Jun 19, 1998 at 04:24:03PM -0700, David E. Fox wrote:
> Installation isn't the be-all of OSes ease of use - it's only a minor
> part, yet it usually becomes the focus of the discussion. We thus have
> a bunch of people who can't see the ease of use of whatever OS they
> might want to get involved with for fear of not being able to cross the
> installation hurdle.
I agree with you. I've had to face the installation hurdle myself --
despite nearly two decades of Unix work, *I'm* having trouble figuring
out which laptop to buy to run Linux on, because, having never used
any Micro$oft OS, I have just about zero familiarity with PC hardware.
(I've lived in a world of Sun, Sequent, NeXT, Digital, SGI, and HP machines.)
And I certainly can't afford to buy a machine that won't run Linux.
But it's turning out to be quite difficult to ascertain, for
J. Random Laptop spotted in misc.forsale.*, whether or not it
will run (say) Red Hat Linux 5.1. (I assure you that I'm neither
lazy or stupid. I have and continue to do my homework. But many
of the documents I've read presume a familiarity with PC hardware
that would be the norm for folks converting from DOS/Windows, but
which isn't for folks coming from the workstation-based Unix world.)
My suggestion? Hmmm...easy for me to suggest this, since I don't
have the knowledge or the time to do the work: a Linux configuration
web page where visitors can indicate which hardware they have and
which would then indicate which Linuxes/free Unixes support it.
The mechanics of such a page would be relatively easy; what would *not*
be easy would be maintaining the data tables behind it which keep
track of which OS supports which hardware and in what combination.
---Rsk
Rich Kulawiec
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