On Wed, 28 Oct 1998, Cheng Zhou wrote:
...
> I can only base this off of my personal experience. But it took
> at most 15 minutes to install NT onto my laptop and have networking
> and everything configured. It took me more than a short few hours to get
> my Linux box setup the way I wanted. Now you could tell me that I'm just
> stupid at configuring linux, but it took a long time to recompile the
> kernel and take all the crap out of the stock kernel. Plus I have a cruddy
> scsi card that has no bios. Windoze liked it just fine but linux all but
> refused to use it w/o manual source code edit. Those who remember how
> to do that can deal but how 'bout everyone else?
...
It is true that Linux still has probs with some hardware, especially
laptops, or so I've heard. (I don't have a laptop, and so have never kept
up with that area) However, experiences do vary, as the two of us have
proven. You mention that it took you some time to get Linux configured
the way you wanted and to get stock things out of the kernel. Admitadly,
this process is could be much quicker on NT--simply decide what you want
to do, then forget about it because you can't do it. It is even faster to
skip these two steps, as they don't really accomplish much, anyway. In my
case, I decided what I wanted to do, and then discovered that it was
impossible. Unfortunately, in some cases it took me as long to discover
that it was impossible as it would have taken to configure it in Linux.
Where it was possible, however, it often took as long as it would have
under Linux, though there were a few configurable things that were
admittadly easier to do. I will admit that I didn't even try to take
stock stuff out of the NT kernel--I simply concluded that it was possible.
I considered going to the Microsoft web site to download the kernel source
so that I could do that, but that seems to be impossible. If you were
willing to simply not configure Linux to be exactly as you wanted it and
to make the kernel slimmer, you would have saved time, as you do in NT,
and you would have been stuck with whatever configuration you were given,
as you are in NT.
With the exception of unsupported hardware, which does need to be
addressed, if you don't want to have freedom to configure, Linux should be
as easy to install as NT. If you then decide to configure, Linux will
take some more time, but NT will not be configurable short of getting a
job at Microsoft where you can get access to source. I consider that more
time input than Linux requires.
If you happen to be in perfect agreement with Microsoft as to how a
computer should work, then NT should be good, when it doesn't crash. I
just happen to have my own ideas about how _my_ computer should work, and
it includes not crashing, and being configurable.
I don't use Linux for moral reasons of liking open source. I use Linux
because it works better for me.
Todd Greer <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
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