Anecdote re: NT vs. Linux installation

[wchandle at hotmail.com (Wendell)]

Hello Jerry -

I have just the opposite response, perhaps because I know M$ Win 9x/NT 4/2K,
having worked & supported even Win 2.x & 3.x back when they were _new_, but
yet currently I hardly know Unix or Linux at all. I went to install RH 4.6.
My network card is an off brand, not included in the distribution's
available list, so I ended up with a bunch of errors. MS Win 9x/NT 4 would
have given you the option during the install for a "have disk" so I wouldn't
have to figure out how to install the darn thing after the OS was loaded.
(The NIC came with the appropriate driver on a floppy.) Same for my
monitor - not on the list, but the install seemed to insist on probing to
find the best settings, and selected a resolution the video card could
handle, but not the CRT. I've successfully installed RH before, but only on
systems that had very vanilla HW. As for all the reboots during NT install,
even though it wanted you to reboot, you could have selected not to reboot,
continued, and loaded the printer driver if you wanted to, then reboot once
to let the changes take affect.

My only point is that I hear people complain all the time about the trials &
tribulations of operating system (x) which is obviously not as good as os
(y) but yet they are already familiar with the inside tricks of the second,
and not the first. I'll be struggling with setting up the video & printer
this weekend. Then it's onto Solaris 8 on the same box. (Although I've yet
to read the supported HW list, I think I'll have to purchase a more
mainstream NIC for it.) On the other hand, a few weeks ago I had the
pleasure of installing Win 2K Pro with absolutely no pain. I didn't have to
read any manuals or PDF's, just booted off the CD & let it run. All drivers
were present and accounted for - no hassles at all. My intention is to learn
Linux  & Unix close to as well as I know the M$ products. But I've got to
struggle with the learning curve in the meantime. And, that's my problem to
deal with, not the fault of the OS's, Linus Torvalds, or Bill Gates.

PS - to get M$ knowledge base answers without going through the registration
hassles, go to:

http://search.microsoft.com/us/SearchMS.asp

and enter your search criteria and select the Support & the Knowledge Base
option.


----- Original Message -----
From: "Jerry Clabaugh" <jerryc at world.std.com>
To: <discuss at Blu.Org>
Sent: Saturday, March 18, 2000 12:58 PM
Subject: Anecdote re: NT vs. Linux installation


> One of my duties in my present job was to set up 2 NT machines in a
> small
>  heterogeneous cluster. It wasn't too hard, although in my experience it
>
>  does take longer than installing Linux. Things got interesting when I
>  tried to get the NT machines to print to our HP TCP ethernet printer.
>  I looked through the documentation I had, found nothing. So I went
>  to www.microsoft.com, did a search, and found 3 article titles which
>  seemed to be just what I needed. I clicked on the top article, and got
>  a message telling me that I had to turn on cookies, and I had to
> register
>  to access the 'premium content'. Now it seemed to me that paying $300
>  for an operating system entitled me to information on how to use it,
>  without having to give Microsoft any marketing data in return. But
> after
>  grumbling for a while, I started to fill out the on-line registration
> forms.
>
>  This is not a simple form. I entered 6 pages of information:
>
>  Who are you? What's your address? Your phone number? Your e-mail?
>  What other software do you run? What's your job title? Whom do you work
> for?
>  What's their address, fax, e-mail? What kind of business? What kind
>  of software? How big? And on, and on and on. After 6 pages of this, the
> thing
>  crashed. And I couldn't access the premium content.
>
>  I searched the Web at large and finally found some pages at U. Wisc.
>  which offered the information without any nonsense.
>
>  When doing the printer setup, I had to reboot THREE times. No, it
>  wasn't crashing, NT just insisted that I reboot (1) after installing
>  TCP/IP, (2) after installing the printer driver, and (3) after I set
>  the printer to system default.
>
>  Under Linux, I just made an entry in /etc/printcap, and printed a test
>  page. The information on how to do it was in the Linux HOWTOs, easy to
> find.
>
>
> -
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