10 years later Windows is still for me. :(

[stoneysilence]

I know this won't be popular but I just got done playing with Linux all evening. Last time I did this was about 10 years ago with Red Hat 6 (pre-fedora) and I am unimpressed compared to XP. There is no compelling reason for me to switch over primarily to using Linux on my home machine. Now if you know of a even more dummy proof install of Linux that I can try, I am willing to try it. I have tried Ubuntu (at my church not on my home PC), and Fedora so far. I have openSUSE on DVD which I tried to install but failed (see below). May try to install it again Tuesday and overwrite Fedora.

My story:
Yesterday I tried installing Fedora 6 but it failed because it didn't include a partition manager. So last night I downloaded another 3gb and downloaded openSUSE 10.2. Get home from church this afternoon and start installing openSUSE. It repartitions my HD but then fails when trying to format the swap directory. So I reboot, Windows does a "error checking" on my drive, I get into Windows and realize that openSUSE had succeeded in repartitioning my hd. So I throw Fedora 6 (chose Fedora 6 over openSUSE since it seems to be the "defacto" version of Linux) back in and it finds the Linux partions and easily formats the "swap" partition and installs.

Everything is going good, finally get to the desktop, start messing around. Fedora then tells me there are 260+ updates to install. So I get it going (after a frustrating 15 minutes of it telling me something else is using software and it cannot proceed or something) and go watch some tv. A few hours later it is done and says to reboot. So I reboot. But now when I get to the Boot Loader it now has 2 copies of Fedora listed and one of my XP. So I assume the Fedora with the bigger numbers is my new patched Fedora. Launch it, get in, no problems. Start dinking around.

Then I notice my graphics and everything is really "slow" (windows opening, closing graphics). Windows XP even though it is a 2 year old install (yes I know I need to reformat and reinstall) is much snappier and other than initial load time is much quicker overall. It's a minor thing so I don't worry about it at this point. I also notice that all the fonts are a weird font which I don't like and way too small. Was unable to find how to change it.

So I go out to the web and surf the net for a bit. Then I realize my Firefox is 1.5 not 2.0. So I go to Firefox's website and download Firefox 2. Now I have this file sitting on my desktop and I have no idea what to do. I tried double clicking on it but it just opens a "Winzip" like program. I try using the "Add/Remove Programs" but it won't show up there, just 1.5 which was already installed. I go under the ?preferences? to it's package updater and it won't find it. So I give up trying to update Firefox. I know I could search on the net and figure out some archaic "dos" mode type of command to do it, but I just don't feel like going back to the "dos" days personally.

I know if I really wanted to I could go out and find all these command line tricks to install packages or even graphical ways, but it doesn't work out of the box which is what I care about. Linux needs a generic graphical installer that will take any "installer" by double clicking it and install it like Windows does (.msi packages or 3rd party installers that are .exe's)

Linux has come a LONG way since RH 6 when I last used it, but so has Windows. Linux needs more work to be more dummy computer user friendly still, I had this same issue 10 years ago with RH 6. It just seems like Linux is still playing catch up after all these years.

I thank you for your time and hope in a few more years Linux will beat the pants off MS and be the OS of choice. But for now, I will be sticking with WinXP on my home machine and probably won't bother reinstalling Linux when I get my new PC in a month or so (may upgrade to Vista).

However I will be using Linux (Ubuntu) on a few computers at my church which are old and for nothing more then Websurfing so I hope I am still welcome to come here and ask stupid questions about Linux which I know I will have.

Thanks,
StoneySilence

PC Specs:
Abit NF7-S Rev 2 MB
2gig Crucial ram
ATI Radeon 9800 Pro
2 SATA 150 HD's:
1 Maxtor 150gb 8mb cache
1 WD 250gb 16mb cache
21" Generic CRT
HP Officejet 7210 All-in-one
Generic DVD/CD +-R/RW Burner

[royper]

Everything is going good, finally get to the desktop, start messing around. Fedora then tells me there are 260+ updates to install. So I get it going (after a frustrating 15 minutes of it telling me something else is using software and it cannot proceed or something) and go watch some tv. A few hours later it is done and says to reboot. So I reboot. But now when I get to the Boot Loader it now has 2 copies of Fedora listed and one of my XP. So I assume the Fedora with the bigger numbers is my new patched Fedora. Launch it, get in, no problems. Start dinking around.

I had a similar "problem". After updating my kernel and rebooting i had the choice between two linux systems, i.e. two kernel versions i could use.
So i edited the menu.lst of my bootmanager and all is fine know.

Now I have this file sitting on my desktop and I have no idea what to do.

You can find some How-Tos dealing with software installation in linux here

Linux needs a generic graphical installer that will take any "installer" by double clicking it and install it like Windows does (.msi packages or 3rd party installers that are .exe's)

But that would make linux more windows-like what in my oppinion would be nonsense. Linux is fine how it is and for me it is the best OS in the world.

By the way, if you really want an out of the box working OS, get a Mac. My brother has a 15" Powerbook with MacOS X 10.4 and it's a great OS. Unix based, nice GUI, some incredible features and a fine hardware finishing (Apple knows a lot of designing neat stuff) and everything works out of the box and you don't have problems with viruses, trojans etc..
Admittedly there aren't as many games for Macs as for Windows, but that's not a point.

Anyway, I wish you the best with windows and hope that you won't encounter the problems i had with WinXP.

[techieMoe]

There's no shame in recognizing what works best for you. Good luck.